What do? [Tag Ellie] on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Freddie Zauberhexen

November 20, 2020 8:11 PM

What do? [Tag Ellie] by Freddie Zauberhexen

The dancing room was a nice place because dancing was a nice thing. Freddie and Ellie had been meeting here pretty regularly for that very reason. Sometimes they also did homework and lots of times they did makeup and stuff, but mostly they talked and danced and everything was easy. It was easy and that was the best thing because there were hard parts of life and you only really knew when they were all worked out because they became easy.

For now, Freddie was laying upside down on a fancy little couch thingy, his head hanging off the edge as he flipped through the pages of a magazine that was supposed to provide inspiration for the next colors to do in his hair. He'd mostly let it get streaky blond again and he was feeling the need to do something more exciting than that. He'd been having the feeling pretty often recently that he wanted to be more exciting, and there was a reason for it, but he wasn't sure what to do with that reason. It had been something that had weighed on him a lot though . . . who better to talk about it with than one of his two best friends in the world? Especially when the other best friend might just be too close to the problem . . .

"Hey, Ellie," he said, sitting up and putting the magazine aside as he turned to his friend. "Can you me help? I have a Problem," he explained, his accent coming out heavier with the shared word. "What does crush feel like?" He pointed to the magazine, as it was a word he'd learned mostly from such sources. "If I have, what do?"

OOC: Ellie and Freddie's frequent dancing and hang out sessions approved by her author.

22 Freddie Zauberhexen What do? [Tag Ellie] 1452 1 5

Ellie Alperton

November 20, 2020 9:15 PM

Fun and research by Ellie Alperton

Ellie sat criss-cross on the couch. She would have thought this was borderline bad behaviour because her feet were up on the seat (though she had removed her sparkly pink sneakers first) but well… it was hard to feel like she was being informal compared to Freddie. She glanced at him reading upside down, an amused and affectionate smile making its way to her face, before she returned to her own magazine. Whilst she had bought the magazine to replace youtube tutorials on hair styles, she had been quite pleased and surprised to find that it had a politics section. And in the style section, the body types and ethnicities of the people represented were pretty diverse. There were sometimes even AMAB people in the make up sections too. All in all, it seemed like teen fashion magazines had come a long way from her mental image of them.

She glanced up from an interview with a female Indigenous politician when Freddie spoke up, asking for her help.

“Sure,” she nodded. That could be a whole range of things from helping him paint the nails on his dominant hand to explaining what a word meant, and they were all types of help she was happy to provide. His actual request fell more into the latter category, although not quite. It was more what something felt like than what it meant, and Ellie had to admit she wasn’t quite sure. She had read the definitions of course, though those were often a little bit heteronormative. You could, as far as she understood it, have a crush on someone whilst being asexual. Which meant all the definitions around them being someone you wanted to kiss weren’t always super valid. Not that asexuals couldn’t like kissing. But then if you just tried to put it into feelings terms, it felt hard to pick it apart from close friendship. And it was Freddie, which meant a kind of simple black and white definition would be way preferable.

“I think there’s lots of different types of crush, or different ways of feeling one,” she said, “How about we look at it the other way… What makes you think your feelings are a crush?” she asked. And who on? she wondered. Was it her? Was this about to be his way of telling her that? It sounded more like he was asking for her advice than anything though. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. About the idea of Freddie having a crush on her, or on someone who wasn’t her, or about anyone having a crush on anyone else. It was all just sort of… weird. She would like to do the whole romance thing. She was pretty sure that would be nice. She just couldn’t say she had those feelings about anyone yet.

13 Ellie Alperton Fun and research 1456 0 5

Freddie Zauberhexen

November 20, 2020 9:38 PM

I likes that first word. by Freddie Zauberhexen

Ellie was nice, and she was helpful right away. It made sense; Freddie had gotten used to Aladrens being like that sometimes, but especially Ellie. She just liked to help people, especially when it meant knowing things or thinking about things. It was pretty cool. Freddie wasn't like that much so it was nice to have people who made him think in new ways or, better yet, who did a lot of the thinking for him and then helped guide him through the main points. Ellie was nice like that.

Except now she was asking questions and making him think for himself and that was the scary part with stuff like this, because thinking happened in his brain and feelings happened in his chest or in his stomach most of the time, and he didn't know what to do to make them all connect. He flipped around, joining her to sit cross-legged on the couch, although he mostly wanted to lean over sideways and put his head on her shoulder.

"We not talk much," he admitted, blushing and feeling silly. "But when talk, I have much smiles. I feel here," he said, pointing to a spot in his belly that got the most flutters. "Like . . . like . . ." How to describe the feeling? "Like someone punch my stomach, but it is nice," he decided. "I want keep punching." That sounded pretty weird actually. He was pretty sure that punches were hits and also juice. He liked the juice kind, but this felt like the other kind, but in a good way. "Like pillow punch," he decided, since it wasn't a painful sensation exactly.

"But . . . Es ist ein Junge," he said softly. "I not know if he like boy too?"

22 Freddie Zauberhexen I likes that first word. 1452 0 5

Ellie Alperton

November 20, 2020 9:54 PM

I like both by Ellie Alperton

Sometimes, Ellie thought, Freddie’s lack of English made for some really poetic expression. He couldn’t resort to the same old tired cliches to describe things because he didn’t know them. Tiny little good pillow punches in your tummy. And someone giving you much smiles. That gave her much smile, although it was a slightly concerned one because they didn’t know whether this was going to be something to be happy or sad about in the long run.

“That sounds like how the books describe it,” she acknowledged. Well, not exactly. Different words. It sounded like the sensation that the books tried to convey. “I like your words,” she confirmed, instead of trying to highlight the difference.

“He’s younger than you? Or yunga is boy in German?” she clarified, trying to pronounce it as close to how he had. She had let him get to the end of both his sentences, and she had a guess as to which of those hypotheses was correct. She was also aware that it wasn’t the most important point here, though she still wanted to clarify, just to be totally sure. Ellie liked being totally sure of as many things as possible - after all, there were far too many things that didn’t work like that.

“That’s hard to know,” she admitted. “I mean, who people like overall is hard to know. It’s usually something that’s on the inside. But especially with this, because not everyone’s very nice about it, so it’s harder to just ask or talk about.” She supposed that when you had an opposite pair of cis hets, it didn’t mean they necessarily liked each other back, or weren’t going to be mean or rude in how they rejected you. Kids were just all round cruel sometimes. But this felt harder, even though it shouldn’t have been. “You know it’s okay though, right? Whatever anyone else says?” She really hoped Freddie did know that by now, and she was also pretty sure that her saying it wasn’t going to magically cancel out anyone who said anything bad, but she knew from experience that it did help to hear it, especially when you were feeling unsure. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, also holding out an arm so that ‘talk about it’ could include ‘hug.’

13 Ellie Alperton I like both 1456 0 5

Freddie Zauberhexen

November 20, 2020 10:26 PM

That's one reason you're great. by Freddie Zauberhexen

Freddie smiled, glad that Ellie liked his words. It did mean that this was a crush though. A textbook example of a crush. How weird. He hadn't felt like this at all about Ellie when he'd asked her to the dance, although he'd thought she was real pretty and still did. Sometimes he caught himself thinking about WOW how pretty she was, or Anya, but it was different with a crush.

"Junge," he repeated with a smile, "means boy." He was generally encouraging of people trying to say German words, and he appreciated the efforts quite a lot, but he wasn't about to start applauding her effort. After all, people almost never clapped for him, and he used English all the time. As far as he knew, people didn't applaud other people's uses of languages other than their native ones. Or their native ones. People didn't applaud other people for saying words. He paused though as he considered the whole of her question. "But also he is younger than me," he realized, scratching his head because English was weird.

Freddie smiled, appreciating that Ellie accidentally got right to what he meant for lots of reasons. "Everything has much hard to talk about for me," he said, grinning playfully. "But yes, this has extra much hard." He smiled more gratefully and less playfully when her words turned to reassurances. "Thank you," he said, because he couldn't quite say that he knew that it was okay until she said so. "Now I think that yes."

He leaned over to accept hugs when she offered them and squished himself into her arms as best he could, offering his own arms or lap or whatever worked to hug her back. People were weird and had lots of limbs that always had to go someplace or another, but he also didn't want to absolutely smother Ellie with affection, even though affection was basically the best thing ever.

"Do I only . . . go talk and say hi and do talking? Or say I have crushing?" he asked as he considered the opportunity to talk.

22 Freddie Zauberhexen That's one reason you're great. 1452 0 5

Ellie Alperton

November 21, 2020 4:09 AM

Thanks, you're awesome too by Ellie Alperton

It meant boy, but this was also a younger boy. Ellie tried not to begin immediately mentally catalogueing the younger male students (Theo stood out because… well, he was Theo, but then there was Philippe who was also in Freddie’s house, and was Anya’s sibling so he might have had more chances to talk to but he’d said he hadn’t talked to this person a lot but then it wasn’t like she’d spoken extensively to all the Aladren goals a year below her, and then there were also Gabriel and Alexander, or someone who was in their year but with a birthday later than Freddie’s although- and that was probably enough not mentally cataloguing people for now).

However much worry and heartache and stomach-punching (but in a good way) he was experiencing, he was still able to joke, so she took that as a good sign, smiling with him.

“You could do either. Saying it directly is more risky - has more danger,” she clarified. She felt she was getting better at identifying less common vocabulary words, though usually after she’d said them rather than in time to stop herself. “He’ll know how you feel, and you will have to hear what he thinks about it, and it might hurt. Or he might be mean, but I hope not. You can also just spend time. Kind of like you’re a detective,” she added, because she suspected the option with more waiting was not going to appeal much if she put it that way, “You can look for clues. Like, you can try to work out if he might like boys in general, or you specifically. You might also find out you don’t like him that way. Like, if you talk to him a lot, maybe you’d find out you disagree about something important. I always like having more information to help me make my decisions, but some people just like trying and seeing what happens. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way, just different good points and bad points about each way. Does that make sense?” she checked.

13 Ellie Alperton Thanks, you're awesome too 1456 0 5