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agent-whiskeys-sweetheart · 3 years

Text

Meant To Be (iv)

Pairing: Hotch x F!Reader

Summary: Once the team is back you all go out for drinks and your connection to Rossi becomes increasingly evident. The following day at work you get your first chance to work in the field.

Warnings: None! Just the slow burn as usual.

Word Count: 5,751

A/N: As always, thank you all so much for your continued support! It means so much to me! I just wanted to warn you guys that I may not be able to update as often as I would like for a while. School just started for me and my schedule doesn’t really allow for “free time” at the moment. Just know that I am working as quick as I can and I always look forward to sharing more with all of you. Thank you for your patience. I love you all so much!

Today goes by much more quickly than the last few weeks. Garcia helped to make the time pass a little faster but most days you were hanging on by a thread. Now that the whole team is back you feel more hopeful about your future amongst them. As the others do their required reports you make your way down to Garcia’s office. There is a bit of paperwork for the two of you to complete as well but it’s much different and a lot shorter than the rest of the team’s. At this point, you are able to walk into her office without even knocking.

“Hey cupcake! Ready to finish things up?”

“You know it.” Pulling your chair around you saddle up beside her. The paperwork is already laid out in front of her and she pushes a few sheets over to you. Thumbing through the few pages that there are you ask her for something to write with. What she gives to you is a small boring ballpoint pen. With a pang of betrayal in your eyes you look at her. “So what, I’m not good enough for the fun pens now?”

“Oh I’m sorry your highness. I thought you’d want a professional pen for your first round of professional paperwork.” Taking it out of your hand, she reaches over and retrieves a new pen that is a bright sparkling pink with a tuft of brightly colored fluff on the end.

“Thank you. Much better.” She laughs, nudging your knee with her own. The two of you set about filling out the reports. Every so often you ask her a question which she happily answers before going about finishing up her own. It only takes you both about fifteen minutes, leaving you time to talk before the rest of the team gets done.

“Did you get a chance to talk to Morgan?” Hearing her mention him for about the ten thousandth time makes you roll your eyes.

“Yes, I did. You know what, he didn’t mention you at all.”

“I wish I believed you but we both know that man is obsessed with me. What did you guys talk about?”

“Oh, so we’re feeling especially nosy today, aren’t we?”

“Always my sweet.” You love the ever adorable smile on her face.

“He was just telling me that he was impressed with my work on the case. He also told me that everyone is going out for drinks tonight and he invited me to come along.”

“Are you gonna go?” She asks even though she knows the answer.

“Yeah, of course. This is my first real chance to get to know the rest of the team. I mean, I already know Morgan pretty well I feel like but everyone else is basically a stranger to me.”

“I know. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. And of course I’m going with you.”

“I would expect nothing less from you my dear.” She gives another big toothy grin, causing you to smile as well. Looking back at the clock you stack up your papers and grab Garcia’s as well, heading toward the door. “I’m gonna go hand these in to Hotch.”

“Oh, okay. Thank you!” She says, watching the expression on your face change at the mention of your boss. “Are you still mad at him?”

“No, I was never mad at him. Was I frustrated with his decision? Of course but I don’t dislike him for it. He was doing what he thought was right. Besides, he already apologized to me.”

“Hotch apologized to you? For a decision that HE made?”

“Yeah.” Garcia pulls your chair back around and points to it.

“Okay you can’t tell me that and just leave. I need details.” Laughing you go back over and sit, putting the papers back on the desk.

“There’s not much to tell. Before he left he said he wanted to talk to me so he could ‘evaluate my abilities’. He called me in just a little bit ago. It went pretty well I think. He apologized for being harsh and said that on the next case he wanted me in the field. He also apologized for not remembering me when we met. So, yeah. We’re all good.”

“Okay, so why did you make a face?”

“What face?”

“Oh come on, you totally know you made a face. When you said you were gonna go to Hotch’s office you made ... a face.”

“Okay, well I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Even so, it happened so what’s the deal?”

“It’s nothing. I don’t know.” Hearing your awful dismissal, her nose scrunches up as she watches you with narrowed eyes.

“Yeah, something is definitely going on with you. I’m all ears my love. You know that you can tell me anything, right?” The genuine expression on her face tempts you to tell her every thought that’s gone through head from the very first moment you met Hotch. However, you are having enough trouble understanding your own feelings. There is no point in sharing them right now.

“Yeah, I know. It is truly nothing. I’m just nervous that he might change his mind about me working the next case, that’s all.” This answer seems to satisfy her as she pats your knee.

“Trust me, he won’t. You are an amazing agent and you are going to do great out there. And if he doesn’t like it he can just--”

“I can just what Garcia?” The sound of Hotch’s deep voice makes both of you jump as you look behind you where he is looming in the doorway. His presence is entirely commanding, the power that he exudes seeming very evident to you now. Garcia clears her throat as she looks between the two of you, adjusting her glasses.

“I was saying that you can just make an informed and valid evaluation and we will be entirely respectful of whatever you decide.”

“Right,” He says with a ghost of a smile, walking a little further into the office. “I came down to see if you had any questions about the paperwork. I know this is your first report, I didn’t want you to get lost.” This he says to you as he makes his way closer.

“It was actually pretty straightforward. I have it done if you’d like to take a look at it though.” Reaching behind yourself, you grab the report and hand it to him. With a nod he begins to scan through the pages, flipping through them fairly quickly.

“Exemplary. I’ll just take this up to my office. Garcia?” Without needing any further instruction, she grabs her own report and hands it to him. Just like that he’s gone again, leaving Garcia stunned.

“Wow. He must be in a really good mood.” She adds.

“What do you mean? I mean, how do you know?”

“Hotch doesn’t do that kind of stuff. If you had a question he would have expected you to take the initiative to ask. He normally wouldn’t have even considered making the trip so something must be different. That was ... just not in his nature.” Pondering the implications of her statement you settle for a small shrug.

“I guess he was just being nice. No need to wonder why he did it.”

“Yeah, I guess not. Well that takes care of that. I honestly don’t have anything else for you to do right now. You could probably go ahead and ask Hotch if you can leave for the day.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll do that. I wouldn’t mind a shower before we all meet up later.” With that you stretch and make your way towards the door.

“Have a good afternoon my dear. I look forward to seeing you later.”

“Thanks Pen. I’ll see you later.” Once she waves goodbye you leave her office, cracking the door behind you. Stepping into the elevator, you slink against the wall. Even though there’s nothing for you to do, the idea of asking to leave this early in the day makes you uneasy.

Once you’re back on the main floor you make a beeline for Morgan’s desk. The sight of you in his peripheral causes him to look up.

“Don’t you ever hang out at your own desk?”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if I didn’t come bug you every five minutes.” This makes him laugh as he sets down his pen.

“We’ll never know until you try,” Faking offense, you cross your arms. “I’m just teasing you kid. What’s up?”

“Well me and Garcia finished our paperwork and she doesn’t need help with anything for the rest of the day so I was gonna go ask Hotch if I could leave early. If he says yes I’ll need to know the name of the place we’re going tonight so I can meet you there.”

“Good luck getting Hotch to agree to that but on the off chance that he does, I can write down the address for you.”

“Sounds good. Better start writing then bud.” Glancing back over your shoulder teasingly you walk up to Hotch’s office, knocking sharply. Hearing him beckon you inside, you step through the door.

“I wanted to let you know that I talked with Garcia and she doesn’t have anything for me to do right now. Nobody else needs help either so I was wondering if there was anything you needed from me.”

“I don’t believe so. Usually today would mainly be spent doing paperwork but since you have less than the others if you’re finished I would be alright letting you leave early.” Hiding a smile, you nod.

“Thank you sir. I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow then.” You go to leave but he stops you before you can get out the door.

“L/N,” When you turn to look at him you see that same softness in his eyes as you did during your earlier conversation. “I was curious ... are you doing anything tonight? Anything recreational, I mean. An important thing to try and do is find time for yourself. This job is incredibly stressful and can take a lot out of you. It would be good for you to find some time each week to do something ... fun.”

This seems like a very light-hearted thing to be coming out of his mouth. He carries himself very professionally. There hasn’t been a moment so far when you’ve seen him unwind so hearing him talk about having fun each week seems a bit odd. However you take the advice to heart. Anything he has to offer you want to remember. “I actually am sir. I was going out to have a drink with the rest of the team.” As you say this you suddenly realize that he may not have already been invited. Feeling guilty you offer a smile. “Did you plan on coming as well?” By the look on his face you can tell that he is unaware of the event however he doesn’t seem upset.

“No but thank you for asking. I need to go home and get some rest.”

“Of course. That’s a very smart decision. If you ever want to though ... go out for a drink with us, I mean. You’re always more than welcome in my book.” The genuine kindness in your eyes when you look at him causes Aaron’s heart to clench and for some reason, this time he doesn’t try to stop it. God, how can one person be so good?

“I appreciate the gesture. I’ll keep that in mind next time,” The two of you stare deeply into one another and for a moment, just one brief fleeting moment, you are just a man and a woman filled with yearning. It passes quickly and you convince yourself that it didn’t even happen. “Go, enjoy your free afternoon and have fun this evening. It’s important for you to bond with your team members.”

“Thank you sir.” As you’re about to leave he stops you one last time.

“One more thing,” There is a second of hesitation. “You don’t have to call me sir all the time. A bit of formality when we’re on the job is appropriate but you can just call me Hotch. Everyone does.”

“Got it. In that case I hope you have a good evening Hotch.” When you step out of his office you can feel your heart beating rapidly. Every time you start to get your feelings in check he looks at you like that and you melt at his feet. It’s nothing but a stupid crush though. You’ll get over it. It’s not like he has feelings for you anyway so there’s no point in entertaining a fantasy. As lovely a fantasy as it is.

“Hey, Y/N,” Emily stops you as you make your way towards Morgan’s desk. “I wanted to tell you, really great job on this case. The work you did was great. You should feel very proud of yourself.”

“Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.” You nod in gratitude.

“Of course. I’m excited to see what you can do in the field. If you’re that good in an office you’re gonna be a force out in the world.”

“I’m excited too. Hopefully I don’t disappoint any of you.”

“You won’t. We’re all on your side here. No matter what happens, we all just want to help you be successful. I promise.”

“That ... makes me feel a lot better actually. Thanks.” She gives you a kind smile, pushing back away from her desk to face you.

“Absolutely. Hey, are you coming out with us tonight?”

“Yeah, Morgan invited me earlier. I was actually about to go get the address from him since I’m headed out for the day.” She doesn’t say anything for a moment, frozen as if she’s buffering.

“Hotch is letting you leave early?”

“Yeah. I finished all my work with Garcia so he’s letting me go.”

“Well, whatever you did to get on his good side, keep it up.” She jokes, turning back to her own paperwork. The continued mention of Hotch’s graciousness with you threatens to go to your head but you fight to keep your daydreaming in check.

“When I figure out what the secret is I’ll let you know.” You kid back before leaving her to continue her work. Morgan seems to be almost finished when you make your way back over to him. Upon seeing you hovering he stops briefly to look up at you. The look on your face tells him everything he needs to know and he lets out a chuckle.

“No way. He’s really letting you leave?” Giving him nothing more than a nod you shift your weight as you watch him grab a piece of paper and write down the address. “I guess you earned this fair and square then. We’ll all meet up at eight. Sound okay?”

“For sure. See you then.” With a smile you stroll out the main doors.

++++++++++

As soon as you step in the door you drop your things to the floor and flop onto the couch. It has been a very short day and yet you feel a strange weight on your shoulders. Hearing everyone’s disbelief at the idea of Hotch being so relaxed with you had sent your mind spiraling with thoughts. Even though you know it was nothing it is hard not to entertain the ideas that come to your head. With a frustrated sigh you push yourself up and head for the bathroom.

Once you step inside your small shower the pressure of the warm water on your back immediately makes you slump over with relief. The strange sense of tension in your body melts away with each droplet as they disappear down the drain. Reveling in the feeling, you take a bit longer than normal to enjoy the time to yourself. After being clean you feel that you can no longer justify lingering in the water so you turn the knob and step out to dry off. The soft material of the towel elevates the feeling of relaxation in your body.

Throwing a robe on you make your way to the bedroom, flinging yourself onto the bed with your phone in hand. Suddenly feeling very mischievous you take an adorably flirtatious picture of yourself in your robe, well cleaned and blissful, which you send to Garcia.

Having fun all alone at work Pen?

I think that I hate you.

The response makes you giggle as you head out to the kitchen to grab a snack. There is a chocolate bar on the top shelf that you’ve forgotten about which you happily grab before plopping down on the couch. Turning the tv on to your favorite station you sit there, impatiently waiting for eight. The day feels impossibly long but once you see that it’s seven you decide to get dressed.

After several minutes of trying to figure out what to wear you decide to keep things casual. You’re not at work tonight. It’s just you and the team spending time together as friends, not agents. The thought alone makes you smile. After a bit longer you figure it’s a good time to head out and make your way to your car. Typing the address into your GPS you pull out and make the drive to the bar Morgan told you to meet at. It is surprisingly close to your apartment complex. When you step inside the building it seems to be fairly empty. There is no sign of the others yet so you make your way over to a table to wait. Cursing your preparedness you fidget with your shirt until you hear the doors open, announcing the arrival of the others.

“Hey, sweetheart!” Morgan immediately calls out upon seeing you. With a smile you stand to meet him as he wraps you up in a hug.

“Hey! Nice of you to show up.” You add jokingly, turning your attention quickly to the others. Emily steps forward next and also gives you a hug. JJ follows with a sweet smile. Spencer offers a handshake, as has become the custom between the two of you. Garcia pushes her way to the front and nearly suffocates you before letting you go with a laugh. At the back of the group is Rossi. His presence is mildly surprising to you but you offer him a small smile. Seeing him brings to mind the recent conversation you have had with your sister but you push those thoughts aside. Rather than embracing you he places a gentle hand on your arm.

“It’s nice to see you again.” He adds, trying to alleviate the tension.

“Yeah, likewise. I know we haven’t really had a chance to talk to one another yet. Hopefully we can clear that up tonight!”

“Sounds nice.” With a nod, you turn back towards the others. They all take up residence at the table you had already picked out. Squeezing in between Garcia and Morgan, you can’t help but smile shyly at the people around you. They immediately strike up conversation, talking like the oldest of friends. Just being amongst them means so much to you. Hearing your name you are drawn back out of your thoughts.

“Sorry what?” There is a uniform chuckle from the group.

“I asked if you wanted something to drink?” Emily speaks up.

“Oh yeah. Sorry.” She starts standing but Rossi stops her.

“Actually, let me get this one,” The action causes you to look between the two, a strange feeling in your chest. “What’re you having?” After telling him your drink order he disappears with a nod. The others continue the conversation as though nothing has happened and you quickly rejoin them. When Rossi comes back over he hands your drink to you first and then passes drinks around to the others.

As the night goes on you share moments with everyone, getting to know them better and allowing them to know you. Emily and you discuss the stresses of being a woman in this field and she gives you several pieces of advice to stay afloat, which you always appreciate. Spencer recommends some pieces of literature to you which you take mental note of. JJ and you get into a conversation about your sisters, confiding in one another as you share stories. Morgan makes light hearted jokes with you as you talk about some of your favorite movies together. Garcia doesn’t do much talking but she does pull you away from the table to dance when one of her favorite songs comes on. Rossi doesn’t talk much either, instead choosing to sit back and watch with a look that seems to be fatherly pride.

After a while of dancing with Morgan and Garcia you decide to go sit back down, a wide smile on your face. At the table Emily, JJ, and Spencer seem to be in a heated discussion about chess. Deciding to leave them alone you instead make your way to sit down next to Rossi. As you do so he smiles at you warmly.

“Having fun?” He inquires, glancing at you briefly.

“Yeah. I really am. It’s really nice getting to spend time with all of you like this. I feel like I’ve been waiting all my life to be part of a family like this and now that I am it’s like I just can’t get enough.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’ve heard some people say we can’t choose our families but nights like this just go to show how wrong that is.”

“Yeah, exactly.” With that, the two of you sit in content silence. The quietness between the two of you leaves time to think. Your sister’s words continue to ring in your head as you wrack ever corner of your memory for how you might possibly know the man sitting next to you. With a sigh of frustration you come up completely blank. As you ponder this you also begin to wonder if he might be having the same thoughts and decide there’s no way to find out without asking.

“So, I hope this doesn’t sound too weird but I’ve been thinking about this since we first met. I just have the strange feeling that you and I know each other somehow but I just can’t recall where from.” It all comes out at once as you shift in your seat to look at Rossi. When you say this he allows himself a moment to think before responding.

“That’s not weird at all. I’ve been thinking the same thing. There is something about you that is so familiar but I just can’t quite remember how I know you.” Hearing him say this helps to validate your confusion and you offer him a kind smile.

“Well, I guess we know each other now. That’s what’s important, right?” In his eyes there is that same sense of fatherly joy and it causes a pang of sadness to creep into your chest for a moment. Quickly deciding that it’s better to just enjoy it rather than dwell in the past, you nod slowly. “Thanks for the drink.”

“Anytime kiddo. I’m glad we do know each other now.”

With that you mutually decide the conversation is over and you stand with a stretch. Morgan and Garcia seem to be the drunkest of anyone at this point and you laugh as you watch them stumble all over each other as they “dance”. Emily, JJ, and Spencer still seem to be deep in conversation. Looking at the time you decide that it’s probably best for you to turn in for the night. “Hey guys.” You raise your voice slightly so they can all hear you as you make your way over to them.

“I think I should probably head home.” They collectively whine for a minute which causes you to laugh. “It’s okay, I’ll see you guys tomorrow!” Seeming satisfied with this answer they all get up to hug you as you thank them for a fun evening and head outside. Rossi sticks to your side and walks out the front doors with you.

“Would it be okay if I drove you home? I feel wrong about sending you home alone after you’ve been drinking.”

“Yeah, that would be okay. I actually only live a few minutes from here anyway.” With a nod he heads back towards the bar. As you make your way over to your car you can here him call inside to the others.

“Don’t any of you even think about setting foot inside a car yet. I’ll be back in a few minutes to drive you home.” With a chuckle you unlock the door and step inside. He slips into the driver’s seat and you give him directions back to your apartment. The drive is silent and quick. When you arrive you thank him as you both step out.

“Wait, how are you gonna get back?” You say, realizing that you’ve stranded him at your apartment complex since he took your car.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be alright. You get inside and get some rest.” With another expression of gratitude you head upstairs and make your way into your apartment. Stripping as you make your way to the bedroom you flop down on the bed, unable to keep your eyes open.

++++++++++

This morning you are awake bright and early, surprisingly ready to start your day. By this point you’ve begun to get into a routine before you head out for work. Your clothes are always laid out on the chair and your work materials are on the kitchen table. You make a quick breakfast then give your sister a quick good morning phone call before heading out the door and showing up to work promptly at five.

When you step inside the building this morning you are one of the first people there. Setting your things down at your desk you head over to the coffee machine, deciding an extra little boost might not be so bad. After setting it up you wait patiently for it to brew. A few minutes later you are very aware of a presence next to you. When you look back over your shoulder you are greeted by Hotch, seemingly very awake and as professional as ever.

“Good morning, Y/N.” The sound of your first name on his tongue doesn’t escape your attention as you take a small breath.

“Morning Hotch,” Hearing yourself say his name is equally as pleasant to you as you revel in the blooming bond between you.

“How was your evening?” Thinking back to the night you shared with your other team members you can’t help but smile.

“It was really wonderful. I had a great time. It was nice getting a chance to learn more about everyone. It really makes me feel connected ... like I’m truly a part of the team. You know?”

“I do. I’m very happy to hear that you had a good time.” With a nod, you look back down for a moment as you think of what to say.

“How did you sleep last night? I hope you were able to rest.”

“I slept well, thank you. I spent the evening with my son, Jack.” Hearing this takes you aback. The fact that he has a son is news to you. It’s not bad news, just a bit surprising. However, the more you think about it the more fitting it seems that he would have a kid.

“That sounds lovely. I didn’t know you had a son.”

“Yes, he’s two now. The nights I get to spend with him are always some of the best.” The thought of Hotchner taking care of a young baby sends a warm feeling spiraling through your chest.

“I can imagine,” You say, unable to hold back a small smile. “I don’t have any children but if I did ... god, they’d be my world.”

As much as you try not to think about it, for the briefest moment an image of you and Aaron laying in bed with a few babies of your own flashes in your mind. Scolding yourself harshly you erase the image and turn back towards the coffee machine. You look away just in time to miss the same dreamy look cross over Aaron’s face as the exact same vision passes through his own thoughts. It’s these moments of silence between the two of you that dare you to dream. It isn’t awkward. It has all the familiarity and comfort of a silence shared between two people that have known each other all their lives.

“That’s exactly how it feels. He means everything to me. He is the biggest thing that makes this job worthwhile. I want him to look back on his life when he’s older and be proud of the man his dad was.”

“Jack will always be proud of who his dad is. That’s a feeling that doesn’t fade over time. At least, not when you know he loves you. And when you know you love him. I’ve never--” There is a brief moment of hesitation as you wonder whether or not you should continue your train of thought. “I’ve always been proud of who my dad was. I always will be, no matter how much time passes. It’s one of the biggest things I remember about him. How much I loved him. That’s a hard feeling to forget. Jack won’t forget either.”

In this moment, Aaron Hotchner has never wanted to embrace someone so badly. Every fiber of his being is itching to reach out and touch you, to pull you close, kiss the top of your head, tell you that everything will be alright, tell you how sorry he is that you lost your dad, thank you for comforting him, caress your face, tenderly press his lips to yours, and just hold you. But he can’t. So he doesn’t.

“Thank you. That’s nice to hear.” Is all he can muster before he falls silent again. Content with this, you stay silent as well as you both simply enjoy each other’s company. A few minutes later the coffee is finished brewing and you pull the pot out to pour some for yourself and Hotch. With a nod of gratitude he makes his way back up to his office, leaving you there alone but strangely full and warm.

Needing a distraction you head back to your desk and begin pulling paperwork out of some nearby drawers to begin filing. You keep yourself occupied like this for a few more minutes before the other agents begin entering the bullpen. Morgan ruffles your hair as he passes by you causing you to punch him. The others come in, talking amongst themselves and greeting you warmly as they pass by. You quickly join in on the conversation as you all begin your work.

Pretty soon JJ disappears to her own office and Garcia disappears to hers, leaving you, Morgan, Emily, and Spencer to do your own paperwork. Things remain uneventful as you look over your materials, stopping every now and again to ask Morgan a question. As you do your work you can’t help but glance up towards Hotch’s office every once in awhile. Your interaction with him had been very strangely intimate and you almost wanted to speak with him more about it but you knew that both of you had things to do. And even if you didn’t it was in the past and didn’t need to be dredged up again. It’s better this way. Around lunchtime you head down to Garcia’s office, joining her for some light hearted conversation. She has also packed you some snacks she knows you love and the gesture warms your heart. It is a very pleasant afternoon, feeling reminiscent of the time you spent shut up in her office on this last case.

After a while you decide to head back up to your desk to continue your work. The day is passing fairly slowly until JJ suddenly draws your attention and calls you into the conference room. There is a new case that you all need to be prepped for. Now everything around you is passing at lightning speed. Preparing your things you head up to the conference room with the others, buzzing with excitement. When you step inside you realize you’ve never been in this room before. In an instant you are flooded with the gravity of what you’re doing. This is the culmination of years and years worth of hard work and you are finally being presented the chance to do what you’ve always wanted to do. It is both liberating and completely terrifying.

JJ begins her debriefing very succinctly, telling you all the facts of the case. You listen intently, absorbing every single piece of information she gives to you. The others pitch in when the moment is right but you remain silent as you simply take in what everyone is saying. Several gruesome images are pulled up on the screen in front of you and for the first time since you’ve stepped foot in this building your stomach turns. Six homeless people have been murdered in the Phoenix area. Their bodies have all been left in widely public places with various messages written on their skin with blood. All the messages are different but point to someone with a serious hatred for big corporations. They have all been left in different parts of Phoenix, leaving a wide geographical profile which will pose a challenge. Once the debriefing is finished Hotch is the first to speak.

“You all know the drill. Wheels up in thirty.” Everyone nods and begins heading for their desks. You follow closely, pulling your go bag out of your bottom desk drawer. Checking inside to make sure you have everything you need, you gather the rest of your things and head towards the doors. As you stand at the threshold you feel a hand on your shoulder. Once again you are met with Hotch��s intense gaze though his expression seems strangely soft.

“Y/N, I want to make sure you feel ready to get into the field. I know this will be your first case with the rest of the team and I want you to be prepared. This won’t be pretty and it will take a lot out of you.”

“I’m ready, Hotch. I was ready the moment I walked through these doors.” Keeping his eyes locked on yours he responds with a nod before walking away. You head in the direction of the jet, steadying yourself. This is your big moment to prove yourself. To Hotch, to the team, and to yourself. You are ready. You’ve been ready for a long time now and nothing is going to stop you from getting out there and putting whoever is doing this away. Determination fills you with every step you take. No matter what happens, you will not fail.

Tags: @talesfromtheguild @lannister-slings-and-arrows @gryffindorwriter @nopeforyou @sheerfreesia007 @roxypeanut @ohpedromypedro @ssahotchie @ithinkhesgaybutwesavedmufasa @readsalot73 @the-mechanical-angel @races-erster @maxlordd @pascalisthepunkest @paintballkid711 @hotchafterhours @h0tchner @ssahotchswife @ssahotchhner @technotic-prophecy @klinenovakwinchester @hotch-stufff @annadorothxa @canadailluminate @yoshigguk @gothicxbarbie @romanogersendgame @little-diable

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consumeconstantly · 4 years

Text

Small Buff Girl Sightings Ch. 2

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | ao3

It’s now the end of Damian’s first week in Paris, and everything is ready for him to transfer into Francois Dupont. He really thought he had dodged the pointless education bullet by coming to France, but of course his father wouldn’t let that slip. However, if he has to continue getting an education he doesn’t need, he will at least get something productive done during the hours of his experience; he will explore the so-called akuma class that he has read up about. One Caline Bustier’s class, the same class that the Ladyblogger is in. The same class that Marinette is in.

He hopes it’s the same as it was in Gotham, or at least similar enough. He expects his reception to be a little different, since his last name has been changed to Grayson to avoid any unwanted attention. Maybe this means that his classmates won’t try to talk to him solely for the purpose of connecting to his family. That doesn’t mean that he wants to talk to any of them. Unless they’re all like Marinette; his brief interactions with her have been bearable, bordering on pleasant. He doubts her class will be similar, though, judging by the quick sweep that he does on all of the student’s social media accounts and the hours that he’s spent on the Ladyblog. From what he has gleaned, the social situation in the akuma class leaves much to be desired. Lila Rossi, who appeared on the Ladyblog multiple times two years ago in rather ridiculous interviews that have since been taken down, seems to be the crux of the class currently. The rest of the class, other than Marinette, who hasn’t appeared in most of the group pictures that her classmates take for the past two years, seem to have little common sense.

When he walks into the classroom, there is a huddle around Lila Rossi, who sits near the front of the classroom and looks astonishingly bored as her classmates talk to her. The members of the class don’t even look up at him when he comes in, instead looking at Lila with almost cult-like devotion, despite the awful shade of lipstick that did not look good on her-- seriously, who wore orange lipstick on a day to day basis? He spares them a moment of observation, decides that he’s not going to get along with his classmates at all, then takes a seat in the back. There is only one desk that has both seats empty-- or is at least currently unoccupied, judging by the lack of items on it. The desk in question is near the back of the classroom next to an exit. He prefers this to sitting in the front, at least.

Right before class starts, a girl drops into the seat next to him, the one that’s closer to the aisle instead of the exit, but the way that she pauses for a moment makes him think that she typically sits where he is, now.

“Damian?”

What luck. Marinette is his seat partner. One of the only people in Paris that he’s talked to that seems to be fairly tolerable. With the added bonus of her being fairly intelligent and able to hold her own. There isn’t much more that he could ask for in a seatmate.

He is confused as to how such a girl is still in this seemingly god-awful class, but small blessings. He’s not going to complain about having Marinette by his side.

“Oh, you must be the transfer from America.” She pulls out a binder from her bag, sends a quick glance sent to Lila, then settles into her chair. Lila sends Marinette a look that Damian can’t quite decipher, but it’s not unfriendly. “If you want to get acquainted with the school, you can ask Lila or Alya. Lila’s the one with orange lipstick and green eyes. Alya’s the one in plaid with glasses. They’re the class president and deputy this year.”

Damian takes a few more moments to observe the class dynamics, particularly how Lila and Alya interact with those around them. The former holds a blonde boy that Damian is fairly sure is Adrien Agreste, and while he seems accustomed to having Lila hang off his arm, he doesn’t exactly look comfortable either. Lila’s eyes unsettle Damian. They look eerily similar to his mother’s, though there is much less ill intent held within them. Alya looks spineless and clingy, clearly uneducated about topics that she brings up one after another. He can’t hear what they are saying clearly from this distance, but he is certain that the small blonde girl was asking Lila to tell the story of how she saved Jagged’s kitten one more time, even though that story’s years old because Lila’s just so humble and modest and amazing. Surprisingly, Lila turns down the girl’s request, and continues to barely interact with her classmates while she continues to hold onto Adrien’s arm.

Jagged as in Jagged Stone, Damian assumes, and though he’s no fan himself, factoids about the rock star’s life have been shoved down his throat by Tim and Dick for the past five years, so how the hell could he not know that a) the star’s manager was deathly allergic and b) the star said that Fang was the best pet that could ever be and he could never want for anything more.

“You can tour me around instead.” To be completely honest, he doesn’t need a tour around the school at all; Damian did do reconnaissance before starting this mission. He knows the school’s layout like the back of his hand after pouring over maps and information about Francois Dupont. However, he is particularly interested in the dynamics of the akuma class, and he might as well get insider information while he still can.

Marinette looks at Damian appraisingly. “I don’t know about that, Damian. Lila and Alya are fine at giving tours. You’d be in capable hands.”

“Hands capable of what?” Damian can’t imagine that Lila’s claws are good for anything except skewering people who tried to disprove her seemingly outlandish tales. He almost feels bad for Adrien, then thinks better of it; he doesn’t seem that uncomfortable with Lila, he just doesn’t seem to like her hand on his arm.

Marinette laughs, softly, focusing on the group. She moves her mouth so little that if anyone looks, it will appear as though he is talking to her without response. “Very funny. Seriously, if you want a tour, ask Lila or Alya. I’m really not the best person for the job.”

The teacher comes into the room, and the students slowly disperse back into their seats.

When lunch comes around, Marinette packs her stuff up and gets out of the classroom so quickly, he wonders if she’s not some sort of athlete.

“You’re Damian, the transfer from America!” Lila puts a manicured hand on his arm, and Damian almost thinks that he sees her lick his lips as his forearm flexes at the unexpected contact. He restrains himself from his initial thought to deck her, but barely.

He takes a deep breath and gets his disgust under control. He can control himself. Alfred and Dick have spent years ensuring that he knows what a normal reaction is to someone touching him. When his eyes aren’t seeing red anymore, he turns his attention back to the hand on his arm. Her nails are the same garish orange as her lips, and it’s the case of the chicken and the egg all over again. No matter which came first, though, the color looks bad on both. Jason will say that Damian can’t criticize the girl because of his own awful sense of color coordination, but there’s a reason why he doesn’t have any color in his wardrobe besides his Robin suit.

“Come, sit with us.” Orange’s voice is nauseatingly fake.

Damian doesn’t outright refuse, but he does shake off the girl’s hand. She feels too similar to Talia up close. Her eye shape is eerily similar. She must be manipulative and cunning to have such a hold on the class. But, he might as well see exactly what the akuma class is all about.

He is escorted into the cafeteria, pushed next to Adrien, then given a lunch tray that has foods that look decidedly less than nutritious and possibly stale. At Gotham Academy, the food was always prepared by the best, so this is unusual for him.

“My name is Adrien. It’s nice to meet you.” Damian thinks the blond boy is nice enough, but he sounds tired and worn out.

Moments later, Lila comes back from the bathroom and squeezes herself between Damian and Adrien, looping her arm through Adrien’s and then attempting to do the same with Damian. But his arms are so tightly at his side, that it’s impossible for her to wiggle her hand through. Damian is glad that he trained himself to eat with both hands, and quickly takes up a fork with his left. Her laugh is high and breathy, like she’s changed her voice to sound different.

He has to say that it feels disgusting, because it feels like she’s treating him as some sort of arm candy. For the first time in his life, he actually thinks about his gender and is very glad that he was born a boy. Had he been born a girl, there is no doubt that this kind of situation may have happened more often; Damian knows he’s attractive. His mother and father both have very good genes both look wise and talent wise.

Not even ten minutes go by, and Damian sees why Marinette high-tailed it out of the classroom so quickly. He wishes that he went with her instead, though he gets the feeling that he isn’t welcome to do so.

The stories that Lila weaves for her life as of late are more convincing than the ones that his classmates have told him of her heroic deeds in the past. Damian can almost believe that they’re true-- helping out with food drives, volunteering with the Red Cross occasionally-- but he doubts the validity of any statement that comes from her mouth after finding the cache of interviews from three years ago. She’s focusing more on friends, she says as she tries to catch his arm again. She leans closer, and Damian can smell the floral perfume on her so strongly that it makes him nauseous. His mother never wore perfume. Nobody from the League of Assassins did. Perfume is something that’s traceable. After he was introduced to Gotham City, all of the women he came into contact with rarely wore perfume and when they did, it certainly wasn’t this floral fruity-fresh fragrance that Lila was drenched in.

She leans on him, and Damian’s pretty sure by the curve of the girl’s smirk and the glint in her eyes that he’s supposed to find the slight touch of her cleavage on his arm attractive. This paltry attempt at seduction is laughable. Even as a nine year old, his mother had him training against attacks like these. He was taught never to give into lust, and after living in a family like the Waynes, girls and boys alike threw themselves at him. If he wants a relationship, physical or otherwise, he can have one. He certainly doesn’t want a relationship with this Lila Rossi. Still, he doesn’t see why she has so much control over the classroom and certainly doesn’t see why Marinette is so excluded from their class.

It’s the longest hour of his life, but Damian makes it through and nearly flees for the safety of the back seat in the classroom. Nearly, but not quite.

By the time Damian gets into the room, Marinette is already sitting at the desk again. She looks up, looks at Lila who has looped her arm with Adrien’s and is smiling at Damian like a cat who got the cream. Damian reads sadness and maybe a touch of concern when she looks at Adrien.

“Lunch was awful.”

“Was it.” It’s phrased like it should be a question, but it doesn’t sound like Marinette is curious.

“You could have told me.”

Her lips purse. She’s copying notes from the last class over again, making them neater and more organized. “That’s not my place.”

“You’re my seat partner.”

“So?”

“Somehow, you seem a lot more morally righteous when you’re out on the streets.”

“That’s different. Paris is Paris; class is class. There’s a time and place for everything.”

From the cacophony near the front rises Lila’s high pitched voice. Damian thinks that she’s modulated it in order to seem more innocent, more believable. “Oh, Adrien, I’m so happy that we’re going to have dinner together with your father tonight.”

Marinette’s eyes raise from her paper. They search for Adrien. Adrien, whose shoulders are hunched in a way that speaks of tiredness and defeat. Adrien, who has eye bags that even concealer cannot fix. Adrien, who looks down at his hands and refuses to meet Marinette’s eyes and their soft, sad questions.

Slowly, Marinette’s eyes lower. She blinks at her paper, then continues copying her notes.

At the very least, Damian is glad that he’s sitting back here with the only sane person in this class. It isn’t like Damian is here to make friends anyways. It might have been helpful, but he doesn’t need other people’s help. He can manage on his own.

Scratch that, he could not manage.

Damian now understands why Hawkmoth had not been captured even though it had been three years since his appearance. Magic is really annoying.

He reports back to the Justice League that yes, the reports were true and no, he did not think it was a good idea to send anyone in yet and yes, he would continue to work on reconnaissance and figuring out who Hawkmoth was.

Despite three more akuma attacks(of increasing intensity) and hours prowling the internet, clues about Hawkmoth’s identity are few and far between. Early on in his mission brief, he was encouraged to not make contact with the Paris superheroes unless the situation got really bad and not to go patrolling the rooftops as Robin at all. They didn’t want to destress the Parisian heroes who had, at first, asked them for help, and then pleaded with them to not send anybody. All of the lack of information and lack of action gave him undue stress, more so than when he was back in Gotham. At least back there, the high stress situations he encountered would promptly be worked off by fighting a villain, sparring his brothers, or patrolling. He can’t do any of that here.

The coffee he ordered finally arrives, and he downs it in one shot, surveying the streets in front of him. Parisians are weird. His classmates have one collective brain cell that resides with the orange monstrosity, Lila, and the people he meets on the streets are way too open and friendly for people who have been terrorized by a supervillain for three years. They should be more like the citizens of Gotham-- keeping their heads down, minding their own business. Instead, he’s been approached by countless people as he wandered around the city-- unsurprisingly, mostly from girls sent by a larger pack in attempts to get his number or ask him on a date-- and also by random people who want to cheer him up. What kind of person tries to cheer up random people on the streets? Apparently it’s something that many Parisians have taken to doing, in attempts to prevent more akumas. Damian doesn’t think it’s very successful on that part, and is more just an excuse for people who want to stick their noses where they don’t belong.

Marinette is the only Parisian who was better than decent at holding her own Damian’s seen so far; in the past week, he’s stopped three bag snatchers, two stalkers, and two random fights. It’s surprisingly lively for a city that is plagued by a villain who takes advantage of strong emotions. He asks one of the people he saves why this is so.

“Well, it’s been three years. For the first year, yes, we very much lived in fear. But Ladybug and Chat Noir always come to save the day, and they told us that holding in our emotions is even more unhealthy.” This, a man he saved from his stalker. “That talk came after they fought off a stream of very strong akumas that totalled the city, all because they had been repressing their emotions until the breaking point.”

That is useful information. It definitely explains why the city is the way it was, though with the number of tourists that Paris has, he’s surprised that this hasn’t become headlining news internationally. He finds a few threads on Twitter talking about it, but most people are convinced it’s some ongoing stunt for attention. Apparently there’s a movie out about Ladybug and Chat Noir? Damian knows that Mayor Bourgeois put an initial block on information about the akumas from getting out, but that shouldn’t have stopped the Justice League from getting their hands on information about the situation in Paris. However, the teams that have been looking into the situation since they found out have had very little luck finding anything other than conspiracy theories. If Damian hadn’t seen an akuma battle with his own eyes, he’d have thought he was sent on a wild goose chase.

Damian feels a cross of pity for the Parisian superheroes and a brief moment of anger at Hawkmoth. From what he’s gathered, the Ladybug and Chat Noir are largely on their own. In that first year, there were a few other heroes in the mix-- a fox, a bee, a dragon, and a snake-- but their appearances became sparse and after a mass akumatization, they never appeared again. Ladybug and Chat Noir definitely stepped up their game in that second year, with Ladybug taking the lead so strongly that Damian isn’t sure that he can call them a pair of superheroes.

Sure, the battles end more quickly with Chat Noir there, but there are plenty of occasions where he doesn’t show up at all and other fights where he stays out of the battle entirely. Oftentimes, in the second year, both heroes looked extraordinarily tired and peaky. Then, something had changed, and Ladybug no longer seemed to be bothered. That was when Chat Noir started staying out of more and more battles, and the few times that he showed up, he always ran off first. Their media appearances, which had been rather heavy in the first year, dwindled down to a few periodic and important announcements. Other than that, they never gave more interviews to smaller blogs, like the Ladyblog. He has to say that he’s not surprised; even though Alya has taken them down, Lila’s interviews were still riddled with lies and she had posted them. Ladybug must have felt that the blog's integrity decreased.

All of this meaningless information leads him nowhere. The Ladyblog and several other news sources have contemplated Hawkmoth’s identity and purpose, but they all seem far fetched. Motivations include everything from world destruction to believing that this is all just a ploy to get Ladybug and Chat Noir media attention. There’s not even any concrete conclusion on Hawkmoth’s gender, though the majority opinion holds that he is a man.

He sees Marinette from the coffee shop windows. It’s amazing that this girl seems to be everywhere all at once. She always ends up near the akuma attacks, but he never spots her during them, which is curious. There’s only so many reliable places to hide. Today, she’s facing down some adult while holding a child behind her. The lady looks furious, red-faced and spittle flying. In contrast, Marinette looks calm and cold, and addresses the woman cordially, though not with respect.

A crowd gathers, but as in all things that might be dangerous, they form at a distance, with phone cameras at the ready. Damian joins them and watches the situation unfold.

“He’s my child. I get to decide how to discipline him.” The lady is wearing an expensive looking suit that is a little over the top. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, and her handbag costs at least two thousand dollars.

“Even if he is your child, that doesn’t mean you can hurt him like this. Mademoiselle, I suggest that we go to the police station now.”

“I don’t have time for that. This brat already cost me an hour of my time to pick him up from school because he was misbehaving, and I have to get to the office now.” The lady hisses, draws closer, ready to push Marinette and grab her child. Marinette side steps, pulling the child behind her.

“You’re a mother. Make time for your child. We are going to the police station, Mademoiselle, or I will call the police here.”

“I am one of the head managers of Silverstein and Company’s Paris branch. You are just a teenager. You have no place arguing with me over parenting tactics.”

“I am only a teen,” Marinette conceded, “But even a child knows when something is wrong and should be stopped. And abusing your child, Mademoiselle, is very clearly wrong.”

Marinette brings out her phone-- she must have the station on speed dial. Now, the woman approaches Marinette with a heavy hand, ready to slap her. The kid is hiding behind Marinette and quivering, very much afraid of his mother. He’s holding Marinette’s hand so tightly that Damian can see her fingertips have begun to turn blue.

Damian figures this is as good a time as any to intervene, so he puts himself between Marinette and the lady. Marinette backs up a little more, bends down to the kid and pats his shoulder.

“It’ll be okay,” Marinette says to the kid soothingly. She seems like the type to babysit. Good with kids, creative enough to keep them out of trouble, but with enough of a backbone to make sure they grow up right.

The police show up in record time, and Damian wonders whether Marinette has Special Privileges that make officers show up more quickly. It would make sense, since she always seems to be getting people out of trouble. Too bad she seems too much on the side of the law to ever become a vigilante. The world could use more people like her, active in helping others.

The four of them are instructed to go the police precinct; the woman says that she’ll take her car, and looks expectantly at her child, thinking that he’ll come with her. Marinette pushes the boy even further out of the woman’s view and meets the lady with a glare.

“Do you mind if we ride with you in the back, Officer?”

The three of them pile into the back of the cruiser, and Damian feels like this is some sort of twisted irony. He’s sent many a villain to jail, but he himself has never been in the back of such a police car. In the back of a high security one, once, when he was on an infiltration mission, but the back of such a normal one? Never. It’s an interesting experience to say the least; there’s mesh between the officer and themselves, and no way to get out from the back themselves. It’s also decidedly hot in the back, with plastic seats and no air conditioning.

Marinette is cooing at the child now, who is gripping her hand only slightly less tightly. “Don’t worry, Renee, we’re going to make sure that you don’t get hit like that again.”

The kid’s eyes are glassy, then he’s all tears, and he’s crying into Marinette’s shirt. She just pats him on the back, slowly, and lets him cry it out. It’s very different from the approach that Batman, the Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin take with their victims. Most times, they just let the victims be ushered wherever the police need then to be, and then, they never see them again. Damian justifies this with the fact that fundamentally vigilantes and regular people are different. It makes sense that Marinette has a more human touch to her. She’s not wearing a bodysuit. It’s all Marinette, and that makes the whole situation more powerful.

It only takes a few more moments for the boy to cry himself to sleep.

“I want to file with Child Protection Services.” Her voice is soft, low. She speaks carefully so as not to wake the kid up.

“Yes, we should file with CPS, but if this is just a one time thing there’s not really much that we can do about this.” The officer sounds sad, like he’s dealt with situations like this before.

“As long as we have proof that this isn’t a one time thing, we can make sure that Renee doesn’t go back with her unless he wants to?” There’s a flash of steel determination in Marinette’s eyes, and it almost makes Damian uncomfortable. It’s the look Barbara gets when one of them get really badly injured.

“Yes, but that kind of proof is hard to get.”

“I see,” she says, like she really does see all of the situation and knows exactly what needs to happen next. She says it like she’s going to make Renee’s mother go to jail if it’s the last thing she does.

They arrive at the precinct, and Marinette carries the boy like its nothing. Damian offers to help, but he’s shaken off. Renee is already asleep in her arms, after all, and she doesn’t want to risk waking him up. She’s sure that he's tired, after all this. It’s a curious thing, how softly and lovingly she looks down at the boy, even though Damian suspects that Marinette has never met the boy in her life before this fiasco.

Their party arrives more quickly than the mother, so they take seats in a small office, Renee still on Marinette’s lap. She’s now scrolling through her phone, assessing whatever’s on her screen with a clinical eye. Damian pulls out his phone as well. To be honest, he’s not quite sure what he’s doing here. He only stepped in at the last second, though he doesn’t have any real complaints about being here. His father would say it’s an experience, and his siblings would joke that he finally ended up in the hands of the police.

When the lady arrives, she looks nothing like that woman he saw on the streets earlier. She looks every inch a professional. Her makeup has been touched up, and there is a smile plastered on her face that screams dealing with an unpleasant situation.

“I’m so sorry about that,” she says to Marinette like she’s an old friend. “You know how it is-- sometimes it’s really hard to keep a level head with all that goes on in the city. I was so scared for my little boy-- I heard there was an akuma attack near his school, and rushed out to get him, but he wanted to stay with his friends.”

Marinette has a polite smile fixed on her face as well. Her face doesn’t show the slightest bit of reaction to the lady.

“Kids, am I right?” The lady tries for a joke, tries to sway Marinette and the officer and Damian to her side. “So just let me pick up Renee here, and I’ll bring him back home.”

The lady reaches for Renee, and Damian stops her because Marinette has both her hands full with Renee, who has woken up with shuddering sobs.

“Officer, is it possible if Renee can wait outside of the room while we talk? Surely there’s somebody who can watch him out there.” Her voice is still kept soft and soothing. She looks at Renee and smiles, doesn’t bother looking at the rest of her surroundings. “Is that okay, Renee? Do you mind waiting outside for a little?”

The little boy nods, and he is swept up by some other person who works at the precinct, and then it is only the four of them in the room.

The lady looks frustrated, but she keeps her mouth shut as the officer goes through the proper procedures that they must follow, and that CPS is getting involved.

“But officer, there’s no need to get CPS involved. I take very good care of my darling Renee. He gets to go to all the classes he could ever want to and I love him very much. I’m so sorry that he got bruised. I’ll make sure that it never happens again.”

Marinette’s hands are carefully laid on her pants. Her fingers are splayed open and the entirety of each palm rests on her thighs. A gesture that makes her look relaxed, were it not for the slight tremble that Damian detects. She is holding her hands in that position so tightly that Damian has good reason to believe that she is withholding herself from hitting the woman.

“Madame DeVries.” Marinette’s voice is clipped. “CPS must be involved. I insist. It’s very clear to me that this is not the first time that you have hurt Renee, nor will it be the last.”

“How can you say that?” The lady wails. She is an okay actress, but not able to fool any of those present in the room. “I love my darling boy. I would never hit him. Never!”

“Regardless of whether this is the first time you hit him, there are more ways to hurt a person than just physical abuse. Renee’s fear of you makes it clear that you have induced some sort of psychological trauma on him.”

The lady’s face contorts into a sneer when she realizes that nobody in the room is on her side. “You have no evidence. You can’t accuse me like that. I’ll call a lawyer.”

“Go ahead and call a lawyer, Madame. I think that would be for the best. Don’t worry about the evidence. There’s plenty.” She turns to the officer. “Please call someone from CPS here. I don’t want Renee going home with her until the trial is over.”

“You can’t do that to me.” The lady is standing now, towering over Marinette and trying to intimidate her. “I have a reputation to uphold. You will not sue me for child abuse. You cannot.”

“Any parent who truly cares for their child would care more for their child’s well being rather than their own reputation. I wonder what that says about you, Madame. There is no reason why I can’t sue you and too many reasons that I should.”

She lowers herself to Marinette's ear, whispers in soft tones that she’s certain will not be caught by any recording devices. “You will not take me to court, or I’ll make sure that you are blacklisted wherever you want to work. You underestimate how much power I have.”

“Madame, please move away from me. I was only going to attempt to remove Renee from your custody, but please be assured that I will now pursue you for threatening a minor, abusing a child, and whatever other charges that I can come up with. I will refuse to settle. The trial will go public, and the reputation that you care so much about will be ruined, even if you win.”

Celia Devries’ face shifts to an almost cattish grin. It looks like she’s won. “Please, I understand that you’re distressed, but I haven’t threatened you at all.”

Marinette simply pulls her phone out again and plays back a recording of the exact threat that Celia just made to her.

She splutters. “I never agreed to be recorded! It’s illegal under French code.”

“Madame DeVries, when you come into the precinct, you agree to being recorded. This recording might be from my personal phone, but it is still within legal jurisdiction. In addition, the code is different for gathering evidence against a crime. Everything that is said and done in this office can be disclosed during trial, and there are cameras and voice recorders in here. Please, return to whatever you had to do, and you will be served your court orders soon enough.” Damian is impressed. Has Marinette done this before? She’s too prepared to know this just by spending a few minutes on her phone.

Celia pales, then storms out of the room, frightened that she’ll say something else that will incriminate herself.

“At least Hawkmoth has already filled his daily quota,” the officer jokes.

“There’s that much, at least,” Marinette smiles, but there’s something frigid behind it.

“You’re always getting caught up in something,” Damian says.

“I really am. Some day I’ll become a recluse.”

“And let the world’s horrors move without you?”

Marinette shrugs and all of the tension that was holding in her hands and shoulders dissipates.

“Since this is a child custody case, it will be the government against Mademoiselle DeVries. The two of you can come to testify, and if there’s any evidence that you have, you can go ahead and give it to me now. If you want to sue her for threatening a minor, you can do that as well; I’ll get you in contact with a lawyer.”

“I don’t have any evidence.” Right now, at least. When Damian goes home, he’ll do a little digging about the woman, see what he can find.

“I do. I was recording the whole encounter on the street, and I also have several eyewitnesses who have recorded as well. Let me send them to you.” Marinette fiddles with her phone. “And if it’s possible, I think it would be a good thing for Renee to talk to a psychiatrist. In the interim before he goes home, who will he be staying with?”

“He can choose to stay with his next of kin, or can stay in a temporary foster home.”

“Please email me the date that I should come in to testify, and give me the lawyer’s contact information as well. I’ll email him any additional evidence that I can get.”

“I’d like the email address of the lawyer as well.” Damian might only have a moral conscience because his family beat it into him, but Renee seems like a sweet kid. He’s willing to help.

They’re out of the precinct in another half hour, after Marinette pulls the person from CPS in so they can talk to Renee about what’s going to happen next. The kid takes it surprisingly well, saying that he doesn’t want his mom to get hurt, but that he’s excited to see his Nonna and Nonno again. Marinette tells him that he can contact her any time he wants to talk at her cell phone number, and if he ever wants him to visit, just call.

All the buzz of the world seems to die down when they get out of the precinct, and Damian asks whether she’s done this before.

“I haven’t done anything like this before, but I’ve certainly dreamed of it.” Her eyes look off to a distance. “Abusive parents are the worst.”

“Yours?” Damian can’t imagine this girl’s parents as being abusive, but he should have known better to believe that. Just because someone is stable and competent doesn’t mean that they have a good family-- just look at him and his brothers. They’re competent and stable on good days.

She gasps and looks shocked, verging on offended and embarrassed. “Of course not! My parents are both very sweet people. I love them so much-- I can’t believe I gave you that idea! No, I was talking about a friend’s parent. Anyways, thank you for stepping between me and that woman. You always seem to help me right when I need it.”

Damian doesn’t really think that Marinette needed his help much in any of the situations that he’s seen her. He doesn’t mind the false gratitudes, though it does irk him that he’s never actually helped her. Odd, considering that what little morality he had mostly pertained to life threatening situations, and Marinette’s issues were more in line with everyday annoyances. “And yet you refuse to help me out with Lila.”

Her face immediately sours. “Like I said; class is class. It’s different at Francois Dupont.”

“And why is that?”

“If you want help catching up or something, I don’t mind helping you outside of class, but you can’t tell anyone. It’s better for you if you’re not seen with me.” Her hand is tight on her purse.

At the risk of feeling like a whiny child, Damian asks again. “But why shouldn’t I be seen with you?”

Marinette sighs, heavily, then looks around at the people on the streets, almost like she’s looking for somebody. “Let’s just say that Lila and I have come to an agreement. The rest of the class isn’t the fondest of me, and if you’re seen talking with me, that will be bad for both of us. I don’t want any problems.”

“Tt. I see.” It seems as though he will also spend some time tonight looking into the history of his class.

#miraculous ladybug #daminette #maribat #mlbxdc #dc #sbgs #original content #adrien agreste #lila rossi #marinette dupain cheng #damian wayne

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gcldenharvey · 3 years

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“The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

The Basics:

Name: Harvard Hargrove III

Nicknames: Harvey, Harv, Goldie, Veevee

Age: 19

Birthday: March 31st, 1979

Gender: Cis man

Pronouns: He/him/his

Sexuality: Straight

Major: Business

Former school: UCLA

Job: N/A, his dad still completely supports Harvey financially

Faceclaim: Jacob Elordi

Personality Positives: Magnetic, extroverted, athletic

Personality Negative: Wrathful, duplicitous, destructive

About:

YOU'RE THE GUY EVERYONE WANTS TO BE. QUARTERBACK, POPULAR KID. THE FACADE LOOKS PERFECT ON THE OUTSIDE, BUT INSIDE YOU'RE CRUMBLING. YOU'RE GETTING ANGRY AT THE WORLD IN A WAY THAT YOU'VE NEVER BEEN BEFORE. YOU GO OUT LATE AT NIGHT LOOKING FOR FIGHTS; CRAVING THE FEELING OF GETTING YOUR FISTS WET WITH BLOOD, BUT YOU'RE DOING EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO HIDE THAT PART OF YOURSELF FROM EVERYONE AROUND YOU. YOUR FATHER GROWS MORE DISAPPOINTED BY THE MINUTE, AND EVERY SINGLE DAY YOU THINK ABOUT RUNNING AWAY. BUT NOW THAT EVERYONE YOU LOVE IS BACK IN TOWN, HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO LEAVE? YOU AND LUX WERE CHILDHOOD NEIGHBORS. YOU GREW UP MAKING MUD PIES, AND SNEAKING OUT TO PARTIES TOGETHER. LOOKING IN THROUGH HER BEDROOM WINDOW GETS HARDER EVERY SINGLE DAY. YOU KNEW SHE WASN'T PERFECT, BUT YOU WERE OKAY WITH THAT... NOBODY IS PERFECT. BUT SOMETIMES YOU WONDER IF YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE WHO KNEW THAT SIDE OF HER. YOU KIND OF HOPE YOU WERE.

Secrets:

The Small Stuff: At UCLA, Harvey found his way into an underground fight club, which he quickly grew to adore. Rising through the ranks with remarkable speed, Harvey learned that the best way to stop someone looking at you funny is to make sure he can’t see straight. Now, back in Cherry, his entire body itches for a fight he can’t find a release for.

The Big Stuff: YOU WERE ARRESTED FOR AGGRAVATED ASSAULT AT YOUR LAST COLLEGE, AND SHOULD HAVE FACED JAIL TIME. THANKS TO YOUR FATHER'S MONEY, THE PROBLEM WAS HIDDEN IN THE SHADOWS AND YOU WERE ALLOWED TO QUIETLY TRANSFER... BUT YOU KNOW IT CAN'T BE THAT SIMPLE. YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE IN THE GANG WHO WAS PLANNING TO COME BACK TO CHERRY ANYWAY, BUT YOU'RE NOT GOING TO TELL ANYONE. IF EVEN ONE PERSON FOUND OUT ABOUT WHAT YOU AND YOUR FATHER DID, IT WOULD END YOUR CAREER BEFORE IT EVEN STARTED, AND COST YOUR FATHER HIS OWN. AKA, YOU WOULD BOTH BE ROYALLY FUUUUUUUCKED. NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT NOBODY WOULD EVER LOOK AT YOU THE SAME.

The Interview:

“HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW THAT EVERYONE IS BACK IN CHERRY?”

The grin that stretched across Harvey’s face was wide and bright and he leaned forward in the chair, that one too-short leg of it rocking forward to hit the ground as Harvey leaned forwards towards Clarissa. Only someone that knew the boy well would have caught the tension running along the sides of his eyes that pulled on the smile, making it appear just a touch brittle. “Oh it’s great,” Harvey said, voice carrying easily through the small room. “This is where we all came from, this is what made us all who we are and now…” Harvey trailed off, swallowing around a lump in his throat. The smile had faded entirely but with effort, Harvey managed to bring it back, though it was a pale shadow of its original form. “With Lux gone, I think we’re going to need each other. Or, well, most of each other. There are some people I could have gone my entire life without seeing again!” A light laugh punctuated that statement, but the creak of wood underneath Harvey’s hands as they gripped the wooden arm of the chair with a white-knuckled tension spoke louder than the laughter.

He consciously relaxed his hand, before bringing it over to smooth down a non-existent wrinkle in his pants. He knew coming here without a drink or three was a bad idea. Harvey didn’t think about the bags that had remained unpacked since he had gotten back to town that now lay scattered along his dorm room like soldiers on a battlefield, quietly saying that tomorrow, surely, he would leave. He didn’t think about the ever-growing hole in the plaster he was hiding in his closet. It had formed when he heard the news, that everyone, everyone minus Lux was back, for better or for worse. The worse, Harvey had reflected in those rare moments of peace that he only ever found in the moments after a punch was thrown, seemed far more likely, given the fucking bullshit of the past few years. No, Harvey didn’t think about any of this, and just smiled at Clarissa instead. “It’s definitely going to be interesting.” And that was the most honest thing he had said thus far.

“WHERE DO YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR FREE TIME?”

“Well,” Harvey began, leaning towards Clarissa with an expression well-known in town forming across his face. It was the look he got when he was flirting and was supposed to make him look mysterious and yet approachable. Whether or not it actually did that, Harvey had no idea. No one had ever bothered to tell him. It seemed to work often enough for him to believe it had some validity. “If you’re wondering where you might find me for a bit of fun, you can always check the track. I’m usually there in the mornings before class. If that doesn’t work, you can probably find me on the beach, or at the best party in town.” He winked. “I know how to have a good time. If you’re ever looking for one, hit me up.”

That all was true. Harvey wasn’t in the habit of lying to beautiful women, after all. Not if it meant some fun could be had in the future. Lying about everything else? Yeah, sure, that’s fair game, but not that. It just fit too well with the rest of how people expected Harvey to be for him to not take full advantage. Plus, it was fun. But even though it might have been true, that didn’t make it fully honest. Harvey would never tell anyone, though, just how much time he spent in The Pit, or how the sounds of The Garage provided a steady pounding noise that focused Harvey like nothing else as he hung around it hoping to one day ask for a job. But that wasn’t the charming athletic party boy his father had told him to become, or else, and so those places, the places that saw more of Harvey than anywhere else, remained a secret.

“WOULD YOU CALL YOURSELF POPULAR?

It was the first genuine sound Harvey thought he had made during the entire time he had been in that room, and it punctured the air like a pin through a balloon. “I wouldn’t go that far,” Harvey hedged, using his hands to make his point, “I don’t exactly have a huge friend group and there’s a few people in town now that I’m pretty damn sure aren’t my biggest fan.” Harvey shrugged with one shoulder, the hand of the other going up to scratch behind his ear in a nervous gesture he never quite managed to break. “But yeah, I guess, if you wanted to, you could call me that. I was quarterback, you know, and definitely never had problems getting any dates to the dances. If that’s all popularity is, then I guess you could call me a popular kind of guy.”

They never ask what all that costs, Harvey reflected. The thought sent a bolt of fury, bright and true like lightning, straight through his body into his gut. He shifted slightly in the chair which rocked with the movement. Harvey shifted again and it rocked back. He decided not to move again any time soon. The noise of it made that burning in his chest that much stronger and he could feel his jaw clenching with the effort it took to appear unaffected. Not for the first time, Harvey thanked his lucky stars he had as much practice with that as he did. He also cursed them in equal measure, for forcing his shoulders to learn to carry that weight without crumbling. But what was it that Dad always said? ‘No one expects you to change anything, Harvey. All we ask you to do is soldier through to the other side’? Words to live by, apparently. He couldn’t stop the snort that escaped at that thought, but he waved off Clarissa’s curious look. “Sorry. Old joke from the locker room. Nothing you’d want to hear.”

“DO YOU REALLY THINK LUX KILLED HERSELF? ”

“I do.” The words came easily, without thought. Harvey knew he had thought about this a lot, considered it while laying in bed or while driving to the next party. It forced its way into nearly every moment of his life, and though he had done his best to drown it out, Harvey hadn’t managed to yet. “I lived next door to her, right? Our bedrooms were right across from each other and I knew she wasn’t perfect. I think she knew I wasn’t perfect either. But I saw things, overheard things.” He shrugged again, this time with both shoulders. “It wasn’t easy on her and I think she just took the fastest way out she could.” The smile that came across Harvey’s face now was tinged in heartbreak and the weights he felt ties to his shoulders every day. “I kinda get why she did it, too. There’s only so long you can tread water before your arms and legs just give out and you drown.” He shifted backwards and the chair moved with him. “I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had it happen.”

Headcanons:

While Harvey is majoring in business, this is entirely because this is what his father expected of him, and as he’s spent his entire life living up to those expectations, it seemed easier, at the time, to just go along with it. He doesn’t like it though.

That old muscle car Harvey drives is the last thing he has of his mother, who died when he was seven. She willed that car to him and he treats it better than he treats some people. It is his most prized possession.

Harvey knows that in order to leave town like he desperately wants, he needs a job to get his own money. But getting a job would lead to questions from his father, from people around town, everyone. He can’t have that. Harvey has a reputation to maintain after all, and so he feels as if he’s in a form of limbo right now.

Lux and Harvey used to sneak out through their bedroom windows, sometimes helping the other get across the roof or down onto the pavement below. Harvey fondly remembers those times, how it all felt like a secret he was in on that no one else knew about. There was a unity in it, an understanding that they were both running away from something. Now that Harvey wants to leave Cherry for real, he almost feels an obligation to do it for Lux.

The man is heterosexual, almost to a fault. He has absolutely forgotten to attend get-togethers with friends or to finish up homework in favor of a date with a beautiful woman.

His favorite subject in high school, much to the surprise of all that knew him, was English. He really enjoyed discussing the books. Writing the papers, however, was a real drag and his work never really reflected his understanding of the material. This only lead more to the perpetuation of the “dumb jock” stereotype as he talked a lot but got horrible grades. Despite this, he bought a copy of every book they read and kept them.

Harvey’s favorite kinds of movies are action-comedies. His favorite movie is Ghostbusters but he has a secret soft-spot for movies like The Dead Poet’s Society and Sixteen Candles. He would, however, break the nose of anyone that shared this piece of information.

He failed his driver’s test three different times because he kept blowing through red lights.

He is allergic to strawberries. This was discovered back in Kindergarten with a snack that had strawberry jam. It caused his throat to swell up and for him to be sent to the hospital. This was the first time Harvey was at the center of the school’s focus but it wouldn’t be the last. Harvey grew to love the idea of being at the focus of everything and turned to sports to fulfill that desire.

#cusaintro #introduction #✵ musings #✵ inspiration

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altarflame · 3 years

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On Aging While Female

I’ve always felt pretty strongly that it’s ok to get old, that old women are beautiful in a really valid and striking way, blah blah blah. I still feel this way, but I am also 39 now, and I have some, uh, insights that I did not have yet when I was spouting this shit in my 20s.

For the record I don’t feel old. At all. I don’t feel like I look old, either. I have a lot of enthusiasm and energy and my sex drive takes up a massive lot of my consciousness for having so much else going on. I still get mistaken for my daughters’ sister pretty regularly, still have my patients assume I’m 10 years younger than I am fairly often. I’ve got a wide sense of possibility and of having a lot of life ahead of me, and I’ve got some perspective on 39 not even BEING old anyway, even if I 100% looked and felt it. I know too many hot, dynamic, interesting women in their 40s. They make it look good. They’re inspiring. I hope to do the same.

But ALSO. I didn’t use to get it, that like, YEAH OK being 80 and looking 80? Fine. Wondrous even. I am all the way here for the Iris Apfel, the Baddie Winkle, the Burning Lotus. Screw plastic surgery etc etc. ....but what about the transition? What about the starting to shift? This is the weird part, the struggle I didn’t really contemplate, the in between phase of like, appearing middle aged??? It involves things like, just looking tired to people. Someone assuming you’ve been sick when you haven’t. People thinking you look grumpy in a picture because of new lines that don’t go away. Realizing particular things that used to go away after being awake for awhile (like eye puffiness), are all-the-time things now. For instance, I’ve always thought long white/gray hair was gorgeous. Fuck, it’s a trend now for younger people to dye their hair that way. What I didn’t grasp was that one of my favorite things about how I look, historically, is the contrast between my very dark hair and my much lighter skin, and that with all the white clustering right at the very front, I lose a lot of that contrast. It kinda washes me out, at least comparatively. And the white hair is like, wiry wild, and goes all over the place of it’s own accord, which sounds great except that I’m trying to be a professional at least some of the time, now - one who doesn’t wear makeup or go to a salon and who still bites my nails and will only wear flats. So the fuzzy white hairs framing my forehead are not helping anything.

And so I started thinking, man, it would give me some polished cred, and it would bring that deep contrast back, to do something about this. Which is how I ended up slathering dark purple overtone on the front of my hair every few weeks - which works great by the way, all my white hairs turn dark purple and my still-dark hairs (which is the vast majority of my hairs) aren’t effected. It blends together invisibly indoors, but then the dyed hairs shine purple in sunlight. This has been going on for about a year now. It’s a good bridge between my personal aesthetics and my “part of a company” role, as a solution. The indian grandmother down the street from my last house? STUNNING with her brown skin and white hair. Truly. She had a Noxzema commercial kinda glamour that always struck me as she worked in her yard. It’s a different kind of contrast and one I can imagine rocking decades from now. Again, though, that is like.... finished? It’s not the in between place, of having 1/6 (or whatever) of dark hair be white, having them loose and randomized throughout and each bending away from the rest at odd angles. My (younger, did I mention) boyfriend is super into salt and pepper hair, he acted a little disappointed (in an encouraging, “it’s your hair” way) when I started the purple thing, and that’s something I appreciate but also I ACTUALLY RECOILED against the term “salt and pepper” and had never applied it to myself before it came out of his supportive mouth? God love him? That’s a Nana and Pa term, way back in my memory. Did I mention that my 33 year old boyfriend (not THAT much younger) works with a bunch of 19-22 year old women (....)? I’m secure enough that I’m objective, I talk about who’s hot with him, I feel like they seem young - to both of us - much more often than I feel like I seem old.

But it still makes me think about all of this more often than I would otherwise, which even in a neutral way, can turn sigh-worthy. Like his coworkers don’t have anything to do with me, but if he worked with people our ages (or older coworkers, like I mostly do) I wouldn’t be pondering all this so often because it just wouldn’t come up. Most of my friends are either exactly my age or 5-10 years older than me. And then there’s the one who’s in her 70s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like the other day one of his coworkers told him about a local 35 and under kink group, and luckily he automatically feels like he’d feel predatory being part of some fetish scene where he’s 33 and a bunch of the women are 18-25. But I was still double-taking inside myself for a moment, like excuse me, there are local kink groups I am too old to be a part of? Excuse the fuck out of me?

Note: I do not want to participate in local kink groups anyway.

It’s weirdly difficult to be comfortable with The Middle Part. Personally. That I can still look just like I did 7-10 years ago, IF I’ve been eating all the right things, getting plenty of sleep, it’s late in the day, and I’ve had sex recently; BUT that nobody at my job has ever seen that version of my face, because what I look like when I have to get up early and show up to print something is real goddamned different. And not what I want to be like, stuck with all the time, soon? But it is what it is. And it isn’t TERRIBLE, it’s just, thought provoking enough that I’m making this post. While glops of purple overtone sit on my head. FYI this stuff is great, it smells like mint and is deep conditioning, I really recommend it. It’s expensive if you have to wash your hair often, but I only wash my curls every few days anyway - and I’m really only using the overtone on the front - so it works out fine for me.

It’s strange to try to OWN a transitional time, to try to identify as a stage that signifies certain losses, and tends to make most people feel like they’re trying to “hold on” to various things. I’m pretty good about taking one day at a time. Being where and how I am. But I’m also gonna be, like, real sad when my titties drop. It’s almost a source of stress that they’re still amazing, because, you know, one of these times that my weight fluctuates they’re not gonna bounce back the same way. I assume. I have known a lot of moms who accepted and even promoted the normality of saggy post-nursing boobs, and that’s cool, but mine never sagged, and I’m real spoiled about it. It’s been a tepid surprise, that I think I look waaaaaay older in my business casual clothing, than I do in my personal clothing. It makes me not ever want to be seen out in work clothes unless I’m working. And that’s partially about struggling with “professional identity,” in general, but still.

Anyway - thus concludes my pondering, for today. Feel free to weigh in with messages or submissions if you feel so moved.

#personal #aging #feminism #aging while female #beauty

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hopevalley · 3 years

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The Real Problem with the Love Triangle

Here we are, in Season 8, and I feel like I’ve finally settled on what it is I hate about the love triangle.

I mean, there are a lot of things wrong with it. It divides the fans, it splits the attention of the scenes between two “potential” romances instead of one certain one, and, perhaps one of its biggest offenses: it’s in the spotlight due to the fact that the plotline was given to the main character.

I could talk about all of these, and I could do it all day, but let’s just look at them quickly (because I do feel there’s a bigger issue than any of these at play, here).

It divides the fans. Yikes? They clearly expected some kind of...I don’t know, Twilight-era Team Jacob/Team Edward split, but Twilight’s endgame was always painfully clear. It’s not that fans weren’t disappointed by the reality when it hit, but...I don’t think many people were...genuinely surprised by it, either. Splitting the fans of an already itty-bitty teeny-tiny fandom was maybe not the best idea, but I guess I can see why they took the risk. After so many characters left the show in S5 (Frank, Dottie, Phillip, Shane, Jack) they probably felt they had to do something drastic to keep the fans invested in the show.

It splits the screentime between two potential romances instead of one certain one. This is less yikes in some ways and moreso in others. The biggest issue with this is mostly that When Calls the Heart has limited screentime to begin with, so splitting screentime and therefore also believable development of any romance makes everything take twice as long to happen, which can either bog down the show (if they take the time to do things correctly) or everything will feel rushed (if they skip proper character development).

It’s in the spotlight. Obviously they had to do this to get attention from the fans, but I can’t help but think that a genuine love triangle for a side character/background character might have been a more appealing option story-wise. Having the focus of the triangle be on Elizabeth means that most of the fans are very invested in their choice...which is GREAT up until the point where it’s suddenly not anymore. Writing yourself into a position where approximately half of the fanbase will be disappointed, perhaps even to the loss of their viewership when things don’t go their way (this is always a risk) is...maybe not the best idea. I can’t imagine anyone would quit over a minor love triangle storyline (for example, Bill/Molly/AJ or Fiona/Kevin/Hickam). Sure, you won’t have the level of engagement in the fans that Lucas/Elizabeth/Nathan brings to the table, but I think it could be fun while also not really risking anything. Not many people would stop watching if Fiona picked Hickam over Kevin, you know?

There are other problems with the love triangle and the concept/use of it, but I think the writers at least tried to make it feel balanced. Did they succeed? Well, that’s personal opinion, so I won’t get into that, but you can tell the effort was there from the start.

So we have a love triangle. Lucas and Nathan are both vying for Elizabeth’s affection, and the crux of Season 8 is: she needs to choose one of them.

Which brings me to my thesis statement.

The problem with the love triangle is that the choice is limited to two options.

She chooses Nathan.

She chooses Lucas.

I think logically as a fan and as a writer who occasionally does enjoy trashy tropes, it’s really no surprise that one of these choices is going to be endgame. What’s annoying—what hurts the love triangle the most—is that they are also the only options presented to the audience. They are the only options Elizabeth and those around her are openly considering.

In reality, there are at least three options.

She chooses Nathan.

She chooses Lucas.

She chooses nobody/to remain single.

We all know When Calls the Heart is a romantic “period drama” so naturally the writers leaned into writing the romance. And again, we know that one of these men is endgame.

But when you’re writing something like this, a plotline that is most assuredly risking future viewership to some degree, you can’t really forget that Staying Single is equally as good an option as Lucas or Nathan.

It’s made worse with things like time skips. Elizabeth has had plenty of time to make a choice if she wanted to make one. She’s obviously not that attached to either man if she’s just going to leave them hanging like that. I think it could be argued that she’s avoided letting herself get too emotionally intimate with either of them on purpose—because she’s scared to try again after what happened to Jack, she’s afraid of having to feel like that again—but that lends credence to my thesis: if she’s not that emotionally attached, and she’s not ready to actually move forward romantically, then...Staying Single is looking like a great option.

But...not one character in the show has told her that. No one encourages it. Not Rosemary (which I sort of expect), not Bill or Henry or Florence (who all seem likely candidates), not anyone. It’s not like Elizabeth’s still heavily mourning Jack (if so, I could see her friends eagerly encouraging her past that). She seems perfectly content by herself and is seemingly doing a good job of raising her son. She doesn’t need a man. She doesn’t act like she wants one.

So why does she have to choose between TWO of them?

What could fix it? Not much at this point. Elizabeth said ages ago that she was ready to move on, or at least try, and that was followed up by all of her friends (Rosemary and Clara specifically) being extremely pushy about how she needed to find romance again. Not once were all of her fears/anxieties seriously discussed and validated.

The best they can do now is have someone close to Elizabeth point out that if she’s not ready to move on, or simply doesn’t want to get involved in a romance again, she doesn’t have to pick anyone (but should be honest with both Lucas and Nathan that she’s not looking for that kind of commitment in her life). It’s also possible that Elizabeth herself could come to this conclusion and speak it aloud to a friend like Rosemary. Just because both men are interested doesn’t mean she has to pick either of them.

I know the fans have been really frustrated at the triangle, specifically how drawn-out it’s been, but I think the reason for that is that Elizabeth’s character has been written in this...really confusing sort of way where...she’s understandably not ready to move on right after her husband has passed away, but even though she’s still in mourning the “potential suitors” get shoved down her throat (and ours) for two full seasons. We (and she, by extension) never get the idea that she could just choose to stay single. The next “logical” step is to choose a man. And that would be fine if she were like Mary Dunbar from the first season, but...she’s the main character. We should see her considering all of her choices.

And like, not to be a fun-killer, but...everything from the past few seasons makes me think she’d just be happier single. That’s the issue, too, with not giving Elizabeth “staying single” as a valid choice: we’re all kind of at a point where we all see how poor her relationship to both suitors is and we’re like, “Hey...maybe neither of them are good options for her at this point in her life.”

Certainly the ensemble-style show lately has contributed to less screentime for Elizabeth and therefore also Lucas/Elizabeth and Nathan/Elizabeth stuff, but I think this could all be fixed if...her choice wasn’t between the two of them, but between choosing to date again vs. choosing not to. She has a career. She has a child. She has a lot of friends. She doesn’t NEED a man, so I want “choosing a man” to feel like...she actually WANTS to date. She WANTS to be romanced. She WANTS physical affection/sex/to be loved and cared for in a romantic fashion.

If I felt that Elizabeth was wholly into the idea of romance and dating and finding someone to live out the rest of her life with, then I might feel good about the love triangle, and about her trying to decide which of two decent men she’d like to allow to court her first.

But because she doesn’t seem eager to court or date, we feel like she never made the decision to move on, and as a result of all of this and the writers trying to keep the love triangle balanced (which unintentionally makes her seem equally DISINTERESTED IN BOTH MEN), her relationships with both Lucas and Nathan feel flat and uninspiring.

TL;DR? The love triangle should have been presented from the start as Nathan vs. Lucas vs. Staying Single, and then we wouldn’t be in a situation where she’s known these men for two+ years and has been ready to move on for more than one of those years, and still doesn’t feel like she knows either man well enough to choose which of them she might like to court.

If we would have started with three choices, she could have spent all of Season 6 working on eliminating one of the options (staying single, in this case) while also being open to CLOSE friendship with both Lucas and Nathan*. Then, in Season 7, she could find that while it’s flattering to have the attention of two good men, it’s emotionally draining and anxiety-inducing to feel she has to choose between them as she likes them both a great deal and doesn’t want to hurt either of them.

*I think they were sort of trying for this, but it fell flat. It would have been ideal to have Lucas and Nathan confide in Elizabeth about deeply personal/emotional things that never leave those scenes. Fears, concerns, they could have some inside jokes... In order for a love triangle that lasts a long time to work, she has to feel very close to both men...and right now she doesn’t feel close to either of them.

As an aside, the love triangle would definitely feel softer around the edges if it wasn’t pushed from Day 1 as a Thing They Were Doing. Elizabeth forming close friendships with two men without TPTB ever saying anything about romance (let alone a love triangle) would have given the characters time to feel like they’re friends first. What we got was romance shoved down our throat (à la “Elizabeth’s still in mourning because her husband seriously just died BUT ALSO LOOK AT THESE TWO NEW MEN... WHICH WILL SHE CHOOSE WHEN SHE’S READY TO MOVE ON?!”) which put too much pressure on the triangle and the characters/interactions from the get-go. It felt like they jumped from brand-new acquaintances to love interests in the span of five minutes...which is, you know...bad.

#when calls the heart #analysis and meta discussion #character studies and information #elizabeth thornton #long post

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unproduciblesmackdown · 3 years

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crossposting billions analysis/musings here but now thinking about 5x08 kind of makes more sense with the context of like, whether that could’ve kicked off them specifically being concerned about loyalty / worrying about unpleasant surprises, since they obviously don’t expect to run into rian having another job, and then instead of going “hey so like, what’s up” to rian about it, they apparently start off strong(arming) a bit, since rian is also starting off bothered by the treatment, and, while we don’t have any reason to think that rian apparently possibly having been moonlighting catering the whole time was going to make her want to quit or have any other conflicts with her mase carb job, after taylor again tries to just go right to the flexing authority / applying pressure approach, now rian’s apparently unsure about staying at tmc, which doesn’t seem to have been true before, establishing that taylor’s reaction to “oh shit is rian Not committed to working here” by already sort of taking a somewhat antagonistic / punitive approach, one which was somewhat bemusing in the first place since there was no indication this had or would cause problems or that they couldn’t just like, talk to rian without preemptively taking that stance, and thus not put rian on the defensive as well / Be antagonized from the start, but they sure did, and it showed us that this was counterproductive, and that only when they both decided to start an exchange with a more conciliatory approach (quantciliatory: see: taylor & winston in 3x03, and then in their next meeting in 3x09) was the situation set up to be resolved, also thanks to taylor voicing their actual motivations in a somewhat unexpected offering of vulnerability re: their lore & also not just trying to push rian into this / hold anything over her head here really

also of note that now, despite taylor’s own trust issues clearly at play, they’ve repeatedly told rian she just kind of has to trust them, despite rian knowing she doesn’t have a lot to go on / can’t really do anything but wait and see if she gets burned by that, which, you know, taylor might have to do with wendy, who hasn’t even gotten around to her “then trust me” line. and, in the midst of these points, is outright saying they can’t trust people b/c they get fucked over, so.

and of course thinking about the entirety of s5 here & gaining & losing (& firing) employees.....rewind to 4x11 when taylor’s saying nobody has to argue for comp b/c the results speak for themselves, but is also asking people to defer bonuses &, in doing so, presumably stay at mase cap for another year, & winston points out that this is less just giving them all a choice & there’s pressure to defer & this suggests employees might be expendable / collateral re: losses tmc might take on if taylor’s commiting to an indefinite revenge jag against axe, a journey that requires you to dig two graves and neither needs to be mine....but he also does not quit, and mafee makes it about trusting taylor, which winston acquiesces to. also notable that lauren like, pseudo breaks up with taylor, but doesn’t, but takes her bonus now b/c if they break up she’ll have to quit, and none of these things really seem to bother taylor at all. then there’s 4x12, where they get to tell their employees they’re all the best & sexiest in the business & tmc is getting back on track, but when we see [all of tmc, apparently] in s5, they’ve presumably had to downsize, or who knows if some people didn’t want to go to axe cap....they kept all their named people, so probably it wasn’t necessarily about taylor having to deal with people quitting, but also probably people Had to be let go, which they not only don’t enjoy like, in general, but of course sucks when it’s their own employees & they would rather not have to downsize or be dragged back to axe cap in the first place, just seems like an Insecurity & Vulnerability Issues exacerbating matter overall, and, naturally, specifically about axe fucking everything up for them

then over the course of s5 you’ve got wendy being generally unhelpful in 5x01, making sure to not really put her back into helping taylor & the rest of mase cap out as part of her job without taking advantage of a chance to ingratiate herself to lauren, which lauren goes ahead & names for what it is. then in 5x02 it’s time to take advantage of taylor’s absence, pull a non axe cap employee over to take care of an axe cap mess, aka lauren, refuse to defer to sara at all and then deflect any responsibility for sara’s disgruntlement / feeling out of place as a result onto taylor, and then of course, you have sara’s sort of halfhearted attempt to voice her grievances to taylor, whose response not only highlights their own unhappiness but now sure definitely seems to suggest that despite recognizing lauren’s business decision to do axe cap stuff as A Good Opportunity, that’s included in things they’re unhappy about but also can’t do anything about. and then in 5x03 sara’s still unhappy & despite clashing a bit further with taylor, apparently taylor doesn’t consider that sara might quit, cue their “don’t worry, i’m not going to fire you” line before sara does quit, & evidently being thrown & unhappy about the fact that she has. & shoutout to their outright telling wendy they can’t trust her & she shouldn’t’ve jumped in and decided lauren should do shit for axe cap, which wendy evidently takes to heart by which i mean she passive aggressively deflects the whole thing and i am sure nothing has changed at all with her and she’d do it again if she felt like it.

then in 5x04 there’s the thing with mafee wanting to switch seats at the lunch table, aka sit with the axe cappers (even if it’s not that clear whether it’s Just a seating change or if it makes him more tied to axe cap re: the actual work he does, seems to at least partially involve the latter, for all intents & purposes) and while taylor does not express anything like “wow really betraying my trust here / this isn’t very loyal of you” they’re clearly unhappy with it, even if we don’t know that they’re actually upset with mafee about it, or anything

5x05 and everyone at least listening to winston about “we can’t and don’t trust wendy” even if nobody particularly cares if he’s fired, who knows if taylor was that concerned, but they at least put in Some effort in the form of stalling for time about it. just a bit odd if they cared enough to put in that nonzero effort but also maybe had no other contingency plan here, and winston’s pointing out that maybe they should be convincing him to stay on....like, yeah, why not? there’s no particular reason for winston to be singled out as Un Impact Fund Worthy, while apparently lauren, & for completely unknown reasons, mafee, are good to go. lauren telling mafee he has “nothing to worry about” to which winston somewhat incredulously goes “he doesn’t but i do??” does kind of sum that up lmfao like, yeah, sorry, but why??? and then there’s the fact that the oil divestment thing which directly led to this impact fund route came from a project winston worked on with taylor i guess, & which taylor decides to run with when, despite sara & mafee both voicing skepticism, winston alone is like “hell yeah we can let’s go for it,” and then, you know, winston also does not quit or anything after axe then invests in the shares that tmc theoretically could’ve. and wendy just got here and isn’t really citing anything about winston about Why he in particular has to be fired, and is figuratively Resting Her Case b/c he doesn’t get her metaphor correctly or w/e?? i see no reason tmc employees shouldn’t think wendy’s trying to isolate taylor / get rid of people who aren’t tied closely enough to axe cap over taylor.....and then spamming F for the fact that there’s this whole subplot that stems from this wherein lauren’s the one pointing out to taylor that they can’t trust wendy & to offer her like, a share of the company in the teens%, and then taylor doesn’t listen to lauren by offering wendy 40% and lauren doesn’t listen to taylor by confronting wendy & telling her she’d better not fuck taylor over, smash cut to wendy fucking taylor over in 5x10 there and lauren Not getting to take it out on wendy, and taylor not doing so either

but here we are still in 5x05, theoretically, wherein winston does just accept not being fired, and wendy’s bailing on the mase carb soiree b/c axe is whining at her to stop doing her stupid bullshit about her stupid life b/c he’s having emotions, so that’s great. and while maybe winston doesn’t need to trust anybody out here b/c apparently, unless ever discussed directly / otherwise, he Is just fine staying at tmc so long as he’s simply not fired, and taylor apparently presumes he will (not like they seem to worried about anyone else even considering quitting either, i guess), he also sure seems to have some people on his radar re: his own vulnerability, like, already Doesn’t trust wendy even if 5x05 is the first time she directly goes after him in any way, can point out that this is about taylor too even if, again, he hasn’t really been directly involved in wendy going after taylor in s4 or prior, & also he still would probably like some validation from taylor themself but will also shrug it off 4 sec later if he doesn’t get it, & for whatever reason may never be brought up in dialogue he sure is committed to working for them or he wouldn’t be here & stay here. & he likes rian, & doesn’t seem too threatened about like, not going “oh heyyy” & acknowledging he likes her actually, as soon as the soiree even, & then there he is in 5x07 having been negged but forging ahead with the determinedly amicability & just kind of tempering the “i’m Just Looking Sometimes, i’m Not Pressing” thing rather than being like “nooo i don’t have a crush on you” or anything. and also, in front of mafee during the soiree lol, and possibly now taylor & lauren if they inferred anything beyond “idk there goes winston operating in the wrong, too literal context / being overly earnest & spontaneous or something” about it....getting off topic talking about winston here maybe but originally the topic was “thinking about 5x08 in an additional/new context as of 5x10″ so guess the post has already gotten off lol

anyways winston’s not really being burned, except also he is (expressing repeatedly he doesn’t feel valued by taylor lol......) but also he doesn’t mind enough to like quit so it’s fine? and mafee might kinnnda have his back at times, won’t narc on him, might intervene if he’s being harassed / threatened, thanks guy. & rian seems to like him in some kinda way and you know, she Did jump in there & apparently truly singlehandedly of her own sole motivation save his employment, i guess? he may as well trust fall swoon into her arms immediately. but guess he’s just vibing out here, and really like, the way billions works, plot focus is dangerous & nobody really just has an episode’s focus of “and here’s [character] just having a great time! they’re so happy! hoorayyy” and even the attention of other characters can be bad. axe shouldn’t’ve looked at him, but do think that was probably just winston off the shits raring to be validated by anything and going “damn i was glanced at? big day for winstons,” and if other characters are writing him off, then they’re probably not also going to come after him (although you know. there’s 5x05!! but she did drop it quick enough i suppose) or be threatened by him in any way and Defensively come after him. i am off track here

anyways then 5x06, things are fine, nobody’s quitting or being threatened with firing, 5x07 they’re fine but also axe is fucking everything up and taylor has to deal with that / know that even [him not being able to be trusted to not fuck everything up For Himself] can fuck with tmc as well as collateral damage, then 5x08, as once stated way back at the beginning of this post, maybe sets off taylor having trust issues re: closer to home threats here, i.e. how committed their employees are, even if it Seems like they are (which, they probably are! i.e. how there probably need not have been any issue w/rian having this side job if taylor hadn’t kind of forced it as an issue) & taylor’s able to resolve it with a bit of vulnerability / dropping the [best Defense is a good offense] insistence

then of course there is 5x09 & seems like maybe it’s A Problem that not only did axe fuck things up for them after saying to their waist that he wouldn’t, but he also said it to wendy & in part b/c wendy backed taylor up, but then also axe went through mafee like well fuck things up for taylor or i’ll fire you, and mafee’s response may have been one that taylor understood but also sure like, had the implication that there’s nothing else he would have or could have done in the face of axe, either then or going forward so long as they’re at axe cap, which can’t be very heartening, and although of course taylor just realizes axe is the problem, when in 5x10 they’re clearly fucked up about not being able to count on anyone truly standing between them & axe / not siding with loyalty to axe vs them when push comes to shove, it’s not difficult to retroactively apply that to this situation with mafee & suppose that like, even if in that moment they didn’t consciously go “wow so i’d better be worried about this from other people too” apparently by the time in 5x10 they learn actually lauren’s Not guaranteed automatically staying with mase carb / them & that wendy, despite again a face to face conversation, is like yeahhhh fuck it i entrusted axe with this and i have no reassurance(tm) for you except bullshit nothing, seems like maybe the first [i’m unexpectedly vulnerable??] internal emotional dustup from 5x08 & then the much more obvious one in 5x09 wherein mafee’s just asserting it as a given that if axe wants to hurt them he will & there’s nothing for it has kinda coalesced & been set off here by first realizing lauren isn’t automatically with them & then that wendy’s just over here doing whatever making them all the more vulnerable to axe & then they’re apparently launched into very defensive mode about all of it, but they’re also clearly personally hurt about things rather than Just like, considering strategy or whatever, or yeah their directing their reaction at their relationship w/lauren & just cutting it off themself wouldn’t be so spiteful & yknow, maybe they’dve simply fired her but been like eh yeah sure go to axe cap but don’t give axe any tmc secrets and also maybe we should break up. meanwhile, if they can have one personal relationship blowup after having tamped down [being bothered] by issues in it for a good while now, it’s like, maybe not guaranteed that just b/c they’re not confronting mafee about anything here they’re not also tamping down [being bothered] which may Potentially blow up later.......do not want that

so congrats i guess to winston if nobody’s really bothered re: him lmfao, like, hey, then they won’t be Bothered(tm) down the line either......again with the like, taylor maybe trusts him to be Loyal b/c they’ve given him the least individual / personal focus here ever so like, if i Don’t trust you, i trust you lol....guy who’s just kinda Around, and is also kinda invulnerable(tm) for it, where rn his most vulnerable thing going on, which is uncoincidentally his most like, involved arc / thread re: character material, is Liking rian, and we don’t know whether that’ll go anywhere. if it’s a joke, that’s kinda underwhelming, but if it’s setting up a romance watch out, that’s where billions concentrates the theme of what’s lost / fucked up in the course of trying to play / compete in / win in this game, but wherein winston is maybe protected by the fact he’s Not really trying to be exceptionally ambitious / at the forefront of things & is instead just kinda out here vibing & rolling w/stuff, which is harder to narratively come down on so as to execute some thematic material....but which may also result in like, his not getting any relationships really, although if he & rian have this mutual affinity / kindred spirituality, why shouldn’t they get to be buddies, which is not so often crushed to make a thematic point as romances are.....also, let’s see him talk to tuk outside just the once, that went great, in 5x08 anyways. i’d say like, as is true of anyone amicable w/him, feel free to kiss but also everyone watch out with that around here. and that brings us back to 5x08 so may as well pretend that’s a definitive conclusion b/c the [series of interconnected billions tangents] that this post has been can go on indefinitely.

#winston billions #if you can believe it tl;dr the issue w/rian in 5x08 may have set up this thread w/taylor coming to a head in 5x10 there....

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salty-cs · 3 years

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Hey there. Before I begin I will explicitly state: you have the right to not forgive nor like anyone. That is your own choice of who you interact with and I am in no way attempting to invalidate this. Your opinion is yours.

Yes, I am friends with Dat and Cambion. That is not something I'm ashamed of. Is that something that deserves hate? Who knows, that's your choice. You have every right to not wanna interact with me because of it.

Neither of them have brought me harm in any shape or form. Nor do I condone a majority of their past actions and I already told them that I don't. It also is not my duty to forgive their actions either. But via my own experience, we have a pretty solid friendship that is very much going well.

Also, neither of them acted with harmful intent ever. I feel that is important to mention.

I am a strong believer and am rather optimistic that people can change (except extremely harmful and illegal actions with bad intent. You know what I mean). Everyone makes mistakes, especially when they're this young. Does age excuse actions? No, it doesn't. But the adults in Dat's situation are also at fault and let us not pretend they are not. I infer it was a collective clusterfuck and an overall bad experience for both parties (yet again, this is my own interpretation). They have every right to not like Dat and Dat has every right to not like them.

However, I must condemn everything that is currently happening. Let's not act like insulting others is a good thing to do.

No matter where you stand, insulting people is not right. Privately, do what you will I suppose. But going out of your way to click through tabs just to say something mean is more of a reflection on your own character than the one you're insulting. Being mean isn't okay. Nobody died, nobody got assaulted. Toxic friendships suck and they happen. Block and move on.

Going onto a salt blog where you know people agree with your negative sentiments only creates a toxic atmosphere and frankly it becomes a bullying brigade. Surely the one being targeted can just "not come on and see it", but let's not pretend that that excuses the fact people are blatantly insulting others. You know you saying stuff will get attention and you know it will ruin someone's mental health and reputation. It's purposeful and malicious. This isn’t salt, this is harassment.

Let us think critically together. Regardless of whether I've done anything wrong or not, is someone calling me annoying out of nowhere valid and okay to post without much of an explanation? So if I'm just casually checking the blog, completely ignorant of the fact someone had posted about me, is it my fault that it made me upset even though I'm the one being called names? No. You cannot justify that.

I'm not attempting to say that venting is wrong--that's not true. It is perfectly okay. I just strongly believe that if you're going to do it, do so with friends, not the internet. Ask questions instead of forcing opinions. Get information and learn instead of bandwagoning. Seeking public validation is understandable, but please realize your words have weight...especially when you're a popular oekaki artist.

We're not big celebrities here...this is a pets site in a small corner of the internet. Criticism and skepticism are understandable responses; calling others names and saying they'll never have friends in life is immature. Don't act like you have the moral high ground when you're so enthralled in internet drama that you publicly celebrate someone quitting and then get upset when they retaliate. You must be aiming for a reaction, what else could make you say the stuff you do?

Now I'm speaking generally but if you're offended then I guess you know it's about you. Harassment is never justified. You don't have to like anyone here, but your mouth is a weapon.

To continually insult someone who you are aware has a horrible mental state and is suicidal is incredibly irresponsible. You are part of the problem. You can hate Dat, but you really have to let go and move on and stop being toxic yourself. That's what Dat wants to do and has stated. Make that active choice. Both of them already apologized countless times before and we all know another apology isn't going to change some of y'all's minds. And that's okay at the end of the day, because that's not my or their job nor responsibility. You have to think for yourself and make those decisions on your own.

Both of them have grown so much and I am very proud of them. I am not excusing them from what they've done, but they are most certainly not pedophiles nor monsters. Please think critically about the fact you do not know everything about either situation. Sometimes people do shitty things, and I say this towards both sides of the argument, and it's best to let the friendship die instead of prolonging the hurt.

Everyone should aim to educate instead of ridicule. You may remain judgmental and skeptical, but how is calling someone a bitch or something or other, remotely helpful to the situation? It only makes it worse. Someone not understanding a term does not mean they're invalidating said term. Educate them. Provide resources and information. It's not difficult.

Now I've said more than I probably should've for being a complete nobody. Sit back, relax with your favorite drink, close your web browser, and realize there's so many better things to do than be a part of an online drama. Now have a fantastic evening. I'm surely going to rest well so I hope you do too.

#mod squid #off anon #submission #paperjack #cambion #dat #mudkip

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h0llyalexander · 3 years

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sex+romance headcanons! - ALL :P

🌟 What is my muse’s sexual/romantic orientation?

“I’m straight, obviously. Why would you ask me that? Are you hitting on me? Because I’m not gay.” 💦 At what age did my muse lose their virginity?

(Answered in this ask.)

😘 Would my muse have sex on the first date?

“Ew, no. I’m not a whore.”

(Nvm about her having sex with random lesbians on the beach that she just met 5 minutes ago, that never happened.)

😊 Would my muse ever ask someone on a date?

“No. I’m not that desperate.”

(Although she will heavily hint at it and bother someone with comments like ‘what does a girl have to do to get asked out?’ until the person gets so annoyed they ask her out on a date.)

👍 Does my muse prefer to be asked on a date, or would they rather do the asking?

(She thinks she’s supposed to wait until someone asks her out so she’ll just say everything she can to steer them in that direction, without actually asking them straight up.)

😉 What are my muse’s fetishes/kinks?

“What are you, some kinda degenerate?”

(She would probably consider her lesbianism a ‘kink’, since her parents/sister taught her it’s not a real/valid sexuality. But she’d never admit to having it, of course.)

💬 When did my muse go on their first date?

“My first ‘official’ date was when I was fourteen. It was sort of a double date with my sister and her crush, and his best friend. It was alright.”

💯 What is my muse’s ideal date?

“Something romantic. Maybe going to an expensive restaurant and eating something fancy, and then going dancing. He should dress nice, and bring flowers. And give me at least three days in advance to prepare because I need to find a nice dress.” (She thinks she’ll enjoy it as long as it’s something expensive.)

💗 Has my muse ever been in love?

“I dunno. What kind of a lame question is that?” (No.)

👠 What was my muse’s last serious relationship like?

“Oh...well, it was pretty good, you know...he was a real gentleman. Lots of dates or whatever. And he was rich, so...” (Her last boyfriend was Heather’s ex, he was not rich and kind of a fuckboy. She didn’t really like him that much, but she dated him to get back at her sister for calling her a loser at school. Ahh, sisterhood...)

👰 Would my muse ever get married?

“Only if he buys me a nice ring. If he doesn’t do that, we are d o n e. Oh, and he can’t propose to me after I just woke up, either. I look terrible in the morning.” (Tbh her main motivation for getting married would probably be because her sister got married and she wants to upstage her. Or because her sister is getting married and she wants to have a double wedding.)

🌼 Would my muse prefer a big wedding or a small wedding?

“Are you kidding? Go big or go home! Okay, picture this...we’re at like, a beautiful venue, right? Like an open air, castle top type place. And there’s gold tablecloths and carpeting, and beautiful lights spanning above the tables, and there’s a fountain with lights in it and a big beautiful buffet with all whole-food dishes and a big bouquet in the middle. And oh, I want a violinist to play music at my wedding, but it can only be songs that I know. Nothing too old or boring, I want my wedding to be fun.” (Fun, aka expensive.)

🍬 Is my muse a sub, dom, or switch?

(Probably switch.)

🏩 What was my muse’s first time like?

(Answered here.)

🎆 Is my muse into monogamy?

“If you’re with me, you’re mine and you better not cheat or I’ll make you regret it.” (She doesn’t share.)

💕 Would my muse ever be in a polyamorous relationship?

(See previous question.)

🔥 Would my muse ever be up for a threesome?

“I don’t do that.”

(I actually have a headcanon where she almost had a threesome with Heather because Heather wanted to impress her boyfriend by giving him a threesome with her and her sister, but Holly refused to do it.)

👮 Has my muse ever had sex in public?

“Did that Russell guy tell you that? Whoever told you that, they were lying. I would never.”

(Well except for that one time on the beach. And in the ocean. And the public toilet thing, but clearly that doesn’t count...)

💔 What was my muse’s first heartbreak?

“Pffft...nobody breaks my heart.”

(Her sister, probably. Not in a romantic sense, but in the sense that she wanted her sister’s approval when she was younger and she never got it and it broke her heart.)

💑 What are my muse’s requirements for a potential partner?

“First of all, you have to have a job. A good job, not one of those jobs at McDonalds. He has to have real money. He has to be tall, and know how to act around a lady. He should give me gifts and do what I ask, and always remember our anniversary. He can’t cheat, obviously, and if we’re together long term he better propose within three years.” (Her classism really shows here smh. Looking down at people who work at McDonalds, not cool. But she’s privileged as fuck financially, as is her sister. What’s funny though is that even if she found this type of guy, she wouldn’t even like him that much. She basically described Scott, minus the tall part, and she doesn’t like Scott at all.)

💋 How many people has my muse slept with?

“Oh my God, you did not just ask me that.”

(She thinks it’s unladylike to tell people, but she’s probably slept with like...30 guys? Mostly to compete with her sister lol. Only one girl tho.)

👀 Is my muse the type to sleep around?

“No I don’t! Oh my God, shut up. I’m not some sort of skank. I’ve only ever slept with my boyfriends, and there aren’t even that many.”

(Yes.)

👎 Would my muse ever cheat on their partner?

“Only the ones that deserved it.”

(They probably didn’t. Some of them cheated on her too, but most of them did not and she still cheated on them if it helped her in some way.)

😳 What was my muse’s worst romantic/sexual relationship?

“Oh God, there was this guy named Danny and he was just the worst...like, he had no idea how to have sex with a woman, he would just act like he was humping an inanimate object. And he was so stupid, too. Like this one time I was on my period so I told him to go to the store and get me some pads, and he came back with knee pads. Like what the fuck?”

💲Would my muse ever date/marry/sleep with someone because they were rich?

“I mean, obviously not, they have to be handsome too.”

(Yes.)

👓 Would my muse ever lie for sex?

“Why would I do that?”

(She’s never had to, but I could see her maybe doing that with Desi. Like if Desi says ‘tell your family about us or we’re done’, then Holly might lie to her and tell her that she came clean, just so they can keep sleeping together because it’s the only sex she’s ever had that she actually enjoys.)

👿 Would my muse ever blackmail someone into sex?

“Now you’re just being silly.”

(No.)

🎥 Who is my muse’s celebrity crush?

“I dunno, Ashton Kutcher is pretty cute.”

(Angelina Jolie.)

🎀 Who would my muse sleep with if nobody ever had to know?

“...”

(Looking at you, Desi.)

💍 Has my muse ever had a one-night stand?

(Again...)

💝 Does my muse like Valentine’s Day?

“It’s okay, I guess...”

(She likes receiving gifts, but hates having to give blowjobs.)

💘 What are the ways my muse says ‘I love you’ without actually saying it?

(Buying stuff for the person, like clothes or whatever she thinks will look good on them. Sending gifts in the mail. Letting the person see her without make up. Doing activities with them that she doesn’t care for like hiking or sports, stuff that might get her clothes dirty.)

#Anonymous #headcanon #meme

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aprilwritesabook · 4 years

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I appolgize in advance for this long ass post haha.

Alright, so here's the deal. This post is gonna be part rant, part confessional, and part inspirational speech. So if your following this blog purely for the updates on my books you can skip it haha.

I know a currently published author. I used to kinda be friends with them in highschool, but it was more like a friend of a friend type deal. But I digress. Point is. They recently released there second book on Amazon. And I really wanna be happy and proud of them, and to see it as an inspirational thing, buuuuut I'm almost 100 sure they are actually a fraud?

And that's not me being bitter. I really really really wish this wasn't the case. But I have the evidence to back this theory up.

1- they claimed that there first book sold out multiple times. And to be fair this one might be at least partially true. Its rated pretty high on amazon, But then again they only have 4 people rate it and three of those people are the editor formattor and artist for the book. Soooo. Yeah I sure hope they rated it well.

2- they are constantly posting stories to there social media that are far fetched at best. They work in a bookstore. And almost every other week its a slightly diffrent story about a customer who "didn't even know" he was the author who would "burst into tears" the second he told them what the book was about because they were just Soooo touched by the message that they wept to a total stranger??? If that had happened even once it would have been an odd occurance. And this is something that apparently happens alllll the time to them. (I hate to drudge up old memes like this, but)

3- this person has recently made a tick tock and a youtube channel. And like, the content isssss questionable? And that's not necessarily a crime or anything. But they give updates about it on social media as if they are speaking to a mass of adoring fans and like...you can see how many subs and views a person has. We know he dosn't have a big fan base. And I know that sounds harsh. But like, some more gullible people have asked him for advise on how to be "successful" and "gain a following", and he answers them with authority. Like he has the answers even though he clearly dosn't? And that feels really... disingenuous at best?

4- along the same vein as 3. They recently made a post on twitter about how they are "overwhelmed by the amount of love and support they have found on the site" and how they get "some many heartfelt messages." Annnd again. I clicked the account. They literally have 5 followers. And not a SINGLE person has EVER liked, retweeted, or commented on a SINGLE tweet of theirs. Not one. Soooo like not only are you pretending to have a huge fan base that dosn't exist your also making up there engagement with you? Which this alone I feel brings validate to my doubts about the other things. Clearly they arn't above blatant lying and extreme over exaggeration. And also they either don't realize we can all seeeee these facts. Or they don't think anyone will actually check and call them on it ?????

Now there's a lot of other examples I could give. But my point isn't to put this ONE person on blast. I'm not trying to start beef or cause damage to their reputation or anything. Which is why I won't say their name or what there books are. The only way you'd know who I'm talking is if you also knew them in real life. In which case you either already know all this, or you should, so you don't fall victim to their lies.

The reason I'm saying any of this at all is because I think I know why they are doing it. And why so many indie authors or would be media mogels feel the need to do this.

The issue with trying to "build an audience" and "self market" yourself, is that you really only have 2 ways of guaranteed sucess.

You either need to have a pre established audience based on success you've already had in the past. (IE youtubers and movie stars writing successful books cause there fans will buy anything of there's reguardless.)

Or you need to buy your way in. Be it by quitting your day job to make social media your full time job, buying ads, hiring a social media person,or hiring a team of people with their own audiences (audio book narrators, cover artists, managers, ect)

And if you don't ALREADY have an audience, and you don't have the funds to BUY your way in, then your just gonna have to get real lucky.

You can be lucky for knowing somebody with an "in". They work in publishing, or advertising, or they're your rich uncle. Just someone who you can go to to get that boost one way or another to get one of the first two methods going for you.

You can get lucky by commenting the right thing on the right post and gaining followers that way. Or by being in the right place at the right time to meet somebody important.

You can be lucky by having lots of supportive friends and family who will promote you and your work FOR you.

Or lastly (and this is in the realm of being a one in a million case here. So it basically never happens without one of the other things I mentioned also being true.)

You can be lucky by working REALLY hard, and being REALLY talented, and having the world actually NOTICE YOU somehow? Just one person with influence who can find you in your dark hole of insignificance and shine a light on you so now the world can actually seee you.

And that sucks.

You could write the greatest book in the whole world. Truly a masterpiece. But if nobody buys it or reads it because they don't know who you are??? Then it dosen't matter does it?

It sucks Soooo hard.

Because untill you get those people with influence to shine a light on you, theres nothing you can do. And the market is soooooo drenched in new indie authors that the odds of the right people finding and liking your book are slim to none.

Its super unfair.

The people who have the influence arn't gonna buy a book with 0 reviews and no social media following.

Why? Because THEIR brand depends on only recommending the good shit. And they need to find that good shit NOW. If they read every book written by nobody's online, they'd have to wade through ALOT of garbage. wasting all their valuable time and money till they found something worthy. And honestly, from a business stand point, you cant really fault them for that

This is where the lies come from.

So basically no matter how you look at it, or what your strategy is, In order to get fans, you need to ALREADY HAVE THEM.

When your just starting out. And I mean truly at square one. It really feels like the only way to "make it" is to "fake it"

If you PRETEND to have a big following. And you PRETEND your books are selling really well already. And you PRETEND that people care deeply about you and your work... Then there is a chance that nobody will do the homework to find out its all a lie.

And if they think your successful already, then it sends a message to the consumers brains of "well they must be good. Everybody loves it/them".

It sucks that so many people who have found real success did so with lies, cash, and being already well connected.

And then they buy it, and they follow you, and the confirmation bias sets in, and eventually you'll dupe enough people into liking you that you don't HAVE to lie anymore.

Those of us with no cash and too high a conscious to lie our way to the top are left with virtually no chance of succeeding no matter how hard we work or how good our content is.

And I'm not claiming to be "better than" or "more worthy" than anyone else. I wanna make it clear that of your in the portion of having it fake it so you can follow your dreams then more power to you. Its a valid strategy. I hate that it works and I hate that its the only option sometimes. But I don't hate the people as creators for "doing what it takes." I get it. Really I do.

And it suckks major ass that so many people feel like this is the only way.

My whole point here. Is that we have slowly built a system where this is our reality. And honestly? End of the day? There's not a damn thing we can do to change it at this point.

In a perfect world made of unicorns and puppies. I could say "hey lets all go ready books by completely unknown authors. Be the change you wanna see in the world." But at the end of the day, especially in the unfiltered world of self publishing, It would be a complete shot in the dark to spend your resources on something completely unknown. We rely on word of mouth, and "best sellers" and high following to do the work of filtering out the bad stuff for us and it would be unrealistic if not impossible to go back on it now. Even if we wanted to there algorithms and shit built into the code. You'll never find the books that Amazon dosnt want you to find unless you search for it directly.

Now comes the confession/inspirational bit

I know all of the above to be true...But I'm choosing not to care

I'm not gonna lie my way to the top. I'm not gonna hide my struggles out of fear of seeming inferior. So here goes

I struggle a lot with depression and anxiety. I've been working on it, and I've gotten so much better in recent years. But there are always gonna be times when I slip up and my mental illnesses take over

When I was writing my first book I felt really empowered and good about myself for finally getting past all my own barriers and following my dreams.

And then once I was done writting and editing and I was ready to show the world and get feedback. I flopped.

I couldn't find anyone willing to beta read. Those who said they would do it (even people who claimed they "couldn't wait") ghosted me after I actually sent it to them

I was hoping to get 20 people. I really wanted it to be the best it could be. Only 11 actully signed up. Of that 11, 5 people actually read it: My spouse, my brother, my best friend, and 2 others. Those two others read the first bit I sent them, took a few weeks to get back to me, said they loved it, but then Neeeeeeeeever got back to me when I sent them the next chunk.

Now you can look at all that and come to the conclusion that it sucks. I know I sure did.

The struggles at each step made me doubt myself more and more to the point that I almost gave up writing all together.

And I didn't want to take about it or how it was making me feel, even though it was having a serious impact on me. I wanted to bottle it all up and let it consume me. Allllll because I didn't want people online to write me off as a failure before even giving me the chance.

I wasn't lying about being successful. I was just trying to hide the fact that I wasn't.

And that's almost as bad. Because then all the new authors just feel worse about themselves and their journey because they think they are the only ones.

Your not alone.

Everyone is struggling.

We just aren't talking about it.

I haven't written a word in over a week because I've been so afraid my second book will be dead on arrival like my first.

And I KNOW somewhere out there is someone just like me whose thinking of giving up.

Don't.

Just keep going.

Do your best. And then come find another struggling writer and share with each other. The world outside might not understand your struggle. But another author might.

We can't change the market. We can't change the way social media works, or how people decide if they will buy things

But what we CAN change, is whether those of us within the community want to be honest about our struggles and frustrations. Or if we want to hide them away and lie about them for the sake of making more sales

I think by being honest with one another we can create a better network.

That way the next time you feel like garbage for not being an "instant celebrity" like everyone else. you can look at the community and realize that you were never the problem

If we just keep making new writing friends our collective reach will eventually take hold in the outside world. Don't wait for a random influencer to notice you. Just make one friend at a time. Be known amongst your peers and maybe the rest will follow

And if your a writer desperate for feedback, or just a friend to share your troubles with. Hit me up. My inbox is always open.

18 notes · View notes

roominthecastle · 5 years

Note

Ok so since you’re a believer/supporter of Agnes Gate I have this question. Lizzy’s memories were wiped, but how do you explain Red? What does he know/suspect? How do you explain his behavior? Where does he stand in all this? Hope you got my point because I’m sick and I’ve lost my ability to think clearly and transform thoughts into words 🤒😂

*cracks knuckles*

Yes, you’re coming across clearly, anon, these are all valid points/questions, and I hope you’re feeling better.

Now “believer” is a strong word but I do believe there’s enough wiggle room in current show canon to accommodate this theory. In other words (bc I really don’t want anyone to misunderstand me here): there’s still enough story space for this idea to emerge but there is no direct, overt proof that it is there or that it will.

So consider what follows NOT a proof post but a simple, albeit long AF - thought experiment that presupposes two things:

Liz and Red slept together while on the run (canonically that’s the period when Agnes was conceived)

Liz’s memory of this has been either altered or removed by Dr. Krilov

Now, behavior was, in fact, the one thing that initially put me off this theory bc I didn’t think Red would be willing to just step aside if he suspected he might be the baby’s father. BUT the following seasons revealed a couple of good reasons why he would not speak up (Kirk and the never-ending list of other hostiles, Liz’s “I hate your guts” phase, Liz clinging to Tom, Liz’s selective memory - courtesy of Krilov, fake-DG & the issue of the suitcase, an illness).

They also continued to show just how apt both Red and Liz are to not deal with stuff that’s not an immediate threat (e.g. Liz’s ‘I love you’ which they both willingly continue to just not address), and the thing is: despite not contesting paternity in any overt way, Red never actually stepped aside.

I think this paternity issue and its various complications - from Red’s perspective - can be separated into 4 major time blocks:

S3B

S5A

S5B–present

Even if there’s a reason for Red to think he might be Agnes’ father, I don’t believe he works off anything more than mild suspicions in the S3B–S5A period.

During this time, his relationship with Liz is rapidly unraveling and several other roadblocks and threats emerge that likely discourage him from openly broaching this issue. Then he gets to raise Agnes for 10 months, which provides the perfect opportunity to safely run a paternity test and maybe even another genetic screening (they made a point of telling us that baby Agnes was getting a standard one back in S3 + it was emphasized how having the correct info about her parents’ medical history is crucial for accurate testing - info Tom couldn’t provide). The beginning of Red’s collaboration with Dr. Stark roughly dates back to the time period when he had Agnes with him. If Red has a hereditary (late-onset) illness, he could have been driven to seek a cure once the tests confirmed his suspicions, and he’s now testing it on himself to make sure it works and is safe before giving it to Agnes.

IF.

– more on all this behind the cut – (apologies, mobile users)

- [ S3B ] -

Confirmation of the pregnancy is a wedge between Liz and Red, and it’s Red who screws up first when he rejects the baby right off the bat and tries to bury himself in work. It understandably hurts Liz and the tense tone of their interactions begins to snowball. The main issue concerning Red’s behavior in S3B, right after Liz tells him that she’s pregnant and he bounces back from his initial rejection, is that he becomes “suffocating” and more committed than ever to keep her and the baby in his orbit (which also alarms and later sets off Mr. Kaplan). Red has little sense of boundary, he starts isolating Liz, and he barely tolerates Tom’s presence. When he makes an effort to tolerate him, that’s bc he is trying his best to respect Liz’s choices/wishes (just like in “Ruin”) regardless of his own feelings, but it doesn’t prevent him from repeatedly trying to push Tom out of the picture. He saves him from going to prison but he still has a hard time dealing with Liz having a close relationship with him. This also echoes his original plans for Tom: being there for her but also keeping his distance. This, in turn, echoes his original “invisible benefactor” role he cast himself in (and both of them clearly crossed these lines as the years went by – more on this later).

Despite telling her that he’s known about the pregnancy for some time, Red does not act out until after Liz doesn’t deny that Tom is the father. Red knew about the pregnancy already, he had weeks to vent and get used to the idea, so his spiraling is kind of puzzling unless it’s not the pregnancy itself that sets him off. The only thing he wasn’t sure about was paternity (why?), so the only emotionally logical reason for his weird spiral is that part of him was still hoping that the baby was not Tom’s (tho, in theory, nobody else was in proximity other than the two of them + a more closer look at the timeline reveals that Tom was, in fact, nowhere near Liz when the baby was conceived).

But when Liz didn’t deny it, that’s when it became too much for Red: he didn’t want to have a child (for several reasons) but what he wanted even less was Tom to be confirmed as the father. Then his entire outlook on this subject changes by the end of the episode (after reminding himself how Katarina, too, dreaded having a baby but changed her mind completely). This also brings that Samar/Aram conversation to mind where she tells Aram how being around him changed her attitude towards having children, but now she cannot raise one bc of her condition.

But back to 312 and the “I’m pregnant” moment:

This whole conversation is just weird. Red is tense from the moment he sees Liz at the Post Office, then feeds her the answer to his own question, presenting it as a statement: “I assume Tom is the father.” Why not just give her the opportunity to name him? What this feels like is him giving her an out instead, and his closed-off, prickly, I-am-being-very-inconvenienced-by-this behavior (and Tom’s enthusiasm) is practically willing Liz to take it. And she hesitates for a moment, then instead of saying “yes” she just says, “I haven’t told him yet.” And this is where Red’s barely civil behavior veers into total assholery rejection, then he does a 180 at the end of the episode. By then Liz is sufficiently pissed off and is already pushing him away and sliding back into Tom’s arms. So in many ways ep 312 is where things truly turn and then get worse, and it all happens over Tom, essentially.

After this fallout, we get the episode where Red is thinking back to Josephine who was maneuvered into marrying an abusive scumbag for strategic reasons (as usual, we have parallels too). It was all arranged by a third party, which reminds me of Mr. Kaplan referring to Tom as her “confidant”, which makes me wonder about the extent of their off-screen interaction. Mr. Kaplan was doing everything to tear Red and Liz apart bc she saw that bond as fatal to both and a danger to the baby. Maybe she arranged that 2nd session w/ Krilov (who might have planted images that switched Red and Tom like he did w/ the fire memory where the roles were switched around), then she tipped Tom off, urging him to rekindle his relationship w/ Liz (his proposal was so out of the blue, I still don’t know what to do w/ that).

When Liz wants to give up the baby for adoption, she is told that she has to discuss this with the father, too, as his consent is also needed. Liz says the father is busy with work, then she has 0 conversation about this w/ Tom and goes to Red who, now being very pro having the baby, tries to talk her out of it. He also sabotages Tom’s teacher job and, at the same time, swoops in and presents Liz with a trust fund he set up for the baby, insisting that it’s for the child. As far as symbolic actions go, this one is screaming “I am the provider, not him”. And if it’s not clear enough, he also spells it out by telling her Tom’s not worthy of being her husband and of raising the baby. But it’s too late. Liz rejects him and clings to Tom. She even re-watches the video of Tom being interviewed as a potential adoptive father, which we saw in S1. Liz has been show to chat with potential adoptive parents, so her watching Tom’s adoption agency interview kinda makes it look like she picks Tom to “adopt” Agnes.

S3B is the time period when the threat from Kirk starts emerging. Mr. Kaplan also begins to view Red and Liz’s bond as sth to sever and Red himself as a threat to Agnes, saying that the baby hasn’t even been born yet but is “already paying the price for her association” with him. Then Liz kicks Red out when he asks to see the newborn baby, and soon after Liz’s “death”, Tom tells him that Agnes would only need protection if Red remained in her life. The three of them manage to gaslight Red to such an extent that he completely breaks down. He begins to contemplate ending it all and wanders around, cataloging the reasons.

And that episode-long contemplation is where we get to see (his version of) Katarina in this exact position, her pain at losing the man she loved at a time when there was so much anger and tension btw them, at not being able to raise her daughter, and all her reasoning for committing suicide (all paralleling Red’s). We can also glimpse Red’s innermost thoughts/feelings regarding Liz, Agnes, and Tom. He says “her mother is dead. All she has is the father.” Somehow he cannot bring himself to call Tom “her father” and this is reflected in future real-life interactions w/ Tom as well, when he switches between calling Agnes “Elizabeth’s child” and “your daughter” in his presence. Liz similarly switches btw calling Agnes “my” and “our” around Tom, and initially she refuses to refer to Agnes as anything but “my baby” even after Tom corrects her. It’s almost like both she and Red need some time to adjust. She does. Red? not so much.

Dom further adds to Red’s crushing guilt by reminding him how his choices doomed Liz like they doomed Katarina before. But then he also reminds him that he still has a reason to live as there are others out there who depend on him (“God help them.” - I LOVE Dom). So Red returns to make sure Agnes is safe and to exact vengeance for Liz’s death, two goals which are tied in his mind as he claims that the only way to protect Agnes is by killing Kirk who’s responsible for Liz’s death. He makes a deal with Tom: he lets him participate in the hunt in exchange for being allowed to spend time with Agnes. Again, this whole exchange has a vibe of negotiating visitation rights.

And Red’s interactions w/ Scottie give us a feel for why he will not argue much in the future when Liz decides to pick her to look after Agnes: Red calls Scottie “a brilliant strategist” who - despite Red’s visceral dislike of her - is a suitable “guard” as long as she believes Agnes to be her granddaughter. So not giving any reason to undermine that belief is in the little girl’s best interest (for now).

- [ S4 ] -

This is a period dedicatedto the overarching theme of “truth vs. appearances”, and we have afew interesting ideas and info snippets introduced that can help furtherexplain Red’s behavior if (he suspects that) Agnes is his.

First of all, we meet Kirkand gain some insight into the relationship dynamics of the past - dynamicswhich reflect those in the present.

Mirroring is a curiousfeature that’s utilized right at the beginning, in 401. It’s briefly touchedupon (here) but what makes the Red-Kirk-Liz scene especially interesting isthat the mirroring btw this exchange and the Red-Tom-Agnes one in “CapeMay” is not merely visual but also verbal, giving some weight to thesuspicion that they are linked by design. In both scenes we have the“designated dad” in a room with his daughter while the real father(Red is not Liz’s father but in 401 he “stands in” for real Reddington) is separated and looking in from the outside. On top of that, the dialogues are verysimilar, too:

Red (401): Are you okay? || Red (319): She’ll need protection.Kirk (401): Unlike you, I’d never hurt my own daughter. || Tom (319): Only ifyou are in her life.

And to push it even further,Kirk’s words (“What I desire is to raise my child. To watch hergrow.”) reflect Red’s innermost wish he voices in 319: “ I’d giveanything to be a part of that child’s life […] see her, hold her, watch hergrow.” And this also echoes Liz’s fantasy she shares with Red when theyare on the run. And Red’s retort to Kirk in 401 (“She was never yours toraise.”) also matches Red’s dance around the issue of Agnes’ paternity in319 where he refuses to directly call Tom her father, paralleling Katarina’s pain that she feels due to being separated from her daughter.

So I think what we can statewith certainty here is that there is confusion around paternity inboth scenes.

As the season unfolds, we dolearn that Kirk was a “cover dad”, designated as such by Katarina formultiple reasons (that happen to match Liz’s reasons for wanting to“escape” Red in S3 and be with Tom instead):

best chance at a normal life: Kirk did not work as an agent or any kind ofoperative, he had a (relatively) stable life in Russia. Katarina wasmarried to him and they lived together until real Reddington, believing Mashato be his daughter, took their daughter back to the US.

safety: asRed put it, “Your safety was guaranteed because Kirk believed you to behis daughter.” This belief was cemented in by a fake DNA report andentries in Katarina’s journal where she writes about their relief that Mashawon’t be exposed to the genetic illness that plagues Kirk’s family as it canonly be inherited by sons.

“no other path”: despite loving Reddington, Katarina accepted that she was never gonna endup with him. The circumstances were forever against them. This is why she began distancing herself from him and this is why she didn’t want to know ifhe was Masha’s father.

If Katarina had written apro/con list for her baby, I bet it would have looked a lot like the one Liz wrote, exceptit would have said “Kirk????” instead of “Tom????” But, as Redtold Liz, being Katarina’s husband didn’t make Kirk her father, which is apotentially relevant observation given how Liz kept trying to marry Tom at allcosts to force a “normal family” into existence that was never more than anillusion + how she was trying to distance herself from Red.

Those three main reasons abovealso provided the motivation for a cover-up that Kirk refused to acceptas the truth until multiple tests confirmed it when he fell ill and needed agenetic donation from a blood relative. As Red pointed out, “You saw whatKatarina wanted you to see.” This also echoes Mr. Kaplan’s words to Red atthe end of S3: “You saw what we needed you to see.” which might godeeper than “merely” faking Liz’s death and could be a hint at Kaplan’srole in arranging the 2nd memory manip session with Krilov.

In this season, Red alsostruggles with appearance vs. truth, with the cost/benefit ratio of deceptionsand false assumptions. This happens indirectly when he “auditions” hisnew cleaners in a pristine white apartment where one of his friends wasmurdered. He is both upset and marvels at how clean everything looks –“your cleaners removed even the memory of his blood”.

This practicality takes on asymbolic meaning as it carries over into Red’s relationship with Mr. Kaplanwhom he calls his confessor: “every trespass I committed, expunged.Cleansed as if it never happened.” Mr. Kaplan claims that Red betrayed Lizand held her “emotionally hostage”. These are rather extreme accusations… unless Red and Liz slept together while on the run and Redconfessed this to Mr. Kaplan. Now that act could be easily and understandablyconsidered trespassing by her, a crossing of a line that never should have beencrossed (= a betrayal). Red felt rage when he learned that Tom had become intimate with Liz. He considered this a betrayal, too, and Tom an immediate threat. He went about correcting the situation the same way Mr. Kaplan goes about correcting Red’s behavior in S3B-S4. Perhaps the trigger was the same type of trespassing too.

Mr. Kaplan makes it her mission to separate Liz and Red,and it all begins back in S3, around the time somebody hired Dr. Krilov to takecertain memories from Liz. Red is very close to directly confessing his feelings for Liz in 302. If he ended up confessing that he’s in love with her and they ended up in bed, that can be considered “a truth” about him that Liz uncovered – a truth that someone who doesn’t want them to be together would definitely object to.

Mr. Kaplan urges Liz to “do what yourmother never had the courage to do: walk away from Raymond.” IF Red and Liz slepttogether and Agnes was the result, then Dr. Krilov’s 2nd memory manipulationdid what Red’s cleaner(s) did in the white apartment: the “trespass” got “expunged”. Even the memory of it.Truth became elusive and assumptions took its place (like “I assume Tom is thefather.”).

Red is trying to complete a white puzzle in the white apartment,which takes on potential relevance after we can hear him compare memory toa jigsaw puzzle in 514. The possible relevance? Maybe he’s wondering (puzzled, if you will ;) why Lizacts as if nothing happened between them on the run, as if her memory of it were wiped clean. And while it is undoubtedly simpler and safer thisway, and it’s best to leave that topic alone, it is hard for him to accept, esp with Tomin the picture and taking on roles Red wishes to be able to fill, roles Liz now rejects him in.

In this episode we can also hear Gale make a pointed, suggestive remarkto Liz about her time with Red in S3A: “What was it like on the run withhim? Did he charm you?” And all this happens while Mr. Kaplan is hell-benton tearing Red and Liz apart for the sake of all of their safety, claiming thatRed’s presence in their lives is a threat to Agnes, Liz, and also to himself.

Memory manipulation - or the presence of holes in one’s memory - has itsown “footprint” in the show. It usually manifests as images drifting outof focus and echoing voices. There are two instances where this happens to Liz with no apparent reason. One is in 308 when she is in a gas stationbathroom - already pregnant - staring at her reflection in the dirty mirror. The other is in 317when Red marches towards her in the church, calling out her name and interrupting her and Tom’s wedding -both are situations where her baby’s father and her husband are likely on her mind. In317 she even connects the two by saying she wants to build a life with thefather of her child and Red keeps pleading with her to not marry Tom.

We are periodically reminded that Red is a Proust fan, and Proustjust happens to be the author of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) - a monumentalexploration of the various connections that web reality, perception, and memorytogether. The concept of involuntary memory originates from this novel series,and we can see this in action on The Blacklist, too, when Liz’sburied memory of the night of the fire gets triggered in 222. It’s also possible that she was close to being triggered in those twoscenes mentioned above, and maybe she won’t even need Krilov’s help in regaining the memories she’s lost the 2nd time as they could also be triggered unexpectedly by the smallest, most random thing - a smell, a taste, a voice, a gesture.

The white apartment incidentalso coincides with Liz, Agnes, and Tom moving to a new apartment. Redhas a hard time adjusting to this change, to no longer being able to see Agneswhenever he wants (and he was visiting her regularly while they were in his safe house, always showing up w/ the request to see her in particular), which brings the downside of deception into focus: separation. And Redstruggles with this despite understanding the safety that lies in it and inhiding truths - something Katarina knew a lot about, as well.

It’s not surprising that he soon starts musingabout the importance of truth (in 412):

“You said something before. The truth doesn’t matter, that the only thing in this world that matters is just the appearance of truth. I fear you might be right about that. Lately I find that the truth has become… so elusive. Often imaginary. But in the end, it’s all that we’re left with, isn’t it? What is real, what you can taste and touch and feel. The words that pass between us as we look each other in the eye are… all we have to hold on to. The truth. I hold it dear.”

then he proceeds to make a cuckoo clock forAgnes in the following episode (x, x). His first remark on how he is no longercomfortable with the idea of dying at any second also pops up in 412, and itgets reaffirmed in 415, in the same episode where the bad guy of the weekexpresses the same sentiment: his reason for clinging to his miserable life is fatherhood andhe wants a family even if he is barred from being physically present in their lives.

Red faces this issue, too. Tom remains Agnes’ (designated)dad and Liz’s husband while he is now kept away. He stillkeeps prodding that family unit, though, keeps teasing Tom about his pastand keeps involving him in missions to strip away his thin veneer of “normaland safe” to prove to Liz that she is mistaken about him. (sidenote: Tom also“takes over” the sentiment of Liz - and Agnes - being his future; thisis Red’s “thing”, has been since S1)

Meanwhile, Red keepsflip-flopping between accepting Mr. Kaplan’s accusations and rejecting them (“Maybe I am the person you need protection from.” vs “She was wrong to think Elizabeth and Agnes were safer without me in their lives.”). Hecannot seem to make up his mind as others join the chorus of blaming him forhow badly things turned out.

This is also the seasonwhere Red has an awkward and out-of-the-blue exchange with Cooper about thelatter’s sick daughter (414), and in another ep (404) - one featuring a parentand child sharing the same disorder - Red is asked point blank if he has achild with special needs but he doesn’t answer.

His personal struggle with appearancevs truth, however, is temporarily suspended when Liz blindsides him with the DNA test in 422. Despite his visible discomfort, Reddoesn’t correct Liz’s false assumption because it happens to provide theperfect cover he so desperately needs to find the skeleton Mr. Kaplan unearthed.But this strategic move comes with the price of having to keep his silenceabout Agnes for the foreseeable future. Thanks to Mr. Kaplan’s parting gift andCooper’s (accidental?) “antidote” of running that DNA test and providing cover, Red is now backed into a corner where the only way topreserve his secret is by not challenging appearances.

- [ S5A ] -

this block is nestledbetween two high-impact turning points: the DNA test and Tom’s death. The DNAtest locks Red into a false role, that of Liz’s father, which holds throughoutS5 and to a lesser extent in S6. The only reprieve is the 10-month period duringwhich he gets to take on the role of father in Agnes’ life (=inhabiting thetruth). Liz spends this time unconscious, which I find quite symbolic, as well (her being not conscious of his true role).

The DNA test is both a curseand a blessing. Red undoubtedly enjoys the sudden warming of his relationship with Lizbut he clearly does not enjoy her referring to him as “father”. Everytime it happens, we can see him wince, cringe, or glare in silence. But it happensto be the perfect cover for him to keep searching for the skeleton since it preventsLiz from asking the very questions he doesn’t want her to wonder about.

So Liz confrontinghim with the DNA test closes the window of opportunity Red still had in S3B andS4 to contest paternity. This turn of events also forces him to prioritizepreserving his secret over almost everything else (he is only ready to give it up when he thinks Liz’s life is at stake), so the struggle we can see him having in S4 - the onebtw appearances and the truth - promptly takes a back seat as keeping upappearances becomes the #1 strategic necessity.

That being said, Red still onlydoes the bare minimum (= not denying it outright) to play father to Liz. And this time block brings some interesting remarks about geneticsand secrets, which may have more significance than simply serving as empty redherrings until the impostor reveal hits at the end of the season.

Smokeydrops some comments about being “just like daddy” and having “noway to avoid the family curse” because “DNA is what it is.” Onthe surface this ties into the (beyond grating) tendency of some characters to blame-shiftand refuse to take any responsibility for their shitty life choices. But what makesthis exchange stand out is the wording “family curse” becauseKatarina uses a similar phrase (“this accursed disease that has afflicted his family for generations”) to describe Kirk’s condition.In 506, Tom also remarks to Red that “family secrets” always comeout. And now Red is sick and is in need of a pioneering geneticist’s help to find a cure. Somehow I don’t believe this is all just coincidence. + judging from those (brief) (glimpses) we get at Agnes, she is already a lot like her dad. ;)

Ep 504 in particularhas some curious details because they don’t line up with Red and Liz’s pretendrelationship but they do line up with the idea of Red having “a familycurse” that puts Agnes at risk. In this episode, asoldier gives up her child to get him out of harm’s way, but when the child presentswith an incurable disorder, she takes him from his adoptive parents, thencommits suicide to provide the donor heart needed to save his life. Witnessing this,Red remarks that “given the same circumstances, I’d like to think I’d beas brave as her. I know I’d wanna be.”

And then Tom dies, Liz endsup in a coma, and Red is left to take care of Agnes. If she is his, this 10-month period gives Red the perfect opportunity to finally confirm it and, asI mentioned above, have her tested for whatever disorder he knows he - and thus she too -carries. The timeline is always tricky on this show but by my rough estimateRed invested in Dr. Stark’s gene hacking research around the time he still had Agnes or not long after.

- [ S5B–present ] -

In this period, Red shouldalready have confirmation about paternity, about whether or not Agnes is atrisk, and Dr. Stark is already working on the cure for both. However, theskeleton and all the threats attached are still out there, circling them, and Liz is stillunder the impression that he is her father, which Red cannot push back againstif he is to keep his main secret secret.

We’ve seen how far he is willing to go tokeep his identity hidden, so letting Liz believe he is her father is really notall that out there for this guy. Only life-and-death situations can push him to reveal certain things, so it might be unruly genetics that will end up forcing his hand this time around. If Agnes needs treatment, that’s gonna be tricky to administer w/o somebody eventually noticing.

Red is still in a false role for now but its confines have weakened since he realized that Liz now knows he used to be someoneelse.

WhenLiz decides to go away for a while and entrusts Agnes to Scottie, Red questionsbut eventually goes along with her decision. “It was what youwanted,” he tells her later on. Even locked in his assumed role hecould have dug his heels in and claimed that he had a say in this matter, but he letLiz make the decisions and respected them. It carried way more risk to let her disappear alone than to let Scottie take Agnes, yet Red did not argue and did notrepeat the mistakes he made in S3B when things got so out of hand, Liz began toresent him and he was genuinely worried he was suffocating her. So he did what everybody toldhim to do in S4: he let her - and Agnes - go. And then she came back to him.

But for now, it is best if Agneshas safe distance from both him and Liz. In 520, Red told Jennifer that she was notabandoned but protected. That’s Agnes, too. Red may detest Scottie but he doesacknowledge that she is an excellent strategist with the skills, insight,motivation, and resources to keep the little girl safe. Shebelieves her to be her granddaughter, which - imo - in Red’s book ensures her loyaltyno matter how he feels about her otherwise. And in ep 512, we can see that Redknows exactly where Agnes is and, knowing him, he has his own invisiblemultilayered security web in place, monitoring everyone in Agnes’ life 24/7 and sendingdaily reports to him.

Whenhe and Liz observe Agnes from a distance at the end of the episode, the topic oftruth once again emerges, making it the third time that Agnes and talk of“the truth” co-occur: one is earlier in this episode (“If I misseven one more day with [Agnes] than is absolutely necessarybecause you’re not being completely honest…”)and the other is the cuckoo clock scene in S4. Red tells Liz heknows how hard this separation is and that they want the same thing here, whichechoes his remark in S4 about how they are in lockstep where Agnesis concerned. It also reminds me ofhis stunned reaction when Liz shares her fantasy with him in S3 (“I’mwalking in a park with my husband. Inbetween usis our little girl. I’mholding her hand in mine… and Inever let go.”). They do want the same thing and they are on the same page about Agnes, but everything else is still in disarray. For now, there is safetyin separation and keeping up appearances, even uncomfortable and painful ones.

In 514, Red gives us and Liz areminder when he points out that in the criminal underworld you can neverreveal how important someone is to you without making them an instant target. Theshow continues to provide examples of this specific danger, and the cases thatdirectly touch upon this topic “borrow” elements from Red’s situation: in518, Mosadek’s son is abducted by business associates because they suspect himof being an informant, and in 610, criminals attempt to extort money from a fatherwhose daughter was born premature with a condition to which there was no cureat the time, so the father came up with one.

Ep605 is extra curious because it features the story of a guy who never knew hisfather and only learned about his identity when he was unexpectedly summoned to the readingof his will. Van Ness was fighting an illness, too, and decided to change hiswill to include his only son that nobody even knew about. His last written message to himwas: “I loved your mother but didn’t have the courage to stay withher.” Van Ness’ seat and vote in an international criminal syndicate are also automaticallytransferred to his heir, making him a target for various reasons. It’s also a reminder of what kind of dangerous entanglements thechildren of international criminals have to deal with once their family ties arerevealed. In this episode, we also get a reminder from Aram that “in arelationship, the truth always comes out.” and Dembe continues toplead with Red to be honest with Liz, tell her the truth and leave the rest to fate. Red, however, stubbornly keeps his silence.

Theparallels btw Red/Liz and Samar/Aram also continue in S6, and what Samar tells Aram in 613has potential relevance to deciphering Red’s perspective and reasons for not speaking up about Agnes. Samar says that she made peace with the idea that she was never gonna havechildren (back in S3, she told Liz she picked career over family) but meeting Aram changed everything. After that, she wanted nothingmore than to try and balance the two, to build a family with him. But now that she knows she has anirreversible condition, she cannot raise a child, and she feels he deservesmore than what she can give.

Ifeel all these sentiments also play a role in how Red evaluates the possibilities of hisrelationship with Liz (even if Agnes is not his). His initial reaction to the baby was rejection,remarking that a child would make their difficult work infinitely harder. But then he changed his mind. In 319, he confessed that hewould give anything to be able to raise Agnes but he was also painfully aware of the factors preventing him from realizing this wish.“Your baby deserves more than we can provide,”Mr. Kaplan told Liz right at the moment she decided to separate her from Redfor good. This idea also emerges in 614, when Red notices Liz staring at thephoto of herself with Katarina, and tells her that the photo represented everythingKatarina wanted but couldn’t have after she became a hunted woman. Being a fugitive himself, Red facesthe exact same problem. And now he alsohas an illness to overcome, so him having the same attitude as Samar - i.e. writing himself off as notbeing a suitable match and accepting not being with “the one” - feels right on the mark, imo. Katarina also shared in this heartbreak where realReddington and their daughter were concerned. She, too, had to let go of what she really wanted.

bottom line (bc it’s time to wrap this up): everything that’s happened since Liz confronted Red with the pregnancynews has been discouraging him from “coming out” as Agnes’ father:

initial uncertainty regarding paternity

Liz’s growing resentment towards him that culminated in a faked death

Tom + Liz choosing him over and over again coupled w/ Red starting to accept that Tom somehow makes Liz happy while he only manages to bring pain and hardship into her life

the constant threats and Red’s growing worry that he might indeed be athreat to Agnes and Liz

the unexpected DNA report that was also the perfect cover

Red’s emerging health issues

Liz’s missing memories (without which how would he even begin to explain it or have any hope she will not freak completely or worse?)

But we are in a period now where there is tangible improvement regarding these main issues. Red now knows whether or not he’s Agnes’ father, so that uncertainty is gone. Tom is dead. Liz’s resentment subsided and she knows Red is an imposter yet loves him anyway and told him so. He also knows about Krilov’s 2nd interference that explains some of Liz’s behavior. His illnessis being treated, too. But the risks and threats in their lives still remain. For now they are mitigating this by staying away from Agnes, but if theimprovements hold, hopefully the time will come when this issue of paternity - along with some other questions - can be broughtforth and sorted between the two of them.

#anonymous #tbl spec #long post

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100-yardstare · 4 years

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I can’t believe I missed ace awareness week. I wanted to blog a little about it, but my computer charger failed on me and it’s taken about a month for me to prepare for the bill to replace it. I feel yucky right now so I just felt like writing about what’s going on in general instead.

I’ve been on so many interviews. I was screwed over on my last big job interview (the one I ranted about last time) partially because I think my old boss that said she be a reference flat out told me she wasn’t going to do it AFTER I submitted her as a reference to the job, so I’m almost 98% sure I was passed over because of that. In addition one of the committee members that interviewed me got mad at me for calling her “ma’m”. She explained she wasn’t from Texas, and I apologized and said something on the lines of it must be a culture shock for her and I didn’t mean to offend. Somehow people think the term is used as an insult now, and that is beyond me. I guess I’m old school lol age is catching up with me and I’m not even realizing it.

So I’ve been on plenty of interviews since then but I keep getting passed over. The last one I had to take a aptitude test, and after receiving feedback from them as to why I was rejected, it’s apparently because I’m a slow calculator/clerical worker. Big whoop because I already know that. I am really feeling the negativity now as an adult looking for work about neurodivergent people trying to find a place in a neurotypical working world. I don’t want to disclose me being ADD to anybody in pre-employment screenings because I don’t want that label to penalize me. But one way or another being ADD does just so anyway.

Because it’s been about 9 months now without work I’ve been seeing my savings decline heavily. My medication bills are at least 155 a month, and on top of that I’m still paying off a stupid hospital bill from 3 years ago that was roughly 2,000 dollars for swallowing barium and a doctor looking at an X-Ray. So that comes to immediately at minimum 200+ dollars a month just on that. Add in the other stuff and I’m fucked without an income. I’ve applied to so many retail jobs too, but nobody gets back to me either.

I don’t go out much anymore because I can’t afford to charge for dinners, so I eat whatever my mom cooks. If she is too sick from her RA, then I try and cook, but because we don’t go to the store as often anymore to save on bills (my parents are having a hard time too) I have resorted to eating canned beans, soups, and others of likeness that don’t go bad. My father is also emotionally abusive to both me and my mom, and it’s gotten worse ever since he started having problems with his job. I can’t leave because I don’t have the money to live on my own. My hobbies have heavily declined. I used to make at least two big cosplay’s a year, and go to conventions, but I can’t do that because, OH NO, I don’t have enough money, and I can’t get a job. I cry all the time because I am so bored. I go out of the house only to volunteer once a week because gas money is tight, and to take my mom on errands. I dream constantly of going on trips. I feel trapped in this house I might as well be a ghost. I stare at my phone all day in hopes of either getting a response from an employer or validation from my social media, it’s pathetic. Imagine being so bored and trapped in your house AND being ADD. It’s like my mind is constantly going places and running around, and I just get emotionally exhausted because I have to tell myself, “no, I can’t afford to go eat at that place, I can’t afford to go on a roadtrip, I can’t buy the material to do my hobby”.

Here is what I learned from all this, which I’m sure a lot of you have already learned, or will learn. Getting a degree doesn’t do you shit. The world hates you and doesn’t care about you, yet values you only on how productive you are and how much money you can make. I see my friends trapped in this mindset right now, but what am I supposed to do? Tell them to give up on their dreams? My cousin is going to grad school for her SECOND Master’s because her other one isn’t getting her good jobs. She even has a full time job on top of it, but her car broke down, and with a full-time paying job she CAN’T AFFORD TO FIX IT. My friend is going to college to get a degree in computer engineering of the sorts, but she’s already 40,000+ dollars in loans. Tbh I’m so glad my brother dropped college. He was trying to complete a degree he didn’t even like, loathed as a matter of fact to the point of attempting suicide. My dad always told him trade school was bullshit, which is A LIE, so I’m sure he felt like he didn’t have any other options when he started. The trades are an awesome career path, and I have a deep respect for anyone who can become a welder, plumber, or whatever. Whatever he ends up doing I’ll be proud of him regardless. I’ve learned that there are other ways to make something for yourself. The traditional route of college doesn’t bring the American Dream, only our persistence and spirit does.

If you’ve gotten this far reading this, this is NOT to say drop out of school. But plan ahead. Don’t jump into college right after HS just because it’s expected of you. Don’t do a degree that you think is good just because it will make you money. One thing college did for me was teach me about myself. I have a massive learning disability, and I graduated. I worked hard for YEARS, thinking I’d never graduate because I had such a hard time keeping my grades up, managing my health, and all the sorts. But I did it! I graduated. The world has told me that doesn’t matter. The world is going to tell YOU that nothing you do matters or is of worth. But it is. You matter. You are NOT a burden.

I will say that all that has happened to me makes me a fierce advocate for those with disabilities and mental illness. My last job working at an ABA clinic showed me that babies (yes, literally BABIES) that don’t act neurotypical will be punished for it. I’ve seen in the work world that if you don’t act neurotypical, you are punished for it. Where I currently volunteer now there is a huge respect for disabled individuals. I see a lot of kids with cerebral palsy, autism, ADHD/ADD, and even physical disabilities. This one boy with CP couldn’t even walk before, let alone stand up, and now thanks to Equine Assisted Therapy, he can sit up and walk with assistance. He did that! That was his accomplishment and I am so proud of him. And yet a lot of people in the world will look at him with just another kid with disabilities that will probably not amount to much. See where I’m getting at? I’m so protective of these people because I am like them. One way or another, we have to stand up for eachother. My story with ADD may not be the same as a particular person with autism, CP, or mental illnesses, but we have to look out for each other. Going through all this has made me a stronger person and I will defend us with everything I’ve got.

FYI if any of you reading this wants to donate to a good organization this year for the holiday’s I’d HIGHLY recommend SIRE Therapeutic Horsemanship in TX. Great wonderful group of people and animals.

Yes, I’m in a horrible place right now. But I’ve learned. I sincerely hope things will change for me soon so I can better take care of myself and my mom, but of course I’m human and I’m going to suffer anyway in the moment. I hope 2020 is going to be better for me because this year was terrible. I crave financial independence, the ability to travel and see and experience new things, and be in a better spot professionally, and personally to do the things I want to do. Graduate school isn’t even an option right now because I can’t afford it, and as of now, I don’t care to go to graduate school. Maybe someday, years from now, but at this rate I’m so sick and tired of expectations from society I just say fuck it. I’ll get there at my own pace. And I’ll be successful without the worlds opinion on what makes me successful.

#kailey speaks #rant

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notbang · 5 years

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funny when you wager how you feel

nathaniel & heather, during 4x17. inspired by heather’s affiliations in the 4x16 betting pool. also on ao3.

“Dude, I was rooting for you. You owe me five hundred dollars.”

“Excuse me?”

He wants to ask how she even know where he lives, but Heather pushes right on past him into the apartment, not bothering to acknowledge the question or wait for a formal invitation. She makes it over to his bookcase before she spins on her heel to look at him.

“The betting pool? The dates? I emptied both of my piggy banks for you. That was my hot tub savings. You basically owe me a hot tub.”

As she stops to properly survey her surroundings for the first time, Nathaniel feels an embarrassed flush prickle up the back of his neck at the state of his living room. Since Rebecca left he hasn’t exactly been expecting company, but things aren’t anywhere near up to his usually impeccable personal standards, either.

“Wo-ow. So, I can’t believe this is your apartment. Aren’t you supposed to be, like, a fancy senior partner at a law firm, or something? And this is how you live? Is this what you think of yourself?”

He rolls his eyes, swinging the door shut when it becomes apparent she isn’t planning on leaving any time soon. “Ha ha. I suppose I deserve that.”

“It’s just that, I don’t know—people that respect themselves usually don’t usually throw their fast food wrappers on the ground when they’re done with them. Or, like, when they’ve had a single mouthful and remembered they don’t eat bread or cheese,” she amends, nudging the abandoned burger gingerly with her toe. When she glances back up at him her face softens unexpectedly into a sympathetic grimace. “You’re like, really bummed, huh? I’ve seen you throw fries on the floor once before.”

He hand waves the disaster zone. “I started to deal with my very messy, human, Rebecca-related emotions the only way I usually know how. And then I decided I don’t want to do that anymore.”

“Okay,” Heather says, humming, eyes narrowed in playful suspicion. “Then what are you gonna do? Because not to be insensitive, but there may or may not still be stakes riding on the fallout of this whole giant mess, and I’d really rather not wait around until you’re sixty five to find out.”

“Huh?”

“Ugh, don’t worry about it,” she’s quick to dismiss with a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t want to get forced into a forfeit for interference. But for what it’s worth, I lived with Rebecca for two years. I’m not sure I understand the hype, personally. She never empties the dishwasher and she flushes her tampons. I think you dodged a bullet.”

She throws herself down on the couch so forcefully she bounces with the momentum of it, leaning deep into the cushions as if to test them and stretching her long, muscular arms out across the backrest.

“By all means,” Nathaniel says. “Make yourself at home.”

“Oh, I will.” She swings her feet up onto the coffee table, glancing pointedly at the pizza box they’re resting on when he opens his mouth to protest. “Seriously though. Are you okay? I feel like maybe I should ask if you’re okay, since you’re like this brand new person with all these emotions and stuff.”

“Honestly?” he asks, and she gestures in the affirmative. “I don’t know. I’m not really sleeping well. I can’t focus on my work. I thought it was all the indecision, and that it would go away once I got an answer, but…” He massages his forehead. “I don’t think it’s because of Rebecca. At least, not entirely. I don’t know how else to describe it other than I feel… restless.”

“Maybe you should get out of town while this whole thing blows over and people go back to minding their own business. Book a vacation, or something. It kind of seemed like you were always trying to run off to Rome or Hawaii or wherever else it is they have hotels I can’t afford to, like, breathe the lobby air of.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t actually want to go to Rome, or Hawaii. I’ve seen all those places before. I just wanted to be with Rebecca—I wanted to spend time with her.”

“Okay, well, that admittedly very sweet option is sort of off the table now, but there must be someplace you would like to go, or that you haven’t been.” Her eyes widen and her mouth forms an ‘o’ shape that he thinks must be her version of excited. “Do you want to throw darts at a map of the world? I totally have darts.”

Almost as quickly as her interest flared, her attention is back on his bookcase again, and Nathaniel sighs as she pushes up onto her knees, the eyelets of her boots scraping the leather as she leans across the arm rest to reach for a spine that’s caught her eye. She flips disinterestedly through one of his law books before discarding it beside her and replacing it with an expensive pictorial on Cuban architecture.

“When White Josh broke up with Darryl he went to Mexico to, like, hammer out all his feelings,” she says, smoothing out the dust jacket. “And then he came back with a dog. Maybe you should do the same.”

“Well, I do hablo español,” he concedes.

Heather raises her eyebrows. “Enhorabeuna. I also attended high school. Most of the time.”

He shakes his head. “No, I’m… reasonably fluent, actually. A little rusty, probably, but more than enough to get by.”

“Well, that’s a start. And since you clearly don’t have much experience with flights of fancy, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Google.”

“Google?” he echoes, dubious. “I’m not convinced that’s a secret.”

“I’m serious. You gotta start Googling.”

“Googling what, exactly?”

“Whatever pops into your head. Like, after I watched The Hunger Games, I thought about J-Law looking all fine in her post-apocalyptic outfit, or whatever, and I said to myself—I could work a bow. So I opened my laptop and Googled ‘how do I become a champion level bowman in the short period of time before the Ren Faire arrives?’ which led me to discovering the archery unit at my community college, and here we are. It’s kind of like rapid-fire association, but you have to fully commit to going down the rabbit hole. And then you just keep clicking, and searching, and researching things obsessively until suddenly it’s three days later and you have seventy two tabs open and a new Pinterest account because you forgot the password to the last one. It’s Wilbur,” she adds. “The password is always Wilbur.”

“Sounds chaotic,” Nathaniel quips.

“It is, but it’s also very therapeutic.” Heather stretches, catlike, and pushes back up onto her feet. “I want to give you some secondhand advice here, but I don’t want to mention the name of the person it originally came from, because your face is going to start doing the drippy thing again, so I’m just gonna call them… Hebecca.”

Nathaniel raises his eyebrows. “Darryl’s daughter gave you advice?” he asks dryly. “Wow. I wasn’t aware she was forming sentences yet.”

“Uh-huh—she’s super advanced for a baby, and I’m giving my womb all the credit for her infinite wisdom.” She pats her stomach, and he can’t help it—he huffs out a laugh as she carries on. “When Paula was feeling dissatisfied with how things were going down at her fancy new job, Hebecca told her she should ask for more. That she should bet on herself.” Heather’s mouth twists. “You should bet on yourself.”

“I did bet on myself,” he points out. “Both of us did, remember? And we both lost. Hundreds of dollars. Thousands, even.”

She tilts her head at him. “Okay, so I’ll admit that probably wasn’t the best phrasing to use, in retrospect. But I don’t mean, like, literally bet on yourself. I mean, you have to decide you deserve the things you want. But not in a gross, rich, white privilege way—in a way that means you have look inside yourself and make some tough decisions about what you want your life to look like, whether certain people are in it or not. You can’t control what choices other people make. But you’re the one that has to live with yours.”

He glances over at the couch she just vacated, where Rebecca had sat across from him only yesterday, quietly apologetic but simultaneously so self-assured. He remembers the way he’d felt at peace with it before she’d even started speaking. How strangely calming it had been, seeing her settled and suddenly sure of herself, in the midst of all this pervasive indecision.

“That is… a solid assessment, actually. You only get one life, right?”

“For the record, I charge by the half hour and accept payment in the form of hot tubs.” Heather considers him for a moment longer, then crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you want to get out of here? I could take you for a spin in my new Honda Civic. You’re basically its honorary godparent, or something.”

“Like a date?” he asks wearily.

“Ugh, dude—gross, no. I’m married,” she says, flashing her ring finger at him. “You were there.”

He rolls his eyes. “I was being facetious. But no thanks—I’m good. I need to clean up in here. Open some windows.”

“That,” Heather says, eyes sweeping the room, “is probably a wise decision, because it smells like the Home Base back room in here and not in a good way.”

“Is there a good way?”

“Well, yeah. I’m surprisingly still partial to when they’re cooking chilli fries.” She leans over, extending her arms in their entirety and keeping her body as far away from his as possible while allowing her palms to rest on his shoulders. “You are valid, kiddo,” she says, squeezing him awkwardly and thumbing his nose in a way that makes him scrunch up his whole face and flinch. “For things other than your bank account and strong jawline. Just in case nobody’s ever told you that. But also, I will be expecting reimbursement for your romantic shortcomings, so the bank account is a definite plus.”

Once Heather is gone he thinks about the person that never told him that in so many words but certainly made him feel it, and after flicking it open and closed a few times he shuts the ring box, rubs his thumb along the velvety seam one last time and pushes it away.

He pauses with his fingers over the keys, then hesitantly types in animals AND law AND spanish into the text box; just because he’s being self-indulgent doesn’t mean he has to completely abandon Boolean operators.

The returns are fairly broad so after a moment's consideration he amends the search to zoo AND law AND spanish speaking countries.

He hovers the cursor over the link to the San Diego Zoo’s donation page before his gaze catches a couple of results down on a site for zoology and wildlife internships, and suddenly, for the first time in awhile, finally something clicks.

#crazy ex girlfriend #nathaniel plimpton #heather davis #nathaniel + heather #brotp: what are you doing in my house?#my fic #i started this after 4x16 and it was supposed to be more heather dragging nathaniel #but after the finale it went elsewhere #i've totally been avoiding fic lately in favour of art in some weird version of denial :/

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badgerms · 5 years

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ok i mean i know nobody's gonna read this but i'm still gonna go off and by all means do interact bc i feel like i'm not (?) the only one (?)

i just sometimes feel so defeated abt content creation for fandom. it's kinda like, mostly in my head, i feel like, but still, i sometimes think "oh shit why even bother" when it comes to drawing or writing for a fandom, in my case maybe drawing more so.. i mean, generally, when The Thing is still a WIP and completely sheltered from the public eye i usually feel good abt it. I don't think I'm bad at drawing and while i know i can always improve and usually also know WHERE i can improve i feel ok, feel good. but then i "publish" it and the anxiety starts peaking - it's kind of one of the reasons i stopped writing fanfiction because i simply couldn't stand the anxiety of the first few hours just kinda sitting by my phone, waiting for notifications and feeling completely and utterly defeated when responses were scarce, especially when i worked really hard on something and kind of wanted (and that's another thing: we're often told it's Not Valid™️ to do fanwork for praise but that you're supposed to do it for yourself and that maslowian type top-of-pyramid idea of self-fulfillment) others to REACT and maybe even LIKE what i put out there! I start seeing it from an outside perspective; more accurately, a very critical outside perspective. i start visualizing others finding The Thing and thinking stuff along the lines of "wow that's really off" or "XY is so much better at this", "I could do a better job" or whatever, just lotsa bad things, and I usually end up either deleting it or just being depressed over it (which might be strong in my case bc RSD i guess but i think everyone feels like that, at least everyone who's had at least one (1) bad experience in their life). And the thing is, there are people out there who are like that and I just genuinely don't know how to deal.. Then comes in the factor of other content creators who get praise and comments and messages abt their work and it kinda starts feeling like EVERYONE BUT YOU gets praise and then that's a whole spiral that happens and you start feeling even worse when in reality it's a good thing people are willing to react and feeling envious kinda makes you question your moral compass tooY and ANYWAY it's iust such a drag!!! Am I wrong to want praise (a lot thereof) and validation or does that make me arrogant for thinking i deserve it? How do other people deal with that? Are they just superior somehow, to the point that their will to create is so strong that nothing could ever deter them? Would I even ever be content with the amount of feedback I could potentially get? I've gotten to the point where I have so many completely unfinished sledgefu wips in both drawing and writing that i simply abandon because of my own standards and the standards i assume others to have and i feel like the more often i start and stop, the more my ability to finish something decreases. Even in this rant right now I'm kinda struggling coming to a full stop. HoW do people do it????? I think if I tried summing this up into core messages it is the following:

1) react to your artists (incl. writers)

2) is there anyone out there who feels similar? and if yes, how do you deal?

3) praise me

#sledgefu #fucking sorry for all this but thanks for reading if you did #bitch i'm wired wrong

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darisu-chan · 5 years

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So here are my two cents regarding the novel and the translation @hashtagartistlife provided

Thanks again for that.

Anyway, I ain’t tagging this so it’s for my followers only. Antis kindly step out. You’re not welcome here.

What I want to talk about is Renji and his reaction. And I know you’re gonna ask “but wait a hot second, isn’t Rukia more important??” Here’s the thing, I realize many people are also anti Renji, but I don’t hate that guy. Sure, I disliked him on his first appearance, but I warmed up to him after all of that was over. I even shipped RenRuki for a while, and that’s why I can understand the reasons people ship the two, but it also makes me see the scene differently. It’s not only Rukia who’s getting the short end of the stick here. This match might not be what Renji needs either and it shows in that short scene.

So, when Rukia says she’s keeping the Kuchiki name, Renji is a little displeased. Before that, he couldn’t contain his excitement, which is sooo Renji. However, he didn’t notice that Rukia was going through some stuff, which is similar to that flashback of Renji and Rukia in the Academy, when he was all happy, telling her about his advanced classes, and Rukia felt upset. Then, he’s displeased because Rukia won’t take his last name, and, wow, what a blow!

Okay, yes, it’s traditional that a married woman takes her husband’s last name, and men see it as a way to say to the world “this woman belongs to me” and I think a decision like that would bruise a man’s ego if not talked about beforehand. But, let’s think it in another way. What does this mean to Renji?

Abarai Renji was a nobody. He lived on the streets with a bunch of orphan kids and they all became his family, including Rukia. So far, they’re on equal grounds. They go to the Shinigami Academy and they get put in different classes. Renji goes to the advanced class. In this sense, he’s better than Rukia and no longer on equal grounds, which is something we partially see Rukia resenting. But, what happens next? Rukia is adopted into the Kuchiki family, which is like the top dog of the noble families. A true Cinderella story. From having nothing, Rukia became hella rich in the blink of an eye, and also important. And Renji takes it as a personal affront. Because now they are not on equal grounds, Rukia is so far removed from him she might as well be the moon (get my references? xD). Who does Renji blame for that? Kuchiki Byakuya. And what is his current mission? Defeating Byakuya, the head of the clan, to become worthy of Rukia again.

The problem with his thinking is that Rukia never cut him off. When she asked him if she should accept the adoption, he told her to go for it, and she reluctantly did. The fact of the matter is he didn’t try winning her. He just went with the flow and blamed somebody else. Next, Rukia never told him he couldn’t speak to her ever again, and we never see Byakuya telling him to stay away from her, which would have been a lovely Romeo and Juliet type of thing, giving more weight to the ship. But what we’re shown, instead, is that Renji chose to not speak to Rukia until he was “worthy” of her, according to his own standards. So, he doesn’t speak to Rukia in 40 years, continues training, graduating from the Academy, and then getting so good at his job he gets promoted to the position of lieutenant of the 6th squad. During this time, he even achieves bankai, something we’re shown in this first part that it’s not easy to do. All the while, however, he feels as if he’s a dog barking at the moon, so far away from his goal he can never come close.

Then, he learns Rukia broke the rules and was in trouble because of a human. Not only that, but Rukia actively protects Ichigo before he even shows up, by running away from his house, and refusing to talk about him to either Byakuya or Renji. Then Ichigo shows up and beats his ass. Worst of all, Rukia doesn’t want this human boy to get hurt. The only reason she even goes with them without a fight is to save Ichigo. That pisses him off. For 40 years, he wasn’t able to talk to Rukia, and in a few months, Rukia comes to care for this human boy as if they’d known each other their whole lives. She willingly exchanges her life for his. Renji even questions her why she’s even protecting Ichigo. And he wants to save Rukia, but he’s also playing by the rules, because he thinks he can’t challenge Byakuya yet, that he’s not worthy.

What changes his mind?

Ichigo.

Because Ichigo never cared about rank or anything of the sort. He did what he wanted and, even with little experience, he defied a whole society he didn’t understand for Rukia. It is his will which sparks Renji’s decision of defying Byakuya, and even when he loses, he know he’s worthy of Rukia, because she never cared about that. Something that, maybe, her oldest friend should’ve always known.

Anyway, flashforward to current events, he’s not only worthy of being Rukia’s friend again, but he’s worthy of being her husband. This means that, in his head, Rukia believes the name Abarai is worthy of taking in exchange of the Kuchiki last name.

Except, she doesn’t take it.

She’s still a Kuchiki, the reason they were separated on the first place, the last name that seemed to mock him for so many years. And, if we take into account the time line, he had just started talking to Rukia again 4 years before. What’s 4 years to 4 decades of him believing he was no one? Of believing he’s not good enough for Rukia?

It’s as if she’s telling him taking the Abarai name is not worthy of her.

And, sure, Rukia cannot be anything but a Kuchiki as she’s meant to be the heir, and by marrying into another family, she would have lost it. But, Renji didn’t marry into the Kuchiki family, which is something that you can do btw. I think, in many ways, it would have validated him as being enough or more than enough for Rukia and Byakuya. What happened is that Rukia refused to change her last name, and didn’t really explain it to Renji. Or if she did in the novel, okay, fine, but it’s something you talk in advance.

In present day, Rukia is a captain, and she outranks him once again. I wonder if Renji still feels inferior. If it bothers him that she didn’t take his name, and that she’s a captain, Kuchiki-taichou, to be exact, the same name of the man he wanted to defeat in the past to be worthy of her.

Is he finally worthy?

#just my two cents

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sockatine · 5 years

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The Scent of Lavender

((My first self insert fanfic to be posted here! I'll be using the name Califia "Cali" Morales for myself. Paired up with Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead. Takes place in season 2.))

Light. Sunlight? Yes, that's sunlight. The room is white. Why is it white?

Voices are talking to her. Who are these voices? Obviously they must be her family; mom and dad, to be precise. Sitting up and rubbing her eyes, yawning and stretching, still not completely awake or aware. Even as her eyes fully opened, she had to rub them again. These people's voices still washing over her like white noise, or nighttime ambiance.

Nothing was registering quite yet, until an old man sat at her bedside and asked, in a comforting and gentle tone. "Can you tell us your name?"

That's when it all hit her. With watering eyes, she asked: "Where am I?"

...

When they found this girl passed out in the woods, it was nothing short of strange. She'd fallen out of a tree at Rick's feet, startling him. He checked her pulse, shook her in attempt to wake her up, but nothing. She was still perfectly alive, minus perhaps starving and bruised. And he carried her back to the RV, deciding it was the right thing to do. After all, Rick himself had been in a coma and woken up to an apocalypse. This was a personal sense of sympathy in him.

Needless to say, after much argument, she was allowed to stay. They put her in the bed of the RV and hoped that at some point, she'd come to. Enter their arrival at Hershel's, having one kid shot and the other still missing, along with the mysterious coma-girl. This was enough to get Hershel to allow them all to stay until everything with the group was a-okay.

Now, that she had finally woken up, she'd have to be comforted a bit before getting any answers. It's not like anyone would take it very well when they find they've been in a coma in a tree for god knows how long. "I'm gonna ask you again, and I want you to take a deep breath or two before you answer; What is your name?"

She did take a few deep breaths, as needed. "Califia..."

"Califia?"

"Yes... Califia Morales."

"Alright, Miss. Now, I'm gonna call in the people that found you, so you can give them the answers they want. Is that okay with you?"

"... yes."

Really, it wasn't. None of this was okay, but she knew she needed to give answers to the people who potentially saved her life. The memories were flooding back to her once Hershel called in Rick and some others to meet her. Rick was of course, the one to ask questions and recieve answers.

"Do you remember what happened before you got yourself up in that tree?"

"... There was a crash. A bus crash. A-and I... I don't remember what happened after. I-I know my family wasn't with me, they... don't live in Georgia..."

"Alright. What else do you remember?"

"I... was by myself. Out by myself... dead people were walking a-and hunting me..."

"Uh-huh..."

"I killed some. I tried calling my parents a-and... and-and-"

A deep inhale, and a pause.

"... I kept walking. I lived off what was in my bag, and gathering wild plants. More dead people came and, I went up the tree... but I don't know why I was asleep... I don't..."

"Hey, hey. Don't worry about that. We'll... we'll get you settled. Once we leave, you'll be coming with us."

"I... thanks. Can I go outside now?"

"Yeah, yeah sure."

...

She was sitting by herself, gathering some lavender after a nice, long cry. It was a lot to take in, really. That she had no idea how her family in California was doing. And it would be easier for her to cope with having been all alone, than to realize she'd been completely useless to a group of people who were kind enough to save her. How long had she been dead weight? Was it ungrateful to believe she should've died.

"What's that 'cha got?"

She almost flinched, turning to see some guy looming over her. Must've been one of the group. "... Lavender."

"You always go 'round pickin flowers?"

"It's for tea... I'm sorry, have we met, or...?"

"I'm Daryl."

"Califia. But call me Cali. It's, uh... nice to meet you."

She stood up, holding her hand out for a handshake. Better than just awkwardly talking, crouching over a bush. Daryl shook it, to at least adding something to keep the conversation from getting too awkward. "So, we found you in a tree..."

"Uh, yeah. I... eheh. I guess I figured it was a good way to avoid walkers. They can't seem to climb for shit, really. So, uhm... is there l-like a job or something I should be getting to, or-"

"Hell if I know."

"O-oh. Well, if you need anything... like, anything at all, I'm right here..."

"Right..."

Daryl left ger to her business.

"Oh, uh... it was nice meeting you!" She added. He didn't respond.

Daryl hadn't much of an opinion on her. She seemed nice enough, but frankly he hadn't any idea how good or bad of an addition she'd be. And frankly, nothing she did or said was anything remarkable, noteworthy, or eyecatching. Cali, as she insisted on being called, was short, pudgy, baby faced, and from every other angle Daryl could see, she looked like walker bait. At least she was smart enough to get in a tall place to avoid them, but perhaps she might not be much for fighting back or wilderness survival.

Nonetheless, he'd be willing to see if she could prove herself. It's not like she's useless.

A few days went by, and Daryl noticed a pattern. When given chores by the other members of the group, Cali would attend to them quietly without ever wanting help. Her voice was always soft and meek when she asked for anything, which was rare in itself. Without fail, around dusk, Cali was always sitting at the lavender bush. Either to pick more, or to sit with a notebook. A diary? And she was drinking that tea she said the lavender was for at night, but also in certain times in the afternoon.

Lavender tea was for sleep, and calming nerves. Daryl knew this because of his mom's old remedies she'd use, when he was just a kid.

So far, he'd deducted that Cali was dead meat if she were to go out on her own. She could make it for a certain amount of time, but her nerves would get the best of her and make her clumsy. Ergo, she's walker bait.

...

It was getting lonely, for Cali. She fancied being alone, but not being lonely. But she was tragically insecure; unwilling to talk about her interests with the other ladies, unable to even approach any of the men. The closest she could get was watching Carl when Lori wasn't, and neither one of them actually talked much to her. So logically, Cali wanted some validation out of being useful.

To be frank, the only person Cali really considered approaching and making friends with was Daryl. He also seemed to be partial to being alone, after all. But it's not like he would ever want to activately be friends with her anyway, right? Cali wrote and drew, she was into books and fantasy and mythology. She was a nerd. A total geek. And what was Daryl? Manly as hell, outdoorsy, and a goddamn hunter.

That didn't change the fact though, that when Daryl finally came back with Sophia's doll, Cali was most certainly concerned. She could see him from her lavender bush, he looked absolutely terrible. And it didn't help that Andrea shot him, to which Cali promptly responded with a "What the fuck!?" of disbelief.

As everyone rushed over to help, Cali wasn't really needed. She asked, but Rick told her that all too familiar phrase: "We got this, thanks." But no, she didn't want to be excluded. She wanted to at least do something. To overtly express that she wanted to help and be part of the group; but so far it had all gone from her being too afraid to talk to anyone, to everyone excluding her by assuming she didn't care for anyone.

So Cali decided to do something about it. At least one thing. One nice thing for someone.

So she visited Daryl, inside Hershel's house. With a small gift. Some lavender, with a paper wrapped around it. While he was asleep, she slipped it onto the nightstand.

...

"Hey, Cali!"

She was at the lavender bush again, with her notebook, whipping around to see Daryl holding her gift. "Y-yeah?"

"... you wrote this? Daryl unfolded the paper. It was a poem:

You carry us far Through all your scars Of old and new, Through sun and stars

Take your rest Feel happiness For it's worthwhile to us all

"... Is it bad?"

Daryl sighed in disbelief, taking a seat next to her. "Nah, that ain't it..."

"I didn't mean to bother you, I just wanted to get you a get well-"

"Why though?" "Huh?"

"You're always sitting out here. You got you're notebook, your head in the clouds. Ya don't talk to nobody-"

"I'm sorry."

"-and you apologize for it. What the hell do you do out here?"

She paused, stuck between just dying on the spot or coughing up the notebook. "I... draw. And I write." She handed the notebook to him, so he could go through it himself.

In it were various practice sketches, poems, characters, and unfinished stories. It was a chaotic mess of creation, full of concepts and ideas that may never be fully fleshed out. "It's just weird nerdy stuff... I-I really like mythology, and uh... comics..."

"... This is what you were hiding all this time?" "Yeah..."

Daryl closed the notebook, handing it back to Cali.

"... What use you think any of that has, anyway?"

"I... wait, what do you mean?"

"I mean now that dead people are walking around eating people. How's any of that gonna help?"

Cali paused, thinking for a moment. Not necessarily on what to answer, but rather how to word the answer out. Such a question wasn't one that confused her very much.

"... Well, we got survival down. If we're hungry, we can pick plants and kill animals. If we're tired, we can make a shelter that's safe. But... what's the point of it all?"

"... That doesn't answer my question."

She gave him a look. For once, it was a more assertive look; like what she was about to say was something painfully obvious. Like he should have known, by now. "Animals survive. Humans live. And what's the point of surviving if you can't live?" She tapped her notebook. "This here is... how I live."

Cali opened up the notebook, flipping to a page in which she was drawing a kraken. "So that's why I'm always here with my notebook. It's quiet so I can focus, and it smells nice with the lavender here. So there."

The conversation ended there, and she expected Daryl to once again take his leave. But, he didn't. He was still sitting there, watching her doodle away. Her drawing wasn't particularly amazing, but... it was okay. He could tell she wasn't actually paying him much mind. Just, focused on her work. But Cali knew he was there, watching. She just had yet to realize she was fine with it.

And they just kind of stayed like that for a while. Sitting in silence at the lavender bush.

((Special thanks to @kiksselfships for encouraging me most to embrace my self insertion, and @skollwriting for giving me the match up that inspired this new ship))

#self insert #self ship #twd #twd daryl #daryl dixon #fanfic #self indulgent stuff

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