death of an optimist meme ( no longer accepting ) + @twcnties // jude

Nobody ever like, really looks at things, do they? Or if they do, they kind of take the best things that best fit their internal narrative, and just roll with it, though, RUE’S REALLY NO DIFFERENT. Knowing and being aware of that fact doesn’t exactly resolve her of the weight of that either, does it. But she’s always been someone who liked to observe... and she’s always had a hard time looking away from someone like Jude. Maybe that’s the whole like, problem, when they’re supposed to be filming, Rue holding onto what sparse lines she had to herself with an unexpected fierceness. Horror, she’s finding, is the gateway into everything. And Rue’s actually kind of good at looking terrified, sickened, and teary, on command.

Or maybe it was just all the fucked up ways her mind was wired. Everything criss-crossed and backwards, the world moving fast, and Rue... well, it was all too easy to allow her thoughts to race ahead, the first to SPIRAL AND CRASH in any situation. It almost made it all seem terribly unfair, that she was here while so many other people, perhaps less complicated, less burdened, could be here instead... it was a special brand of cruelty to know how much more they’d all be worth to have there, instead of her, downwards glances, the outline of a familiar silhouette. There he is - just as she was considering that perhaps, really, she wasn’t cut out for this after all, given the 10 hour days that dragged longer and longer, the exhaustion that plied at her fingertips and wore her voice hoarse. 

              'how did we get here?'

death of an optimist meme ( no longer accepting ) + @twcnties // ryn

They spend a lot of time together, don’t they? From fated moments on the quad, Alice skipping from one class into the next, a hand that catches at her arm to fold her shit up straight, all blonde, all long-limbed messy, she almost has a curse ready to fly from the TIP OF HER TONGUE when she meets Ryn’s then plaintive deadpan stare, and her sudden insistence that she needed her. Alice had never been told that by a woman before, not like this, all seriousness painted across her face, the downward curve of her lips. Eyes, darting over her, she felt more seen then the way a man would peel you down and dress you back up, and Alice, well, even she had to blush for it, something new, hands opening up at her leather jacket as a measuring tape was produced and looped loose about her waist.

Alice, she’s told then, was perfect. Not in the way that someone declared, dreamily, that oh, oh, oh, you’re PERFECT, but no, all the right shape and length and all the things in between that made up what Ryn was looking for - in this case, a model for an upcoming show to be held here for her final project.

                     Who was she to say no to some new, grand adventure? 

It’s afternoons spent being pricked by pins and standing still, that’s always the HARDEST PART for her ; the stillness. For someone used to shifting, squirming, moving! That never worked well, but, she learns under Ryn’s pointed gaze, though she’ll in turn drag her out by the night’s end, to have her pay witness to a new, neon-dosed world that exists in industrial spaces, amongst the aching loudness of music. It’s meant to be an exchange, right? Arm in arm, Alice laughing as they stumble down unknown streets. New York at its finest ; New York at its lowest.

         'i did a lot of wrong i can't make right'