On the tenth day of Christmas
Jan. 4th, 2014 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tallulahgsmy true love sent to me
ten acts of drama
[Title] Film Noir
[Fandom] Homestuck
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Rose speculates on the reasons why someone might develop an alcohol problem. (This was the first HS fic I ever wrote.)
You are not sure of your motivations for doing this.
There are any number of psychological theories that you, or an observer, could put forward. Shall we start with the obvious? you ask, even though no one's watching this time. (Well, no one visible. You think you heard a clank in the air vents, but let's not bring that strand of the story in yet.) No, not the obvious. The simple.
That you are bored. That three years on a meteor with a bunch of bad-tempered aliens isn't all it's cracked up to be (if it was ever cracked up to be anything in the first place). That there's a limit to how much bickering or exploration of your sexuality you can do when there's nothing else to do.
That you resent the way that your adolescence is speeding past you, like the endlessly-scrolling black outside. (The addition of similes. Already the alcohol is taking effect.) That you were looking forward to another four to five years of passive-aggressive defiance and maladjusted teenage exploration of boundaries.
God knows what she'd have said or done if you got yourself pregnant, or threw a wild party and trashed the house, or whatever else it is you were meant to have been doing with your time.
(Ah. Yes. Now we're getting to the more Freudian interpretations. Although you're not sure if it can be called Freudian if there's no sex involved. You would probably know the answer if you hadn't already drunk most of this martini.)
It's so trite to even theorise that it's any of the following: trauma at seeing her dead; a pitiable attempt to reconstruct what was, for you, normality; an obvious way to seem like a grown-up - like a mother; a distraction from the knowledge that before too long you'll be meeting her again, a different her, a girl like you, and that it's entirely likely this will hold a simplistic mirror up to you and reflect back – reflect back -
You are distracted by the halogen light above you glinting on the dregs of the liquid in your glass, which is probably a good thing. You drain the last few drops. You think, actually, that these familial-based motives are just you trolling yourself with psychotherapy. You think that it's only natural for someone who's seen and heard as much as you have (horrorterrors, and other things) to have developed a few mildly self-destructive habits. (Once you've officially gone grimdark, aren't you obligated to develop an addiction?)
There's no need to start inventing dramas on top of that.
[Title] Ju-jitsu
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompted bystill_lycoris: "What Raito wants, Raito gets."
Raito is baffled by a lot of things people do, but one of the things he really doesn't understand is people fighting battles over every little thing: making loud, angry demands every time there's something they want, or something that's not to their liking. Well, no. He understands it. He just... despises it, to be honest. Some people are clearly just enjoying the drama, the shouting and crying and how it makes their life feel like something on TV. And some people just can't control their feelings to any extent. They really are that upset by being stuck with chores, or homework they can't do, or someone not returning their feelings.
Raito knows he's intelligent, but he really is surprised by how everyone else hasn't figured out the obvious. You smile. You're helpful. You volunteer when you can. You are patient and strong. Most dislikeable things in life are not that bad, because what you're doing every time you accept is building up a reservoir of favour. When you do refuse, or register displeasure, or simply take steps to make things work your way, people remember how you behaved before and think they owe you; or they're scared by this other face you show; or they don't even realise what you're doing. You don't fight battles over things that aren't worth having. You fight for things you really want, and then you win.
[Title] Shooting for the Moon
[Fandom] Battle Royale/Doctor Who (new series)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompted bycanonical_insanity: "Shinji and the Ninth Doctor: what it feels like to literally shoot the moon."
The TARDIS is always warm, but it reminds Shinj of sitting in a cold room with a log fire. Bits of you are shiny with the heat, but there's always a sense of something cold at your back.
Right now, however, behind him is the normal warmth and air of a place humans can live, and in front of him, beyond the TARDIS's door, is the eternal blackness and coldness and airlessness of space. He's trying not to think too hard about the latter, because he thinks if he starts wondering too hard about the physics of it, it might all collapse around him and the next thing he knows he'll be suffocating. Or exploding. He seems to remember reading the vacuum of space is not kind to the human body.
The moon hangs below them, grey and rocky and looking way too much like a black-and-white still of the Earth, or a screenshot from a bootlegged sci-fi film. Looking at it, Shinji wonders why shoot for the moon was ever a thing. It's empty rock, is all. Who'd even want it?
Except for some evil genius who's set up a mind-control spire on it, of course. There's that.
“Hey, Doc, can you get us any closer? Damn thing's still too far off.”
A snort. “Thought your basketball skills were meant to be making this easy for you.”
“The tower's like fifty feet away, have a heart.”
The TARDIS lurches and the view spins and dances around them. Shinji grips the doorframe and tries really hard not to think about what'll happen if he falls out. When will Doctor-physics transform into real-life-space-physics? Probably too soon for the Doc to zoom under and catch him. Okay, he really needs to stay frosty. He's not let anything on this trip faze him so far, and he's hardly the type to be blown away by the majesty of the natural world, is he?
Just... it's pretty damn empty, is all. Empty and big and sort of designed to kill you.
“I thought it'd feel more epic than that,” he says afterwards, when they've seen the little spire explode into dust like a bonus kill on a video game. The Doctor has let the TARDIS hang motionless in the air, and they're both sitting in the doorway, legs dangling towards the moon's surface. Seeing your shoes with the craters beyond them is trippy in a fun way. Shinji keeps swinging his legs and trying to spot hints of crappy green-screen.
“What?”
“Saving the world. You know. I mean, it's pretty dramatic.” Maybe it's the silence. Well, silence except for creaks and groans from the TARDIS and sarcastic remarks from its pilot. Shinji expects another such remark this time, but the Doctor only shrugs and says, “Things don't always feel like you think they're gonna.”
“Guess it must be old hat to you, anyway. Saving the world again before breakfast, man, these stupid apes, I leave them alone for five minutes...”
“You just think about it like it's basketball,” the Doctor says, scrambling to his feet. “Sometimes you make the... basket or whatever and it's amazing. Other times you don't make it and you know you could've. Other times you make it and it means something different from what you thought -”
“Yeah, I don't think b-ball works that way.”
“Saw you trying to keep your cool when we first came up here,” the Doctor says. “Why're you surprised it worked?”
Shinji shrugs off the comment. “Yeah? Does anything still feel like a buzz to you? Anything still feel like shooting for the moon should?”
The Doctor doesn't answer. He's rushing round to start shoving levers and pushing buttons again.
[Title] Bad Boy
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Takako Chigusa/Shogo Kawada. Takako isn't sure why she's doing this.
When they've stopped making out, Kawada puts out a hand for the cigarette pack, then stops, glances at Takako. She shrugs, the unaccountable irritation she usually has with Sugimura rushing up from her stomach. “It's your apartment, do what you want.”
Kawada shrugs, lights up. “You want one?”
Takako shakes her head automatically - track stars don't ruin their lungs like that! - but as she lets her head flop back against the wall she pictures herself with a cigarette in hand, scowling and blowing smoke. Actually, she'd be coughing and throwing up or at the very least blinking back tears, so perhaps she said no because of pride, of not wanting to look stupid. At least Kawada genuinely seems not to care whether she smokes or not. He doesn't seem to care about anything concerning all of...this. (And yet, that glance back...)
If she were more spiteful – more manipulative – she'd straighten her clothes and stomp out of the apartment right about now. Thanks for nothing. Hoping for a what did I do? so she could shout back You know. Petty, childish romance. But –
She has no idea what Kawada's getting out of this (well, apart from the obvious). She doesn't really want to speculate too much on what she might getting out of it (the obvious is not so obvious, and what if it turns out she's only doing it to make Sugimura jealous?) Coming into this tiny, stuffy apartment (neat, though – fiercely so, like someone washing their hands til they bleed) – coming into this strange place and saying nothing about herself, being asked nothing – she can't tell if she's leaving herself behind or more herself than ever. But she thinks if she took the cigarette – gave herself an accessory - it would turn everything into an accessory. The bad girl, making out with the delinquent rebel and blowing smoke rings at the faded lampshade. Star of her own personal drama.
(Some of those scars on his shoulder were round. Like cigarette burns. Or bullets. That's what keeps her coming back, maybe. Whatever else he is, he isn't faking the suffering.)
[Title] Compensations of Dating
[Fandom] Battle Royale (novel)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Mayumi doesn't know what to say when the others talk about boyfriends.
Mayumi was happy with the sleepover – eating pizza and ice cream, painting each other's nails, gossiping about all the people in Class B who weren't in the room – until everyone else started talking about boyfriends and then she wished she'd not bothered to come at all.
“I really don't get it, you know?” Yuka Nakagawa is saying, waving her hands around to dry the nail polish. “Like... when I get a boyfriend - if I ever get a boyfriend -”
“Don't say that, Yuka!” Chisato looks actually really worried, but Yuka of course snorts with laughter, spraying crisp crumbs: “It's okay, Chisato, I'm cool with it. I am resigned to my future Christmas cake status – I'll just hide out in my apartment with a shrine to all the hot guys I knew in high school -”
They're all shrieking with laughter but Mayumi's already feeling herself falling away from it all, here we go, talk the talk as Yuka carries on, “But what I was gonna say is, when I get a boyfriend am I gonna have to stop talking about horror movies and fart jokes? 'Cause none of the girls in the dramas ever do that.”
“Let's ask the only one of us who actually hasa boyfriend,” Satomi says, pushing her glasses higher up on her face. “Sakura?”
Sakura blushes a little. She's in pale-blue silky pyjamas and Mayumi thinks she looks like a girlfriend and then wonders what the hell she even means by that anyway. A girlfriend just means some guy takes you out on dates and makes out with you. And there's no money involved, of course. Usually. More or less. God, she wishes she had the guts to say some of this out loud.
“I don't talk about horror movies anyway,” Sakura's saying.
“You know what I mean, though,” Yuka says. “Like, do you act just like you do with us, when you're with Kaz? Or how you do when you're on your own? Or do you have to start being all, you know, drama-y?”
“Half the girls in dramas are crazy anyway,” Haruka says, raising a finger to make her point. “You know, they punch the guys or they have a huge secret or they're really depressed because someone's bullying them.”
“I don't know.” Sakura frowns a little. “Not really, I think? I feel like I just... act like me. But Kaz... like, he seems really... happy to be with me. If he doesn't like stuff I do, then he doesn't say anything.”
Amid the chorus of awwwwws, Mayumi thinks about all the salarymen who seem really happy to be with her. And they do, a lot of them, they're fascinated by her short school skirt and her chest under her sailor collar and how she twirls her plait round her finger. It's easy to fascinate guys ten or twenty years older than her. The boys in her class are far more confusing. But it's not like she can ask if any of the others have noticed this. She keeps her secrets; they'll keep theirs. But she doesn't relish the idea of acting twenty-four-seven.
[Title] The Perfect Comeback
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Chell didn't always want to be silent.
She dreamed of losing her temper. Screaming insults at the cameras and the rippled glass. Demanding what the hell they thought they were doing. Coming up with pithy arguments, killer lines, biting sarcasm to make them, if not see the error of their ways, then at least feel kind of bad about it for a few minutes.
Of course she never said anything. She told herself that silence is more dramatic, can freak people out far more than throwing a tantrum would. But she worries that maybe she just knew she wouldn't be able to find the words. Or that it wouldn't achieve anything anyway.
[Title] Rules of Engagement
[Notes/Summary] In which four guys don't understand why women are so unreasonable.
Shinji
Shinji can take or leave arguments, but they always seem to be the straw that breaks the camel's back for his relationships. (Make-out sessions. Hook-ups. Whatever you want to call 'em.) He's not sure why. Not like he picks fights for the hell of it, like some people do, and not like he says really shitty things when he's in the fight. Some guys, they get really freaked out when a girl disagrees with them and it turns into this huge I-AM-DEFENDING-MY-MASCULINITY drama. Shinji doesn't see why you'd bother. If you think you're right, you say so, and he usually is right, even if he says it himself. And if you think you're wrong, why make a huge deal out of it? He stays frosty and states his case and it's not his fault if a lot of girls are kind of funny when they're really pissed off, is it? He's never the one who starts the fights. Girls just like the drama, though it makes no sense that when they've got the argument they wanted, they break up with him. Really, he's the one who should feel used.
Kaneda
Kaneda wishes girls would just get that he yells at everyone sooner or later. Like, he's not a jerk who wants to make people cry, but sometimes people piss you off and you're gonna say so, right? Or tell 'em to shut up or that they're being idiots. He does it to Tetsuo just as much as he does it to whichever girl he's seeing. Hell, he does it to teachers. And even cops, once or twice (although he was kind of smashed those times). The point is, girls need to understand he yells and then mostly he's really not interested in going over and over what the yelling was about. It pissed him off. It happened. They should move on. They should make out. End of story. He'll always have chilled out about it within a few hours, whatever it is. But girls always want to make it into this huge earth-shattering thing, with tears and footstamping and throwing books at his head. Maybe it's because they're not bikers. He gets all the drama he needs on the road.
Raito
Raito does not enjoy arguments. He would be quite happy to preserve harmony and resolve differences of opinion through compromise and co-operation. However, he's not going to capitulate to someone's stupidity simply because they want him to, or because that's what's expected. He learnt a long time ago that remaining calm and continuing to quietly reiterate your views is surprisingly effective, particularly when the other person cares more about the issue at stake than you do. And, quite frankly, if you do care about the issue strongly, then why try to resolve it via an argument? There are other ways to win. (The only person this doesn't work with is Ryuzaki, who probably worked it out at a similarly young age. With Ryuzaki, raising your voice feels like you've lost, or like you're being unnecessarily dramatic. Raito grits his teeth and tells himself it's worth keeping the peace, at least for now.)
Tetsuo
Tetsuo hates fighting. Which is pretty fucking pathetic for someone who chases bikers down the highway and beats their heads in with iron bars, but – there's the fact that whenever anyone yells at him, part of him is still that scared kid going don't be mad, and that it's always his fault whatever's happened, it was always something he didn't do better, and that he always ends up yelling back and his voice goes loud and shaky and he sounds pathetic. Kaneda never sounds pathetic when he yells. And afterwards, he can't stop thinking about it, all the things he should have said, all the clever things he could've come back with. It's like every fight is an earthquake sending waves of drama through his life for days afterwards. S'why he likes Kaori. She never fights with him. It's safe.
ten acts of drama
[Title] Film Noir
[Fandom] Homestuck
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Rose speculates on the reasons why someone might develop an alcohol problem. (This was the first HS fic I ever wrote.)
You are not sure of your motivations for doing this.
There are any number of psychological theories that you, or an observer, could put forward. Shall we start with the obvious? you ask, even though no one's watching this time. (Well, no one visible. You think you heard a clank in the air vents, but let's not bring that strand of the story in yet.) No, not the obvious. The simple.
That you are bored. That three years on a meteor with a bunch of bad-tempered aliens isn't all it's cracked up to be (if it was ever cracked up to be anything in the first place). That there's a limit to how much bickering or exploration of your sexuality you can do when there's nothing else to do.
That you resent the way that your adolescence is speeding past you, like the endlessly-scrolling black outside. (The addition of similes. Already the alcohol is taking effect.) That you were looking forward to another four to five years of passive-aggressive defiance and maladjusted teenage exploration of boundaries.
God knows what she'd have said or done if you got yourself pregnant, or threw a wild party and trashed the house, or whatever else it is you were meant to have been doing with your time.
(Ah. Yes. Now we're getting to the more Freudian interpretations. Although you're not sure if it can be called Freudian if there's no sex involved. You would probably know the answer if you hadn't already drunk most of this martini.)
It's so trite to even theorise that it's any of the following: trauma at seeing her dead; a pitiable attempt to reconstruct what was, for you, normality; an obvious way to seem like a grown-up - like a mother; a distraction from the knowledge that before too long you'll be meeting her again, a different her, a girl like you, and that it's entirely likely this will hold a simplistic mirror up to you and reflect back – reflect back -
You are distracted by the halogen light above you glinting on the dregs of the liquid in your glass, which is probably a good thing. You drain the last few drops. You think, actually, that these familial-based motives are just you trolling yourself with psychotherapy. You think that it's only natural for someone who's seen and heard as much as you have (horrorterrors, and other things) to have developed a few mildly self-destructive habits. (Once you've officially gone grimdark, aren't you obligated to develop an addiction?)
There's no need to start inventing dramas on top of that.
[Title] Ju-jitsu
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompted by
still_lycoris: "What Raito wants, Raito gets."Raito is baffled by a lot of things people do, but one of the things he really doesn't understand is people fighting battles over every little thing: making loud, angry demands every time there's something they want, or something that's not to their liking. Well, no. He understands it. He just... despises it, to be honest. Some people are clearly just enjoying the drama, the shouting and crying and how it makes their life feel like something on TV. And some people just can't control their feelings to any extent. They really are that upset by being stuck with chores, or homework they can't do, or someone not returning their feelings.
Raito knows he's intelligent, but he really is surprised by how everyone else hasn't figured out the obvious. You smile. You're helpful. You volunteer when you can. You are patient and strong. Most dislikeable things in life are not that bad, because what you're doing every time you accept is building up a reservoir of favour. When you do refuse, or register displeasure, or simply take steps to make things work your way, people remember how you behaved before and think they owe you; or they're scared by this other face you show; or they don't even realise what you're doing. You don't fight battles over things that aren't worth having. You fight for things you really want, and then you win.
[Title] Shooting for the Moon
[Fandom] Battle Royale/Doctor Who (new series)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Prompted by
canonical_insanity: "Shinji and the Ninth Doctor: what it feels like to literally shoot the moon."The TARDIS is always warm, but it reminds Shinj of sitting in a cold room with a log fire. Bits of you are shiny with the heat, but there's always a sense of something cold at your back.
Right now, however, behind him is the normal warmth and air of a place humans can live, and in front of him, beyond the TARDIS's door, is the eternal blackness and coldness and airlessness of space. He's trying not to think too hard about the latter, because he thinks if he starts wondering too hard about the physics of it, it might all collapse around him and the next thing he knows he'll be suffocating. Or exploding. He seems to remember reading the vacuum of space is not kind to the human body.
The moon hangs below them, grey and rocky and looking way too much like a black-and-white still of the Earth, or a screenshot from a bootlegged sci-fi film. Looking at it, Shinji wonders why shoot for the moon was ever a thing. It's empty rock, is all. Who'd even want it?
Except for some evil genius who's set up a mind-control spire on it, of course. There's that.
“Hey, Doc, can you get us any closer? Damn thing's still too far off.”
A snort. “Thought your basketball skills were meant to be making this easy for you.”
“The tower's like fifty feet away, have a heart.”
The TARDIS lurches and the view spins and dances around them. Shinji grips the doorframe and tries really hard not to think about what'll happen if he falls out. When will Doctor-physics transform into real-life-space-physics? Probably too soon for the Doc to zoom under and catch him. Okay, he really needs to stay frosty. He's not let anything on this trip faze him so far, and he's hardly the type to be blown away by the majesty of the natural world, is he?
Just... it's pretty damn empty, is all. Empty and big and sort of designed to kill you.
“I thought it'd feel more epic than that,” he says afterwards, when they've seen the little spire explode into dust like a bonus kill on a video game. The Doctor has let the TARDIS hang motionless in the air, and they're both sitting in the doorway, legs dangling towards the moon's surface. Seeing your shoes with the craters beyond them is trippy in a fun way. Shinji keeps swinging his legs and trying to spot hints of crappy green-screen.
“What?”
“Saving the world. You know. I mean, it's pretty dramatic.” Maybe it's the silence. Well, silence except for creaks and groans from the TARDIS and sarcastic remarks from its pilot. Shinji expects another such remark this time, but the Doctor only shrugs and says, “Things don't always feel like you think they're gonna.”
“Guess it must be old hat to you, anyway. Saving the world again before breakfast, man, these stupid apes, I leave them alone for five minutes...”
“You just think about it like it's basketball,” the Doctor says, scrambling to his feet. “Sometimes you make the... basket or whatever and it's amazing. Other times you don't make it and you know you could've. Other times you make it and it means something different from what you thought -”
“Yeah, I don't think b-ball works that way.”
“Saw you trying to keep your cool when we first came up here,” the Doctor says. “Why're you surprised it worked?”
Shinji shrugs off the comment. “Yeah? Does anything still feel like a buzz to you? Anything still feel like shooting for the moon should?”
The Doctor doesn't answer. He's rushing round to start shoving levers and pushing buttons again.
[Title] Bad Boy
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Takako Chigusa/Shogo Kawada. Takako isn't sure why she's doing this.
When they've stopped making out, Kawada puts out a hand for the cigarette pack, then stops, glances at Takako. She shrugs, the unaccountable irritation she usually has with Sugimura rushing up from her stomach. “It's your apartment, do what you want.”
Kawada shrugs, lights up. “You want one?”
Takako shakes her head automatically - track stars don't ruin their lungs like that! - but as she lets her head flop back against the wall she pictures herself with a cigarette in hand, scowling and blowing smoke. Actually, she'd be coughing and throwing up or at the very least blinking back tears, so perhaps she said no because of pride, of not wanting to look stupid. At least Kawada genuinely seems not to care whether she smokes or not. He doesn't seem to care about anything concerning all of...this. (And yet, that glance back...)
If she were more spiteful – more manipulative – she'd straighten her clothes and stomp out of the apartment right about now. Thanks for nothing. Hoping for a what did I do? so she could shout back You know. Petty, childish romance. But –
She has no idea what Kawada's getting out of this (well, apart from the obvious). She doesn't really want to speculate too much on what she might getting out of it (the obvious is not so obvious, and what if it turns out she's only doing it to make Sugimura jealous?) Coming into this tiny, stuffy apartment (neat, though – fiercely so, like someone washing their hands til they bleed) – coming into this strange place and saying nothing about herself, being asked nothing – she can't tell if she's leaving herself behind or more herself than ever. But she thinks if she took the cigarette – gave herself an accessory - it would turn everything into an accessory. The bad girl, making out with the delinquent rebel and blowing smoke rings at the faded lampshade. Star of her own personal drama.
(Some of those scars on his shoulder were round. Like cigarette burns. Or bullets. That's what keeps her coming back, maybe. Whatever else he is, he isn't faking the suffering.)
[Title] Compensations of Dating
[Fandom] Battle Royale (novel)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Mayumi doesn't know what to say when the others talk about boyfriends.
Mayumi was happy with the sleepover – eating pizza and ice cream, painting each other's nails, gossiping about all the people in Class B who weren't in the room – until everyone else started talking about boyfriends and then she wished she'd not bothered to come at all.
“I really don't get it, you know?” Yuka Nakagawa is saying, waving her hands around to dry the nail polish. “Like... when I get a boyfriend - if I ever get a boyfriend -”
“Don't say that, Yuka!” Chisato looks actually really worried, but Yuka of course snorts with laughter, spraying crisp crumbs: “It's okay, Chisato, I'm cool with it. I am resigned to my future Christmas cake status – I'll just hide out in my apartment with a shrine to all the hot guys I knew in high school -”
They're all shrieking with laughter but Mayumi's already feeling herself falling away from it all, here we go, talk the talk as Yuka carries on, “But what I was gonna say is, when I get a boyfriend am I gonna have to stop talking about horror movies and fart jokes? 'Cause none of the girls in the dramas ever do that.”
“Let's ask the only one of us who actually hasa boyfriend,” Satomi says, pushing her glasses higher up on her face. “Sakura?”
Sakura blushes a little. She's in pale-blue silky pyjamas and Mayumi thinks she looks like a girlfriend and then wonders what the hell she even means by that anyway. A girlfriend just means some guy takes you out on dates and makes out with you. And there's no money involved, of course. Usually. More or less. God, she wishes she had the guts to say some of this out loud.
“I don't talk about horror movies anyway,” Sakura's saying.
“You know what I mean, though,” Yuka says. “Like, do you act just like you do with us, when you're with Kaz? Or how you do when you're on your own? Or do you have to start being all, you know, drama-y?”
“Half the girls in dramas are crazy anyway,” Haruka says, raising a finger to make her point. “You know, they punch the guys or they have a huge secret or they're really depressed because someone's bullying them.”
“I don't know.” Sakura frowns a little. “Not really, I think? I feel like I just... act like me. But Kaz... like, he seems really... happy to be with me. If he doesn't like stuff I do, then he doesn't say anything.”
Amid the chorus of awwwwws, Mayumi thinks about all the salarymen who seem really happy to be with her. And they do, a lot of them, they're fascinated by her short school skirt and her chest under her sailor collar and how she twirls her plait round her finger. It's easy to fascinate guys ten or twenty years older than her. The boys in her class are far more confusing. But it's not like she can ask if any of the others have noticed this. She keeps her secrets; they'll keep theirs. But she doesn't relish the idea of acting twenty-four-seven.
[Title] The Perfect Comeback
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Chell didn't always want to be silent.
She dreamed of losing her temper. Screaming insults at the cameras and the rippled glass. Demanding what the hell they thought they were doing. Coming up with pithy arguments, killer lines, biting sarcasm to make them, if not see the error of their ways, then at least feel kind of bad about it for a few minutes.
Of course she never said anything. She told herself that silence is more dramatic, can freak people out far more than throwing a tantrum would. But she worries that maybe she just knew she wouldn't be able to find the words. Or that it wouldn't achieve anything anyway.
[Title] Rules of Engagement
[Notes/Summary] In which four guys don't understand why women are so unreasonable.
Shinji
Shinji can take or leave arguments, but they always seem to be the straw that breaks the camel's back for his relationships. (Make-out sessions. Hook-ups. Whatever you want to call 'em.) He's not sure why. Not like he picks fights for the hell of it, like some people do, and not like he says really shitty things when he's in the fight. Some guys, they get really freaked out when a girl disagrees with them and it turns into this huge I-AM-DEFENDING-MY-MASCULINITY drama. Shinji doesn't see why you'd bother. If you think you're right, you say so, and he usually is right, even if he says it himself. And if you think you're wrong, why make a huge deal out of it? He stays frosty and states his case and it's not his fault if a lot of girls are kind of funny when they're really pissed off, is it? He's never the one who starts the fights. Girls just like the drama, though it makes no sense that when they've got the argument they wanted, they break up with him. Really, he's the one who should feel used.
Kaneda
Kaneda wishes girls would just get that he yells at everyone sooner or later. Like, he's not a jerk who wants to make people cry, but sometimes people piss you off and you're gonna say so, right? Or tell 'em to shut up or that they're being idiots. He does it to Tetsuo just as much as he does it to whichever girl he's seeing. Hell, he does it to teachers. And even cops, once or twice (although he was kind of smashed those times). The point is, girls need to understand he yells and then mostly he's really not interested in going over and over what the yelling was about. It pissed him off. It happened. They should move on. They should make out. End of story. He'll always have chilled out about it within a few hours, whatever it is. But girls always want to make it into this huge earth-shattering thing, with tears and footstamping and throwing books at his head. Maybe it's because they're not bikers. He gets all the drama he needs on the road.
Raito
Raito does not enjoy arguments. He would be quite happy to preserve harmony and resolve differences of opinion through compromise and co-operation. However, he's not going to capitulate to someone's stupidity simply because they want him to, or because that's what's expected. He learnt a long time ago that remaining calm and continuing to quietly reiterate your views is surprisingly effective, particularly when the other person cares more about the issue at stake than you do. And, quite frankly, if you do care about the issue strongly, then why try to resolve it via an argument? There are other ways to win. (The only person this doesn't work with is Ryuzaki, who probably worked it out at a similarly young age. With Ryuzaki, raising your voice feels like you've lost, or like you're being unnecessarily dramatic. Raito grits his teeth and tells himself it's worth keeping the peace, at least for now.)
Tetsuo
Tetsuo hates fighting. Which is pretty fucking pathetic for someone who chases bikers down the highway and beats their heads in with iron bars, but – there's the fact that whenever anyone yells at him, part of him is still that scared kid going don't be mad, and that it's always his fault whatever's happened, it was always something he didn't do better, and that he always ends up yelling back and his voice goes loud and shaky and he sounds pathetic. Kaneda never sounds pathetic when he yells. And afterwards, he can't stop thinking about it, all the things he should have said, all the clever things he could've come back with. It's like every fight is an earthquake sending waves of drama through his life for days afterwards. S'why he likes Kaori. She never fights with him. It's safe.
