good grief

[grox]

I'm a 27 year old man and I got hanahaki disease because they fired the clerk I like at the vape store

[mattymartin]

↳ MAT BARZAL AND HIS MOM AT A SANTANA CONCERT | 7.21.26

[apatasaursorority]

Question game, calling upon the Overripe Universe!!! First off I’d love to hear any tidbits of lore that you feel like sharing! Would love the behind the scenes of what the other Hugheses are thinking, and what Nico and the team think about Jack before/after the … event…

ok luke's thinking oh my god my brother's gonna die. and then jack comes back from getting fucked for three days straight and is no its totally fine. doc said its normal it could happen to anyone. (it's not and it couldn't.) and obv luke does NOT believe him but jack is acting normal (honestly better than normal) so like wtf is he gonna do... he knows his brother and he knows what's gonna happen if he pushes. i do think jack and nico can kind of hide what's going on from the team for a while by using patches all the time so they don't smell like each other but there's no way luke doesn't at least suspect. but again. jack's not talking about it and he can't snitch to their parents bc also there is the aspect that luke's been lying to their entire family on jack's request lol <3 so meanwhile ellen and jim are like. well that's unfortunate but as long as you're managing it and there are no longterm side effects... (they don't know jack continues sleeping w nico slash possibly don't even know he slept w him the first time, jack phrased it as "i had to go off medication and go through heat" and does not clarify that he didn't do so alone). and luke has to be like yeah no totally. eveyrthing's fine. and it's not like he WANTS to think about his older brother's sex life so he's mostly willing to go along until not yet when it's like. no you have to talk to me. i don't even care about your feelings because i feel fucking bad and need to address it.

re: q i don't even know. LMFAO. i think i mentioned earlier how there's this weirdness btwn him and jack bc theyre both jealous of each other but never will admit it, jack wishing he was like quinn and didn't have to worry about biological issues at all vs quinn wishing he was like jack and could be "normal" and have people want him normally. so unlike with luke there's weird baggage that's hard to navigate. but at the same time it's always been the two of them, they've always been a united front, and i don't think jack could keep the truth from him for long. also i think when they're home they don't patch or anything so they can always smell everything, so even if jack kept it a secret for that long, when they were home quinn would know just from smelling him that something had happened. abo logic doing the heavy lifting for me in a big way here...

as for the team i think both jack and nico were right, like yes the guys would probably think it was weird (or at least some of them would), but jack is like. their guy. and nico would back him up. and i think management etc is always gonna put jack first so he'd have that on his side. so as long as he went into it with the attitude that they could deal with it or get fucked, he could power through it. like definitely it would get weird as guys got traded or told their buddies and it kinda spread around more but at the same time. i do think in this universe like... there are other omegas playing in the league. it would eventually be something that people know but don't talk about. like maybe snide comments on the ice, but nothing that's like... typical bullshit they'd say even if they didn't know for sure. which honestly jack was already getting. so.

[apatasaursorority]

i hope you’re still answering fic questions! under skin is my favorite fic ever. i remember you answering someone on tumblr a while ago, saying that the behind-the-scenes is that nico has convinced himself that jack was groomed/abused by his dad/close coaches ? but really jack is just wrapped up in the quinn of it all, combined with nico acting a bit shifty. so my question is, in your head, do they ever actually have a conversation about this misunderstanding in its totality and how would that go??? i know jack got a bit of resolution when nico told him that his talks with timo were about work. anyway im just so curious for any more of what you’re imagining behind the scenes for them, in the present, past, or future lol!!!

oh it for sure comes up, maybe not for a while because nico's hesitant to ask about it outright and obviously jack's never going to do it first. but i think at some point nico makes a comment that makes it clear what he thinks happened and jack's like wait what. wtf. why would you say something like that...

tbh i don't really know how to write it in a way that wouldn't feel it was recycling things that people have written before, but if i could i'd absolutely add a coda of nico suggesting therapy and jack just outright being like well why would i need to do that. suddenly forgetting all the barfing and bad sex etc etc etc. he's fine. why would nico think that. and i think nico's (maybe vague) suggestion that something happened within his family, or that it happened to him, would be really realllyyyyyyy threatening to him, esp since it's been shown that his memory of back then is extremely spotty. like oh my god. what if someone DID touch him... what if it did happen to him... maybe it happened to him too and he just doesn't remember. anything could have happened. sometimes it feels like it did... sometimes when he remembers it he remembers it like he was quinn instead. so maybe nico's right... so that would be really destabilizing to him!!! and he is not a person who reacts well to being destabilized. as we know. so it wouldn't be a nice few days or few weeks or whatever but at the end maybe they'd have a real conversation... and wouldn't that be nice <3

[apatasaursorority]

I love the idea of OMCs in hrpf, and I loved ben in "right there if you want it", and also the whole petey kinda walking in on them flirting was great!!

do you think ben ever becomes anything more than just a one time hookup for quinn? does he ever find out that that quinn was quinn hughes? (I do love that quinn got traded to mnwild for this potential)

and does quinn ever come out to his family/friends on his own terms? how do they take it?

omg i also looooove omcs i love letting closeted guys have a nice somewhat normal time... it's enriching for them...

& i believe this so strongly that i actually started a sequel for right there if you want it lmfao but i kinda couldn't figure out the angle and what i wanted to happen, like i just couldn't think of enough material to pad out in between the scenes. but yes ben does figure out who quinn is! from the draft:

and then they have phone sex and then i couldn't really think of anything after that <3 but i do agree that the trade would be fun to tackle, like quinn going from having this kinda not serious phone thing that he's keeping hidden from everyone because what would be the point? it's not going anywhere? to showing up in wild and kinda tentatively letting people figure out that he does kinda have someone, maybe even before he lets his brothers figure it out, because it's easier when it's guys who don't really know him. and like it would be obvious what was going on bc if it were a gf he'd just tell them outright. idk. idk!!!! maybe some day i'll get in there and finish it...

[apatasaursorority]

Question about your process for your latest fic! It was so new to read a fic where it’s Nico in a SituationTM and Jack having to react to it; it’s usually all of us torturing Jack (as he should be tbh; nothing wrong with that). How was it to flip that part of the dynamic??? And how was it to write from the perspective of someone struggling with depression who is just losing hours of time here and there? You did such an amazing job of showing how lost Nico was, from his perspective, but without him quite realizing it for a while lol if that makes sense

omg i decided i wanted to flip the dynamic literally months ago but it was sooooo hard to find the right premise!!! i actually wanted to do a medical emergency (similar to holocene!) but i don't have enough knowledge about hospital stays to feel like i could do it justice... i LOVE reading fucked up medical shit (hospitalization, medical trauma, honestly just like. regular ass doctor's appointments) so much because it's something that's so easy to romanticize or focus on the feelings, but actually it's literally just about. your body. it's failing you or it's hurting you or there's something you need to do it. and i love fic that acknowledges all those things instead of just focusing on how it feels emotionally.

however i clearly did not do that LOL so i kinda floated along until i remembered this fic which is so superior to anything i could possibly write but gave me enough juice to at least have a premise... spent a lot of time researching psychological effects of working on an offshore rig (final result: Bad <3) and then kinda went with it from there. & i gotta be real here. i think writing people losing hours of time is kind of easier than writing stuff actually happening because you can just gloss over the parts you don't have details for... i was struggling a lot with how to balance nico's mental state and keep it believable, because like, I'M depressed, yes, but nico usually isn't. but then i thought about it a little more and like... i think someone who's never had any issues like that would actually be so much more freaked out by it? like i had intrusive thoughts and insane anxiety as a child so i had sooooo much practice with it. but this version of nico has never experienced anything like that, has never had his own brain turn on him, so he has no idea how to handle any of it. he thinks he just has to push through it and keep going and instead of helping that just keeps making it worse. yay !

[apatasaursorority]

comebackhome- after their fight in the kitchen while Nico goes outside what happens when Jack rejoins his family? Does he attempt to put on a front that everything’s fine even though everyone heard that whole thing or is he too rattled to even play at normality? And what does his family do/say to Jack after overhearing that??

i'm gonna be honest jack does not even bother to go back into that dining room LMFAO he goes straight to the living room to pretend to message people on his phone while deciding whether he's mad enough to ditch nico there and make him hitch a ride home with quinn or luke. his mom is the one to come in and say theyre gonna head to the neighbours' and give him and nico some space (the "to get your shit together" is implied). quinn possibly comes in to awkwardly talk to jack or possibly just kinda hovers and then goes out to the deck. luke is actually also still on the premises but has fucked off to the basement to play video games while avoiding the situation entirely. there's no food left at his apartment and honestly he's suffered through wayyyyyy worse vibes in that house. water off a duck's back baby........

[apatasaursorority]

desperately seeking susan au. is this anything

[apatasaursorority]

Low ceiling, small room - does Nico ever dom Jack again? Does Jack keep picking up subs?

yes, after the end of the fic they enter an exciting new phase of their relationship where jack progresses to pretending to take subs home to save face but actually ditching them as soon as he's out of eyesight of his teammates, and then letting nico dom him later (for purely practical reasons) (obviously). he is in exquisite agony the entire time because he can't bring himself to admit he wants nico to get all over him and nico mostly keeps it either platonic or one-sided (gets jack off but doesn't make jack touch him) (mostly because jack refuses to properly articulate boundaries and he doesn't want either of them to regret it later) (he is literally gagging for it but ok king. sure). this lasts idk several months. maybe longer. until jack finally cracks and just asks for what he wants. and then nico gives it to him <3 isnt it so nice how some people get everything they want...

[apatasaursorority]

also four legs and a tail verse i wanna hear anything you’ve headcanoned about other players and their daemons……

ok being fully honest i didn't really think about it that much like if you gave me a specific player i could probably come up with one but i mostly stuck to the main players.

as previously discussed this is kirill:

brock:

& this is jesper!

and that's as far as i got lol. petey is a crow and he feels weird about it but will never everrrrrrr admit that. the indistinguishable brunet guys on the stars are both beagles. matt boldy is a canary. sidney crosby, canadian legend and icon, is obviously a loon.

[apatasaursorority]

teen mom fic…. what’s pearl’s little sibling called and how does pearl feel about them? what are nico and jack’s respective favourite activities to do with the kids?

in my head her name was ruby but then i was like god that's unbearable you cannot make it that corny. but THEN i thought about nico's fuckass facebook post and honestly. yeah. he'd do it. pearl largely views her as a baby doll who she can play with and force to follow along with whatever she wants... jack and nico both lowkey hope ruby grows out of going along with this but she kind of never does. she's way quieter than her sister and as a result way harder to get a read on. sometimes freaks them out when she moves out / goes to university because she'll just randomly stop answering messages and go silent for chunks of time. very quiet in a way that makes her forgettable in larger social situations but also unnerving in one-on-one interactions.

both nico and jack like doing outside stuff the most! not just hockey but any kind of sports or outdoor activities (hiking, swimming, etc). & jack also likes helping them with their homework because he's a micromanager and needs to make sure they're doing everything and also doing it correctly. (this is beneficial for pearl but does lead to ruby nearly flunking out of multiple semesters in university because she never learns to manage her assignments herself.) and nico likes cooking together! honestly with all three of them, not just the kids. jack doesn't actually help but he'll hang around the kitchen with a glass of wine watching. pearl doesn't really have the patience for it at all, but ruby will help sometimes! she likes getting her dad to herself.

[ambatya]

[apatasaursorority]

brother figure... be prepared..

is jack the only girl here... suspicious absence of friends in the narration from miss popular... Where Are They

what do nico's parents think of jack/nicojack

what do jack's parents think of nico/nicojack

what does QUINN think of nico/nicojack

why is jack the loneliest girl in the world

does jack ever tell anyone what happened

DOES NICO GO TO MICHIGAN

do either of them ever realize they're in real life love with each other or do i have to die

OK LETS GO

1: is jack the only girl here… suspicious absence of friends in the narration from miss popular… Where Are They i imagined that most of the people she played with were guys, like there are women in the league but she isn’t close to them and resents people thinking she should be, that contrary instinct of “just because we’re both women doesn't mean we need to be best friends.” girl with no sense of self preservation… so obsessed with being independent and not needing anyone that she’s inadvertently walled herself off from like… multiple possible sources of support. yes queen ♡

2: what do nico's parents think of jack/nicojack they like jack as nico’s teammate but would be a bit hesitant if he brought her home as his girlfriend, partly because they’d privately prefer he dated someone from back home (or someone willing to relocate back home) and partly because jack is… well. she’s abrasive. in a way that maybe doesn’t really jive well with the vibe at nico’s house. but they’d try because they want him to be happy, and if that’s his choice they’ll back him up. (they are very swiss and polite about this and jack completely doesn’t realize their feelings on the subject; thinks they’re very weirdly nice and welcoming.)

3: what do jack's parents think of nico/nicojack WILLFUL IGNORANCE BABEY!!!!!!!!!!!! actually i think they genuinely like and respect nico because he’s good for jack’s image and they definitely know he’s helping smooth the locker room over to make it easier for her. so as long as he’s sticking to the “she’s a sister to me ☻” party line they’re thrilled that he and jack are playing together. in their mind jack’s the star and it’s everyone else’s job to make it work with her, and nico’s obviously willing to do that, so they’re happy she’s playing with him. if she brought him home as anything else it would be a different story, because unlike nico’s parents, jim and ellen are pretty much viewing everything through a business lens. nico as jack’s supportive captain who doesn’t see her as a sexual being = great. nico as jack’s captain who she’s sleeping with = pr nightmare, huge mess waiting to happen, nuclear bomb about to hit the family group chat

4: what does QUINN think of nico/nicojack likes him fine yet feels bone-deep jealousy towards him that he doesn’t know what to do with and thus refuses to acknowledge. always talks positively about him in the press and only feels a little bit weird and nauseous while he’s doing it. maintains civil conversation every time they’re in a room together (nico is doing the heavy lifting). wishes jack was drafted to a different team even though he knows that’s insane, because he knows she basically won the lottery re: a teammate (and later captain) who would back her up like that. misses when they played together when they were kids. jack also misses this but they can never ever go back ♡ yay ♡

5: why is jack the loneliest girl in the world see question 1 also she is living with the mindset that no one else has experienced this, no one else could ever understand, etc. which is partly her personality and partly just youth. maybe she’ll grow out of it and maybe she won’t! also worth noting that she deliberately hangs out with people who cannot understand (due to being men who are experiencing the world completely differently from her.)

6: does jack ever tell anyone what happened yes because i love fanfiction about conversations so i would love to go there in my imagination palace <3 she might wait a long time though, i think it’s one of those things like… she can’t do it while it’s fresh, both because her own feelings are fresh but also because the other person’s reaction will also be more intense. but if it’s like… oh yeah that happened two years ago. clearly i’m fine. that’s different? i think it would be kinda interested from a writing pov if she told luke instead of quinn because there’s less weird baggage there. like with quinn she’s genuinely afraid of him judging for it, and it gets all tangled up and makes her angry and defensive. like what if he never looks at her the same way again BUT ALSO why the hell does she care. jack cannot answer this question and possibly never will. but with luke it’s like… idk his gf or hookup has a pregnancy scare or something and jack’s like yeah i aborted that thang once. nbd. it was fine. (it wasn’t fine but she’s not telling luke that. but maybe he kinda knows.) although if we’re being really real here the best option would her to be a make a fucking female friend. godspeed babe…

7: DOES NICO GO TO MICHIGAN MAYBE??? if jack got her shit together enough to ask him then he’d say yes, so it’s up to her ig… if at any point she managed to stomach telling him that she needed him he would be there in an INSTANT, it’s very validating to him to feel as though he is helping slash possibly even coming to her rescue. i do think it would be eye opening to him re: her weirdness with quinn, like up until that point he honestly doesn’t get it (perhaps wilfully). however it has been established that this would not put him off ♡ because there is something wrong with him too ♡

8: do either of them ever realize they're in real life love with each other or do i have to die this is literally fanfiction of course they realize. i have genre awareness. but i don’t know it happens so i’m still working through it in my mind palace… the conditions must be juuuuust right…

[apatasaursorority]

loved absolutely everything about brother figure btw but especially obsessed w the jack and quinn of it all... soooo yummy!! perhaps you could expand on that a bit (if you have anything else to add) 🥹

i'd written fic where they were both genderswapped before but it was sooooo interesting to think about how the dynamic would change if only jack was a girl, esp since jack is the bigger fish in that relationship in a huge way, but theres no way their parents didnt drill it into quinn that he needs to take care of her. so theres this friction between what he thinks he needs to do and what hes actually capable of doing, hence him overcompensating and constantly checking in on her, interfering w nico, etc. but like. quinns a very black and white person and when jack has actual problems (such as. needing to get an abortion) he's not actually capable of giving her that support. and he's aware of that and he hates it, because he knows he's supposed to be better. so it's just this constant vicious cycle.

and on jack's side, she can see exactly what he's doing and resents him for it, but also that's her big brother, the one who's always played with her, the person who's known her the longest. and he doesn't know her the best, maybe, but the parts she can't show to him are the parts she doesn't feel like she can show anyone. so she just keeps shoving it down and perpetuating the status quo, because she doesn't actually see there's any way it can change.

[one-step-at-a-time25]

on anger

[apatasaursorority]

BROTHER FIGURE! My question(s!) hinge on how much Nico pov headcanon that you have. What was he thinking when Jack said the sex wasn’t even good??? What was he thinking when this wonderful person he loves but won’t let himself have, is basically dying in his bathroom and then naked in his tub as he stands there OMGGGGGGG AND WHAT DOES HE THINK ABOUT QUINNNNN this fic hit so hard and I want all your thoughts, basically.

re: quinn i think we as the reader (or writer lmfao in my case) can understand that the way quinn acts towards jack is obviously overly controlling in a very patriarchal way, but i honestly do not know that nico himself recognizes that. in his mind it makes perfect sense for quinn to ask him to look out for jack and to promise never to touch her, because of course that's the right thing to do. and i also think nico knows that there are plenty of guys who would make the promise and then do it anyway, so it's hard to justify the way he feels about her, especially knowing he'd eventually have to explain it to quinn if quinn found out anything happened between them. jack has very complicated feelings towards her brother but nico doesn't; quinn's someone he respects as a work colleague, essentially, and he takes what quinn asked him to do seriously.

which means that when he's with jack he has to (either actively or subconsciously) convince himself that he just loves her as a teammate and ""sister"" and friend, because there's no point in thinking about it any other way. it's never going to happen because he would never do that. (unless...?) and looping back to the patriarchal caveman bullshit, i do think he felt the beginnings of hulk rage when jack said the sex wasn't even good, especially because he's been helping her with cleanup duty, essentially, this whole time... like the threefold injustice that someone else got to touch her like that and didn't even do it right, and then on top of that it got her into this situation. i think when you really love someone and are in a longterm relationship with them there's always a familial aspect to it, like when you get married you become part of the same family, right? so the way he feels towards her when he's taking care of her - protective, concerned, upset that someone did that to her - those aren't necessarily specifically romantic feelings. it's just that there's always something lurking underneath, and usually they're both swimming at the surface of the pool, but the events in brother figure start to push them down a bit.

[apatasaursorority]

brother figure - how long was nico with his gf/does jack like her/does she like jack/does nico care if jack likes her/how soon do they break up after the events of the fic 🙂

ASKING THE HARD HITTING QUESTIONS THANK YOU. he was about her for about six months but she is absolutely not the first casualty, just slightly longer lasting than any previous attempts (he has actually brought her to team events or dinners). she does not like jack and definitely thinks it's weird, but is trying so hard to play it cool bc she also (correctly) doesn't think nico will ever go for it bc it would be a pr nightmare. so it's just like... this weird shadow lurking. their relationship's sleep paralysis demon. and yes they break up, possibly not immediately after abortiongate but i do think nico starts getting worse at paying attention in the right ways after that and she senses a difference. like not to be judgmental here but i do think wag types will cling on as long as they can bc the status is important but eventually shes like i cant fucking do this. esp when she realizes he's never gonna put a ring on it. rip to a real one...

also re: nico caring if jack likes her, i think he'd care if jack actively said or did something that made it clear that she doesn't like her, but otherwise is content to float along in denial about it. & because jack mostly avoids the topic and/or sticks to surface level jokes (preserving their fragile facade that it's a sibling dynamic and nothingggg more) it's pretty easy to just kind of. not really let himself think about it.