#tmiy asks

[mayzini]

right so sophia during ice out phase right. does the ice bath thing happen then? idr. but i was thinking like, when yoonchae calls for sophia in that panicked voice after she went to find ace, maybe just maybe sophia thinks ace did something yoonchae. or she was doing something bad and freaked yoonchae out. she doesnt immediately think ace is in danger because shes had that "ace is a bad influence, keep away" mode. but it all goes flying out the window when she sees ace shaking and unable to breathe and her heart hurts when ace sobs so horribly. and when ace apologises, it feels wrong. because it conflicts so badly with the image that was made up about her. it probably stews in her mind for a while, until that game night when the cracks of truth slip out. sophia feels shitty about herself. how could she ever even believe this little kid was the bad guy when all ace ever needed was a hug and someone to hold her hand when her brain was mean to her. how could her mom not help and just make it worse. thats how ace becomes much, much more baby sister to soph because not only does she deserve the love but sophia feels like it falls on her to make up for the slight mistreatment and everything.

OKAY FIRST OF ALL JIN SENT THIS TO ME ON DISC AND THEN I MADE HIM SEND IT HERE BC IF I HAD TO READ IT YOU ALL DO TO.

second of all,

the ice bath thing happens a while after the ice out thing stops. so the ice out thing kind of gradually stops, like they don't think she's THAT bad anymore but they also don't know whats happening in ace's head and think that she's choosing to not have family time and kinda keeping them away. so sophia is still a bit wary of her ESPECIALLY in regards to baby yoonchae (sophia also hates herself bc she was such a good guardian to yoonchae and ace thought that sophia didn't love her). but the ice bath thing happening and yoonchae panic yells for sophia and sophia's mind just slotting in conclusions. i feel like it would happen after game night, probably after lolla even, where the only person who really knows what happened to ace is dani, and even then she doesn't get the full story for a bit.

so sophia knows that her childhood was "a little rough" (ace's words) and sophia bolting to the locker room (locker room? idk. a room where they get changed) to find ace in a literal ball on the floor just sobbing and shaking. and it hits sophia that ace cries silently. her shoulders are shaking, she's not really getting air in, and the only sounds that sophia can hear are her little gasps for breath. how many times did that sweet baby cry upstairs all by herself and sophia just couldn't hear it? how many times did sophia wake up to someone walking around late at night before she went back to sleep and how many times was it ace post-nightmare?

sophia drops to her knees and ace flinches so hard, begging sophia not to punish her and apologizing over and over again and she just sounds so small. it hits sophia how young ace actually is. that she's just a little kid. she's 18 years old and begging not to go back into the ice bath because thats what she thinks her punishment will be. bc thats how shes been punishing herself.

or worse. thats how she earns sophia's approval. thats how she earns a spot in her family.

[mayzini]

hehe idk if ace knows abt the gc the girls have without her, if yes just ignore this but imagine if she sees some notif on like danis phone or something from a gc and she’s like oh ill see what it is and opens it and its just an innocent text message but she realises like omg its everyone without me and freaks out and is like “nooo they all hate me” but wont say anything bc OBVIOUSLY being the only one not on a gc is like embarrassing yk.

and then all the girls need to connect the dots and show her they only talk abt her on it awww ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹😝😝

not a request or ask baby im just musinggg

(and sorry if she already knows abt it I haven’t read everything ma’am 😔)

no ace most definently does not know about the group chat. she's in the car or something with dani and dani's phone buzzes and she's like "ace can you just tell me who's texting?" and ace expects it be like jomah or something and instead it says "Manz sent a message in the groupchat with Lala, Soph, and two others" and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together who those other two people could be. and ace is just like "it was jonah" and puts her phone down SO FUCKING FAST. and dani is like "...okay?" and doesn't think anything of it.

meanwhile ace is trying to think of everything she could have done wrong to be excluded. like what do they talk about? do they talk about her? they've pretty much never gone out to do something as the six of them without ace but what if thats just schedules clashing? what if she's only invited to go out bc someone else canceled? what if they just wish she wasn't there? how long has this groupchat been in existence? a week? a month? six months? a year? since dream? ace doesn't want to know and she doesn't know what to do.

she thinks about going to adela because even through dream adela's been good at helping her navigate weird social things like this, but adela is also megan and lara's best friend and she doesn't want adela to tell them bc how tf do you bring that up??? she goes to lexie about it like "i don't know what to do, i don't know what i did..." and lexie is all "honey. honey. why don't you bring up to dani or soph or even yoonchae?" and ace is like "noooo lexie i can't thats so embarrassing. i just can't stop thinking about it." they make the mistake of having this conversation in the living room of the prelude house when they think no one is home but someone most definitely is home and emily overhears them and goes to megan like "do you talk about ace behind her back?"

and megan is all "wtf are you talking about?" and emily is just like "please tell me there isn't a groupchat with all of you and not her." and megan is all "how do you know about that?"

"because ace knows about it"

"fuck"

[mayzini]

don't know if this has been answered but kats super bowl/winter olympics headcanons? for super bowl, which team are they supporting (and i bet they argue over who gets to introduce yoonchae, sophia and manon to their favorite team)

the olympics in that house is going to be crazy 😭 winter would be bad enough but imagine summer with all their respective countries competing

-🏄🏻

this started off as fluff and got so angsty I’m sorry.

the olympics goes crazy in the kats house.

sophia (and by extension mateo) root for the phillipines (duh), but for the events where her country isn’t competing, she’s rooting for the other girl’s teams.

ace, dani, lara, and megan are into very different sports but they all watch and support anyway, especially if their going against one of the other girl’s countries. Both Megan and ace are into surfing so that’s a really big deal.

mylo also gets very into surfing.

Manon watches. she pretends to be more invested in it than she actually is bc it pisses off whoever’s losing. she also likes to watch the other girls crash out.

Yoonchae loves her country and supports them happily, and she likes laughing at Lara or Megan losing their minds.

the superbowl is a whole other ball game. (Literally)

yoonchae roots for ace’s team (pats). Meg couldn’t really care less, Lara’s a cowboys fan, dani (and therefore mylo) are bulldogs fans, and there is definitely a fight over who gets to introduce the rest of the girls to their teams. Manon likes the rams, Sophia roots for whatever team she thinks is prettier uniform wise. mateo (and dani and meg and manon and Lara) are just there for bad bunny.

tw: mentions of domestic violence/ child abuse

there is a statistic in a America that domestic violence incidents spike during and after the Super Bowl, because of the men who get so into it and then take the losses out on their wives and children. this is definitely true in aces home.

the patriots lost three super bowls during ace’s childhood (2008, 2012, 2018) and things didn’t go great for her at home. but there were years that they won and ace associates that time with making genuinely good memories with her father, and getting to bond with him and stuff. he takes her to see the parade in boston when they win in 2019 and she still has the jersey he bought her hanging up in her closet in LA.

however, watching the Super Bowl, especially with Mateo and mylo, especially last nights, means that aces anxiety is through the roof “for no reason” (her words). she has to go stand in the kitchen to breathe more than once before dani figures out she’s getting more and more anxious.

no one says anything when dani pulls her down to sit on her lap and braid her hair but every time mylo or Mateo get a little too loud or excited Dani can FEEL her tremble in her lap.

it’s gets better after the halftime show bc you know they are SINGING and dani makes her get up to dance and they FaceTime Ana and ace relaxes a bit. the night is bad tho. mylo and Mateo spend the night which doesn’t normally put ace on edge but she feels like she deserves to sleep outside or in her car. she also feels like she can’t go get dani after she inevitably wakes up crying bc mylo is right there and she feels very very silly for being afraid of her sweet physics nerd who she knows would never hurt her.

dani doesn’t connect the dots until much much later.

( @sodanisboy )

[mayzini]

Once the moms learn from their daughters about Ace’s childhood I picture all of them having different reactions here’s this baby who lived a rough childhood while their daughters had the best ones imaginable 😞😞

oh my god yeah. it also doesn't help that they all find out in different ways and don't see the "real" ace for a while.

carla doesn't know ace very well, none of them do, because ace gets so anxious in front of any of their parents because of a couple of reasons. so when she gets a call from a woman saying she's ace's mom and she has photos to prove it, carla believes what she's saying because maybe ace was difficult. she tries to explain that ace seems very sweet and gentle nowadays and her mom is like "oh no no no, it's all an act." and she brings it up to the other mamakats like "should we be concerned?" and the girls are like "oh what the fuck?!" but afterwards i think she feels really bad bc the more of the real ace she sees, she can never imagine ace being "difficult" or "demanding" or "attention-seeking" or anything else that her mom said she was.

ana is angry. also ana finding out that carla talked to ace's mom and believed HER over ace for even a second? yeah, that doesn't go very well. like she's fully just so angry for this kid who has given dani so much and who dani loves so much and the more she hears from dani, the worse it gets. and then she sees ace in peak softness (i.e, sleepy on dani's shoulder) and thinks about how she still has a bit of a baby face and what her actual baby face looked like and she gets mad all over again. and then she gets soft. because her anger really can't do anything, but her love can. she can love the fuck out of this kid who her daughter cherishes and so she does! whenever they're on a break, ace goes home with dani and eventually overhears ana say "oh those are my daughters. yeah those two. yeah they look nothing alike, what about it?"

sylvia is really heartbroken. she remembers meg's struggle and her tears and how her life was so hard even with the love of her family. her and meg are really close and the thought of her daughter, or any child with that level of anxiety feeling completely alone keeps her up at night sometimes. she tries to fill in the cracks that she can see, and takes a stab at the ones she can't. she's very mental-health positive and tries to normalize it for ace, almost. she also definitely shows up to the katseye house every once in a while and just takes ace out to lunch and tells her stories about meg as a kid and about anxiety and all the resources she found.

kavita is also really heartbroken. she loves her daughters more than the world, and she would do literally anything for them. she's so incredibly proud of all they've accomplished and she can't imagine doing any of the punishments that lara's told her about or letting her children just dip out her life. also food seems to be a really big thing in their house and ace knows how to cook to survive but not to enjoy and kavita decides they need to fix that. rhea, lara, and ace will be making music or something and it astounds ace how many times kavita will come to check on them, not bc they're in trouble, but because she actually cares.

yoonchae's parents aren't super involved in ace's life because one, they're in korea, and two, they only speak korean. but they will never forget how yoonchae told them about the girl in dream who learned korean for her, and was so patient. they're very grateful for ace and very sad that a kid so bright was hurt so badly.

the same thing kind of goes for manon's mom. she also understands that ace is getting a lot of support and doesn't really want to overwhelm her. that being said, she finds it incredibly heartwarming that manon gets to be a big sister to these girls. she's also seen photos that kavita has taken or that carla passed on via sophia and they all look SO soft together that she can't imagine hurting a child the way they all suspect that ace has been hurt. sophie, on the other hand, wants to fight someone.

[mayzini]

tw child abuse

i imagine ace getting used to doing things the painful way because she never learned how to do them safely. the first time she accidentally broke a glass, her mom made her get down on hands and knees and clean it up. ace gets older and when things like that happen, if something breaks or is burning or going wrong in any way, she will immediately do what it takes to fix it as fast as possible. not to hurt herself on purpose (most of the time) but because it hasn’t actually occurred to her that she could just sweep up the broken glass with a broom because she’s never done that before. and so what if she gets cut or tiny pieces of glass work their way under her skin? she broke something and her sisters will get mad at her if it isn’t cleaned up as soon as physically possible

ace breaking something on accident, or even one of the other girls breaking something on accident and ace freezes because she either needs to protect one of the other girls or fix it right that second.

she drops a glass or something and reaches down to pick up the broken, jagged pieces and lara is like "ohhhhh what the fuck."

"ace. broom. we own brooms. ive seen you use it many times." and lara thinks that its just ace being a little forgetful/scatterbrained. but ace has tears in her eyes and very quietly explains how sophia's gonna get really mad if she doesn't keep her voice down.

"why would sophia be mad about the broom?"

"because it takes more time!"

"you could get hurt like this."

"that doesn't matter." and oh, lara is going to kill someone. i can see her going as far as asking michael (her cousin) for her parents number just in case. just in case ace ever gives her permission to absolutely scream at them over the phone.

...y'all arent ready to hear about the ice bath thing

[mayzini]

one night ace has a nightmare and she goes to dani’s room bc she just wants to be in dani’s presence. but she forgot that mylo stayed over the night until she was in dani’s room. thankfully mylo a light sleeper so he hears her come in and like groggily figures out what happened then leads ace to his spot on the bed. which cause dani to wake up bc her boyfriend left and now the person getting into her bed isn’t him. she realizes that it’s ace pretty quickly and just turns to cuddle her. ace of course asks mylo if he’s sure and he’s like “nah it’s all good” and he leaves to the living room, it’s reveal to dani and ace later that he slept on the couch and that manon accidentally woke him up like 3 hours later

ace falls asleep on the couch playing zelda or something, and wakes up panicking in the middle of the night. meg and lara usually catch her and wake her up before they can get bad bad but this time she's alone which means the nightmare woke her up, which means that it was bad bad.

all she wants is dani. dani will keep her safe. dani will make it better. but she pushes the door to dani's room open and it takes her eyes a second to register just who that other figure is under the blankets and, fuck, its mylo.

ace keeps trying to get her breathing under control bc she can't wake mylo (or dani) but the panic is still so so so loud and she doesn't even register mylo moving until he's literally right in front of her face. mylo shaking dani awake a little so she doesn't get spooked when its not him getting back into bed. ace feeling so, so bad about "making" him get up and dani just shushing her baby.

manon coming downstairs and having a mini heart attack about a white man on the couch before realizing its mylo.

[mayzini]

….ill bite. Whats the ice bath thing? You’ve piqued my curiosity and i know im about to get my heartbroken

-🧚‍♀️

tw: mentions of child abuse

so ace probably has some form of ptsd. ace's parents often sent her outside as punishment for long periods of time or even overnight.

megan and lara find that out after a nightmare. they assume the sodanon already know.

okay so the girls mentioned doing ice baths in one of the london interviews i think. i can imagine ace's first ice bath and its just an immediate flashback to being left outside in the freezing cold. complete shut down, just stone faced and the girls think its just her being tough or whatever because they dont know. they dont even know she has anxiety yet and it takes sophia months after ace's anxiety and parental situation to realize that that stone faced thing is her reliving some kind of trauma. over and over and over again, sometimes every day. sometimes multiple times a day. for months. she realizes that ace is always so quiet and doesn't come down for dinner on ice bath days. and sophia has been praising her for her efficiency or bravery or whatever.

and ace will literally do anything to make sophia proud. so if sophia is going to give her two words of praise or encouragement for getting into the ice, she's getting into the ice. no matter if it causes her to relive some of the worst moments of her life for hours and hours.

there comes a day when ace is already having a really bad time and she's already done one and she looks to sophia like "do i have to?" and sophia, not unkindly but in the firm leader voice, is like "get in babes." and she does and then sophia finds her crumpled on the bathroom floor bc she can't get out of her own head and she's so cold. she can not stop crying but she's trying so hard to hold it in bc thats phia and she wants phia to be proud of her.

but ace kind of runs away from her when sophia tries to get closer and ends up walking past megan in the hallway, clearly upset, and it clicks for megan for the first time. she turns to sophia like "oh my god. you don't think-oh fuck." and sophia is so confused and megs like "they left her outside. in the cold. you don't think she could be reliving it right?"

and sophia's like "...what."

so sophia gets to find out that ace is literally torturing herself to make sophia happy.

[mayzini]

This might be a bit self indulgent but imagine ace just getting the worst periods. Like awful cramps, body aches, headaches, even sometimes nausea. Like poor baby’s been through so much and still has to deal with this. And the girls are just so caring whenever it’s aces time of the month. And they just like dote on her and she’s like, so so grateful but the girls just think it’s nothing. But ace never had someone to do stuff like that for them. Idk just a thought

oh yes yes yes. baby has just been conditioned to push all her pain down her whole life and this is one of the ways mmmhmmm. every since she got her first period, its been awful, but she practices her smile so it doesn't look like she's in pain and she keeps dancing even though she wants to die and so why not just keep doing it?

she smiles through the pain all through dance, through dream, through everything, because thats just what you do. its never even crossed her mind to take tylenol or eat chocolate. she's never felt the relief of the heating pad until dani finds her doubled over in the basement, just trying to breathe.

and ace is forever astounded that the kats are consistently trying to take her pain away because the first thing dani does is hug her. she hugs her and rubs her back and soothes her while she breathes and then ace tries to just go back to whatever she was doing and dani's like "uh uh uh, no ma'am. you're gonna lie down, that must hurt like a bitch." and dani puts her heating pad on ace's stomach and ace passes out in her arms because the pain has gone away enough that she can sleep.

thats when meg and lara realize that there's about a week of time when they're consistently not woken up by nightmares every month and its because she's in so much pain she can't relax. they do these tiny little things that are no brainers to them and everything to ace.

manon brings her favorite tea up to leave on her nightstand, yoonchae suggests more convenience store runs for snacks. dani burritos that girl around her heating pad, and makes sure she's actually asleep most nights. they love on her in ways that make her life a little easier and her heart goes kaboom.