#I’m a HUGE horror fan I fucking love horror as a genre and i love horror films

[quilterdyke]

I’m scared to admit this but……..the shinning was not good

[beauty-and-passion]

TMA - Chapters 1-10: The beginning and everything I didn’t expect to see

Hello, everyone.

As promised, here is the first post with my impressions regarding chapters 1-10.

Let’s not waste too much time here: there is a lot to say and I’ll leave my final impression for the end of this post. For now, let's start.

<< Main masterlist

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MAG 1: Angler Fish

Well, that’s not what I expected.

So this series doesn't have a continuative plot, but it’s rather a “monster-of-the-week” situation. However, I don’t think it will be just like that: I’m quite sure a plot will come in the future. But since it’s not coming for now, I think the option I chose (i.e. commenting this series 10 chapters at a time) is perfect. This way, I can easily keep track of my favorite statements!

I also appreciate the small introduction. So we have a place: the Magnus Institute. I suppose this is the “library” I vaguely remembered. And we also have a person: Jonathan Sims, our maybe-protagonist. And we have Martin too! And Sasha and Tim! I have no idea who they are, but I’m looking forward to knowing them.

All I got for now, is that Jonathan (who I will surely call Jon from now on, because his name is too long) is kind of a skeptic. Clichè, but I accept it: this is a horror/supernatural series, so he will probably change his mind when he will face the real shit.

And speaking of the genre, glad to know that this story is horror/supernatural. I’m not a huge fan of horror, but I like to be surprised/scared/creeped out in creative ways.

And this first statement… fails to do that. Sorry to say that, but the story is kinda meh. The supernatural element is just here and it’s not very scary. Fine, the mysterious figure is probably just the bait of a supernatural shit we don’t see, but it’s weak. And the association with the anglerfish isn’t enough to creep me, nor creative enough to surprise me.

I hope the next statement will be better.

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MAG 2: Do Not Open

Yep, that’s much more interesting.

I like that the wooden coffin doesn’t do anything you might expect from a coffin in a supernatural story. The scratching was still kind of clichè, but I didn’t expect the singing in the rain. Or the “dream possession” or whatever it was that weird power that tried to trick Mr. Gillespie into opening the coffin.

It was also kinda funny to follow his misadventures in dealing with it. And understandable too: my man doesn’t want to open the weird coffin, so he will do everything to not open the weird coffin.

Honestly, same: I am a wimp and if someone delivered some weird shit in my place, I wouldn’t be so stupid to go face-first into it. Curiosity might be strong, but my will to live is stronger.

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MAG 3 - Across The Street

That’s another interesting statement.

First, you think it will be about Graham and his journals, then there’s the weird hypnotic table with the missing piece, then Not-Graham. There are a lot of things here and they’re all creepy and interesting and I want to know more about them. Could there be a follow-up to this story? Or, at least, to its mysteries? It would be very cool to read another story and find the missing piece of that table. Or one of Graham’s journals. Or to see Not-Graham again. It would be fun. I hope there are follow-ups.

About the supernatural stuff: I couldn’t really understand what the arm-y thing-y was, so it wasn’t exactly scary, but more… bizarre? And a bit meh. It was just a black arm-y thing-y after all.

What really crept me out was Not-Graham casually saying: “Hey Amy, we live so close to each other, what a weird coincidence! Maybe I’ll pay you a visit.”. THAT was creepy as fuck and I loved it.

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MAG 4 - Page Turner

I vaguely remember the name Leitner, so I have high hopes we will see more of his books in the future. After all, this statement looks more like an introduction to him and his books, rather than a self-contained story about Random Weird Thing no. 247.

Maybe we won’t see Ex Altiora anymore, but other books… why not? Also, Jonathan knows about Leitner and asked to search more of his books, so maybe we will see more of them.

By itself, the story is good at introducing the weirdness of these books through the equally weird figure of the Keays. I feel there’s still a lot to find out about Mary Keay’s murder, her existence, her place and her connection with Sanskrit. I want to know more about her.

And I want to know more about Gerard Keay too. Will we see him again in the future? I hope so: I feel like he has still a lot to say.

I also noticed a guy named Michael. Will we see more of him too? Is he the same Michael I’ve heard about? Or is there another Michael? Can’t wait to find out.

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MAG 5 - Thrown Away

I don’t think this statement is creepy, but rather, a great example of weird.

There is nothing truly scary here, only weird. And I love this kind of weird. Every new trash bag is a surprise and the surprises are not gore-y, bloody, or clichè with the sole purpose of shocking you. The stuff inside is harmless, just… immensely weird: a long paper strip covered with the Our Father prayer, a huge bag full of teeth that are all of the same tooth… that’s not dangerous stuff, just weird. Unexpected. And, therefore, very cool.

The metal heart was a great choice too: just like all other findings is not disgusting nor gore-y, but it serves its purpose perfectly. You look at it and you know Alan is dead. I love it when creativity is used so well.

I also noticed there is another Michael here. Is he the same Michael mentioned in the previous story? Or another Michael? How many Michaels are in this series? XD

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MAG 6 - Squirm

Another meh statement: a mysterious girl is feeling very sick, then she basically explodes into worms. Kind of a backlash, going from the delicious, subtle weird of the previous story to the disgusting stuff of this one.

However, I can understand Mr. Hodge: if my room was packed with worms, I would’ve burned the whole house down too.

Also, it looks like Jon knows this woman in red. Will we see Jane Prentiss again? Or more of her victims? No, of course I don’t want your answers: the series will tell me ;)

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MAG 7 - The Piper

A simple war tale, starring a supernatural element, the Piper. I don’t find it particularly scary, but rather a melancholic figure. Sure, it’s a bit eerie and mysterious, but not particularly interesting - not for me, at least.

The story isn’t particularly captivating either. It’s just here and it screams “filler”. Or maybe not? After all, Jon remembers the name Joseph Rayner, so we will see another story featuring this guy?

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MAG 8 - Burned Out

There’s a lot of stuff here - maybe even too much. First, Mr. Lensik’s father and fractals and math and the mysterious guy with “all the bones in his hands”. Then Mr. Raymond Fielding and Agnes, the disappeared kid, the missing hand, the tree, the green apple with spiders… woah, woah, slow down! What are all these things? Should I remember all of them? Are they all important? I feel like I already forgot something while writing them down!

Honestly, this huge number of peculiar elements is very distracting, because it gets all of the reader’s attention and takes it away from the story itself. A story that, if we reduce it to basics, what’s truly about? A man meets a ghost and pulls down a tree. Not exactly the most exciting thing ever.

Now, I’m not saying that a story with multiple digressions is bad. It just needs an extremely good writer and A LOT of time and space to properly develop everything, because it would be too easy to “forget” the story and get lost into all the digressions.

So, considering these statements are all short, I would rather avoid too many elements and keep them as simple as possible, focusing more on the story itself and adding just one or two recurring elements.

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MAG 9 - A Father’s Love

Another meh story. Some elements are interesting, like the necklace with the hand and closed eye related to the Church of the Divine Host and the mysterious something that blows out every lightbulb. But yeah, from the moment it was mentioned that the father had a shed, I knew he was doing some supernatural circle/prayer/whatever.

A simple story, but nothing truly amazing about it.

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MAG 10 - Vampire Killer

Seriously, every time there is a meh statement, a great one follows up. And if it’s not great, it’s extremely interesting. Or, like in this case, it’s surprising.

I mean, a statement titled “Vampire Killer”? I expected the same old tale about seductive vampires burning out in the sunlight.

But nope, this story offered a new vision of vampires. Even better, it did it by putting these details into the story, in a great example of show don’t tell.

I really like that the vampires' characteristics are so… bestial. Shark-like teeth, a leech’s tongue and no ability to talk: it’s new, it’s cool, it’s interesting and I would love to see fanarts of them (once I’ll finish the whole series).

I also appreciate that they burn like crisps, because without blood (i.e. a liquid), they dry out: so, not only it justifies why they drink blood and not eat solid food, but also why they burn so easily. It’s cool, it’s logical, it’s creative: I love it.

Oh-oh, am I also noticing a small hint of doubt in Jon’s words? Is he starting to think these statements are not just silly stories made by insane people/mythomaniacs? Didn’t expect him to start so soon, but I suppose a lot of things will happen in the near future and he needs the right state of mind to face them.

_______________________________

In conclusion

My first overall impression is positive: this series looks promising and I want to read more statements. Sure, my impression is based on 10 chapters out of 200 (so basically nothing) and on all the assumptions I made while reading. I don’t know if there will be a continuative plot, I don’t know if the characters of these stories will return and I don’t know if something huge will come in the future. I am just assuming these things, based on my experience as an “art-forms-enjoyer”.

I just hope I am right and that, while being right about these things, the series itself will keep surprising me with creative ideas. I would be very sad if my assumptions were correct, but the quality of the statements gets worse and worse. Please, keep being creative! More surprising stories and less “meh” stuff!

That’s all for now. I’ll come back very soon with the next post about chapters 11-20.

>> Next post

(How about a coffee? ☕)

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TAGLIST:

@royalprinceroman @mudpuddlenl@allmycrushesaredead @aquatedia@whatishappeningrightnow  @effortiswhatmatters @bella-in-a-bag  @doydoune @forever-third-wheeling​ @payte @hypnossanders​  @idontreallyknow24​  @imcrushedbyarainbowoffical​ @patton-cake​  @hereissananxiousmess​  @purplebronzeandblue​  @cynicalandsarcastic​ ​@lost-in-thought-20​ @andtheyreonfire​ 

@riseofthewerewolf​ @rosesandlove44​​  @chewy-rubies @groaaaaan​ @arya-skywalker  @csi-baker-street-babes @queen-of-all-things-snuggly @reesiereads

@dracayd-universe​ @starlightnyx​ @stubbornness-and-spite​ @averykedavra @joyrose-fandomer @mihaela-tbg @igonnatalknothing

@thatoneloudowl  @grayson-22  @softangryfuckingdepressed @theotherella  @boopypastaissalty @nevenastark @varthandiveturinn @roses-bubbles @cuter-on-the-inside  @coldbookworm  @snixxxsmythe @charmingcritter�� @analogical-mess @emphasis-on-the-oopsie @selfdestructivecat @yangwalkerao3 @the3rddenialist

[doll-elvis]

Bear with me 'cause I'm feeling sad as fuck 'cause we had so many people talking about Elvis bith in good and bad faith but it hurts me deeply that we don't have a list of his top 100 movies/song and his top 10 favourite animals and shit like that.

I wanna KNOW the man, I wanna know what he liked besides burgers

I wanna know if he watched Young Frankenstein or Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and if he liked them!

I'm so sad I'm sorry

oh my gosh- please don’t feel sorry for sharing thoughts like these because I truly relate to it so much 😭 and it brings comfort to me to know that I’m not the only one who can get lost in my own head thinking about these things- I welcome any and all vents about elvis in my inbox & I hope this brings you some comfort like reading your ask did for me ♡

while im grateful that we know some of his favorite things/foods from girlfriends and friends (like the fact that he could finish a whole box of Eskimo pies because he loved them that much 🥹), I’m still not satisfied because I have about a hundred questions floating around my head at any given time that I wish I could ask Elvis

I want to know what he got at the candy counter whenever he saw movies at the Memphian, I wanna know all the movies that made him laugh or cry, and like you said I want an numerical list of his top favorite animals. I would be over the moon to know something like his go-to McDonald’s order or if he was a morning shower person or a night shower person… sigh

I’ll just never get tired of learning about him because everything I’ve come to learn, I’ve come to love

however I did recently discover something about Elvis that made me personally love him even more (which I didn’t think was possible at this point) and that is that he was a huge fan of horror novels- which just happens to be my favorite genre to read and so when I saw him holding the copies of two of my absolute favorite books of that genre, I practically screamed !!

look at his cute self holding his copy of the exorcist- could you imagine him all curled up in bed with his lil reading glasses on and his bedside lamp on, reading this? 😭

and look at him proudly showing off his copy of the omen (this one made me scream even more because I have the exact same copy that I got from my aunt who bought it when it was first published in 1976)

im also on the floor at the fact that when he got sent a copy of the omen by a fan for it to be signed he read it before sending it back 💀

knowing that he was such an avid reader is just one of my favorite things I’ve come to learn about him- I just know he would have been an active reviewer on goodreads 🤧

[purble-gaymer]

why so obsessed with the random grimdark au?

GAHH I DONT KNOW!!! i think it’s because as far as i know, there really isn’t much kirby fan work with a similar tone, so it really stands out to me. also because i love the gsa so seeing them play an important role in the story is super fun for me.

i enjoyed the subtle mystery in temporal stars, i was engaged with the lore built up in glory’s end (GE is probably my favorite despite its age, again it’s my gsa bias), and timestruck is just so dense with fun mk&gk moments, gsa-related chaos, and endearingly despicable butterflies that i can’t help but love it. not to mention horrific demises which isn’t even finished; everything feels so tense like it’s building up to something huge but it’s just!! not!!! happening!!!! and the suspense is great.

the characters also really click with me. meta knight and galacta knight’s not-quite perfect relationship, especially in timestruck, was fun to follow. i wanted them to have a happy ending, but there’s so much stacked against them from the very beginning. the gsa dynamic is totally different from others i’ve seen, which is part of what got me interested in the first place. arthur being an antagonist was the most fascinating detail—he’s probably my favorite character despite how much i shit-talk him. when i say i want to study him i mean it. there’s so much to dissect there, and when you compare him to what he’s like before gwen’s death, it becomes so clear how badly his grief has fucked him up and i love it.

i’m not really a horror fan but the horror i like most is the psychological stuff. kirby has a lot of potential to explore that genre. don’t get me wrong, i love the bubbly, happy, friendship-conquers-all world, but there’s nothing wrong with digging into the dark side from time to time.

[freemefromthishellscape]

I finally watched The Menu and holy fucking shit am I glad I did. I am a huge fan of horror, specifically what I personally classify as “psychological horror.” Whether that’s what it actually is or not that’s what I count it as. I still have more horror movies to watch that I haven’t had time to see yet, but this is so far my favorite horror film. The absolute insanity of going from what feels like the start to a shitty rom-com about an odd couple trying to fix things (cuz he’s an ass and that’s how some of the movies in that genre start) to the mindfuck that is the dinner is built up slowly enough that if you didn’t know it was horror it would be like putting a frog in water and then heating it on a stove. (I don’t condone that happening because I love frogs, I just couldn’t think of a better analogy) I really just love this movie with the well done feminine rage, twisted self awareness of the chef, and the almost unnoticeable commentary on how we see service workers as their service and not as human during the Man’s Folly scene where Katherine cries and is only complemented on the food and not actually comforted about what happened to her. I am going to be thinking about this movie for weeks and talking bout it for just as long. It’s so well made I’m just enamored with it right now.

[olderthannetfic]

#cover design#genre fiction#i just noticed the “death of chatterton” reference on the cover too ha

Not gonna lie, my reaction to that painting is a huge influence. Like, for real, I was expecting it to be the product of some torrid affair between painter and model, not for the painter to have run off with the model’s wife. Ahaha.

As a small, creepy child, I had many proto-horny thoughts about this thing:

Same as reading all that Poe: formative.

And god, yes, it’s always the exact same photo. With all the photoshopping, maybe one wouldn’t recognize the model from another angle, but when it’s the very same base pic, it’s sooooo obvious.

I did my research a couple of years ago, and I don’t have, like, specific notes on what was trending in month x. Basically, what I noticed overall was:

Many mainstream published books make far too much of the author’s name and of text referring to their great success.

Nobody’s heard of me, and I haven’t won anything, so I didn’t want a design centered around that. I also despise quotes on covers and even in Amazon blurbs, so even if I’d gotten some famous person to read the book before I put it out, this wouldn’t have been useful to me. There are some text-heavy covers I love, but on average, I tend to like pictures.

Some indie m/m has covers that are literally P.L. Nunn art or other anime-influenced Western fan art-looking stuff.

Some of them are pretty, but they tend to cue the audience that the book is very top/bottom-y in a particular canned way. There isn’t even any sex in book 1 of my series, and my long-term plans don’t fit neatly into that kind of thing. Those covers don’t necessarily promise sex in book 1, but I don’t want someone coming in expecting a particular dynamic, waiting all the way to book 2, and then being disappointed that things weren’t telegraphed early enough. I don’t think everything Asian has the exact same take on relationship dynamics, but the covers I’m thinking of scream “anime fandom in English in 2003″, not “Asian inspired”.

That was another problem I had: many of the leads of the series are Asian-American, and Asian magic and sketchy-ass international adoptions to the US play a role in the overall series. So some Asian things on the cover would not be amiss... but not ones that over-promise.

A lot of indie m/m has what I call the “oily naked man chest” cover

My understanding is that these sell pretty well. I’m on an erotica writers mailing list that’s mostly het writers, I think. It’s a set of fandom people who went pro and are making good money at it. I’ve been lurking for a while, and they have good insights on the business side. Anyway, they put out stuff that follows (or hopefully predicts) trends a bit more and that’s more directly competitive, playing the algorithm and such (i.e. they’re far better at the pro side than I am). Many of their covers involve the oily naked man chests, and this seems to be the right move for both a lot of m/m and a lot of het.

The problem is, while I might be willing to put a cover I hate on a book in order to get it to sell, those covers would not work. They sell because they promise high heat levels. If you’re looking for a romance with plenty of fucking, you pick the oily man cover. My book would be disappointing.

Some romance books have a couple embracing.

I considered this. I wanted to make it clear on the cover that it was m/m, but I’m not that great an artist, and I was not confident in my ability to draw silhouettes embracing that other people would understand were dudes, especially on a busy cover with a lot of other elements. I’ve got a buddy who put out her first m/m book, and when I look at the cover, I see het. Sorry, friend, but I do. It’s a high fantasy one, and the elf dude has long, pretty hair and a puffy vest. I haven’t read the book and did not like the preview, but if people are curious, I guess it won’t do any harm to link to it.

CGI horrors scream mid 00s.

Speaking of my friend’s cover, there’s a certain style of CGI-looking m/m cover that was really popular in the mid-00s. Not only do I find them hideously ugly, but they hearken back to an era where the pro m/m all sounded like 90s slashfic with the serial numbers filed off. Not only were the relationship dynamics not my fave, but the plot structures tended to be lacking in the same way that casefic rarely has a complete and satisfying mystery novel plot. My book is more cozy mystery than m/m romance, so these covers were inappropriate on every level.

Europe’s covers are different.

This I already knew, but doing cover art research reminded me that big publisher covers in Europe and the US look totally different in a given era. The European ones tend to be more sedate and literary-looking or to have lovely midcentury-feeling graphic design. The American ones tend to have more art of humans and to be flashier.

A lot of covers have the blocks of color outline art thing.

I mean like this one:

I actually kind of like how it looks, but it signals to me that the novel has little plot and is about regular modern people having understated relationship problems. It’s probably either general fiction or YA/New Adult. Also, “a novel” is an instant ladyboner-killer for me. Tedious litfic, here we come.

On this particular H/D with the serial numbers filed, perhaps that cover is apt, but the book I wrote is first and foremost a cozy. I actually had a temp cover I thought was beautiful, but it signaled depressing litfic “mystery” where the focus was on people’s sad life problems.

Cozies have houses on the cover.

Aside from the ones that just say ‘Agatha Christie’ in mile-high letters, they’ve all got a fucking house. And I love every single one of them! Sure, they don’t signal m/m, but they do signal audience for Knives Out, which is probably a lot closer to who would enjoy my writing.

There are some m/m covers that are closer to this—specifically, Cat Sebastian’s Hither Page, which is more of a golden age detective novel than a romance in book 1.

I figured it was better to signal the genre I most deliver on than to plaster my cover with giant text about the shipping content. I see a lot of indie stuff on Amazon that has a cover, title field, and blurb absolutely covered with “m/m fated mates werewolf first time” blah blah blah blah blah. And you know it reads like barely-spell-checked erotica and not like a big publisher mystery. The latter is the general reading experience I’m shooting for, so that’s the kind of presentation I want.

My other problem was that a lot of covers are just so fucking serious. I wanted, if possible, to have something that signaled a more lighthearted book. If you’ve gotten to the end of the book, you’ll see what I mean. There are certain levels of darkness and tragedy I didn’t want to promise. The only covers that really signaled wacky mystery to me were those old Gorey ones.

Ugh, I’m late for running errands. I’m sure I have more thoughts.

Hey OTNF, you mentioned you were currently writing some patreon blog posts - is that in any way linked to this blog and can we support you there in any kind?

--

This is just my personal blog, no matter how much my shitposting sounds like half-baked academic essays, so it’s not associated with this except insofar as they’re both mine. I was being a little secretive, but you know what, fuck it! Enough people have asked that I’ll just deal with the troll reviews I’ll inevitably get.

If you guys re curious, here’s my author patreon.

Right now, the perks for all tiers are a discord that I’m hoping will be a nice little community of writers. For the higher tiers, there’s a 2-day sneak preview of my second novel, which I’ll be putting up on Kindle Unlimited on Saturday.

My first series is m/m urban fantasy mystery-adventure. Book 1 is on KU here.

[emonaculate]

Streamer!Eren headcanons

❥ AU: Modern!AU

❥ Genre: Fluff

❥ Rating: Anyone can read

❥ Pairings: Streamer!Eren x Black!Reader

❥ Author Note: Ive been having the biggest brain rot about streamer!eren cause i just feel in my bones, it would be perfect for him so here are some head canons.

inspired by @sleepysnk

Eren would play any game that peaks his interest, but gets the most views when he plays any horror game, minecraft, or among us.

Its mainly due to how serious he gets when he rages over losing/dying or getting a jump scare.

"SON OF A BITCH! WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT ZOMBIE EVEN COME FROM?"

"Eren babe, not so loud."

"Sorry beautiful."

There are tons of video compilations dedicated to you walking in to shush him

His fans ADORE you

Most of them are baffled that Eren is in an interracial relationship but quickly grow used it after seeing your interactions

He often answers questions surrounding your relationship without invading what you want to keep private.

He would 100% let you sit in his lap whilst streaming

His views always rise when you are there, people just like seeing the adorable banter and romance

Everyone can tell how much he loves you

Literally he will visibly soften whenever you enter his line of view

Demands kisses whenever you enter or leave his "office"

If you ever miss a kiss, he will take a break from his stream and track you down

Plays with Jean, Connie, and Armin often

Plays with you too and gets super overprotective if anyone kills you in a game.

Once the entire gang played Among Us together and Eren went completely batshit after finding out Reiner and Bertholdt were the imposters that killed you.

The next round he is the imposter.

"And I took that personally."

He's oddly the scariest imposter.

For some reason, he becomes rational but manages to hide it well behind his usual hotheadness.

Still would never kill you tho <3

He would completely obliterate you in minecraft however

"eren stop I only have one heart left. you play too much."

"you didnt seem to mind playing when you hit me into lava... I lost all my fucking diamonds so you know what they say... hasta la vista baby"

Sucks at building but sucks at mining as well

usually fights mobs all night to stack up xp

says he's training to fight the dragon

swears he'll slay all creepers

deathly afraid of endermans

when they pop up, his screams are girly and loud

"HOLY SHIT. NO NO NO RUN YOU DAMN MIDGET! FUCKING MOVE!"

when he isn't fighting, he'll gather flowers for you and constantly leave them in places for you to find around your house

"Thanks for the flowers baby, yellow is still my favorite."

"I know princess."

he also puts gifts in your chests even though he sucks at mining, because you deserve the best.

Eren is pretty perverted and though he doesnt look at his stream chat often, whenever he sees any comments about your body or how lucky he is, all he does is grin knowingly and mumble "all mine."

HATES whenever people make it a big deal that you're black

addresses it once and swears if shit starts up again, he'll leave forever and never come back despite streaming being something he loves

will never tolerate racism or hearing stereotypes toward you EVER, even if its unintentional, pops off ever mfing time.

"Whether or not that's her real hair, it doesn't fucking concern you. Stop asking when you clearly look like you have uneven extensions, Brittany. Mind your fucking business."

"Baby chill, maybe she was just asking a honest questions."

"Nah fuck that. I don't give a damn, don't worry about whats in my baby's head."

You know those social media stars, who turn the cheek and allow people to say rude and hateful shit?

Yeah thats not Eren, he will always clap back harder and its beyond disrespectful.

"How are you gonna tell me to kill myself, when your bio literally says fly high mom? You must want me to pay her a visit or something."

"I'm too short? Well I think my height is just fine compared to your brother who seems to be just below six feet."

He has been cancelled TOO many times

its always for stupid shit

for being able to speak Japanese despite being a white man

for thinking pineapple on pizza is good

for liking Pepsi over coke

for pouring his milk in before his cereal

His COD lobby trash talk; while he doesn't say slurs or racist remarks, its too damn vulgar. He was built for that lobby 😭😭

His trash talking is elite and most times you can hear the person he is shit talking on the verge of crying. Its so fucking brutal.

In the same breath, he turn around and ask for kisses from you, as if he didn't make someone rethink being born.

That side only pops out when he is extremely pissed and he tries to avoid ever getting that mad because he knows words can hurt.

AN ADVOCATE FOR THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY

Gets super confused whenever someone asks what his thoughts on the community are.

"Love who you want, why the fuck should I worry about what some else gets off to?"

"If dicks makes you hard, cool. If pussy get you off, me too, lets be friends. Sexuality shouldn't matter people, grow tf up."

Donates a huge sum of the money he earns to different causes such as: cleaning up the polluted ocean charities, Black lives matter, protect Asian lives, and feed the hungry.

Basically he's caring and just wants to help despite his impulsive personality.

Once a month, he visits orphanages to talk to the kids, no camera no video nothing just to hang with the kids.

The only way his followers find out is because others posting about it.

Overall, Eren is in love with what he does and you, but if he had to pick, he'd choose you every single day over and over again <3

[simsbitchbells]

hello hello! i’m bella, welcome to my sims blog! i’m twenty-three, use she/they pronouns and am a raging lesbian (shoutout to the gays). i love to read and am a huge fan of tv/film, so lets chat about books and movies and what not (my favorite genre is horror).

i’m relatively new to the sims (been playing for around three years, so not my entire childhood or anything) and i usually find myself fucking around in cas, so i’ll mostly be posting my sims/their look books. mainly maxis mix!

if i’m not playing ts4 i’m probably playing minecraft, dead by daylight, stardew valley, or acnh!

here are some convenient links to help you navigate around my blog:

my posts : cc finds blog : resources : wcifs : personal blog

please do not hesitate to send an ask to chat! also, this blog is wcif friendly!

[valleyfthdolls]

Here’s my thoughts on it so far because one person expressed any level of interest in the idea.

First of all, the way YanDev created the names I found to be really superficial as he outright admitted to just using combinations of the most popular first names he found on google and then google translating phrases into Japanese for the names. This always struck me as rather lazy and does the idea of naming characters to connect to their story role, character, etc. a total disservice. (Plus I’ve heard from Japanese ppl online that names like Taro Yamada are unbelievably bland and generic.)

So I actually decided to go in with renaming the characters, approaching the naming conventions as I would an English named character. Most importantly, Ayano, the lovesick heart of the story.

Now, Ayano means of color, by design, or of love. This is actually a decent name for the protagonist, and one I may keep, although I did come up with the alternate name Akki Amano, Akki meaning demon and Amano heaven’s field. A little less on the nose toward her character, but I found nothing on Aishi as a surname aside from a little over a thousand people in Bangladesh who allegedly have that name. So if I keep Ayano, I’m changing the surname to Onitake. I’m not a huge fan of ayaNO-ONitake, it doesn’t sound great, but it’s possible she would be referred to more as Onitake Ayano which sounds much better, and Onitake means devil, which would make her name devil of love. Having prominent devil imagery around Ayano could help highlight the horror of her actions by comparing her directly to a literal embodiment of evil. However, interpreting Akki Amano as demon in heaven’s field raises its own interesting idea as it kind of paints the idea of her role in this fancy, harmonious private school.

By the way, I am not going to call the school Akademi. I get that YanDev wants to pretend this game parodies and deconstructs anime tropes the way Danganronpa tries to but it really doesn’t… do anything to parody or deconstruct them. An obviously unbothered attempt like Akademi High School would work if the story played more with these stereotypes, again, how Danganronpa 1 does with the ultimates, in a more satirical way, but the game takes itself WAY too seriously for that.

What should be happening here imo is a deconstruction of the harem genre, turned into something like a horror story, as the main character is no longer the boring protagonist being fawned over by a bunch of girls out of his league, but rather the one on the outside, quietly and secretly obsessed with the “boring protagonist” and destroying the lives of the girls who take an interest in him by any means necessary.

Tumblr just took away my keyboard this is probably a sign I’m going on for too long but I am NOT stopping.

Truth be told, I don’t see the relevance of this school being so elite. I don’t think all the Deep Lore the game is trying to build should overshadow the narrative of Yan-Chan and her twisted desperation to have her senpai in her own hands.

Oh, by the way, cutting every character just calling him senpai. Unless his underclassmen such as Ayano/Akki are referring to him merely as their upperclassman/senpai when not speaking to him directly, no one is just calling him senpai.

It can still be a highly regarded private school with a high graduation rate run by the Saikou family, but it doesn’t have to be this massive thing it’s painted as. In fact, given you have characters like Kokona, whose father is so debt ridden that she can’t afford a properly fitting uniform and is willing enough to be easily coerced by boys and men into being sexually exploited for money, at the academy, I don’t think it needs to be super high-profile.

Speaking of Kokona, her whole plot is creepy as fuck and really highlights a greater issue. It plays these things (usually the sexual exploitation of underage girls) first for shock value, then doubles down on it being important to the plot, but never addresses it seriously as the heavy issue it is, making it wishy-washy at best and just exploitative at worst. And usually it’s just exploitative.

To explain; on the minor side you have panty shots. First it’s a “you have to do WHAT?!” knee-jerk shock, but the game just doubles down. You’re working for a girl who sells contraband including lewd photos of girls to students, so you DO have to do it in exchange for favors. This is gross very obviously, but also something that is shamed by other characters for obvious reasons, but y’know you’re a YANDERE working for INFO CHAN so that’s beneath YOU don’t worry about it. On the extreme side is Mida Rana, a serial pedophile treated as another “romantic rival”, Kokona Haruka, whose most important character traits are her breasts because she allows others to sexually exploit her because she needs the money, and this is her entire plot line, no character outside of the grooming and sexual abuse that open the completely viable option of bullying her into suicide over it, and in one elimination on the YouTube channel is used to drive her to beat a girl to death out of desperation to make the suffering and shaming she’s dealing with stop but YKNOW it’s fine don’t worry about it sexual shock factor yay!!!

Similarly, the yakuza option to have the sixteen to seventeen year old girls (at the OLDEST) be literally kidnapped and trafficked, no repercussions, no acknowledgment of the actual monstrous nature of your crimes against these girls’ lives, is horrible. Literal human trafficking is an elimination method that has no further repercussions and causes no problems and…??????? What the fuck??

So, all of the shock content is going to be cut. Depictions of abuse and exploitation aren’t inherently gross. It’s the context in which they’re displayed that causes a HUGE problem here. I’m cutting the yakuza elimination method. If you wanna contract them to off your rival, whatever? I guess?? But casually selling a young girl off to be kidnapped and trafficking is a horrific thing that has absolutely ZERO place here. Put simply it’s just unacceptable.

Any depictions of abuse, exploitation, whatever, including other things the game mistreats like mental health, bullying and suicide, are going to be taken and explored seriously.

All of that said, I do intend to cover themes surrounding similar topics as listed above.

The story takes place over roughly three-ish months. “Yan-chan” (Akki Amano or Ayano Onitake) is a sophomore at Sakuragi High School in the suburbs in Osaka. Sakuragi was the surname of the founder, and the cherry tree at the far end of the field in the back of the school was planted when the school was built as a sign of its prosperity. An urban legend says a murderer once walked the halls. Having killed a classmate on behalf of the boy she’d fallen for, she confessed everything to him under that tree and asked him to be her boyfriend, and despite her crimes, he’d said yes. And from that came an urban legend among the more romantic at the school, that if you confessed to your love under the cherry tree, all would be forgiven and they would accept your love.

Of course, like the legends of ghastly figures known for their tall, thin form standing at eight feet tall and stealing children away, of which I know two from two different cultures, this was nothing more than a story. However, it was, in a sense, made real by the students- if someone confessed to you under that tree, it was a sign that they loved you enough that they would give up anything for you, and that was a confession you just couldn’t resist.

Yan-chan has had her eye on that tree since freshman year. Her mother Kanae, a graduate of Sakuragi High School herself, had told her all about how she’d fallen in love with her old friend at Sakuragi, and oh, she hoped her little Yan-chan would find her happiness there, everything’s been so hard for her lately but if she can find a lover then maybe she’ll settle down and really be happy. Whatever means necessary, she wanted her daughter to find that happiness in her one true love, just like she had overcome every adversity in her path to get her husband whose name I couldn’t be assed to remember and still don’t care.

See, Yan-chan had a… troubled past, shall we say. She often found herself feeling emotionally numb, and was never able to express her feelings as her mother was absolutely smothering and her father completely distant, always seeming like he was waiting with desperate anticipation for his chance to slip out the door and run. Her mother absolutely loved her, but her father seemed to hate her, and her mother. He was withdrawn and depressed, and became only more so the more numb his daughter became and the less she was able to emotionally control herself. She was never close to anyone, not her father, not her peers, not even her mother, and was known as a problem child, bullied and getting into fights at school, unable to regulate her emotions and lashing out in extremes despite seeming completely stoic otherwise. Not a single person liked or cared about her.

Well, except her senpai Satoru Koumoto. Satoru was a kind and well liked boy, but ever since he was a child, he had never cared much for interacting with others. He was quiet, almost to the point of being considered mute, and had far more interest in logic puzzles than small talk. But he was kind, despite it being hard to get under his skin, especially as he grew and slowly became more closed off and depressed, leading to him shutting out his childhood best friend Mineko. Despite what would eventually become low self confidence and difficulty standing up for himself, he didn’t like seeing others be bullied. It was freshmen year when he met Yan-chan, having seen her being bullied and wanting to help. The kindness he extended to her led them to have something of a friendship that Yan-chan became obsessed with. At this point, she had become completely hateful and emotionally repressed, even toward her mother, and cared about absolutely nothing and no one but herself. But when Satoru, a year older than her but treating her as an equal, extended kindness and acquaintanceship to her, she began to want absolutely all of it, and all of him, to herself.

However, at the same time, a peer of Yan-chan’s was developing a crush on her for admittedly superficial reasons, yet reasons similar to why she liked Satoru. A part of what drew this student to her was her quiet nature, stoic and always seeming lost in thought. This student wanted to believe she was a good person underneath and wanted to bring that out and see the beauty that may be underneath her thick outer shell.

The student in question? Haruka Amamiya, a purple-haired people-pleaser who was bullied by many of the same students as Yan-chan due to her tendency to go along with anything just to be liked making her an easy target. Haruka was a closeted lesbian, just as she was closeted about really everything about her, as she only trusted her closest friend Satsuki “Saki-chan” Takamori with anything about herself, knowing her more popular “friends” would just bully her.

But when Yan-chan fell in love with Satoru and began to grow extremely jealous of Mineko to the point of stalking them both, Haruka could tell Yan-chan was preoccupied. She knew Yan-chan was stalking the two, but wanted to overlook it, thinking maybe she was just… well, she was doing something, and Haruka really didn’t want to judge her or think she was a creep or a bad person, surely she was just a victim of social alienation like Haruka and she was a good person deep down if Haruka just gave her a chance.

So she did. She stayed after school the day she noticed Yan-chan stalking Satoru, and asked her to help run lines for a play about a vengeful ghost of a high school murder victim who possesses a new student every year to kill off their classmates. (This has nothing to do with Ayano/Akki and her mother both being yanderes because they’re “possessed” or something, rather it’s meant to represent how Kanae’s crimes haunt the school, and how this is sort of a cycle- Kanae was obsessed with her own crush and willing to kill for him, and her actions left such an imprint on everyone around her, especially on her husband, and then her daughter, that in a sense it’s doomed to repeat.)

Unfortunately this is what would set the idea in motion in Yan-chan’s head. If she could play the killer in a play with a set based on her own school, then she could play the killer for real, and get rid of that pesky Mineko hurting her beloved Satoru and keeping him away from where he belonged in her arms.

So my dumbass decided to rewrite Yandere Sim to be a like… decent story

I don’t know why I’m doing this aside from that I had a YanSim hyperfixation in middle school before I realized how exploitative, poorly written, and gross the story was and it won’t. fucking. LEAVE so I just decided to rewrite it

[thefanficmonster]

My Kind

Corpse Husband x Reader (Female)

Warning: Swearing

Genre: Fluff, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: Having been chosen by the gang to be a guest streamer on today’s stream of Among Us, it’s safe to say Y/N’s super excited but also a bit nervous. The whole of her anxiety gets lifted off her when she meets someone with the exact same vibe as hers - yeah you guessed it.

Requested by @monizzle96 Hi dear! Thank you so much for your wonderful request! I’m so terribly sorry it’s taken me so long to write and post it but here it finally is! I hope you come across it and read it and if so I hope you enjoy it! Love, Vy ❤

This has to be the fiftieth time I’ve checked my setup in the past twenty four hours. But no, I’m definitely not nervous, what are you talking about. Pshhh. Nah, being nervous isn’t in my brand. Plus, what do I have to make me nervous - a group of famous streamers inviting me onto their stream to play Among Us with them because they enjoyed my own streams? Ok yeah, that’s a pretty good reason. Not gonna lie, I almost chucked my phone out of excitement when I received that DM from Toast, telling me they’d picked me to be their guest streamer for today’s date. My stomach was doing somersaults for a good forty-eight hours following that text and then the anxiety slowly started setting in fueled by the expectations they probably have of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not inexperienced in the streaming field, I’ve been a streamer longer than some of the members of Toast’s streamer gang actually. But I never managed to garner that big of a following which I’m honestly quite ok with. I have a modest - ok, maybe larger than modest - following consisting of incredibly loyal fans which I will never stop being grateful for. They are all so respectable of me, my privacy and my boundaries. They know the main rules: no shit-talking in the chat or in any of my comment sections, no bashing other YouTubers in my comments/chat, and most definitely not asking for a face reveal. Fun fact: I didn’t even set up that last rule, they all just collectively know not to ask for it. 

I’ve been keeping my brand pretty low-key to avoid garnering some unwanted attention - some of which I’ve already experienced on certain social media platforms following the full body pictures I posted on there - face not visible of course. I tend to also have my webcam on, facing towards my hands working away on the keyboard sometimes when I stream. I don’t know why people obsess over faceless content creators’ hands, but I appreciate the enthusiasm - it also drives me to do a manicure every now and then which ain’t so bad, self-care and all that you know.

Now, back to the subject of my ridiculous nervousness.

You see, it has layers.

I’m nervous of ‘preforming’ underwhelmingly and I’m nervous of what my own fans will think of the person I will become during this stream. They know me as a super chill and laid-back person, which I am by the way, but they might think I’m putting on a show if I exhibit any nervous gestures/vocabulary. I highly doubt they would, but the possibility is not letting my mind rest. And now that it’s about ten minutes till the stream starts, I’m getting doing my best to calm my nerves.

They are all just people. You know they are super chill too. Just be yourself, that’s why they invited you, because you are yourself on all your streams. They liked you for your personality, humor, maybe even your gaming skills. So chill the hell out and be yourself, damn it!

Easier thought than put into action that’s for sure.

I start my stream five minutes early just so I can vibe with my viewers for a little while before I have to meet the gang. My fans always have a way of injecting me with confidence, they remind me of where I was when I started and how far I’ve come. How much I achieved when I thought I’d be nothing and no one, someone the algorithm would simply overlook. But then they entered my life and I entered theirs and it all became much better than I ever thought it would get to be. I rarely tell myself ‘good job’ for the milestones I’ve reached or the hard work I’ve put into my content, but that’s probably cause I orient myself based on that quote from the movie Whiplash: ‘There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job’ - simply put, I’m never satisfied with what I do and I always strive to do better. My fans, however, make sure I don’t go overboard with it - always serving as a reminder that I’ve done plenty for myself and others. And that’s what makes an amazing fandom, one I consider family.

Whoa, when did those five minutes fly by?!

Ah shit, here we go. Deep breaths, Y/N you got this.

“Hello!“ I say as I enter the Discord call, subconsciously biting my lower lip, grateful the camera isn’t capturing it. However, I make a mental note to keep my hands steady cause that’s the one part of me people can actually see and the last thing I want is for them to see how much my fingers are trembling.

“Oh hi, Y/N!“ Toast is the first one to greet me, “Welcome to the stream! Thank you so much for accepting our invitation.“

“Thank you for having me and inviting me, Toast. This is a huge deal for me. You guys are basically YouTube legends, this is unreal to me.“ I reply, cringing immediately afterwards because of my fangirl rambling. Great way to make first impressions, Y/N. Bravo.

To be fair, they already have an impression of you. Quit stressing.

Aright, you’ve got a point, me.

“Oh please, we owe all that to our fans. We’re really nothing special. All streamers are almost completely alike, we all owe where we are to the people who helped us make it there - our fans. We’re no legends.“ Toast says, bringing a small smile to my face as well as a light pink blush to my cheeks, “And from what I’ve seen, you yourself have quite the following. And your fans seem to adore you.“

“And I absolutely adore them.“ I chuckle, “They mean the world to me. They are the reason I’m here today.”

“Then we have to give them a special thank you, don’t you think?“ The teasing, familiar giggle, widens my smile - it’s Rae, “Nice to meet you, Y/N! I’m Rae, and, no cap, I’m quite a fan of your content. No joke, I binged your entire series of Resident Evil 7 as soon as I found your channel when Toast said he’d invite you.“

This rattles me a bit. I can hardly believe it - am I really receiving a compliment from an A-list name in the streaming world? My fans must be hella proud of me right now. A quick glance at my chat confirms that they indeed are. That in and of itself fills me with joy and newfound confidence.

“Oh Gosh, thank you so much Rae! That means the world to me. You’re all so sweet.“ I reply, lifting my ice cold hands to cool down my burning cheeks, my lips spread into a grin, my stomach filled with butterflies.

“Oh please, we have some real savages around here.“ A male voice, seemingly Charlie’s scoffs, “Don’t overlook us please.“

“Wait, we do?“ A deep voice, one I immediately know the owner of speaks up, “Who? How come I don’t know about that?“

I can’t help bust snort, “Nice to meet you, Corpse. Sarcasm central, I see.”

He laughs, “Just returning it to where it’s due. Nice to meet you too, Y/N. Sick Outlast series, by the way.“

Ok, wait, I have two A-list streamers complimenting my content. Ok, I’m bound to crack open a few beers to celebrate later cause OH MY GOD.

“Thanks! I’m a horror junkie so I’d be lying if I said I haven’t binge watched all your story-times. Personal favorites are the deep web ones, they fascinate me.“

“Oh, you’re one of my kind even more than I expected, huh?“ He replies, the tone of his voice changing, raising a bit due to what I can only describe as excitement and enthusiasm. “I’ve had people tell me it’s twisted, but I really like seeing the lengths to which the fucked up human mind can go to. Like, the shit I’ve read is insane! Some stories I didn’t narrate cause I would’ve probably had my video taken down, it was that messed up.“

My eyes widen, sharing the same excitement at the thought of digging deeper into this phenomenon, “Careful, Corpse, you’re walking a dangerous line of tempting me to deep-dive on Reddit in search of those exact stories.”

“No need.“ Corpse says, his tone now taking up a bit of a cocky note, “I still got them all saved, I can send them to you no problem.“

“Please do! I seriously gotta read them now. If I can’t sleep afterwards, I’m blaming you, Corpse. Just FYI.“ I say, giggling slightly, finding myself all but completely comfortable now. I wonder where all that anxiety went? 

“Blame fully taken. Given that I’m not much of a sleeper, I’ll keep you company whenever you think there’s a killer hiding in your closet or fear a red room pop-up will appear on your computer screen.“ He replies, chuckling.

“Um, that’s oddly specific.“ Charlie comments, “Been there yourself, buddy?”

“Perhaps.“ Corpse wheezes, getting a laugh out of me too, “I will neither confirm nor deny.“

“You know what, I’ll just private message you my number so if you see it call you at some ungodly hour, you don’t freak the fuck out. Sounds good?“ I ask, already prepping to type it out and send it to him. 

“Perfect. Wait...“ he pauses for a second, sounding puzzled for a second, “You don’t have mine.“

“Oh, do I not?“ I reply with a sinister tone - thought to answer the question, I of course don’t have his number.

“Oh, do you?“ He sasses me right back. “If so then you don’t need me to send it to you. Cool.“

Ah, shit

“Wait, no! I-I need to confirm it’s the correct one!“

Damn, never did I think I’d be complimented by some of the most important streamers on this platform, but to get a number of theirs too? That’s a whole another level that will take me time to process. But I’ll do that another time, right now, I have to kick these people’s butts in Among Us and later I have some deep web stories to read.

Turns out, all it takes to get comfortable in a new surrounding is someone of your kind. And Corpse is definitely one of my kind.

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[gukyi]

that’s the spirit! | myg

summary: min yoongi hates halloween. as his best friend and resident halloween-lover, that is simply unacceptable. but when halloween night rolls around and you and min yoongi feel farther apart than ever before, you discover that what’s come between you is more than just a bad trick, and that no matter what day it is, loving him is the sweetest treat of all.

{college!au, friends to lovers!au, halloween!au}

pairing: min yoongi x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, a little angst? (a little i promise) word count: 8k (woohoo! i did it!) warnings: alcohol consumption, underage drunkenness in flashbacks, misunderstandings, helpless but mutual pining, halloween parties, this is halloween during college, what else do you expect a/n: some scenes inspired by love, rosie, my absolute favorite rom-com! happy halloween, and i hope this brings some joy to your life before armageddon i mean election day rolls around! much love 🎃💜

Min Yoongi hates Halloween. 

Which is ridiculous, because you assume that there must have been at least one time in his life where he liked it. Halloween is a universally-liked holiday. It was the one day of the year where he, an unbridled child rebelling against authority, got to dress up as his favorite book character, superhero, or movie star, hang out with his friends past sunset, and solicit strangers for free candy. Free candy! How could anyone hate that?

But the thing is, it doesn’t matter what Min Yoongi was like in his youth. Ever since you met him, he has hated Halloween. For reasons completely unbeknownst to you. 

Unfortunately for Min Yoongi, just because he hates Halloween doesn’t mean that he gets to spend his October pretending that it doesn’t exist. Because, unlike him, you do not hate Halloween. In fact, you rather like it. So much so that Min Yoongi has to deal with the holiday no matter what. For better… 

“Ah! What the fuck!”

Or for worse.

You pop your head out of your bedroom to find Yoongi about to throw down with the fake skeleton you’ve propped up by the door, one of those cheesy ones from Spirit Halloween that make a zombie sound whenever its artificial brain can sense someone near it. He’s got this wide-eyed look on his face, fists up in front of him like he’s going to beat the damn thing senseless, even though Min Yoongi is barely five-feet-ten and has a body that functions exclusively on iced coffee and could probably get taken down by the average third-grader. 

Min Yoongi does not have a flight instinct. He only knows how to fight. 

He’s muttering to himself by the time you emerge completely from your bedroom, grumbling about how he nearly wet himself at the sight of the thing, fingers glossing over the plastic bones as he inspects them. There he stands in the doorway of your apartment, curled-up fists tucked inside the too-long sleeves of his too-big hoodie, pink lips parted in innocent confusion as he blinks at your apartment’s new resident. 

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” You chide from where you stand in your room, watching as Yoongi jerks his head up. The sound of your voice seems to catch him off guard for a minute, eyes wide in shock before he realizes that it’s you and his whole body relaxes. “Was that you I just heard screaming outside my apartment, Min Yoongi?”

“No,” Yoongi deadpans, fully aware that the both of you know that it was him. “Must have been someone else.”

“Yes, of course, my mistake,” you tease, coming up behind him to rub his upper arm, the palm of your hand pressing against the worn fabric of his hoodie sleeve as he sighs. “You don’t have a problem with my festive decorations at all, do you?”

“Not those,” Yoongi frowns, pointing to the orange and black streamers hanging above your apartment window, to the mini pumpkins sitting in the center of your dinky kitchen table, to the construction paper cutouts of black cats decorating your walls. He rounds on the skeleton, propped up right next to the door with the sole purpose of scaring whatever visitors you have. “This, I have a problem with. What is this thing?”

You smile proudly. “Reginald.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Yoongi looks at you, positively flabbergasted. “You named it?”

You scoff. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I? I bought him, he’s mine now, and he needed a name. So I named him Reginald. What’s the issue here?” You weren’t about to buy a twenty-five dollar plastic skeleton, set him up to be your personal doorman, and not give him a name. 

“The issue is that this—” he motions to Reginald’s face, “—is the first thing I see when I walk into your apartment, instead of—oh, I don’t know—you,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Aw, I’m touched,” you say, pressing a hand to your heart. “Didn’t know you always wanted to see my face first thing when you come over.”

Yoongi’s gaze drifts down towards the floor, thumbs twiddling. “Well, yeah,” he mumbles, words barely audible. “Why else would I come over?”

“I don’t know, for the ambience, maybe?” You say with a shrug, watching him slide his backpack off of his shoulder and onto the floor by the couch. “Anyway, maybe if you had come with me to Spirit Halloween when I went shopping for decorations, you wouldn’t be so surprised.”

“I had two midterms that week! Two!” Yoongi reminds you.”

“I’m just saying,” you tell him, hands up defensively as you make your way to the kitchen, fishing out two teabags from the cabinet as you set the kettle to boil. You never used to like tea, but a year ago Yoongi convinced you to try this jasmine flower one from the Asian supermarket downtown and you haven’t looked back. Now there’s always at least three spare boxes in your kitchen cupboards, for you and for him. “No time is a bad time to get into the Halloween spirit.”

Yoongi sighs, loud and obvious, because this is the third year in a row you’ve brought up this conversation and it’s not any more convincing than it was the last two times. “Do we have to do this?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t we just pretend it’s November Eve?”

“Come on, Yoongi,” you plead, because he’s never given you a good explanation as to why he refuses to spend Halloween with you, and you just want to know why. “Won’t you just celebrate this one stupid holiday with me?”

“So you admit it’s stupid?”

“That’s not what I meant.” You frown at him, crossing your arms as the kettle starts whistling. 

Yoongi exhales, reaching over you to pour the boiling water into your teacups, matching His and Hers ones you bought from the sale section of Target last year for Valentine’s Day. “It’s just not my thing. You know that.”

“But we’re college students,” you exclaim. “Halloween is the best when you’re a college student! You get to dress up as whatever you want and go to five different parties and spend the night with your friends without your parents chaperoning you.”

Yoongi purses his lips, unconvinced. “So… basically an opportunity to get piss drunk in a frat house? No thanks, I’ll pass.”

“You know that I wouldn’t care what we did if you celebrated Halloween with me,” you say, leaning against the counter as you hold your mug in your hands, the heat warming your palms and steam brushing against the skin of your cheeks. “Even if we just stayed in and watched a movie. Or played one of those horror video games Jungkook’s always talking about.”

“That sounds worse,” Yoongi admits with a helpless laugh. It really does. Neither you nor Yoongi have ever been huge fans of the horror genre Jungkook loves so much. 

You chuckle. “Honestly, yeah, forget I said anything about that.”

“You know I just don’t care for Halloween that much,” Yoongi says, gazing down into the swirling brown of his mug, the steam from the water making his glasses fog up. “It’s nothing personal.”

You sigh. That’s about as good of an answer you’re going to be getting out of him. No matter what you suggest, whether it be a house party, a night in, or even just a candy feast, he has always declined, citing his unexplainable dislike for the festivities. The only reason he deals with the holiday in the first place is because you love it so much. 

“Will you at least help me carve some pumpkins please?” You ask, a last ditch effort to get him to participate. “The supermarket on Fifteenth Street is having a sale on them, and I wanted to decorate the windowsill. It’s easier with two people, you know.”

Yoongi narrows his eyes, looking hesitant. 

“Oh, please, Yoongi? Just this once? It’s not even, like, a strictly Halloween thing. It’s just a fall thing! Plus, we can roast the pumpkin seeds after for a snack,” you plead, placing your cup down on the counter so you can tug on his arms, hands wrapped around his wrists as you stare into his eyes, positively desperate. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yoongi says with a huff, that resigned tone to his voice that signifies that he’s caving in. “Yes, we can carve pumpkins together. That I will do.”

“Oh my God, really? Yes! Yay, thank you so much!” In a fit of excitement, surprise, and joy, you pull Yoongi in for a hug, wrapping your arms around his neck as he tilts back in shock, tea spilling out over the edge of his mug and onto the linoleum floor beneath your feet, drops of it splashing against your skin. 

“Whoa, whoa, okay,” Yoongi says, taken aback. Still nestled tightly within your arms, he carefully sets his mug down onto the counter so as to avoid more spilling, his other hand pressing against the small of your back. “I didn’t know pumpkin carving was so important to you.”

You laugh, pulling away as you look into his eyes, crinkled up into fond little crescents. “It’s not. But you are.”

“So cheesy,” Yoongi chides.

“You love it,” you remind him, pressing the side of your body against his as you lean against the counter together. Instinctively, you let your head flop onto his shoulder, fitting perfectly in the crook of his neck. “Thanks for doing this for me,” you say softly. 

“Of course,” Yoongi says. “Anything for you.”

“Look how festive campus is!”

Yoongi chuckles as he watches you skip down the main walkway, the one that winds right from the west to the east side of campus, relishing in the feeling of autumn. Yoongi always forgets that it’s fall until it hits him like a brick to the head, and suddenly it’s getting dark at five-thirty and he can’t go outside without a proper jacket anymore. It’s a week until November, and Yoongi still refuses to wear anything heavier than a denim jacket, no matter how cold it gets. It can’t be winter yet, right?

“Wow, all the tones really fit the spooky mood,” you tell him, leaves crinkling as your feet step on the fallen foliage, brown and orange and yellow and red.

“How convenient it is that orange happens to be one of Halloween’s signature colors,” Yoongi chides with a roll of his eyes. “Is the Castle still hosting that party next week?”

“The costume one? Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” you tell him with a nod. “We’re still going, right?”

“Only because it’s our first year,” Yoongi reminds you pointedly. “And since you wanna celebrate together so badly.”

You scoff. “Don’t act like it’s such a drag. I know you want to spend time with me.”

Yoongi chuckles to himself, casual and cool. He knows you’re just teasing him but quite frankly, if Yoongi could spend every day of the rest of his life with you, then he would. If he could turn himself into a witch and cast a spell to keep you by his side for the rest of time, then he would. From the moment the two of you met in your dingy dorm, you clicked. And Yoongi knew, in that moment. He just knew. 

“Oh my God, look at the pumpkins!” 

Your voice breaks him from his thoughts, your finger pointing excitedly at the carved pumpkins outside of the dormitories that line the walkway, lit candles nestled safely inside. They’ve got everything from the college logo to video game characters to the face of your lovable-but-memeable university president carved into them, decorating the street with a little more personality than normal. 

“They’re so cute, holy shit,” you tell Yoongi fondly, all endeared and heart-eyed, the same way you get when someone walks their dog through campus or a professor sends out an update email with a picture of their newborn grandchild. Yoongi’s only known you a couple of months, but already he’s starting to figure out what makes you tick. “I love them. Don’t you love them, Yoongi?”

You turn around to meet Yoongi’s eyes, and when he looks back at you it feels like his whole heart is lighter. He sees your smile and it makes his body fill with warmth, like someone’s wrapping a blanket around him, like a warm cup of hot cocoa on a cool autumn afternoon. He looks back at you, and it feels like everything is right. 

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, grinning. “I do.”

The lopsided legs of your creaky kitchen table tremble as the pumpkin hits it. 

“Damn, is this thing heavy or am I just getting weaker?” You ask, smoothing out the newspaper spread out on the flat surface of the table, two college students’ best attempt to avoid a mess. They’re old student copies with headlines like Brand New Cafeteria, but is the Food Even Any Good? and New Semester, New Me! sprawled across the front. You care about your school news, you really do, but the members of the newspaper team that hand out the papers practically stuff them down your throat whenever there’s a new issue, which is three times a week and at every street intersection on campus. So you’ve had extras lying around. 

“Nope, they’re definitely heavy,” Yoongi agrees as he plops his pumpkin onto the table next to yours with a thud. “Though it’s not like I go to the gym much anyway.”

“Didn’t we say we were gonna try and be healthier this year, since we’re graduating?” You ask. 

“That was before that new doughnut place opened up next to the ramen restaurant three streets up,” Yoongi reminds you. 

“Maybe grad school?”

Yoongi rolls his eyes, reaching over the table to grab the pumpkin carving kits the two of you bought from the drugstore down the road. “Caution. Keep out of reach of children ages three and under,” he reads. “Welp, guess I can’t do this then…”

“Ha ha, very funny,” you say with a deadpan frown, grabbing onto his wrist. “Hold on a minute, Mr. I Promised I Would Do This For My Best Friend.” Yoongi exhales dramatically as you pull him back towards the table, though it’s not as if there was much resistance from him in the first place.

You pry open the plastic wrapping that surrounds the kit, the orange tools eventually popping out of their casing and onto your newspaper-ed table. Sure, you could have probably pulled out two knives from your kitchen drawer and it wouldn’t make a difference, but spending ten dollars each on these two little pumpkin carving kits didn’t seem like a waste of money. For the sake of Halloween spirit, right?

“What do you want to carve?” You ask, handing Yoongi your open kit as you gaze at the instruction manual. Pumpkin carving shouldn’t be too difficult, should it? You cut open the top, pull out all the gunk from the inside, and then carve a face, or something. 

“I’m not a very good artist,” Yoongi admits, looking hesitant. 

“Well, the good thing about pumpkin carving is that no one expects them to look nice,” you point out. “I think I want to do that anime eyes face emoji. You know the one. Let’s see…”

You grab a hold of the plastic knife that came with the kit, hover the tip over the top of the pumpkin, and stab. It sinks into the squash up to the hilt. That’s the good part. 

The bad part is that, because you’re holding onto a knife made out of non-recyclable plastic, moving it once it’s inside the pumpkin is exceedingly difficult. You pull it right and left fruitlessly, watching as the knife sits firmly in place, the handle bending with the curve of your fingers if you tug on it too hard. 

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Yoongi says with another sigh, abandoning his own pumpkin, which he has already de-stalked in the minutes you weren’t looking his way. “Let me help you.”

Suddenly, you feel a warmth wrap around you. A figure presses against your back, this musky, coffee-laden scent surrounding you, and you watch as Yoongi’s calloused hands slowly envelop yours, fingertips pressing firmly against your skin. It makes you freeze up instinctively, jumping at the sensation of his body around yours, of his torso pressed against your back, of his breath tickling your ear. 

“Relax, alright?” He says, voice calm and gentle. He brings your hands to the knife, lets his palms rest against them as your fingers slowly wrap around the handle. You can feel him breathing, feel the slow rise and fall of his chest against you, the heat of his mouth just inches away from your cheek. “It’s just me.”

You force a chuckle. “You just surprised me, that’s all.”

You feel Yoongi pause behind you. 

“Seriously, I’m fine. Help me,” you insist. 

Steadily, albeit a little bit tentatively, Yoongi does. His hand wrapped around yours, together the two of you carve out the top of the pumpkin, his chest pressed firmly against your back, body engulfing you. He feels so close, so goddamn close, like there is barely an inch of space in between the two of you, like if he were to bend down right there and if you were shift yourself around you would see nothing but his face right in front of yours, his hazy brown eyes looking back at you, twinkling in the white light of your kitchen. 

It almost makes you want to turn around and look. 

“There we go,” Yoongi says, voice suddenly soft, quiet like there’s something else weighing on his tongue. “What are you thinking of carving?”

“I don’t know,” you murmur, lips upturned. “Maybe you?”

“I don’t make for a very attractive pumpkin picture,” Yoongi says with a shake of his head, even though that’s total bullshit for a number of reasons. 

First of all, a pumpkin portrait is by no means meant to be an attractive portrayal of you, unless you’re Keanu Reeves and you look photogenic no matter what. Second of all, there has never been a time where Yoongi has not looked good. He always does. He did during finals week when his body was made of nothing but iced coffee, he did in freshman year when the two of you would stay awake until the early morning getting vodka spilled all over you in frat houses, and he does now, tired eyes and soft skin, dark hair and pink lips, standing in your apartment like he belongs here, like this is where he was meant to be. 

“I think you would,” you tell him honestly. “You’d look good no matter what.”

Yoongi’s silent at that, but you can tell from the way his cheeks are turning red he’s taken the compliment to heart. It makes you want to shower him in them. It makes you want to freeze this moment in time, suspended in reality, and stay like that forever. 

“Then I’ll do you,” he says with a grin, because what else would he say? Who else would he choose? You are going to put two matching pumpkins on your windowsill, and they will be of you and him. Messy, Picasso-style portraits carved into the orange skin. Two best friends, together even as fucking pumpkins. 

You will carve out a picture of him, and he will carve out a picture of you, and isn’t that what this is really all about?

“Do you think people are gonna get the wrong idea about us?” 

“What do you mean?”

Yoongi turns around to face you where you stand in front of your dorm mirror, this giant plastic one hanging on two hooks that you’ve latched onto the door of your room. He knows that you can see him in the mirror, staring back at you with a black mask over his face and a cape draped over his shoulders, the giant yellow emblem printed out on a piece of paper and taped onto his chest. It’s a last minute costume, for sure, but it gets the job done nicely. 

“I mean,” you say, fixing the cat ears that sit atop your head. “Do you think people are gonna think we’re a couple, or something?”

Yoongi grins nervously and hopes that you don’t notice. “I mean, we’re just going to a frat party. I doubt it’s going to be light enough to see anything at all. Why?”

“Well, I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about us,” you say, adjusting the mask over your eyes. Yoongi, unabashedly, rakes his eyes up and down your figure. Your black turtleneck and skintight leather leggings don’t leave very much to the imagination. You’re definitely much more in costume than he is, to say the least. 

“We’re freshmen, people already have the wrong idea about us,” Yoongi scoffs. 

You turn around just so you can shoot a frown his way. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Why are you so worried about people getting the wrong idea about us?” Yoongi asks you, an eyebrow raised. This does not exactly bode well for him. “We can be Batman and Catwoman together no matter what people think.”

“I don’t know, I guess I just—” You stop in your tracks, letting the words fall off your lips and crash to the floor. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”

“What? You can tell me,” Yoongi says, concern lacing his voice. He rushes over to you, the two of you staring at your reflections in the mirror. Two friends, clad in black, wearing matching costumes. If Yoongi wasn’t sober right now, maybe he would actually do it. 

Maybe. 

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” you shrug it off with a shake of your head. “I’m happy to be doing this with you. Even if your costume totally sucks.”

“Hey!” Yoongi exclaims defensively. “It is not my fault you came up with this idea last minute even though you already owned everything. I had to pay twenty-five cents to print this in color, you know.”

“A Twenty-five cent costume and you still look good.”

You and Yoongi smile at each other in the mirror, lips turned up as you stare at yourselves, wondering if this is all you will ever be, or if there is something more. 

Yoongi sure hopes it’s the latter. 

And he’s determined to find out, once and for all, tonight. 

You’ve just lit the candles that sit inside yours and Yoongi’s pumpkins when you hear the knock at your door. 

You’re sure that Yoongi can hear you from a mile away as you scurry towards the door, white platform heels clapping against the floorboards with every step you take. You’re going to have to practice walking in these a bit more. Maybe you shouldn’t have bought them only a week before Halloween, and maybe you should have at least tried to break them in a little bit. 

“Hello?” You swing open the door. 

“He—whoa,” Yoongi begins before his eyes widen to the size of the moon as he fully takes in the sight in front of him. “What’s with the—uh, the… dress?” He’s scratching at the nape of his neck, eyes sweeping up and down your body. 

You hold out the skirt of your sequined, bedazzled dress as best you can, and grin. “I’m a gogo dancer! What do you think?”

“Wow, I—” Yoongi starts, a little speechless. “I don’t know. Wow. You look… you look nice, Y/N.”

You smile, thankful for the compliment. Yoongi seems weirdly breathless, blinking more often than usual, like he’s trying to convince himself that what he’s seeing is real. Although, you will admit that this dress is much more sparkly than anything else you have in your closet. You reckon a few disco balls were sacrificed to make this costume. 

“Why—uh, why did you call me over? Did you need something from me?”

“Actually, yes,” you say, ushering Yoongi into your apartment. 

As he’s walking inside, Yoongi notices the pumpkins sitting on your windowsill. “Hey, those look cute together.”

“Don’t they?” You say proudly. Nobody else has commented on them, but then again, you live on the fifth floor of your apartment, so you don’t imagine many people can even see them from ground level. But it’s nice to know that they’re there, and that they mean something. Not to a whole lot of people, but to you. And to him. “But that’s not why I asked you to come over.”

“Why, what’s up?”

You freeze when he looks up at you, like you can hardly will the next few words to come out of your mouth. They’re stuck at the dam of your lips, refusing to budge, because there is this tiny, this little part of you that doesn’t even have the courage to ask. To say it. Because you know already. 

“Hoseok’s throwing a party tonight—”

“No.”

“You didn’t even let me finish!”

“But I know what you’re going to say,” Yoongi says like it’s obvious, because it is. “You’re going to ask me to come with you. And I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, Y/N, but I am not going to go. I’m just not.”

“But it’s not a shitty frat party or anything!” You exclaim, desperately trying to dig yourself out of a hole you’re already six-feet in. “It’s at his place, an apartment across campus, with just some friends of his. There won’t be crazy music and sleazy guys and jungle juice. It’s just going to be a house party.”

“I don’t care, I don’t want to go,” Yoongi tells you. “There’s nothing you can do to change my mind.”

“Why? Why won’t you go?” You demand, because the least your best friend of nearly four years could do is give you a real reason. A real reason as to why he hates Halloween, why he never wants to celebrate it with you, why he never wants to go out with you on your favorite night of the year. 

“Because I just don’t want to! Why can’t you just accept that? I don’t want to go!”

Silence. It’s almost as if Yoongi’s shocked he was even speaking so loudly in the first place. 

Next to you, the candles flicker. 

“I don’t get it,” you say, resigned. “I don’t understand. This is our very last year to celebrate Halloween as college students, as best friends, and you can’t even give me a real excuse as to why you won’t come with me.”

Yoongi frowns. “What do you mean, ‘a real excuse’?”

“Exactly that,” you say sharply. “A real excuse. Even when I offer for us to just stay in and eat KitKats and watch a shiity movie you refuse. All because it’s Halloween. I don’t get it. It’s not the crowds, and it’s not the drinks, and it’s not even the other stuff, like the pumpkins and the decorations. Is it me? Am I the reason you don’t want to celebrate Halloween?”

“No, what the fuck, it’s not you!”

“Then what is it, Yoongi?” You plead, not even making an attempt to lower your voice. Can’t he hear the sheer desperation in your voice? The hopelessness? “Why won’t you just tell me why you don’t ever want to celebrate this goddamn holiday with me? Is it my fault?”

“I just don’t!” 

The sound of Yoongi’s shouts echoes throughout your living space, bouncing off of the walls. You look back at him, feeling helpless, but he doesn’t look angry, or enraged. He looks exhausted. Like this conversation has knocked the wind right out of him, stolen the breath from his lungs. Like suddenly the pot has boiled over, only it’s extinguished the flames that kept it burning. 

“I just don’t,” Yoongi repeats, fists clenched tightly by his side. “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

He gives you one last tired look, matching your own defeated expression, before turning around and walking out of your apartment. The door shuts firmly behind him, neither a slam nor a gentle stop, leaving you stranded in the middle of your living space, watching his silhouette disappear. 

You sigh. You don’t think Yoongi will ever tell you why he hates Halloween. And while that may be no fault of your own, you can’t help but feel like it has something to do with you. 

Yoongi could probably count the amount of times he’s gone to a frat party on one hand, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t already know everything there is to know about them. In his eyes, once you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all. 

Still, he supposes that it being Halloween makes this one a little different. Everyone’s in some sort of costume, whether it be good or bad or just plain old lazy, and there are at least a few orange and black decorations lining the walls of the Castle, and they’ve curated a playlist with Halloween songs as well as rap songs Yoongi has heard plenty of times before, so for once, Yoongi will give the fraternity a bit of credit when it comes to their Halloween party-planning. 

Beside him, you take another giant chug of your drink from the orange solo cup in your hand, wincing as the alcohol burns your throat on the way down. 

“Hey, take it easy, okay?” He says, though he doubts you can even hear him over the music, loud in the kind of way that his ears are going to be ringing far into tomorrow morning. 

“I’m fine!” You shout back, even though you are definitely not. The entire room reeks of a mixture of vodka and sickly sweet soda. 

“I just want to make sure you’re not overdoing it!” He tells you as the two of you get shoved together from some massive guy pushing past Yoongi and sending him crashing towards you. He catches a glimpse of the contents of your cup, eyebrows raising when he sees that it’s almost empty. You just got that drink five minutes ago. 

You smile. “I’m not!”

The song changes, and Yoongi swears that he can feel the entire house shake as everyone screams, cheering as they bounce up and down, dancing to the beat. Next to him, you are finishing the last few drops of whatever’s in your cup, finding an empty ledge to place it down on when you’re done, and pulling him in close to you. 

“Let’s dance!” You shriek excitedly. 

And who is Yoongi to resist?

He lets you take your hand in his own and parade him around the tiny little space the two of you share, a couple square feet of freedom in this crowded room, chock full of sweaty bodies just like his. Yoongi may not have had as much to drink as you, but the little bit of alcohol in his system is already shutting down normal mental processes like not-staring-at-you-constantly and pretending-that-he-likes-you-just-as-a-friend, sending him into a tizzy whenever he meets your starstruck eyes.

Even in this dingy, sweaty, unventilated fraternity living room, you are beautiful. You are beautiful here, and you are beautiful at three in the morning after twelve straight hours of studying, and you are beautiful after spilling the dining hall’s chicken noodle soup all over yourself. 

God, you’re the only person Yoongi is looking at in this room. You’re the only person he sees. 

Shaking his head, Yoongi abandons those thoughts as the song comes to an end, a hand wrapped around your wrist as he leans into your ear. “Do you wanna go outside? It’s hot in here!”

“Okay, whatever!” You agree easily, too easygoing after you’ve got a few drinks in you. 

Yoongi grabs a hold of your sweaty hand and tugs you towards the back door, one that he thinks leads to a fenced in backyard. You squeeze through the crowd, getting a couple of drinks spilled on your shoes on the way until you reach the back door and Yoongi fumbles with the knob, shaking it a couple of times before it gets loose. Eventually, the two of you stumble outside into the backyard, where a couple of people are playing beer pong and a couple of others look like they’re making out. 

It’s a frat party. What else did Yoongi expect?

It’s the end of October, and Yoongi doesn’t even have on a jacket, but the chill of the night has little effect on him after being in a room that’s felt like one hundred degrees for an hour. Out here, Yoongi feels like he can finally breathe. 

“It’s kinda cold out here, don’t you think?”

Yoongi doesn’t even have time to respond before you’re wrapping yourself up in him, curling into his body and placing his arm around your figure, letting the heat from his frame radiate onto your skin. 

“Better than being in there,” Yoongi reasons. 

“But aren’t you having fun?” 

He looks down to see you looking up with him with big, wide eyes, like you’re afraid that he isn’t having fun, or afraid that you’re enjoying this night more than he is. It makes him smile. “With you, I am.”

You grin at that, turning back to face forward, head pressing into the crook of his neck. “That’s good to hear,” you tell him. “It seemed like you were kinda nervous.”

“Nervous?” His voice cracks as he says it. Fuck. 

“Yeah, is there something you wanna tell me? It looks like you’ve been dying to say something all night,” you comment mindlessly, clearly much more observant now than you are when you’re sober. Or perhaps, Yoongi’s just more obvious. 

He takes a deep breath, pressing his eyes shut tightly. This is his chance. He knows it. 

“Actually, yes, there is,” he says, and it feels like he has to force the words out of his mouth because they’re refusing to come out on their own, pausing at the edge of his lips. It feels like he has to overcome his own mind in order to tell you, feels like every word is a sucker punch to his lungs. 

You pull away from him, looking up at Yoongi with big, blinking eyes. It’s a clear night, and Yoongi knows because he can see the fucking stars reflected in your pupils, see them twinkling as your glossy eyes gaze back up at him. You look up at Yoongi and God, you are just so beautiful. You are beautiful, and Yoongi wonders, then, if you know. If you know how Yoongi looks at you. If you know how he feels about you. He is so in love. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. You are beautiful and he is so in love, and he’s been dying to tell you that and this might be his only opportunity to do so, because tomorrow will be a new day and Yoongi won’t have the guts tomorrow. This is his only chance. 

You deserve to know. 

“Well?” You ask him. “What is it?”

Yoongi wraps his arm around the small of your back, pulls you into him, and presses his lips to yours. 

Hoseok’s party is fun. It’s definitely one of the better ones you’ve been to in your four years of university so far. There aren’t too many people, and the drinks are actually good instead of just burning your throat, and his music taste is impeccable. 

And yet, you don’t think you’ve ever been so unenthused at a party in your whole life. Thriller by Michael Jackson blares from Hoseok’s television speakers, chatter fills the room, and Hoseok’s girlfriend, Haebin, is constantly checking up on you, but never has one place felt so empty. 

It’s not really very difficult for you to wonder why. 

“Hey, Y/N!”

You whip your head around to find Haein standing by the kitchen table, gesturing towards Hoseok as he’s looking up the recipe for a drink he wants to try. 

“You want one? Hoseok’s trying to make Long Island Iced Tea,” Haebin asks. Next to her, Hoseok is struggling to get the measurements right. At least he’s making an attempt. 

You stare down at your nearly-full cup of strawberry daiquiri. You took one sip when Haebin first handed it to you thirty minutes ago, and haven’t touched it since. “No, I’m alright, thank you.”

Haebin sighs, patting Hoseok on the back encouragingly before she makes her way over to where you’re sitting on their couch, pressed up against the arm of the sofa as you mindlessly swirl the drink around in your cup, eyes zoning into the whirlpool you’re creating. She sits down next to you with a smile, with the kind of look on her face that makes you simultaneously thankful for and dread the conversation you’re about to have.

“Hey, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.” You don’t even believe yourself when you say it. 

“Listen, you don’t have to tell me. I just know that Halloween is your favorite holiday and I was wondering if there was something getting you down tonight,” Haebin says in that comforting, gentle sort of way, like an old friend who knows all your tells. 

“It’s not a big deal, really. I think I’m just out of it tonight,” you say, not drunk enough to divulge more information but also not sober enough to keep your mouth completely shut. 

Haebin smiles at you, lips pursed. “Alright then. If everything’s alright.” She pushes her hands onto her thighs as she gets off of the couch, heading back towards the kitchen to help Hoseok figure out how to mix drinks. But before she leaves you alone, she turns around and says one more thing. “You know, I don’t know why Yoongi’s not here or anything, but I wish that he was. You always look so much happier whenever he’s around.”

And that just sends your mind into meltdown. 

Defeated, alone, and best friend-less, you place your cup down on the end table to your left and get up off of the couch, beginning to gather your belongings, your coat and your shoes and your bag, tugging your arms through the sleeves as you storm towards the door, eyebrows knitted together, lips pursed.

“Hey, where are you going—?”

“I gotta go, Haebin. I just—” You pull on a shoe, tugging at the boot as it slips over your heel, “—I gotta go. Thank Hoseok for me, okay? I have to go.”

You only have time to catch Haebin nod, wordless, before you tug open the door to Hoseok’s apartment and stomp outside.

This is the worst Halloween of your life, bar none. The time when you were four and you tripped over a curb on the sidewalk, spraining your ankle doesn’t even come close. It’s your very last year to celebrate Halloween as a college student, to celebrate it by getting dressed up in a low-effort costume and spending time with your friends, and your best friend isn’t even here. He refused. 

He refused and you still don’t know why, but worst of all he refused and you still wish he was here. You wish you could have spent time with him tonight. More than anything else. You wish you could have spent the night wrapped up together on your couch, or on your bed, watching your favorite television shows and enjoying each other’s company. You wish you could have curled into his body as the television blared, pressed your head against his shoulder and felt the warmth of his skin on yours. God, you wish you could have. 

You wish you could have told him. 

You wish you had the guts to. 

Twenty minutes later finds you outside one of the dozens of frat parties likely occurring on campus right now, the bass from the music so loud that you can feel it in your eardrums even outside of the building. No part of you wants to go inside something like that, but at this point you start to wonder if maybe hopping different frats is actually your best idea. Get a drink, get drunk, and then move onto the next one. Rinse and repeat until you don’t remember a thing about this terrible, awful night. 

As you walk along the sidewalk, you spot another student sitting on the curb underneath a leaf-less tree, a cheap black drugstore masquerade mask covering the top half of his face. He doesn’t seem to be having a particularly enjoyable night either. 

Normally, the last thing you’d want to do is sit down next to a stranger whose face is disguised, because who knows what could happen to you if you do, but there are at least twenty people surrounding the two of you, loitering outside the frat house in the hopes that they can eventually get inside. And honestly, you could use a fucking break. 

As casually as you can possibly manage, you take a seat next to the boy, a few inches apart from him as he looks up at you. You can’t make out too much in the dim light of the frat house, but he’s illuminated just enough for you to see his eyes widen at the sight of you. 

“You don’t mind, do you?” You ask. 

He shakes his head. 

You smile in thanks, shifting around where you’re seated on the cold cement, eyes drifting all over the place, from the houses across the street to the road to the people standing around, anything to avoid turning back towards the boy and initiating an even more awkward conversation. Sitting down, the world stops spinning, just a little bit. You didn’t have too much to drink at Hoseok’s, but it was enough to loosen your mind. 

“Can I say something?” You say loudly, turning towards the boy. 

It was enough to loosen your lips too, apparently. 

The boy stares back at you, silent. 

“I’m sorry, I just need to get this off my chest.” You close your eyes, breathing in and breathing out, feeling your chest rise and fall. “I am not having a great night. And I wish I was out here with another friend of mine, instead. He’s my best friend, actually. He just… didn’t want to come out tonight with me. But I wish he was here, because I love spending time with him, and I miss him.”

The words spill off of your tongue like lava from a volcano, bursting from your lips completely unfiltered. It surprises you, a little, how much you actually have to say. How much has been weighing on your chest.

You don’t expect him to respond. Truthfully, you can’t even believe you’re unloading all of your baggage onto him in the first place. Since when are you the type of person to tell other people about the tragedies of your life?

But then, he says, “You do?”

And it makes you wonder what else you’ve been keeping hidden. 

“Yeah, I guess I do,” you realize. “I love spending time with him. He makes every day brighter, turns everything he touches into laughter. And I wanted to spend time with him tonight because I actually thought he would want to. You know, we carved pumpkins together a few days ago. Of each other’s faces.” You force out a laugh. “We carved each other’s faces into pumpkins and he still isn’t here tonight. I wanted him to be here because he’s my best friend, and because he makes me so happy, and even other people are noticing what effect he has on me. Noticing how fucking happy he makes me. Because he does. I feel like I’m a better person with him. I want to spend the rest of my life with him and he’s not here and instead of going to look for him I’m sitting here telling you the sob story that is my life and I just wish—”

“Does that mean you love him?” The boy asks softly. 

“What?”

“Does that mean you love him?”

You turn to look at the boy, eyebrows raised, almost ready to deny such a thing, but when you open your mouth, nothing comes out. 

How could you say you don’t love Yoongi? Of course you do. He is your best friend. You never want to live a day when he’s not by your side. You want to spend the rest of your life with him. He makes you smile and laugh like it’s nobody’s business, brightens your day without even trying. Just seeing him is enough to lift your spirits. Seeing his face on the other side of your apartment door, all ripped jeans and Converse sneakers, hands wrapped in the sleeves of his hoodie, dark brown eyes blinking back at you, pink lips parted in a grin. That image you have of him in your head—it’s one you don’t ever want to forget. He is standing in your apartment, lips upturned, eyes crushed into crescents, smiling at you. He is mid-laugh, grinning from ear to ear at something you said. He is right there. 

“Well, yeah,” you say, because what else are you supposed to do? “I guess I do.”

Suddenly, your chest feels a whole lot lighter. 

The boy next to you smiles, the dim light barely illuminating his features, but when you look at him there is something so strangely familiar about him, about the way he blinks at you, about the peak of his Cupid’s bow, about how his lips are stretched into a grin. It couldn’t be him… could it?

But before you have time to ask, he is leaning towards you and pressing his lips atop yours, crashing your mouths together in a desperate, messy kiss. His palm presses against your cheek and you can’t help but sink into it, sink into the way his other hand curls around to rest on the small of your back, let yourself be engulfed by him. 

You’ve never kissed Yoongi before, but you know that this is what it must be like. 

You know, from the way your blood starts to sizzle, sparks rushing through your veins. From the way your heart is pumping, loud and clear in your ears, like it’s been jolted to life. Like a shock is running through your body. Like a warmth is filling you up, from the inside out. 

When you part, as Yoongi takes off his mask, he can’t keep the smile off of his face. “I knew it. I knew you loved me.”

“What are you doing out here?” You ask, positively shocked. “I thought you hated Halloween.”

“I do,” Yoongi confirms. “Or, well, I did, I guess.”

“Then what changed?”

“You. Us. We changed,” Yoongi says, motioning between your bodies. “I hated Halloween because it had bad memories for me. Nothing crazy, but, yeah. You don’t remember?”

“What?” Your mouth drops open. “What should I remember?”

“We kissed that night.” Yoongi begins, eyes shifting down towards the ground. Clearly recalling this is awkward for him. “Halloween, freshman year. Outside of the Castle.”

You don’t remember this at all. 

“Well, I kissed you and you kissed me, and I thought that we had established then and there that we liked each other. You know, like, really liked each other. But you were so drunk that night. I don’t know what you had, but you could hardly walk by the time I got you back to your dorm. Your roommate was furious with me.” He shakes his head at the memory, replaying in his mind like a movie. “And I thought, okay, we’ll just talk about this tomorrow. But you must have had a wicked headache or something, because I saw you the next day and you said—”

“God, whatever happened last night, I don’t want to know.”

It’s the middle of the day, the sun high in the crisp November sky, but you have been cradling your forehead ever since Yoongi last dropped you off, back at your dorm, when you were slowly starting to crash. 

“What?” His voice is hollow, empty. 

“Last night fucked me up real good,” you say with a huff, shaking your head. “I’m glad I don’t remember what happened last night.”

As Yoongi traipses back to square one, his heart shakes in its cage. 

“I guess you just didn’t remember,” Yoongi tries to explain, much to your horror as you realize that you and Yoongi have been crushing on each other hopelessly for three years extra without you even realizing it. “So, uh, yeah. That’s why I didn’t like Halloween.”

“You kissed me that night?”

“What?”

“You kissed me that night? Outside of the Castle?” 

A tingling on your lips. A faint feeling of warmth. You remember bits of that night. It was cold, and you were freezing in your costume. And you and Yoongi had gone outside to escape the crowd, and he said something, and then you said something, and then he—!

“Yeah.” Yoongi nods. “I did.”

“And I didn’t remember?”

“I mean, you were really drunk.”

Your shoulders sink, the thought of Yoongi, helplessly pining after you for three more years because he thought you didn’t like him like that, because he thought that the love you shared was one-sided, still sticking by your side as your best friend. At the thought of him deciding it was better to be best friends and keep that love hidden than tell you and risk it all over again. At the thought of him accepting what he thought was his fate. 

“I’m sorry,” you say. What else is there to tell him? If you had remembered, if you just didn’t say those words, if you had just told him how you felt, this would have all been so much easier. 

“It’s okay now,” Yoongi says, expression growing fond as he pulls you in for a hug, sad to see you so gloomy. “You love me and I love you. What more could I want?”

A realization dawns on you. 

Pulling apart from him ever so slightly, you quirk an eyebrow. “You know, you could have just kissed me again the next day, and then we wouldn’t have had to deal with all of this. Plus, you would have still liked Halloween.”

Yoongi scoffs, pressing a kiss to your icy cheek. “So what? I like it now, how about that? I fucking love Halloween now. It turned my best friend into my girlfriend. She’s the love of my life. We can celebrate every Halloween together from now on until the end of time.”

You grin, pressing a kiss back on his little button nose, pink from the cold. Finally. “That’s the spirit.”

↳ don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

[rachelbethhines]

Top Ten Classic Books I Wouldn’t Mind Re-reading With Tumblr

There’s lots of discussion about which classic lit story Tumblr should serialize next , in the vain of Dracula Daily, so here are my humble recommendations  that I haven’t seen mentioned much.

1. Treasure Island

I mean, come on. It’s perfect. Adventure on the high seas, pirates, deserted islands, and buried treasure, and it’s a pop culture classic. Everyone knows about it, but few have read it in it’s entirety.  

2. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

One of my favorite novels... and it’s already written in a serialized format. We’d be reading it the way Vigor Hugo intended it. Plus, like Dracula, HoND has been adapted to death but none have ever really captured the full plot of the book... Including stage adaptations penned by Victor Hugo himself. 

3. A Little Princess

Also one of my favorite books. It’s shorter than most classics and doesn’t get a look in as much because the title makes people think it’s a book for little girls only, and nooo, no, it not. It’s a commentary on class divide. Tumblr would go gaga over Sara Crewe because she’s a nerdy introverted book worm just like us!  

4. The Phantom of the Opera

The only gothic horror story I’m really interested in re-reading again. Everyone mentions Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but no, my vote goes to this little novel full of weirdos.

5. The Hobbit

Just The Hobbit and only The Hobbit. Not the whole of Tolkien’s work, please. The Hobbit is a fine standalone little story and I’d happily re-read it again. It would also be a good introduction for those who only know of Tolkien’s work through the films.

6. The War of the Worlds

Any HG Wells story would do, honestly, but I think this one is deep enough in its science fiction premise that it’s political commentary is more digestible for those of us who have lived through a couple of wars, three major global recessions, and a recent pandemic. It’s cathartic is what I’m getting at.

7. Peter Pan

I love journey and return stories and Peter Pan is one of the three classics in the holy trinity of journey and return stories. The other two being Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland... but Peter Pan get my vote because it’s a standalone tale. No fifty million squeals here folks. (Also I want to see Tumblr lose it’s mind when it’s revealed that Peter is actually a murderous sociopath.)

8. Little Women

I’m not a huge fan of typical romance novels. Particularly, ‘classic’ romance novels in the Jane Austen vain. However, I can stomach Little Women better than most other books in this genre because the romance is secondary to the coming of age aspect. So for the ‘romance’ category this gets my vote.

9. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 

I have read surprisingly few Mark Twain stuff and I would like to read more. However I do remember reading those abridged classics that you found in grade school libraries, and remembering that I really liked this story. I would like to read it again in it’s original format

10. The Odyssey

I just think this would be fucking hilarious. Imagine Tumblr getting a hold of this. Imagine the never ending memes! It might even be more fun than the Moby Dick thing folks got planned.

[harukamitsuki]

Voltron Band/YouTuber AU

Allura is the daughter of Alfor, who owns the company ‘Altea’. They handle huge bands and music groups. She is going to succeed Alfor when he eventually retires, however, Allura does not desire to take over the company and, instead, wants to manage a band. Alfor does not believe she will be able to live comfortably as a manager of a band. In order to prove she can, she gathers five different YouTubers and forms a band with them. She has two years to make them as popular and as successful as she can, with at least 2 million subscribers on YouTube. Obviously, two years isn’t enough time, so she picks YouTubers who already have a following, though they’re all under 500k, as she was restricted by Alfor. In the end, she picks Shiro, Keith, Hunk, Lance and Pidge to establish a band, Voltron.

And, of course, because they're YouTubers already, they're not gonna stop at just music. Cue a shit ton of shenanigans, Kallura, Lancelot, and shit ton of Adashi. (BTW, I'm listing things by age order, not favourites. If I were, I would have started with Keith and Allura.)

Shiro:

His YT channel is mostly playing horror games. It’s hilarious because new viewers look at him and think he’s going to handle everything really well, but this guy is such a baby. He’s like twenty-three, but he screams and jumps five feet into the air at a can falling from the shelf in a video game. Sometimes he’ll get a notification in the middle of a tense moment and will scream like no other. 463k subs. Sometimes streams on twitch, but usually uses YouTube. After a terrifying gameplay, like res, he’ll play a softer game like Minecraft or Ratchet & Clank.

Do not let him near a sad game - he will cry, and you will cry seeing it. He once played The Last of Us on recommendation and cried for the rest of the video when Sarah died. He had to stop the video early because of this, and nobody has recommended a sad game since.

Before the video ended, Keith calls out Shiro’s name, and Voltron fans took this and used it as further ‘evidence’ that there was something going on between them. Again, this was shot down without hesitation.

Lead guitarist/vocals. His voice is gruff, and he can reach the low and high notes, which makes his voice so fucking suitable for the rock genre. His vocals are the best in the band, with Lance coming in second, and then Keith. As stated previously, he’s quite emotional, and he uses this to his advantage, connecting to the songs on an emotional level. Sometimes, he’s even the one writing them. When he and Keith work together, expect many, many tears, or much empathetic anger.

He’s fluent in Japanese and English, and only half-so in Korean. He only started learning Korean a year before the story starts, so he’s only confident in writing and reading, not conversations. Keith is helping. Whenever he’s super scared, he screams in Japanese.

He was once accused of being a weeb and just went, “I’m Japanese, aho”.

He got into a car accident on the way to the concert and ended up with a fractured collarbone. He gets physio, but in his absence, he has Keith led the team, but he does have Lance on lead vocals.

Weak for Disney and love songs. He posted a cover of ‘you’re welcome’ on his channel, and it’s one of his most famous pre-Voltron videos. It’s also one of the reason’s Allura scouted him.

Engaged to a still-alive Adam because I am NOT A COWARD, VOLTRON--!! He and Adam are very happy together. Because they're both gorgeous and of age, people have taken to thirsting over both of them. Adam laughs it off, but Shiro gets a bit jealous, but not possessive. Fuck that toxic shit.

This is only one of the reasons he was disgusted by the idea of ‘Sheith’. Other reasons are that Keith is literally nineteen, and he’s twenty-three; Keith is his little brother - adopted, but still; Keith is demi-aroace. Need I go on?

Listen to him sing.

Keith:

Keith’s YouTube channel consists of conspiracy videos, analyses and theories. Occasionally, when he’s bored and CBA to go through the whole recording-editing process, he just live streams whatever’s on his mind. Because there’s no script, his streams tend to be about three hours, but most people end up watching the entire thing and get their mind blown. 337k subs. Strictly YouTube - no twitch. He has a naturally angry face, so most think he’s a hothead, but he’s such a softie.

He did a stream about why Hippos are the superior animal while hugging a hippo plushie. He was a bit sick and wasn’t thinking clearly, but he changed the mind of so many people because he was so fucking cute--

BuzzFeed and the like use him a source because he’s that fucking reliable and fast

Shiro’s adopted younger brother, but nobody really knows this. When they start gaining popularity, someone digs an old video of Shiro walking in frame in the middle of Keith’s video in just briefs and a tank top and people began speculating that Shiro was dating a fucking nineteen-year-old and they both shot that down because ew. (BTW, you can ship Sheith if you want, but, in this AU, they're adopted brothers, so it's disgusting here.)

Keith has PTSD from his foster homes before the Shiroganes take him in. When he’s sick and feverish and someone speaks loudly or looks somewhat mad, or if he does something wrong, even by accident, he’ll slip and start calling people sir or ma’am. He’ll hide in closets if he thinks he’s in danger, but he hates being forced or pushed into a closet. He takes the topic of abuse and mental health very seriously.

Autistic baby.

Just because he’s demi-aroace, it doesn’t mean this guy isn’t smooth as FUCK. He teaches Lance how to flirt properly, after he’s got past finger guns, a grin, and an overplayed pick-up line. When he gained feelings for Allura, you bet your arse, he flirted his way into her heart. (Little did he know, Allura already had underlying feelings for him, the flirting just helped reveal them--).

He’s the bass/rhythm guitarist, but he can play literally any instrument he deems interesting enough. He’s also very good at singing, though his tone suits solemn songs mostly, and he isn’t as good as Shiro or Lance in their genre of songs. He can also dance very well. Legit, this man can play: bass (obvs), guitar (acc & elec), piano, harmonica, the stylophone, a fucking kazoo, and even the violin. Most people think he doesn’t have the patience for any of these instruments, but they’re so wrong. He once mentioned this in a stream, and Allura snatched him up without hesitation. A man of actions, not words, but when those words are written, expect a lot of tears.

Keith actually has a lot of patience - he’s just passionate. He doesn’t have anger issues, stop assuming he has, you DICKHEADS--

Keith is legit a genius. This guy knows five and a half different languages. He’s fluent in English, Korean, Japanese, French, Latin (bc all the ancient texts are in Latin) and is half-fluent in Spanish. He can write in all of them, but is unsure about speaking in Spanish. (Lance helps him because toxic friendship = NO).

This is his voice. Listeeen. (Also, I'm crying. One of the comments for the first link says, 'im crying oml, Glenn singing this to Maggie. and keith singing this to mothman').

Hunk:

He has a cooking/baking channel, of course. He’s so fucking sweet, omg. 498k subs bc he deserves it. Gets Lance to taste most of his dishes, but Pidge gets the desserts/sweets. This man has legit been complimented by Ramsey - he’s that good. When he isn’t cooking/baking, he’s reacting as others cook, and his reactions are so fucking funny. Basically, he’s Uncle Roger.

Jamie Oliver brings him unsettling amounts of rage and fury. Gordon is his favourite chef, but he yells a lot and Hunk’s anxiety says NO.

He doesn’t livestream, but he joins Lance’s streams and plays all sorts of games w/ him. He was scouted bc, Lance bragged about Hunk’s drumming skills for Hunk in a stream, while also bragging about his own musical skills. Hunk is flustered, but he doesn’t exactly deny it.

Hunk, as stated previously, can play the drums, and is the drummer. He writes a lot of the softer songs, and those are the songs that people listen to feel better rather than vent. He can play the saxophone and the tuba, but not expertly. Yet. You bet your ass Allura is pushing all sorts of lessons on him when she learns this, and, before you know it, Hunk is being offered freelance orchestra positions.

Hunk is fluent in Samoan, English and is half-fluent in Spanish bc of Lance. He knows certain words in all sorts of languages, but that’s just because of his multicultural cooking. He also knows Go, Python and JavaScript.

Hunk has been offered the position of head chef, but he always turns it down because he doesn’t want to turn his passion into a job. It’s easier to manage with YouTube. Plus, he doesn’t like being confined to a set menu or genre. And he can’t eat what he’s cooked after as a chef in the industry. Plus, he can’t handle the pressure.

Has 100% arm wrestled the entire cafeteria in school for an entire tiramisu and won.

Anxiety mainly, but he’s so sweet, and he knows how to handle people - he just thinks too much and is very queasy. Almost threw up in his first video because of his anxiety. He gets over it, eventually, through exposure and Lance.

Lance thinks their friendship is a bit unfair because he relies on Hunk a lot, but Hunk disagrees. He needs Lance as much as Lance needs him, or even more. If it weren’t for Lance, Hunk would still be scratching his arms until it bled because of anxiety. If it weren’t for him, Hunk would still be unable to look at even a phone camera without feeling like he needed to throw up. Maybe Lance doesn’t know this, but it’s fine, because it happened anyway.

Lance:

He posts a lot of beauty videos, and sometimes gives commentary about crime, like Bailey Sarian, or just about whatever’s on his mind. Fans love him for more than just how pretty/handsome he is. Lance talks a lot about sensitive topics and handles it really well. He’s firmly against stuff like homophobia, transphobia, racism and so on. He doesn’t get overly emotional unless it really strikes home, like self-worth, anxiety and what it was like growing up poor. 435k subs.

Live streams on twitch mostly, but sometimes does YouTube. Twitch streams are gaming ones, which get way more views than his YT streams. YouTube streams are usually just him talking to chat. He hums and sings a lot in these, which is how Allura knew to scout for him.

ADHD, anxiety and lack of self-worth. He gets better, don’t worry.

Lance loves the water and took free diving lessons. He can go five minutes forty seconds without air at the bottom of a pool. He likes rain, but he hates drizzles as they keep making him flinch, and it’s uncomfortable.

A lot of people ship him with Keith, but this died down after Lance expressed discomfort with being shipped. He had to explain that he is bisexual, and it’s not because Keith is a guy, it’s because everyone from the band is like family to him, and it goes against his very being to be shipped with them.

Lance is the rhythm guitarist and can sing very, very well. He’s the second best in the group. He can play the guitar, acc & elec. He acts like he can dance, but he is so bad, somebody, stop him--!! He gets better, don't worry. He also knows how to play a launchpad, because of course he does, and a kazoo.

He’s fluent in English and Spanish. He’s the one to sing Spanish songs, like Despacito. He’s excited when he hears that Keith is learning Spanish and gets Hunk to learn Spanish too. When he’s really excited, he ends up speaking Spanish and confuses most people, but it’s adorable anyway.

Acts like he’s the smoothest guy ever, but he really isn’t. He’s so awkward and has no idea what he’s supposed to do. He has to be taught by Keith, of all people. It takes him a while, but after Keith seamlessly flirts with Galra employees, Lance ends up asking him right after they get the information they need and meet Lotor and the gang. He’s a bit oblivious.

Met Hunk in first year of middle school, and they’ve been besties since. He usually goes to Hunk if he’s feeling a bit sad or emotional. Hunk knows how to handle his anxiety attacks and knows when to tell Lance if he’s done something wrong or crossed a boundary. Because of his ADHD, for a long while, Lance thought the worst of people and suffered from extreme paranoia. This settled down when he started going to therapy and taking medication. He doesn’t need medication any more, but he takes it when he has a bad day.

His voice is so goood, but he's an asshole...!!

Pidge:

Vlogging central. Their channel is full of random, spur of the moment recordings of their life with Matt, Sam and Colleen. They prank Matt a lot, and Matt tends to prank them while they’re recording. They’ve accidentally walked in on Matt getting worked up over an Otome and nobody lets it go. Sometimes, Pidge catches Keith and Matt cuddling, or Shiro and Matt freaking out over a horror film. 327k subs.

Streams a lot of gaming, and they use IG for instalive for vlogging-type streams. They only use twitch if Lance and/or Hunk invite them to play. They’re a master at video gaming and always beat them in smash and the like.

A lot of people though they were a guy before, in an instalive, they were like, “Nah, I’m nonbinary, and I go by they/them pronouns” and Matt jumped in with, “and you’re biologically female, so they’re wrong in all possible ways lol”. So many people were shooketh.

Pidge is the pianist. They can play the keyboard, mainly, but can also play the flute. Their vocals are mediocre, so they’re not really relied on for singing, like Hunk. They reveal this when Matt gets them to play for the video, and they play Lavender Town from Pokemon.

They’re very much multilingual, like Keith. They’re fully fluent in English, Italian, Spanish, French and Russian. They’ve recently started learning Polish and can only write thus far. If you include computer languages, then they’re also fluent in Scala, Python, C, Go and JavaScript. They want to learn Japanese and get Shiro and Keith to teach them.

Pidge has collaborated a couple of times to create websites for popular YouTubers, but despite being credited, they don’t get much recognition or attention. They create the website for Voltron when they start to gain popularity. At some point, a game company reaches out to them and requests aid to program their game, and Pidge is ecstatic and works freelance for them on the side.

They’re aroace and bond with Keith over being ace. When they told this to Lance and Hunk the first time, they had to create a whole ass PowerPoint about what it meant. This PowerPoint was what led Lance to question his own sexuality. In the end, they were both very supportive.

Pidge knows everyone pre-Voltron, apart from the Alteans. Matt was besties with Shiro and Keith, so they met them that way, and they met Lance and Hunk at comic con. They usually talk with Keith in French for the lols and to piss everyone off.

They were the most hesitant about Voltron, but caved in the end after feeling the rush after their first performance, even though it was private and a spur-of-the-moment thing, courtesy of Shiro. (Lemonade Mouth who?? lol).

Allura:

Allura is the daughter of Alfor, who owns the company ‘Altea’. They handle huge bands and music groups. She is going to succeed Alfor when he eventually retires, however, Allura does not desire to take over the company and, instead, wants to manage a band. Alfor does not believe she will be able to live comfortably as a manager of a band. In order to prove she can, she gathers five different YouTubers and forms a band with them. She has two years to make them as popular and as successful as she can, with at least 2 million subscribers on YouTube. Obviously, two years isn’t enough time, so she picks YouTubers who already have a following, though they’re all under 500k, as she was restricted by Alfor. In the end, she picks Shiro, Keith, Lance, Pidge and Hunk to establish a band, Voltron.

Because of her prestigious background, Allura was taught aikido just in case anyone tries to harm or kidnap her. While aikido is a self-defence form of martial arts, she is plenty capable of starting fights if anyone wrongs her or her family/friends.

She grew up with Romelle, who she met at a private middle school. Allura only found out about the others because of Romelle, who prefers niche and smaller YouTubers whose following aren’t big enough to be overwhelmingly toxic. They banter so much that it actually shocks the others when they see their interactions because of how rude they are to each other. Basically, it’s British banter, where they take jabs at literally everything and that’s how you know they’re family. Romelle is actually the one to get her to realise that she loves Keith.

When she joins, Allura gets on them vocals, able to sing both high and low, though not baritone. Her voice is literally the most soothing thing ever. She debuts with 'Would you be so kind?' which fans adored. Her best moment, however, is when she sung Sweater Weather w/ Keith. This is the song that made her begin to realise that she has some sort of feelings towards Keith. It was also the song that cemented Keith’s feelings towards her and made all the haters, who’d been opposed to Allura joining, shut the fuck up.

The only real vendetta Allura has against Galra Entertainment is due to a rivalry. In the past, Altea and Galra had been one entertainment company, but Zarkon got too big for his own good and split the company in half, with Alfor as Altea’s head and Zarkon as Galra’s head. The other three in their band/company ended up going into different careers. Trigel became an audio engineer. Blayzt became a casting manager. Gyrgan became a cinematographer. Allura is still close to them, but only because they care about them and show that they do. Zarkon does not, which is why she does not like him.

Voltron:

Voltron’s definition: A group of things that are more powerful when combined. Fandom is known as the Voltron Coalition, VoCoal’s, (Vocals). They grow hella fast as all the members are diverse and attractive, sound good, and already have a following. They reach the goal of two million subs in a single year.

They start by uploading covers of classics and then release an original album.

Their instruments are all colour-coded. When Shiro has to take a break on tour, Allura steps in. She takes over Keith’s bass guitar and Keith takes over lead guitarist and vocals, but Lance is the one taking on the heavy and hard vocals. Allura can also sing very well and ends up joining Voltron instead of replacing. She doesn’t play a set instrument, but she has the missing feminine vocals.

Allura is the manager, but Coran takes over for her when she expresses a desire to perform and because of popular demand after she sings Sweater Weather w/ Keith, (the KHS ver).

Their YT channel, Voltron, is solely for music, trailers and announcements/updates.

They have a second channel, Paladins, where they upload basically anything, as long as it isn’t a sole thing or something for their channel alone. Pidge is in charge of vlogs, Shiro and Lance are in charge of gaming, Keith is in charge of explaining songs/MVs, and Hunk is in charge of feel-good videos and comps.

Hunk often hosts huge cook offs/bake offs, and he’s the referee. Keith’s the only one who can actually cook, (because he had to learn or else he’d never get to eat), so whoever’s on his team often ends up both learning and winning. Lance can only sort of cook from being with Hunk for so long. Adam cooks for Shiro, who's been banned from the kitchen after burning a boiled egg, and Pidge’s parents cook for them. Baking is usually fifty-fifty, but you have a better chance with Lance on your team.

Keith spends literal hours just making the script when he has to explain songs even if it’s his own songs, but the videos are always huge hits or emotional, so he deems it as worth it. Their editor takes a while to send videos back because they either get super riled up or they burst into tears. At one point, Keith details some things he went through in one of his foster homes as a source of his writing material, and they didn’t get the video back for a week. Curtis, their editor, made sure to give Keith a vanilla milkshake and some strawberry shortcake. After that, Curtis gets emotional every time he sees Keith. He’s not the only one.

Shiro and Lance hold meetings, no joke, to decide what game they should play. Some multiplayer games Lance suggests have very emotional scenes, and Shiro can’t handle those. But, some multiplayer games Shiro proposes are generic and played to the point of death. There are also times when they get someone to play a single-player game and Lance has to warn Shiro ahead of time when there’s a sad/emotional scene. He forgets once, and Keith freaks out and almost breaks the camera to calm Shiro down.

Pidge doesn’t warn anyone when they’re recording, unless it’s in the studio. They just barge in with a camera and everyone is just like, ‘oh, so this is happening now?’. Because of the new proximity, Pidge can capture more pure crack. This is not an exaggeration. They record Keith dropping a pen and jumping five feet in the air like a cat, Shiro belting Let it Go when he thought he was alone, Hunk and Lance re-enacting Obi-Wan vs Anakin on the kitchen counter with bread sticks, Allura’s clothes falling on her when she opened her wardrobe, and Coran hanging upside down from the ceiling. In return, Hunk caught Pidge asking where their glasses are while wearing them and also asking where their phone is while on it, so many times that there are now comps.

Everyone was worried after Kallura became official and public, but the reception was amazing, and they genuinely love each other. (Lance gets jealous a bit, but not because he has a crush on either of them. He’s just lonely and-- Oh, look, there’s Lotor).

After Lancelot becomes a thing, the fandoms unite and double their followings. Also, Generals appear more often in Paladins videos. The BOM are mad about Galra and Altea being connected in such a way, but Keith sort of scowls at them, and they just shut up.

Quick Notes:

Shiro is 23, Keith is 19, Hunk + Lance are 18, Pidge is 17, Allura is 19, Coran is 40.

The Galra are a rival entertainment industry with Zarkon as the CEO, Haggar as the EA, and their most famous group being the Generals, (Lotor, Acxa, Zethrid, Ezor, Narti).

The BOM are a group of pre-Galra recruits who left due to how toxic the workplace was and started an orchestra. (At some point they invite Keith to join them as his mother was part of their group before she died. He temporarily joins them as a violinist when Thace is shanked and robbed in an alley.)

Allura offers to pay for a year of any lesson they need or want to bribe them, other than exposure, and they all take it.

Keith and Shiro can ride motorbikes, and Lance really want to learn.

Pidge and Hunk share a love of computer science. Hunk likes building computers. Pidge prefers coding. But, they both love programming and even dabble in hacking.

[arcade-conspiracy]

Julian Browning (The Usher) x Reader General Dating Headcanons

Warnings: None :3

A/N: I’m having BRAINROT, also these are kinda old so they might suck but oh well

What a fucking romantic. Huge fan of classic shows of affection and chivalry. You can pry it from his cold, quite literally, dead hands.

Expect lots of hand/knuckle kisses, doors opened for you, and single roses. You can expect many detailed love letters as well. He tends to ramble in them a lot, his mind drifting constantly while trying to write them for you.

He is also not very big on pda. He’ll keep you close by and hold your hands while you’re in public, but anything further is,, not quite his speed. Maybe he’ll go crazy and let you sit in his lap if he’s in a place he feels comfortable or around those he knows well, but that’s a large maybe.

To him affection is something intimate and special. He’s not one to give it to just anyone. It could also maybe be the selfish need to not let anyone but him see you blush from his kisses and so on, but I didn’t tell you that.

If you wear makeup, he will in fact be watching you do it every single day. Not in a creepy way at all, though, it’s very sweet. He’s a bit,, fascinated with makeup, so why wouldn’t he? He just finds it interesting how much someone’s look can change entirely with just a few powders and creams. He believes it’s quite a talent.

He also just likes looking at you, so it doesn’t hurt that it’s you he’s getting to watch do the makeup. It’s a little more explainable than the normal longing stares he may give, or the many times he’s caught himself watching you sleep next to him,,

Not one to be very big on nicknames or pet names, when it comes to giving them. When he does use them, though, it’s always something like “my dearest” or “my love.” It’s not too daring or provocative, but it definitely gets the point across. Again, very fond of classic love, it’s in his blood.

Will take any opportunity to slow dance with you, especially when it’s just the two of you alone. He’s not particularly,, skilled at it per say, but it’s intimate and special to him, so he’s gonna keep doing it.

Sometimes you’ll be sitting in the lobby of the Universal Palace, waiting for him to be finished cleaning or whatever he may be doing to end the night and the ambient music you normally don’t notice sounds super loud with no one in the room. He will take that opportunity to steal a dance.

If you have any sort of height difference, which chances are you will bc he’s tall as hell, he can and will get an ego boost from it.

His height is one of the few things he’s 100% confident about, and if he has to lean down to kiss you, even just by a little, boy is that confidence through the roof.

Might throw out a teasing comment or two about it from time to time, because he’s obligated to make you feel even more small than you already are to him.

Yes he does the cooking, yes he does the cleaning, but only cause he enjoys doing so for you. He is the king of acts of service, only the lord knows why. It’s how he shows his love to his theater, by cleaning and keeping things nice, it’s how he’s gonna show love to you.

Especially if you’re disabled or mentally ill or going through a hard time. He feels more inclined to make sure that the things you need done get done. Though, he’d never admit that it makes him feel good to do these things for you. If anything, he might express feign annoyance about it, just because that’s how he is. He does thoroughly enjoy it, though, despite how he may make it seem.

It’s a given, but expect many a movie night with this man. Whether that be cuddled up on a couch somewhere, or him ironically queuing up Phantom of the Opera a the Universal Palace, he finds great joy in watching films with those he loves.

Horror movies are obviously his favorite, but he’s not opposed to branching out into other genres, especially if it’s your favorite movie. He’s forced you to watch Phantom on multiple occasions, he can bare to watch what you like every once in a while.

He’s overall a very desperate and deep lover. All of his actions are thought out and perfectly planned, nothing he does for you without reason. You are his, and he is yours, and that’s how it should be.

[maxwell-grant]

Speaking of Tod Slaughter... any thoughts on Grand Guignol theater..?

Looking back on it, the first time I encountered the term Grand-Guignol was also the first time I looked at Fantomas, when I picked up the book above titled The Theater of Grand Guignol, which is all too fitting as Fantomas is Grand-Guignol to it's core. It's also a term that I've seen applied a couple of times to The Spider as well as some darker fan reinterpretations of Batman. Like film noir and sword-and-sorcery, it's a term for a type of storytelling that's associated with dime novels and pulps, influenced and was influenced by them in return, but isn't really the same thing and is, in fact, a separate "genre" (not quite the right term).

Indeed, if the common cultural association of pulp is that of something trashy and violent and darker than it's contemporary culture, one can see Grand-Guignol as perhaps the darkest of it's adjecent family, the Dario Argento to pulp's John Carpenter, the cracked mirror to all that exists.

Short and full-length plays were based on the hot topics unseen onstage at this extent before, from graphic scenes of murders, tortures, sexual violence to psychological thrills like resurrections of the dead, incest, suicide, characters being hypnotized, trapped or guilty of their loved one’s deaths. In most cases, it was a combination of several of those themes in one piece, which of course, multiplied shows’ popularity - AngryFishTheatre's article

‘At one performance, six people passed out when an actress, whose eyeball was just gouged out, re-entered the stage, revealing a gooey, blood-encrusted hole in her skull. Backstage, the actors themselves calculated their success according to the evening’s faintings. During one play that ended with a realistic blood transfusion, a record was set: fifteen playgoers had lost consciousness. Between sketches, the cobble-stoned alley outside the theatre was frequented by hyperventilating couples and vomiting individuals.’

Despite of its scandalous nature, for France Grand Guignol was more than a theatre: it was a tradition, an institution, and an attraction like the Eiffel Tower or the Folies Bergères, and Maxim’s... It was then highly fashionable. Celebrities of the day, South American millionaires and errant royalty went there assiduously to be scared out of their wits.

Going to the Grand-Guignol was less a social act than a private one and certain audience members preferred not to be seen. Some witnesses reported that the iron-grilled boxes in the back of the theater encouraged a certain ‘extremism.’

The cleaning staff would often find the seats stained - — Mel Gordon, The Grand Guignol: theatre of fear and terror.

It lasted almost the exact same time period as the American pulp era (from the late 1880s to 1950s), and even in it's origin, as the theater itself was built out of the ruins of a church, and it would attain fame and legacy as the shadow opposite to Moulin Rouge's glamour and spectacle. It's original intent on being focused on naturalistic theater led to breakthroughs of horror that made it the whole selling point, and much like the pulp lords of terror I talk about, their staged and spectacled terrors were still no match for the horrors of reality that followed.

“We could never equal Buchenwald,” the Grand Guignol’s final director, Charles Nonon, told TIME magazine that year. “Before the war, everyone felt that what was happening onstage was impossible. Now we know that these things, and worse, are possible in reality.”

And of course it goes without saying that the Grand-Guignol's influence on storytellers long transcended it's original lifespan. Gore for gore's sake is hardly something I enjoy, but I've definitely enjoyed many, many films that reached to extremes of horror and violence and gore for horror and comedy alike. I would not claim the Grand-Guignol started this because I could very well be missing out on something, but they are undeniably a huge part of the history of horror as we know it, along with the German Expressionist works of the 1910s that were as well both inspired by, as well as influential, on the Grand-Guignol.

Time and time again we see the pattern emerge, of creators or outlets or mediums that emerge as cheaper and less critically-reputable alternatives to the mainstream attain extraordinary and influential success both in their circles as well as those who would never admit to looking at them for inspiration otherwise. In fact, you could very well argue that it’s alive not just through films and comics and so forth, but in newfound forms of media created by people with all the freedom to put together whatever their imaginations and limited resources and lack of restraints can create.

Like Youtube Poop.

Now maybe I'm biased here because I grew up with YTP, but really, the main intent behind every YTP is to twist the media it's using to provoke a new reaction from you, every YTP is varying levels of a rollercoaster of jokes and edits and little narratives stacking up and flowing together, references and poop jokes and murder jokes and slurs and parody and criticism and SuS and literally anything the creator thinks is gonna get a reaction that wasn't in the original material. And it doesn't even have to be exclusively about jokes, there's a lot of YTPs that are centered on horror or drama or even are just completely original narratives using the assets at hand, sometimes even clocking in at almost movie-length.

There's no filter or censors or teams making sure it's tested to the audience, it's just as much chaos as someone with video editing skills can manage to create, and more so than anything else nowadays, it's the medium that abides and amplifies the same principle that ruled and defined Grand-Guignol: "The Hot and Cold Shower"

Grand Guignol, was not the inventor of this concept, but probably the first performing arts company that used it as its main programming principle. Every evening at the theatre was programmed with plays heavily contrasting in their nature. In the 6 plays presented on a regular night, every 2 horror plays were followed by a light comedy and the light comedy by another horror play or two. Using this contrast the creators aimed to give their audiences a fuller range of emotions. They called it a "hot and cold shower".

You could also make a similar argument for creators that used Garry's Mod or Source Filmmaker to create Youtube content, many of whom either followed the styles of YTP or created their own which ended up influencing others in return, and you can definitely see how YTP as well as these have influenced our current generation's taste in comedy as well as the editing styles of many prominent creators. It even seemed for quite a while that GMOD and SFM content of this type was dead, but it definitely seems like it's gotten a revival recently, and really just never went away. Likewise, a lot of people think YTP died circa 2012 or 2015, which is completely false, it just changed a bit, as things tend to do if they are to stick around.

The entire approach of extreme hot and cold, extreme horror and comedy shuffling per second and extreme absurdity overriding is something you definitely get nowadays a lot more out of these newer forms of media than anything that film and television's capable of giving, and just as Grand-Guignol started out relatively ordinary (focused mainly on naturalistic horror) before it completely spiraled into a perpetual race for excess, we've gotten so desensitized so quickly to surprises that you can see in real time the growing needs for content that's faster and more chaotic and funnier and more dramatic and more absurd and more well-produced but also worse produced and, yeah.

I definitely wonder how we may see future filmmakers and cartoonists and creators be influenced by, not just the above, but also the rapidly changing landscapes of meme culture and social media and the gradually less-funny theater of the absurd that reality's become. I definitely imagine we'll be in for some interesting times.

Y'know, if we make it that far.

Alternatively you could also argue Jackass is also a modern Grand Guignol and they just cut out the narrative middleman to get straight to the "people getting fucked up for your amusement" part, but at this point I'd just be inviting a retread of all the "Is -X- pulp" questions I got for "Is -X- Grand Guignol", and I may have stepped straight into a rake with this one.

[ojcobsessed]

oliver jackson-cohen for flaunt magazine, by jessica romoff, july 2019

***

The first horror movie I ever saw was The Exorcist on my grandmother’s RCA console TV, midnight on Christmas Eve. My grandmother is a Catholic Portuguese woman who was devout to cross stitching and Jesus Christ, resulting in crucifixes nailed into every wall of the living room. So, as every flash and jolt from the TV screen would animate the tortured figurines with chilling white light, I prepared in panic and thrill for each one to flip upside down.

Not only did this movie ignite my passionate love for horror, but actor Oliver Jackson Cohen’s passion as well. Mine lead me to accumulating random 70’s slasher movie memorabilia and sporadic nightmares, while Cohen’s lead him to eventually being the star of hit Netflix horror miniseries The Haunting of Hill House as his character Luke Crain, with a few nightmares as well. The 10 episode show is a modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson’s novel “Hill House” and follows the Crain family during the summer they lived in the haunted home, and flashes forward on their lives decades after the tragic events.

During a phone interview with him, I learned Cohen is much more than just a dedicated actor with a jawline that can cut glass; Cohen is a whirlpool of empathy, an artist who gushes his heart into everything he does, and demands that his character Luke, and those battling with similar struggles, are portrayed more than just their addiction.

With your role in last season, I was really impressed by how you portrayed a character with drug addiction, and how you refrained from making him a stereotypical, one dimensional person - and I was wondering how you avoided leaning on this cliche when approaching Luke?

Thank you, number one, I think we all have seen drug addicts portrayed in movies and tv shows before. Most of the time, they are always portrayed as their addiction, and I don’t think that’s very true for anyone who knows anyone who has substance abuse problems; there is actually a fucking person there. So it was very clear from the get-go that I had a responsibility to present a fully formed human being, and they actually brought in a specific writer to write Luke’s character- who was a heroin addict in recovery. I said to Mike, the director and creator of the show - before we even started that it’s very important that Luke is the sum of all his parts and is not just his addiction. So I think that the way I approached it, is that when I first began doing all the research and the pre-work before we started filming, I started looking at documentaries, because I had never done heroin before, so I thought, Oh I’ll start looking at documentaries - but then I realized quite early on that that was putting a judgement on him. And I don’t think it’s fair - because behind anyone who has fallen into this trap is someone who is deeply struggling. And I felt it - I felt a huge amount of, not pressure, but a need to show the person behind the addiction and show the person who is actually struggling, and why he had become an addict. So I focused on that - so I spent no time whatsoever seeing Lucas as a drug addict; I saw him as someone who was struggling to come to terms with everything that he had experienced and happened in his life. And so I focused on anyone who is trying to numb themselves, that know they’re running away from something. So I built up the terror of that, instead of focusing on “I need my fix.”

Was there something that happened in your own life, that was out of your control and not your fault, but regardless someone judged you because of that - perhaps driving your connection to Luke’s character?

Oh 100 percent, and that’s what is so interesting, because I don’t have a substance abuse problem - but I think that out of all the characters I have ever played in the past 10 years, there’s the most of me in Luke. Like, all of that stuff of just trying to function, and the vulnerability, and just trying to be normal, and being so ashamed - all of that is my own shit, and so [laughs] I didn’t need to be a heroin addict to understand the pain that he was going through, so, so much. I think it’s incredible getting to play someone like that because, in a weird way it felt like therapy - I was able to go to work everyday and just be all the parts of myself. I think it’s interesting as well for men, there’s this whole thing about having to be a certain way, having to always be strong, and I think inherently a lot of people do feel incredibly fragile. So all of that stuff of Luke is me, and my stuff, and I didn’t have to pretend - I just got to go to work and be as vulnerable as I feel. You know we all have incredibly complicated lives and incredibly complicated upbringings,  and I used all of my stuff: I was diagnosed with PTSD a couple of years ago so all of that is in there with Luke - and it felt incredibly cathartic to be able to kind of put it all out there and be there.

When your work is something that is so emotionally rigorous, and strenuous, it must be very draining dedicating yourself to a character who is really struggling his whole life  - How do you unwind and decompress from this intensity?

[Laughs] I….you know what, I’m not very good at it. I feel like I’m one of those people, I’m sort of with the school of thought that you either go to work and you fucking do it  - and you do it for real, or go home. I’m not into this whole I’ll just pretend! thing, so it’s probably not the healthiest way of working. But I feel it’s necessary, and then I don’t know how to handle it. There were a couple of days on set where specifically we were filming all of Luke’s episodes or the stuff where he’s sort of roaming the streets - that got way too intense. We would rap at 6 am and I would go back to my house and sleep for a bit, and then wake up and just be so out of sorts: I would have to call people at home to reassure me that everything was okay.

I imagine the intensity can be overwhelming

Yeah, I mean, it sounds really wonky - but I think that when you’re messing around with stuff like that, and you’re tricking your brain into thinking something is real, and then on top of that you’re drawing from your own personal well of shit that probably should be kept untouched - it’s gonna be messy at times. So yeah, it gets… it did get a little hairy. But again I felt that it was important - and I think all of us across the board in the cast felt that it was so important to do that - to give Luke a voice. And what’s been so interesting when the show came out, it was so overwhelming, the response, specifically from people that have struggled with addiction. And it was so warming to hear these stories from people, so I think it was necessary for all of us as actors to go to those dark parts of ourselves, and put that out on screen.

Is there something that you wish you knew before you began acting in a horror TV series? Or about a TV series with intense family drama with horror influence?

Hm..I don’t know. Just… it’s all good. [laughs] it’s gonna be all good.

Honestly, that’s pretty solid universal advice. And I was wondering, are you a fan of horror in general?

Yes! Huge

And is this a genre that you want to continue with?

Yes, I had never done anything horror before, so this was a dream. I remember I watched The Exorcist when I was like eight or something, and it completely terrified me - and I still to this day have nightmares about it. I think what’s so clever about horror, and I think specifically with what Mike has done on our show, it becomes a metaphor for something else. So specifically with Hill House, if you take away the house and all the ghosts and all the horror elements, it’s about childhood trauma. So you can swap out what all those kids went through, the horror they experienced, can be swaped out for sexual abuse, or physical abuse, or anything like that. So you manage to kind of navigate all of these horrific things we kind of don’t want to look at, in the veil of ghosts, so it becomes palatable for an audience. I never knew this, Netflix told me this, that horror is the most watched genre in the whole world.

Really!?

Across the board, yeah! I thought it would be comedy. But that’s why Netflix made the show. Because they realized that actually there was such a massive market for horror. So yeah, a really long winded answer to your short question - yes I was a fan of horror, I always have been.

Me too! I’ve never thought about how horror can be a metaphor for trauma. That’s so fascinating. Just one last question - I know that you can’t say too much about the second season… right? Or they’ll shoot you.

Right [laughs]

So, see if you can answer this: if Season 1 and Season 2 were mythical creatures, what would they be?

[Laughs] What would they be… ahhh...I genuinely don’t know how to answer that question. They’re both just beasts from the darkest corners of our minds. Season 1…. Uh… what I can say - is that season 1 I believe was amazing, and with what they’re doing with season 2 is even…. More incredible.