#(<- their figure will be significantly more difficult to make bc i need to use serval figures to make them plus sculpting things plus i need

[trashcreatyre]

GUYS SHES REAL!!!!

[alacants]

hi! just wanted to say that i was recently looking for lore on the ferru ferri relationship so ur lore post is perfect timing and *chefs kiss* 🤌 i fully support ur unhingedness about them bc i'm getting there too LOL i would love to know more about the facts/lore/thoughts u have on them if u'd like to share ! :D

i actually need to thank you because it was the tags on one of your rbs + talking with another mutual that pushed me to finally finish and post. so thank you!! …and sorry for what's about to happen here. would i like to share more thoughts, YES I WOULD.

(eta: this thing is LONGER than the original and also significantly more unhinged. so like… fair warning.)

first of all here are an assortment of facts/links/quotes that didn't make the final lorepost cut:

about all those times ferru drops by the academy: for example, this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.

then there is this classic roland garros 2011 "choose a player" questionnaire. ferru picked juanki for THREE separate answers: who would you share a nice bottle of wine with, who would you open a bar with, and—wait for it—who would you hit on girls with. 

i mean, i get it. juanki's looks are ideal bait. i see it happen every day on tumblr dot com. but a truly unfortunate number of scenarios do immediately unroll before the mind's eye.

david ferrer's official 2004 atp media biography included "says his most inspirational player is countryman juan carlos ferrero"

juanki's official atp tour dot com bio includes this typically restrained ferru testimonial: "He was and is my best friend on the tour. He's a person that is very close to me... He’s a very humble and noble person." elsewhere: "He's an even better person than he is a player, which is very difficult."

(juanki's bio is a wholeass novella and ferru's is THE most bare bones bullet points. ferru stop being so fucking modest challenge!!)

juanki used to visit javea to play football with ferru and his hometown friends. ferru are you making your girlfriend hang out with your friendsgroup.

select topics from the david ferrer official forums: "stayed with juan carlos before leaving for the davis cup." (juanki himself was not called up.) "went to a nice restaurant with juan carlos and had paella." "spending new year's eve at juan carlos' hotel."

according to juanki's blog they would watch world cup matches together at ferru's house?? cute.

especially cute since juanki is a real madrid fan and ferru is a barcelona fan. (although he's more outspoken about supporting valencia cf.) here is an amazing photo of a clasico watch party in the cincy locker room.

honestly this is just some sponsor promo content but i am dying to know what the inside joke at 1:15 is about. what are you smiling about juan carlos. why is ferru trying not to laugh. answer me.

ok easy stuff out of the way. i'm just going to warn you in advance that there are a cool 3000 words under the cut so uh... brace yourself i guess. don't open on mobile. topics include: 

some Narratives

thoughts on the dynamic (past)

101 reasons to love david ferrer

behind the music: juan carlos ferrero

thoughts on the dynamic (present)

i didn't link more than a few quotes but if you want sources for anything in particular just drop me a reply or an ask.

finally, in addition to Facts and Anecdotes this includes what is by definition rampant speculation because i don't know these guys and never will. we cannot fully know public figures, we are making the shadows on the wall of plato's cave kiss, you know the drill.

the Narratives

first of all. the opposite narratives of their careers are soooooooooo compelling to me. like, juanki was a child prodigy—junior world champion, junior roland garros finalist, bursting onto the pro scene age 19 and winning his first title just a month later. then clinching spain's first davis cup, roland garros sf-sf-final-title, us open final, world number one. all by age 23! expectations were through the ROOF.

…and then 2004 hit and he fell off a cliff and never recovered. (injury, mentality, and incredible bad luck, like oh this man is CURSED cursed. he missed multiple tournaments because of chicken pox.) in september 2003 he was world no. 1; 17 months later he was no. 98.  he never did make it back into the top ten.

meanwhile, ferru was—i mean obviously he was talented. he won stuff in juniors. but no one was talking about him as the future of spanish tennis, yk? he even quit when he was 17… for a week. (lol.) he was inconsistent, vulnerable to meltdowns. he first appeared on most people's radars when he beat agassi in rome in 2003, but then not again until a brief spike in 2007—made the USO semis, made the master's cup final, world no. 5. and then he, too, slumped.

but he did not give up. ever.

he climbed out of the slump and just kept climbing up, and up, and up. the best year of his career was 2012-2013, age thirty—seven titles, masters title, roland garros final, world no. 3. the second-best was 2015, age thirty-two. top 10 for 292 straight weeks, 2010-2016. ferru is like. the ultimate proof of how dogged persistence pays off if you just. keep. trying. ← wow tumblr user alacants is he your favorite or something.

the arcs intersect in ~2008-2010, when they were especially joined at the hip. they're both struggling—juanki dropped out of the top 100 for the first time, ferru's treading water in the low teens and saying he'll never reach the heights of 2007 again—and both right on the verge of a revival. juanki won his first title in 5+ years in 2009, kickstarting an 18 month last-gasp renaissance that included davis cup hero, more titles, more finals, as high as no. 14. for a few weeks. ferru slowly and surely got his feet back under him. (he calls the dc 09 final a turning point.) around those back-to-back finals in 2010, they were hovering right around the same rank—juanki even jumped ahead a couple places. and then juanki's body finally called it quits, and ferru started to really take off. 

so that window is probably the peak of the pre-retirement dynamic. what IS that dynamic, you ask? great question.

the dynamic (past)

first i must note that although i myself led the lore post with the quotes about how they've been friends forever, something i find super cute/funny is that there seems to be an element of historical revisionism at work there? like, ferru didn't come to the academy until he was 17 (1999, the year juanki went pro), and their hometowns aren't THAT close. and ferru spent a couple years in barcelona as well. so although they clearly knew each other from an early age, it's unlikely that they were like. besties. but if you ask them, it's oh yeah we've been friends foreverrrr.

anyway. dynamics, 2002-2012:

mutual security blanket

introvert (situational) 4 introvert (intrinsic)

senpai/kouhai

chronic patient/emotional support rescue dog

fighter/sacrifice

king/lionheart, where the king was overthrown 10 years ago and now they're living in exile and the loyal retainer is earning their keep by the sword—

what do i mean by 90% of this—ok, first, web 1.0 tangent: beginning relatively early in ferru's career there was a fan forum on his official website. ferrru, who in those days was blatantly uncomfortable with the fan/star dynamic, immediately set about trying to like. befriend everyone on it. no fans here, we're all just friends! he would post regular life updates and then hang around in the thread just. chatting. he would remember details like where posters lived and who their other faves were and TEASE them about it. he hosted a christmas dinner in his hometown for anyone who wanted to make the trip. this is obviously unsustainable past a certain point of success but while it lasted it was just. so charming.

so ferru took his self-appointed role as juanki handler very seriously. like, i joke about "xx news and publicity bureau," but ferru really was. he would regularly post updates about juanki's health and recovery progress. he would answer questions. juanki's fans would come to ferru for updates!! couple this with the comments about how they tried to enter the same tournaments and generally traveled together/stayed in the same hotels, along with juanki's incredible run of illness and injury, and it's just like. ferru is juanki's designated spokesperson, his interface with the cold cruel world, his shield arm/support animal.

mutually supportive, but also: ferru clearly gets a lot of validation out of doing things for other people. he is always describing himself in terms such as, "i'm nothing special, i just try to be a really good friend." this is an acts of service guy all the way down.

(you ARE special, ferru, listen to me and juan carlos—)

i do think it was an evolution—ferru especially credits juanki with supporting him in the early days on tour. so i see it as like... friendly face showing the new kid the ropes, giving him advice, and then suddenly they're pulling even, and then even more suddenly ferru is the one equipped to provide the support.

introvert (situational): namely, juanki describes himself as shy, but he loves being the center of attention. he doesn't act out to get it but he very much enjoys it when it comes. (early quote re: what he likes about tennis: "all the people cheering for me in the big stadiums.") (it's also worth noting that he was the youngest child and the much-anticipated only son. lmao.) at the same time the media describe him as reserved, and he visibly dislikes talking about personal stuff. direct quote: "you can see how uncomfortable he is talking about his family…" 

so at first the press calls him "the monk of villena", he lives in the middle of nowhere, his lifestyle isn't flashy*, he's so humble, wow. but alllllso he loves fast cars and throwing parties at his hotel. he befriends other famous spanish athletes like sergio garcia and sete gibernau. and there are some wiiiiiiiiiild pictures from players' parties through the years. 

(*the contemporary gossip was also that maybe he was out having a little more fun than he let on, lol.)

so maybe it's accurate to say he's doesn't like being out of his depth? doesn't like unfamiliar situations. but like—i have seen the records and they do not lie. juan carlos looooves being—sorry—doted upon.

(this btw is why someone dedicating their tournament victory to him in front of god and the city of valencia and everyone was probably what you could call an effective tactic.) 

meanwhile ferru's favorite hobby is READING. he is famous for always having a book in the locker room. "i can get through 3 books in a 2 week tournament and i keep every book i read." (← man who ebooks were invented for.) his idea of a perfect day is going to the beach in his hometown ("the best beach in the world") with his family and his friends and then having paella. he's a cat person. he's perfect? SORRY. I'M TRYING SO HARD TO BE NORMAL. anyway genuinely think this is the person you would find in the corner at a party befriending the host's cat.

—ok fuck normal i need to talk about ferru some more.

some very normal thoughts about david ferrer

as a player ferru had uhhhhh well maybe it was an inferiority complex or maybe it was a self-defense strategy playing in the big four era or maybe he was just unbelievably hard on himself. but for a long time he was out there saying stuff like, i'm the worst player in the top hundred. i'm the worst player in the top ten.

the thing is. it's impossible to talk about ferru without bringing up the closet story. you can read it here. c. 2007 this was reported as like, a humorous character-building anecdote????? because ferru brushed it off ("once in there i didn't think much" <- bad sign!!!) and said things like "i learned everything from him, about tennis and how to be a person." ok ferru, but what if you learned the wrong things. 

i mean, what do i know. i don't know any of these people, i'm (mostly) not here to pseudo-psychoanalyze. i just don't think it's UNrelated that ferru explicitly compared their eventual coaching split to a breakup and later implied that he should have cut the cord earlier but couldn't bring himself to do it. or that afterwards he started going to therapy, "personal, not sport," and says he wishes he'd started when he was 20. 

he stayed with that coach until he was 31 btw. there is loyal and then there is whatever the hell this is.

how do you reconcile this with today's happy and well-adjusted davis cup captain? many possibilities, such as his very own family (they're so cute, they are so cute) and 20 years of personal growth. also probably the therapy. and tbf by the end of the career he'd already gotten a lot better about the self-deprecation. but he still has a worldview that is uh refreshing verging on eye-watering. he's repeatedly said that being a professional athlete doesn't make you particularly special or interesting. asked whether as a known reader he's thinking about writing a memoir: "I'm not that important and I don’t believe I can contribute that much to the society… there are so many people that can contribute much more." ← ferru STOP.

(speaking of the adorable family: although this post is mainly about silly shipping nonsense and not irl romantic relationships i DO think it's instructive that ferru appears to have dated exactly two (2) women in the entirety of his adult life. one gf age 17-26, one age 27-present. this man's natural mode is Devotion.)

anyway my main point here is that it probably felt real good to have someone on tour in his corner. someone who hadn't ever locked him in a closet.

(there is a lot more to unpack about ferru but if you're sitting here like "but what about uso 2008" or whatever trust me it's solely for the sake of not making this insanely long post EVEN LONGER and i am happy to share my thoughts upon request lol.)

some very normal thoughts about juan carlos ferrero 

IN CONTRAST... one of the funniest things about revisiting old press is constantly hearing juan carlos ferrero described as "humble" when my man has a VERY healthy opinion of himself. this isn't a bad thing. it's arguably better than calling yourself the worst player in the top one hundred. it is however a problem when the person you feel threatened by is. rafa nadal. 

i initially had an 800 word tangent here that has now been exiled to its own post. the short version of this is juanki got dropped in favor of rafa in the 2004 davis cup final and never forgot it, lol. a number of other perceived sins were committed including 1) rome 2008 media coverage 2) dc 2009 president's speech 3) valencia open 2013, how dare rafa spurn juanki's beloved child tournament. but really it was that rafa became who juanki was supposed to be. :(

juanki's got a lot of pride! another example: madrid master's 2008. yet again juanki is in bad shape. at no. 44 he just missed the main draw. so he asked for a wild card… and didn't get one. that was genuinely an insult considering he was the 2003 champion and that wc #3 went to (consults notes) fabio fognini, ranked 73. the spanish sports media were up in arms. juanki said he was so insulted that even if they offered him a spot he wouldn't take it.

…so when carlos moya pulled out they didn't waste their time. "he said he didn't want it so we gave it to someone else." oh, juanki.

(ferru's measured thoughts on this decision btw: "The absence of Juan Carlos Ferrero is outrageous and insane. This only happens in Spain. It's a huge tragedy and, above all, an injustice for a player like him, who's been number one in the world and previously won this tournament.")

so, juanki: proud, outspoken when he's angry, reserved when he's not. to the extent that when he started saying ferru was his best friend on circuit his fans were like wait. what. this is brand-new information. 

you will notice that throughout this post there are a Lot of heart-on-sleeve quotes from ferru, and fewer from juanki. what happens is that when you don't talk about your feelings, they explode without warning in Grand Gestures. juanki LOVES a Grand Gesture. ferrufest 2k19 is the most notable but far from only instance, see also organizing special surprises at their special tournament. (the open letter is somewhere in the middle, i would be fascinated to know if he would have been that forthcoming if asked point blank. i mean, maybe so!!!! personal growth!!!)

sidenote, but imo you can see the exact same dichotomy at work with juanki and carlos, where he goes out of his way to reject the we're-like-family premise and then acts the exact opposite. ("i leave the father thing to his actual father." ok juan carlos.) he used to do the same thing wrt his own coach since childhood, "i wouldn't call him a father figure, that would be weird…" this is how you end up naming things after people and bursting into tears in public! ← the fact that he's a capital-c Crier makes it even more obvious.

you will ALSO notice that despite that 7-2 h2h juanki sure never had any problem with ferru. lol. the appeal presumably goes without saying of a friend who is shouldering his way in among the ~big four and STILL out here in the year of our lord 2009 saying things like, “[Ferrero] is one of the best players in history on clay… I think he can win Roland Garros again. Nadal and Federer will be there but Juan Carlos will be right there behind them. Why not?"

(fwiw i think all of this is very like… normal and human. it's why it's so fun to put him under a microscope.)

and what is also true is that no matter how much you think juanki's life is the academy, it's more than that. he is the academy. like it was founded specifically for him (well, his cohort of young players, of which he was far and away the most promising), and his coach included him in conversations about the Vision and the long-term goals from day one. he lived there with a ROOMMATE for years and years after going pro, despite owning like… a nice house in the city of valencia. (← maybe also a reason he didn't get married until well after retirement lmao.) so when he starts naming parts of the academy after you... it's a Big Deal.

—incidentally it must be comforting to have a ready-made identity on hand when "generational spanish tennis talent" turns out to go. not the way you thought it would.

hm not doing a great job avoiding the pseudo-psychoanalysis, am i. well. i tried.

thoughts on the dynamic (present)

dynamics, 2024:

will-they-won't-they x 20 years

(life) partners

✨✨✨ co-parents ✨✨✨

that one is so overwhelmingly dominant it sort of overshadows everything else. lmao.

king/lionheart STILL only now the one-time king has returned from exile to be an advisor to the new prince—

tbh now that they are both retired and both have their own families they are a little less codependent. normal best friends, i almost said, before remembering the fucking portrait commission. do you think that's hanging up in ferru's house???? i ask myself this every day.

what do i think has changed? ferru is (wonderfully) much less self-effacing. juanki successfully reinvented himself as a top coach. after juanki retired i think they finally started to relate as… i'm not saying they weren't equals before that but maybe to some people (ferru) it didn't feel like they were. and ferru is clearly in his element as dc captain, where his job is literally to be the entire team's emotional support dog. emotional support pack leader? once again: who needs hierarchy, we're all friends here. (he gave coaching a brief shot but it didn't stick—this my personal theory as to why. based on nothing other than intuition lol.)

hm this section is suspiciously resembling "ferru: the postscript." well we all see a lot of juanki, he's doing great lol. if anything i think having ferru around is good for him, keeps him from getting too martyred. every time ferru and carlitos TEAM UP to tease juanki is jfkldajf;l so delightful. (to modestly quote my own tag, "just two dogs yapping at their favorite cat.")

but shipping nonsense aside: i genuinely think it is really lovely and heart-warming to see two people who clearly mean so much to each other and are still such a big part of each other's lives after so long—even/especially despite the changes. some people grow apart. some people grow together. :)

and if you want to throw in twenty years of pining SO MUCH THE BETTER

--

christ that is. so much text. uhhhh hopefully this was informative/entertaining/morbidly fascinating, and everyone who reads it will feel mysteriously compelled to start including ferruero subplots in their sincaraz fic. :D?? :D????

you have SO many options. practically married. one-sided pining for many years. (whooo in this post sounds like they would do that.) MUTUAL pining for many years. practically married but haven't realized it. tour arrangement but they caught feelings. second-chance romance years after a youthful failed fling. the parent trap, starring carlitos alcaraz— [curtain falls as i am forcibly dragged from the stage]

[obsessioncollector]

something i find so frustrating and infuriating is how large tech companies overwhelmingly ignore or half-ass assistive technology. there is SO much potential to make life significantly easier for disabled people with technology and yet these companies just don't put the effort in! i have a very close relationship with my grandmother, who has low vision, and being able to text the family with siri (and have our texts read to her) and listen to audiobooks through apps is genuinely a game-changer for her—she's able to do the things she always did before her vision deteriorated much more conveniently than even ten years ago. and YET!! siri often doesn't read a whole text chain (ex. if my mom texts to a group text and then i text to it) and does a terrible job of transcribing my gram's speech. if she doesn't hear her cell phone ring, she doesn't realize she has a call (unless we leave a message) bc her phone only tells her visually about missed calls. audible, libby, and the podcast apps we use are very difficult to navigate for her, so my mom and dad have to set books up for her. and if anything it's getting worse, because apple and amazon both try to push their own products and make it less convenient to access competitors (ex. pushing apple music or amazon music over spotify.) my grandmother is still able to use this technology bc she lives very close to my family and we help her, but so many people are isolated and wouldn't be able to operate these apps without assistance.

and what really gets me is that these don't seem like difficult improvements to make! there is absolutely no way that apple doesn't have the resources to research how their products can be more effective for disabled users, but even though there are accessibility options in the settings, it seems like they haven't worked in-depth to figure out what users actually need. (obv this isn't limited to apple, just mentioning them bc i've tried to use their producs w my gram.) tech companies realized that developing things like siri, alexa, audible, etc to be conveniences for abled people is more profitable than developing them to provide vital assistance for disabled people. none of this is surprising of course, capitalism is inherently hostile towards disabled people, but it really gets to me bc there is so much untapped potential for these technologies to be really helpful.

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

four week review/pre-up nonsense:

♡ being an objectively kind person is always easier while disassociating, but it does always raise the question of whether it makes it more or less real

(vs whether being kind being difficult makes it more or less real)

(vs whether any of this is relevant to each other)

♡ the intrusive thoughts have not stopped (or like. lessened. lmao) but they have been easier to stop from spiraling+recognize the starts of spiraling.

this is likely (&unfortunately) a sign that upping the dosage is the right move.

♡ exactly half the time i think i'm actually more creative because i'm slightly more likely to actually complete my ideas (vs performance anxiety eating me alive)

&half the time i am in fact positive that my creativity is ruined&i'll never recover&it will always be a choice between madness&being boring (a choice i will fail at every time which is unfortunate but also not surprising bc its mostly on purpose)

♡ my memory is perhaps better than its ever been, as is my awareness of my actions.

will continue to monitor whether this is acceptable, because if it continues to be a hindrance, it isn't, lmao.

remembering now why i've spent large portions of my life running from my own memories. am i really expected to process these things? what a waste of time.

♡ my view on forgiveness has not changed at all, lmao, so the worst it can be is a personality defect, not a mental illness, as far as i'm concerned, lmao.

♡ my anger issues have not gotten better but they have gotten easier to control+manage. i feel less like a rabid dog. more... rabid bunny. much easier to cage&much fluffier to look at when detached.

this feels acceptable, but only if not directly reliant upon the disassociation. everything is always toned down with the disassociation, lmao, that isn't a decent tradeoff.

♡ have been intaking way too much yandere media as of late. most significant passive sign for concern in regards to my mental+emotional state sliding backwards, lmao.

♡ perfection. perfection. perfection. i. need. to. be. perfect.

most significant active sign for concern in regards to my mental+emotional state sliding backwards, lmao.

♡ no sudden spike in suicidal tendencies, including/especially dangerous situations.

definitive win.

♡ seeing as most/all of my confidence comes from defiance (most aptly demonstrated by the fact that it primarily appeared right around deciding to stay out to keep from being outted), slightly to the left of my body makes that significantly easier to pull off.

value also debatable. keeping my head up while walking down the street being easier is useful, but also not worth the disassociation tradeoff, &also much more likely to be reliant on it, lmao.

♡ remembering (not that i ever really forgot lmao) why strong feelings&passion, of virtually any sort, have been my most consistent and damning drugs for virtually the whole of my life. def my whole adulthood.

i have spent all day fucking with the newly bloodied hole in my head because i don't how to keep myself from feeling if feeling is an option, lmao. this is the poetic way of saying i have no self control.

♡ clearly, my ability to romanticize total fucking nonsense is still here. yet another personality defect at worst, lmao.

♡ the idea of an oncologist who specializes in gastric cancers&disordered eating still makes me nauseous as all fuck, but it no longer makes my vision blur with the heart palpitations.

definitive win.

♡ i think i'm harder on myself when i disassociate to any degree. or maybe thinking that in general is giving myself too much credit. i feel a little like dr. manhattan while he reflects on time from outside of it. is this proof that i hate myself or proof that i think too highly of myself?

the meds were supposed to make the mania happen less, not make it harder for me to figure out if it's going on. will continue to monitor-- like that'll make it any easier.

♡ i get a minimum of ~350 calories a day from actual food&not only juice now because the idea of lapsing on my meds&rebounding terrifies me, lmao. i can hate myself enough at any given moment to let my anxiety make me starve, but not nearly enough to make myself go through that. lmao.

definitive win.

♡ at least half of my doing this right now is to avoid having to sleep.

the meds were supposed to make sleep easier. this has been decidedly untrue.

♡ the taste of blood in my mouth is such a regular occurrence that i didn't notice it at all during the procedure or at any point after today.

this kind of stupid observation is exactly why disassociation is bullshit, actually, &i would rather feel than not. anything. feel anything. than not.

♡ i wonder how much of this is actually gonna make it into my appointment, lmao. i'm positive i can edit most of this into roughly acceptable for a learned doctor. maybe not the yandere thing or the confidence thing, but probably at least ~75%.

♡ believe it or not (&i don't i think), the disassociation issue with these meds has actually been getting a little better. i don't know if this is optimism (cause: obvious) or masochism (cause: fretting over the upped dosage probably resetting it)

♡ i owe the goddamn red string everything for never abandoning me along the way, goddammit, so i guess there's no getting around any of this if i ever expect to be half way stable enough to pay it all back.

every single day i wish i didn't believe in destinies or needing to be worthy of them, good or bad, lmao.

[thedeviljudges]

It’s not that it’s difficult writing character analysis for Yohan bc I keep seeing ppl complain that we’re not doing enough of it objectively.

But consider this: Yohan isn’t just a layered character. He spells himself out to a T and doesn’t try to hide who he is. It’s not that we can’t analyze him, but he’s so clear-cut with his intentions that you’re given everything you need to understand him so concisely without really needing to dissect him further. Is it fun to do that? Yes, but considering this—

As @highflyerwings has pointed out so many times, Yohan is the one consistent characters who has been truthful - has he omitted truths and let people come to their own conclusions? Yes, he has, but that’s different than point-blank lying. He’s never hidden his intentions; I mean hell, he literally told Gaon’s professor in episode 12 exactly who he was and what he was doing when confronted:

See, the thing about Yohan is that he knows how to manipulate words. When the professor was accusing him of corrupting Gaon, he did not admit to it, but omitted it by transferring partial blame on the professor, telling him that he was the reason Gaon got involved in the first place - if he hadn’t told Gaon to spy (as if that’s even honest in and of itself, lol) on Yohan, the associate judge never would’ve found himself in the situation he was in (and an assumed situation because Soohyun didn’t bother asking what actually happened and relayed that back to the professor).

I’m sure there are other poignant moments I’m missing that I could include throughout the show - such as the priest Gaon spoke with assuming kid!Yohan was weird when it turns out Gaon posed the question about Yohan just being lonely and wanting to play with the other kids - but my point here is that yes, we can break down a character analysis for Yohan, but what’s genius about his creation is that he is the most obvious, most exposed character out of everyone. His intentions from the start are clear, and the only thing that is still uncertain is exactly what happened with Isaac and the fire - but even then just from the flashbacks we’ve seen that there’s been omitted parts, which is consistent with his characterization. Was his story an actual lie? Or did he just manipulate his words again? We’ve yet to find out.

But this is also one of the points of his character. Yohan makes no mistake about who he is and what he is. In fact, he goes so far to call himself a monster because he knows what he does and yet chooses to do it anyway. His tactics may not necessarily be Sunah level; it seems he still lives by some amount of personal moral code (even if it is a logical, strategic understanding that x, y and z will get him a negative response, so he doesn’t do it), but he is no stranger to introspection and self-justification based on how he grew up.

And that’s also one of the points of his character because people only see what’s in front of them and what they want to see - Yohan may not be straightforward with saying his exact intentions in a factual, direct sentence, but everything about him from his words, thought process and actions all paint a very clear picture that doesn’t need spelling out.

Soohyun and the professor and two examples of characters that only see what’s in front of them. They use their confirmation bias (”the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand”) to ressasure themselves Yohan’s a monster.

An example of that is the professor blaming Yohan for putting him in the hospital and Gaon defending Yohan by telling him it couldn’t be possible. Instead of listening to Gaon, the professor had his mind made up.

Instead of asking Gaon what happened with the minister, the professor assumed Yohan had corrupted him and got him into this mess, to which Yohan asks the professor:

And it’s because they see what’s in front of them and they only see what they want to see. To some extent, Gaon was the same until Yohan showed him how detrimental assuming can be, that you must actually look and pay attention to more than what’s in front of you because you’ll miss the bigger picture if you don’t.

Yohan is significantly more transparent than anyone else on the show has been. They’ve just chosen not to see him for who he really is - which is well intentioned, even if a little misguided.

The irony is not lost on me when I see posts and/or comments about Yohan and our lack of awareness for who he is, how we’re uwu towards him and dismiss his actions and baby him. He’s already spelled it out for us; half the work’s already been done for us, and there’s no mistaking it. So, I don’t have to spend countless hours trying to figure him out. Instead, I can spend my time coddling him because I can, lmao.

[mintseesaw]

northeast monsoon

pairing: god!jungkook x goddess!reader genre: fantasy, smut, slight angst, soulmate!au word count: 3.7k warnings: mature content, unprotected sex, brief mentions of the character’s health conditions, cursed!reader, son of the deity jungkook // 18+ summary: Jungkook, not out of ordinary, decided to celebrate his 24th birthday in his favorite place on earth, the closest place to heaven—on a mountain summit. However, even before he reaches the highest peak of the mountain range, he was trapped, enthralled, and coincidentally found his true nature.

note: the idea occurred to me earlier while i was at work yesterday used jk’s birthday as an excuse to pursue it and ignore my 36433 wips and drabble requests; short, steamy and a literal filth bc it’s unedited

Jungkook was lost.

His birthday seems to carry the bad luck today. His very first misfortune in his two year experience of mountain hiking. The moment he stepped foot on the soil of mountain range marks the start of a weird feeling sitting at the pit of his something. That he refused to acknowledge  because nothing bad happened to him before.

When they visited the homes of the natives on the foothill of the mountain to pay respect as inhabitants of the ancestral domain, the chieftain’s storytelling of the mountain’s cursed guardian sounded incredulous. He didn’t take it seriously nor think of it as a warning. He didn’t understand why the indigenous leader felt the need to tell them a folklore causing a delay on their activity.

Amongst the group of civilian trekkers, he was the only one who skipped the supposed ritual of spitting to the soiled ground and drawing a cross on foot on the same spot before entering the premises passed the small village. It was said to reverse the effect of any potential supernatural force against them.

Approximately 45 minutes after they started their trail onto the summit, he caught a swarm of fireflies flocking on a trunk of a humongous tree, seemingly in its hundred years of existence or more. But it wasn’t the insects that prompted him to stop and admire the view. It was the rare glow surrounding the tree that did. In his great fascination, he even loudly shared his discovery to the group. Their disinterest to the majestic tree dismayed him. Are they blind or something? It’s not everyday that they get to admire such beauty. For a solid few minutes, he was left dazed, stunned to see a tree before his eyes just like the one he had seen recently in a fantasy drama where there existed witchcraft and wizardry.

He’s not dreaming, is he?

When he finally snapped out of his reverie, the group was no longer in sight, leaving him there standing alone. At least, there’s a trace of footprints he could use to follow their tracks.

In silence, Jungkook couldn’t help but think back of the past, and the last bit memory he remembers when he woke up in a hospital bed with no recollection of his identity.

Four years ago, he was met with a major car accident with its impact resulting to hundreds of stitches in his chest, the only hideous scar he obtained after he was said to be hospitalized for a month. He not only developed a heart condition but was also diagnosed with a retrograde amnesia. He believes that his inability to recall his past memory marked the start of his vivid dreams occurring every night. Still, he was lucky enough to have his body remain in the best condition despite the lasting emotional and physiological damages it left him.

The endless dreams of mountains and forests led him to discover his fondness in scenery and the constant sense of emptiness becoming difficult to ignore. His newly found obsession with nature was enough to convince himself to start trekking, particularly mountains. Strange enough, he found the solitary in mountain peaks, of the scenery, and the cold climate in summits.  He found a temporary peace in the closest place to heaven from the constant ache that each of his bizarre dreams left his heart bruising.

It was not only his dreams that he finds peculiar. Although his mother had reminded him numerous times that it was his adolescent self who developed a liking to tattoos, he didn’t know what occurred to him in his teens to consider inking his body with unrecognizable symbols that even with a brief searching in google couldn't provide him what the underlying significance each mark carries.

Few minutes later, he found himself stopping at the same spot where he had taken his time admiring the tree. He didn’t know how it happened when he was only following the remnants of the collective footpath on the ground. If he perceived the situation odd, he didn’t acknowledge it until the third time he came back on the same spot, same view.

The fact that he’s always has this great sense of remembering directions whether it be in the road or in mountains, makes the situation even weirder. For the nth time, he took a glance at his wristwatch. A groan resonated through the eerie silence in the midst of the forest. He’s been walking in circles for almost two hours now.

The group might have been halfway through the summit at this point. The trail takes about 4-5 hours and he’s far behind them now. With a heavy heart, he decided to return back to the foothill.

The sun is at its highest peak above the sky, amplifying the dryness of his mouth from the heat of noon. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to drink the remaining content in his flask.

The gust of wind brought by the monsoon is somehow mixing up his sense of direction. Some may find it strange, but he could feel the presence of wind oddly stronger than other human beings. Out of the ordinary, he could sense where the wind came from just by the mere blow of breeze passed his skin. Right now, he couldn’t put his extraordinary ability into good use because even with his attempt to go back down, he keeps returning to the same location.

Jungkook is lost. Somewhat, he’s trapped.

Now more than ever, he’s almost convinced some being invisible to the naked eye is playing him around. Jungkook lowered his rucksack on the ground, and started pacing back and forth as he tried to figure out how he’ll reverse the imaginary spell.

Even with the time passing by, the fireflies remained there, swimming around the trunk like they own it. If he’s trapped, someone or something might be responsible for this. Whether or not these stupid supernatural creatures are true, he needs to get out of here.

His foot stopped mid-step and fixated his glare at the old tree. What else would prove the peculiarity of the situation other than the mythical personified before his eyes.

“Come on, take back whatever spell you’ve casted on me. I’m not gonna destroy your home. This is an order, you devious creature.” Jungkook reprimands sarcastically as if the poor, ginormous tree can understand him in the human language.

There was nothing significantly remarkable about it if not only for the fairy dust-like glimmers surrounding it.

However, to his surprise, he suddenly hears the rustles of the leaves and cracks of branches echo through the stillness in the air as they pliantly bend over. He could feel the shiver run through his spine as he gathered what was happening to the tree. It is bending, its crown slightly crouched in front of him as if it was bowing down.

Jungkook staggers back in utter astonishment.

What the fuck is this sorcery? Is he dreaming?

He blinks furiously, trying to deduce the realness of the scene in front of him.

Soon after, he felt another surge of force-like brush of the wind against his skin, kindling tingles and goosebumps to appear on his skin. Dust swirls like a whirlpool in the air as weightless dead leaves harshly dance above the ground before they fall back down. To make things more incredulously mad, out of nowhere, a blinding form comes into sight near the trunk.

As its gleam dies down, the next thing his eyes have captured is the most enchanting being he has ever seen in his life.

A goddess.

She leans forward, her shimmering palm rubbing up and down on the rough texture of the trunk, as if the bewitching creature is consoling the seemingly submissive native species. Whether or not the goddess is upraising its spirit, he couldn’t be sure.

In quiet amazement, he watches the beauty just a few meters away from him while his presence remains hidden. Long silky hair in beautiful waves flowing with its end touching her lower back. It’s shade resembles that of the dead leaves with seemingly fresh petals and leaves decorated as accessories on her hair. Almost brandishing her as a forest goddess. With her side facing his front, Jungkook could clearly see the swell of her breasts with her thick locks keeping her peaks hidden like an enthusing mystery.

As if abiding by whatever the goddess had said, the crouched tree slowly returns back to its natural form. And just as the goddess turns her back at him, ready to vanish into the thin air, he scurried forward.

“Wait!” Jungkook shouts, hurriedly calling their attention despite hardly recovering from the peculiarity of the scene in front of him.

You only responded with a side glance, just enough to see him in your peripheral vision.

Jungkook took it as his cue to garner more of your attention, “You’re a goddess?” He says with his tone clearly filled in awe.

As if his naive question took you by surprise, you whirled around. When you did, it was like there was an invisible electrifying sensation that struck him the moment your eyes landed on him. The tremor of sparks immediately radiating in his body.

She’s such an exquisite sight, Jungkook gawked. Cting you as his example, none of the illustrations he’d seen on the internet had given justice just how beautiful goddesses are in real life. In real life! 

When you spoke for the first time since you appeared in his vision, he was quickly snapped out of daze.

“You can see me? How… you mortals do not have the ability to see us.” You say breathlessly, bewildered to have met the eyes of a mortal for the first time since time immemorial. No living mortal can and will see you, unless you have opted to be seen.

Jungkook’s mouth parted. You said no affirmation. Yet, the way you addressed him as a mortal only meant one thing.

“You’re really a goddess!” He exclaims, still stunned.

“Go back to the land. The fairies will guide you the way.” You said with a simple directness, having no intention to unravel the mystery of his identity and why he seemed to carry power in him. Just as you uttered those words, the fairies appeared from the crown of the tree.

“No, wait! I’m not gonna leave until you answer my questions.”

Your head shook and with firm persistence, you say, “I am no guardian of a mortal like you. Leave the mountain before another fairy casts a spell on you. If that happens, you will never return to your home.”

Jungkook held his arms out. “I’m not here to harm anyone or anything.”

As the wind continues to swirl around the two of you, the long locks of your hair resting over your chest continue to sway pliantly in the wind’s direction.

At some point, Jungkook caught a vaguely familiar mark decorated on your skin just below your shoulder blade. On the same spot of one of his marks which mirrors yours.

“I am the guardian of this shelter and supernatural beings that live here. I cannot fill your curiosity nor have the power to keep you safe against them.”

Jungkook could perfectly hear you, but his focus had zeroed in to your shoulder. To see the exact resemblance of his mark on yours is a different story. You’re wrong, definitely wrong because you are the answer to his dreams.

Jungkook suddenly peels off his waterproof jacket while dragging his feet toward your direction.

The swell of your breasts entice him almost too painfully that his cock twitches from the mere sight of your glowing skin in complete nudity. As if they were inviting his palms to touch them. And even with your orbs glinting with subtle surprise, your face remained expressionless.

Why, he finds it fascinating. You have bewitched him!

Your confusion only lasted for a couple seconds until the last layer of fabric was taken off of his upper body. But it was replaced by a thunder striking discovery, gasping as your eyes landed on the flesh-colored, slit-like scar on his chest similar to that of the Deity’s symbol. Lightning bolt.

Jungkook met your eyes, thinking you’ve already recognized the identical marking on his skin.

When he parts his mouth to speak, you beat him to it.

“You’re not a mortal.” You revealed, still astounded.

“W-What?” Jungkook stopped in his tracks.

It couldn’t possibly be. The children of the Supreme Deity are no mortals. The God of the sea, the Ruler of the stars and moon, the Owner of the soon, the twin Gods of love and beauty, the Prince of the earth and the deity’s successor, and the missing guardian of the wind have no mortal blood. That you’re certain of. But the missing god... does it mean he’s the missing guardian of the wind?

Your gaze sifts through the generous amount of inks on his arms where the secrets of his power lie beneath the layer of the markings. The God of love have revealed this to you once several years when you dared question the reason why his body is decorated of inks, unlike other gods you have seen.

When your eyes shifted upward to his shoulder blade, you felt your heart tightens in an almost unbearable grip for the first time since the Deity has cursed you.

“Soulmate,” you reveal for the second time.

Jungkook’s eyes went round. “S-Soulmate?” He stutters.

You reach out and touch the ink of your bond on his skin. And just like that, Jungkook visibly shudders at the minimal contact.

Your eyes glossy from moisture. “I’ve been waiting for you.” You confessed.

He took one bold step forward, cupping your elegant face in his palms.

“Heavens, you’re so beautiful. How could I possibly believe that I’m rewarded with a soulmate like you? Tell me, I’m not dreaming.” He says with wonder glinting in his eyes.

He inches his face closer until your noses are touching. “If I only knew you’re waiting for me, I should’ve come here sooner when I began having those weird dreams. Fuck, let me kiss you, princess.” He groans, unable to wrap his head around with the revelation. He still has yet to ask what you meant when you said he’s not a mortal, but right now, he doesn’t care what his true identity is.

He needs to taste you.

And so he did, capturing your mouth in a flash, and taking your breath away as he pushes his tongue into the caverns of your mouth.

“So sweet,” he murmurs against your mouth. “You taste so sweet, princess.”

But the moment was cut short as he felt a searing pain in his chest. He jerks back as his body contorts in agony.

Jungkook hisses as the pain all too quickly rushes in his blood, the sensation numbing his entire body. With his eyes clenched tightly shut, he failed to witness the glow beginning to exude from each ink on his arms, the most vibrant glimmer coming from the mark on his chest that symbolizes his birthright.

His power is trying to rouse back through his mortal senses. Your glimmering fingers cautiously graze the bond on his skin, exploring the effect of your touch to him. 

The tingles that radiate through his veins left him whimpering and wanting more, more of it to distract him from the unbearable ache.

“Please touch me…” He writhes, sharply drawing a breath in and out.

You lower your head and let your mouth touch the bond. A ripple of tingles slither through him almost instantly, involuntarily making him shiver from the newfound sensation. He could feel the rush of blood going straight to his cock inside his pants. He needs more.

As if you heard his silent pleas, your tongue darts out of your mouth, swirling around the spot to soothe his aches. Jungkook’s hands curl over your back, closing the distance between your bodies, leaving no way for him to not feel your breasts on his chest. In daze, he looked heavenward, mouth parted back as gasps proceeded to stumble out of his mouth deliriously. With the pain drowned by the pleasure that your sensual licks carry, he tears your mouth off of his skin just to crash his mouth to yours in a searing kiss.

He lets his instincts rule him out, and there’s one thing he wants more than anything else than to permanently mark your body his, to seal the bond that will eternally link your souls together.

“I need you so much, Princess. Tell me you want this, too. Otherwise I’ll leave and will never bother you, again.” He says in a whisper against the corner of your mouth.

The harmless threat of his words stirs alarm in you, giving him the answer he wants to hear almost instantaneously. “I’m yours, please have me. Do as you wish to my body.”

He groans, loving the way you call him yours. “Jungkook,” he whispers against the plump skin of your glowing cheek, “Say it. Say my name, Princess.” He demands softly.

“Jungkook,” you utter breathlessly.

His chest vibrated as the growl rang through the emptiness of the forest. “Fuck, you’re so perfect, my goddess.”

Jungkook sweeps you off in his arms, and with a few, calculated steps, he laid you over his thrown jacket on the ground. Another groan tears out of him just as he parted your legs, with your bare, leaking center exposed right before his hooded eyes.

Unceremoniously, he braced himself on top of you, sucking the raven mark on your skin. His fully aroused member is freed with a pop of his button and a one forceful pull of the waistband of his trousers.

He wasted no more passing second and impulsively align the red tip of his mad cock on your entrance. With a calculated thrust of his hips, he sinks his member to your warm tightness, releasing a heavy sigh in relief as the heat of your hole equally envelops all throughout his body despite the chills brought by the gust of the wind.

Jungkook catches one of your peaks with his mouth as you get lost to the heat of the intimacy. He didn’t know if goddesses such as his enchanting soulmate can conceive like mortals do or if there are other methods to reproduce but it’s never a waste of his fluid to try and test the theory. After all, if your words bear truth, he may not be a human like what he actually thought he was.

Your heavenly mewls coax him to penetrate in you deeper, until your cries have intensified and your body writhes helplessly beneath him.

With each roll of his hips colliding against your pelvis, your delightful cries have become more profound, unrestrained, enough to flare warmth right straight to his abdomen. Jungkook rests his forehead just below your temple, murmuring sweet confessions to you, the owner of his soul and inevitably soon, his heart.

He guided your legs around his waist, giving him the access to ruthlessly pound into you deeper. And then something snaps out from him.

All the gentleness of his movements have evolved into something more carnal—feral, manifesting the strength of his true nature.

God of the wind, son of the Supreme Deity. The longer his body connects with your immortal form, the luminescence emitting on his skin becoming more vivid.

“Jungkook!” Another scream tears out of you. Tears cascading from your eyes from both pain and pleasure.

With his godly powers spurring during the intimate joining of your bodies, his strength turns more powerful that no human would possibly ever survive from. You could never match the godliness of a deity’s son, but your supernatural strength was able to neutralize the surge of his energy and entwines the intensity with yours.

The God of the wind continues to rock you closer and closer to the end, with the thought of his future with you, you carrying his children, you and no one else.

He senses the buildup tension in your stomach with your head tossing restlessly from side to side.

And in a suck of your bond with his mouth and a flick of your bud in your center, you exploded so powerfully around his cock. Jungkook chases his end while the rush of your euphoria continues to spark in your veins, giving your body an exceptional glow.

He reaches the peak of pleasure with an animalistic growl reverberating on his chest, locking your hips immobile to make sure your walls greedily take in every drop of his cum. He’d want to breed you with his children.

“My sweet goddess, you’re amazing.” He praises, nuzzling on the thick, wavy locks of your hair.

Jungkook didn’t miss the squeeze of your palm on his waist. He let your wandering hands trace the length of his body. But he pulls away when you spoke.

“Will you leave me after this?” There is sadness hinted at the tone of your voice.

He tilted your chin up with his fingers, studying your features. “Of course not, how can you say that?”

You smile weakly, the grief dancing in your eyes making his chest tightens. “I’m not as powerful as you are. You are the son of the deity, you can… reject our bond and choose any goddess as you wish. Whereas, I only have one eternal soulmate and that’s you. But…”

Even with the truth unraveling right before him, he could only focus on your grief. Why is someone as perfect as you hold so much moroseness in your heart?

“But?”

“This mountain is my world. I’m eternally cursed to guard this shelter.” Your lips quiver in fear. His thumb grazes your lower lip as his arm tightens over your back. The tale told by the chieftain crosses his mind. The cursed guardian is you.

“Oh princess, do you think anything else will convince me to live without you in my life? I’ll be wherever you need me to be. Goddess or not, I will never let you out of my sight forever.” He vows, sealing the promise of eternity with a power-clashing kiss.

mintseesaw © 2020

[superphlyduskull]

some core and halfa physiology thoughts

found a page of notes from when i thought i was gonna rewatch dp (apparently i got three episodes in before i realized i just couldn't do it by myself lmao) and i found some interesting thoughts i had on how halfas work!

also look at the single note i took from one of a kind tho dfkhsldfk

One of a Kind

* tucker and danny snuggle…

also might be watching dp with my friends tomorrow so maybehaps ill take more notes when i do that!

ANYWAY

this post got away from me, so im gonna put the rest under the cut in case it’s a bit long lmao

now to the meat of this post!

so i surprised myself by having written this. i have zero memory of it:

* Cores: concentrated ball of ectoplasm inside a ghost, similar to a heart but more difficult to destroy or manipulate. has organelles as well, and there are some that are the same across all ghosts, but some that are different based on core type and ghost type. is kept strong by feeding the ghost’s obsession and/or by being in the ghost zone. 

    * with halfas, its a little different. there hasn’t been much (ethical) research done, but a halfa’s core is sustained both by continually feeding the obsession and keeping the human side healthy (mentally and physically, but mental health in particular). not keeping up with the obsession significantly weakens the core, but it also won’t kill the halfa, just weaken. Same goes for the human health necessities; if physical and mental health are not kept up, the halfa won’t die/end, just be weaker. Both sides have to be neglected  in danny’s case, this gets difficult, as he tends to rely on his ghost powers to feed his obsession (protecting and helping others)

i havent thought extensively about cores and core types yet, but i picture cores with at least four organelles: one for holding the form together, one that determines what their appearance is like, one that contains energy for their element, and one that harnesses the energy they get from their obsession or other sources (like ambient ectoplasm or emotion). and some pretty standard core types ive seen around are ice, fire, electricity, plant/nature. also time and space

ive always had a hard time figuring out whether i vibe more with danny having an ice core or an electricity core; electricity bc of how he died, and ice bc of all that stuff with frostbite and whatnot. then i thought, maybe danny’s a weird case, because he is in every other way, isnt he? there are two other halfas, and he at the very least came about through very different means than they did. i subscribe to the hc that vlad isnt “as much” of a halfa/is less stable bc he didnt half die immediately/died less than danny, which makes danny even more different from him

and from that thought, i arrived at: what if danny has a multi-element core? like one element is dominant, but the organelle responsible for his core type just kinda grabs a little of an element if he has a strong enough attachment to it. like he is primarily an Ice core (for some reason? still don’t understand the choice for that in canon but what else is new), but because of his death, his core latched on to Electricity a bit as well. and it gives him the potential to have a bit of Time if clockwork mentors him. i also think Space would be plausible, both bc of his love of outer space and the fact that he died in a portal. this makes him incredibly op but like..... he was already, why not ramp it up a notch?

OH AND ALSO its like that because he’s A) a new ghost, which i hc are more susceptible to change as they get used to being a ghost, B) an adolescent at the time of the accident, which is a time of turbulent change for humans and C) was literally between dimensions when he died, which is as about as symbolic of change as you can get!!

now for my thoughts on halfa physiology! not sure i fully vibe with what i wrote before, but there are two hcs that i like:

- if he takes care of one form and then some, that “and then some” bleeds over to his other half and he doesn’t need to care specifically for it. like if he overfeeds his obsession, he doesn’t really need to worry much about eating or drinking or breathing depending on how much he overfed. if he can’t get to the ghost zone for the ambient ectoplasm or feed his obsession, overeating will do just fine

- the above, except that only works for so long. one half can only compensate for the other for so long. he can go a lot longer without than a full ghost or human, but eventually he’ll need food or ambient ectoplasm

- surprise third option: his ghost half can override his human half’s needs, but not the other way around. he doesn’t really need to eat or brink or breath anymore (even if it makes him uncomfortable) as long as he’s keeping up with his ghostly needs, but ignoring the needs of his ghost half isn’t sustainable and will cause great distress, madness, or death

i may have accidentally stolen these from the many fics ive read over the past year, but if anyone has any input i’d love to hear your thoughts!

[exoticarmyofcrowns]

sing for me | kth

pairing: taehyung x fem!reader

summary: you have been living with your roommate for well over a year and the unresolved sexual tension between the two of you finally comes to a head

genre: romance, smut (VERY 18+ not for the littles), roommates au

warnings: masturbation, vouyerism??, fingering, thigh riding, attempted dirty talk, breath play, slight power play???, excessive use of the word “baby” and other pet names, kinda awkward discussion of feelings thrown in bc my characters never shut up when i want them to get it on sorry

word count: ~6.6k

a/n: hello~ um... i have no explanation for this. i am like half ashamed and half proud of this??? idek man. all i know is that i couldn’t have done it without @sugaerie​ so thank you so much my queen i love uuuu

You step through the door of your apartment, feet practically screaming with relief as you kick off your shoes.

Work was really kicking your ass lately. Add that together with the stress of grad school and you had a deadly concoction not even your favorite tea and copious amount of ibuprofen could protect you from. Your job as a cashier was pretty easy, you can’t lie, but constantly standing and running around the store did a number on your poor feet. Thank god you had weekends off—a perk of having worked there so long you practically had the manager wrapped around your pinky when it came time for scheduling—so you could sleep in for once.

Tossing your keys on the counter, you spare a glance at the clock above the stove as you walk into your small kitchen. It’s about a quarter to midnight. You figure Taehyung is still out with his friends, hitting up one of the bars downtown.

You sigh heavily at the thought of your roommate. Not because anything wrong with him. Taehyung is nothing short of incredible. He’s sweet and kind, always greeting you with the most adorable boxy smile that makes you feel like the only person in the universe. People gravitate toward him just as easily as he draws them in, a natural warmth that instantly puts others at ease in his presence. He’s generous and thoughtful, never missing an opportunity to surprise you at work with a coffee or just to see you. Those shifts are your favorites and maybe you’re a little spoiled because you often find yourself glancing at the entrance more often than not, trying to see if you can spot his dark, curly head from your register.

Not to mention Taehyung is incredibly stunning. Long dark curls frame his face in the most intimidatingly beautiful way it’s often hard to look away from him. He’s got piercing dark eyes that can stare right into your soul but that also crinkle beautifully at the corners when he smiles. His fashion sense is killer, obscure brands and fabrics lining his closet almost like a museum. You’re not sure how but he can wear just about anything and still manage to look like he just stepped off a runway.

He works as a freelance photographer and has quite the sizeable following on social media. He’s passionate about his work and it shows in the quality of his photos. You know next to nothing about photography but even you can see that the beauty and skill with which he wields his camera is nothing short of magical. Commissions are not hard to come by for him, though you’re more than positive it has just as much to do with Taehyung himself as it does his beautiful portfolio.

No, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Taehyung.

Only that he’s perfect and you have a massive crush on him.

Exhaling tiredly, you run a heavy hand down your face. Anyone else would be ecstatic about having such a wonderful, attractive roommate but you know things like this can only end in disaster. More than anything, Taehyung is your friend—your best friend, you would argue—and involving feelings into your relationship can only end poorly. The whole roommates thing just adds another layer of complication that is better left alone. You don’t shit where you eat, after all.

But it’s difficult. Taehyung is just so nice and likeable it’s unreal. You often find your thoughts wandering to dangerous places when you both are curled up on the couch together during movie nights, blankets and pillows and snacks scattered all over the living room, while he curls his body around you without a second thought. He’s naturally tactile, you try to remind yourself in an effort to calm your racing pulse but then he’ll laugh at something happening in the movie, his cheeks plumping up adorably, and you know you’re a lost cause as you feel your heart melt all over again.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore your feelings for your roommate and you know something has to give eventually. In the last couple of weeks, there seemed to have been a shift in the air whenever you were around each other. Taehyung was still your adorable and playful friend but the hugs seemed longer, the touches more tender and lingering. You even think you’ve caught him staring at you a few times, a strange new darkness simmering beneath the chocolate irises.

Flushing with embarrassment and shame, you bury your face into your hands. Of course not. You’re just being ridiculously optimistic. You pull out a clean glass from the cupboard and fill it with water from the sink, hoping to dampen the butterflies fluttering in your stomach.

Cleaning up, you decide to pamper yourself with a long hot shower complete with a nice sugar scrub and an in-shower face mask. You even spring for a shave, already excited for the feel of your sheets against the smooth, moisturized expanse of your legs. It’s the little things.

You hum lightly under your breath, already feeling the residual tension from the week bleed out as you gently massage your favorite lotion into your skin. Finishing up, you feel much more relaxed and so wonderfully clean you can’t help the smile that graces your lips as you move to head back to your room.

“___.”

It’s faint, so faint you think you imagine it but it still makes you freeze as you step out of the bathroom. Glancing down the short hallway that leads to your room, you blink for several seconds and wait to see if you hear it again. When nothing happens, you feel your heart resume its normal pace before rolling your eyes at yourself and continuing on to your room.

“___.”

This time it’s unmistakable and you can’t help the way the sound of your name makes you jump in fear. Now you’re in full-on panic mode and you anxiously scan the apartment. Your eyes catch on the faint light emanating from Taehyung’s room and you relax slightly. How had you not realized he was home already?

Your relief quickly morphs into confusion. Why would Taehyung be calling for you? Did he need something? Was he hurt? Stifling your self-induced panic, you quietly make your way over to his door. Despite having been in his room multiple times before, something feels off now. Almost like you shouldn’t be there. You can’t quite put your finger on it but something about the whole situation has you on edge…

You shake it off. It’s fine. You’ll just casually peep through the slightly ajar door and make sure everything is okay before marching off to bed to enjoy your evening in. Simple as that, right?

Wrong.

Whatever you thought you were going to see past the small opening of his door doesn’t hold a candle to the image that will undoubtedly be burned into your memory forever.

There, laying casually on his bed, is Taehyung. That in and of itself is not out of the ordinary. Except for the fact that he is naked save for the boxers he normally wears to bed, with a hand pulling desperately at his painfully red length.

It’s suddenly hard to breathe, air catching so violently in your throat you nearly choke audibly. Slapping a hand over your mouth and nose, you will yourself to calm down enough to take in the scene before you. Taehyung’s long legs are splayed almost elegantly across his sheets, deliciously thick thigh muscles clenching and unclenching from his ministrations. His hand glides skillfully over his cock, alternating between slow, languid tugs and fast, unyielding strokes. He throws his head back before tucking his chin in briefly, tongue flicking out to wet his lips before he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth. A hiss of pleasure melts into a throaty groan and heat pools rapidly in the pit of your stomach.

A voice in the back of your mind screams for you to get away while you can. You shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve lusted after your roommate, how long you’ve wanted to push him against any flat surface and have your way with him or let him have his way with you. It doesn’t matter that you want to do couple-y things with him too, like hold his hand and kiss those soft, pink lips because you are roommates—friends—and a fling like that could only end in disaster, especially when he doesn’t feel the same way. It doesn’t matter and you have to leave now before—

“___,” Taehyung groans once again, hands caressing up his lean stomach and you’re distracted by the way his muscles ripple with the attention. “Are you just going to stand there or are you gonna come help me?”

Something between a squeak and a cough leaves your throat in that instant and you wish the floor would open up and swallow you whole. You can’t bring yourself to move for a good second but Taehyung lets out another low moan and your feet move of their own accord into the bedroom.

If you thought he was beautiful before, he is absolutely glowing in the soft light of his bedside lamp. A light sheen of sweat coats his skin and you are overwhelmed with the urge to lick a stray bead that travels down his neck. Your breath is coming out in short pants and you try to subtly squeeze your thighs together to ease the ache. This does not go unnoticed.

“Hello, darling.” The words leave his lips in a low purr and a shiver zips down your spine. He’s smirking at you, hands still gripping his length but his pace has slowed significantly as if giving you a show. He seems perfectly comfortable despite the lack clothing, completely unfazed by your blatant staring. Like he wants you to look at him and only him. The thought has your face burning.

“T-Tae, what are you doing?”

“Isn’t is obvious, sweetheart? Surely I don’t need to spell it out for you, hm?” A particularly wet pass over his dick has him sucking in a gasp and you find you can’t look away. Your tongue darts out to wet your lips and Taehyung fixates on the motion, pupils blown wide and darkening further.

“Although you haven’t picked up on my blatant flirting so maybe I should.”

That snaps you out of your reverie. “Flirting?” You hate the way your voice sounds so weak and vulnerable but it can’t be helped.

“I haven’t exactly been subtle, ___. I’ve been—fuck—I’ve been trying to drop hints for the last few weeks now, hell, the last few months but you never n-notice.” He tugs at his bottom lip with his teeth again before releasing a heavy sigh.

Your head is spinning. This Taehyung is so different from the one you’re used to—yes, he’s still the same incorrigible flirt, but where he is usually giggly and playful he is now sensual and downright sinful. You think back over the past few weeks, the lingering touches, the casual hugs. Taehyung has always been touchy but they had felt charged with something else entirely. It’s good to know you hadn’t been making that up.

“I…” You truly don’t know what to say for yourself. “I didn’t know,” you murmur, feeling very very small all of a sudden.

Taehyung immediately stills at your tone and misinterprets it as discomfort.  “Oh. Oh god, ___, I’m so sorry.” Wrenching his hand away from himself, he scrambles on the bed, looking up at you with earnest, remorseful eyes. The waistband of his boxers snap shut in his frenzy and you almost mourn the loss of the desire-tinted skin. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I just thought that maybe you…maybe you felt the same?”

You’re so taken aback by the complete 180 he’s made that your response gets caught in the whirlwind of your thoughts, This is more like the Taehyung you know, kind and considerate, and you almost forget the situation you’re in. Almost.

“N-No!” you stammer, eager to assuage his uncertainty. “I mean, yes, I-I…” You close your eyes tightly. “I do…feel the same.”

The way Taehyung looks at you after your stunted confession has your heart auditioning for a marathon and goosebumps prickling across your skin. You may as well have just hung all the stars in the sky with the amount of adoration swimming in his warm irises.

“I’m glad,” he grins brightly at you and you can’t help but smile back. You bite your lip out of habit and the smile fades from his face as he watches you.

Swallowing thickly, he rasps, “___, c-can I kiss you? Please.”

The desperation in his voice is not something you expect and a jolt of electricity zings down your spine. Dazed, you nod. That’s all Taehyung needs before he practically launches himself to his feet to grab you by the waist and pull you to him. His hand—the other hand that was not touching himself—cradles your face as he bends down to brush your noses together. A moment passes, Taehyung staring into your eyes to give you room to pull away. When you don’t, he smiles briefly to himself before surging forward to connect your lips.

The kiss is soft and warm, exchanging only the slightest bit of pressure as if you both are worried that you’ll frighten the other. Which is ridiculous, you think, since you have yet to run away. You bounce up on your toes to alleviate the reach for Taehyung and kiss him harder. He hums appreciatively as he nips at you, the sound tingling from your lips and down the length of your body. You shiver in his hold and move to wrap your arms around his neck to pull him impossibly closer. The distance disappears between you two and you feel his arousal poking at your stomach. You break the kiss to look down between you, bottom lip trapped between your teeth.

Glancing up at Taehyung from beneath your eyelashes, you marvel at how positively wrecked he looks. He’s still damp with sweat but his mouth is slightly swollen from your kisses and his eyes are so blown out they’re practically black with desire. You feel yourself clench hopelessly as the blood rushes loudly in your ears.

“Can I—Can I watch you?”

You’re just as surprised as Taehyung is to hear those words leave your mouth but you’re not quite thinking straight, not when he looks like that and you finally have him in a way you never thought you would. It’s overwhelming, to say the least, and you want to savor every moment together.

Taehyung doesn’t seem to be faring much better, the request making his breathing turn heavy as he leans down to rest his forehead against yours. “Are you sure, ___? Are you absolutely sure? Because once we start, I don’t think I can stop.”

Peeking up at him coyly, you respond, “Who says I’ll want you to?”

A beat. Then, Taehyung squeezes his eyes shut and practically growls at your words. His arm tightens around your waist and crushes your body to him as if trying to mold you together. You love it.

“Then sit back and enjoy the show.” His lips quirk into a lascivious smirk before crashing your mouths together once again. This kiss is different than the previous one, not one bit of hesitation lingering now. Taehyung’s tongue licks along the seam of your mouth insistently and your legs turn to jelly as you open up for him.

The kiss is over too soon but before you can mourn the loss of his lips, he pushes you down onto the bed and resumes his spot against the pillows. Tugging on his boxers, Taehyung pulls them down to discard them somewhere behind you. Heat pulses through you at the sight of his exposed flesh and your thighs rub together once again.

Taking himself in hand, Taehyung spreads his legs and begins a torturously slow pace. “You have no idea how long I’ve dreamt of this.” All the air in your lungs leaves you at the confession. You can’t even think clearly, much less think up a semi-coherent response, but he doesn’t seem deterred by your silence.

“I’ve always—shit—I’ve always wanted t-to kiss that pretty little mouth of yours, ravage it until you can’t think. Your mouth, your neck, anything I could get my lips on.” Your eyes eagerly take in the sight of the milky substance beading at the tip of his cock and making his passes even messier.

“Ah, fuck, I-I wondered what kind of sounds you would make. If you would gasp and sigh or if I could make you scream.” He twists his wrist as he glides over the head of his length and he gasps out loud, his breathing rough and ragged and oh so lovely.

“I’ve thought about what it would take you to make you beg for it.”

A whimper escapes your lips before you can stop it and heat blooms across your cheeks. Taehyung stills for a moment before resuming with a smirk.

“Oh? Does my baby like the sound of that? Of me making you beg for my cock?” You nod, stunned and aroused beyond belief. It’s as if your brain has short-circuited and all you can think about is the fantasy that Taehyung so beautifully illustrates for you.

“Dirty girl,” he chuckles, tonguing the corner of his lips. “I should have guessed at what a desperate little thing you’d be. Asking me to stroke my dick while you watch.” He tuts playfully, eyes never leaving yours.

Breathing has become steadily more difficult and you’re acutely aware of the dampness between your legs. You want nothing more than to relieve the ache but you’re so transfixed on the beautiful man laid out in front of you that you can do nothing more than squeeze your thighs together.

“Look at you,” Taehyung’s eyes rake down your form, taking in your lust-darkened gaze and heaving chest before lingering on the apex of your tensed thighs. “I bet you’re dripping, aren’t you? So eager to take my cock that I could just slip right in if I wanted to, hm?” Again you nod, fingers twitching as you grip the sheets beneath you. He laughs lowly and the sound washes over you and settles deep in your stomach.

“God, I bet you’d taste so sweet on my tongue. I would spend hours just buried between your legs if you’d let me. Every time you prance around the apartment in those scraps you call shorts, I just want to bend you over the couch and fuck you until you can’t walk. Would you like that, baby girl? Want me to sink my cock into that sweet cunt of yours? Make it mine, over and over again?”

You’re practically panting now, desperate sounds ripping themselves from your throat as Taehyung stares at you intensely, hand never faltering on his swollen erection. He seems to take pity on you because in the next moment, he murmurs a deep, “Come here, baby.”

Snapping into action, you nearly stumble over yourself in your haste to be close to him. He smiles, fondness flickering in his eyes beneath the lust at your eagerness. You crawl forward until you are settled on your knees between his legs. A feeling of shyness settles over you—absurd, given the circumstances—and you find yourself unable to meet his gaze. A hand winds around your waist and pulls you to him, forcing you to straddle one of his thighs. You feel a finger slip under your chin to coax you into looking at him. When you do, Taehyung offers a sweet smile.

“You still with me, sweetheart?” You go to nod but Taehyung clicks his tongue. “I need to hear you say it, ___.”

“Yes.” You’re proud that your voice doesn’t shake. “I want you, Tae.”

The finger on your chin turns into a forceful grip as he crashes your mouths together once again. It’s messy and desperate and you can’t help the loud moan that Taehyung swallows gleefully. You welcome his tongue into your mouth and when you give it a pointed suck, he lets out an answering groan low in his throat.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he pants against your cheek, planting wet kisses down your jaw and to the length of your neck. His lips meet the collar of your shirt but before he can even ask, you’re wrenching it off your body and onto the ground.

Taehyung seems at a loss for the first time since you’d walked into his room and you revel in the swell of pride that overtakes you. He can’t help but ogle greedily at the newly-exposed skin and you feel powerful knowing that you have his undivided attention.

Shaking himself out of his daze, Taehyung places a gentle kiss right above your heart before slowly making his way lower. The gesture is not lost on you and you find yourself melting further into his touch as your hand wraps around to tangle in the hairs at the nape of his neck. You can feel two hands ghost up your sides to tease the undersides of your breasts and you inhale sharply, chest pushing up into his mouth. Taehyung breathes a laugh onto your skin before cupping the soft flesh and placing almost reverent kisses upon their stiff peaks.

“Tae, please,” you whimper, eyes squeezing shut at the onslaught of sensations he is inflicting on you.

“Hmm, I like hearing you beg for me.” His tongue flicks against your pebbled nipple and you cry out, unable to hold back anymore. “My desperate baby girl.”

“T-Tae, ah, please don’t tease.”

“Don’t tease?” He punctuates the question with a sharp squeeze. “But you’ve been teasing me for well over a year, no? Walking around the apartment practically naked, with nothing but a t-shirt or these poor excuse for shorts.” Taehyung’s hands leave a lingering pinch before gliding down the length of your torso to the hem of your sleep shorts. Hooking a finger inside, he snaps the elastic back in place and you gasp. “No panties?” He asks in wonder, eyes fixed on your lower half.

Swallowing, you murmur, “I-I don’t usually wear them to bed.”

He lets out a throaty groan. “Fuck, you really—” He cuts himself off with another sharp exhale, head tipping backward as he squeezes his eyes shut as if in pain. Something nudges the side of your thigh and you look down at forgotten length between you, swollen and nearly purple. As if in a daze, you reach for the turgid flesh and let the tips of your fingers graze the head tentatively. Taehyung’s eyes snap open to look at you in shock and you freeze.

“Do that again. Please.”

You can hardly deny him when he looks so fucked out beneath you and your hand begins a tentative pace, stroking his dick like you had witnessed him do earlier.

“That’s it, atta girl,” he groans into your shoulder, kissing the skin almost absentmindedly. “Such a good girl for me.”

Your stomach plummets at his words, inner muscles clenching almost painfully. You’re so turned on your shorts are most likely unsalvageable but seeing Taehyung so wrecked and because of you makes it all worthwhile.

Keeping up the pace on his cock, you don’t even notice your hips begin to lower onto his thigh and rock down against him until he sits up from where he’d begun to slouch in pleasure, leg knocking up into your dripping heat.

“Fuck, baby. Look at you, grinding on my thigh like that.” His words send your heart stuttering in your chest. “Your poor little cunt has been neglected, hm? You’ve been such a good girl for me, stroking my cock and getting me ready. I think you deserve a reward.”

Taehyung grips your hips with bruising force and helps you grind harder onto his leg. The drag of your shorts against your swollen clit is a little too harsh but the sheer dampness of the fabric makes the glide much easier.

“I can feel you dripping onto my leg. You’re soaked, baby.” You’re delirious at this point, incoherent noises spilling from your lips as you work yourself over Taehyung’s thigh. It’s not long before you feel the pleasure mounting within you, hips pistoning back and forth even faster.

“That’s it, baby girl. Use me. Make yourself cum on my thigh. Get yourself nice and ready for my cock.” His hands run soothingly across your skin, sending your nerves on fire. You whine as you feel your orgasm approach with each pass of your hips.

“Come on, babe. Give it to me. Let me feel you cum all over me.”

With a strangled cry, you buck against Taehyung uncontrollably as you finally release all over his leg. You curl into him, hands tangling into his hair and tugging in order to keep yourself grounded. Your hips gradually slow as you ride out your high and you find it a struggle to catch your breath. The two of you stay like that for a few moments, letting the aftershocks wash over you.

“Oh, ___,” Taehyung murmurs in wonder. Almost sheepishly, you peek up at him from beneath your eyelashes to see him staring at you with such unadulterated reverence and want that your heart skips a beat. “You did so well, baby girl,” he rasps, lips ghosting over your face tenderly.

Face warm, you try to redirect the attention to him and begin placing gentle kisses along the length of his neck. Taehyung tilts his head back, eyelids fluttering prettily at your ministrations. Smirking to yourself, you trail your hand teasingly down the length of his chest to make your way down to his dick but he stops you with a firm hand around your wrist. Before you can even open your mouth to question him, he’s already flipped you over onto your back.

“Hmm, still so eager for my cock.” He nips playfully at your bottom lip, laughing when you move to chase him. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’re getting there. I have to get you ready first.”

Two of his fingers brush the swell of your mouth and you open immediately to take them in. Taehyung inhales sharply as you give them a pointed suck, eyes narrowing slightly to let you know that you will certainly pay for that later. The thought sends a shot of arousal to your core.

Taehyung removes his fingers and wastes no time in bringing them to the apex of your thighs. He makes quick work of your soiled shorts and suddenly, he’s all you can feel. A single digit swipes the length of your slit to circle around your clit, eliciting a hiss from the both of you.

“Oh, baby, you’re so wet,” Tae groans, in a trance. “All for me.”

He wasn’t really speaking to you but you nod anyway. “Yes, Tae. All for you.”

Eyes snapping to yours, he sinks one finger into your weeping heat and watches your face for any signs of discomfort. You tense slightly before relaxing and sending him a reassuring smile as a signal that he can continue. He pumps his finger in and out, letting you get used to the sensation before gently slipping in another. Scissoring the digits, Taehyung furrows his brows and bites his lip as he forces himself to be patient.

You, on the other hand, are having a much harder time controlling yourself. Soft whimpers escape you with every pump of Taehyung’s fingers. One particularly potent curl has you gasping for air as an animalistic growl tears itself from your throat, hips bucking harshly upwards.

“Gah, Tae—please,” you pant, hands flailing wildly for something to hold onto before settling on his hair.

“Anything, darling.” Taehyung inserts yet another finger and you begin to really feel the stretch, so much that it nearly becomes uncomfortable. A small noise of discomfort makes the man above you pause but he mouths at your temple reassuringly. “I know, baby, I know. But I have to make sure you’re ready for me.”

Right then, he curls his fingers just as he did before and you’re seeing stars again. He places adoring kisses along your jaw before dipping for another taste of your mouth. You eagerly accept him, opening fully to him as your hips roll along with the rhythm of his fingers.

Breaking away, you pant, “I’m ready, Tae.”

“Are you sure?” Looking deeply into your eyes, he must find what he’s looking for because he nods lightly and kisses you breathless. He reaches over to his nightstand and rummages in his drawer. The crinkle of a wrapper hits your ears, making your face warm slightly as the reality of the situation hits you full force. You were really doing this. The fact that the man that you’ve pined after for so long is here with you—actually likes you—is so surreal you’re not quite sure how to process it but you’ll be damned if you didn’t enjoy every second of it.

Once he has rolled the condom on, Taehyung moves upward to cup your face between his hands. “Before we begin, are you absolutely s—”

“Tae, I swear to god if you do not get inside me in the next three seconds I will flip us over and do it myself.”

Taehyung blinks before chuckling. “There will be plenty of time for that, sweetheart. But for right now…” His smile turns sinister, prompting anticipation to swirl deliciously in your stomach. “I’m calling the shots.”

He takes himself in hand and rubs the tip up and down the length of your folds. Your eyes flutter when Taehyung collects your pooling arousal, making a complete mess of you.

When he pushes in, your mouth drops open in a silent gasp. He’s big—of course he is—bigger now that he’s entering you and you can’t deny that the stretch is more than welcome. You glance up at Taehyung’s face and are pleased to see that he looks just as wrecked as you feel. He locks eyes with you, dark irises burning with lust but also something deeper. Something…soft and warm. The thought sends your heart pounding in your chest.

As he bottoms out, Taehyung makes sure to probe your face for any signs of discomfort. He doesn’t find any and tentatively thrusts into you, eyes never leaving yours as he does. You gasp, nerves tingling as a whine tears itself from your throat, soft and breathy.

“That’s it, angel,” Taehyung pants in your ear. “Sing for me. Let me know just how good I make you feel.”

You clench helplessly, reveling in the low grunt it earns from the man above you. He begins to pick up the pace, hips snapping fiercely against yours so that the only sound is the harsh slap of skin against skin mingling with your eager breaths.

“Such a tight little cunt, even after you’ve already cum once.” His voice is even raspier with the force of his thrusts and you practically keen at the sound. “I wonder how many times I can make you lose it.”

You sob, hips rising desperately to meet his. “P-Please,” you cry, unsure what it is you’re asking for but it doesn’t matter because he props himself up to get a better angle, looking down at your writhing form.

“Such a desperate little baby.” He punctuates the pet name with a particularly harsh snap of his hips and your eyes roll into the back of your head. You can already feel your second orgasm rising within you, all you need is a little push.

“You know,” Taehyung begins, concentrating his thrusts to a slow roll, “I’ve always been curious about one thing.”

Before you can ask what it is, you see his hand snake between you, gliding across your stomach, between the valley of your breasts, to settle at the base of your throat. Your eyes widen of their own accord, breath stuttering as you realize the intention. Taehyung’s eyes hold a silent question and you nod, albeit a bit desperately, prompting him to wrap his long fingers steadily around the lowest part of your neck.

“Fucking filthy,” he whispers in awe, gaze alternating between your face and the sight of his hand wrapped around your pretty neck. He thinks he could watch this forever. Squeezing experimentally, Taehyung watches with utter delight at how quickly you fall apart under his grip. Your hands scramble to claw at his arm, not to pull it away but to keep him locked in place.

“Poor baby just wants to be choked and fucked senseless, is that it?” You nod jerkily, pleasure fogging your mind and making you delirious. You couldn’t talk even if you tried but the way your hips buck up into his needily tell him all he needs to know.

“So honest,” he chuckles, increasing the pressure slightly. “Good girls get what they want.” Taehyung pulls his hips back, so far that only the tip remains inside you, before snapping back in full-force. The pace he sets is brutal and you can feel his hip brushing relentlessly against your clit.

“T-Tae,” you gasp, stomach tightening as a particularly well-timed thrust has you seeing stars. “C-Close.”

“Is baby girl gonna cum?” You nod frantically, eyes focusing and unfocusing on his face. “Come on, baby. Give me one more. I know you can do it. My desperate. Little. Slut.”

Taehyung tightens his grip even further and that’s the end for you. A scream lodges itself in your throat as the coil in your lower stomach snaps, sending you spiraling into the most powerful orgasm you’ve had in a while. Taehyung releases his hand from your neck abruptly, the rush of air prolonging your pleasure to the point you think you might pass out.

Above you, you hear Taehyung groan gutterly at the vice-like grip your walls have trapped him in. “Fuck, princess, I can feel you squeezing. You’re gonna make me cum.”

Still breathless, you fight against the fog clouding your brain. “Please, Tae. Cum inside me, please. I-I want it so bad.”

“Such a filthy little thing,” he stutters, breaths sounding labored in your ears as he gets closer to his own climax. “Gonna f-fill you up so good. Make this cunt mine.”

“I’m yours,” you gasp, tightening your muscles one last time around him. That seems to be the end for him because before you know it, Taehyung is moaning into your shoulder.

“All. Fucking. Mine,” he growls as he snaps his hips, once, twice, before stilling inside you.

It seems to last hours but Taehyung eventually collapses onto his forearms, careful not to crush you under his weight. You both take a minute to catch your breath, enjoying the feeling of closeness that follows. Eventually, he pulls back, carefully slipping out of you to tie off the condom and toss it in the wastebasket. You wince but relax immediately after, snuggling further into the soft down of his comforter.

Taehyung smiles adoringly as he makes his way back to the bed, heart flipping at how cute you look in his bed. Almost as if you belong there. He hesitates as he gets to the edge, fearing for a moment whether or not it was alright to join you. Those fears are put to rest as you blink sleepily up at him, arms tiredly reaching for him. Relieved, he snuggles in next to you and gathers you in his arms. It’s silent for a moment as you both enjoy being wrapped up in each other.

“Since when?” you finally break the silence, tracing mindless patterns across his chest.

Taehyung inhales sharply. He knows exactly what you mean. Still, he feigns ignorance. “What?”

You close your eyes for a moment, burying your face further into his chest. “Since when have you liked me?”

“Since when have you liked me?” he shoots back and you pinch the skin on his ribs. He yelps before you both dissolve into a fit of giggles.

“I asked you first,” you whine, risking a glance up at his face. Taehyung is already staring down at you fondly, warm gaze melting into your own.

“Since the very first moment,” he whispers softly. You almost laugh, except his face is deadly serious. It’s suddenly hard to swallow around the lump in your throat. You stare at him in wonder—the delicate brush of his eyelashes against his cheek, the soft sweep of his sweat-dampened hair over his forehead, the gentle curve of his lips as he smiles at you. You clear your throat, glancing away as a pleasant warmth settles over your cheeks.

“That’s not an answer.”

He laughs breathily in your ear and you fight a shiver. “Okay, okay. Well the first time I realized it was the day you had come back from your shift after you had switched managers.”

You balk. “Are you serious?” You remember that day. Management had decided to move your favorite supervisor over to the men’s department while you remained stuck in shoes. The new guy was awful—condescending, incompetent, and downright unpleasant. You had come home that day with three different bottles of wine and all the take out you could afford and practically forced Taehyung to drink with you and listen to your misery. The guy was eventually fired but the whole experience had left you with a bitter taste in your mouth.

Tae chuckles as he thinks back to that night. “Yes, I’m serious. You were about halfway through the second bottle and were practically screaming curses at the guy. It took you all of 30 minutes after dinner to fall asleep right there on the couch, somehow still complaining about that dickwad.” You snort, hand shooting up to cover your face in embarrassment. “As you talked, I realized…I could listen to you forever. And then you fell asleep, cuddling so cutely into my shoulder, and I knew I was a goner. Even though you snore.”

Your eyes, which had started watering at his heartfelt confession, widen before you regain your composure enough to hit his chest. “I do not snore.”

Taehyung winces playfully, knowing full-well that you don’t but enjoying teasing you all the same. “So, yeah. I’ve liked you for a while. And I had an inkling you felt the same.”

“Oh, yeah? What gave it away? The fact that I practically hopped on your dick?” you tease.

“Well it certainly didn’t hurt.” He winks at you and you have to stifle the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl. “But it was little things. Like how you’d blush at a compliment or if I hugged you just a bit too long. I couldn’t be sure though. Not until tonight, I guess.”

“Well,” you shift upwards, his confession instilling a confidence in you that you hadn’t known you possessed, “in case I haven’t made it abundantly clear: I like you very, very much, Kim Taehyung.”

He’s silent for a single, nerve-wracking beat before the most brilliant smile lights up his face and for the second time that night, you find yourself breathless.

“And I like you very, very much, too, ___.”

Taehyung kisses you then, slow and sweet, and you’re left thinking that you never want to be anywhere else.

© exoticarmyofcrowns 2020

[jpegjade]

If I Believe You - Spencer

Welcome to another fluffy story! This is the unplanned story I mentioned bc I was feeling down last night and I needed to just write something. 

Warnings: It’s a lot of fluff but it does deal with a few signs of depression. There’s nothing graphic and it’s mainly talking. so if you’re not up for that, i have other fluffy stuff that might fit better! don’t push yourself!

____________________________

“Y/n, I’m home. I got groceries!” Spencer called. 

You spent the weekend in bed. What else was there to do? Spencer was gone and you had a complete loss of interest in the world, especially your world. It was just better to be in bed all day, whether or not you were able to sleep.

“Hey.” You said, half heartedly. Your voice felt like it didn’t work. 

“You turned over!” He said, smiling. 

He was right. Earlier in the day, you turned over from being on your right side, which gave you the best view of staring at Spencer, to your left side, where you could charge your phone and use it at the same time while it was connected to your nightstand. 

“Stop smiling. I didn’t do anything.” You said, putting your phone down on the nightstand. 

Spencer walked over and kissed you on the forehead before going to change into his pajamas. You still didn’t move. Everything inside hurt, you were so heavy, and all you wanted to do was be anywhere but alive. 

When Spencer came back, he climbed into bed and scooted himself all the way to you. You rolled back over, feeling like it took all of your energy just to move that much. You groaned the whole time and made Spencer smile. 

“You turned over again. I’m so proud of you.” Spencer said, tapping your nose. 

“You’re such a nerd, you know that?” You smiled just enough to bring out his full smile. It makes him so happy that in the middle of your worst depression symptoms, he could make you smile. 

“Yes, I have been told by you, repeatedly.” He smiled. 

Spencer just stared at you, watching you breathe. Your heart rate was steady and he was just thinking about you. You were so quiet and it was hard for him to watch. He was used to you talking, asking him about his day, wondering what was on his mind. But right now? All he could wonder was what he could do to help, what he could do to lift your spirits in the slightest. 

“Have you eaten today?” He whispered as if it was against the rules to speak normally. 

When you struggled like this, it just seemed like it was easier to stay close, keep things intimate. 

“I’m not hungry.” You said, voice barely audible. 

“Come on, y/n. You have to eat today. I let you slide with a granola bar yesterday but I need you to eat today. Real food.” He pleaded with you just a little bit. 

“Spencer, I don’t want to eat. I’m so tired.” You sighed. Of course he was going to try to do this. 

“I know, sweetie. But you have to eat.” He said, still quiet. 

There was a patient silence between you, almost like a standoff. You were determined to hold out and Spencer was determined to not give in. You didn’t mind the silence, you didn’t have to talk. Meanwhile, Spencer just wanted to talk to you. You lit up his day and all he wanted was to take a moment to brighten yours. 

“Tell you what, sweetheart.” He started. “You eat some food and I’ll eat you.” 

“Smartass.” You smiled at him, a small smile but a smile. 

“I got you to smile. I love you.” He kissed your forehead and scooted even closer to you. 

“But you have to eat. Severe depression has decreased your appetite significantly and it’s going to lead to malnutrition soon if I can’t get something in you that gives you enough nutrients to sustain your body. Malnutrition can lead to a multitude of additional health problems, if you would like to hear about them.” 

“Spencer, just because I’m not hungry, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be malnourished. It just means I’m sad today. And yesterday. And the day before. Need I go on?” You asked, followed by a sigh. 

“Why are you sighing?” He asked, knowing it was related to something. 

“I’m so tired of being this way. I’m tired of knowing that in the end, I will always be this way. It will always come back to being down and I don’t want the cycle to continue. If I could, I would make it stop.” A tear escaped and you angrily wiped it off. 

Spencer was speechless. He didn’t know what to say because you were right. It was chronic and while manageable, it wasn’t going to be fixed. He wanted so badly to fix it, to help you. But this isn’t a case. He can’t help you like he couldn’t help his mom for all of those years. But he has gotten better, he built a better relationship with his mom. He has gotten better at caring for you because he became more attentive to you rather than the statistics and numbers. 

“I can’t say that it will get better soon. I can’t say that you’ll feel better. But I can say that you will eventually feel better, a little bit at a time, okay? I can say that I will be right here when you are ready to do the smallest things, like eat some orange slices. Or apple slices. Or some kind of easily edible, nutrient filled food. I can say that I won’t stop talking, whether or not you end up hating the sound of my voice or me or love the sound of my voice and me. I can say that you will see the sun again, loving it as if these tough times never happened. I can say…” 

“Spencer, shut up and get me the damn orange slices.” You said, rolling your eyes. 

He knew the eye roll was sarcastic but he also saw the smile you tried to fight. You failed and ended up giving him what you could manage. Spencer hopped out of the bed, nearly skipping to the kitchen area. He was so happy that you were going to eat something. 

You groaned because it was freezing cold in the apartment and Spencer getting up meant that you lost another body of warmth. You sighed, preparing yourself to sit up by the time Spencer came back. If you did it before he got there, he would be really proud of you. You liked when he was proud of you, no matter how down you were. It made the smallest difference in your day because you loved him. 

But, at the same time, it can be hard to love someone when you don’t want to be alive. It can be difficult to love anything when you don’t want to be awake. But no matter how much you had to fight to keep your eyes open, Spencer was there when he could be. He volunteered to work cases with Garcia as much as he could so he could make sure you were alright, he didn’t spend late nights at the office anymore, and of course, he spent more time caring for you. And this made you feel even more horrible. 

“Y/n? I got the orange slices!” He was still upbeat. You liked that he could be so… Optimistic yet realistic at the same time. He was optimistic that you would get better but realistic about it taking a lot of time and effort. 

“Thank you, baby.” You smiled as much as you could but it felt so empty, forced. 

He was staring at you with such adoration as you as you ate your half of the orange while he ate his half. 

“I’m so proud of you right now.” Spencer scooted over to sit right next to you, leaning his head over so you touched shoulders and his head was on top of yours. “You did it. You ate something today. We’ll try again later but do you want to cuddle? If not, that’s okay. We can nap. Or not nap. We can… Oh, I can read to you. You don’t have to listen.” 

“Spencer, can you kiss me, please?” You asked, watching his eyes light up. 

It had been a while since you wanted a real kiss. He had settled for giving you kisses on the face and your hand and wherever else he had access to because you just weren’t up for making out or anything that might lead to it. 

This kiss was special, gentle. He was hesitant but it was okay because that was what you needed. You just wanted to show him that you appreciate him and everything he does in his love language, which was touch. He loved touching any body part possible, just knowing that you’re there with him. Sometimes, it’s what kept him from falling apart. You may not know it but you kept him from falling apart. 

“Why did you do that?” He asked, face still close to yours. Your noses were touching and he was whispering again. The moment was so fragile, he didn’t want to pull away. 

“Because I just wanted to remind you I love you. You do a lot for me, I figured I could do something for you. You like kisses so… Just thought I would give you one.” You said, wanting so badly to lay down but you didn’t want to disconnect from Spencer. Not right now. You needed this little thing, whatever it was.

“I love you. And nothing will change that. If I could, I would…” Spencer stopped. He knew how you felt about when he said he would take it onto his own shoulders if he could. 

“It’s okay.” You said, quietly. A tear ran down your cheek, followed by a tear down his face as well. 

“Can you read to me? I’m tired again and I just want to hear your voice.” You said, breaking away from Spencer to wiggle back down, completely under the blanket.

“I’ll go get a couple books.” Spencer started to move but you stopped him.

“No. From your memory, just pick a book and read. I don’t really care about following along. I just...Need you right now.” You said, followed by a yawn. 

“Okay.” Spencer got back under the blanket completely, holding his arm out for you to come closer. 

“If I believe it will get better, will that make the emptiness stop? I want to believe you so badly. And I need to believe in something because I can’t just believe in nothing...” You whispered, another tear rolling down your face. 

“The emptiness won’t go away, y/n. It will always be there. And I’m sorry I have to say it but it’s true. My emptiness doesn’t go away, either. But it gets easier, you can fill it with some things to make it easier to handle. You can feel it less at some moments and more at other moments. The emptiness will be there but the loneliness won’t always be there. The feelings of despair won’t always be there. The hatred for being alive won't always be there. You know why? Because you won’t always think that way. You won’t always be down. You won’t always feel the worst feelings you can possibly imagine. If you believe me, then you’ll see we’ve got a lot of joy to find. And happiness. My mom would say we’ve got ‘adventures’ to go on.”

And with a few more tears running down your face, you smiled what you could manage before closing your eyes and letting spencer talking send you back to sleep for the day.

[sohelish]

*

RP problems I'm having and need to solve:

As a fa.ndomless OC I still need a fa.ndom to function. Which wouldn't be too hard if a) my interests hadn't shrunk significantly; b) I didn't prefer role playing with original characters or canon characters that are significantly divergent.

I also don't like leaning on a fandom too much, I use it as guidelines and push myself off of that... which is pretty opposite to what people do it seems.

I forgot how to plot... or rather... plotting has become complex and triggering in a way?

When I plot I can only plot out a general setting. Hel pretty much has a personality at this point and I can't 100% promise she'll react the way I predict she will. I can give her goals that overlap with the other muse. I can't force her, however, to like/dislike/corrupt/save somebody... Either I personally am getting it wrong or there's some giant miscommunication here.

When we take a canon character we always say that something is IC or OOC for them and we praise the muns who write the canon very IC. When it comes to original charas people seem to assume anything goes? I've been really discouraged by this over the years... "Everything goes" to me means storyline possibilities, as in, you aren't restricted by what someone else has written - you can tweak reality around the muse? I've never taken it as "making Hel more agreeable whenever needed" kinda thing. Which, sadly, I've done multiple times anyway caving in under pressure bc I don't like upsetting people... (maybe I'm wrong tho? Maybe original characters do have potential to be more bendy?)

I've been approached many times asking if Hel could do this or do that in a very specific way... and I can only promise an approximation. If that approximation doesn't work out people tend to get offended.

There has to be a way to communicate this better??? There has to be a workaround??? There's like... a very significant wall I keep bumping into. There has to be a way over or through it?

Also I've noticed that I'd offer plot ideas and people would go silent forever, which only means that I didn't deliver something that was wanted, but also they never contacted back. As in, quite a few people wouldn't say 'nope, this won't work' they just... stopped talking for good. As if I've said something wrong and I probably even did...

Communication is difficult for me as it is and it seems like it has been getting progressively worse.

Either I'm doing something wrong or people are generally not interested... or they are interested but they yet again have that very specific idea in mind that I can't satisfy so they figure that out but then nothing else interests them...

Maybe I'm just really bad at talking. I'm either silent or chatty but hey that's how I am irl tho. I either have something to say or I don't xD

I find it so much easier to wing it as of late bc by the looks of it people enjoy Helena's talking and presence more than mine. I've drifted away from plotting to winging and experimenting bc it's so easy to try something and then call it crack if it doesn't suit someone's taste.

I absolutely have to fix the communication issue but that's like... a huge undertaking. I love winging things but plots really are better.

Frankly, not sure where to start. Are the plots I want too complicated? Do I as a mun talk too little/too much? Should I maybe be more flexible? But how does one ship with a woman who doesn't like romance... how do I write fluff with her if she only wants adventure? I still remember how I had a thread about her cooking and talking... it was sooososososooooo boring...

But maybe I should get over myself and do the boring stuff sometimes? Maybe trick Hel into hugging people? Idk.

Also I don't seem to able to explain that Helena is not affectionate or kind but that yup she likes ki.ssing and having se.x. She is passionate. She has emotions as well. She can just... ya kno, shut them down and shove them where the sun doesn't shine. Or she can pull them out so that the other muse would warm up to her. She isn't lying or faking, or pretending. But she is using her emotions as a tool instead of letting her emotions use her? And as far as romance goes... idek anymore. Like, I don't even mind people being romantic at Helena... I just for real... I've been in this situation so many times? When I say: she doesn't like romance. Smb: is romantic. Helena: sees that and shuts the person down. Mun ooc to me: that's so saaaaaaad why is she like this. Welp what did u expect? Bc she... is? I have been soooo traumatised by the repetitiveness of this? I'm so tired?

I've had a ship with Helena. I'm pretty sure it was a decent aro ship. What was is like? Welp, the other mun and I knew our muses were doing things in the background like s.ex and stuff. But not much else. So virtually the idea existed but we were writing our muses just the way we would write any other. So... there was a ship and yet there was none. It was the same as any other interaction only we acknowledged there was something deeper through minor detail. Imho it can be done... but it's easier not to.

Then there was that awkward moment where there was this awesome potential ship and the other muse brought Hel flowers. Not only she couldn't evaluate the romantic gesture in a decent form, so happened that the flowers they picked were the ones Hel was allergic to... which made her laugh and praise the other muse for trying to kill her. That was the end of that ship, imho. I'm pretty sure both mun and muse were upset by it and it only went downhill from there.

I'm so tired of such miscommunication!!! I'm sure it can be avoided but like how how how???

I'm also 24/7 afraid I'd hurt someone's real life feelings this way. I'm still 100% being held back by this. I'm tiptoeing around folks and not opening up enough!

There's also that thing where I told myself: I'm gonna write that book about Helena! Aaand never did.

But at the same time there's a lot of lore that I did work out. But it's spoiler-y. Maybe not too much?

So it's like... I don't want to accidentally write out a plot point/lore bit via RP?

And partly that sucked the fun out of the RP cause I sorta framed a zone in the main-verse... a sort of square where I can function freely. So I put myself in a cage, pretty literally.

I feel like I should get rid of that restriction somehow.

Bc I've always RPed main verse Helena. 90% of the time. I did start running dry bc there are almost no takers for any AUs once the focus began shifting to that - bc I don't lean on fandoms and barely RP with canon blogs... ah the circle is complete.

Now how do I bypass all of this crap???

[inyoursheets]

i got tagged by the kind @bourbon-ontherocks​ to do the language tag game thingy so let’s goooo

below the cut bc my english language journey has many twists and turns (jk im just a wordy person) (in writing) (as you may know by now)

How many languages do you speak?

two bc im an embarrassment to all my high school modern language teachers. so just dutch and english im afraid

What’s your native language?

my first language is dutch

Which language you’re most comfortable with?

it’s unnerving as hell but............it’s increasingly becoming english? youd think dutch would be the answer and it is in some ways, but considering most of my degree was in english, i genuinely struggle to express myself in dutch more when speaking on topics related to my field. so basically whenever someone tries to debate me im like !! i know but i dont know how to say this in dutch !! aah !! help !!! many thoughts, zero coherent sentences

the only reason im less comfortable w english is when speaking, mostly bc of my pronunciation. speaking english is something i do considerably less compared to reading, writing, and listening in/to english, especially now that im done w my studies.

also! i notice that while i understand the meaning of english words, sometimes when i deliberately literally translate them in my head (a much slower process than the intuitive way i normally speak/listen to english) the meaning hits me more? like, it sinks in a little more, it lands closer to home? english not being my first language means it creates some emotional distance from what im talking about.

so, i now sometimes try to deliberately seek out books and articles in dutch on important topics, bc that way i take in more of the depth of meaning and i feel addressed more directly on an intuitive level. does that make sense? for example, reading about racism and white privilege in english gives me a little more distance from the subject tho it shouldn’t, by virtue of it being in a language that is not the one i was raised with. so especially topics relating to (my) societal privileges, i try to also engage with in dutch, and not just in english. im not gonna stop learning about them in english, there’s a fuckton more information out there on any topic, really, in english, and so many people i learn so much from speak english. but i gotta keep reminding myself to also consume dutch articles/books/etc., especially when it’s very important that i really hear what’s being said

Where or how did you learn English?

formally? i started in primary school and then all of high school (we dont have middle school here, fyi). but really, what helped the most was reading books and watching tv shows and films in english.

first, id read the dutch translation of a book. then id read the english version, already knowing the story. then slowly i got to a point where i didnt need to already know the book before being able to read it in english.

same with tv and film -- first id watch dubbed versions of tv shows, which is common practice in the netherlands with shows aimed at a young audience (that’s the extent of it as far as i can tell - other than kids’ movies, films in the cinema are not dubbed). then i got to a point where i could watch those same shows in english with dutch subtitles (shows airing earlier in the day would be the dubbed version, and in the evening theyd be subbed). then i got to a point where i could watch shows that aren’t dubbed in the first place, with dutch subtitles. then i got to the stage where i watched shows with english subtitles. and now i forget subtitles exist and only watch things in english. the only time i’ll turn on (english) subtitles is if there are people whose accents i find more difficult to understand.

i think consuming media in english in these stages (which took years! slow process! happened alongside of high school english classes!) is what helped me learn english the most, next to formal training. that’s really how my vocab improved and how it keeps improving, i guess. tho the amount of times i encounter a word i dont know the meaning of has significantly lessened

(also what helped is living in sweden and in the uk for a few months. no choice but communicating in english. and like i said, most of degree was in english so i had to read and write in english like every day. in conclusion: being surrounded with english on a daily basis is why im at this level, not just from watching hannah montana)

When outlining a fic, which language are you thinking in?

ok so i dont really outline fics ??? it’s more like. a few bullet points of vague ideas (in english) and then i start. but if i were to finally get my shit together and actually properly outline, id do so in english

When planning a fic, which language are you thinking in?

yeah also in english

Is the first draft in your native language, or is it in English?

also english. it wouldnt even occur to me to draft or outline in dutch. i might if the show itself was in dutch but since it’s in english....ok wait no i wouldnt, im far too lazy to translate a whole draft and i commend people that do!

What do you [think] of your English?

ummmmm well. i think i could improve on the speaking front and that my pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired. and i think i could stand to be a little less arrogant sometimes bc i tend to think i know meanings of words but sometimes i dont know the exact nuance of a word or all of its meanings. so if i were a little less cocky about the whole ordeal id probably improve more. annnnd bc these days i learn most new words on online, i should be more proactive about figuring out where terms originate from and pay attention to whether a word or a phrase is okay for me to use or not (like not appropriating AAVE).

other than that i think my english is fine. and i think that me thinking in english more often than in dutch means im what dutch people talk about when they say dutch is dying out lmaoooo you’re WELCOME

im tagging................. ok im actually not even sure who in this fandom doesnt have english as a first language? so im just gonna tag fic writers and hope they speak multiple languages. like my wife @mrslackles (i should know this about my wife! sorry!) or @bethsuglywigs ?? @septiembur ??? @riosnecktattoo ???? somebody pls send help. ok you know what im just gonna double tag @bathroombreaks and @missmaxime

also whether i accurately tagged you or not, no pressure. also if you’re reading this and english isnt your first language, TAG YOU’RE IT

[wordsablaze]

help, i lost myself again

It's over and they've won but is it really winning if Kai somehow feels more lost than ever?

A/N: aka angst™ bc i love hurting my faves... title from six feet under by bilie eilish :) oh and this has major s2 spoilers !!

-

When Kai wakes up, he doesn't react as calmly as the others.

He doesn't go and ask his parents if they're real or question the existence of his house.

But that's because his parents aren't there, they're never there, and his house feels just as empty as it always did.

The doughnuts taste great though.

And then he runs into another Hollow gamer who seems not to recognise him but he doesn't really question it because why would someone so talented and famous want to talk to him anyway?

But then Mira and Adam share their thoughts and he has to admit that what they think makes sense in a really nonsensical kind of way.

So he takes them to his house and tries not to pay attention to their judgemental staring, gazing, as Davis brings them something to drink, as they notice the giant statue of himself, as they see his neighbour Kevin.

The giant chicken from his nightmares helpfully distracts him from thinking about their reactions.

But Mabel is eventually defeated because as if he's going to allow his nightmares to hurt his best friends.

And then it turns out his best friends don't in fact like each other when he'd spent most of the first hollow game thinking that they do, that they choose each other over him.

He's not sure if it's worse that they liked each other or if it's worse that they didn't , because the latter means they just didn't like him.

Maybe they aren't his best friends after all.

He certainly isn't theirs anyway.

He pointedly ignores those thoughts once he realises he really isn't dreaming and they get caught up in figuring out how to find Weirdy.

But those thoughts come right back when he asks Adam why they'd chosen him over Reeve and apparently it's just because he was available.

Available.

Not because he was good at what he did or because they liked him or because they thought he could help, but just because he was there.

It stings to hear but he doesn't argue because they have more pressing matters, like making sure the other, more valuable member of their team is okay.

And anyway, Adam jokes around with him afterwards and it's not really that bad.

(But he does stop trying to convince Adam he's cool because clearly that's a futile quest.)

It's bittersweet to see Skeet because last time, he and Reeve had all but bullied him, but it's better this time because he's far nicer - he does try and leave the second they rescue him but that's only to be expected, really.

Fighting fire with fire is ridiculous but it works out in the end, mostly thanks to Adam and his clever ideas.

Speaking of clever ideas, Skeet's idea to try and reboot is not clever and it's endlessly frustrating to try and rescue someone who doesn't want to be rescued.

(It's kind of like how his parents keep trying to rescue a marriage that's better off not rescued)

But they do it anyway, and then they find Mira, and it turns out she and Skeet have something between them, which makes his old crush on Mira kind of embarrassing.

And he convinces himself that the others let him control the wheels that turn the puzzle floors because they know he can fly, not just because he'd be the lesser loss if something went wrong.

Sliding on mucus is surprisingly fun, and there's something he never thought he'd think.

But losing a friend is significantly less fun.

Although he's not entirely sure he can call Skeet a friend but they'd shared laughs and Skeet hadn't minded his presence all that much and that's what friends are like, right?

So it definitely hurts to lose him, and he imagines Mira is devastated. He just wishes he could help.

But he can't, as usual.

It's definitely unusual, though, that the weird evil scientist decides to dress Adam and Mira up to look fancy and formal and he gets given a sailor outfit, of all things.

(Come on, he has fire powers, why would he ever be a sailor?)

But the guy has good cutlery, Kai can give him that. Although said cutlery is not so good when Reeve is trying to kill him with it.

Saving the others from their weird possessed state ruins his hair but really, it doesn't matter when he's wearing what he is.

And then they finally, finally find Weirdy.

Though not before they meet another team in which one of them has fire power, his power.

And Nisha is really good at using it.

But it's meant to be his thing.

If another player can master his power better than he can, what does he have left?

It's unfair .

What's also unfair is Adam and Reeve yelling at each other like an old married couple, exactly like another married couple he knows.

It throws him back to Easter and how arguing had ruined his chance of finding any chocolate the Easter Bunny had left for him, and he abruptly forgets where he is and what they're doing.

(Thank heavens for Davis, who had always given him chocolate before bed to try and make up for things.)

He manages to push his memories aside as they focus on trying to get Weirdy's attention but all they get for their trouble is being thrown into yet another life or death situation.

It's disheartening to know that even Weirdy, who'd been specifically programmed to help them, has given up on them.

Not to mention that Vanessa won't stop acting strange and although he'd figured out that she was only pretending to like him before, which is a whole other world of hurt he doesn't even want to address, it's unnerving to see her so quiet.

But she mostly ignores him and they end up separated from Adam and Reeve.

They end up eaten, actually.

It's a bizarre experience and not one he'd like to experience ever again. Although he'd take it over Christmas dinners any day.

And then he manages to get Vanessa to tell him why she's been so sad, and they have what he feels like is a nice conversation.

(It's rare that he can discuss video games with someone who understands what he's talking about and poor Davis had tried but hadn't quite gotten the hang of it all.)

Of course he wants to blame her but he'd already done that and it hadn't helped in the slightest so he just assures her he isn't annoyed.

And then the others get back because apparently Mira is the only one who can help things along when they're underwater.

And he wants to tell Adam how happy he is to see him but he remembers that Adam had chosen him out of necessity and he holds back.

Plus, Adam and Reeve suddenly being friendly with each other again means he's probably no longer needed anyway.

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

The pixies or sprites or whatever they are make a nice break from people trying to kill them and figuring out how to make a goat is actually pretty enjoyable .

Until Weirdy ruins it by telling them they're not even real.

But they're not dead either, so he'd been slightly wrong about that.

And it turns out the other team have figured out their doomsday weapon, which is exactly what they don't need to make things better.

Stopping the other team is just as easy as his parents getting along, which is to say it's one of the most difficult things in the world.

Vanessa ends up disappearing, and that's just great because he'd thought they were getting close, becoming friends, and he'd just convinced the others to side with her.

(But it's fine because it's nothing new, it's not like he's used to retaining friends.)

And then because of course life can't be easy, they have to stall the other team, who seem to always be a step ahead of them.

He tries to be a good friend and joins Adam in attempting to force the weird pyramid open but it seems his efforts go unappreciated, surprise surprise.

Stupid motion sickness.

He can practically feel Mira's disapproval when he throws up but he can't help it, he really can't, and he'd take a dragon over a car chase anytime.

The boss battle feels wrong and they all just get thrown around for trying to confusingly help by not helping.

And he feels awful because he knows he wouldn't have been fast enough to save Iris, he'd almost cost everyone their lives.

But he's happy Vanessa is alive.

Although it seems he's too happy because by telling Vanessa what he'd figured out about the mechanical boss, the other team learns how to win.

All is almost lost, again .

Well, before Weirdy finally gets round to being amazing, helping them properly, and conjuring a portal that leads back to whatever their new life is.

It works.

It really works .

And they're still not dead.

And everything is as okay as it can be.

Except it's not, because the others have families to go back to but the game hadn't even thought to program his parents into this world so all he has is a mostly empty house.

(That's not to say he's not grateful for Davis, who is by far the best butler and friend in the world.)

But while the others are making a toast to old friends and new adventures, he can't help but feel a little lost .

Actually, make that very lost.

Because where does he fit into this new world?

Turns out you can take Kai out of the hollow but you can't take the hollow feeling out of Kai.

-

sorry for the big sad but the poor kid is traumatised enough to warrant this tbh... more of my thoughts at @kaidamplease if you’re interested :p

-

thanks for reading! masterlist

[gay-doodlebug-with-adhd916]

So, this is probably going to make very little sense, but I’m not sure where else to put this news. In therapy, I uncovered some pretty heavy early childhood trauma that my brain was hiding from me for a long time, and I talked to my mom about what I remembered because I was half hoping that she was going to say that my brain just made this up and this didn’t happen and maybe I just had an overactive imagination as a kid. Instead, she confirmed it. She got all somber and real and the details she referenced (and the fact that they’re congruent or the same as what resurfaced in my memory) is validating, terrifying, and heartbreaking. I’m not sure if I can go into much detail, partially because I can’t/don’t even tell much of my family or friends about this, this is the internet and it’s not always the wisest for everyone to know everything about me, and I still know and love the people who were directly involved in this trauma and they’ve changed as people and I wish the best for them. However, these resurfaced memories fundamentally change the way I view myself, the way I view those closest to me, and the way I view the world around me. It feels both liberating and very difficult. My emotions seem to change like waves about this. In the morning and during times when my head is more clear and my thoughts are least tangled, I’m able to use these newfound memories to tell myself that I am growing and that my mind is healing because I’ve been able to acknowledge these memories. In the evening when I’m around my family, I find that my mind often tries to dissociate which I don’t love because I want to try to continue to make memories with my family in the time I have left with them, but that can be difficult to do when my mind is somewhere else entirely. Late at night I have a tendency to spiral into a dark place because my thoughts are the least clear by then and everything is too muddled and swimming around in my head frantically like my thoughts need to go somewhere but they don’t know where to go. Remembering these things (or what I remember of these things so far) felt like a major step in therapy because sometimes I feel like I know of myself but never know myself, or it’s hard for me and my emotions to be connected as one (it’s difficult to explain, partially bc it ebbs and flows). I have PTSD and I already know that (that’s what I’m in therapy for) because of something traumatic that happened to me when I was middle school age that I continue to work through. However, when these memories resurfaced, my therapist and I are spending time evaluating the possibility that I may have had PTSD before this as well, and it significantly worsened or maybe affected me more after what I went through as a middle schooler. When these memories resurfaced, my therapist asked me what I think of the little girl (myself) who went through this when looking at her from an almost adult perspective. And after some consideration, I said that I think she was courageous. Because she was. I was. I wonder how much differently she would have dealt with what she was going through at that time if someone went out of their way to tell her that. But in that moment, I decided to tell her that, for whatever it was worth. And I think that was what caused me to be able to meet my inner child. Or, perhaps, what made my inner child feel comfortable enough to come out and meet me. This entire concept is very new to me, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do and how to handle this, how the heck one “interacts” with their inner child. But last night, I decided to text my sister and tell her about what happened. She herself was also quite young when I went through what I went through, and I’m not sure how much she remembered or what she was told at that time. To be entirely honest, I was nervous to tell her. I was scared that she would get mad, or think that I was trying to talk trash about or be rude to our loved ones. But in the end, she responded with love. She was kind to me, and sorrowful that I had to go through what I went through. She

apologized, and she told me that she never had any idea about this. I told her some positive memories I had of that time as well, of her and my other sister and the silly things we did and the ways the two of them were so kind to me. She seemed to enjoy those parts. And this morning, I woke up being able to know that my sister knows and it’s okay. I feel a little bit lighter, a little less alone. I’m still processing a lot and my emotions still ebb and flow. But I don’t know, the fact that I’m not alone, the fact that a person I’m close to, a person who was there believes me and is here for me makes it feel a little bit more like maybe its going to be okay.

[southsidestory]

you have bipolar disorder? how did you get to that conclusion? did you go to a doctor? i don’t want to self diagnose but i’ve read up on it a lot and it seems like my grandfather, father, and i have it. its made life super difficult. I even stopped writing ff bc when i posted, people wouldn’t understand how depressive episode make you not want to do anything for literal months at a time and would berate me for not updating 1/2

2/2 and my family is Mexican so they believe that mental illness is an American Thing, so i cant really go to them for help, and i wouldn’t even know where to begin with a doctor. what was your experience with it?

I did go to a psychiatrist, yes, but I had been experiencing symptoms since I was 12. I was 26 when I was finally correctly diagnosed. Before that I’d been misdiagnosed with MDD (major depressive disorder) and put on a cocktail of meds that mostly made me worse. Being correctly diagnosed is hugely important, and I highly recommend that someone see a psychiatrist rather than self diagnosing. 

But. Not everyone has the privilege of easy access to a psychiatrist, and it sounds like you’re in that category. And I can say from personal experience that I knew I was bipolar before I was diagnosed, because it runs in my family and my symptoms were astoundingly obvious by that point. Since you asked, I’ll tell you about my experience.

As I said, I started experiencing bipolar symptoms when I was a kid. I also have PTSD and GAD, and my anxiety has been with me all my life, but my depression started when I was 12. A nurse practitioner put me on the antidepressant Lexapro, which made me worse--because antidepressants don’t work for bipolar people. Our brains aren’t wired for it. So I quit taking Lexapro and didn’t attempt to treat my mental illness with medicine for the next ten years. 

I also started having hypomanic episodes as a young teenager, but I didn’t recognize them for what they were. I wouldn’t sleep for days and I’d be highly productive and feel great, so why would I complain about that or think it’s a problem? But the longer I went untreated the more severe my episodes became and the longer they lasted, and by the time I hit my 20s I was in a really bad place. Depressed 85% of the time, hypomanic 10% (although I didn’t know that’s what it was), and “normal” about 5%. My depressive episodes often lasted for months at a time, briefly broken by a week or two of hypomania, after which I’d plummet right back into depression.

I went to a psychiatric nurse practitioner when I was 22. He assumed I was depressed and put me on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. That mostly made me worse. The only thing that ever really worked was Abilify, which is an atypical antipsychotic shockingly used to treat bipolar disorder. That really should have been a fucking clue, but I went improperly diagnosed for another four years.

Being on a cocktail of the wrong meds made me worse, which led me to stop taking my meds cold turkey, which is always a bad idea. In April 2016 I had a horrible mixed episode, although I didn’t understand what it was then. For those who don’t know, a mixed episode is when someone is manic and depressed at the same time, and it’s pure hell. During my episode, I broke up with my partner right before our first wedding anniversary, quit my job, and almost committed suicide. (Then I moved back home and my mom promptly died, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.)

Fortunately my partner and I got back together, and they helped me figure out what was going on. They’re also bipolar, but unlike me they were diagnosed as a kid, and our symptoms presented differently so that’s probably why neither of us saw it for a long time.

I finally saw a psychiatrist at the beginning of 2017, and I went in already knowing what I was going to hear. My mom had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder a couple of years before she died, so I knew it ran in my family. My symptoms had worsened significantly and my hypomania had finally become so distinct and unhealthy that it couldn’t be overlooked anymore.

None of my previous health care providers had ever asked me, “What do you feel like when you’re at your happiest?” If they had, it would have probably been obvious that I suffer from bipolar disorder, not unipolar depression. Because my “happiest” looks like extreme periods of creative productivity, days or weeks of insomnia, and some very bad decision making lol. Usually followed by a crash landing back into depression.

So I guess that’s my question for you. What do you feel like when you’re at your happiest? If your “up” periods sound like hypomania or mania, which I’m sure you’ve read about, then yeah there’s a good chance you’re bipolar. :/

And if you are bipolar, I cannot stress enough how important it is to get proper medication. I don’t want to scare you, but something like 20% of bipolar people die from committing suicide. And those are just the successful ones; the number who attempt, sometimes multiple times, is much higher. This is an extremely dangerous, disabling, potentially deadly illness. Although you can learn helpful coping strategies in therapy, and a good support system is also very important, the #1 thing you need to treat bipolar disorder is medication. It’s a chemical imbalance in the brain that, for 99% of us, cannot be effectively managed without mood stabilizers and/or antipsychotics. Every bipolar person I know (my mom, my aunt, my partner, and one of my friends) didn’t get better until they were on meds, and it was the same for me.

All this to say, if you suspect you’re bipolar, I encourage you to do every single thing in your power to get to a psychiatrist. I’d like to say your family might come around, but if you say they believe mental illness is an “American Thing” then I believe you. In which case, you need to advocate for yourself now and worry about their opinions later. Assuming you’re an adult, which I’m *really* hoping you are. If you’re a minor, that makes this much harder.

When you say you’re Mexican, I don’t know if you mean you’re living in Mexico or living in the US. If Mexico, I can’t point you toward resources, but if you happen to live in the US, most major cities have FQHCs (federally qualified health centers), which are aimed at serving poor people, and many of which provide mental health care services.

If you do have access to a psychiatrist, I can give you some pointers on what to do before your first appointment. I went into mine with a list of symptoms and how long I’d been experiencing them, family history of mental illness, previous medication regimens, and a summary of my trauma. When I handed it over to my psychiatrist she was like “Well it’s quite clear that you’re bipolar. I’m sorry you’ve been misdiagnosed for so long.”

If you’re comfortable DMing me, please feel free. Regardless, I hate to hear that you’re struggling, but I do want you to know that things can get better. I honestly feel like I lost the years between age 12 and 26, because I spent them so miserable, but since getting properly medicated my life has turned around completely. I want to see that happen for you too, nonny.

[scrutineyeze]

i’m seeing a lot of ppl tossing around ideas about the nature of Fear & the Fourteen Fears (& some about the Extinction & its place in that), so i thought i’d try my hand at it too, lol. these thoughts have been kicking around my head for a while, & i’d be really interested in hearing what others think about this !

gonna put a warning here just about descriptions of fear/s & stuff. also a heads up: this contains spoilers for all of the magnus archives up to date [6/29/2020] and also i have A Lot of thoughts & can Not shut up, so this got. long. (2.7k) & ,,, increasingly weirdly worded bc uhh that’s kinda How I Write

without further ado: my thoughts on Fear, its facets, & how Old these might be. possibly also featuring mentions of the sublime & various things i’ve read. (i’ll work to paraphrase and/or quote these things as succinctly as possible.)

01. introduction 02. Fear: that it is not distinct Fears 03. Fear: a continuation, that it is in Facets 04. on the separation & age of such Facets 05. on, indeed, why such facets cannot be seen are Separate 06. some closing thoughts

01. thesis: robert smirke is Wrong about Fear. robert smirke believes that Fear is distinguishable into Fourteen Separate Fears; this has been shown to be, of a sort, already incorrect, as jonah magnus figured out & demonstrated with the only successful ritual, which entailed bringing in all the “fears” at once. however, to think of them as distinct Fears as in plural is a misunderstanding.

02. the following are selections from the meno, a dialogue written by plato & this translation is from Cathal Woods. beginning at 71d.

Socrates: … But you yourself, divine Meno, what do you say virtue is? … Meno: M: But it's not hard to say, Socrates. To begin with, if you want the virtue of a man, it's easy. A man's virtue is this: to attend to the affairs of the city effectively and in the process to benefit his friends and harm his enemies and make sure that he suffers nothing similar himself. If you're looking for the virtue of a woman, it's not hard to express. It's to manage her home well, preserving her possessions and being obedient to her husband. And there's a different virtue for children, both male and female, and for an old man, and, if you want, for a free man and, if you so desire, for a slave. And there are so many other virtues that there's no problem saying what virtue is, since there's a virtue for each occupation and stage of life with respect to each function of each person. And I take the same to hold for vice, Socrates. Socrates: It seems I've had some great good fortune, Meno, if, when looking for a single virtue, I have discovered in your possession some kind of swarm of virtues.

socrates then goes on to ask about bees & if meno thinks that they differ from each other insofar as “their being bees” or if they only differ through other means, such as beauty, size, colour, etc. meno says that they differ by other means, not through their being bees, & socrates presses then that virtue must be the same: there must be something which makes each of the attributes which meno listed virtues, and that connecting thread must be Virtue.

imagine, then, that we are talking about fear. (not so hard to do, when we are talking about fear lol.) so it might follow thus:

Socrates: meno, what is fear? Meno: Well, it is of corruption, and of violence, and of death, and of …

and so on—except that meno could, of course, differentiate further than simply the fourteen which smirke spoke of. as said in 111 “Family Business:”

I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red?

and, of course, he goes on to say:

I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour.

but i would (will) argue that it isn’t meaningless to try to describe Fear as it is, which is as a single Entity. because it is the differences by other means (beauty, size, shape) which distinguish the facets of Fear, and not that it is distinct from itself by its Being Fear. that which makes us afraid—and us here, and likely everywhere, will be in reference to living things which feel fear in general, tho i will try to make myself clear at any time i speak less or more generally—makes us afraid through its Shared Connection to Fear, not through its connection to any other thing or other attributes. if something has the capacity to induce fear, then it must contain within itself the connection to Fear, or its being scary—the way that a bee, regardless of its other features, will always share with other bees their Being Bees, and the way that virtues must all contain within themselves that which Makes Them Virtuous in order to be listed as virtues at all. “that which Makes Them Virtuous,” socrates says, must be Virtue, & he spends the whole dialogue trying to get meno to help him answer that question (plus an interesting part about memory & reincarnation, but that’s unrelated).

(i’m going to say here that you Really Don’t Have To Read the meno. i uh personally dislike plato, esp when he’s not talking about love—but this is neither here nor there.)

03. so this brings us to, well, if Fear isn’t separate, then what are the Fourteen in relation to Fear? i’d say that they’re Facets of Fear, the way that honeybees and bumblebees are both bees, and aren’t different insofar as “their being bees,” but they are different in terms of other things, such as size and shape, so you might call them Facets (or different manifestations) of Bee-ness.

this does, also, allow for the looseness of seeing Fear like Colour. you can stick to the basics—blue, red, yellow, green, etc.—or get into specifics—ochre, cerulean, lilac—but you’re still discussing Colour. at the same time, Fear works similarly; you can speak of Fear of change (which would include fears such as uninjured to injured, healthy to sick, alive to dead), of depths (which is my reasoning against the point in 111 that “[s]ome really clash, and you just can’t put them together” … “I doubt The Buried would be bringing through The Vast,” because the fear of both seems to me as significantly more similar than dissimilar: the fear is often categorized as not being able to breathe, due to a too-much or not-enough, and also as the fear of being insignificant in comparison to the size, the fear of a deepness you will Never comprehend that Will Swallow you—a video i would Highly Recommend is “Fear of Depths,” made by Jacob Geller; he talks mostly about caves, the darkness you can’t see into, the call of the void. he talks some of the creatures at the bottom of the ocean, a lot about various video games, including a platformer which causes you to lose the floor. it’s a game about going deeper, ever deeper, and yet … you’re plunged into a massive, empty space. it’s a very, very good video. cw for talking about someone dying stuck in a cave.)—and you can speak of Fear in specifics, even more into detail than the Fourteen do. the Fourteen seems, to me, as a relatively easy nomenclature for these things, especially as understanding these things involve “paradoxes that most adults couldn’t handle” (111)

04. and i’m not arguing, necessarily, against using such nomenclature. to talk about Fear is difficult—i believe, much like socrates believes in Virtue, that there must be something that we can speak to which will succinctly categorize all that we find Scary, but, just like socrates and his search for Virtue rather than the naming of virtues, i find myself at a loss. i have my own thoughts on its connection to the sublime, & how terror and awe meet—how i find it impossible to separate the two, and other thoughts on how perhaps calling what i’m speaking of Fear is a reduction of what it Is—but i think putting those thoughts in another meta is a better organization of my thoughts.

so to talk about Fear in a much more manageable way, to talk about it in its particulars, in its Facets, allows us to better speak to it, just as, when trying to speak of Bravery, one does not need to speak of all things Virtuous.

however, i do believe it important to bear in mind the distinction between something being a Facet of Fear, and something being A Separate Fear. this is when we come to the “age” of various “fears,” or facets. this is another point at which i believe that robert smirke is wrong. he believes that the flesh is the youngest entity, that the end is old & so is the dark—and i’ve seen further speculation from there, about the eye being young—which, in light of how the eye (or, at least, jonah magnus, which i think is more likely, as it does seem Fear is malleable based on belief—as it should be, if it is to reflect our Fear) feels about children’s fears (cf. “Night Night,” ep. 173), i’ve seen quite a bit about

in order for fear to exist, the Fear must have been there since the first time fear was felt—or must have been created simultaneously with it, or some such thing. if Fear is indeed how i’ve described it, and smirke took the easy way out by calling it by its Facets as meno did Virtue, then i would argue against the saying that one facet of Fear is older than another—especially because the difference seems only to be in how close one pays attention.

consider the hunt and the eye, for a moment. at first glance—indeed, likely from smirke’s point of view—the hunt would be an older fear than the eye. we understand the hunt to be the fear of being chased, the fear of being made prey, the fear of predators lurking or stalking or hunting. and we understand the eye to be the fear of being watched, seen, known, of having our secrets brought into the light—the eye, as i’ve seen algie @equalseleventhirds say (along with a great deal of other things that i find highly interesting! they have had a lot to say about the connection between fears—fear soup is the nomenclature there—& also about jonah’s effect on the apocalypse & the distinction of Fear that we’ve seen in season five; all of this i highly recommend checking out) is younger than others, and from how these facets are understood now, it seems possible

after all, animals have been afraid of being prey since there were first hunters.

except to be hunted, you must first be Seen. how many animals protect themselves through camouflage? how long have animals used camouflage to protect themselves? how many animals Must fear being Seen just as much as being Hunted because, to them, those facets are inextricable?

05. which brings us to the facets being incapable of being made separate. we—and once more, this is all living things which can feel fear—don’t ever fear only One Thing At A Time.

from a piece of my writing (which is still very much in the works):

“Fear … isn’t that separate. The cabin fed on your fear of loss, yes, but also of being alone—of being left alone. Of being the sole survivor. Of watching us slip away—of losing us to an unfathomable violence that hid[es] … you’re not only afraid of one thing, Tim. It all blurs together.”

in this instance, i’m talking about desolation—kind of. 111 describes it as the “[f]ear of pain, fear of loss, fear of unthinking or cruel destruction.” but where does the fear of pain stop connecting to the fear of being prey, of being the victim of some unexpected violence? from “the Eye Opens,” ep. 160:

You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?

where does the fear of loss stop being the fear of being alone? if you’re afraid of losing those you love, you’re also afraid of being made separate from them, of being alone, aren’t you?

even the flesh, which smirke thinks began with the industrial revolution, must have existed since there were first bodies. even if included within other facets, there are so many things which force us to recall our own physicality in the worst way. in the disease & decomposition of bodies—in things like gangrene, in the bacteria that consume flesh—in the witnessing of flesh (sometimes yours) in the mouths of predators—hyenas and lions don’t always kill their prey being beginning to consume it—

humanity’s stories are full of reminders, too. we have cannibalism in our fairytales (hansel & gretel) & we have it in our propaganda: horror stories ranging from during the famine in Jerusalem during Titus’ siege—Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, “There were scattered reports of Jews who succumbed to eating the dead.” and i think i’ve read of similar rumors spread about early christians eating children, tho can’t currently find any sources—and also in significantly more recent times we also tell stories of various people participating in cannibalism, or of monsters which only consume human flesh, or people driven to starvation (cf. ep. 58, “Trail Rations”)—these stories aren’t new. living things have probably feared our own bodies since we had the knowledge that they age and deteriorate and die—that we must eventually end because of them.

this is also why i don’t believe the extinction is any more than another facet of Fear, just like any other; (from “Rotten Core,” ep. 157) “[p]erhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore.” it overlaps with and through and into the other facets just as each other in turn folds into the rest. i mean ,,, how many apocalypse-setting shows/books/movies/podcasts exist now? how big was the “2012 as the end of the world” thought? (they made a movie about it: 2012.) us, our end, & the life that comes after … i’m put in mind of a post i recall going around:

“but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.”

06. this has all been a rather long-winded (and somewhat meandering) proposition on how Fear might work—i’m Very interested in how other people think about Fear/the Fears/the Fourteen (& if anyone wants to talk to me about the Sublime & where that meets Fear, i’d ! be Very interested in talking about that, i might make another post about that too). i see each facet of Fear as inextricable—when talking and/or writing about them, i find it hard to keep any of them separate at all, especially when it comes to fears i specifically have myself. what do other ppl think ? how separate do you see the various fears/facets ?

[literary-princess]

hey! i was wondering if you have any videos or quick tips on making the six costumes? id really like to make the black alt one, with different parts for each queen (like cleves' jacket, howard's halr skirt, etc) bc i dont have a favourite queen, i have an obsession. also, im new to costume making (ive been sewing normal clothes for a while) and i was wondering if the six costumes' materials are werdly textured or anything? i have sensory processing issues, so id like to know how it feels :)

Hi there! I’d love to tell you lots of positives, but honestly, these costumes are notorious for being difficult for cosplayers to tackle because they’re the opposite of simple. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible! I’m a novice at sewing myself and I was able to figure it out after a lot of trial and error, lol

I did a tutorial/walkthrough for Boleyn, and I may get around to making Howard one day if I find the motivation, but Howard was significantly more difficult and I don’t know yet how I’ll be able to make it more concise/understandable.

If you’re going for accuracy, the materials you’d use (vinyl, pvc, pleather, etc.) are all very oddly textured on the skin compared to most regular clothes, and it’s going to be pretty heavy compared to wearing cotton or denim or any everyday fabric. In Howard especially, I am constantly aware of when my legs bump against the skirt because it’s stiff and structured basically like a hard rounded sheet of plastic. And with Boleyn, I’m always aware of the weight on my shoulders, but otherwise it kind of just feels like wearing a cropped leather jacket. The fishnets might also be interesting texture-wise if you aren’t accustomed to wearing tights.

A tip I could recommend would be to structure the costume so that you can wear your own clothing as much as possible underneath - for me, I built my Howard top around an existing old bra that I covered in the new material, and I’m able to wear my own comfy undies under the bottoms, so I don’t feel the scratchiness of those fabrics in those places at all.

Now on the other hand, if you wanted to make versions with alternative fabric choices, it could help with the sensory issues, but the structure and overall look of the costume may turn out different. The costumes have that uniform look because of the materials they’re made out of, but that isn’t to say you can’t find another way to do it!

There’s a bunch of tumblr accounts, instagram accounts (especially the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre costume shop!) and facebook groups where people have collected resources on where to find the materials, tips on construction, reference photos, etc.

My biggest thing when making both of my costumes was just to look at tutorials for regular clothes and kind of alter them in size or shape just slightly to fit the look of the costumes (a pleated skirt for Boleyn, a bustier for Howard, etc.)

Hope this general info helps! And my inbox is always open if you need any more specifics!