#(but i want to clarify that although i understand where those comments come from on like a social level [stereotypical unhinged fujoshi idk] | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

threewaysdivided · 3 years ago

Note

So we all know how you feel about season 2 of Young Justice so how would you go about fixing all the flaws that happened over the course of the time skip and are there any episodes in season 1 you would have done differently? Also love your Deathly Weapons story and look forward to the next part.

First of all, thank you! I’m happy you’re enjoying Deathly Weapons and I’m super grateful for how much patience everyone has shown about me disappearing down into the writing mines for years at a stretch - especially to all the readers, commenters and artists who’ve come by to say hi during those long barren periods.

Chapter 18 (#19 counting the prologue) is now in full draft version with about 80% in final draft and the last few scenes currently in revision, so with luck I might get the next update out this month (touch wood).

Now, to your questions:

Any episodes in Season 1 that I would have done differently?

Honestly, not really. Or at least not on a whole-episode-rewrite level.

I think most of Young Justice Season 1 is incredibly solid, even in the slower and less substantial episodes/ scenes. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, narrative is more than just plot, characters and thesis; it’s also stuff like pacing, framing, tone and emotional texture, and for what they are I think those scenes and episodes contribute pretty well - usually on top of doing some pretty decent character work by themselves.

That’s not to say YJS1 is perfect by any measure, but a lot of the issues I have are entirely the kind of polish stuff that you’d expect from the first season of a show still finding its feet.

The biggest things I would want to change are:

I would tweak the writing of the Light specifically around the episodes Welcome to Happy Harbour and Humanity. The reveal of T.O. Morrow’s plan is that he wants his Red Androids to drive humans extinct and repopulate the planet with a robot army, which doesn’t really fit the Light’s stated goal of evolving humanity. I would either cut the scene from Welcome to Happy Harbour that implies T.O. Morrow is a part of their plan and just let him be an independent antagonist like we see in a few other episodes, OR I would add a scene in Humanity to clarify that the Light were using Morrow for their own agenda a la the Injustice League (perhaps in hopes of turning Red Tornado or even just confirming that the Team is operating from Mount Justice) and that Red Volcano’s ultimate failure is something they anticipated or even planned to cause themselves if necessary. Looking at Season 1 in isolation I do understand why the first scene is there; Welcome to Happy Harbour is only Episode 3 and at that point they’re still trying to establish a sense of the Light lurking conspiratorially as a presence behind every curtain. It’s one of those minor things that’s understandable on its own but, with the context of the later seasons, kind of feels like ominous foreshadowing in hindsight.

I’d also potentially want to adjust the dynamic between M’gann and Conner in the episode Terrors. In the context of just Season 1 it’s mostly fine – their relationship having some light friction around boundaries/ consent is interesting and could have been built into a future arc. But in light of what actually followed, the way this episode has M’gann reveal something personal about Conner to a stranger without his permission, only to then frame Conner as wrong for reacting angrily and have him beg her to come back without addressing it because “don’t leave me, please, I need you” feels like a red flag for what would become a pattern of later entries routinely forcing Conner to just ‘get over’ or even accept blame for moments where M’gann is written to violate his trust. Were it me, I would either add some extra lines toward the end of the episode to have both of them recognise that (although well-intended) M’gann’s choice of action was inappropriate and Conner is allowed to feel upset (even if he was a little harsh) OR leave it as-is but make resolving the issue of boundaries (especially as a character flaw of M’gann’s) a key focus for them in a follow-up story.

In a similar vein, I question the addition of Rocket/Raquel in the last two episodes. It’s not that she’s bad, it’s just a really late point in a season to be adding a new character. She doesn’t have any established emotional connection to the rest of the Team or the reveals that follow and, outside of a couple of scenes that use her powers for minor problem solving, she doesn’t have much narrative utility. (And sure, she shows up as a cameo in Revelations but so do a bunch of other characters who never meaningfully come back). Were Young Justice’s canon not trapped in The Bad Place and, had some actually competent showrunners created later seasons where she had an arc and proper function, they could have justified it but, again, with the context of what we did get: ominous foreshadowing in hindsight.

Apart from that, I think I would have liked to see a bit more animation fidelity in places. Little tweaks to things like expressions and maybe a few background idle/ breathing animations during group shots. There are some moments where facial features get a little bit slide-y, and characters can freeze into being these wall-eyed mannequins while waiting for their turn to talk. (There’s a couple of points in Denial’s elevator scene where Artemis just turns into this vacant cardboard cut-out when she’s not speaking and it’s kind of hilarious: she has become one with the elevator music.)

But on the other hand, I get why it’s like that. Animation is really complicated, especially in 2D where every little change or addition can mean an entirely new set of drawings; which means asking the animation/lighting/compositing/VFX team to make and implement those drawings, which means spending more time and money… at some point there’s diminishing returns and only weird nerds like me are going to notice or care. It’s flawed but mostly in that kind of charming way where it reminds you that even really good art is made by human beings trying their best. And, when it wants to, Young Justice’s animation can be really good, so I’m glad they put the resources there instead.

How would I fix all the flaws that happened over the timeskip?

Boy howdy, this one is going to be a doozie.

For the sake of people just tuning in: I have some significant frustrations with Invasion (and really all post-S1 content). To this day, Young Justice remains the only show where I adored rewatching one season, only to turn around and consciously think “I don’t want to keep watching, this feels like a chore” on the next. Back when things were still mercifully cancelled I poked at Invasion a bit, identified a couple of surface-level annoyances, and let it go because one great season and one flop is still 50% excellent (and hey, maybe there were production problems, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt).

And then the revival happened and OH NO. I have been sucked down the rabbit hole of trying to understand how deep the problems go and why they’re so infuriating ever since.

Here’s the resulting master post (I know, I have a master post, good grief) of my analysing various problems across YJS2+.

With that as context, the challenge in answering your question is that there’s no singular problem with Young Justice (well… there is but we’ll get there). It’s more of a Russian nesting doll of interlocking problems; smaller things that point to bigger things. So trying to “fix” all the flaws ends up feeling a bit like Sisyphus with his rock - as soon as you get on top of one it rolls right down another slope into a fresh quagmire of issues.

What I think I’d like to do now and I was going to say ‘with your permission’ but it’s my blog and none of you are here to stop me so this is a hostage situation, I’m so sorry is use Invasion as kind of a case study/ writing exercise. Go through the problems layer by layer, suggest some possible ways to address them and see where it leads us.

Alright.

Let’s take our boulder and get rolling, shall we?

Before we really get into this, there’s an idea I’d like you to consider:

Constructing a narrative is about making choices. Nothing in a narrative “has” to happen and, at the same time, nothing just spontaneously manifests by itself. Good fiction creates the illusion of being a window through which we experience pieces of another living world, but in reality what is presented by the text is all that exists. Everything has to be consciously constructed: from the events of the plot, to the backgrounds, to individual footstep sounds. A drawing intersecting another drawing on a screen does not make noise; someone deliberately adds that in. If a tree falls in a forest and the creators don’t depict it, it doesn’t even fall.

An example: Let’s look at the Toy Story Movies’ credit-scene “bloopers”. These aren’t actual bloopers - real bloopers would be stuff like the animation breaking, or textures not rendering, or the engine going haywire; things that would disrupt the illusion of life. What they actually are is bonus scenes that the creative team actively wrote and developed on top of the rest of the movie, to help support the illusion that these characters are real and continue to exist outside the story rather than being CG-rendered polygons that disappear when the program switches off.

The flipside of this, though, is that the creators have near-ultimate power over what does happen. The sky could be blue one day and chartreuse the next. Wally’s hair could change colour every five minutes. Zatanna could be a different nationality each episode. Superboy could speak exclusively in limericks. It’s not complete power - licensing agreements, executive mandates and the physical limitations of time/tools/team/budget do create restrictions and force certain things - but outside of that, anything they decide goes. Good narratives tend to make effective and efficient choices; choices which fit cohesively with what has already been established and with what is planned to happen later, which create a sense of causality that the audience can follow, which don’t break the explicit/implied “rules” of how things work, and which don’t demand a lot of additional work/choices be made just to facilitate them. This is why I have limited patience for people who try to defend stories by claiming that ‘X’ “had” to happen. No, it didn’t. The creators could have chosen anything; they decided that ‘X’ should happen, and had they chosen a different option, it would have become canon instead.

With that said: to business.

I want to make it clear; there are things I like about Invasion. I like that they continued Red Arrow’s personal narrative and that it was Jade and Lian who ultimately helped him break out of his self-loathing and find the original Roy (although it is frustrating that he drops from the story immediately after that).

I like some of the new additions. I like Jaime and Bart, and I think Jaime’s arc about developing a partnership with his Scarab is one of the strongest personal narratives throughout the season. I like the Runaways, and especially how Virgil was written. I like Green Beetle. These characters are entertaining; the animation team and voice actors created good moment-to-moment chemistry between them and they’re written to play off each other well.

There’s also a lot of potential in the ideas if developed further. Beneath his bubbly persona there’s a lot of layers to explore in Bart’s experience as a time traveller interacting with a world and people that in his own are long-destroyed and dead. I like the idea of him developing new relationships with the present-day Neutron and Blue Beetle despite already “knowing” them in another form. I like the potential between Jaime and Tye; two old friends independently and unwillingly empowered by outside forces, learning to navigate and live in their new environment. I like the concept of the Runaways; a group of teens abducted because they were unwanted/ neglected/ overlooked, who find a place with each other - being led by Virgil, a kid from a loving family who was grabbed by mistake. There’s interesting things to explore in the idea that each meta-ability in some way reflects the individual meta-human’s surroundings; especially since most of the Runaways are multi-ethnic, and particularly for Tye as the grandson of an Apache chief. You could make some fascinating commentary about a world where the lines are blurring and “superpowers” are increasingly being held by “regular” people, rather than just mythologised costumed culture heroes and aliens, and where aliens are becoming an increasingly normal aspect of everyday life.

Like I said, there’s good potential there.

It’s just…

I would have liked them better if they’d been in their own show.

The immediate problem is that these elements barely engage with the existing narrative of Young Justice. None of the new characters have emotionally significant personal interactions with the original cast. Nor do they or their journeys function as cinematic/ thematic/ character foils or parallels to the original Team. The mole plot and Bart/Jaime’s plot never seem to intentionally feed into each other; nothing Jaime and Bart do really contributes to the reveal in Summit, and nothing the original Team do really contributes to defeating Black Beetle on the Reach ship. While there are some minor convergence points in service of problem solving for one story or the other, it rarely (if ever) feels like both groups are actively working together in service of a mutual overall goal. They are connected primarily by virtue of existing in the same show.

Here we have that Scope Management problem I’ve mentioned before. We now have two functionally independent casts and storylines competing for less total screentime than the first season (Invasion having only 20 episodes to Season 1’s 26). Any screentime given to one comes as the opportunity cost of that screentime not being used to develop the other. It’s narratively inefficient, and the result is that even the good things end up feeling underbaked.

There’s also an issue with how the Reach fit into the structure. Invasion likes to frame their defeat as something that “broke the Light in half” but the more you think about it, the more that’s revealed to be untrue. The Reach were never fully-integrated partners of the Light; both organisations held each other at arm’s length, and both ultimately saw and treated the other as disposable. Indeed, the thing that drives the final wedge is the Team revealing that the Light had always planned to double-cross. And then the final climax happens because the Reach were intending to double-cross right back by attempting to destroy the Earth. In fact, you could argue that defeating the Reach was always part of the Light’s own plan, and that the Team’s actions in Summit simply altered the method and timeframe by which that plan advanced to its next intended stage.

Which is itself a problem because the presence of the Reach is most of the justification for these new characters existing in the story in the first place.

I’d like to introduce two concepts from game design:

Accretion Accretion is a design phenomenon (usually in MMOs and perpetual games) where instead of patching, improving or removing mechanics and systems that are becoming outdated, unbalanced, exploitable or broken, the developers choose to simply build and layer over unrelated new mechanics with the aim of replacing and outmoding the systems that already exist. The old Extra Credits team did a video on this if you want to learn more.

The Sidequest Problem In his God of War Retrospective, Hello Future Me identified what he called ‘the Sidequest problem’: where the designers establish a story goal but then (rather than creating future goals/stakes for the player to progress past it and on to) they instead have the player encounter a sequence of arbitrary obstacles and problems that mostly exist to obstruct progress to that main goal until the obstacle is removed. The issue being that, while this approach extends playtime and gives the player a lot to do, the things that happen don’t necessarily feel like they’re moving the story forward. This is similar to the “filler arc” problem in early-2000s TV anime. In order to continue airing episodes while waiting for the publisher to release new adaptable material, the show writers would put the ongoing story into stasis by inventing an unrelated/ unconnected original antagonist or problem which they could divert the cast into a story about overcoming without changing the status quo on either side.

As they exist in Invasion canon, the Reach represent a choice to add a disposable secondary antagonist who can be knocked down without much advancement to the central conflict. It’s effectively a canonical “filler arc”.

The overarching structural issue with Young Justice is that every season Accretes new Sidequests rather than progressing the existing narrative goals.

There’s also the broader Scope Management issue that (even excluding the characters required by the ‘Sidequests’) Young Justice introduces a ridiculous number of characters per season. Most end up in the same position as Rocket: no properly established emotional connection to the existing Team, no personal motivations giving them agency in the plot, little to no narrative utility outside of a couple of scenes of minor problem solving. They seem to have been added mostly as references but because they hang around longer than cameos they divert time and development away from the narratively significant characters. Again, it’s an inefficient choice with a high opportunity cost.

So, how could we fix this?

The broader Scope Management issue is pretty simple. Just take out any characters who weren’t set up by Season 1 and who aren’t relevant to the Sidequest. So, outside of Jaime, Bart, Neutron, Green Beetle and the Runaways that leaves us with: Beast Boy and Arsenal, and then Batgirl, Bumblebee, Lagoon Boy and Guardian if we count the cameos as foreshadowing. That’s already a lot more manageable. Plus Bumblebee and Beast Boy’s powers are useful for specific problem-solving, and between them, the original Team, the League and the Sidequest cast they should be able to cover most of the critical roles in driving missions. And, by reallocating more time and jobs to them, you give them more opportunities to resonate with the audience and become narratively significant on their own.

I say simple but functionally it means we’re already re-writing most of the season (or at the very least re-animating and re-recording all the scenes with switched-out characters, which is pretty similar) .

The next step would be to address the Sidequest problem, which we could do in two ways.

Option 1: We could give the conflict actual long-term significance by making the Reach properly important to the Light, rather than just a tool whose loss they can shrug off. This could be done by making the Reach actual full partners, or by shifting the Light’s plan to a stage where they still need the Reach around for a while longer: either way losing them should represent a setback that the Light has to re-strategize around. Ideally we’d also like to fold the two casts and plots together more, which I think could be done using Bart. Even more than the Light, Bart is the one who understands what’s really at stake, so he has the motivation to encourage/ steer everybody he can towards working together against the Reach. You could also have Bart interact more with Wally; something that would work both because of their shared tie to the Flash legacy and because Wally is in on the Mole plot. Perhaps have Bart trying to bring Wally out of retirement because he believes Kid Flash is important to the future - which would add more weight to him taking up the mantle later - and since Wally “questions objectivity” and is skilled at detecting fakery (thanks to years of being Dick’s best friend) he might be the one to realise that Bart’s bubbly persona is a front and that something more is going on.

Option 2: Since we’re already functionally re-writing the season anyway, we could fix the Sidequest problem by simply lifting it out and making it into its own separate show. Remember nothing has to happen in a narrative; we could easily have another answer to the sixteen hours that doesn’t involve the Reach, letting the Mole plot and Red Arrow take centre stage again. Meanwhile, that Sidequest - the Reach coming to Earth to stealth-abduct humans for experimentation, Bart coming back from a future-apocalypse to stop them, Jaime finding the Scarab and learning to work with it to become Blue Beetle, liberating Neutron and the Runaways, freeing Green Beetle, and eventually defeating Black Beetle and driving the ambassadors off - doesn’t need to be bolted onto the side of Young Justice. You can write new reasons and ways for these things to happen in their own separate universe. And honestly that story would be better for having the breathing room. The “bond” that allows Jaime and Scarab to defeat Black Beetle feels incredibly barebones in Invasion. With the exception of Virgil, the runaways barely have a fully developed personality between them. Those more nuanced sides of Bart beneath his comic-book-personality act hardly get a look in. It would all be improved by having the space to be its own thing.

For the sake of simplicity let’s go with Option 2. Cut the padding, drop the Sidequest, get the focus back to the original cast.

Wait, where did our boulder go…?

Have you noticed that the Mole plot doesn’t actually progress the long-term conflict either?

We finish Invasion with barely more understanding of the Light’s structure and goals than when we started. When Kaldur is first revealed to be working with them, he’s apparently not trusted enough to have access to their inner secrets. Then, when he is finally brought into the fold after destroying Mount Justice, he gets immediately brain-blasted by Miss Martian and the plot pivots to solving that problem instead. Despite what you’d expect from a mole story, we don’t get to see the how the Light operate in their own environment; the dynamic between the individual members, any points of tension/ disagreement, what each one personally hopes to gain from the alliance. Even outside of the inner circle, Kaldur doesn’t interact with the Light’s wider network of resources and allies - he spends most of his time on the Manta-sub. They barely discover anything, and most of what they do learn is only really useful in knocking down the Reach.

So this is its own form of canonical filler. The conflict still isn’t progressing. It feels like wheel-spin.

Of the story threads in Invasion, we have a Sidequest and this. The only thing that actually moves meaningfully forward is Red Arrow’s personal arc, and he disappears from the story once Arsenal is introduced.

And this is something that persists into the revival at Outsiders; by the end the Light is still incredibly undefined.

It also indicates a weird lack of faith - or even tacit admission of failure - on behalf of the creators. Young Justice is supposedly about “generations” but, rather than letting each entry be a new story about a new generation, they never let go of the original Team. It’s like the showrunners weren’t confident that the audience would accept a whole new cast - or perhaps aren’t confident that they and their new production teams could create characters and conflict as compelling. The result is a lot like the “keep watching and maybe you’ll find out” problem that Hbomberguy so thoroughly criticised in BBC’s Sherlock. The original Team is always there, doing things that might one day progress the existing conflict, but really it’s just a hook to keep you going as the show subjects you to a Sidequest.

An aside: the revival’s blatant nostalgia-bait This is why I'm retroactively annoyed with the Outsiders trailer and how it put such heavy focus on Wally despite him barely being a presence in that season. It's why I was infuriated with the Outsiders fever-dream scene and how it sacrificed any opportunity to meaningfully reflect on Dick and Wally's friendship in favour of a shallow attempt to tug on our nostalgia for Season 1 (to the point that they play the original theme-song, despite it never being used in-show or musically associated with the Team before this). And it's why, despite having already dropped canon, I was still thoroughly irked by how heavily the Phantoms trailers used imagery from the first season when emphasising the next season's supposed return to focus on the original cast. These scenes and trailers speak to how consummately dishonest and insincere Greg Weisman is being as show lead. It reveals that he and the revival team know full well that attachment to the Season 1 cast and their story are the primary source of engagement for most of Young Justice's audience. But, instead of reciprocating that passion by progressing the story, they tease them in false-promise trailers and emotionally exploitative scenes as a transparent attempt to pander back into good graces; even though they clearly have no intent to deliver and (as we'll discuss later) even if they did, any possibility of actually continuing that narrative is at this point long gone.

The other problem is that, because it still drags the original Team through the time skips and plot events, it’s not quite a filler arc. They aren’t in stasis waiting for their turn again - they’re still making choices and doing things that reflect on their characters. And because the show has them do substantially negative things in service of “intrigue” and “drama”, it can accidentally make them seem unsympathetic and callous. And then incompetent when the lack of forward progress gives them no end to justify their means.

So let’s give them an end.

The Team don’t necessarily need to move against the Light in Invasion but they should at least retrieve some significant information. This is, nominally, an espionage show; things like objectives, in-group dynamics, individual motivations, alliances, favours, resources and supply-lines are all important pieces that have value in future problem solving and could act as the foundation of later strategies.

But here’s where we hit a smaller (at least for now) problem: The Light don’t actually have a plan.

The show likes to pretend they do - they’re always lurking in the background, putting fingers to their noses to make their anime-glasses keikaku gleam - but once you stop to examine it, it starts falling apart.

Let’s unpack the Lights “plan” In Season 1 we learn that the Light exist in opposition to a “calcified status quo” which they believe the heroes have helped to create and are enabling to persist; and that their goal is apparently to drive humanity into what they see as “a new stage of evolution”. (Keep that “status quo” bit in the back of your mind for later.) At no point do we learn the details of what this “new stage” entails, or what systems they intend to have replace the current status quo; although by virtue of them being the antagonists and our protagonists being Heroes we can infer it will be worse than (and probably not solve any of the actual problems with) the existing one. By Season 2 we know that the “plan” has something to do with meta-humans, as well as lowering public perception of/ faith in the Justice League, and that their partnership with the Reach is apparently in service of this.

However, this doesn’t really line up.

Season 1 effectively communicates the idea of the Light as meticulous planners taking steps toward a specific goal; on rewatch you can see how the main events of multiple episodes serve as cover for them assembling the pieces of their final weapon. The Team stop Amazo and the Fog, but Ivo and Roquette’s nanotechnology go on to be used in creating Starro-tech - along with the Echidnoderm piece, which Downtime’s attack serves to move to the surface so that it can be stolen during the panic in Misplaced. I especially like the jump-cut that happens right after the trigger phrase ‘Broken Arrow’ in Targets, concealing the period when Red Arrow is pumped for information and likely given the directive to infect the League.

And yet the primary plan that this is in service of involves waiting four-to-five years in hopes that that right aliens are lured to Earth. It’s almost like they’ve gone fishing. They don’t take any on-screen steps to capitalise on the disorientation of the League in the aftermath of the Starro attack, and they don’t carry out any other attempts to attack the heroes or alter the status quo over the intervening years - there’s not even evidence of them making preparations. The only sign of activity is early in Team Year 5; when they go after a magic Tiamat statue as justification for a tie-in game that IGN rated 4.8/10 as “a bland, unsurprising action RPG that has little to do with the series’ continuity or mythology.” (And for anyone wondering; yes, Greg and Brandon were the lead writers on this.)

A smarter strategy might have been to use the 16 hours to implicate the League in some kind of corruption or racketeering on either Earth or in the immediate planetary system; something that would more directly damage their public image and could allow the Light to gain open support and resources by positioning themselves as defenders against the League as a potential threat. Plus, the Light have access to Project Cadmus. Any facility capable of conducting full live cloning is capable of comparative DNA analysis, and any organisation able to entirely replace Roy and steal clone-quality DNA samples from Superman should have no problem gathering DNA from other known meta-humans. The only benefit the Reach bring is the mass-meta-gene-tracer distributed in their drink, and the Light actively sabotage that as part of their double-cross.

Then the plan becomes even less sensical in Season 3. We learn that Vandal Savage is apparently the first meta-human, and has been motivated to form various iterations of the Light throughout history in order to evolve humanity as part of an old pact with Darkseid where they would conquer the galaxy together and then have Earth and Apokolips fight for rulership. Vandal has, apparently, known about the return of Apokolips for millennia; long before the formation of the current status quo or the heroes who supposedly “calcified” it. He’s also confirmed to have known Klarion - who in Season 3 is revealed to be able to activate meta-genes with magic - since the days of Ancient Babylon. Yet he did seemingly nothing to change the course of history or make use of those tools until 2010 - and even then the plan he picked involved passively waiting around for another five years despite intentionally doing things that would put Earth back on Apokolips’ radar.

The whole thing is an Idiot Plot: it requires every member of the Light to be actively and obviously bad at basic planning, strategy or project management. It completely defangs any impression of an organised conspiracy; they exist purely to contrive the illusion that movement-to-moment events, Sidequests and plot-happenings have a greater long-term significance. And in “justifying” internally inconsistent things, the show reveals that there is no coherent creative plan for the Light beyond bog-standard villainy-in-opposition.

Unfortunately, for the creators this is a feature and not a bug; Greg Weisman has openly said he doesn’t want to end the show. If the Light never have a clearly defined plan or internal structure then the Team can never come up with a counter-strategy that will stop them for good. Of course, he could always have had the Light be executing multiple different plans, or be the first in a chain of bigger, badder, baddies for the Team to tackle, but that would require him to get off his ask blog and actually think about the story for more than 10 minutes.

But anyway, let’s give the Light a plan and a structure.

Let’s give Kaldur a proper briefing on their mission statement and at least their current plan once they bring him into the fold. Let’s give him some time to interact with them and learn about their internal dynamic; where the alliances are and who might be persuaded to break away if the incentives were right. Let’s have him observe the coming and goings of mooks from different parts of their wider network. Let’s properly foreshadow their suspicion of him and why (even after “killing” Artemis) it was necessary to take such as drastic step as destroying the Mountain. Let’s give Artemis a chance to offer her own insight into proceedings as someone who grew up among villains. Maybe we could have some suspense around them finding ways to deliver updates and warnings to the others, or even subtly sabotaging a move before it gets someone hurt. When Dick and Wally are fighting, let’s have Dick actually spell out the strategy and stakes.

Now, even if the Team doesn’t take direct action, the conflict is advancing on the information side. It sets up potential for future strategies and justifies the actions they had to take to get there.

So, fixed?

Oh no, not again.

The premise of the of the Mole plot represents a huge contradiction in continuity between seasons.

To an audience watching the seasons back-to-back, the Team has just learned how to work together and trust each other. After the reveals in Usual Suspects we know all of them to be trustworthy. In Alpha Male we see how secret-keeping about a potential mole damages their ability to work together. There is no justification within the show for why Conner, M’gann and Zatanna were excluded from the plan. And the problems that leaving them out causes are extremely foreseeable by the characters. In Failsafe they all experienced the fallout of a situation where they thought Artemis was dead. In Image they watched M’gann brain-blast Psimon into a coma. It’s another Idiot Plot- it requires the characters to be incompetent.

Not only that but this Idiot Plot only works if several characters are written to act directly against their previously stated motivations and values: if Dick is willing to "sacrifice everything for the sake of the mission", if Kaldur is wiling to unquestioningly follow his orders like a soldier, and if M'gann is wiling to casually abuse her powers in a way that hurts people she cares about. There is no acknowledgement or in-show explanation given for why these characters are suddenly acting like the Bizzaro-versions of themselves, despite how badly it damages their arcs.

Plus, if you’ve just come off the back of Season 1 and watching the Team repeatedly express a value of anti-secrecy and getting angry at being lied to over much lower stakes then the whole plan looks super hypocritical.

Then, to make this plot “dramatic” and “intriguing”, the characters are written to do some really callous things. Artemis “dying” is a known source of trauma which the plan forces members of the original cast to re-experience. Blowing up Mount Justice renders M’gann and Conner homeless (and probably destroys most of their earthly belongings). When Dick is questioned by Wally in the aftermath, he responds with an incredibly demeaning and invalidating jab about Wally’s “precious souvenirs” instead of giving an answer. And again, the fact that this doesn’t actually progress the narrative in canon makes their behaviour even harder to swallow.

The five-year timeskip and lack of backfill don’t help either. For five years the Team has known both that the Light exist and that they’re dangerous enough to take control of the Justice League. And yet the audience never sees or hears any sign of them having made meaningful attempts to investigate or address this during that time. You could almost be forgiven for thinking that they spent four years procrastinating before panicking and rushing into the first scheme they came up with like it was a college assignment the night before submission. Oh, and the characters too!

There is no chain of causality from Season 1 to Invasion. It’s a narratively inefficient choice because justifying it requires a lot of additional work and choices - and in the absence of the story doing that work the burden gets shoved unreasonably onto the audience.

So let’s do the work.

Let’s use the extra time we’ve given ourselves on flashbacks and conversations. Show the audience that the Team has tried multiple times to investigate and stop the Light, but been frustrated at every turn by their ability to disappear into the shadows and hide behind layer-upon-layer of proxies. Let’s take some time to explain how M’gann became so cavalier about using her powers invasively; pushed further and further by the situation and the others as they became more frustrated, or maybe overcompensating for a time when holding back caused things to go wrong. Let’s have people speculate about the reveal that Black Manta is Kaldur’s father, and how it broke the trust between Aqualad and Aquaman.

Why don’t we add some scenes properly showing how Dick was, and still is, devastated by the death of Jason. Hear more about how Tula’s loss rattled all of them and crushed Kaldur. Perhaps have a conversation between concerned League members where we realise that the Mentors have gone too far in the opposite direction; treating the Team too much like adults instead of offering the support and guidance that grieving adolescents needed. Actually explore Wally’s reasoning for leaving; how he became disenchanted by years of minimal progress and heavy losses, eventually persuading Artemis to walk away with him so that they wouldn’t have to see (or make the others watch) anyone else die a pointless death. Let us understand how, to Dick, that felt like being abandoned by his best friend (explaining his petty meanness during Darkest), and how the loss of the person who “questions his objectivity” impaired his judgment.

Let us realise that the Mole plot comes not from stupidity but as a last resort - that it’s the only strategy Dick and Kaldur think might work, and how at this point they’re so emotionally compromised by survivors’ guilt and a fear of losing anyone else that they truly believe keeping the others in the dark is better than sharing the danger between them.

Give the audience a way to understand that what we skipped over was 5 years of increasingly desperate times, which have finally called for desperate measures.

Now we have causality. An emotional and logical through-line that the audience can follow from how it started to how it’s going.

And with that… are we done? We’ve trimmed the scope to a level that’s manageable, we’ve built the plots into something that actually progresses the conflict, we’ve created an understandable sense of continuity from Season 1 to Invasion. That’s everything.

… Right?

HECK.

So this is where we get to that singular problem and why it took so many ding-dang essays for me to reach it. It’s like that footprint scene from Godzilla - the underlying problem is so big, so fundamental and at the same time so beginner-level basic that you have to step a long way back to realise it’s even there. And then you see that all the other problems are nested inside it.

As I said a million years ago in that first Scope Management essay, at its core most storytelling is about understanding. It’s about communicating ideas. It’s about answering unspoken questions.

And one of the biggest, most basic storytelling questions seems to have never been asked by Young Justice’s showrunners or answered by the series as a whole:

What is this story about? What are the core ideas, themes and values that it speaks to?

For the showrunners, the closest answer we’ve gotten so far seems to be: It’s a superhero spy show that will go on forever and has Secrets and Lies and Generations.

But that isn’t actually an answer. “Superhero” and “spy” are genre descriptors. “Secrets and lies” and “generations” are story elements, patterns and/or motifs. All of these have collections of commonly associated themes and ideas but unless you narrow it down and start engaging with those ideas to create a thesis, they can’t actually tell you what Young Justice is about.

The problem at the root of every other problem with Young Justice is that it doesn’t have an actual narrative. It’s only an illusion of story. Once you peel the surface layers back, it’s not saying anything.

But one season did.

There is one season of Young Justice where that season’s Production Team seems to have genuinely thought about and constructed a story which answers that most basic question.

No prizes for guessing which.

So, what is Young Justice Season 1 about?

Well, it’s about trust and collaboration and respect. And specifically that open communication, trust and information sharing are the most valuable tools both interpersonally and in a world of deception and espionage.

Once you notice it, it pops up everywhere: in the explicit dialogue of both Team and League members and in incredibly loud subtext. The Team initially formed to show their mentors they could be trusted to handle more than just being tag-along kid sidekicks. The unit is always most functional when they collaborate honestly and their effectiveness is always threatened when one or more of them is noncommunicative or actively keeping secrets. The Team is finally able to outmanoeuvre the Light for the first time in Usual Suspects because Artemis, M’gann and Conner choose to share the personally painful strategic information they were being blackmailed over - trusting that their friends will accept them for who they are and giving the group the big-picture understanding needed to approach the conflict on their own terms.

When assessing proposed candidates in Agendas, Wonder Woman states that the most important criterion for Justice League membership is:

And to fill the gap between the seasons in a way that justifies Invasion, you would have to look at that theme and say:

No.

You would have to say: It doesn’t last. You would have to say: Only children can believe in that. You would have to say: This world and the things they will go through are so bleak as to break and beat that trust and collaboration out of them.

This is what I mean when I say that post-Season-1 Young Justice feels cruel. That it feels like a tragedy.

But, hey, maybe that’s the solution. Should we frame Invasion as a tragedy?

Maybe.

Well, except…

Firstly, this would likely feel tonally and emotionally misleading. As mentioned in the zombie-fic post, part of storytelling is setting expectations - and one of the expectations a first entry sets is the general tone. That isn't to say that tone can't shift over time - many series become more solemn and less lighthearted as the story develops towards the final conflict - but a large, unexplained tone-shift can feel like a deception, especially if a series gives no way to reasonably anticipate it. And this is particularly true if that tone-shift swings more cynical.

Season 1's tone is, on the whole, Hopepunk. The world of Earth-16 is not fair - it can be corrupt, characters can die, things can go traumatically wrong - but it is also a world where that trauma is treated with respect, and where hope, collaboration, trust and progress are possible. It is a world where Artemis can find new family, where M'gann can find community, where Conner can be more than a weapon, where Wally can come to appreciate helping people, where Dick can realise he wants to choose better, and where the Team can forge something powerful. But to get from there to Invasion, you must be cynical about all those things. It's brightly-coloured Grimdark.

It's also just a generally poor idea to write a sequel about how your strongest theme is wrong, because it insults the intelligence of your audience. It asks them to believe something and then turns around and tells them they were stupid for believing it. (In Invasion's case, on top of already calling them stupid by asking them to swallow a double-dose of Idiot Plots with a side-serve of canonical filler.)

The second problem is how this shift in theme impacts the long-term conflict. And to talk about this properly I want to run through a couple of ideas about the nature of conflicts and fights in stories:

One way to consider ‘fight scenes’ - and conflict more broadly - in stories is in terms of two narratives:

The Technical/ Strategic narrative is the physical and logistical actions involved in winning a fight/ solving a problem. It’s the blows of a sparring match, the parry-and-riposte of a duel, the movement of chess pieces on the board. In terms of a wider narrative, it can be the strategies and physical steps the characters will use to solve the main “problem”. This also isn’t limited to just physical confrontation. In the show Leverage the strategic narrative of each episode is mostly behavioural and psychological; the con and what they do to make the mark fall for it. In the Alex Rider series the strategic conflict is very literal; they’re spy stories about retrieving tactical information. Plenty of Mysteries run entirely on the technical/strategic conflict of clue-gathering and puzzle-solving.

The Emotional/ Ideological/ Thematic narrative typically provides the underlying thrust of a conflict, and usually expresses the themes and ideas of the larger story. The surface level “technical” conflict becomes a proxy for the deeper emotional arcs of the parties involved, for clashes in their personal worldviews, or for a symbolic conflict between the themes each represent. It gives the parties personal stakes and often provides the deeper answer to why the fight is happening beyond just “because plot”. It’s often where the mind games happen. It’s where the “fight” becomes more of a thematic debate. And - while it’s common for the ideological victor to also win the technical conflict for emphasis - where the two diverge, the ideological/ thematic victory usually feels like the “true win”. (I would recommend Super Eyepatch Wolf’s videos on Fight Scenes and “Non Battle” Battle Series if you want a deeper discussion of this.)

An example: The Todoroki vs Midoriya match in My Hero Academia’s Sports Festival Arc is a great example of divergent technical vs emotional narratives. The technical fight is a fairly low-danger (but impressively animated) superpowered sparring match to see who advances to the next bracket of the competition. But the important emotional conflicts come in Midoriya trying to live up to All Might’s expectations, and his disagreement with Todoroki’s plan to become a hero using only one half of his power in order to spite his father. Over the course of the fight, Midoriya convinces Todoroki to embrace his power as his own and become a hero on his own terms; costing himself the technical conflict of the match as he’s not able to withstand Todoroki going all-out. But in winning the ideological conflict he takes the true victory: earning both Todoroki as a long-term ally, and All Might’s approval for sacrificing a personal win to help someone in need.

The reason I bring this up is that main antagonists typically play an important role in the story’s overall Emotional/ Ideological/ Thematic narrative. Often they represent some combination of the following: 1. An ideology the protagonist(s) opposes 2. A counterargument to the protagonists’ ideology 3. A symbolic obstacle representing something the protagonist(s) must overcome as part of their personal journey 4. A thematic foil to the ideas the protagonist(s) represent within the story

Another example: Avatar: the Last Airbender's Firelord Ozai is an excellent example of a multi-layered main antagonist. As Firelord/Phoenix King, Ozai is the "final boss" in the series' overarching strategic narrative of stopping the Fire Nation, as well as an extremely dangerous opponent in the immediate technical narrative of his fight with Aang. But he also represents fire (or, at least, fire’s destructive and consuming sides) and the disruption of balance within the thematic narrative of elemental harmony that the Avatar exists to maintain. Ideologically, Ozai's brutal colonialism and rigid belief in "respect" through domination and fear is a direct foil to Iroh and the Gaang's values of harmony, growth and love. In Aang's personal journey, Ozai is the final obstacle on the path of accepting his role as the Avatar; something Aang must fully embrace and make peace with in order to energybend properly and end the fight without killing. As the heir of Sozin, Ozai also carries the legacy of the Air Nomad genocide; a source of pain and grief that Aang must confront as The Last Airbender. And, as both the Fire Nation leader and an abusive father, Ozai is (however indirectly) responsible for all the pain and oppression inflicted upon the rest of the cast; who - in supporting Aang to get to this point - are granted justice by proxy. Aang vs Ozai is not the strongest technical fight in A:TLA (let's not pretend rock-ex-machina didn't happen) but, in culminating so many thematic/ emotional narratives, it makes for an incredibly powerful climax to the series.

In Season 1, the Light don’t have their own distinct ideology beyond the vague stance of opposing the “calcified status quo” revealed at the very end. In isolation, though, that’s kind of okay (especially for a first season). It would be more interesting if they eventually revealed a specific worldview that could be interrogated, but so long as the Team develop their own paradigm and operate in a different way to their mentors (keep that in the back of your mind for later too) then they’ll naturally counter the status quo argument anyway.

What’s more important is whether the Light represent a symbolic antithesis to the themes and ideas represented by the Team. Which, in Season 1, they do.

It’s unclear whether the members of the Light actually trust each other on a deeper level (although just based on the characters you can probably assume they don’t) but they do collaborate effectively - in comparison to the Team slowly figuring it out - and their secrecy and ability to hide behind proxies is what makes them so hard to unmask, anticipate and bring to justice. Even more importantly, the primary way they attack the Team is by sowing discord, distrust and misinformation. As Kaldur himself points out, Sportsmaster’s mole reveal is a play to create dissent, anger and lingering suspicion between members. Artemis, M’gann and Conner each have a personal fear/shame/secret used to blackmail them into acting against the interests of the group. The Light repeatedly attempt to drive wedges, and the Team is finally able to gain the upper hand when they fully trust and work together in spite of it.

And herein lies the problem.

In Season 1, the Light act as an effective thematic foil to the show’s core ideas of trust, collaboration and communication. But properly connecting Season 1 to Season 2 requires a story about how that theme is wrong. Which means that Invasion’s Team are also an antithesis to those original ideas. Trust is for fools, secrets and lies are the only reliable way. The heroes and the Light are thematically in agreement.

So, now what’s their conflict about? What ideas does it advance? Are we advancing at all?

As presented in canon, Invasion removes the closest thing to a proper thematic conflict that the series had set up.

Any ideological conflict is likewise in shambles. The Team has never really had a driving ideology or set of values beyond “don’t treat us like children/sidekicks”. But - in time-skipping them forward five years to Nightwing being his own hero and other members joining the League - the show has had them literally grow out of that. And the mole plot itself contradicts any anti-secrecy values previously expressed. So now the Team primarily exists to react to the Light. But (as mentioned) the Light’s stance against the “calcified status quo” is mostly a villainy-in-opposition pretext to throw sidequests at the Team. So the two oppose each other just to oppose each other: purely “because protagonists vs antagonists”.

Which leaves only the technical/strategic narrative to drive the story forward. And since the Light doesn’t actually have a long-term plan, and most of the “moves” and “counter moves” on both sides have been a series of illogical, unpredictable, internally inconsistent “decisions” that mostly exist to provide in-the-moment “drama”, the show doesn’t offer much by way of meaningful strategic conflict either.

So, how do you fix this?

Well, you don’t.

You can’t.

The premise itself just doesn’t fit.

We finally got our boulder to stop rolling but now it’s shattered into pieces and we’re completely stuck.

Great.

Hopefully you’re starting to appreciate the complexity of the challenge when it comes to “fixing” the flaws in Invasion. Even just improving the more surface-level issues would require huge swarths of re-writes and restructuring (and then re-drawing, re-recording and editing all of it).

And to truly solve the root problem… you’d have to start over from scratch with an entirely different story.

But there might have been another way.

A revival: The saving throw that never was

When news of the revival first dropped, I was curious but mostly tepid about the idea. Even before doing the analysis, I could feel that there were deep structural problems with Invasion, which left me concerned about the direction of the series (especially after the follow-up announcement of yet more characters and yet more time-skips). And considering what we got and my now well-known “oh god, oh god, please just let the poor broken thing die, it’s suffered enough” reaction to it… yeah.

But I didn’t want to dismiss it out of hand. Because I think there was the possibility for a different third season to (while not erase) at least address Invasion’s issues in a satisfying manner and bring the story back somewhat more on track.

So, how might we go about doing that?

First, let’s go back to what we’ve already figured out. We know that the main appeal is the characters. We know that the narrative was strongest when it spoke to ideas about trust/ collaboration/ communication with a generally Hopepunk tone. And (stealing again from the zombie-fic post) we know that, based on Season 1, audiences could reasonably have the following expectations:

Obvious questions get answers

Emotional consequences are acknowledged and addressed

Main characters have consistent internal motivations that are addressed/ explored/ reinforced in-story

Pre-existing comic book knowledge should not be required to understand the story.

Right, let’s start putting pieces together.

First thing’s first: No More Time-Skips and No New Characters that aren’t do-or-die narratively essential. The cast-scope by Invasion is already wildly overstretched to the point of barely holding together. Adding more while creating yet more holes to backfill is not only inefficient, at this point it would be actively detrimental to the basic structural integrity of the narrative.

An aside: we need to talk about the time-skips Let’s be real here: The time-skips in Young Justice’s canon do not serve a narrative purpose. They aren’t there to accelerate the plot through slower periods that would be more effective if summarised or communicated through flashback. Nor do they exist to facilitate mysteries around learning how things changed so drastically from one entry to the next. What they are is a cheap and lazy contrivance that allows the writers to pile on characters and disregard continuity without doing the work of narratively justifying those inefficient choices. Now if a new character comes out of nowhere or an established character is acting against their prior characterisation, well it’s because “a lot happened in the time-skip” and “it’s not Greg and Brandon’s fault that the audience don’t know”… about events they could never have been aware of because Grandon never actually did the work to make that information available anywhere within either the main or extended canon material (which, remember, is a choice on their part), and are now just obviously lying about in attempt to “well actually” their way out of a legitimate criticism. It’s amazing what you can creatively achieve when you have absolutely no respect for the time and intelligence of fans sincerely trying to engage with your story as its own text!

With that said, let’s bust out some bandages. I think the two main patch-jobs our hypothetical Season 3 would need to perform are addressing the contradictions, and giving emotional consequences to events.

The break between seasons left a lot of obvious questions in need of answers. The mole plot doesn’t make sense based on Season 1 and how/why it was conceived is a complete mystery in canon. Most of the character changes are big enough to feel inconsistent without an explanation. In particular we need to address the obvious conflict between Dick’s explicit Season 1 character realisation that he doesn’t want to be a person who’d “sacrifice everything for the sake of the mission” and him doing exactly that in Season 2. And we also need to continue the narrative threads of the new major characters Invasion brought on board.

How to go about this?

Well first of all, I would frame Invasion as a narrative darkest hour. The point where everything has gone wrong, where the heroes realise how far they’ve fallen… and from which they can start building back up.

The inciting incident for this hypothetical realisation would be pretty obvious - just use Wally. He’s a founding member of the Team, he’s the best friend who questions Dick’s objectivity, he’s part of the same Flash lineage as Bart, and he just died. That’s an event that should have serious emotional fall-out within the narrative.

And this would also be a great vehicle for backfill because death/grief stories (at least good ones) usually involve a lot of introspection and retrospection. It’s when characters start to look back on the journey they shared with the person who passed; to think about who they were, what they valued and what that relationship meant to them. It would be a prime point for both Dick and the Team as a whole to realise they’re going down a path they don’t want to be on - a path Kid Flash never stood for - and scenes of them discussing or flashing back to how they reached their current point would pull double-duty in backfilling missing information and context to bridge the seasons.

Wally was one of the characters most strongly written to call-out internal secret-keeping across both seasons, so he would be an effective way to pull the show back on theme as well; have the remaining Team members re-affirm their commitment to honesty, trust and collaboration in honour of his memory.

In the context of being a revival, this would also show respect to the fans. Wally was a widely-beloved major character and his death during Endgame was a huge bombshell for the fandom. I personally know people who dropped the series over it. People’s desire to see if Wally would come back (and to get closure if he really was gone) formed a massive part of the thrust behind the revival campaigns. And remember, it was those fan-campaigns that convinced DC that reviving the series would be financially worthwhile. Greg and Brandon didn’t resurrect Young Justice: the fans did. And a lot of those fans were motivated by Wally. So centring a major emotional arc around him would be a nice way of paying that effort back.

Another aside: Oh Wally, what did they do to you? This is, I think, why some fans now believe Greg Weisman hates Wally as a character. I don't believe this: I think Greg is just a deeply incurious and insincere writer, who neither understands nor particularly cares to understand how other people think and feel, who primarily sees these characters as tools to play out whatever scenes he personally thinks are “cool” or “clever” rather than as fictional people who real people care about, and who mostly values the audiences' attachment to them as something he can use to extract emotional responses and bait further viewing. But, in the face of such open and sincere love and passion for a character, that kind of dishonest lack of caring can feel a lot like hatred. Especially when combined with the bitter sting of the trailer (which clearly understood what fans wanted when it teased the promise of Wally so heavily) turning out to be a bald-faced lie.

As for the Light’s plan, we could have some of the proposed reflection do additional work as a form of “retroactive foreshadowing”; having scenes whose surface-level purpose is to give on-mission flashbacks about Wally or the Team over the missing five years, but which also reveal that there was more going on in the background. Invasion sets up the idea that Darkseid is coming but I think it would be enough for a third season to go back to Season 1’s approach; letting the character arcs take focus while cutaways to the Light reveal more to the audience and keep viewers very aware of the impending threat that the Team need to get themselves sorted out in time to face. And Season 1 already established the New Gods as a group of characters that we could use in an episode or two should we decide to have Apokolips send any advanced guards just to keep things interesting.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of fallout from Invasion that could be used to build the central plot thread of an intermediary season aimed at stabilising a new status quo while setting up for big climactic conflicts in a fourth or fifth season (and realistically 4-5 seasons is about as far as you expect the average story-driven original animated show to travel). The challenges posed by a world reeling from the Reach’s betrayal and dealing with an increased population of metahumans could easily create a central story core that spoke to ideas of collaboration and accountability as the Justice League rebuilt and re-earned public trust in the aftermath.

Ideally, this would also have space to continue the narrative consequences of Invasion for both the original cast and the new main characters of that season. You have the mole plot thread and the challenge of healing broken trust, not only within the unit but especially between Kaldur and the people of Atlantis; many of whom would have sincerely believed he had turned on them, and would take more than just an assurance from Aquaman to fully sway back. We could check in on Red Arrow, find out what paths he is considering after finally recovering Roy at the same time as learning that he has a potential family who are entirely his own. For Bart and Jaime there are the personal consequences of the Reach’s defeat. Bart could finally allow his “act” to slip, while processing the consequences of having successfully erased his own timeline and his feelings over still losing Wally. Jaime could be dealing with the backlash of having publicly outed his identity and acted as a prominent public spokesperson for the Reach while under their control. The Runaways could be helping with clean-up on the metahuman situation, while figuring out their own values and stance on working with established heroes.

And the good thing is that these threads already have interconnections. Kaldur rebuilding trust in Atlantis would tie into the Team rebuilding more broadly. As a member of the Flash lineage (and the new Kid Flash), Bart would slide easily into any major arc about Wally, linking him to the original Team. Bart in turn connects to Jaime and the Reach, who in turn tie into the Runaways both by association and through Tye and Jaime’s existing friendship. And Jaime also potentially opens some interactions with Green Beetle.

What I’m suggesting is not a perfect solution, nor is it the only solution. Some of the structural problems from Invasion can’t be undone. But, with a bit of thought, they could be alleviated. We can’t reverse the cast-scope issue but we can reign it in by not adding more, and focus it by forming the most narratively important characters from the existing seasons into a “core ensemble” that the other additions can orbit around (kind of like how Justice League: Unlimited managed to stay relatively stable by holding onto the Original Seven as a central pillar and having at least one of them as a reference point in each episode). We can’t undo the 5 year time-skip but we can find narrative reasons for characters to reflect, bridging the gap for the audience. We can’t erase the contradictions between the seasons, but we can acknowledge and build a story to address them. We can go back to answering obvious questions and following up loose threads. We can course correct towards the themes and tone that originally resonated. We can give weight to emotional consequences and trauma. And we can show respect to an important central character whose death emotionally impacted a lot of fans.

But Outsiders doesn’t do any of that. And what it does…

I know I’ve belaboured this point in other posts but I have to stress just how thoroughly and systematically Outsiders destroys the narrative.

In terms of the Original Cast: Outsiders directly writes Nightwing to act exactly like Batman and treats it as a positive despite that being explicitly what Dick never wanted to become; all of Kaldur’s ongoing personal arcs have been dropped or forcibly resolved off-screen and he keeps making the same bad decisions, proving himself unfit to lead; M’gann has been repeatedly written to do harmful, disrespectful and manipulative things toward Conner and others for “the drama”; Conner is routinely lied to and treated not much better than he might have been at Cadmus while being constantly victim-blamed and forced to forgive that mistreatment; Artemis has lost her characterisation to Greg Weisman’s misogynistic inability to write women, being defined by her biological family and brother-in-law at the cost of her agency and connection to the Team; Wally is written to coward out of the Life before dying in a twist that was not properly built up to and after which is treated with no respect or gravitas beyond cheap knife-twisting; Zatanna is a grief-riddled Deus-ex-Magicka who manipulates Artemis in service of another pointless “twist”; Red Arrow has had all his personal arcs similarly dropped/ handwaved off-screen; and Rocket remains undeveloped and irrelevant.

In terms of the Central Conflict, the Light are proved utterly correct: by Outsiders the Original Team are callous, hollow husks of their former selves, who have replicated a worse version of the same status quo the Team originally formed in response to. Dick, Kaldur and M’gann’s Anti-Light are a new upper echelon of older heroes who keep even more secrets from the next generations, who exclude the new generations far more strongly from knowing their plans, who give them even less reason to trust or communicate with them, and who do so for less just, less honest and less narratively justified reasons than their own mentors' understandable (if condescending) desire to shield the proteges from the parts of the Life they may not yet have been equipped to face.

Not only that but their constant lying with the intent to control others, and refusal to hold themselves accountable for those actions goes directly against both the League's stated heroic ideals of "Truth, Liberty and Justice" and Red Tornado's conclusion that caring is "the human thing to do".

By the end of Outsiders, even the existence of the Team itself is undone; decommissioned into the exact kind of safe training space that the Season 1 characters were desperate for it never to be.

You can’t come back from that. The damage is now too deep, too extensive and too entrenched.

The closest thing Young Justice has to an ongoing thread across the seasons is this singularly joyless piece of miserable nihilism that the showrunners are attempting to wrap up in faux-intellectual trappings via twitter thread.

With Outsiders, any actual narrative set by Young Justice Season 1 is over. By their own standards the Team have lost, and lost entirely.

The show can “go on forever” now, because whether they actually progress to defeating the Light no longer matters. The only winner here is Greg.

But these problems didn’t begin with Outsiders.

The Vanguard

I think it would be a fair assessment to say that the Young Justice Revival has been divisive. The passionate part of the fandom is now split into two main camps; people who defend it, and people who dislike it for various reasons. But within that latter camp there are also two tents; people who think the original entries were uniformly good, and people who only really like Season 1.

I want to repeat what I said before: With the right writers and the right focus a different revival could have salvaged something decent, if maybe never quite as brilliant, from the series.

But that still would have left Invasion as the weakest link.

The reason I can’t like Invasion (and why I eventually broke DW away from everything post-S1) is that Invasion is the vanguard of every problem that ultimately killed the series for me.

The problems in Outsiders did not spring spontaneously into being with that season (apart from the rainbow capitalism so transparently, ignorantly insincere that it swung all the way back around into being bigoted). It just doubled down on everything that that was already breaking or broken.

And, in so doing, it snuffed out once and for all any embers that remained of the white-hot potential Season 1 originally promised.

In order to truly fix the issues with Invasion you would need to go back to that deepest root problem. To ask the questions that the showrunners seemingly never did.

What is this story about? What are the core ideas, themes and values that Young Justice speaks to?

But once you do that, you realise that Invasion is so misaligned to the answers Young Justice Season 1 gives that in order to create something cohesive and contiguous with it, you would basically need to re-write Season 2 from the ground up.

Remember, nothing has to happen in a narrative. There are only more-efficient and less-efficient choices.

And if you have to re-write Invasion whole-cloth anyway, then the most efficient choice would be to wipe the slate back to the end of Auld Acquaintance and start over. To write the show that Young Justice Season 1 set itself up to be.

The show that gave us this:

#scattered thoughts #young justice #young justice critical #YJ essays collection #young justice: invasion #graphic depictions of boulders #writing analysis #will-zeke-thomson #3WD answers #This probably isn't the answer you were looking for but it was the only way I could think to properly explain it #congratulations on de-railing my evenings for almost two weeks (but also thanks for the excuse to rewatch while screencap-hunting)#this is what I mean when I say that I don't think the showrunners were the ones who made YJS1 what it was #YJS1 isn't subtle about those themes and yet Grandon clearly weren't paying attention and only saw 'secrets and lies are cool'#I cannot comprehend the depths of wild incompetence it takes to contradict the core of your own story that badly #As the post probably makes quite clear: I have no respect left for Greg Weisman as a writer #and I am willing to lay at least 80% of the blame for Outsiders at his feet #because there is a clear and concerning pattern of this happening when he gets full/majority control over a story #and those patterns include some deeply gross (and at times outright bigoted) treatment of female and queer characters #(plus hints of abuse-apologism/victim-blaming and casual racism/diet white-supremacy... because why not fill the entire incel-bingo card?)#as well as a general disregard/disrespect/condescension/entitlement/contempt towards established canon and fans trying to engage with it #He is at best the same as Steven Moffat #and at worst a less-skilled imitation-Joss-Whedon #Given a talented editing and directorial team to do re-writes and enforce consistency he can produce a passable story #but left on his own he demonstrably lacks the skills and creative mindset to carry a long-term narrative or lead a project #over a decade of industry experience and he's still making the same basic beginner-level mistakes #Greg Weisman critical

36 notes · View notes

blindbeta · 4 years ago

Note

Something I frequently see in atla fanfic is Toph rolling her eyes and other characters being surprised she can do that. (“Who taught her that?” Is a very common sentence.) I wonder if this is realistic? Obviously, with some forms of blindness, rolling your eyes is no problem. But would Toph, blind from birth, be able to roll her eyes? I’m sorry if this question is hyper-specific. I see this trope in at least half of all fics with Toph in them. (Thanks for your amazing blog and all you do.)

I welcome hyper-specific questions here! Especially about A:TLA and Toph, where fandom is both a nice break from ableism and a very ableist place.

With the resurgence of Avatar, there were an agonizing amount of comments like this online. Although they were more about how unrealistic it was for Toph to have facial expressions, how the animators messed up by having her eyes move, etc. The “Who taught her that?” trope about eye-rolling is simply another manifestation of that.

It is hard to explain my frustration with questions like these, even if no offense is meant. These questions bother me partly because they assume certain things that make it clear they have never met a blind person, nor bothered to research before commenting, endlessly, on what is or is not possible for blind people.

Also, as I explained in this post about myths, even the ignorance behind expectations like these can be harmful. In assuming Toph cannot have facial expressions, a blind person who makes expressions or gestures may be assumed to be faking. This puts a lot of stress on a blind person, who may be refused help, harassed, or even attacked. Plus they are just annoying. In this post, I go over how some of these assumptions carry over into jokes, something the Avatar fandom is also not exempt from.

Jokes are fine. Questions even more so. As long as someone is genuinely asking and not coming from a bad place. For example: “I wonder how Toph learned to make facial expressions as a blind baby” is easier to answer than “OMG Avatar is so unrealistic and ridiculous because Toph, a blind girl, makes the same kinds of expressions as the other characters!”

Facial expressions are instinctual and innate. There are basic expressions that many people can make and understand — with some exceptions — which have evolutionary implications. For example, making a face of disgust could have indicated that something was poisonous. A face of fear could have alerted others to danger. Eye rolling is not quite so useful or ancient, but it has been referenced in older literature as a way to express contempt or rejection.

I would put eye rolling in with the gestures category. By this I mean research shows blind people gesture just like others who speak the same language. Because gestures are culturally specific, they can differ depending on language. Even people who were blind since birth gesture the same way others do. Eye rolling is not much different. No one would need to teach Toph how to roll her eyes, although she probably would have heard about it verbally eventually as she aged, such as when Azula teased her by saying, “And since you can’t see, I should tell you I’m rolling my eyes.”

So the “Who taught her that?” question is not very realistic as far as I’m concerned.

I will say that sometimes people have rapid eye movement and difficulty controlling the muscles in their eyes. Before I had surgery, I would have uncontrollable eye movements in one eye and since I couldn’t see my own eye, I have no idea if rolling my eyes actually looked like it is supposed to. And because I can’t see other people very well, I’m not sure if I’m the best person to give details about this.

But the real issue behind the other characters being surprised Toph can roll her eyes isn’t so much about the ability to do so, so much as just knowing about it. Again, the same question comes up about facial expressions and gestures.

I also want to clarify that the ableism in the Avatar fandom isn’t really about mean words or even rude assumptions. It is the attitudes and beliefs behind these questions. It is a rudimentary understanding of ableism that causes people to claim Katara is ableist so they can hate her, while similtaneously complaining that Katara and Zuko talk about their trauma too much. While simultaneously sharing art and GIFs and videos of Toph without image descriptions. While saying very little about the show’s lack of audio descriptions when it was added to Netflix initially, or even assuming blind people couldn’t or wouldn’t watch the show at all. Not because of a lack of accessibility, but because people simply assume we don’t like television or films.

If you think about these attitudes and beliefs, you start to notice a pattern. One that isn’t only in the Avatar fandom, but it is made all the more frustrating because the show has a popular blind character in it. You would think people would be interested in learning about blindness, but the overwhelming love for Toph sometimes comes across as exploitive without this interest.

That said. Toph is one of my favorite characters and I love that the fandom loves her too. I love fanfics with her in them. I don’t blame one person for not adding an image description to their art, because image descriptions are not as normalized as they should be, and were certainly not normalized years ago. When I talk about ableism in the Avatar fandom, I don’t mean any one person. I mean the wider problem as a whole that has been going on for over a decade. I mean people who have “ableism” in their vocabulary and yet don’t change their ways when someone gently asks them to. Ableism is in our society and fandom, especially those with blind characters, are no exception, despite whatever hopes I might have.

There are absolutely wonderful people in the Avatar fandom. The fandom is improving on reblogging things with image descriptions or adding their own to older posts, especially art of Toph. While I sometimes feel things are stagnant, there are people like you, anon, asking the good questions. I appreciate you and anyone else who is doing the work to learn and also for supporting this blog. While I have some problems with the fandom, there are wonderful people here and progress is being made every day.

If you want help writing Toph, @mimzy-writing-online has an excellent post with advice. I highly recommend fanfic writers read it for a richer story.

So that’s my wishy-washy Avatar post with some slight education thrown in. Thanks for the question, anon!

If any blind people want to chime in about this, feel free.

I hope this helped some.

-BlindBeta

#atla toph #atla #avatar the last airbender #toph beifong #writing #blind #blind characters #toph #ableism #how blind people. x #blind people- facial expressions #atla fanfic #atla fandom

210 notes · View notes

mxxnlight-99 · 3 years ago

Text

🌼chifuyu x reader🌼

Warnings: +18. Praise kink lots of dirty talk. Squirt. The reader (?) Has a date with kazutora but very short and nothing happens. Slight but very slight spoiler of chifuyu and kazutora's relationship and job. i'm not very good at English so i apologize for possible mistakes

You and chifuyu had met at an animal shelter. you liked them a lot so you were volunteering at various shelters.

You met him several times before you talked to him. He had caught your eye, not that the boy would go unnoticed with those blue eyes and his hair.

He told you that he owned a pet store with a friend but that he also wanted to help out and so he volunteered at various shelters just like you.

Often their schedules coincided so you had built up a nice routine of going out for a drink, going out to eat or just talking about their day, it was nice to have someone to share things with.

He had told you about his past with Toman and you were quite surprised that someone like him had been involved in such situations. Although it didn't really bother you, Chifuyu had always shown you that he was a good person.

Over time you had begun to realize that your feelings towards Chifuyu were more than friendly. You had watched him play with a puppy, he was so loving and then he had turned around and looked at you with those beautiful eyes and gave you that beautiful smile and your heart almost burst out of your chest. You had always wanted to be with someone who shared your love for animals so it was no wonder you felt that way about him.

You had decided to ignore your feelings for him. Clearly the boy didn't seem interested and you didn't want to ruin his beautiful friendship by confessing to him, so things went on as usual.

you had left the shelter and were having ice cream with chifuyu until their phone rang. It sounded like it was from the store it was something with some cages that had arrived it wasn't that important but they needed the main owner's signature and he asked you to go with him.

There you met his friend Kazutora, he seemed nice but since you arrived he didn't take his eyes off you and started to make you uncomfortable.

Chifuyu came back and Kazutora spoke.

- So this is the reason why you've been absent so much? - he said in a playful tone - nice girl -

- She's not my girl," Chifuyu hastened to clarify.

You weren't but feeling the urgency with which he had to clarify that he's not with you hurt you a little bit at the end of the day you really liked him. The situation stayed there and you helped the guys to settle things down.

You had started going to the store more often and now you were helping to clean up and feed the animals. Kazutora was really nice once you got to know him you had a lot of fun hanging out with the two of them.

you were cleaning the place where the kittens were, well more like Kazutora was cleaning and you were playing with the cats.

- you know... - kazutora started talking - you're very cute - you stopped playing and watched him.

- What was that for?

- I'm sorry, I know it's a sudden comment, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable -

- no, it's okay it just took me by surprise I didn't expect you to say something like that -

- I umm... you are very pretty and nice and I wanted to ask you... if you wanted to go on a date with me, that's why I told you that, it's okay if you say no -

You stood there not knowing what to say your feelings for chifuyu were still there and even though you didn't expect anything to happen you didn't want to go out with kazutora if you had feelings for someone else it wasn't fair to him and he had been through enough in his life. You were about to speak when he interrupted you

- I know you like chifuyu - you froze in your place How had he noticed? - It's obvious you're the only one capable of putting up with his tricks but since you haven't told him I figured he might have a chance, it's just a date and we'll see what happens -

You thought about it for a second and agreed. It was just a date and nothing more and you would see how you felt about the situation.

The date was on a Friday afternoon, it was no big deal and you thanked Kazutora for choosing something simple. you had a picnic on a lake where there were some nice ducks. You fed them and took pictures with them it was really a nice afternoon. You didn't rule out the idea of going out with him again.

Monday you went to the refuge as usual, it was one of the days you shared a shift with chifuyu, he had been tense and distant all day, you didn't understand why but you didn't inquire too much, for sure he would tell you when you left.

when you two go out You tried to make conversation but he was still with the same attitude.

- So you went on a date with Kazutora? -

- yes, we had a little picnic -

- why? -

- Why? - you asked confused.

- yes Why did you go on a date with him? -

The question caught you off guard. What were you supposed to answer to that? He had stopped walking and was looking at you waiting for you to answer. You stood a few steps ahead of him not knowing what to say.

- tell me, tell me why you went out with him -

- I... I don't know -

- What do you mean you don't know? Do you like him? -

he approached you and took your face softly making you look into his eyes his lips inches from yours

- tell me now that you really like him and that you want to be with him and I'll leave you alone otherwise... I'm going to kiss you right now -

What?

You couldn't think anything else when you felt his lips against yours. Chifuyu's lips were soft and warm and he held you as if you were going to break. It was a soft kiss but full of longing and as quickly as it started it ended.

- I'm sorry, that was wrong. You're going out with my friend what was I thinking. I'm leaving -

He turned around and started to walk away but you grabbed him by the arm.

- don't go fuyu -

He stopped and turned to look at you, his eyes were teary.

- Why did you do that? why did you kiss me?

- Why would I kiss you? Think what reason could there be for me to kiss you?

You looked at your feet. You knew the reason but you were afraid you were wrong

- because I love you. But that doesn't matter, you're with kazutora -

- I love you too chifuyu -

- What? Then why...? -

- I went out with him because I thought you didn't return my feelings and I just... wanted to try dating other people -

He looked at you for a split second and kissed you again. You couldn't believe that chifuyu returned your feelings.

You kissed him back by putting your arms around his neck and touching the short hair on his neck, he put his hands on your waist and pulled you to his body, cut the kiss short and rested his forehead on yours.

- Let's go to my house. I need you right now - he said

- yes let's go -

The ride to chifuyu's house was filled with anticipation and little kisses.

as soon as they crossed the door of the house you had him on top of you devouring your lips.

- hold on to my neck - he said softly against your lips

You did as he said and he lifted you up by your thighs and wrapped your legs around his waist. He went into the bedroom and gently laid you down on the bed on top of you.

His kisses moved to your neck and his hand slipped under your shirt and gently caressed your ribs.

- God! You are so soft baby -

He attached his hips to yours rubbing his erection against you and you let out a little moan. He pulled away from you and started to remove the top part of your clothes leaving you only in your bra, he went down your chest kissing and licking your pelvis, he unbuttoned your pants and pulled them down barely revealing your mons pubis and biting it gently.

- you have a beautiful body baby -

He took off your pants and panties and went back up to your chest and took off your bra.

- Fuyu... - you complained - you're still very dressed up I want to see you too - I want to see you too -

He laughed - whatever my baby wants - and started to undress.

- Do you like what you see? - he said teasing you

- very much -

He kissed you again and moved his hand down to your pussy running his finger softly feeling your wetness.

- you are so wet baby -

He started sucking one of your breasts filling your nipple with drool while playing with your wet pussy.

- Fuyu put your fingers inside please -

Immediately he put his finger inside you putting it in and out gently

- You are so hot baby you feel so good on my fingers. You touch me too baby please I want to feel you -

Your hand went to his cock, it was already fully hard, you started to move your hand up and down and chifuyu moaned against your neck as he increased the rhythm of his fingers inside you.

The sensation of orgasm started to form in you chifuyu's fingers tapping at the right angle to drive you crazy.

- Fuyu... I'm coming ah!

- yes baby do it cum in my hand, I want your cum dripping on my fingers. Please, please baby give it to me - I practically begged.

And you cum driven by his dirty words the walls of your pussy convulsing on his fingers and panting heavily.

- you look so beautiful when you cum baby, I want to see you again -

Chifuyu positioned herself between your legs looking at your pussy glistening from orgasm

- look at that pretty pussy all wet from me - he said spreading your juices.

You moaned and squirmed from the touch still sensitive from your orgasm.

- now I want to put it in. will you let me baby? I can? - he said running his cock up and down your pussy

- yes Fuyu fill me up please - you asked desperately

In less than a second he was completely inside you and let out a moan of relief.

- oh god baby you feel so good, so much better than I thought, ugh I can't take it... I'm not going to last long -

He started ramming gently biting your neck and looking for that sensitive spot inside you. He straightened up trying to go deeper, your eyes rolled back and your back arched, grinding your pelvis against his.

- you have no idea how sexy you look like that love - he said and started massaging your clitoris with his palm as he thrust - you don't know how many times I imagined having you like that but none of my fantasies came even close to how beautiful you look and how good you feel -

Each onslaught brought you closer and closer to the abyss and you held on to the sheets as if your life depended on it.

- Fuyu... Fuyu... Fuyu ah! It feels so good. Fuyu... I'm going to come again -

- aaw my baby wants to cum again? Does my cock feel that good? -

- yes! yes! It feels so good make me cum Fuyu please -

- do it love cum all over my dick let me see that beautiful expression on your face again -

The movement of his hand on your clit increased, the sloshing sound louder each time his cock went in and out of you was too much stimulation and you cum audibly moaning. a white ring covering his cock as he kept going in and out of you seeking his own release.

- Fuyu...I can't - it's too much -

He bent down and kissed you softly

- I know love but hold on a little longer for me I'm almost there... you're doing great - he took you by the hips giving firm thrusts

The sensation of a third orgasm was starting to form but it felt strange it was too much

- baby I'm coming, I'm going to come deep inside of you I'm going to fill you with my cum -

- ah! I can't... I'm coming again -

you came for the third time shuddering and whimpering from over stimulation dripping and wetting all over. And you felt it... chifuyu's hot semen inside you, his breathing completely agitated and small spurts running through you.

They stayed in each other's arms catching their breath. Finally they got up to change the sheets and clean themselves.

- I can't believe you made a squirt, it was so hot, baby -

They had gone back to bed and you had your head buried in chifuyu's chest hiding in shame.

- don't be ashamed love, it was amazing - he said and kissed your head - now let's sleep.

The next day after talking seriously about their relationship and what they both wanted they went to Kazutora to explain and apologize. It had been just a date but you wanted to set the record straight and make sure no one got hurt.

When you talked to him he just laughed at you telling you that he only asked you out so that chifuyu would finally do something about his feelings. You playfully hit on him and feigned anger because that was the reason for going out with you even though you were deeply grateful to him and that things had worked out really well.

#chifuyu smut #tokyo revengers #chifuyu matsuno #tokyo revengers smut

90 notes · View notes

shihalyfie · 3 years ago

Note

Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

#tri negativity #shiha's ask box #springcrafter

56 notes · View notes

cellard0ors · 3 years ago

Text

Fic: Movement (2/?)

Still dedicated to the wonderful @peachworthy. you read part one than you know - GMM Rhink AU - College Student Link/Pornstar Rhett AU

“Got it right again, man! You’re going to ace this test!” Rhett crows as he tosses down another notecard and Link pumps his arms in triumph. The two of them are settled in the kitchen, piles of books and notecards spread around as well as few bottles of beers and some bowls of chips.

Link picks up one chip and pops it into his mouth, grinning at his roommate fondly, “Well, couldn’t’ve done it without you, pal. You are, without a doubt, the best study buddy I’ve ever had.”

“Aw shucks, gonna make me blush,” Rhett laughs even though it’s Link who feels his cheeks actually grow warm, his friend’s laughter a common cause of the occurrence.

They’ve been living together for over a month now and it’s been beyond amazing. Link would’ve never guessed a guy like Rhett and a guy like him would work so well together.

It’s like they’re the world’s weirdest, most convoluted puzzle yet all the pieces click together to form a full picture that is nothing short of a masterpiece. True, there’s a lot about Rhett Link doesn’t know yet (and gosh is there a lot he wants to know) but their friendship is running smoothly.

Well, smoothly save for the massive crush Link has on the guy, albeit he’s doing his damned best to squash it. Yes, Rhett’s attractive and yes, he’s the first guy Link’s ever met that he’s felt a real zing for, but the fact of the matter is – Link would much rather have him as a friend and roommate than lose him as a…well, Link’s not sure if he’d lose him, but the mere possibility keeps Link’s lips sealed.

Besides, it’s okay to crush on someone and never act on it. People do it all the time. Not to mention that it’s a bit…odd to crush on someone in Rhett’s line of work. Isn’t it?

Link can’t think of too many people who will admit to crushing on an adult film star. Regular, mainstream film stars, sure – but adult film stars?

Yeah…

Although, to be frank, Link’s sure there are some that do. And, hopefully, some of them are not the creepy internet troll-y kind of people, but genuine salt of the earth folks like himself. Because, okay, he is crushing on one so…

Rhett is toying with the cards, maybe looking for the next question to quiz Link on when he asks idly, “Y’know, Link – I gotta say, I admire your stamina.”

That remarks makes Link choke on the drink he’s just been consuming, a cough clearing it up some as he croaks, “I’m-I’m sorry?”

Rhett hums noncommittally, as if not noticing the gaffe, “You’ve had yet to grill me about my job. Normally, once folks hear about it, that’s all they want to talk about.”

“Oh,” Link breathes out loosely, “Well, ah-? It-? It just…seemed rude to-to ask…”

“Been over a month living with me now. You telling me you ain’t interested?”

“I didn’t say that!” Link quips back much quicker than he would like, but Rhett just gives him the most perfect smile. All sincere and warm beneath his beard and remember, Link, you’re doing you’re best not to crush on him!

Rhett is still toying with the cards, eyelashes downcast, the very visual definition of shy as he murmurs, “Just sayin’…I don’t mind if you wanna ask some stuff.”

Link’s eyebrows rise in such a way as to damn near bump his glasses off, “Y-You sure?”

Rhett draws in a deep inhale and then sits the cards down. He crosses his arms and leans back in his seat, looking quite serious even despite the casual red flannel and jeans, as if this was more of an interview (or perhaps an interrogation?) than anything else, “Shoot.”

The a million and one questions that Link has kept at bay about Rhett’s job and more personal life threaten to cave his skull in as they crash about in his mind. However, he has to go with the obvious, “Know this’ll be predictable, but…why?”

Rhett just bobs his head in an understanding nod even as Link pushes on, “Why and how?”

Rhett sucks on his teeth before picking up his own beer and taking a fortifying sip before continuing, “The two are kinda interconnected to be honest. Had a fallin’ out with my family. Think I mentioned it in passin’ to you once. But, to clarify; they weren’t too happy with my chosen living destination nor with the fact that I’d come to terms with the notion that I’m attracted to both the ladies and the gents.”

Link’s mind immediately (and joyously) clings to ‘the gents’ remark, bookmarking it for future reference, even as Rhett continues his tale, “You grew up where we did. So you get it.”

Link does. And then, to nail the point home, Rhett adds, “Probably get it a lot more than others. If my…instincts are to be believed.”

Shit.

SHIT.

Link’s whole body immediately bursts into flame, the tips of his ears so hot he’s sure they’re glowing bright red.

Rhett knows I’m gay. He knows. I thought having a radar for that kind of thing was bullhonkey, but he knows and oh, lord, oh lord – do I give off some sorta vibe? I know that girl in my screenwriting class, Stevie, she teased me about being an A-Level twink or something, but I didn’t think-!

Rhett’s laughter carves right through Link’s insecurities, “Take a breath, brother! Look like you’re about to pop!”

Link does and Rhett just shakes his head, still grinning, “Point being – I was pretty much a babe in the woods when I came to LA. Not two nickels to my name, so I took whatever gigs I could get. Managed to snag a few commercials and things of that nature, but you know the drill. Jobs are hard to come by. And a guy of my height?”

He blows out a big breath and tosses all of those luxurious curls about with a rueful head shake, “Yeah, most people fingered me for a baller, so – again – jobs were hard to come by. But then, wouldn’t you know it? A friend of a friend of a contact told me about this part they thought I’d be perfect for.”

Another deep barrel chested chuckle emerges as he reminiscences, “Mighta been nice of ‘em to let me know it was actually a part of me they thought would be perfect.”

Do not zero in on his crotch! Do NOT zero in on his crotch! Charles Lincoln Neal the Third DO NOT-!

Link keeps his eyes so steadfastly forward he probably looks like some bug eyed zombie. If Rhett notices, he doesn't comment, “Anyway, when I found out what the role was, I had planned to politely decline but, y’know, the money they offered…”

There’s an easy shrug and this Link can look at. He looks at Rhett, who looks a bit sheepish as he scratches at one side of his beard, “I mean, again, you grew up where I did. So, you know how the whole ‘wait until marriage’ thing was drilled into your head, but I figured it wasn’t like anybody would know. My family’d cut me off, my friends were few and far in between, and the people on set…”

Now he looks a bit happier and Link can’t help but smile along with him, “The people on set were all right. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the kind of stories people tend to spin – the exploitation, the drug abuse, other questionable stuff…place I was at wasn’t like that. I mean, maybe I just lucked out or something, but it was…”

Another shrug and he goes for his beer again. Link figures this is as good a time as any to get in another question, “So, you did that and then you…? Just kept going?”

Rhett nods as he drinks, the bottle leaving his mouth with an obscene pop that Link is going to do his best to forget all about right now and certainly not recall at any point in the future (and most certainly NOT when he’s jacking off later), “Yeah, I did the one and the director really liked me. He pull me aside and told me about this company he was trying to set up with a couple of buddies of his. They wanted to go in a classier direction – know how funny that sounds, but he was serious.”

“So, what? No, like, blockbuster porno knock offs? Like ‘Sex in The City and ON the City’ or ‘Arma-get-it-on’?”

“Think you stole that last one from an episode of CSI.”

“I did, doesn’t change the question.”

They’re both smiling like a couple of fools, but the mood is good and the atmosphere light as Rhett sighs, “Yeah, nothing like that. I’ve actually worked with a few female directors, shot some things with great budgets, nice lighting, good costumes…”

“Oooo, costumes,” Link teases in the silliest voice and Rhett swats out at him. Link avoids the hit even as Rhett rolls his eyes, “I’m serious, dude. Some of the things that department pumps out looks better than anything you’d see in Hollywood.”

“Hmm, some kinda wood,” Link snickers and this time Rhett’s swat makes impact, brushing Link’s shoulder and Link would be embarrassed by the giggle he lets out, if it weren’t for the way Rhett’s nose is all scrunched up, making him look beyond adorable, “You’re sucha brat!”

Link sticks out his tongue and Rhett just laughs. They turn their attention to the drinks and chips for awhile before Link circles around to another question, “You like it then?”

“It’s a living,” Rhett confirms, not really answering one way or another, “Like I said – make great money, work with some really nice people.”

“Uh,” Link scratches behind one ear, “Hate to ask, but, um…clean people?”

Rhett doesn’t seem offended, “You bet. Have to be. Another reason I’ve done this as long as I have. Money's great, but the safety is even better. I’m currently under contract with that same company I told you about – the one that director brought me under. On top of wanting to,” he air quotes his next words, “be classier’-”

He drops the quotes, “They wanted to provide an excellent work environment. Heck, me and the other actors and actresses probably have a cleaner bill of health than the entire state. Can’t shoot scene one until you’ve got the A-Okay.”

“Huh,” Link absorbs that with some surprise, but then, he supposes it really shouldn’t be. The adult film industry is a big lumbering beast right alongside it’s more recognized counterpart. No reason one shouldn’t be as cautious as the other. If anything, one has more right to be cautious.

Thinking on this, Link suddenly feels an odd pang. It’s a shame in one way that’s one viewed as more reckless than the other, more questionable. But, when viewed through a mostly puritan lens…

Not wanting to get too philosophical, Link switches gears, “You been in a lot of films?”

“My fair share.”

Another dodge, but Link will let him have it. However, he can practically feel devil horns rise as he asks with a naughty gleam to his eye, “Win any awards?”

Rhett’s practically preening, “Several.”

“Really?” Link asks with some surprise, but Rhett suddenly looks quite naughty himself. Naughty and…a bit too hot for Link’s liking as the heat that always seems to surround him when he’s near Rhett rises and woo boy, he’s really failing at this squashing-the-crush thing.

“If you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll show you one of my trophies some time…”

Everything in Link melts into a puddle and he’s not sure what expression he’s wearing, but it’s one that makes Rhett’s whole face light up, “…or maybe, just maybe, I’ll show you a little somethin’ else…”

If it’s possible for a melted puddle to also explode, then Link’s just done it. Rhett bursts into guffaws as he reaches forward and, very smoothly, pushes Link’s jaw up because Link’s jaw? It dropped. He didn’t even feel it drop.

And then, to just add more fuel to the fire, Rhett rubs the pad of his thumb along the bottom of Link’s chin, right below his lip, “Damn, son…you’re just too much for words.”

“I…”

That’s it.

That’s all that Link can offer.

Just one sound, one vowel.

Silent and stunned and Rhett draws back, looking like the cat that ate the canary as he lets him go and rises up from his seat, “Think you need a moment. I’ll be back in a bit.”

And – just like that – Rhett saunters out of the room.

#rhink #randl #my writing #peachworthy #oh my sweet peach

47 notes · View notes

the-pontiac-bandit · 4 years ago

Note

If you're still answering tortall prompts, how about Raoul + family?

wow why NOT write 2000 words of blatant, shameless fluff about families you make for yourself??? inspired by this quote from tammy: “[Raoul and Buri] have glorious sex under trees, in tents, in lakes…. In carriages. I think at some point they’ll probably adopt. By the time they’re attached Buri’s getting a little old to have any of her own. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of orphans around.”

As Raoul stretched out, trying to make himself comfortable in his too-hard, too-small desk chair, he savored the warm feeling filling his chest and threatening to spill out and take physical form in front of him. In the midst of the most head-spinning, headache-inducing, sleep-sapping, joy-filled week he’d ever experienced, he’d had precious little time to slow down and simply exist within his new reality. He thought to close his eyes, the better to feel everything, but they only stayed shut for a moment before they forced themselves back open. He couldn’t stop looking at the scene in front of him for long.

Buri lounged cross-legged on their bed, far more relaxed than he had been at any point this week. Kel sat next to her, her back straight and her long legs carefully hanging off one side so as not to get dust from the practice courts on their bedding. Both had just returned from a full morning of training, sweaty despite a change of clothes and coated in dust despite a thorough washing, courtesy of a long, hot summer that had refused to give them rain.

Between them was the baby.

His son, he reminded himself. He thought the words a few extra times, even mouthing them once, as he had a thousand times in the last five days, as if forming them on his lips might make them feel more real.

None of this felt real to him yet. He supposed most people had nine months to get used to the idea before seven pounds of screaming chaos turned their lives upside down. He’d had exactly fifty-three days—he’d counted on Tuesday—so he supposed he still had some catching up to do. His mind was still reeling from the conversation that had led them here, and he wasn’t sure yet that he’d ever catch up.

He’d been sitting in this chair and pretending to read reports while mostly thinking about his right knee, which had been bothering him despite Duke Baird’s best efforts. He wasn’t sure why he remembered so specifically, since his days were nearly as certain to contain aches and bruises as they were to contain a sunrise. Buri had returned from a meeting with Thayet and Onua, although really, the word meeting conferred far too much dignity on what was more likely a combination of trick riding and palace gossip. They’d settled into the evening routine they’d shared for nearly a decade, working in comfortable silence with candles lit between them.

“Do you want children?” she’d asked, breaking the quiet spell of paperwork that gripped their nights.

“I think it’s a little late for that,” he’d replied with a snort.

She’d thrown a pillow at him. He had caught it and thrown it back without even looking up from the thick stack of papers in his lap, with a rude hand gesture following behind.

“You know what I meant. Did you want children? Before?”

Something in her voice had shifted. He’d finally looked up to find her eyes already trained on him. Her face had been so unexpectedly earnest that he’d actually taken a pause, had slowed the speed of their consistently paced banter, to think.

“I suppose I hadn’t given it much thought. There were friends, and then there was drinking, and then there was the Own, and then there was you,” he’d told her with a shrug. “I do like children, but I’m perfectly happy where I am.”

She’d chewed on her lip for a moment. He remembered being surprised by that. After nearly thirty years of friendship, she rarely took the time to think before she spoke with him anymore.

“Spit it out.”

“Do you want children?”

“And we’re back to the start,” he’d said with a grin.

“I spat it out. Now you answer it.”

“Hypothetically, sure, I’d enjoy a child. Now can I ask why you’re asking at all?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she’d started. She’d paused for a moment, holding her breath as though she was trying to decide whether she should speak at all. And then she’d let it all spill out at once. “I’ve been thinking it might be nice to have one. A child, I mean.”

She’d held up a hand and made a face before Raoul could even begin to formulate a joke about her monthlies or her aching hips or what they might do to make that happen. “Not like that. Thayet was telling us today about homes they’re opening in Corus, for children without parents. We were thinking about the children we traveled with back in Sarain, when Alanna found us all those years ago. Gods, it was terrifying, having Thayet and an infant to protect, especially when Thayet was ready to throw her life away for the infant. And I started thinking—we have money, and safety, and love, and there are all these children who have none of those things, and—”

She’d been speaking faster and faster, but she’d cut herself off abruptly at the look on Raoul’s face. “Never mind, you can forget—”

Raoul had smiled back at her, straightening up in his chair and marking his spot in the report on his lap before putting it aside. “So you want a child.”

The weeks that followed had been ones filled with paperwork and inquiries at the palace records about the process of appointing a common-born heir to a noble house and at the magistrate’s about drawing up paperwork for adoption. There had been careful planning and hushed discussions with only their closest friends about the best way to proceed. Buri had insisted on an older child, maybe eight or nine, saying that the few diapers she’d changed on the road to Rachia were enough for a lifetime.

Instead, five days ago, Buri had entered their rooms carrying a squalling mess of blankets with an air of forced nonchalance that had told him immediately what she’d done. Instead of clarifying, or teasing her, or asking if it was the smallest eight-year-old he’d ever seen, he’d simply held his arms out. While Buri had supplied endless explanations about Thayet ambushing her with a baby, he’d stared at the squirming mess of baby in his lap, blankets already coming undone, absolutely entranced.

“He’s tiny,” he’d commented. His voice sounded like it was coming from someone else’s body. The baby was only just too large for him to hold in one hand, although he’d never try to prove it. The fragility of the life sitting in his lap was overwhelming.

“His mother died yesterday. Childbed fever, caught too late to help. The priestesses at the Goddess’ Temple were worried he might need more than the homes could give.”

Raoul had nodded, only half listening. The baby’s eyes were screwed shut while he wailed. His fine hair was dark, his skin tanned like that of the Bazhir babies Raoul had seen in his year in the Great Southern Desert. One of the baby’s hands had broken free of its blanket. It had waved in the air, keeping pace with his cries, which were far louder than he’d have believed such a tiny body could produce. He’d intercepted the hand with one finger and then watched in wonder as the baby had grasped it.

“Does he have a name?”

“Pathom,” she’d answered definitively, before belatedly remembering that names were the sort of thing parents might choose together. “That is, if—”

“Pathom of Goldenlake,” he’d cut her off with a smile.

The days that followed had been a blur. Thayet had found a wet-nurse and supplied an endless stream of goods that they’d have never known a baby required. Alanna had ridden in from Pirate’s Swoop at full speed to pronounce in a gruff voice that the infant was in perfect health. Gary had gifted them a bassinet and more blankets than any human child could possibly need. Dom had found a way to convert a standard-issue burnoose into an excellent baby sling, while Evin had given them a congratulatory note from George, who complained that Alanna had left before he could finish writing, and a cheerful promise that he’d never touch a soiled diaper. Onua had given them a set of unimaginably soft stuffed ponies, perfect replicas of the horses that roamed the highlands of Sarain where she and Buri had learned to ride.

Kel, away on business with Second Company at the Gallan border, had to wait almost a full week to learn she had a new godsson. He’d met the company when they’d arrived back at the palace long past dark the night before. They’d groomed Hoshi and Sparrow together while he thanked the gods for perhaps the hundredth time that her “testy pony” had finally found his way out of the Own stables and into a pleasant retirement.

Finally, when the last of the men had trudged towards the barracks and a well-earned nights’ sleep, she’d turned to him.

“Well?”

“There’s someone important I want you to meet,” he’d said, shoving his hands in his pockets with a smile that was equal parts nervous and eager.

“Sir, I’ve already met your wife.”

Raoul had let out a hearty chuckle. “But you haven’t met my son.”

Kel had frozen. Her face fell back into perfect stillness, the way it did when her mind was working its fastest.

After a second that felt like an eternity, she replied, “Sir, I saw Buri five weeks ago. If you’re telling me you’ve managed to grow a baby since then—”

“We didn’t, but someone else did. We adopted him from the Temple after his mother died in childbirth.”

Understanding flashed in Kel’s eyes while her face broke into a rare broad grin. She’d wrapped her arms around him in a fast, tight hug accompanied by enthusiastic congratulations that had gone suddenly silent in surprise when he’d added, a wicked glint in his eyes, “You really should come by tomorrow to meet your godsson.”

Buri had intercepted Kel on the practice courts the following morning with the dual goals of keeping her own skills sharp and ensuring that Kel would not be too polite to visit. And so now, he watched as Kel bounced his son with the brisk certainty of someone who had held a baby a thousand times. He could hear her cooing quietly at Pathom, softening her consonants while she told him all about forest campaigns in hill country. He knew he should ask her to speak up—if she was going to give her report verbally, she could at least give it at a volume he could hear—but he found he wasn’t particularly interested in the intricacies of the Second’s bowstring supplies. Buri made eye contact with him behind Kel’s back, laughter in her eyes. Buri could laugh if she wanted, but he was taking notes on Kel’s tactics. He would have sworn this was the quietest he’d heard his son in the entirety of his hundred-and-twenty-odd hours in the palace.

As his son stared wide-eyed at his former squire, Raoul was reminded of a comment he’d heard as they’d left Turomot’s offices the other day with paperwork making Pathom officially their own. “Well, that feckless Goldenlake dolt’s managed to start a family, even if it was too late to do the thing properly,” the Lord of Genlith had muttered at their backs as they’d left. Buri had elbowed him and whispered a quick “Feckless? I’ll show him feckless,” but her heart wasn’t in it. Before she’d even finished the thought, her eyes were back on Pathom, squirming against her chest in the burnoose that bound him to her.

And now, Raoul watched his son, passed between his wife and the woman who had been like his daughter long before any papers said he was a father. Stuffed Saren ponies lined the shelf above an intricately carved bassinet filled with beautifully embroidered blankets. A protection charm had been pulled from Alanna’s packs to hang at the head, while twin leather circles bearing the insignias of the Riders and the Own, no doubt carefully cut by mischievous commanders from the saddle packs of some unprepared trainees, was secured carefully at the foot. Raoul had to smile for a moment at Genlith’s ignorance—he’d begun his family right on time.

#carrie answers #my writing #anonymous #raoul of goldenlake and malorie's peak #raoul of goldenlake #buriram tourakom #tortall #tamora pierce #protector of the small #keladry of mindelan #okay we've got all the found family shit in here #the friends? check #the surrogate daughter? check #adoption? check #also who said a baby can't have three godsmothers definitely not buri and raoul #also on ao3

157 notes · View notes

teawaffles · 4 years ago

Text

It Happened One Night: Chapter 1

T/N: Takes place after the Scandal in the British Empire arc (Chapters 17-23 of the manga).

Baker Street was full of people as usual. But in contrast to the hubbub, the entire street was enveloped in a vaguely unnatural, lonely atmosphere.

It looked like it was going to rain. That was what John H Watson thought as he walked down the street, gazing up at the heavily clouded sky.

“We should get back quickly, Sherlock.”

Saying that, he looked at the man beside him — Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock squinted and sniffed the air, as if trying to detect the smell of rain, and agreed with him.

“Right. And I also have some things here I don’t want to get drenched.”

Then Sherlock looked down at the items he was carrying. They each bore a large paper bag, stuffed to the brim with food and other sundry goods.

John furrowed his brows.

“Sherlock, haven’t you bought too many personal items? We’re even more broke than usual, you know,” he reminded.

But Sherlock wasn’t perturbed.

“They might be useless to you, John, but to me these are necessities of life. Please overlook this just once.”

“It’s no use, huh……”

It was better to avoid cigarettes at times like this, but John knew it was pointless to say that — hence instead of going on at length, he just gave a small sigh. Somehow, it felt like the bag in his arms had grown heavier.

As the two men walked on like this, they eventually drew near the flat where they lived. 221B Baker Street. This was the very place from which the great detective Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, John H Watson, unravelled Britain’s mysteries.

However, they walked past their lodgings, not once slowing down. As they passed by, John glanced toward their flat.

There, remained the scars of appalling destruction. The building itself had retained its original structure, but the flat in which they’d lived had its windows all blown out; from what he could see through them, the walls and ceilings had been scorched to a miserable crisp.

They’d been unexpectedly drawn into the “Scandal of the British Empire” case, in which Sherlock had devised a bold strategy — blowing up their own apartment — in order to save Irene Adler.

They had achieved their goal, but at the cost of losing their home for the time being. As such, Sherlock and John, together with their landlady Miss Hudson, were staying in cheap accommodation a little ways from here until the apartment repairs were complete.

As they headed to their temporary lodgings, John’s shoulders drooped.

“Although all of us had agreed on it, in the end, it’s still tough to see the place you’ve gotten used to living in become like that.”

“Sorry about that. I had no other option back then.”

Sherlock kept his eyes forward as he apologised with sincerity. To that, John smiled gently.

“I don’t really mind — In any case, I’ve been put through many reckless situations like this before……. Oh—”

Right then, a drop of water splashed on his palm. Just as he registered that icy sensation, more raindrops came pouring down.

Sherlock looked at him.

“It arrived earlier than I thought.”

“Yeah, let’s run for it.”

Then, carrying their bags with both arms, the two men half-ran to their hotel.

When they arrived, they shook their heads slightly to rid the water from their hair, then walked past the front desk to their room.

After putting down their bags and opening the door, they found Miss Hudson standing in the doorway.

John tilted his head in confusion.

“Miss Hudson, what brings you here?”

As it would be improper for them to share a room with a lady, the two men chose to rent out a separate room despite the steep cost. Hence, John thought she would be in her own room now — why was she in theirs?

She smiled back awkwardly.

“Mr Mycroft’s here.”

“What?”

Instantly, Sherlock’s face morphed into one of displeasure. Without asking the details, he took up his shopping and walked into the room. Seated on a chair near the wall was his older brother Mycroft, looking out the window.

“……Damn you, Mycroft. Coming all the way to this hotel — what you do want?”

Distinctly uncomfortable dealing with his own elder brother, Sherlock spoke up first, his tone sour. But Mycroft simply turned to look at him, and responded without haste.

“That attitude again as always, Sherly. How about subverting my expectations sometimes and acting like a gentleman for once? Or rather, is it that you’re so frustrated by a case you forgot your manners?”

“Ugh……”

Mycroft looked around the cramped interior as he spoke, and the corners of Sherlock’s mouth twitched as he let out a groan. He didn’t regret blowing up their apartment itself, but hearing Mycroft’s calm, pointed comments forced him to remember his own helplessness back then.

“……Did you come all the way here just to make a fool of me?” he retorted, trying to defend himself. But Mycroft simply shrugged his shoulders in resignation, and got straight to the point.

“If you’re having trouble with accommodation, there’s a country house in the Cotswolds I can introduce you to.”

“……What’s this, all of a sudden?”

Country houses were often built by nobles and wealthy landowners as status symbols on their own land: it was ridiculous to suggest that someone would simply lend theirs out. Sherlock raised an eyebrow in suspicion.

“Isn’t it natural for an older brother to want to help his younger sibling in his time of need? Furthermore, although I’m sure they’d agreed to your plan, it pains me to think how Dr Watson and Miss Hudson have been caught up in it.”

“We don’t need your concern. We’ll do what we want, so just get the hell out of here.” Sherlock made a shooing motion with his hand, in a bid to chase Mycroft out, but was soon admonished by John, who’d entered the room afterward. John then calmly turned to Mycroft, seeming eager to listen.

“Do you mean that, you would be willing to lend us an apartment? Thank you very much for your offer — could you tell us more?”

Mycroft was smiling as he nodded.

“Actually, an acquaintance of mine — a noble — intends to stay in London for a week. They’re looking for someone to look after their mansion in the meantime, hence I thought it would align perfectly with your situation, Doctor.”

John nodded in understanding.

“I see. However, if that’s the case, why not ask their employees to stay behind?”

“From what I’d heard, they felt it would be a good opportunity to give their hardworking employees a vacation as well. Although if you aren’t able to accept, Doctor, they did say they would ask some of them to remain in the house……”

“In other words, if we were to take up the offer, then their employees would be able to take a break. Moreover, the three of us would be in charge of the mansion’s upkeep during our stay.”

“Not exactly,” Mycroft clarified, “They said you won’t have to concern yourselves with the maintenance and such. As long as it stays reasonably tidy, you are free to enjoy yourselves while keeping an eye on the house.”

It was a very generous offer, so generous it invited suspicion of an ulterior motive; however, since it came from Mycroft, perhaps it could be trusted. John wanted very much to accept — he couldn’t say he was entirely pleased with their current arrangement — but he knew his partner didn’t view it that simply.

As expected, Sherlock tutted in disapproval.

“This place suits us just fine: I don’t want to live in some boring mansion in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to take on clients when I’m away.”

Sherlock himself did harbour some guilt at making the two of them endure their present lifestyle, but following his brother’s opinion was simply anathema to him. As such, he couldn’t help but bite back in reply.

John understood that, but admonished him regardless.

“Sherlock, you shouldn’t talk to your own brother like that. Mr Mycroft was just looking out for us when he made that suggestion.”

“Pay no mind, Doctor. He’s been like this for a long time.”

Mycroft gave them a wide smile. Then, he directed a question to Miss Hudson, who had been keeping an eye on them from behind.

“We’ve heard what my little brother thinks, but how about you, Miss Hudson?”

“Eh? A-Ah~……”

Having suddenly been addressed, she responded in a faltering tone.

“Well, um…… To me, I think, it would certainly be helpful.”

In an effort to consider Sherlock’s feelings on the matter, she ended up replying in a roundabout way — but it was clear that she was in favour as well.

Mycroft turned to John.

“How about you, Doctor?”

For a moment, John was at a loss for words, but when he heard the floorboards creaking underneath his feet, he made up his mind. He looked at Sherlock as he nodded slowly.

“I think, that the country house might be more pleasant, compared to our current circumstances. Moreover, we could always receive clients via post.”

“…………”

Both of them had answered in the affirmative. Now, only Sherlock remained.

Despite the apparent obstacles being cleared, he still had his reservations. But eventually, Sherlock looked at the ceiling in resignation.

“Ah, bollocks. It would just be selfish of me to refuse at this point, now wouldn’t it? Alright. Please let us stay at that country house until the apartment is fixed.”

At that reply, Mycroft smiled in satisfaction, and Sherlock turned away to hide his frustration from those eyes.

The three of them drew up some agreements on their new living arrangements, and with that, until the flat at Baker Street was fixed, they would proceed to stay at a noble’s mansion out in the country.

Footnotes:

[1] The Cotswolds is a large hilly area to the northwest of London, further than Oxford and dotted with villages. (Wikipedia)

T/N: After the angst from the last story, I just remembered how much I love the Baker Street gang 😉

#moriarty the patriot #yuukoku no moriarty #yuumori #english translation #forbidden games

111 notes · View notes

mrsalwayswrite · 4 years ago

Text

To Call Forth Love - Chapter 6

Haha, I’m so excited for this chapter. Please let me know what y’all think! Also a huge thank you to everyone who has liked/commented/reblogged. You guys deserve all the love and cookies possible!

Warnings: swearing, fluff (i think that’s it, sorry if i miss something)

Words: 7300 (i feel like my chapters keep getting longer. oops?)

Tag List: @heavenly1927 @youbloodymadgenius @zuxiezendler @punkrocknpearls

Series Masterlist

The aroma of coffee surrounded Kari like a warm, comforting blanket. The café was just the perfect amount of busy, there were a few other tables occupied but without feeling cramped or overwhelming. The lunch rush was just beginning, indicated by the number of patrons standing in line to order now.

The brunette sipped on her latte as she slowly swiped through the pictures on Gyda's phone. The two were finally meeting up for an early lunch and coffee after a yoga class. Gyda had been gushing about the trip she just returned from to Phnom Penh, telling stories of the week she spent there and letting Kari slide through the pictures on her phone.

"These are just gorgeous. Gods, you have the best job, I swear."

Gyda laughed, picking at the muffin in front of her. "I know. I can't imagine doing anything else though."

"When do you leave again?"

"Mmmm…. I’m not sure yet. The company is wanting me to go to Vancouver, British Columbia next. I might wait until the end of September to go. I'm not sure. Either way, it won't be for at least a month. Depends on how soon I want to go visit mom."

"Why wouldn't you want to go soon?" Kari perked up at the mention of Gyda's mother. She knew the two were close, but all she really knew about Lagertha was from what Ivar told her.

"I'm not a fan of her new boyfriend. Sorry, she prefers the term "lover". Kalf works for her, specifically with contacts from their Mediterranean partners and overseeing some of the shipments."

"Why don't you like him?" She swiped to the next image, a stunning picture of the Cambodian royal palace.

The blonde waved her hand vaguely, as if swatting a fly. "He hasn't done anything; I just don't like him."

"That's fair. Does he treat your mom well?"

"Yeah. She just has shit luck with men and I'm worried how this one will turn out." She sipped on her coffee, gazing out the nearby window for a moment.

Kari turned back to the phone, guessing there was more that Gyda was not saying. Not that she needed to know. No, she had enough drama in her life currently and his name was Ivar.

Both women lounged in the wooden café chairs, still in their yoga clothes, having come straight from the studio. Except Gyda changed her footwear, losing the sandals for a pair of wedge heels that made her long legs look like skyscrapers. It was hard not to envy Gyda's body, and Torvi for that matter. They both had the perfect hourglass figure, with all the right assets and gorgeously braided, blonde hair. Maybe it was some standard that women around the Lothbroks had perfect bodies. It made Kari wonder why Ivar paid her any attention then. Her body was far from perfect. Her chest side was decent, but she always thought her hips and thighs were too large. Most likely leftover critiques from her mother who not-so-lovingly would say Kari was pear-shaped and needed to focus on losing all that extra or no man would want her. Not that she was trying to get a man. Over the past two years she had finally come to embrace her body and was learning to be comfortable in her own skin. Though some days were better than others. It was still difficult to watch Gyda receive appreciative looks from many of the patrons as they passed by their table and know none of them would even give her a second glance. The blonde was effortlessly beautiful. Perhaps there was a way for her to teach Kari that.

Suddenly Gyda zeroed in on the brunette with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. "Speaking about men…."

"Are you going on a date?"

Gyda snorted, with an amused grin on her face. "Hell no. I'm not interested in a relationship right now. I am perfectly fine being single. Stop changing the subject. There is a little something going around the Lothbrok rumor mill that Ivar took you on a date to Casa mia, Maggiore."

"Not a date, it was just as friends." Kari clarified.

She gave her an incredulous look. "Just friends?"

"Yes."

Gyda narrowed her eyes at her.

"What? We went out to Casa mia, Maggiore and then I convinced him to go to Masterpiece. After he dropped me back off at home. Nothing happened."

"Right…." Gyda hummed. "So, it was a date."

Kari dropped her face into her hands with a groan. "Not a date. Just friends."

"Whatever you say. Just know Ivar doesn't take just anyone to his favorite restaurant. Hell, I think he only took his ex there once in the ten months they were dating. He usually only goes with Aslaug."

"Oh? Um, I didn't know…" The brunette hated how she perked up at this new information. It should not matter hearing that he never took anyone, that it really was his favorite restaurant and he wanted to share it with her. In their texting, he made reference to when they went back, what food he wanted her to try next. Something apparently, he was not even inclined to do with an ex. No, none of that should matter. But it did, and the way her heart swelled at the realization only proved that to her.

"Clearly he really likes you to take you there. Do you like him?"

"Sure, he's a good friend."

Gyda sighed dramatically, tipping her head back. "You're killing me, Kari! Fine! When was this not-date? A week ago?"

"Eight days, yeah."

"Have you hung out since then?"

"Yeah, he picked me up once and we went out for dinner. Another time, he took me out on my lunch break. He had to go on a business trip so I haven't seen him in…. three days?"

"Right. I'm guessing he's blowing up your phone while he's been gone?"

Kari took a sip of her drink as she mumbled, "sort of." The truth was they were practically texting non-stop. It was mostly discussions, and arguments on his side, of superficial things like TV shows, the proper time to wake up in the morning and her lack of clothing that was more than yoga attire. Other times they sent memes back and forth or links to funny YouTube clips. Kari never realized how lonely she was before Ivar thrust himself into her life with all the force and subtlety of a rocket.

"What does that mean?" Gyda eyed her for a long moment before she gasped and slapped the table. "Oh shit! Is he sending you dick pics?"

Kari choked on air. After hacking for a couple of seconds, tears coming to her eyes because of the action, she vigorously shook her head. "No! No! Ewww....no! We keep sending stupid memes to each other and talking about where we should go out next. That's it. I promise."

The blonde laughed loudly at Kari's reaction, who fiddled with her earring, face burning with embarrassment. The two sat quietly for a couple of minutes, sipping their drinks and watching the line of lunch patrons increase.

"So…. it kind of sounds like you're dating."

"No, we're just friends. Why can't friends just hang out?" Kari tried to argue. The beginning tendrils of annoyance creeping in at constantly having to defend their friendship.

Gyda stared at her. "Have you made-out?"

A blush colored Kari's cheeks before she could figure out a good enough lie, giving away the truth.

"What?! How often?!" Her enthusiastic friend cried, before waving her hand once again. "Never mind. Listen, he's taking you out to his favorite restaurant. He is clearly going out of his way to spend time with you. He is texting you! You don't realize how big of a deal this is for him! He generally hates people. I'm positive he has murder plans for most of those he is forced to be around. Does he know you're just friends? Because to me, it doesn't sound like it."

Kari covered her face with her hands, tears of frustration springing to her eyes. Ivar and her could only be friends, that was what she promised herself. If he knew her, the real her…. it would never happen. He would never want her. So it was best to remain friends, to protect both of them from the inevitability that anything more would never happen. Even though their line of friendship was blurring…. and that was the worst part. She found herself wishing to continue to blur that line, even when she knew it would only end in disaster. Taking a deep breath, she could smell his cologne, a scent she had become so used to now. Her mind could easily conjure the feeling of being in his arms, his mouth on hers as she gave in under his touch. She cared for him, deep down she knew more than a friend. Although he could annoy her to no end, she enjoyed his presence, his humor, that vulnerable side that peeked out occasionally, how he made her feel safe and beautiful.

Now hearing Gyda pointedly telling her that Ivar was treating her as more than a friend. It left her speechless and wondering if she was making a mistake.

Gyda’s tone softened when she spoke next. "Why are you so set on just friends?"

"I just…. I don't want to date right now. After my last relationship, I just want to focus on myself."

"That's fair but listen, he isn't going to wait around for you forever."

"I know. I don't want him too." She admitted, tugging on her earring. Though her statement was the truth, it still tasted bitter on her tongue.

"Ok, but does he know that? It sounds like he’s set on you, but I'm going to warn you. Don't break his heart. He isn't the type to recover from heartbreak. His heart is already locked up more securely than Fort Knox but if you break it…."

"I promise, that isn't my intent. I just…. can't. I like him, more than I thought I would. He is funny and charming and sweet but also infuriating and demanding and I've had more fun with him than I've ever had with a guy friend before. He…. I can be myself around him and I think he can too. But I just…. It can't go further than friendship."

Gyda mulled over her words. "Alright. I don't fully understand but I get it. It's nice to hear that he's connecting with someone. None of us liked his ex. He only really spends time with family or Floki."

"I don't want to hurt him." Kari whispered.

"I know. You're too sweet to purposefully do something like that." The blonde tilted her head to the side with a slowly growing smug look. "I give it until the end of the year and you'll be naked in his bed."

"Gods! What? Why would you say that?"

"He's a Lothbrok. They always get what they want."

*****

Kari laid curled up on her full-size bed, her laptop up and watching Downton Abbey. A heating pad rested on her abdomen as she waited for the pain relievers to kick in. Most of her life she was happy with, but the one thing she would easily trade out would be the painful cramps when PMSing. The birth control she took helped out, but there was usually still one day that the dreaded cramps hit hard.

Her phone dinged. Languidly reaching over, she grabbed it from beside her pillow and opened it to check the text.

Ivar: wat r u doin?

He texted her earlier that day saying he was returning home from his sudden business trip.

Kari: nothing

Ivar: good. bts.

She groaned, slamming her face into her pillow. She did not have the energy to deal with him right now. All she wanted was to relax and eat her body weight in chocolate. After a moment of self-pity, she texted him back, hoping she could get out of whatever he had planned already.

Kari: no, I don't feel good.

Ivar: wat wrong?

Kari: nothing bad.

Sure, they had been talking daily for over a week but that did not mean she wanted to divulge her period issues to him. There were a few things she knew and one was that guys did not like talking about the menstrual cycle.

When he did not text back right away, she turned her attention back to her laptop and the TV show playing. Soon enough the magic of pain relievers and hot pads kicked in and her pain was minimal, though she had no intentions of leaving her warm cocoon. Alana was at her night class, so Kari was home alone. Not unusual really, but tonight she certainly felt the urge to lay around and do nothing.

After about twenty minutes, she heard a loud knock on her front door. Alana was not home, so it could not be any of her friends. Her neighbor, Erik, never just showed up. He always made sure to text before coming to her door. Maybe there was some kind of emergency? Or a package being dropped off? Though at this time it was certainly getting late for any kind of deliveries. Then it hit her.

Ivar.

"Ughhhh," she groaned, rolling out of her bed. For a split second she contemplated not answering it, just staying in her warm bed. She knew, though, if she did not get it, he would probably bust the door down. Maybe even set it on fire to make a point. He seemed like the type to light things on fire for fun.

As soon as she opened the front door, those intense blue eyes scanned over her body as if looking for some unseen disease. "What's wrong with you?" He barked at her, one hand still on the doorframe.

"What?" She blinked owlishly.

"You said you don't feel good." He gestured towards her, his gaze still searching. "What's wrong?"

"Um, it's nothing. Just cramps. It's better now."

"You sure? It's nothing worse?"

She was touched by his concern, the way his last questions were said in a breath of relief as if actually worried about her health. "Yeah, happens every month. I'm fine."

"Ok, good. Get changed, Hvitty and I are going to see a movie. I want you to come with us."

"Ivar, you should hang out with your brother…."

"I fucking live with him. He's fine with it. Go change."

She sighed, knowing by now there was no way she was making it back to her warm cocoon and Downton Abbey. Besides, she had missed him while he was gone and found herself wanting to spend time with him. Not that she wanted him to know that, it would only inflate his ego. "I'll only agree to come with you on two conditions."

"Fucking what?" He growled, though she could see the amusement in his eyes.

"First, I'm wearing my comfy clothes." She waved her hand at the pair of soft, black leggings she wore and the thin, slouchy sweater with the word 'beautiful' printed on it. "Second, and this is the most important condition, you have to buy me a stupid amount of chocolate."

He rolled his eyes, but a smile tugged on his lips. "If that's all, princess…."

"Oh, give me a minute. I'll think of something else… and it's not princess. It's m'lady."

"Shut up. Get your shit. I'll meet you at the car."

She laughed as she raced up to her room to grab her purse, not even bothering to change out of her clothes. The only addition was to throw on a zip up jacket that was a size too big on her. She always found movie theaters too cold to be fully comfortable without a jacket.

The vehicle waiting for her this time was a luxury SUV. She stopped for a moment in the driveway, unsure what to do. She wondered what the neighbors would think of her getting picked up in this and how many knew Lothbroks were sitting in it. Hopefully no one was paying attention. The one of the back doors opened so she headed that way. Ivar slid over and she followed him into the vehicle, closing the door behind her.

"Took you fucking long enough, m'lady."

She smirked at the nickname. "Well, you did just show up at my door and told me we were going to see a movie. At least the other times you gave me a heads up to be ready."

"Ivar, you said you text her we were coming." A man she had not noticed said. He sat across on the bench seat facing them, watching her curiously. It was now Kari noticed how both Ivar and the guy were dressed casually, both in jeans and t-shirts, though Ivar had a light jacket on also.

"She said she wasn't doing anything."

The flaxen-haired man sighed, before reaching his hand out. "Hi, I'm Hvitserk. This idiot's older brother."

"It's nice to meet you. I'm Kari." She took his hand, but instead of shaking it like she expected, he turned it over and pressed a lingering kiss to the back of her hand. When he released it, he gave her a quick, flirty wink and leaned back in his seat.

Startled by his bold action, she looked at Ivar, unsure how to respond. What was with these Lothbroks and their unabashed flirting?

He had his eyes narrowed at his brother, teeth practically grinding. "Fucking touch her again." He snarled.

Hvitserk chuckled, a smug look on his boyish face. "Relax, brother. I know you don't share…. even if you're just friends." Either he was purposefully antagonizing his younger brother or did not notice the anger seething off of him.

Ivar started to lean forward but Kari wrapped her arms around his, pulling him into her. She was not about to watch a fight go down between the two. "Didn't you just get back from your trip? I thought you'd be home resting." She quickly asked, trying to distract.

After a long moment of the brothers staring at each other, Ivar with a glare and Hvitserk looking amused, the raven-haired brother leaned back. He turned his head to look at her as he answered. "You said you wanted to see me earlier, and going to see a movie isn't strenuous."

"Everything involving you is strenuous."

As soon as she muttered the words, she wished she could take them back.

A devilish grin spread across his face, those blue eyes dancing with something mischievous and forbidden. "I can show you strenuous." He shifted to hover over her, lips dangerously close to hers. "All. Night. Long." He whispered, one hand leaving a trail of fire as it slid from her thigh up to the curve of her breast. A shiver ran down her spine at the low, hungry tone and the naked want in his gaze. "You'll be begging for more of me…. to destroy that pussy and leave you completely undone and hoarse from screaming my name." His tongue flicked at her earlobe, a choked gasp leaving her mouth at the sensation. Her eyes fluttered shut on their own accord, the knot in her core tightening painfully. She both hated and loved what his touch did to her, how it gave her a taste of pleasure otherwise unknown. His nose traced her jawline as he spoke again, tone filthy, making her core ache. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, kattungen?"

She gulped, her voice coming out far more timid and needy than she wanted. "That's...um, that's nice."

Hvitserk's laughter broke the smoldering tension. Her blue-green eyes blinked rapidly as if wakening from a dream, darting to stare at the older brother before returning to the one who still lingered over her, his presence alone keeping her pinned to her seat.

"En dag, søte Kari, blir du min." Ivar whispered into her ear, then kissed her temple tenderly. After he leaned back, legs splayed out and arms across the back of the seat. A rapid conversation in that foreign language started, Hvitserk saying something that had Ivar snarking back and rolling his eyes.

The whole time, Kari focused on slowing down her breathing and trying to tamper down the warmth radiating from her core. There was no denying it, Ivar did something to her on a primal level. Her body wanted him. Even her mind wanted him. When he directed that sensual, seductive side at her, she melted like an ice cube in June. Her panties were testimony to that. Thankfully, he did not turn that powerful ability onto her frequently. She doubted they would remain 'just friends' for long if he did.

Suddenly, Ivar tugged on the sleeve of her fleece jacket, drawing her from her thoughts. "What is that?"

"Um… a jacket?"

He hummed then glanced over at his brother. "Sigurd had the same one, doesn't he, Hvitty?"

"I think so." Hvitserk ran a hand over his braids, a smile on his lips. "Didn't you set it on fire?"

Ivar waved off the question, still scrutinizing her jacket. "Whose is it?"

"Mine now." She replied, wondering what he was getting at.

"Whose was it?"

"A guy friend. He lent it to me years ago and I never gave it back."

"He's in England?"

"Yeah…"

He grunted, rubbing a hand over his mouth for a moment. "Take it off."

"Wha…. what?" She sputtered.

"Take it off. I don't want you wearing another guy's clothes."

"Ivar, this is stupid. Plus, I always get cold in movie theaters. That's why I brought it in the first place."

With a deep scowl, he tugged off his own gray, soft shell jacket. When he saw she was not moving, he tugged on her sleeve roughly. She huffed but gave in, not willing to fight him over something so childish. She slipped the fleece jacket off and placed it in her lap. Before she could stop him, Ivar snatched the jacket out of her lap and threw it on the seat to his other side. He dropped his jacket in her lap then leaned back, watching her with a serious expression. This was one of those times she wondered why she put up with him. Who cared where the origins of her clothes came from? It was comfy. Sure, it had some sentimental value but it was a nice, warm jacket.

Quickly, she slipped his gray jacket on…. and was immediately hit with his scent. A salacious side of her wondered if he would let her keep it. He always smelled incredible and having his jacket now wrapped around her, enveloping her in that…. her libido definitely woke up, begging for attention. Especially after the tease he just bestowed upon her.

"Happy?" She asked flippantly, smoothing the gray jacket down over her and trying not to be obvious with her sniffing it.

He grinned. "You look better in my clothes."

"Ugh. Is he always like this?" She turned to Hvitserk.

"I wouldn't know. He's never asked me to take my clothes off. But if you did, I'd happily oblige." He playfully winked at her.

She groaned. "You both are unbelievable. No wonder you're brothers." She looked at Ivar beside her. "Can I have my jacket back?"

He raised a single eyebrow as if surprised by her question. After a second of mutual staring, he slid over and opened the window, maintaining pointed eye contact the whole time. Before she could process what he was going to do, he balled up her jacket and threw it out the open window. Without a word, he rolled the window back up and slid over to her side again.

"What jacket?" He questioned impishly.

She stared open-mouthed at him. "Was…. was that really necessary? Gods! Why did you do that?"

"I don't want you wearing another guy's clothes." He shrugged. "If it's that big of a problem, I'll buy you some new clothes."

"That's not…. that's not the point! You can't just get rid of something of mine without my permission!"

"But it wasn't yours, it was some guy friend's."

She covered my face with her hands. Why should she expect anything different from Ivar? He had a vendetta against her clothes. With a sigh, she scooted away from him. "I feel like we need to make a list of things that are not ok for you to do."

"I'm not following some fucking list."

"Alright, I'll stop wearing clothes that belong to someone else if you promise not to throw away my clothes without my permission."

He yanked on her arm until she was at his side again, despite her half-hearted attempt for space. "You can wear my clothes anytime, especially if I can take them off of you."

"Ivar, I'm serious."

He nuzzled the crook of her neck, making her squirm. Sweetly, he pressed a kiss to her neck before leaning back. "Fine." He muttered, tucking her into his side.

She glanced over at Hvitserk, having momentarily forgotten his presence. A broad smile covered his face, highlighting his handsome features.

"I like her." He declared, meeting his brother's eye with a nod. Next he looked at her, cocking his head to the side. "What are you doing with his sorry ass?"

That earned a low growl from the youngest Lothbrok, causing Kari to jump faintly and Hvitserk's smile to grow.

"Well, I didn't have much of a choice. He showed up at my work the first time." She answered honestly, though she mostly did it to tease Ivar.

Hvitserk threw his head back with a groan before narrowing his eyes at his brother. "I told you not to stalk her!"

"What the fuck is this? Gang up on Ivar day? She wouldn't have gone out with me otherwise and afterward she said she had fun, so it's not a big deal."

Hvitserk's brown eyes met her blue-green ones with true sympathy in them. "I'm sorry, Kari. I would say he isn't normally like this but I'm guessing you know that's a damn lie by now."

She giggled, "Yeah, I do. Thank you though."

"You know, we could always ditch him and go to the movie just us."

"Oh yeah?" She tapped her chin, pretending to think the offer over. "That sounds like fun. Ivar did promise to buy me a stupid amount of chocolate though. It'd be a hard sell to pass that offer up."

"I'm sure I can come up with something." He wiggled his blond eyebrows, smiling again.

"Shut the fuck up, both of you."

Kari laughed at the look on Ivar's face. Peering up at him, she changed the subject. "What movie are we seeing?"

"Ask your new friend over there."

"Come on, Ivy. You know we're just fucking with you." Hvitserk sighed.

Ivar grumbled, looking out the window and ignoring both of them.

Hvitserk answered her question. "That new horror movie."

"Oh ok." She hoped she sounded confident but kind of wished she had known before coming. Horror movies were not her thing. As a child, she had watched 'IT' at a sleepover and decided then that purposefully being scared was something she could do without. Though knowing Ivar, he would have laughed and pushed her out the door, saying something about how she needed to watch better shit than she normally did. Maybe this one would be more action-based than real horror. She could only hope.

Thankfully, they pulled up at the movie theater soon after. The driver dropped the three off at the door, driving off after to go park and wait.

"Ivar, hold on." She tugged on his arm, forcing him to slow his steps instead of walking ahead of the other two. "Give us a minute, Hvitserk."

The blond brother gave her a quick nod. "I'll go buy some snacks."

After he walked away, she tried to meet Ivar's gaze, though he pointedly stared over her shoulder. "Hey, we're just teasing. I'm sorry if we pushed it too far. I'm really happy you asked me to come out with you and your brother. It's been years since I've gone out to the movies."

He remained stubbornly sullen, continuing to stare just over her shoulder as if her presence was a nuisance.

With a sigh, she shifted closer, taking the initiative to wrap her arms loosely around his waist. Something she had noticed during the times they had hung out was he liked touching her, not always sexually, but just casual, intimate touches. A stray thought of him being touch-starved crossed her mind.

"I also really like your jacket, it's soft and it smells like you." She softly said, peeking up at him, suddenly nervous about her forwardness.

"Yeah?" He breathed out, placing his arms around her and tugging her closer. In just that movement, she could feel the hostility drain out of him, the hard tension in his muscles easing away into a softness she was beginning to doubt many people were allowed to see.

"Since you threw my other one away, can I keep this one?" She teased, lips curling up at the edges. If he said no, she was inclined to steal it anyway. For emotional damages, of course, not because it smelled good.

"Fuck, yes, kitten." He nuzzled her neck, making her squirm in his arms and giggle at the sensation. After a moment, still chuckling, he kissed her neck then laid his forehead against hers. When he spoke, it was with a quiet hint of vulnerability, his voice just above a murmur. "You really are happy to be out with me?"

"I am." She confirmed with eyes closed, soaking in the heat from his body against hers. This moment felt so strangely intimate that she struggled between prolonging it or tearing herself away. It was in these touches, she found her resolve wavering, a longing rising within her to give in. His arms around her, just holding her, their foreheads pressed together as if grounding one another. It was euphoric and dangerous.

He broke the silence between them, tone muffled as if regretting speaking up. "We should go in; the movie is going to start soon."

"Ok. Hvitserk will probably come looking for us if we don't."

"Ah, fuck. He will."

They untangled, but as she moved to step away, he snaked his arm around her waist, tugging her next to him. When she glanced up at him, he only looked down at her in wide-eyed, mock innocence. She rolled her eyes but giggled. He was like a puppy afraid to let go of his new toy.

As they started towards the doors, she finally paid more attention to his gait. Each step was stiff but powerful. One more than one occasion she ogled him and his swagger that seemed to scream predator, a dark and deadly thing meanwhile also being so enticing. She wondered how he managed so well without his cane but decided not to bring it up.

Once they passed through the door, Ivar slowed down, pulling his phone from his pocket.

"Shit. I've got to take this. Go wait with Hvitty. Oh, here." He pulled out his wallet and handed her his credit card. "Go buy all that chocolate I promised you and drinks for us."

Normally she would protest, saying she could buy her own stuff. This time she had full intentions of spending his money on chocolate. "Do you want anything to eat?"

"Are you on the menu?"

"Gods, unbelievable!" She laughed though, watching him smile genuinely. After an arrogant wink, he stepped away, bringing his phone to his ear and speaking rapidly in a foreign language. She scurried over to Hvitserk, who stood near the confessions counter.

"Everything alright?"

"Yeah," she glanced over her shoulder at Ivar quickly, "he just got a phone call he said he had to take."

Hvitserk hummed, watching Ivar across the lobby with a peculiar expression.

While they waited, she ordered her snacks and the drinks for both of them. Though her doubts rapidly spun out of control as she realized she did not know what Ivar would like or want. With a pleading look thrown at him, Hvitserk gave in with a chuckle. Together they picked out snacks and drinks that would have the youngest Lothbrok's approval. Once done, they gathered their stuff and moved over to an open, standing table to continue waiting.

"While Ivar is busy, I wanted to talk to you."

"Ah, sure." She felt a tendril of dread grow in her belly. Nothing good ever came out of a conversation with such an inauspicious beginning.

"I know Ivar can be a lot, closer to fucking insane, and not many people can tolerate him." He looked down at her with brown eyes that seemed to see more than they let on. "But you're good for him. You don't take his bullshit. Fuck, he even listens to you. I could count on one hand how many people Ivar actually listens to. What makes you different?"

"I don't know. I'm just…. I don't know." She stared down at her chipped, teal fingernails, unable to meet his eyes now.

"Well whatever you are, we've already noticed a difference since you two started talking. He's not as angry, he doesn't just hole up in his room as often."

"That's good."

"Mmmm…. Ivar is my brother and I love him. But I also know his temper can get the better of him and when he is on a rampage, nothing can fucking stop him. He is easily jealous and possessive of things he deems his own…. and he clearly had staked a claim on you."

"But…. we're just friends."

"Not to him." He huffed, running a hand over his braids. After checking to make sure his brother was still on the phone, he continued, lowering his voice even more. "You seem like a nice girl so I'll only say this once. Be careful of what promises you make to him…. and if he ever does something to harm you or scare you, I want you to call me. I'll do what I can to protect you. Alright?"

She nodded, unnerved by his warning. Sure, she knew about the Lothbrok reputation. Yet this was the first time someone point blank warned her with true understanding. She was unsure if she should appreciate the warning or be terrified that he thought Ivar could hurt her.

"Give me your phone."

Silently, she handed it over. He plugged his number in and called himself. With a satisfied nod, he gave it back to her.

"Good, don't ever hesitate to call me. Besides, if my brother has his way, none of us would ever meet you. My other brothers want to meet the girl who has Ivar wrapped around her finger already." He winked at her, making her blush.

"Hvitty, stop flirting with her!"

The flaxen-haired brother grinned, as he watched his brother approach. "I'm not. Just telling her the others want to meet her."

"Fuck no." Ivar growled, coming to stand between the two.

"I'd love to meet your brothers." She commented lightly. "After hearing you talk about them, it'd be nice."

"Awww, Ivy, you talk about us?" Hvitserk teased, nudged his shoulder with his own.

"Not you, asshole."

Hvitserk laughed, pressing his forehead swiftly to Ivar's. "Come on, the movie has probably started."

Ivar and Kari followed behind Hvitserk, as he led them to the correct auditorium. Along the way, she handed Ivar a couple of the boxes of candy she bought and the drink picked out for him.

"How much fucking candy did you buy?" He grumbled, eyeing the boxes suspiciously.

"Enough. If you ask nicely, I might share." She quipped. "I even bought Heksehyl for both of us. Hvitserk said it's your favorite…. and I also got Dumle. Oh, and Guld Barre!"

"I did promise you chocolate."

She giggled. "Yes, you did."

The three of them found the auditorium and took seats off to the side. Ivar sat in the middle with Kari on his right and Hvitserk on his left. The movie had just started as they sat down, the lights and noise minimal. Though apprehensive about the movie, Kari found herself smiling at just the nostalgic feeling being here evoked. There was something so simple yet profound at being with friends, eating sweets and watching the silver screen. Let alone the darkness of the theater and the nearby munching of popcorn by others and the occasion sound of people talking. She missed this. So, she endowed to enjoy every part of this. Quietly eating her chocolates, she kept her gaze on the screen.

After some time, Kari felt a large hand on her upper thigh, inching slowly higher and higher. Jolting at the sudden feeling, she grabbed it, trying to stop its further ascent. Immediately, Ivar flipped his hand over and entwined their fingers. She tried to half-heartedly tug out of it, but he maintained a vice-like grip on her hand. In an attempt to glare at him, she swiveled in her seat to gain his attention. Only for him to remain solely focused on the screen. Rolling her eyes, she gave in, shifting back to continue watching the movie. Their fingers remained entangled.

Eventually, the chocolate lay forgotten in her lap as the images on the screen became more disturbing and graphic. A few chuckles came from Ivar and Hvitserk and whispered comments made between them. Once someone in the theater screamed as a person on the screen was suddenly killed. The abrupt sound made Kari jump, squeezing Ivar's hand. He laughed, but squeezed her hand back. Not long after, she gave up on watching the movie and just tucked her face against his shoulder. Horror movies were never her thing, the idea of purposefully being scared never appealed to her. And this movie had a thing for people being eaten alive. Not something she wanted imprinted into her brain. The thought crossed her mind that Ivar orchestrated this on purpose, since he seemed to be fully enjoying her cuddling into him. As if without concern, his head lay on top of hers, continuing to hold her hand. If she was not so concerned about having nightmares and trying to block out the hair-raising screams, she might have liked the cuddling. In this instance though, if he moved, she was going to punch him.

Once the movie ended, Ivar and Hvitserk argued about the movie- how some of the people should have died or about the graphics of the terrifying creatures. They both became more and more animated as the three of them walked out of the movie theater and towards the waiting SUV.

"What did you think, Kari?" Hvitserk asked, taking his seat across from the others, once they all piled in.

"She was scared." Ivar answered, leaning back, his arm on the back of the seat and behind her.

"That creature was eating that girl's brain while she was still alive! I did not want to see that! I'm going to have nightmares."

Smirking, Ivar tilted closer, invading her personal space. "Want me to stay with you? I'll keep you safe…. and make sure you dream of other more, pleasurable, things."

"No, you'd probably try to scare me on purpose." She accused, pushing his body away from her with a pout.

"Well, thanks for seeing it with us." Hvitserk spoke up. "Gods, Bjorn would love it. We'll have to tell him."

The youngest brother nodded before turning back to the brunette by his side. "You coming out with us for drinks now? We always get drinks after."

"No, I can't. I have to open tomorrow. I need to sleep."

"Come on, it'll be fine."

"No. I'll be getting up at 5:30. That's in like…. six hours." This was one thing she was not going to give into. He had dragged her from her bed already once tonight. He was not about to make her lose out on anymore sleep. Not everyone was able to sleep all morning like certain people.

"Next time," Hvitserk said with a shrug, a grin on his face as if amused by the interaction across from him. "I'm sure we can all go out again soon. Right, Ivy?"

Ivar snorted, "Fine. We'll drop you off."

A discussion about the movie and comparing it to others swiftly captured the two brothers' attention. Finding herself growing tired, Kari just leaned back and listened, her head resting on the back of the seat, and consequently, Ivar's arm. It was different and refreshing seeing him interact with someone he clearly trusted and cared about. His guard was down and even if some of his comments sounded more like sharp barbs, it was said without true malice. The flaxen-haired brother took each verbal jab like water off a duck's back, either making a joke out of the comment or ignoring it. Throughout the interaction, the care and respect for one another was evident, even if on the surface level it appeared dysfunctional. A smile hinted on her lips as she listened to the brothers. She hoped this was not the last time she spent time with Hvitserk. Though his warning still rang in the back of her mind, she liked him. The whole ride back, Ivar kept his arm behind her, sporadically playing with the ends of her hair.

At their arrival to her townhouse, Hvitserk said his goodbye to her in the vehicle, surprising her with a swift hug and peck on the cheek. Her face must have been quite flushed if his laughter after meant anything. Ivar grumbled something at his brother in their foreign language as he pulled her out of the SUV. To her further surprise, Ivar walked her to her front door instead of staying with his brother.

"Thanks for inviting me out." She said honestly, once they reached the door.

"Next time we'll watch something you enjoy."

Before she could second guess herself, she stepped closer and wrapped her arms around him. Instantly, his arms went around her, pulling her closer. While the hug at the movie theater was sweet and intimate, this hug carried a different tone. It was more urgent and passionate. Her face rested on his collarbone, allowing his scent to envelope her. He laid a soft kiss to the top of her head, resting his chin there after. For a split second, she realized she never wanted to leave this moment. To be safe and warm and comforted and wanted. It was all she had ever hoped for. This was dangerous water they treaded in. With each intimate action, she could feel their friendship sailing closer and closer to the waters of something more. The gentle, easy waters of friendship would not be enough to maintain them.

With that thought in mind, she regretfully pulled back. "Goodnight." She murmured.

"God natt, kattunge."

"One of these days, you have to tell me what you're saying."

A devious smirk grew on his lips. "No, I think I like you being in suspense."

She laughed, shaking her head. They both hesitated to move, the air tense with something, as if both were waiting for the other to say or do something.

"Ok, bye." She finally said, opening her front door.

He nodded, taking a step back without removing his heated gaze off of her.

Shuddering at the feeling of his smoldering gaze, she let herself into the townhouse and made sure to lock the door behind her. Releasing a deep breath, she leaned her back against the door. What was it about him that tempted her so? He was bad news for her. Yet the more time she spent with him, the more she craved being with him.

Glancing down, she stared at his soft, gray jacket she still wore and wondered how symbolic this unintended action was.

74 notes · View notes

missskzbiased · 4 years ago

Text

I Hate That I’m Afraid to Love You (18)

Genre: Romance, Friendship, Angst, Hurt /Confort , Suggestive, Fluff, College Au, Enemies to Friends to Lovers Au, REALLY Slow burn, Love Square (?)

Pairing: Hyunjin X Fem!Reader X Han X OC

WC: ~ 4,4K

[Previous] [Chap] [Next]

Masterlist

Warnings (general*): Language, Mentions of (Physical abuse, Death/ Loss of Loved One, Child Abandonment/Neglect, Divorce, Toxic Parents, Cancer, Mental disorder, Anxiety Attack, Alcohol, Food), Suggestiveness

Notes: If anyone got the notification, please tell me 😭 If you guys want to get notifications (hopefully) please go here

Updates: Tuesdays

////

There were a lot of rumors going on right now.

You prided yourself on not being the type to care about rumors and things like this but being in the center of so many of those in the last few days made it impossible for you to not be at least curious. The whispers had been obvious for a while now ─ particularly after Paris’ performance ─ and you couldn’t help but wonder how people could have so much free time in their hands and use it like that.

You should have known, though.

It was more than obvious that befriending Chan and Hyunjin would put you in the spotlight and it was bound to lead to dumb rumors at some point. You just didn’t expect them to be so dumb. Although you must have heard about hundreds of versions up to now, the core of all of them was pretty simple to catch: Love affairs and intrigue. That was what those incredible undergraduate brains could do with all of their loose imagination and wisdom.

You could kinda grasp why people thought you were dating Chan. You really could. You were pretty close with each other so it was logical for people to misunderstand your relationship… The thing is that you had been like this with Chan for ages now and no one ever had commented anything about it ─ at least not to this extent ─ so the real question here was pretty simple: Why now?

“Hey” You lifted your eyes from the counter, meeting Hyunjin’s ones “Daydreaming at work?” He chuckled, leaning on the surface as he rested his face on his hand, studying you closely.

Well… Then there was that too.

Not only you were dating Chan but you were also cheating on him with Hyunjin… So maybe you could understand why people thought you were with Chan but where did this come from? It didn’t make any sense. First of all, they’re best friends living together! How the hell would you two-time Chan right under his roof with his best friend?! Second of all, you didn’t give away any hint on feeling something for Hyunjin! And he didn’t show anything similar for you either!

No. Fucking. Sense.

“Yeah…” You agreed mindlessly, mimicking his position to stare into his eyes “What about you? Why are you here?” You asked curiously, tilting your head as he smiled fondly at you; face too close for you to completely catch his shrug.

“Can’t I drop by to see a friend?” He asked in a teasing tone “I should just have gone to see Paris… She treats me way better than you” He joked; hand reaching to fix a strand behind your ear “I should know you were just going after my body…” He sighed mockingly, chuckling as you rolled your eyes and tried to get away from his touch.

“Stop it” You hissed “You know people are talking about us!” You frowned, getting a laugh as an answer. He leaned even closer, prompting you to lean back, trying to get more space between the both of you “You might like being the center of the attention but I don’t, Hyunjin” You mumbled, pushing him lightly so he would take a step back.

“I didn’t think you were the type to care about what people thought about you” He pointed out, leaning back anyway “What are you worrying about? Do you think Chan will misunderstand us?” You weren’t really sure but his tone sounded a little bitter right there, and you couldn’t help but narrow your eyes.

There was something wrong with Hyunjin these days…

You were under the impression that he had been the target of those kinds of rumors throughout all his life and yet he was acting weirdly. Although he was quite playful about it ─ and by playful you meant flirty and touching ─, he also had those moments where he seemed to… Overthink? You weren’t really sure what was going on.

It was like he couldn’t help but grimace each time you and Chan were mentioned on those. He seemed pretty okay in being the center of the rumors… Whether it was you or Paris, he didn’t seem to mind when either of you was pictured with him but he got clearly upset when Chan was involved. You were not sure if it was just his overprotective self over Chan or if he was suspicious of something going on between both of you while he knew the other rumors were just bullshit.

He probably believed that both of you were hiding things from him. Again. You honestly had no idea why your friends had so much of a hard time understanding the things you said. You and Chan would never have anything! You were best friends, for Lord’s sake! And that was it.

No. Romantic. Feelings. At. All.

“There is nothing to misunderstand here, Hyunjin” You sighed “You and I have nothing going on and neither do I and Chan” You explained for the hundredth time already “Not wanting to fuel the rumors isn’t the same as caring about them” You added, grimacing at him in a matter-of-fact way that made him scoff.

“I see…” He hummed, staring into your eyes for a second too long “Well… Anyway, I came here for a new book” He clarified, placing the last one he borrowed on the counter “This one was pretty good but I still preferred the first you lent me” He added, drumming his fingers on the book’s cover “I was wondering if you don’t have any other indications” He shrugged, averting his eyes from yours.

“Oh? I thought you were a slow reader” You arched your brows in surprise, taking the book from the counter while looking at him “Are you sure you read that one?” You joked, chuckling.

“I guess you still have a lot to learn about me” He giggled, leaning once more on the counter “Maybe if you started to pay attention to me instead of listening to those rumors…” He let the sentence hang in the air teasingly, smirking as you rolled your eyes “Or maybe we should start dating to give them a reason to talk” He chuckled, wiggling his brows at you.

“Great 5th grade way to think” You praised him mockingly, giving him a thumbs-up as you pressed the book against your chest and made your way to the shelf it was supposed to be on “Do you have any genre in mind?” You asked mindlessly, checking the codes to match the book.

“Surprise me” He joked, trying to do an awkward French accent that made you look funnily at him “Oh, come on… Ratatouille? No? Really?” He nagged, mumbling displeased as you giggled at his antics.

You turned on the aisle, eyes roaming around as he followed you closely behind, gaze wandering around the many books displayed on the shelves. You put the one you were holding back in its place, humming as you studied the content on the shelves. He hummed along with you, playfully leaning closer to your ear as he pretended to be invested in looking for something to read.

His presence sent shivers all the way down your body.

No… Not his presence.

It was the setting… Yes, it had to be it.

The library had that mysterious ancient vibe that thrilled you… The brownish solid colors surrounding everything in a majestic framing that made you feel too small… The hard-covered books’ scent in the air, a full-bodied heaviness that seemed to clamp you… The dim lighting that revealed each scattering mote fluttering around, agitated by the soft huff Hyunjin let out… The warmth that crept into your bones as you held your breath for just a half-second…

It wasn’t him.

The way your heart rammed against your chest had nothing to do with his presence… Nor it had anything to do with his hands slowly making their way to the shelves, trapping you between him and the books… And you were almost too sure that the cloudy thoughts flickering in your mind and the fluttering sensations in your stomach ─ that forced you to swallow dryly ─ had something to do with your skipped meal but, again, not with him.

“Someone looks nervous” He whispered and somehow his breathing seemed to tighten your chest and quicken your heart pace once more. You could see both of his hands right in front of you and yet it felt like he was embracing you… The way you had to force your eyes open wasn’t a good sign to your brain “All stiff and…” He continued; voice purposely teasingly “… Panting” He added, a hint of amusement under his tone.

“Stop joking around…” You managed to say, lips quivering as he chuckled huskily. Although you could feel his warmth and presence clearly, there was no inch of skin ─ except his chin making its way to rest on your shoulder ─ to seal the deal. It felt intimate yet distant… It felt like you were supposed to laugh it off but you didn’t want to.

“It doesn’t need to be a j—“ He couldn’t finish what he was going to say, interrupted by a gasp that had both of your heads snapping at the side. There, facing the aisle with mouth fully agape and widened eyes, was someone who was bound to spread some more rumors around.

“I-I’m sorry” They blurted out “I-I didn’t mean to interrupt” They rushed to say, clearing their throat before turning around, utterly flustered by what they thought to have witnessed. You groaned, resting your forehead on the shelf before flicking Hyunjin’s nose, pushing him away for you to look for a new book.

“Read this” You spat, shoving a random one into his hands.

////

Your thoughts were filled with Hyunjin.

Although your eyes were fixed on the TV, you couldn’t care less about whatever was going on there. The voices sounded like a buzz in the back of your head and the image was almost too blurry for you to understand but Paris’ distinct laughter was a good cue for you to laugh at some joke you didn’t listen to. Whether it was your chuckle sounding too fake or too off time, she seemed to notice that something was going on inside your head.

She didn’t even say anything, pausing the show before looking straight at you with a questioning look, arching her brow as she waited for you to say something. There was it… The two-path road. You could either tell her that it was nothing ─ and she would probably narrow her eyes at you until you made up a random excuse ─ or you could actually tell her what has been on your mind lately ─ and then you would have to put up with the insufferable Paris state.

Too late to back off now… You should have paid attention to the show.

You glanced at her ─ unsure about what to say or do at a moment like this ─, biting your lip as you blinked a few times to buy some time to decide what you were going to do. You knew Paris well enough to predict her reaction… As soon as you said that you have been thinking a lot about all those rumors, she would instantly assume that you were worrying over it because you had some suppressed feelings that you were trying to hide.

You just knew it.

“So…” She stressed, still staring at you “What’s going on inside that little box of yours?” She joked, pointing at her own head before hugging her knees, sitting across you on the couch.

Path N° 1: The finals are right there at the corner…

Path N° 2: I can’t understand where all those rumors are coming from… I didn’t do anything suspicious with Chan or Hyunjin and suddenly people are talking behind our back. Either I messed up really bad about something and didn’t notice or someone misunderstood something I did… Or maybe it could be because Hyunjin has been flirting a lot lately! He pinned me against the wall thrice already. Do you think this is strange? I’m finding it a little odd... Maybe I’m being too sensitive over useless st–

“Y/N?” Paris called you softly, tilting her head to the other side as if it could help her to see what was going on in your mind “Are you feeling okay? You seem a little bit… Off… Today” She said carefully, studying your features for a brief moment.

“I’ve been thinking about the rumors…” You began hesitantly, checking for her reaction “Don’t you find it strange? I mean… You and Hyunjin had your rumors before but I hadn’t been dragged into this until now” You pointed out, shrugging “I find it odd that people are talking about me and Chan out of nowhere and… Well, talking like I’m hooking up with Hyunjin behind your back” You explained.

Paris didn’t say anything at first, seeming surprised by your worries.

“Well…” She cleared her throat “I mean… I have heard some things about you and Chan around… And you kinda… Well—“ She licked her lips, visibly stiffening up as she thought about what to say “You know? Some people saw you guys at the library… And you guys keep calling each other sweety and stuff…” She floundered her hand in the air as if it helped her to express it better “And you gave him your keys… And he slept here the whole week…” She trailed off.

“What the fuck?” You blurted, surprised by all this “How do they even know about this?!” You frowned, wondering how many people heard all those kinds of stuff out of context and got to build up a rumor like this.

“Yeah… Well, you guys aren’t really subtle” She chuckled nervously “And I think that you shouldn’t really have said that you guys used to… Have sex…” She practically whispered the last part, ashamed to talk about it “Before, you know? Especially on a party” She cleared her throat once more, fixing herself on the couch.

You had what now?

“I never said that” You frowned “I never had sex with Chan… I-“ You scowled in disgust “Why would I ever have sex with Chan? We’re literally best friends! He’s like a brother to me or something… Ew” You scrunched your nose, shaking your head to get rid of the thought “What made you think I had sex with him? What the fuck?” it would be an understatement to say that you were flabbergasted.

“Well… You kinda did” She arched her brow, looking at you filled with confusion “You told us you used to hook up with Chan, remember?” She asked as if she was talking to a kid “At the party, you clearly said that you used to hook up with him…” She pursed her lips, raising her eyebrows matter-of-factly, almost as if she was trying to transfer her memories to you.

“No, I most definitely didn’t say this” You grimaced at her, finding all the situation kinda odd, “I said I hooked up with Chan’s friend” You emphasized, returning the look to her “I would never say I hooked up with him… You distorting what I said” You blinked, staring at her in confusion as she gasped.

“Oh! It was Chan’s friend!” She chortled “Well, so you should roast Chan! He interrupted you, and I think everyone understood the very same as me” She huffed, seeming to find the situation amusing “Oh my God… I’m pretty sure that was what triggered the rumors about you and Chan, to be honest” She mused, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

“I can’t believe you guys thought—“ You sighed in resignation “Well… Anyway, I’m not dating or fucking Chan” You said dismissively, already done with how all this had started “And what have you heard about Hyunjin? What started it all?” You deadpanned, waiting for some silly explanation once again.

Paris stared blankly at you.

“You’re kidding, right?” She sounded taken aback, looking at you as if you tried to make a bad joke. The way you stood silent, staring back at her in genuine curiosity, must have seemed really sincere because she chortled before answering you “Y/N, he literally kissed you at the stairs” She reminded you slowly, trying to get the words to sink into your head.

She didn’t need to do much.

You didn’t want to admit it ─ and you would refuse to for as long as you could ─ but that kiss… Fake kiss! That fake kiss… You couldn’t help but gulp down as you felt your senses being electrified just by the mention of it. How many times did you push aside that thought? How many times did you ignore the flickering thought in the back of your mind? How many times you could practically see him leaning in for a kiss?

You licked your lips, biting them to restrain the turmoil inside your head.

Of course, you weren’t blind… Hyunjin was a handsome piece of shit. You knew it even when you hated him. You knew it even when you didn’t want to acknowledge it… Even when you wanted to believe that it was just the popular opinion about him.

Now, you couldn’t ignore how pretty he was.

You weren’t quite sure if it was all in your mind ─ he did lean it too quickly for you to notice every single thing ─ but you could still feel the fire on his gaze as he made his move. You could remember how eager he was… Or at least, how eager you believed him to be as you were crushed against the wall and lost all the air inside your lungs. Was it just you being surprised? Was it the abruptness of the situation? Or did he really pin you against the wall as if his life depended on it? You surely felt like it was the last one… But could it be you the one who wanted to believe it for dear life?

No, of course, not.

The warmth of his hands still lingered there on your skin from time to time, and the soft pressure in your lips seemed to be carved at the back of your mind. You hated that sometimes you pressed your lips with your thumb ─ the same pressure though not the same way he did ─ just to snap out of it a second too late. You also couldn’t forget the way he tilted his head to deepen a kiss that didn’t really happen… The way the realization washed over you right at that second.

It wasn’t disappointment… It was something else.

You could still feel how his touch changed on that second… The hold was firm and consistent… It was like he didn’t want to let you go; like something just switched on his head and triggered something that felt so much like… You gulped down once more, still refusing to stress that thought out. The way your breaths mingled and hitched… Faltered… It was almost painful to know that it didn’t really happen.

There was it…

Desire and passion.

The urges of a single woman who hadn’t been getting some in a while.

“It was a fake kiss” You finally answered her but by now, Paris knew too damn well where your thoughts were wandering around a second earlier.

“Yeah, but it seemed pretty real for anyone who took a glance at it” She reminded you, and the suggestive hint under her tone made you scoff “And I don’t want to say it—“

“Then just don’t” You grimaced at her.

“—But I think both of you were pretty into it even for a fake kiss…” She grinned at you teasingly, and the tired sigh that left your lips seemed to fuel her “I can remember quite well how you just let your hands right on his chest… I don’t recall you pushing him away, you know?” her grin spread all over her face “I think you enjoyed feeling him under your touch a whole lot…” She raised her eyebrows, throwing you a knowing look that made you huff, rubbing your face in distress.

Why did she have to say that?!

You clenched your fists, trying to suppress the memories that you didn’t need to have right now… So what if his chest felt so warm and firm under his shirt? So damn fine under your touch? What about the way the water droplets seemed to caress his tanned skin? So what if the very same droplets must have rolled down and down and down and… Well, all the way down from his throat to his collarbone to his chest to… You couldn’t help but lick your lips, shaking your head to dismiss the thought.

It didn’t matter.

The way he bought you coffee and waited for you on Monday? It didn’t matter. The way his damp hair gave him a sexy vibe that looked like a plead for being warmed up on a cold Tuesday? It didn’t matter. The way he was trying to impress you with good food? It didn’t matter. The way he kept visiting you at your work to ask for indications? It didn’t matter. The way he kept flirting and teasing you around? It didn’t matter.

None of it mattered because Hyunjin had been pretty clear before.

He wanted you as a friend.

A good friend.

“I think…” You trailed off, darting your eyes away from her “I may…” You gulped down, reconnecting your gazes before sighing heavily “I guess I’m feeling attracted to him…” You admitted.

It probably wasn’t the reaction she was expecting because Paris just let her mouth hang open as her eyes widened, utterly in shock to hear it coming out of your mouth. You pursed your lips, feeling kinda embarrassed by her reaction, averting your gaze once more as you played with your own fingers, refusing to look at her. Was it that strange for you to feel… Well, some kind of silly attraction towards your stupidly handsome friend?

You didn’t think so.

“You don’t need to be so surprised… It’s not like I’m a criminal or something” You muttered, peeking at her for a split of a second before focusing on your hands once more “I think the fake kiss kinda… Awoke something? Like a tiny little spark or something… Nothing too important or any—“ You were just rambling at this point.

“No!” She blurted, hands waving exaggeratedly in front of her body “I mean- Yes! I’m not… I mean… It’s not that I’m shocked, I’m just…” She floundered her hands around, trying to find the right words in her mind “I think it’s great!” She chortled “Oh my God… Yeah, I think it’s great! It’s great that you have a crush on him or something!” She chirped, and you couldn’t help but frown.

“How is it great?” You asked warily “We’re literally just friends and he’s the hugest fuckboy we had ever met” You reminded her “There is nothing great in it… Actually, I think that’s the worst thought my brain had ever had” You scoffed, crossing your arms over your chest.

“He’s not that bad!” She retorted eagerly “He’s actually really sweet!” She added quickly, trying to convince you as she patted your knee “I mean… He’s smart! Isn’t he? You guys are always arguing in class!” You arched your brow at the distorted way to boost him “He also has good grades! I know you like smart guys” She threw you an insistent look.

Well… You were not so sure the attraction had much to do with his brains.

“He’s also really funny! You’re always laughing at things he says!” She kept her monologue “He also likes the foods you like! He’s always spending time at the hot dog stand! He even knows your favorite food by now!” She was so excited at all this that it was almost like she was selling him to you “He has an amazing taste for TV shows! I can testify that” She smiled proudly “And he’s also interested in your things! He’s reading the books you like and everything!”

Yeah… She kinda had a point, to be honest.

“You said yourself that he had been flirting! So… I mean- It has to mean something, right?” She asked filled with hope, looking at you expectantly “He wouldn’t flirt with someone he doesn’t like! So to the very least, he likes you!” She clasped her hands together, excited.

“He has been flirting with me even when we hated each other” You pointed out skeptically, and she groaned in frustration.

“Okay! He’s a fuckboy, I get it! Flirting is what he does” She rolled her eyes, impatient “But he hasn’t been fucking anyone for a while! He has a crush on someone and he’s being really romantic about it!” She insisted, making your chortle.

“Yeah… Because not fucking people around when you like someone is a great romantic gesture” You sneered “You sound too… Eager to make your point” You narrowed your eyes, tilting your head in suspicion “You’re not being the usual…” You cleared your throat to imitate her “I ship you guys so much!” You chirped mockingly, clapping your hands repeatedly in a short and rapid motion “You’re… Did he tell your something?” You asked curiously.

“What are you talking about?!” She asked in a high-pitched tone, snorting in a too anxious way to be natural “It’s just that you’ve never shown interest in anyone before! I’m excited!” She dismissed your thought, waving her hand at you “I’ve been waiting for this! The day you would talk to me about boys and stuff like this!” She whined, and for a moment she really did sound sincere enough for you to believe her.

“It doesn’t matter anyway” You shrugged “You said so yourself… He’s been crushing on someone” You pointed out, uncrossing your arms and returning your gaze to the TV “Also, it’s not like I want to fuck him… Too much trouble, right? I know he isn’t the type to attach… He wouldn’t risk our friendship just to get his dick wet” You reasoned.

“What if he’s crushing on you?” She asked unsurely, glancing at you.

“Yeah, right!” You just laughed it off, gesturing for her to hit the play.

80 notes · View notes