Somehow being a person does not come naturally to me

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@hushedstars
Somehow being a person does not come naturally to me
sometimes i think about how neil probably went days without speaking to another human being before becoming a guy who literally couldn't keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it in contrast to an andrew who literally couldn't shut up bcus of the meds before returning to his normal state of 'i speak to 3 people and one of them is my therapist' and its just like wow. andreil.
i DO believe that a good writer can make mischaracterization work. oh there's a character who doesn't normally cry? figure it out!! disect the character. make the situation cryable for them. make that character cry ugly tears even if it goes against their very nature. YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK!!!
A great piece of advice I've seen is "Don't fixate about what the character would never do. Think about the circumstances that would drive them to do this, even if they wouldn't normally."
Best advice ever!
i'm obsessed with the fact that neil josten is a ridiculously fast learner. and it's not limited to one particular thing, it's EVERYTHING. like he made up nearly a decade of not practicing a sport and managed to become COLLEGIATE LEVEL in a YEAR. we don't even know how many languages he speaks fluently bc he doesn't find it important (nothing like neil's priorities) but it's at least 3 and at least 1 (2?) other(s) conversationally. he may have been oblivious to andrew at first, but as soon as he found out there was something there he was INSTANTLY flirting. he's casually a MATH PRODIGY (yes, he's absolutely a prodigy there's no way someone who never had consistent schooling would excel in an college math program after already being behind in said program, bc neil switched his major, without being one). the way he catalogs and interprets andrew's andrew-isms (for lack of a better generalized term) says a lot about how fast he can process information.
this man is insane. sometimes it gets overshadowed by the fact that he makes bad decisions when put in the crazy situations that happen in the series, but neil is genuinely really smart.
Chapter 9 / The King’s Men - Nora Sakavic
Get away from the edge losers
it is impossible to watch a movie. every night i think i want to watch a movie. no movie gets watched. because it's not possible
and yet they keep making movies with the hopes that one day humanity will discover a way to watch them. it's so inspiring
Why do you use It/Its pronouns...
i got tagged in elementary school and never recovered
Kevin at Seth's funeral
Aftg au everything is exactly the same but neil owns a tiny black cat that is with neil every second
WHO PUT FINE AS NEIL'S STATUS ON THE WIKI 😭😭😭
Little baby Nathaniel who takes his first steps and immediately decides that he needs this, but faster.
Little baby Nathaniel who throws himself from couch to couch, his tiny legs wobbling as he tries to balance himself while maintaining the zoomies.
Little baby Nathaniel who giggles as he runs to hug Mary's knees, babbling nonsensically, like all babies do.
Nathan who recognises this talent and immediately decides to foster it within his son. Nathan who teaches his son to run faster and faster. Nathan who, when Nathaniel is deemed old enough, decides to encourage this even more by making his subordinates chase Nathaniel around the garden.
It starts as a meaningless game of cat and mouse meant to help his prodigy with endurance, and then later ends up as an actual challenge when Nathan realises that his son can no longer be caught so easily.
This time, there is no surrendering in this game, and Nathan intends to catch his son.
my smile has never disappeared from my face so quickly….
Do you want more let me give you more!!
We never got full in-depth details about Neil and Mary's lives on the run, just that they were accompanied by many close calls and injuries along the way. (And that Neil consantly remembers those moments and misses his mother so badly it brings tears to his eyes multiple times throughout the series. Someone shoot me)
So you can imagine that Neil has quite the load of nightmare material that his brain can pick from.
Imagine three year old Nathaniel who still has not developed enough to understand that these "games" he's playing are meant to train him. Imagine three year old Nathaniel shrieking in delight as he ducks and weaves past the bushes in the Wesninski manor. Imagine Romero Malcolm grabbing small baby Nathaniel and going, "I've got you!" and Nathaniel giggling and demanding to go again.
Now imagine an older Neil hiding behind a tree dead in the middle of the night. An unkind spattering of muddy rain showers him from head to toe, and the air is bitingly cold. The forest itself has gone quiet save for the rain, not even the residing insects daring to make a sound. Neil and Mary's latest stolen car lies flipped over and broken a couple feet away, and the last thing that Mary had hissed to her son before splitting from him was to stay hidden. If one of them is to be found, atleast it wouldn't expose them both.
Suddenly, Lola's lilting voice cuts through the night, tauntingly singing for him to come out and play. Neil Josten wakes up and is unable to separate the truth from the lies in his life. Did this actually happen to him? Is his mind making it up to scare him? He has met with too much horror to be able to discern what could possibly be true.
Now imagine Neil having the first dream. A sweet childhood hymn that leaves him waking up in a calm haze, somehow. Imagine the fog of dreams clearing from Neil's head, reminding him that that was a sugar-coated lie. Imagine him remembering his mother's odd silent stillness just moments before her death. Remembering that his mother never screamed, lest she exposes their location, not even when her own life was bleeding out of her. Imagine Neil living with the cold-hearted truth that this was what it took to keep his life going.
Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.
the men in my life are all good men, or, at least, they are men who are not violent - and that is enough for a man to be considered good; that he could be violent but is not.
the men in my life are good men. recently at a hardware store one of the men in my life let me stand behind him, just a little, in that ghosting way that girls can learn. the disappearing technique we master of shadowing behind our Good Men. this was to protect me from a man who was not-being-good.
i fall down. one of the good men in my life offers me one arm like a knight, we are laughing while i clamber back onto my feet. i give the good men in my life piggy back rides because i like to show off how strong i am. i give the good men in my life run-at-them hugs. i let the good men in my life pick me up like i am a sack of grain; i get the good men in my life coffee, i make them sandwiches, i teach them dancing.
i am a man-hater, obviously. i am gay enough the insult is sort of funny. waiting for the bus, where there are men who are not-known-to-be-good, i google how to make a fist. i can never remember if the thumb goes on the outside or the inside, only that it is imperative that i do not fuck it up or i will break my thumb at the same time the man tries to break me.
i walk my dog around the track only-at-dusk and-no-later. i made that mistake once, in august, hoping i could take a later run and maybe see the stars - i romanticized the idea of being able to skulk like a fox. the man that followed me across three lawns, two road-crossings, and back to my car - he spent the whole time whistling. the good men in my life say - oh, do you need me to come with you? and are actually asking - do you feel safe?
i fall down in a supermarket. a man i do not know grabs the inside of my knee. i do not know if the man is good, but i am supposed to give men the benefit of the doubt, so i laugh while standing. a man trying-to-be-in-my-life says what, no hug? and i have to decide if it worth it to just take off or put up with it. a man who-might-not-be-good stares at me while i walk by - i have to calculate if he’s just looking or if he’s watching. other men have badly hurt me, physically. the casual remark made is that those men are not real men. but they were real enough, to me.
there are many men who are mad at me. an entire reddit thread once was dedicated to how to dox me for feminist ranting - it was kind of funny, when it wasn’t downright scary. i have been stalked and harassed and treated horribly. they are all good men, in their own lives, you know. they are not violent, usually, unless provoked, and all it takes for a man to be good is for him to not be violent unless provoked, and i am, of course, always provoking.
a man in my life rolls his eyes. “i am sick of hearing this. we get it, all men are fucking evil. get over it.”
a man who-is-not-good shouts something unwritable at me. i have to tell the good man i am standing next to - it’s okay, this is nothing compared to what-could-be, this happens, it’s really not that big of a deal to me.
“but it should be,” he says. “it should be.”
If you start reading books again, you’ll feel at least a little better. I promise.
The problem with having OCs is that sometimes you wanna read about your little guy being in situations but unfortunately he is YOUR little guy and no one is gonna put him in that situation but you. Tragic.
Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.
At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.
At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.
“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.
The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.
I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.
I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.
I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.
I’m not worth the cost of a watch.
i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.
i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.
as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.
disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.
at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.
i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.
i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.
we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.
the amount of care and attention the human body needs is disgusting