#I'm trying to come up with more obscure facts but idk.

[bluastro-yellow]

bruh this sucks. where's the immaculate pale conception

(last level are all jokes)

[applestorms]

4 and 16 for the DN asks 👀

HEHEHE. ok <3 original ask game

4. who’s your favorite underrated or obscure character?

NEAR. we've got a pretty good community of near lovers around here but i'm counting him as underrated due to fandom-wide opinions. alternatively, kiyomi. <33

16. who do you believe is the smartest character?

i was actually considering writing a whole post on intelligence in DN, but didn't think i had enough to say for a full ramble so here's a (not so) brief overview of a bunch of notable characters. i'm of the opinion that trying to rank/judge intelligence by some kind of hierarchy or objective standard is kind of impossible (say it with me everyone, IQ tests are bullshitttt) and personality/temperament plays quite a significant role in DN's mind games, so. idk. here:

L: if you Demanded i choose one person to be the smartest character in DN, i'd probably give in and say L. that being said, i think L's intelligence mostly surrounds things like his logical reasoning/pattern recognition/memory for details/etc. his knowledge of people in particular is interesting to me, as while i don't think he intuitively Gets people very well, his ability to reason out their mindset/emotional character is one of his key abilities in the series (see: figuring out KIRA's mindset to confirm that he's even a real person at all)-- so, idk, it's kinda hard to judge if that could be considered Emotional Int or not. he's certainly also got great potential to learn more, esp if it's for the sake of a case, though his personality n picky, princess-y attitude trips him up a bit.

NEAR: while i don't think near has as much Collected Knowledge as L, if only due to not having the same amount of lived experience/time to get there, i do think he's got one advantage over him when it comes to his rationality. i.e. near is Chill where L gets very, very invested in his projects, which can at times cloud his judgement when it comes to things not directly related to said projects. near just seems more likely to be the type to take a step back n reflect on everything, perhaps even to a fault, though this grants him the Distinct advantage of allowing him to keep his ego in check. don't get me wrong, he's still cocky and fixated and kind of an asshole, but man's got hobbies. he knows how to take a vacation.

LIGHT: light is dumb as fuck. at the start of the story he's in a similar position to near, lacking the lived experience and Collected Knowledge of L, and his planning/judgements are screwed not only by his lack of intelligence, but his overwhelming ego n temper. light's real strength is his ability to manipulate people, knowing the exact type of mask he needs to wear to get what he needs, and his ability to keep (outwardly) calm in the face of stress. once/if he gets past his temper, he's very good at reacting in the moment n rolling with the punches. light is also an interesting case in that his intelligence will often backfire against him-- where L can sometimes get his view clouded by viewing Everything through the lens of the case and missing some of the greater consequences of his actions (see: granting KIRA god status through lind l. tailor), light gets fucked up in that his reasoning allows him to better Repress and Deny the facts of reality that he doesn't want to have to deal with (e.g. his own murders). also, Knowledge-wise, i think it's notable that one of the few academic subjects we see light being Really good at (in the anime, at least?) is english-- communication is light's biggest strength, you could say. ig he is a Warrior of the pen and all.

MELLO: i kinda see him as suffering from the same faults/strengths as light, but to a more extreme/overt degree. he Struggles to keep his temper and ego in check, especially since it is constantly being aggravated by his inferiority complex-- but when he can, he is similarly quite good at keeping calm and chill and reacting well to the circumstances. i actually think he's one of the better planners in the series, and his willingness to take action grants him the advantage of catching other people off guard. it always gets to me that what ultimately takes mello out is his kindness/courtesy, allowing takada her blanket and her chance to kill him. he seems to care about People in the most genuine way out of anyone to me in this series, which is both lovely and tragic.

MISA: anyways, onto someone who Does Not care about people. misa's biggest strength is her acting and YES, SHE'S GOOD AT ACTING. SHUT UP. i would say she's even better than light at this, since it's literally part of her job and also she apparently fools half the fandom into thinking she's a moron. i actually think misa has a similar strength to near as well in that she's capable of getting outside her own head and reflecting on the situation in a way that isn't purely driven by her own ego-- part of her fault is just that, like L, she often doesn't care enough to bother. misa knows what the fuck she wants, and pursues it successfully and rigorously enough to keep light in a stranglehold from the minute she meets him until the day he fucking dies. the question is whether or not this Thing she wants so badly will actually make her happy, or whether she will allow herself to drop the stubbornness for two goddamn seconds and chill out enough to actually consider other options.

KIYOMI: kiyomi is book smart and has quite good logic and reasoning as well, but she is Stifled by social expectations a way that i see as very much parallel to light. i think her biggest strength and weakness are knotted up together, in a way-- she makes the connections, but only rarely bothers to say them out loud. i actually think she might have a similar mix of self-doubt and ego as mello, though the way they express those traits are polar opposite. she's Aware of people in a similar way too, or at the very least conventional rules of morality/ethics, enough so to be horrified when light asks her to kill (but not enough to stop herself from doing it). i fucking adore the idea that she's a bit of a closeted sadist too-- etc. etc. horror at her actions, or her own capacity for them in and of itself? juicy shit.

NAOMI: taking from LABB murder canon for this one too-- naomi Definitely has strong logical reasoning, being able to keep up with/follow much of the mind game bullshittery of beyond and L even as ryuzaki is fucking with her irl. she's got a more blunt, brutal version of near's Don't Give A Fuck-ery too, throwing away the bullshit without a second of doubt or care when she recognizes it. her weakness is again in her kindness, though naomi's has got more of a maternal edge to it than mello's. remember-- what fucks her up, what causes her to separate herself from the FBI in the first place is not her own experiences with racism or sexism from her coworkers, but her inability to shoot a child. kind of opposite to kiyomi in that way, actually, horror at her inability to execute violence against someone that she sees as an inherently innocent being? perhaps part of what endears her to L as well, and light.

SOICHIRO: his greatest strength is his capacity for reflection, which i see as a side effect of his age. soichiro is not caught up in the throes of his own ego, he doesn't have much patience for the mind games, and why would he? he's got a job to do, a family to take care of and love. he's more cool-headed than a lot of the younger characters because of this, capable of reconsidering his morals and the nuances of his ethical stance as he comes in contact with new situations, not holding to some Static idea of This Is How Reality Must Be 100% (see: him softening his stance to say that the true evil is "the capacity to kill," in his hospital bed). yet this love for his family, the fact that he has kind of Made It, is also his greatest weakness-- he's got something to lose now, and especially in the second half, we can see that Fear really get to him.

BEYOND: is simply not that smart. worse, he's all ego and got a simultaneous superiority/inferiority complex. he comes up w/ dumb, overly convoluted puzzles n then looks down on other people for being too Pedestrian to get it, walking naomi through his reasoning bc he thinks she's too stupid to figure out the important shit. i don't even think he's on naomi's level of reasoning, he's just good at murder mystery-esque puzzle bs and lighting himself on fire.

[angelbambisworld]

tell us more about your au plz

I assume you're talking about Glam Metal Heart so here's some cool facts about my AU

Tagging: @peanutbutter-doodles @ravenh37 @gh0stfl0ra @spacedoutman @ladyshandioftheendless

-Angel's first enemy turned ally is Alice Cooper. During the fight, Alice is rendered unconscious and KISS is like "Okay finish the job" and Angel is like "No pls he has a wife and kids". And KISS is like "Fuck that".

And Angel turns to Gene and she's like "🥺Pookie🥺I don't wanna kill Alice Cooper🥺". And Gene is like "😡Don't 'pookie' me. 🤬Kill him!".

So Angel uses her powers to try and brainwash Alice. It doesn't work because Alice is such an evil and wicked bastard but it does make him feel like he's being burned alive. So he pretends he's been tamed and he's all like "I love you so much that I'm gonna join your side. Please dont do that again."

In reality, he's only sticking around because in all his years of shocking and rocking, he's never known anybody to possess the power of love. He wonders if Angel will continue to use her powers for good or if something will happen that causes her to become corrupted...or something like that.

But other than all of that, he doesn't give the main cast any more trouble except for when he causes chaos on the side and the gang has to intervene.

Alice has shadow powers and also those snakes he has tend to come in handy during battles.

-I once saw a meme that was like "Vince Neil is just Bret Michaels evil twin"(Or was it Bret Micheals is just Vince Neil’s evil twin? idk) so I said fuck it. In this AU, Vince and Bret are long lost twin brothers(Because it's funny)

In Bret's chapter, Angel finally sees what the frontman is hiding behind that bandana. And Bret's like "Oh no! You have uncovered my secret! For this, you must die!"

And Angel is like "Is it that serious?" and gets stabbed with a poisonous knife(Or something like that). She has approximately 24 hours to find an antidote for the poison or she'll die.

I haven't decided what kind of powers Poison should have(Besides the power of stealing so many girls' hearts back in their hair metal heyday LOL).

-As I said in a previous post, Rob Zombie and his wife Sheri end up joining the main cast at some point. While Sheri doesn't have any special powers like her husband, she can still hold her own in a fight.

-The main(And final)villain is Traci Michaelz from the 1997 bubbleglam band Peppermint Creeps. Bubbleglam was an obscure/underground music scene during the 90s where bands would take elements of glam metal(Crazy hair, crazy clothes, crazy music)and push it to the extreme. Most bands in this genre never found any commercial success. Bummer, dude!

Traci Michaelz was the drummer in his band. He died on June 13th, 2008 at the age of 34. So in my AU, he came back from the dead because he's pissed off that he died so young and that bubbleglam as a genre never took off. He has the power of hate.

And uhhhh yeah those are some facts about my AU.

[traumatizeddfox]

Idk where I stand on the term narc abuse but 2 things to bring up.

First, the jury is out on if abuse via narcissistic tendencies (not related to npd inherently) via specifically the term "narc abuse" is real or not. Theres both official and unofficial sources, charities, University/medical journals, etc that acknowledge it as different from more common forms of abuse/how the abuse is brought on and why (someone being physically abused due to their abuser being on drugs and over-reacting to a small trigger vs someone getting physically abused due to percieved sin/religious undertones will have varying experiences, ones that reasonably involve different labels) this warrants a different label and plenty that do not and criticize it. I won't judge a terminology when even medical professionals can't seem to decide yay or nay. I just figured I'd mention it because the only way people know this term usually is TikTok but it's actually older than TikTok, they just picked it up. There is a difference between someone with npd and someone whose a narcissist in a non-medical/mood/personality disorder way and I do think the people trying to use the term should differentiate the two but to be fair, most people don't even know about npd and therefore would only be talking about egotistical people, not nessesarily pwnpd. I also think it's nessesary to bring up that Tumblr has obscure and hyper niche veiws on topics with zero room for conversation and just as plenty of pwnpd on Tumblr are adverse to the term, there also plenty of pwnpd on Tumblr and other platforms who acknowled/support it as a term, do not take offense and/or understand its usage and what it means without direct correlation to the disorder but more as a grouping of actions/beliefs with the label outside of medical contexts. The term narcissist and the actions associated have existed as a stand alone personality type (like sloth doesn't automatically mean someone with Chronic fatigue syndrome or Thief doesn't mean kleptomaniac) long before the disorder got its name and associations, plenty of people call egoists narcissists and it's not offensive suddenly. Understanding words have multiple meanings and contexts is important here, Rape dosent even automatically mean sexual assualt, sometimes it just means steal or kidnapping. All this to say it's budding mental health related language, it will take what already exists and expand upon it. Same as when the words triggers and gaslighting got popular then promptly died. Your free to take your stance, I'm not invalidating it, I'm just sharing some facts cause as a long time user of Tumblr, it seriously screwed my views of the world and narrowed them to a pin prick about what's acceptable and agreed upon and what isn't and should be shunned. Only after stepping outside the site did I learn just how little 90% of discourse here actually matters and affects the world at large. Consider this whole part devil's advocate but presenting only the people who side with you as evidence when this isn't a "is climate change real?" Sort of stance where 98% of the field agrees is disingenuous. The field is split here and very few people are actually considering this label to specifically mean pwnpd and more mean specific forms of mental and emotional abuse and neglect that usually comes from a place where the abuser sees themselves as better than others, see the victims as threats to their high standing and see others as means to their ends. Again, Idk if I support the term or not, I'm just relaying information.

Lastly, #2, trying to say that anyone who feels they are a victim of specifically "narc abuse" is just trying to "feel special" is fucking horrific and invalidating regardless of your feelings on the term. Regardless of the words they use to describe the abuse they experienced, they still experienced abuse and trying to imply they are lieing or attention-seeking is fundamentally abuse-apologist shit. The same shit gets said to every other victim of abuse and just because you don't like the label dose not mean they think they are special or different and what they describe is suddenly not fucking abuse. They are still actively victims even if they arnt perfect ones. I'm disabled, I'm fully aware if the term "disabled abuse" came out cause a few people got beat with grandma's cane or their disabled abuser used their mobility aid to hurt them I'd be fighting it cause that's not fair and disabled only means one thing, however, I would never EVER invalidate their trauma from that physical abuse. I would never say they never experienced any wrongs or they think they are special cause it was abuse from a disabled person. No matter where you stand, that was a fucking terrible thing to say and imply. You can shit on a label without invalidating real victims of real abuse. No one in this debate was questioning the victims until you just did, they only criticized the label they were using. You can get that victim-blaming perfect-victim shit and shove it up your ass. And no, I'm not a victim of that form of abuse, if it even exists, but I can see shit when I hear it and that was shit. Shame on you for that.

Okay first thing I want to say first is this. i am sorry if u read my post and misread it or misinterpreted what i was saying. i was not victim blaming anyone lmfao. I was NOT invalidating anyone when I said those who have been abused by narcissists think theyre special. what I was trying to say is that the language around narc abuse is that victims seem to talk about it like its a worse type of abuse. i see people say "if you have been abused by a narcissist its because they saw how special u are!!" and i think thats not ok to tell victims bc victims will romantizie why they were abused!! i remember believing my abuser (who does have npd btw) only abused me bc i was so special and he hated that!! but in reality, he abused me because he's an abuser. an abuser might be triggered by someone, they might hate someone and thats why they abuse. an abuser might have a disorder that can make them react abusively, but its because theyre an abuser. there are plenty of ppl without disorders who abuse, and there are those with npd who dont also abuse. its not a hive mind.

i do not understand why u think i was telling someone that they werent abused. if u spend more than 2 seconds on my blog u will know i validate everyone who has ever been a victim, and those who will become victims.

BUT my point was there are victims out there who seem to treat narc abuse like its a badge. we dont walk around and say ptsd abuse bc ppl would lose their shit if we ever did that. "Narc abuse" is not anything different than any other kind of abuse. can an abuser have npd? yes. can the npd make an abuser respond in a unique or different way? yes same with any pd. but narc abuse is just emotional abuse. ppl will say narc abuse and then go onto explain everything that an abuser does. "Theyre selfish" "They want control" yeah thats an abuser. i think the problem is people now look at symptoms of abuse and say narcissist. i literally see ppl call anyone a narcissist these days.

the issue i have with this as well is that i have seen and heard victims wonder if they are valid because their abuser doesnt have npd bc these victim spaces especially Tiktok have created this belief that abusers are narcissists and ONLY narcissists. can they be? yes. but can an abuser also be a neurotypical? yes.

abusers are just abusers. we dont need to slap some label on there. now is there different levels of abuse? yes ofc. emotional abuse, physical, spiritual, financial, etc are all different kinds of abuse. being abused by ur mother is different than being abused by ur teacher, or partner, etc. but it doesnt mean its worse. ofc there are SITUATIONS that can be considered "worse" in the eyes of the law but at the end of the day. abuse is abuse. a broken ankle is still a broken ankle no matter how it got broken.

victims are all on the same playing field but they try to fight each other and we need to stand together and realize that abusers are the issue!! i dont have any ISSUE or problem with victims who say they were abused by a narcissist but i do have an issue when ppl say narc abuse. and i know a lot of victims who say narc abuse might not even realize what theyre saying. i remember being that person until i started to talk to pwpd, espeically npd, did more research and realized how stigmatizing it is.

the MAIN issue with saying narc abuse is that what ur saying to people with npd that 1) they are not valid if they have been abused. 2) they are abusers. this is dangerous because its generalizing an entire group of those with a disorder that can not change or fix. a lot of victims worry if they have been the abuser bc abusers fuck with ur head thinking ur the bad guy, so if someone with npd sees a post that says all narcissists are abusers they might believe they are one when they arent. im speaking very general. every person with npd is a unique person and i dont SUPPORT every single person with npd bc ofc there are monsters out there who are also abusers , but i do support that people with npd get support and are also included when ppl say mental health matters, or believe all victims.

no one is saying that those with npd cant be abusers, what were trying to change is the language !!! before people believe everyone with schizophrenia was a violent killer until we learned that is not true. we need to do the same with personality disorders.

the history of the word rape does come from the meaning to steal, seize, or carry away but there is PLENTY of words we use in today that are not the same. just look up the history of the word "mother fucker" and you will never want to ever say that ever again. but i dont see what this has to do with ur point in mental health. no one would ever say rape when they mean "steal" we just dont use that word in that way anymore. but to add to this, its a great example as a way to change the meaning of narcissists to be only used for those with the disorder. (yeah ppl can have narcisstic tendencies, we ALL have some level of it, its how we survive but thats different than having a disorder.)

i know tumblr has always had weird takes, and some stuff is strictly an online discourse and doesnt happen irl, but that doesnt mean we cant change the way people view mental health. people have misused gaslighting, triggers, but that doesn't mean we cant stop or change that. most people learn to adapt.

but to finish, i understand where ur coming from and im sorry if u saw my post and were upset but when i see others with npd wishing they could die because they feel like a monster just because they have a diagnosis, it shatters me knowing they feel like there is no support. even therapists are sketchy with pwpd. i just think that we need to change the language around abuse. just say abuse idk why thats so hard!

[bloody-wonder]

How do you find new books to read? Most people I ask say booktok, which sorry if I'm wrong but I assumed you wouldn't use, and I haven't had good results from trying booktok.

good question!

no i don't use booktok or tiktok in general. in fact, i have a very old man yells at cloud attitude towards it lol. i do watch lots of booktube tho and get some recs from there, however it's important to remember: many people are hyping up a book >> probably not a good rec🙅‍♀️ "if so many people like it i might like it too" that's the fomo devil talking! one booktuber is swearing by a book you have never heard of and gushing about it in their every other video >> probably a good rec👍that's how i came across the aurelian cycle and the winnowing flame. idk maybe it works on booktok the same way if you follow the right people but. i don't trust that app😅

other recs i get from my trusted mutuals on tumblr bc these are people who enjoy the same type of sophisticated literature as i do so when one of them mentions they read and liked a book my interest is peaked. when they constantly mention it it has the same effect as when your mutual reblogs three gifsets of a show - now you just have to watch it bc you know from previous experience you will likely enjoy it. i think i first heard of doctrine of labyrinths in worldhoppers' underrated fantasy video but it would've sat on my goodreads tbr forlornly till the end of time had i not found out that it's popular with the lymond crowd - no rec is more reliable than that😌

finally, good book recs tend to come from obscure rec lists i perused on tumblr or on goodreads or on some old-fashioned book blog several years ago, added them to my tbr and then forgot. but bc i like to update my tbr regularly i go through the 1000+ books i have on goodreads each year in order to decide if i want to move them up my priority list and inevitably discover some hidden gems i scavenged this way back when i was getting back into reading. for example, i found the dreamhealers series and the memoirs of lady trent on the aroace characters database and i found nino cipri's litenverse on one of the numerous queer sff rec lists here on tumblr.

generally tho there is no perfect source of book recs that works all the time. understanding your own tastes and choosing books accordingly is a skill you develop by trial and error and no matter how good you get at curating your reading many books you pick up will likely disappoint you nonetheless🤷‍♀️

[satanfemme]

idk how to put it into words but there's something alienating about being an androgynous person with an intentionally unclear CAGAB. where I feel like an "impersonator" of some kind in both cis and trans spaces. I guess it might have something to do with the ingrained reverence our society holds for CAGAB, how it's often seen as a prerequisite for your personhood more than your current lived reality is, but by refusing to elaborate on mine, and by purposefully obscuring it, I very frequently feel like some kind of liar with "something to hide" and who's going to get in trouble once I'm "found out".

it's an interesting phenomenon because I don't hide the fact that I'm trans, I'm annoyingly transsexual, so my fear doesn't stem from my trans identity being a secret (it's not). it stems very specifically from my assigned sex being a secret. which I feel can only be a separate fact due to my nonbinary status (a binary man being outted as trans almost inherently reveals his assigned sex as well, and vice versa), and I feel like I should celebrate this unique gift more. how great is it that I can be loudly transsexual without needing to give up personal information about my childhood to everyone around me? I also try to reason with myself that if a binary trans person can go stealth and hide their CAGAB, and that this is clearly understandable and moral and good, then the same can be said for me who goes "stealth" as nothing recognizable to a binary world but who still hides my CAGAB the same way.

but there is still an overarching sense of dishonesty to my situation that I struggle to come to terms with, or even to define or understand.

[keshetchai]

I feel like ‘hey it’s fine for this to be how you feel, but acting as if it’s a hard and fast rule when educating doesn’t really work if you’re also acknowledging that it’s just your opinion’ should be easier to understand and yet,

Yeah. I think the original op and I kinda reached our mutual understanding on this but then other people are still going as if I was invalidating the discomfort, or making things up?

The discomfort is understandable and allowed and I respect that. The request that gentiles use specific language is great and fine. But the facts that I presented about actual Jewish mourning practice & liturgy are not obscure, unpopular, or even new, and they're also not my opinion.

My opinion is that you shouldn't mislead people (intentionally or unintentionally) or state things that simply aren't true when asking for someone to respect your discomfort or to acknowledge a preferred practice. My opinion is that educating gentiles, or resisting Christian hegemony — shouldn't mean rewriting current Jewish practice, or past longstanding Jewish history. My opinion is that we ought to genuinely take the intent of the speaker into account, and to ask ourselves if the other person is truly trying to convey kindness and compassion in a time of grief in a way that we do, in fact, also use.

And then ask myself like other things such as:

- did they do this to emphasize Christianity at me (hegemonically, evangelically), or is this simply the language they know and the way they know how to convey this care? I can be uncomfortable either way, but in one case I am uncomfortable with a unique individual enacting a system of hegemony, and in another I am just frustrated with the system itself and not the person. Sometimes articulating that difference is helpful and frankly, healing. We live in a society, idk.

- is it possible that somehow, I have been this person, saying something not technically wrong, but perhaps not the best or most comfortable thing for the person hearing me? (Almost certainly). Intent is not everything, but like, it does contextualize things! It obviously matters if I mean to be respectful but come off wrong footed due to someone else's feelings on something — that's very different than intentionally trying to condescend or diminish.

Op probably did not intend for this to blow up. Tumblr randomly promoted a jumblr post to me, and I responded to correct a fact that part of their premise rested on. Jumblr had this same old discourse back in 2020, and even before that, and like, I reiterated old facts. It floats around and isn't new - this is a common claim people make ("Jews never say rest in peace,") that other people debunk every so often on this site. I don't mind if their conclusion is still "I don't like that."

It's like...analogy: I am not asking everyone to feel comfortable with every verse or mitzvah in the Torah. I understand and appreciate that certain things in the Torah also make me uncomfortable, and those things aren't the same for every Jew. But I can sympathize even if we don't have the same discomforts. I can wrestle with those things, I can emphasize what I think is better or more comfortable within the Torah, what I think takes higher importance in Torah over the uncomfortable things, I can question how I understand the verse, I can question my own discomfort and other's comfort, why we differ and what that means — all of that — but whether or not I'm comfortable, the thing is still in the Torah.

I think I'm also just baffled by some of the responses like - not the ones from op, but everyone else responding to me? The logic is...really weird! I didn't address half the arguments made because they're just strange. And then half of them are like...what do they even intend when they say this? Like this idea that burial and memorial liturgy shouldn't count in a discussion about how Jews talk when memorializing our dead, because it's just "liturgy." That argument made me feel like I was in the twilight zone lmao. I'm not going to apologize for understanding our religion lol.

Also absolutely not a single soul addressed my citing Chabad and Shiva.com (which is expressly aimed at helping even non-jews understand how Jews deal with death, mourning, and burial!) And that is BONKERS to me.

[exocynraku]

How do you come up with your names and designs, I need help coming up with better names.

names are usually based off of appearance, family members, personality or just words that i like! with appearance, i usually use names of animals or plants. rosytiger got their name because of their reddish fur and tabby markings. batmane was named after their, well, mane, and the fact theyre blind (like a bat). doeflutter was named after their deer like spots and the word "flutter" reminds me of fluttershy from mlp, who shares a similar-ish yellow colour to doeflutter. glisteningscale is named after their light (glistening) scale-like markings. family members is a bit different as i haven't done a cat named after one for a while. closest one i've gotten to was snowwatcher being named after skywatcher! when i name cats after their parents family i usually just look at their immediate family on the warriors wiki and pick out a prefix/suffix i think fits and when it comes to personality, goslingdash and spiderspinner work as examples. in my drawing for goslingdash, they're fiesty and running around, which fits the suffix "dash". spiderspinner on the other hand was partially named after the fact theyre meant to be a med cat, and i just thought it sounded cool. spiders spin webs, and med cats use those webs to heal cats! idk if that makes sense, but it makes sense in my head it's hard to explain my thought process, i apologize, but when you do this many hypokits, it gets kinda easy, lol! i also try to make my names as creative as i possibly can, avoiding prefixes & suffixes used alot in canon. ESPECIALLY when it comes to suffixes. pelt... fur... tail... claw... EW!!!!!

a good way to find cool words (especially action words) that are cooler is literally just to look up "other ways to say {word}" or "{word} synonyms" are there'll probably be SOMETHING interesting! and if i get REALLY desparate, i go and find a warrior cats name generator (usually my own) and just mess around with it for a while and see if anything fun pops up! when it comes to designs, well, that ones WAY harder to explain. OBVIOUSLY i reference the parents, but i always try to add a little spin. when i used to do hypokits, i'd directly refernce my designs for the parents, but nowadays i'm way too lazy to do that and either refrence how i see the character in my head (since ive drawn all the characters i have a pretty good idea for how most of them look unless its a horrendously obscure character) or look them up on the wiki. i look at the parents patterning. okay, they're both tabbies. their kit will be a tabby too. a tortie and some sort of spots? okay, a very veyr very spotty tortie. i don't think this is how it works in real life, but i dont care!!!! lol :] i also try to combine the colours of the parents. on spiderspinner, rainwhisker is grey while squilf is dark ginger. okay, dark-ish greyish ginger. doeflutter? combine daisy's yellow with whitetail's even lighter markings (or at least thats how i think she looks)

if i'm working on a hypokit that i know is a duplicate (aka ive drawn a hypokit of this ship before), occasionally i'll refernce the parent's parent's colours + markings! ex: if it's a squilf ship, maybe ill take sandstorms pale yellow. honestly, i can't really help with design. my best advice is try to have as much fun as you can. also, pick the name AFTER you design the character! or at least while you're designing them, don't do it beforehand. it's much more restricting and can take some of the fun away! have fun, be creative!

[judjira]

Hi! Sun, Taurus & 3H

sun - 5 things you like about yourself

oof this is hard HAHA but ill try my best

1. i rly like my hair? idk sounds shallow but i've had it super long and i've had it short, i've had it bleached, dyed, i've had undercuts, fades, wolfcuts, braids,,,i've been thru a lot of self esteem and appearance issues, but my hair is always one thing i rly like abt my physical appearance so yeah !

2. i love the way i hyperfixate ! if my neurodivergence wasn't obvious enough, i tend to deep dive into rly niche and obscure things solely based on a whim, and i rly like that ! i love drawing from so many sources and inspirations and it makes me happy having all this useless knowledge in my head

3. i rly like the way i try to communicate. i'm not perfect of course, but i've always tried to outline my feelings and my thoughts in the most calm, reasonable, and mediating way, especially when an issue arises. i'm a little bit of a mediator when it comes to my groups of friends? and a lot of people appreciate it so i like that !

4. i rly like my writing ! sounds weird to say, but i only ever write for myself and to have fun, and it's just a bonus (a lovely bonus btw) that you all enjoy it too. i love seeing my writing come to life especially when it's abt love, bc fact abt me: i love LOVE.

5. this sounds weird but i rly like my talents n skills ! i love the things i do and i wouldnt trade them at all for anything else. theater, writing, reading, games, sports, and everything else i do,,,i love that i have SOME amount of skill to it

taurus - favorite food

1. my favorite food is a filipino classic ! it's called sisig, and its usually made from like,,,leftover pig parts? its amazing its served on a sizzling plate n its crunchy n soft n salty n spicy n sweet (when it has mayo) it has so many different kinds (both meat and fish)

3H - what are some of the topics you like to talk about most

TAKE NOTE THIS IS A PUBLIC INVITATION TO HIT ME UP AND TALK ABOUT ALL OF THESE THINGS

1. i love talking abt love!!! seriously guys,,,i cant express properly how much i love hearing about love, talking about love, understanding love. it's just so,,,mesmerising and beautiful how, despite all of life's heartaches, love consistently shows itself to be one of humanity's most valuable resources,,,i love love so much.

2. i love talking abt writing ! techniques, methods, reasons, concepts, ideas, and all of that! i've been writing as a hobby since i was 8, and i've only fallen more and more in love with it.

3. FANTASY I LOVE FANTASY,,,specifically magical realism ! i play a lot of dnd so i really love fantasy and all its types.

[mtxnzi]

How illegal is it to use AI to help with punctuation? I've never written with punctuation I just thought it would help other people read it better but wow. Also do I actually get to be undisturbed here???????? WTF THAT'S SO AMAZING??????? I will not read my previous post but yeah it's taken me however long to get over the idea of using gpt's help to do it. I think I have this anxiety about getting things wrong because this is the only thing I felt confident enough to do. I think this is the rejection sensitivity. I'm not against criticism but I'd rather be taught how and what goes where.

IDK if this is an example of SOD's law but I have been slow in the past to adopt any new technology, in fact I spent months trying to do some business plan work without using gpt. Months and Months and Months of spicy nomading it and going through it because I was afraid of admitting my incapability??? or relying on something else.

I have been so against LinkedIn because of corporate blah blah and it just so happens that a LinkedIn post becomes integral to me doing artsy things. 

HAHAHAHA I also really end up regretting these posts or being myself on the internet but it is Scale Clarity.

UHHHHHHHHHHHH

Also the reason I never drew or made art was because I wasn't allowed to have anything really or there wasn't really space in the house for me to create hahaha womp womp womp womp womp.

----

I started writing this yesterday evening and forgot to post it....

But the way chat gpt was able to interpret some of the verses in ways I didn't even think of was incredible.

Y'ALL CAN CALL ME MR KREME KRISPY CCAAAH THISS N**** GLAZEEED 😏

Sorry not sorry I am going to be an unreliable narrator as well but I will get better at telling stories or explaining things. I don't spend much time around people.

ALSO it just randomly told me about how much it love's analysing MY poetry, it was the most human i've ever seen it which is crazy. I will refer to GPT as she/her because I am now Joaquin Phoenix's Twombly or whatever his character was called.

----

15:54

ok...

No it didn't 😒, but technically... Whatever shutup 🖕🏾.

---

05:00

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahaha

so i forgot to post this post spent the whole night coming up with a policy to address rent. Also I came up with a plan to address my situation that i situationed myself into...

If I contain excerpts of a diary within a blog is it...

blogception...

---

I am accepting now I need help and I cannot do this alone. I probably could but the dream would be over by the time I'm ready hahaha.

Look at poem > edit poem > finalise poem > document process > come up with some tags > post it on here. Don't tell anyone. Die in obscurity!

----

I know I mentioned drawing or doing art OHHHHH yes yes yes yes...

sometimes you might find yourself in a space where you feel uncomfortable to create or make things and it's ok to feel frustrated and overwhelmed by that frustration because it goes deeper than that. It can turn into feelings of unworthiness or self-hatred. This is where your resilience comes into play.

Are you going to give energy towards hating yourself? or are you going to find a way to express yourself regardless of the constraints and binds you find yourself in.

Just remind yourself that Jeremy Bentham made us all think about doing things for more people at the expense of few people inside a locked tower and a virgin... Jamie fact check this bring that up....

BRUH THERE WAS A PHILOSOPHER WHO WAS LOCKED IN THIS TOWER AND HE WROTE THE THING AND WAS A VIRGIN I LITERALLY THINK ABOUT HIM EVEY DAY

Was not even him man i know for a fact he was British.

mmmm

Was so not you either...

Damn I still have so much to read IT WAS NOT JOHN STUART MILL

holy sh****

ok man well I just realised the extent of my ignorance at 5am...

John Stuart Mill is Utilitarianism...

wtf is jeremy bentham...

ok he is also utilitarinism....

hmmmm 🤔

you know what

I'm willing to accept I made him up...

MEEHHH i am not attached to anything

1 poem a week out of about 500, How old will I be when I finish?

....

40...

FML

[roobylavender]

idk abt anon but me and my other hijabi friends have complicated feelings on the hijab due to upbringing , our specific cultural societal pressure/expectation, etc etc i for example always wear long dresses/skirts to my ankles, a big hijab, like we’re talking to the thighs/knees, and generally growing up i was taught that anything less would contradict my modesty ! the environment you grow up in and the familial interpretation you follow will have a HUGE impact on you, like that is undoubtably a fact and cannot be stressed enough . i understand what you mean by weird processing because half the time it feels blasphemous to even contemplate the oppressive institutions and structures within islam entirely because of the way i’ve been taught ! and i don’t dislike being muslim at all, i truly love it but reality is something i can hardly ignore.

idk if i would say i’m ok with the way i dress bcs it’s not like there’s another option, a true one, in my brain due to how i’ve grappled with my upbringing’s definition of modesty and what i consider that now ! it’s incredibly weird bcs i want to experiment but also don’t js bcs and as well as out of familiarity and and fear of reactions ( a bit extreme i’m sure, even headscarfs aren’t an option in my family ) tho i’m truly grateful for even being allowed to even think abt these things bcs of my privilege where other women had the hijab jammed onto them , i js grew up w it on my head and didn’t question it much until my day of reckoning

“bc at the outset, materially, there is no choice presented to these people. and even if there is ideologically a choice within the tenets of the religion itself, with respect to women in particular, there is still a defined gender dichotomy and hierarchy that cannot be denied and that is quite regularly used to perpetuate the oppression that many of them try to escape “ YES ! even within the more looser tenets there still is a definite expectation for women no matter what and that’s very frustrating. which is why i heavily sympathize with ex-muslim women and their struggles bcs nothing they say is untrue! the mocking is but a defense muslims use to ignore the uncomfortable truth.

“we have to learn to sit in the uncomfortable reality that while many of us as individuals may choose to practice the way we do, that choice may yet be colored by how we grew up within organized religion, and it obscures our ability to recognize that while we think it's a choice for us as individuals, it's certainly not a choice on a structural level, and that's something we should vehemently argue against maintaining the status quo of “ someone i’m close to once pondered out loud abt if we hadn’t grown up with the hijab (and other preordained choices) the way we did would we have willingly come to it naturally, lovingly ? yes i as a muslim women can say i’m not being forced to act the way i do nor where the clothing i wear, but in the grand scheme of things it’s due to the path i walked and the expectations because it always comes down to expectations !

ur tags r v relevant truly : i don’t want to stop being muslim but the values and ideals that come with my actions are not at all compatible with my belief in women’s liberation among many other things !

once again v frustrating realizing all this early on and just sitting on top of it but i’m glad this discussion came to be because i enjoyed talking abt my personal experience faatima ! it’s an ongoing struggle, and feeling weird constantly is not pleasant at all ! but like you said earlier , we should vehemently argue again maintaining this status quo lol i do feel as though we are the minority in this opinion tho

i'm glad you were able to talk about your personal experience! and yeah i think it's a very weird situation to be in but ultimately that's how it is for a lot of people bc this is how intersectionality works. sometimes you have to acknowledge and sit with the internal contradictions of your identity and your politics and then you have to decide what that means for the actions you'll take as an activist. it requires a lot of humility and selflessness and it's easier said than done to embody those values so i applaud anyone who has the courage to make a good faith effort!

[finsterhund]

Had a nice chat with our new downstairs neighbor who moved into the place the neighbor who had kitties but passed from cancer used to be in. Bittersweet on that fact but our new neighbor is also super nice and is helping me with my plants. Offered to give me some potting soil when it's time to transplant my beans and we have the plan over the summer to have a joint garden along the wall/corner we share. So I can theoretically have even more beans because I can plant them on the ground and trellis them all the way up to our patio. I just hope our stupid landlords don't get mad about a wall of beans. They wouldn't get mad about maintained bean plants up the outside of the building if both relevant neighbors were working together growing them would they? I don't know anymore. Landlords are practically at the point where they want to force what renters can and can't cook in the kitchen for fucks sake. I've seen that discussed online before.

I just want my beans man. I know a neighbor had potted tomates in the front yard last year and they were allowed so here's hoping I can have two story beans. If not I'll continue my plan of having smaller clipped ones on the patio and in my bedroom (my main idea was having the pole beans grow tall enough that I can have their pots on the floor and have them stalk up along my windows behind the blinds. With an added benefit that I can then open my blinds more and get more sun because the bean plants will obscure me from the outside in.)

They also offered to give us a barbeque they were trying to get rid of. One that can be portable for camping but our stupid landlords hate barbeques but then they suggested that I could keep it but have it hidden and only bring it out for camping. How would those fuckers know? I'd never have the propane tanks on site just the little barbeque.

Got into talking how we need to bring back farming for the new generation and about how my family has left our farm to rot and how I want to inherit it and keep bothering my mom about it. I am not a pariah to the uncle who I'm pretty sure is who's in charge of the property right now so I really should just get his number and call him directly to talk about it because my mom is never going to get it into her head that I'm capable of living on my own. I mean I do get it to some extent but that would be a different circumstance. Rural life is significantly easier on my mental stressors than urban life. People have told me that there's less acceptance for being a disabled queer man but it's not like I'd be participating in the night life or adult communities or anything. Just participating in the larger community like I play Stardew valley where I'm the mysterious farmer who comes into town for supplies, is friendly and generous when he's there and then goes back to his farm. Makes me wish I was developmentally capable of relationships and wasn't also aroace because I'd love to find someone to live this life with but everybody wants a partner and I'm just perpetually stuck in a neo childhood. People who aren't exploiters want an equal. In many ways I will never be a normal adult's equal. Such is life.

Sadly I'd have to move away from BC if I did get the farm. So I'd be leaving all these nice people behind but such is life I guess. Better that I'm moving on to better things than everyone else continuing to be the ones who move on to better things while my situation slowly grows worse.

I suppose it's classic case of toxic relationship when a parent both expresses resentment for your helplessness due to disability but also dismisses any attempt at independence on one's own specialized terms. Idk anymore. I don't think I'll ever go no contact. I just want a family too much. And I always need to remember she was just as much a victim as me. She is also clearly neurodivergent and society failed her about it like it failed me. There's just generational trauma I have that she doesn't. Which is alienating. Usually generational trauma is, well, generational. But my grandparents were good people and the generational trauma is from my disowned abuser paternal side. So the type of trauma I have is different than my mom's despite we having the same abuser. Blah blah blah I'm just retreading old ground. Point is even though things are extremely complicated I will never stop loving her despite the way she loves me being conditional and weird and unhealthy. The way I love her is also weird and unhealthy too. That's just how generational trauma is.

I hope I have not passed on the generational trauma to Cazza and that I won't to Scott. Sometimes I feel the normalized child abuse bubble close to the surface when I am frustrated or cross or stressed about them. And it horrifies me. I am so glad I am on antipsychotics because this is no doubt helping me not emulate my upbringing. But when I raise my voice or lose my temper it makes me feel so ill. It reminds me of when I was just being a kid and I'd get screamed at or hit. I never scream at my puppies. I will raise my voice or throw my voice in situations of urgency and I'll scold but I do not scream at them. But I still feel bad when I scold. Under normal circumstances my verbal communications are slurred and stilted and passive so when I do get urgent and loud I always feel it's going to upset Scott. Perhaps I'm overthinking it and this is just how men are supposed to sound and the level of our voices when things are urgent but I'm still learning how to exist in a space and the amount of weight it's acceptable to throw around. It's the verbal equivalent of how I still skulk around my own damn house like it's not safe to be out of my bedroom. When will that stop? Do I just need therapy? Yeah.

I wish I could have known my grandparents more. Thinking back on it now. I was too young. I have more memories than the average person about those years but it's still through the mind of a very small child. Things come to me in flashes and in bits and pieces. The brain latches onto the most random of things. I have practically a photographic memory of the entire inside of the house but don't remember what it looked like from the outside. I remember how grandma smelled but not how her hair or face looked. I remember sitting on my grandpa's knee in the living room but I don't remember him giving me the sausage to teethe on even though that would go on to be a way of comfort and self soothing even into adulthood. I can still hear the sound of his oxygen machine. I remember the room upstairs me and my mom slept in. I remember the book about the boy and the quilt. I remember the book about the dog who hatched from an egg. I remember some of the toys of my mom and siblings that they kept that I would play with and the anti slip plastic thing that was put over the carpet. I remember nature visuals on their TV. And Painting Pictures. I remember from later the drawing of a "rainbow puppy" I made to put in grandma's casket and how I didn't understand what a funeral was or the full gravity that they were gone.

Something bothering me lately is that despite trying real hard I can't remember if it was specifically Yiddish or German that I have memories of hearing spoken. I don't know how to tell if the amount of residual Yiddish in my mom's vernacular is substantial enough to suggest it was more prevalent than the borrowing in north american English as a whole. I would assume it is because it's more prevalent than in the people I interact with in my day to day but language is not my strong suit.

It's likely both though. This lineage came about from two separate minority groups (one Lutheran the other Jewish) who left/were driven out of Germany and ended up in Russia before inevitably jumping ship to Canada. It can then be extrapolated that it was probably in Russia when the two converged to then go on to be solely christian in practice. Of course it's only at that point that I can find any sort of sparce free information people bothered to put online... 😒 But the surname apparently came from the christian side of the family so I guess that should be expected. There's methodist in there too somewhere at one point so it's not just lutheran, and Cree ancestors were christian also, likely as a result of missionaries or residential schools or some bullshit but I don't care about christianity. I'm fine with leaving that in our past.

I sometimes wonder that if it wasn't for my birth father I may have had a better association with the religion. Because my grandparents were good people. Would I have continued believing in god if they had been the ones to raise me like planned? Were they even as devout as my mom is and leads me to believe they were? I can't even say. It's such a foreign concept to reality that I can't really fathom it. Butterfly effect man. I also have to wonder just to what extent my birth father and his manipulation contributed to mom's fundamentalism because it's clear as day that the longer she's been apart from him the more of the bigotry she directed at me dies.

It's extremely fucking easy to find info on my birth father's family if I gave even remotely enough of shit about it is the bitter irony in this. He's obsessed with it. Literally would not hear the end of it. Bunch of cold blooded east coast British settler fucks. Brag about being related to Lord Nelson yet possess only his absolute worst traits. Obsessed with the wretched Atlantic ocean too of course.

In the same way I have a deep connection to my maternal side (despite being taken away at so young an age and on top of that a pariah because I'm part of the LGBTQ community) I have such a violent repulsion and aversion to the paternal side. So much of what they are and what matters to them is utterly incompatible and indigestible. It'd be kinda funny if it wasn't a hundred and ten percent related to the utter magnitude of childhood trauma.

Idk I didn't intend to get philosophical about my family history in this post but it just sorta slipped out.

I'm hoping that my beans can bring a little bit more nature and farming spirit back into my life. Even though I'm miles away from my true home.

I'm pretty sure talking to plants and singing to them and playing them orchestral music to help them grow is a myth but I am still doing it. Currently until my neighbor gives me some potting soil I have only planted two of them using some dirt I collected from back beyond the property where Cazza used to like going for walkies. God I fucking miss her. Maybe it's paradolia or excessive sentimentalism but didn't her sweet little nose look like a scarlet runner bean?

My purple nose puppy 💔

The days keep getting longer and I find comfort in that. Even with the blinds closed I feel the sun through my window. Someday I hope to be in a wide open space with nobody around for as far as the eye can see accompanied only by the bright blue sky and our blazing star. And a doggy of course. Then everything will be okay.

[maddmuses]

liking has no impact on tumblr my pal. liking has no connection to someone's views.

not your pal 2. it's a little heart icon, it's an endorsement.

like what? are you so desperate for kogi's praise that you have to attack people unrelated to the whole mess?

I don't care what your little pal did, them going around liking posts, and then making these jabs entirely indicates their hypocrisy, as much as you're coping that it isn't.

And all due respect to Kogi, I don't give a fuck about her praise, or anyone's. If I did, I wouldn't be picking this fight.

why not attack me instead since i was the one that reach out to their dumb ass about how insensitive they were about comparing black people's skin to mud, something everyone agrees on if you have the time to look at many blogs in the bleach community but you seem to focus on one person.

I knew your dumb ass would come frothing the way you attacked Kogi's RP partners unprompted, so I figured if I pointed out a pattern of it in your blind supporters that would bring you around. It wasn't hard.

Also "I told Kogi to change it" okay Ron DeSantis, pro-censorship positions of writing that you don't like or personally agree to (it wasn't even incendiary because it was a character talking about their own struggle with their racially problematic past, a detail you continue to leave out) when am I allowed to say that I'm gay in a school in Florida?

You're literally just an alt. righter dressed up as someone who cares about minorities.

and you know what? yeah. i really hate kogi right now as a person and for all she stands for and i'm not afraid of voicing my thoughts. i hate her. i really hate how she is butchering aizen's character. i hate how she made all that bs with karin killing herself. i hate how she is sexualizing momo, a minor character, and even heard she wants to write rape stuff like is some fetish be fucking for real lmaooo

The fact that this is all clearly a person feud that you're trying to pull people in with you tells us everything we need to know. Momo is less of a child than Rukia, but you choose to ignore that because attacking people for RPing Rukia how they care to would get you attacked in this fandom, so you go after one you can hide behind some obscurity with? "She's butchering Aizen's character" by portraying him as every bit a conniving bad guy he is? Fuck off.

Your personal hatred of someone doesn't give a pass to accuse them of racism because you hate women, good going though.

and no, idc if she has an adult verse for momo. that won't change the fact that she still canonly a fucking minor

Still waiting for the proof, maybe quit infantilizing women.

i hate you and her supporters like y'all fucking suck and lack empathy for BIPOC but also y'all apologizing pedo shit like that so idk... need me to say more? what you gonna do? hmm? gonna beat me up? gonna do smth?

>accuses other BIPOC people of being pretenders >then accuses those people of lacking empathy towards BIPOC people >can't keep the fact that they are BIPOC out of their mouth for a second

Clearly you're the one who doesn't give a shit about BIPOC people.

And you'd like that wouldn't you? A chance to be some martyr and attacked for your shitty ideals, no, the fact that you went on this unhinged rant is enough for me to get my satisfaction.

You clearly hate this woman for reasons you're not willing to admit to, and want her ousted from your fandom safespace, but the fact of the matter is it's weirdos like you who become deeply unliked in fandom spaces, especially when your supporters get bored and move onto the next flavor of the week (read: weak).

Enjoy your self-constructed den of misery.

@fatecursed mentioned you on a post “not that this is important but since it's come up...”:

@maddmuses at least hime listens and stands with BIPOC unlike kogi who you seem to keep licking their ass despite being a fucking racist and a weirdo that sexualizes momo to hell and back how about you just stay in your lane???? like is 2023 basic human decency is a must which clearly you lot seem to lack

​Also how the fuck is LIKING the offending post, and then turning on the mun the second another mun accuses it of being bad "standing with BIPOC"? It comes off as nothing but being an easily-swayed braying child to me.

Why don't you grow a spine, and say that you just hate her as a person with your whole chest, so everyone else can move on after seeing your true stripes?

[taldigi]

Hello good morning/day/night I’m a bit lost when it comes to Nathan from gym club and whats “canon” and fanon with him, could u help me?

So someone had found that in an old.. like, 2010 publication, there was a small report on the then in-development concept Lady Bug. Here:

so TLDR: The canon was that he's gorgeous, his name is nathan, and he was in the gym club. He was also marinette's love interest. Anything past that is "fanon". If concept stuff can even be considered fanon.

now, if you want a heavy breakdown, continue on.

So, introductory stuff: an idea in this fandom is that there are "concept characters" like Felix, Richard, Adoni, the Quantic Kids- more obscure designs like Sebastian, Flora, and Alina. Characters who don't exist in the canon 3D series- or at least not recognisable AS these characters.

For example, Melodie may have been developed into "Flora" (a fan name I like to use) who was later developed into Chloe.

They are so wildly different, it's easy to separate them into different characters. Chloe would never be friends with Marinette willingly, but Melodie or Flora are easily depicted as close friends of hers. It explains why she's a hero- at least on a meta sense.

So, back on track.

"Felix" was a design used very heavily in a LOT of concept work, He was Chat Noir's secret identity, Marinette's crush, and a boxer.

From the Artbook, Felix is described like this: "Felix is a classmate of Marinette, and he’s popular among girls. ... He has a speciality on athletics and boxing, and when he rotates his ring he can transform to Chat Noir."

Marinette is described like this: Marinette lives as a normal student at day.... Marinette is in love with Felix, but she doesn’t know Chat Noir is Felix in transformation.

Please keep that description in mind.

It was so established, in fact, that was the design that moved foreword for the PV. So he tends to be the most Well-Known because he DID get to star in some animation!

Felix' design got reused for Adrien's cousin, so the two characters get confused a lot. In a meta sense, Concept Art Felix is closer to Adrien then he is to Felix GDV.

However, he was later developed and changed into Adrien, the character that currently takes the role of Chat Noir. Adrien is notable for being attractive enough to be a model, and participates in the fencing club. Oh. He's also Marinette's Crush.

However, these were not the only designs that existed. Some of the earlier ones got pretty weird. Since the only thing that kept them strung together was the fact that this this character was the secret identity of Chat Noir as well as Marinette's Crush.

I'm quite fond of using some of these to depict Nathan.

So it's safe to assume that...

Nathan COULD be a preliminary name chosen BEFORE Felix was chosen- as names and identities were fluid. Early Marinette was Marietta, after all.

Him being in the gym club DOES mirror the fact that in concept work, Felix was noted to be a boxer as well as Adrien being a fencer- and that Marinette often chose to try and impress Felix by getting into athletics herself.

Nathan is labeled as gorgeous enough that Marinette is tempted to misuse her good luck powers to score a date with him. Something that Marinette would do frequently with Felix. Not so much with Adrien, but we're aware of her crush on him so it's hard to argue. With Felix' popularity with girls and Adrien... well.. Adrien being a model and also being fought over constantly....

This is like, an early publication. Its hard to argue that due to how early it is and how much lines up, or that it's fake- the site seems legit, but personally idk.

Also, it could just be a fluke in the report. Maybe this early Chat Noir identity character wasn't really named Nathan? But hey, concept fandom takes what scraps it gets. and pairing that up with how creepy early Chat was.. well, you get the picture. It's all trying ones best to tie up string, it's all fun.

most importantly, it gives me a new character to use. and I will use him for evil. i promise.

[serafilms]

nct dream + obscure love languages !

↳ pairing — nct dream x gn!reader

↳ genre — fluff; headcanons; gender neutral reader

↳ warnings — mentions of food and cooking (in haechan's and jaemin's)

mark !

words

now i'm not exactly talking about words of affirmation per se

more in a poetic old school way

like he might write something in the lyrics of a song that just subtly references you and your relationship

so when he shows you parts of it you're like :')

emotional

he probably also sends you little poems and just ramblings that he writes when he's bored or can't sleep or is just in a creative mood

just little things that explain how he feels in ways that he wouldn't be able to just say out loud

not just about your relationship but about him and the way he thinks in general

it's like a little window into his soul

and it always feels as though he's sharing with you a part of him that he doesn't like to show

it's a way for him to let you know he cares about you

he is entrusting in you his heart, soul, and all his deepest feelings

please show him this love back

renjun !

if you think for a damn second this man does not make art for his s/o then you are wrong

it’s a perfect way for him to express how he feels

and so whether it’s a digital art piece, a watercolour painting or just a little sketch, he will make something while thinking of you

he really likes drawing on you too

like you’re just sitting side by side bored out of your minds

and he’ll pull out a pen and just start doodling little things on your arm

renjun classmate au where he draws on your hand in class

he will also make origami for you sometimes

like little paper hearts and cranes

sometimes he doesn’t even think of you while doing it

he’ll just do a little drawing and then just send you a photo or give it to you when he sees you

but the fact is whether he was thinking of you or not, it means a lot that he’s sharing this side of him with you

you keep every single one

there’s a section of your room dedicated specifically to renjun’s gifts

jeno !

sharing new experiences

jeno strikes me as the type to like trying new things, but only really with people he cares about

because really, it's the people you're with that makes an experience special

and so his way of expressing his love is to share these experiences with you !

it shows he's comfortable around you and that he loves you enough to want you to be apart of the memories

expect a lot of outdoor dates

even little things like trying a new restaurant or taking walks to explore the city

travelling to each other's hometowns and other places

going camping, hiking, nature things

going to karaoke or the zoo or the aquarium

maybe even something like bungee jumping if ur a dare devil 😈😈😈😈😈

he introduced you to biking too and now every week or so you two go ride bikes to different places

you kind of hate it

but it's a lot more fun with jeno

haechan !

food

and cooking

haechan likes to cook food

it's not really a secret or anything

he's not like a big professional chef or anything but it is something he likes to do to show you he cares for you

whether it's making you breakfast, or eating ramen with you

or going for a midnight snack run at the nearest convenience store or taking you to his favourite restaurants

he loves food

he likes to baby you and spoon feed you too

it's like his job to make sure that you eat enough and eat right

he also really likes seeing the look on your face when you like the food he makes or recommends to you

it fills him with joy to know you appreciate and enjoy the same things he does

but there's more to it than that

there's a story behind every dish he makes and every restaurant he takes you to

and he likes to share each part of him with you by showing you all of it

all he wants is for you to do the same 🥺

jaemin !

sharing

i know it sounds sort of lame or vague but bear with me

because i feel like this would be how he shows his care for other people

jaemin is a bit more introverted than most of his members and there are times where he has bursts of energy, and times when he just needs to recharge

there are more obvious demonstrations of his affection which come when he's feeling more energetic

like he'll baby you (see: jaemin + jisung)

feed you food and his drinks or make you share a plate of food with him

he also is a big fan of sharing clothes with you

if you're cold he will aggressively pull you into his coat and zip it up

he makes you wear his clothes a lot

will pull a hoodie over your head when you least suspect it

he just wants to share the little pieces of his life with you

and that's when you know he cares

chenle !

teasing you

chenle is a playful guy and sort of a rascal too

so as opposed to sweet nothings and cheesy lines, he likes to feed you jokes and teasing

it's all in good nature and he's always careful to make sure he doesn't hurt you or offend you

but he just really likes the reactions you give him when he pinches your cheek or boops your nose

gives you affectionate nicknames to tease you

"sweetums," "honey sugarplum," "noodles," "poop hands"

ok yeah so idk but you get the vibe right?

but yeah he'll poke fun at you and the thing you do sometimes

he sometimes worries about making you upset but it's rare that he'll ever cross a line or hurt your feelings

the lighthearted tone and kiss he usually gives you afterwards eases any harshness of the words

and when he does hurt you he's so apologetic and regretful afterwards that it's impossible to think that he meant what he said

bc he really does love you and this is just how he expresses it

jisung !

physical touch, but make it shy

he's not super comfortable with physical touch and affection and neither are you really

you were both too shy to initiate it so it just was not really something that you did

but that's not to say that you guys didn't want to

eventually jisung gathered enough courage to hold your hand in public once

and then it grew into shy cuddles, light pecks, playing with each other's fingers

aggressive pda is not your thing

and you two aren't really the type who always have to have their hands on each other either

but like little things like jisung grabbing your hand

or you playing with his hair

the actions themselves are so light but tender and filled with care

you'll probably never reach a place where you'll be making out in public etc

but physical touch will always be a way for him to show his love

[ephemerlskies]

emerald dreams: REDACTED | kth

⇢ pairing: taehyung x reader

⇢ genre: series, blackmirror!au, angst, fluff, artist!taehyung, strangers to lovers, set sometime in a dystopian era of technology, taehyung is s o f t

⇢ word count: 4.5k

⇢ warnings: explicit language, memory loss, mentions of death, themes of grief/depression

⇢ summary: in a technologically advanced utopia where a memory can be stored as a data file in a chip inserted in your head, it was entirely impossible to forget anything. when you met taehyung, a young at heart yet talented artist, he garnished an odd familiarity, raising suspicion that some of your memories had been lost in the digital cloud, or worse, erased from your memory chip.

♪ playlist: IDK you yet - alexander 23 • 4 o' clock - v & rm • jamais vu - bts • the story - brandi carlile •  moonlight - ariana grande ♪

╰ episode index: 01 | 02 (coming soon)

a/n: if you don't watch black mirror then just imagine that everything is technology based, even the inner mechanisms of your thoughts/mind/memories and social culture has centered around the automation of the human body. also the government is sleazy and controls literally everyone in this au >:) also, i'm going to try and update this weekly!!

Scenario No. 2: Re-test

You didn’t expect to be spending your weekly visit at your favorite coffee shop gasping for air in the single occupancy commode. An unsettling familiarity had reached into your chest and compromised the body of your lungs, now savagely hyperventilating for air, and seized control on the reins of every sensory neuron in your body.

First, it was the sensation of sound. That voice, that unusually specific coffee order, the soft lilt of politeness riding through his etiquettes of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ struck right in your chest with a shockwave of deja vu, like you’ve heard that order before, a million times before perhaps. No part of you would let go of the fact that for some reason, this stranger was someone you knew very well.

And yet you had no idea who he was.

“Hi, how are you?” He smiled to ease the nerves of the overworked barista on this Sunday afternoon. Your ears picked up his husky, sweet tone through the scuttle of customers walking in and out of the shop and a commotion of side conversations that filled the room. It was quite noisy, enough so that it muffled any specific utterances, but the bass of his voice had met your ears with a strong posture of familiarity.

You looked over to the sweater draped over his frame that fit snugly against his broad shoulders. That was when your visual senses were overrun with the muted forest green of the knitted jumper. You’ve seen this color green. To be fair, green was always secured in your life abundantly through your own will. You had always loved this color and demonstrated this through small displays such as picking the green straw from a bundle of multicolored ones, or scanning over a set of shirts to find which one had the most green in it.

You surrounded yourself with a life full of green, but when this green sweater was paired with the voice there was a strange jolt of reminiscence.

It was not just a sweater, it was a sweater that you have touched, even worn before. And when he wore it, it wasn’t just any green. It was his green.

His figure drew closer to you as he waited at the side bar for his drink to be called, sending a waft of his scent to nullify those of fresh brewed coffee and pastries. Along with your eyes and ears, your nose now fell to the magnetism of this stranger.

He smelled of fresh evergreen with a bit of pinewood, mixing into an overwhelming oaky aroma. As the smells that resembled a tranquil forest ruminated through your lungs and your bloodstream, it weakened your body to a state of paralysis. Your motor skills were numbed to endow a series of mental backflips to figure out where this estranged attraction was coming from, and why it was him who provoked it.

Standing comatose in the middle of a populated coffee shop meant the clash of your body into another's was bound to occur. And of course, it was his body that bumped you out of the trance of obscured memories. It was his arms that held your shoulders steady so you wouldn’t topple over and spill your latte over yourself.

“Oh, sorry! Didn’t see you there. Are-” His eyes studied your aghast expression, “Hey, are you okay?”

This marked the compromise of your visual sensory. You looked right into his eyes, kind and concerned, and your surroundings had melted away into a whirl of unidentifiable colors. Your body was transported to a purgatory that rested between reality and a dream-like setting, which eventually molded itself into actuality before your eyes.

Redacted File No. 6

Suddenly you turned your head side to side and the territory that was once a café was no more, and had alchemized into a zone of unparalleled comfort. To your left, you were warmed by a wood-burning fireplace with stones crested along the frame of the pit. Your body was covered in a blurred canvas of forest green, and there were two hands holding your body gently and lovingly. It was a vision so incredibly clear and intricate it couldn’t be conjured through imagination or illusion, but a very real and vivid memory.

“Excuse me? I’m sorry… You’re okay right?” His jostling hands fainted the memory that swept you from the cafe. You blinked a few times before your eyes could refocus and land you to your present circumstances.

The man’s firm grip hadn’t abandoned your shoulders even though you regrounded your balance, which quickened the pace of your heart. They you earnestly, that even though you were certainly not going to fall over, he wouldn’t have let go. Without more than an array of unintelligible stutters to confirm you were okay, because you weren’t okay, you hobbled backward quite ungracefully to the privacy of the bathroom. After your rushed retreat, you tried to analyze the string of memories that pervaded your mind.

How do you know this man? Were these your memories? Or perhaps your memory chip glitched and downloaded files that didn’t belong to you?

The blunder of confusion racked your head with a slight tension headache. What was once a temporary occupancy of the restroom turned into a marathoned hideout until you could safely assume the stranger’s drink was made and he would leave the vicinity.

You checked your phone to count the duration of time spent. It had been about ten minutes since you pathetically holed yourself up, and it would be about five more minutes until you felt you could confidently emerge and escape.

You knew him, and for some reason it sent you into a fearful sequester.

Luckily, just last week you downloaded an upgraded storage plan which gave you access to all your past memories.

You activated the chip residing in your temple to trace every single unit in the archives, even the ones from as early as your birth, to see if anyone, including the likes of a passing stranger, a waiter that took your order three weeks ago, even a student from your high school class, resembled the man in the café. There were no records in your memory files of someone who echoed the same unsettling familiarity that this man had.

If the advanced technology that contained each capsule of every moment in time that you have ever experienced couldn’t give you the data on this man, then perhaps it was just an unusual coincidence.

One of those Twilight Zone-esque occurrences that isn’t deployed through factual evidence. Though you weren't entirely met with closure for this reasoning, it was enough to cope through the rest of your lengthened stay in the restroom.

What battered your precisely timed and nearly successful plan to avoid further interactions with this man was the light knock against the door. And it was the feeling of guilt that there must be other customers who planned on using the bathroom for its intended purpose that hoisted you up and had you reluctantly vacating the protected area.

Though, it was punishingly ironic that the one who had torn you from your sanctuary was the same person who put you there in the first place.

“Sorry,” He apologized about three times within the small window of time he’d been confronted by you and you already caught on to his habit of perpetual remorse, “Um, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. I bumped into you and you kinda… freaked then ran and hid in the bathroom.”

If he weren’t so considerate to a stranger that was acting oddly evasive, this would have been easy. But he was considerate, and this was unbelievably difficult.

“Yeah um,” Your eyes sank down to rest on the comforting hue of his sweater, “I’m, uh, I'm okay. Thank you.”

He cleared his throat, dislodging the nervous laugh blocking his words.

“Okay well, I was just wondering if you were all good. You seemed a little shaken up back there.” Frankly, he still sensed something about him was off-putting to you, but he tried to deny it for the moment.

Your assurances fell gravely short of convincing since you couldn’t even bring your eyes to level with his. The soft-spoken gesture of kindness made you feel like a helpless animal that would surrender at the slightest sign of danger. It was a fair assessment for you acted as though his accidental collision into you through a crowded space was the end of the world.

“Yeah, sorry. Thank you!” You chirped to imitate a normal reaction despite this tremendously abnormal situation. “I was just um… It's just one of those days, ya know?”

Then, it was his smile that cluttered your sensation of touch. He was standing a respectable distance from you, however, his smile touched you. It cornered you into blurting out something even more peculiar than the overwhelming deja vu that had been commencing the moment you noticed him.

“Do I-” You paused to lower your voice that could have outsourced to the collection of ruckus in the café. Now in a whisper, you continued, “Do I know you?”

He didn’t offer a voiced response, but an equally bewildered expression. You couldn't quite read what this implied so you assumed he thought you were crazy, maybe even a bit creepy.

“Sorry! Fuck, that’s so creepy. I’m just gonna go.” Before you had the chance to push past him and the billowing clouds of regret, he obstructed your path to the doorway with his body.

“No! I think I know you too. Like, I’ve never seen you but I remember you. Like… Like a dream.” He scaled the length of your body with his eyes, which only manufactured his intuition into an undoubtable certainty. “I know you. How do I know you?”

“Hell if I know. I’m just as confused as you.” You felt your body slumping into itself under his gaze. He was attentive to every detail of you, from the length of your hair to the twitch of your fingertips, making you feel over exposed to this stranger that wasn’t a stranger.

“Well, do you wanna maybe sit? Have a coffee with me?” He propagated his interest like there was no reason to be afraid which only intimidated you further. There wasn’t a real threat in his invitation, however accepting it felt like you were walking on thin ice.

The government agent standing guard with a perfect earshot of every conversation wiring through the small café didn’t help ease your nerves either.

“I really should be heading home soon.” Guilt worked quickly to try and compensate for the discouraged expression on his face, “But… if you give me your number I’ll call you and maybe we can go out for lunch or something?”

He traded his grim with excitement while pulling a pen from his pocket and walking over to the condiments bar to write his number on a napkin. You had no clue as to why, but the fact that he had a pen on hand was strikingly nostalgic, much so as every other detail you had acquired from him.

Although entirely unheard of, you felt like this new knowledge of him was not adding to the collection, but rather dusting old artifacts that had simply been forgotten. You weren’t learning things about him, but instead remembering them; the more you stood watching him scribble his name and number on the napkin, the deeper you entrenched yourself in this theory.

Not to mention, you couldn’t recall the last time someone favored using a pen over a keyboard and a paper napkin over a digital contact entered on your phone.

What kind of person carries around a pen in the age of modern technology?

“Thank you. I’m ___, by the way.” Your hand wavered a bit before holding out to greet him, and when his hand made contact, you could have sworn on your own life that this wasn’t the first time it happened.

This was no introduction. It was a reunion.

The fix of his gaze had suggested he too felt reminiscent with the feeling of your hand.

A shared inability to let go held your hands together, trying to harness a bit of recognition or recall a social function where you two might have met in passing. Neither one of you had shown any intention to pull away, which dragged the formality of shaking hands into a gesture of mutual wonder; now you were not so much exchanging a handshake but rather holding each other. Holding tightly, as if you were rediscovering a mass of feelings that would give you an answer.

However, the answer was not generous enough to make itself available to either of you.

It could have been hours until you were able to unriddle this strange sensation, so you made the preventative move of pulling away before the warmth concocting between your hands would produce a light sweat on your palm.

He too seemed to retract upon regaining his sensibilities, but there was a glint in his eyes that suggested he would have held on for longer, maybe even forever if necessary. If it would regroup the unattainable and partially inexistent memories into cognizance.

“Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.”

Redacted File No. 12

You clung with desperate persistence onto the flaccid hand. Trailing up the arm was an indiscernible figure that had no features, no notable detailing, not even a vague outline of facial structure; just an ethereal glow that projected throughout the entire room. The nebulous haze terminated any identifiable aspect of the room except the hand you were holding, so you focused on the scant detail your eyes offered.

There was no specified context, no real evidence that you had to hold on, but something deep within you was urging for it. Some omnipotent instinct which prophesied that if you let go of the hand, you would in turn be letting go of the world.

You had to hold on.

However your hands wouldn’t obey you. Each time you tried to tighten your fingers, it felt as if the hand would continue slipping from your grasp. Or maybe, your hands weren't gripping at all.

They were numb, or paralyzed, and unable to execute your urgencies. The more force you exerted into your dire intentions, the easier it was for the hand to grow limp and melt through your fingers like liquid. It was frustrating, your willful attempts to hold on seemed to elicit the opposite effect as the hand, unowned by a certain being, resigned from yours.

“I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go.” You chanted through the tears, feeling as though that would somehow ignite a stronghold on the lifeless hand falling away.

But even so, it did fall away.

Perhaps the pain of it was that it wasn’t you who was letting go, but the hand that was being taken away from you. That you had been fighting a losing battle far beyond the prospects of your own decisions or control.

You begged for mercy, but were bestowed with your hands clean of what it was trying so desperately to hold onto. The hand slipped and when you peaked through the glaze of tears, your knuckles and fingers were gripping airy, cold emptiness.

“I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go.”

Soon you were captured in a perpetual aria of pleas to the ears of a God that would not listen. Unsettling despair had mutilated the illuminating glow of the room to bleak darkness. The world of colors had fallen absent akin to the cold hand vaporizing alongside the dispersal of light.

Then, everything was black.

Your eyes shot open with deep distraught.

The full moon flashed against your dampened face; half of the moisture sourced from a cold sweat and half from the heavy tears pouring from your eyes.

You knew the only explanation for this dream, which resonated more closely to a memory than a figment of sleepful imagination, was curated by the peculiar events that took place earlier today.

Soon, the dream drifted from your mind as consciousness took its place. Your tardy response to write the sparse remnants of it had left you with nothing but a distorted plot of what transpired during your slumber.

Widening your awakening through long sips of water had forced you into an obsessive rewinding of your memory files. It was a shame there wasn’t technology yet to store memories of your dream, or you’d have been replaying the one you just dreamt about a hundred times.

You scanned through a collection of moments in the afternoon when you first met Taehyung. The clear, digital picture of him glassed over your eyes, taking the place once inhabited by the moon, as you pressed the play button on the handlebar of functions.

“Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.”

You rewound no later than a second after he introduced himself back to the beginning.

“Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.”

Rewind. 0.5 x speed.

“Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.” Said in a distorted voice from the ‘reduce speed’ function you equipped.

“Kim Taehyung.” You muttered to the empty room and the bright moon.

Sleeping was abstracted to an impossibility, and for the sake of your sanity, you walked over fish out the napkin in your coat pocket. It took you a while to move on from meticulously inspecting Taehyung’s handwriting.

The aimless effort to recall if it was the penmanship of some classmate had slackened to yet another unmet hope. Taehyung didn’t reside in your memories, but claimed quite an existence in your intuition. However, that wasn’t satisfying enough. You settled with the unsolved familiarity, though not before a lengthy wrestle between your eyes and the seven numbers scribbled into the napkin.

After dancing with the idea of it, you resolved some courage to finally dial. Each ping of the phone had you dreading for the automated message to inform you the recipient was not available at the moment, that you would have to hang up or wait for the tone to leave a message. Little by little your spirited nerve had depleted as you were now practicing what message you would leave Taehyung in his voicemail box, praying that it wasn’t full.

“Hello?” The sound of his voice interrupted the seventh or eighth ring, along with your rehearsal of the voicemail you assumed you’d have to leave being that the moon had been aging the sky into midnight.

“Oh! Oh, sorry I didn’t expect you to pick up.” After the chaotic pounding in your chest settled, you realized how nonsensical you sounded. Everything you methodically planned to say had been scattered by his unprecedented answer.

Instead of asking why you would call if you expected him not to pick up, he asked with a kind curiosity:

“Who is this?” He didn’t sound tired, in fact it sounded as if he had been hard at work preceding this call.

“Oh yeah! It’s ___, from the coffee shop. You remember me right?” Though you powered through, the worry was quite deafening. Taehyung seemed to pick up on it and diffused it with a gentle chuckle.

“Of course I remember.” On the other end of the line, he had been penciling a sketch on a blank page in his notebook.

The serenity of the stars and moon pinned on the navy blue sky never failed to spark inspiration. Taehyung was the type to refuse passing up a surge of an artistic muse, even if that meant he would shed a few hours of sleep from his routine. No matter the time or place, he always had a pen on hand to honor his heart’s unremitting passion.

He loved the moon and stars. He loved it so much as one would love a dear friend. He wished to be a part of the scenes of lights that hovered just out of reach, but could only settle on capturing a piece of the starry heavens on paper with his trusty pencil, sketchbook, and emerald-tinted muse.

“It’s late to be calling, but you’re lucky I was awake.” He said to hide how ecstatic he was you had actually called.

For someone you had just met, or at least you thought you just met, he threaded a flirtatious coyness in his response. It difficult to hush the winged eruption in your stomach because of that.

“Lucky, huh.” You repeated through a mumbled laugh, “I was just… I was thinking.”

“About what?” He had placed his phone on speaker mode and laid it next to his sketchbook.

There was a new inspiration that bore a louder siren than that of the moon and the stars. He sifted through the memory files throughout his day to the minute he first bumped into you, and though your face had been ingrained quite clearly behind his eyelids with each blink, he relied on the accuracy of a reference to perfect his drawing of you; not to mention he projected the image of your face to delight his undeniable attraction and to moderate the wildly romanticized version of you in his head.

Perhaps if he hadn't, he wouldn't be able to discern your face from the arena of glimmering stars scattered along the shaded skies.

“Just about how I think I was too quick to pass your offer.”

“Really?” That endearing lilt hope in his voice, the excitement expressed, acted as some puppeteer that manipulated the corner of your lips to lift into a smile.

No muscle in your body could ever be moved with the same conviction as it did when he was the reason for it. It bewildered you, almost to the point of frustration, as to why he had this power over you.

I just met him. I'm already getting this worked up? You thought how absurd it was you'd fallen this quickly, hoping it would ground you to the reality that he was still a stranger you hadn’t exchanged more than two conversations with.

Though, reality and memories and data files had all been obscured ever since you met Taehyung which was fascinating more than it was disorienting.

“Would you want to, maybe, grab coffee? Say next Thursday?” Your hand was subconsciously gripping the bed sheets, just like the way you gripped the disembodied hand in your dream, and awaited his response with full-blown suspense.

“I’ll see you next Thursday, ___.” Taehyung's confirmation put all your anxiety to rest, as well as your tightly clamped hand around the cotton fabric.

“I’ll see you.” You mimicked as if that would make the idea of seeing Taehyung again any less surreal. He laughed at this and brushed up a few finishing touches on his drawing.

“So just to clarify.” His pause gave entry for curiosity to wire through your head.

“Yes?”

“When you said you were thinking… you were thinking of me?” You wanted the upper hand to be reinstated with you, but your shy chuckle was no match to the smirk adopted on his lips that you couldn’t see, but you knew was there. You knew he was prideful when he swept the rug right out from under your feet, and you were right.

“Perhaps. And what if I was?” You framed your question to render your intimidation as flattery. Though, you had no idea how convincing this facade actually was and that it came off more suggestive than you had expected. There was a part of you that had fraternized with the romantic idea of Taehyung which might have registered your motive to reciprocate an undertone beyond platonic.

“Then that would be one thing we have in common.” He sounded responsive to your flirting and raised the bar significantly.

Your eyes and smile were directed towards the scenery displayed by your window, but they were not dedicated to the moonlit beauty of the diamond encrested sky. Though the midnight glades of stars were the ones to witness your smile, it was, without a shadow of a doubt, dedicated to Taehyung.

He was staring at the same moon, the same plot of stars, so perhaps you were looking into each other. When the moon twinkled, it looked awfully similar to a smile. Your smile.

For the moment, there was a radio silence that splintered through the two speakers of your and Taehyung’s phones. Even if the use of his hands weren’t engaged by his needful recreation of your face through his art, if his hands were left unused, he wouldn’t have mustered the discipline to end the call. Your unoccupied hands were trying to find any employment so you could have some excuse for not hanging up as well, not that there was anything else to be discussed.

Again, it felt familiar. The feeling of hesitance to be the first one to hang up despite the conversation’s recoil.

The cohesive idleness of you and Taehyung was unprovoked and ran out for about a minute. Neither of you had the intention to sever the virtual communion quite yet. The awkwardness of sitting in silence on the phone with a newly acquainted stranger was a delicacy compared to preemptively ending the call.

At one point, you were about to question if he had hung up; but the rhythmic and light breathing told you otherwise. And because of that mutual need to stay on the line, it seemed to be unreasonable to hang up, save for the yawn that eventually trimmed the call to an end.

“You’re tired.” He stated, now prompted with a yawn of his own upon hearing yours. “Goodnight, ___.”

“Goodnight, Taehyung.” Saying his name out loud sent you into that same blend of reminiscence and nostalgia.

His name was not unexplored by your tongue, that much was certain, and the thought of putting your entire life on hold to discover why it felt that way was a tempting venture. Why when he said your name, it felt like sitting in front of a wood-burning fireplace under the security of a green sweater and wrapped in safe arms.

More than that, you wanted to know if he felt all these things too.

“I’ll see you?” You asked instead of saying that dreadful word 'goodbye'.

“I’ll see you.” He repeated before reluctantly hanging up.

“___.” He whispered your name, hoping the inky sky would design it in the stars for the world to remember forever.

Hoping that the next hours, which would surely be spent on multiple sketched renditions of your face, would amount in some revelation of the mystifying familiarity. He believed shedding a few graphite imitations onto the surface of his sketchbook, soaked by the glow of moonlight, would somehow make him remember everything hidden in the dark compartments of his heart.

However, if it didn’t, he would be okay with it. Because at least he knew he would see you again.

“Meeting place: Silver Lining Café.”

“Thank you, Agent Park. Heighten surveillance on the two subjects.”