happy birthday to meeeeee!!!!
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POST ABOUT IMPORTANT THINGS.
Yes it IS in fact almost three weeks past my birthday and I AM still posting about it, because why would you NOT. Birthdays are the best holidays ever, this year has totally redeemed itself from last, in spades and by miles and with flying colors.
So as a birthday present to myself last Tuesday, I went and got myself a tattoo. So pic and a little bit of that under the cut!
This was right after it was done! It is now more or less entirely healed, I think??? There's one little part that's yet to peel off, on the bottom corner of the 8, but everything else seems to have gone fine. I'm so THRILLED with it. The 28 stands for 'to infinity', which is mostly a representation of the fact that I have infinity before me and that I can take whatever I want from it, and stuff like that. It also has a lot of personal meaning beyond that, being that the 28th (of January) is a super important date to me andmockturtletale, and a bit more besides.
ALSO FOR MY BIRTHDAY, MY BEST FRIEND WAS BETTER THAN YOURS COULD EVER BE, SORRY NOT SORRY. Clo did all sorts of GLORIOUS things for me, inlcuding drawing me a picture, making me a glorious audio post, taking lots of pictures, and the one most important to this post ... she wrote me a fic!
Y'all need to read this immediately, basically. It's called 'just to get it blessed', it's Harry/Zayn, canonical (for the most part -- derivations from canon stated in the author's notes), and it is here on AO3, and here's why you should read it ASAP:
It's described as coming!out fic, which it is, but it's also so much MORE than that. I don't know how many of y'all listened to my long, rambly 1D voice meme, but basically I mentioned how unrealistic I find it in fic when every or any one of the members is taken for granted as gay, or bi, or whatever -- that there's rarely any struggle there. So she took that and RAN with it, and wrote 12,000 words of... what I think is really one of the best characterizations of some of these characters that I've yet seen. And I'm not saying that because it's my fic, or because my best friend wrote it, but because it's just ... it's a fantastic story.
In it, Zayn struggles with his sexuality in... a really less conventional but so realistic and so refreshing way; the story warns for 'angst', which it has, a bit, but not in the soul-crushing way -- it doesn't deal with any disorders or anything, just with Zayn coming to terms with his sexuality in a way that he can express to the world around him. In the middle of all of that is Harry, whom Zayn's been in love with for quite some time, but who doesn't even entertain the idea of Harry being interested back -- both because he doesn't expect Harry to be interested in dudes, and because he doesn't expect Harry to be interested in him.
The dynamics described and illustrated between the boys, individually and as a group, are fantastic, really, really, amazingly well-done. Another thing that's considered here is how the band might react to some of the horrifyingly intrusive questions interviewers and fans ask them, how everyone takes that in personally and how it affects everyone as a group, and how it ends up affecting Zayn on a very personal level.
On top of all that, while Clo finished it in a rush for me last night (because she is FLAWLESS and couldn't stand how late she already was and wanted to finish it as quickly as possible after having very tragically (that sounds sarcastic -- it isn't at all) lost a TON of her writings in a flood), so there are a few typos here and there, but as per ALWAYS with Clo, it's so unbelivably well written I want to puke with it. The way she handles words, the metaphors she makes with feelings and the body and emotions and making it all so visceral, so real, makes you think about it in ways you'd never thought to before and it's -- I fucking love the way she writes, and that carries over to this so well.
Have an OT5 quote:
"They're best friends, and sometimes they're too tired or confused to say that out loud - so to be able to stand up there and say it with their smiles, with their hands and their voices tied up with words that aren't what they mean to say but say it anyway - that's their gift and their reward."
Now go read it!!!!!!!!!!!!