#ITS GREAT TO NOT BE CONSTANTLY LIVING PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK

[sideysvault]

ೀ｡˚ Patching Deadpool up years after he left you ೀ⋆｡˚

Pairing: Wade Wilson x fem!reader

Part two here

Wordcount: 2,9k

Tags: Canon typical violence, angst with a happy ending.

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The rusty silver plate read in an almost playful manner “The sisters Margaret home for wayward children”. It was a colorful name, and it belonged to a not so colorful bar. That was the place where the two of you had met.

Back then, you were nothing more than a student.  Constantly struggling to manage the very limited funding given to you. All you wanted was to finish your thesis, get your master’s degree, and make it to the end of the month. Your paychecks had cornered you into the only half decent apartment you could rent: The one built in the shittiest neighborhood in town, in a building held up solely by divine grace and poor construction.

That particular night was the end of an extremely rough week. Work piled up, homesickness struck you every time you had a chance to relax and think, and you were the living proof that nobody could make any meaningful connections if you only strictly went to work and home with no rest in between.

And for Christ’s sake, you hated to admit it, but you really missed home and the crippling suspicion that you were close to breaking down was settling in.

The only logical next step you could take popped into your head just as you were walking into your neighborhood. You needed to blow off some steam. Have a drink. Or two. Or three. So, your steps seemingly redirected themselves towards that ugly bar that was close to your uglier apartment. Sure, it seemed super sketchy. But right this second, all you needed was to get a drink.

Wade was in that bar too. As he usually was. He immediately took notice of the woman who seemed clearly out of place. You looked like some kind of stuck up librarian. And it was obvious that your mood was extraordinarily dispirited. Sitting there staring at the wall with a piercing stare. Paying no mind to the environment you were in. Furrowed eyebrows adorned your face seemed concerned. Before Wade even realized what he was doing, he found himself striking a conversation with you.

He tried to reason with himself. There were no ulterior motives, no meaning behind his accretion. Wade has always had a soft spot for damsels in distress. And you were hot as fuck. Nothing else.

“What's a nice place like you doing in a girl like this?”

Strangely, that's all it took to make you laugh. The absurdity of the corny comment immediately got to you and a loud burst of laughter came out of your mouth. Wade's face softened with a certain sense of pride when he saw he could make you laugh.

The stuck up girl with a stick up on her ass had just let out not a forced and polite giggle, but an all teeth and gums type of laugh.

The poorly dim light in the bar did not stop him from trying to take all your features in. And a sense of warmth began to surface under his skin. He was the one who made your night better.

Ever since the event, you would visit that horrid place regularly. Only to see the charming guy who would make you laugh. Your little hangouts quickly evolved into something more. A friendship of sorts. He would walk you home when you stayed late working. “To protect you from all the homicidal freaks”. Wade would take you on private tours around the city, so its streets wouldn't feel so foreign to you. He could notice that you genuinely had a great time whenever he was around. And that was all he needed to keep showing up.

One late night, laughter turned into teasing, which transformed to kissing, which later turned into a hookup that evolved into having sex on a regular basis and going out routinely. Wade and you couldn't be more different, it was true. But it seemed to be the key to your relationship. You guys clicked together, balancing each other out.

The insidious realization came to you on a random afternoon. You were in love with Wade Wilson. And he probably felt the same for you.

As cruel as life is, something terrible happened. Just as things were getting serious between the two of you, on one cursed night, he just decided to pick up all of his things from your apartment and leave. All Wade left behind was a tiny note stating that he had terminal cancer and that he loved you. With a little doodle of a heart with crossed out eyes and a tongue sticking out of its mouth.

You were out doing research the first time he fainted. A full-time professor had the kindness to name you as a co-author in an important research paper that was being published in some big shot magazine. Wade felt extremely proud of you. On some late nights he couldn't believe that a woman like you could be head over heels a low stakes hit-man.

The decision felt simple at the time. He ran straight to the clinic and never told you about the incident. Wondering why he would bother you with something that was probably nothing. On that day, in a confined room with sterile air, with its gray walls and the constant sound of the old air conditioner, that’s where the doctor hit him with the whole terminal cancer ordeal. Wade knew you would automatically make a billion plans and extensive research. He knew you'd stay with him all the way through the end. Even if it affected your career, even if it would wreck you emotionally, even if your routine together was reduced to a mere nurse-client relationship, you would stay with him all the way. That was the reason he had fallen in love with you after all.

So, he made a choice. Albeit, one that was a little less simple. He was leaving before tarnishing your life, your memory of him and your time together with his sickness. He couldn't do that to you. The woman who actually had goals. And a shot for a promising future. If he told you about the situation, Wade was certain that he wouldn't have the heart to say no to you. He would stay. And you'd forever remember him as a lost puppy who you loved but had to put down mercifully.

The other option was to be the asshole who left. But he could live on your memory forever. As the person he once was. So that was that.

━━━━━━━━━

You decided to take a shortcut to your newly renovated home. You were wearing your favorite heels today. And they really weren't walking shoes. Brand new, stiff, and ridiculously blue. The scrappy and dark alleyway was well illuminated, and it would take you directly into the street your building was in. After weighing the options, you decided it was safe enough to make a run for it.

The loud noises that you increasingly heard coming from the dumpster worried you. The dumpster was located just before being able to get out of that creepy lane, and you tried to stop the flux of thoughts about homicidal maniacs that suddenly plagued your mind. But, the thought of injured animals that people abandoned on the street came to you as well. Getting closer, hearing the early sound of the echoed of your shoes against the cement, you tried to swallow your fear. Something in there could really need a vet.

But there was a mutilated man wearing a red suit. You instinctively froze and began to step back, the scene was so gruesome that you were sure you would puke on the body and ruin the DNA evidence. Just as you were typing the emergency number on your phone you heard that voice.

“Bad Deadpool” it mumbled. You heard some nonsensical phrases before you could make out a “Fuck. That was, like, my favorite arm”

Your heart began to pound so strongly you could practically feel it on your ears.

He hadn't noticed you yet, continuing to lose a shit ton of blood and trying to balance himself upward without the missing limbs and several shot wounds.

Not without a second thought, you ran to help him stand up. As soon as he felt your firm touch, he turned around violently, holding a defensive position. But the man in the red suit stopped dead in his tracks when he saw you were the one holding him.

This was not the neighborhood you used to live in.

You sighed at the sight and quickly took him back to your apartment. You knew it was him. Not only that, but you were sure of it. The lame jokes had given it away. And that voice had haunted you for a long time. You'd recognize him anywhere. His remaining arm felt the same, the inflections of his tired voice sounded the same, and the shock he’d felt at seeing you was indisputable belonging to him.  You had heard rumors about the red suit. But never wondered who could be behind the mask. Wade was supposed to be dead by now, anyway.

Wade, on the other hand, was focusing on not making a sound. He really hoped breaking your heart had left you clinically insane. Insane enough to rescue random mutilated men off the street.

As soon as you entered the apartment it became tainted with carnage. A trail of crimson red adorned your freshly painted white snow walls. Little chunks of skin would occasionally fall. Accompanying the already gruesome blood. Your heels had been lost somewhere along the way and with great effort you had managed to throw him into a bed that he wasn't yet familiar with.

Fuck it. As if losing an arm and a leg wasn't enough. This was breathtakingly fucked.

The shock left your body as soon as you saw your not-dead ex-boyfriend mutilated on your bed. And shock was the only thing keeping you together.

By that moment he was certain you knew it was him. Your eyes began to tear up at the sight of his wounded body, your cheeks were trembling with fear, or disgust, or a combination of both. Before he could try to get up, a pool of blood came shooting out of his mouth without warning. Some of it must have filtered through the mask because you somehow looked more terrified than before. He felt dizzy. And before Wade could do anything about it, you took out his mask on a whim to try to avoid him choking on his own blood. And that was it. All that pain, all the abandonment, the secrecy. It all meant nothing now. You had seen his face.

You were definitely taken aback. And he felt his heart break a little when you instinctively removed her hand from his face. You swallowed with difficulty, shook your head and got up. There were more pressing matters at hand. You had heard things about the vigilante regenerating. But you weren't taking any chances. Not with Wade. Never again.

It didn't matter how fucked up he looked now. He took the opportunity of you leaving the room to put his mask back on as quickly as he could. As he was trying to process everything that had just happened, through the door he could see your crying face moving up and down around the apartment. And there you were. Carrying it all into the bedroom.

It was a massive, fancy emergency kit that you had saved up for back in the day. When he was still beating bad guys for money and living with you. You had kept it all this time. And it was still perfectly stocked.

Wade couldn't lift his gaze to meet yours. But he noticed that you seemed relatively unfazed by his new face now. Or by the fact that you had seen him lacking two limbs and with some extra holes. The tears had stopped, but the mortifying look on your face never left. You always knew what he did for a living, you weren’t stupid. But he had always managed to keep it out of home. Or at least he tried to. Never to this extent. You weren't really used to it.

After all he had faced, he thought he did not need any care anymore. Just his healing, getting high and his unicorn. After all, his body would mend all the damage he had done to it and grow itself back together. But it still hurts. And you still tried to make it better. You begin to patch him up as best as you can, taking your time disinfecting, sewing, and fixing him. He knew you well enough to be absolutely certain that you were trying not to gag at the sight of the wounds. And he appreciated your efforts.

When you finished, you softly traced your fingernails on his bandages. He was too tired to talk. And you were still too shocked. How the fuck is he still alive after those injuries? What had happened to him after all these years?

Without saying a word you got up and went straight to the kitchen. You returned after some time, with his favorite tea, soup, and all the analgesics you could find. Your kindness gave him courage to stop being such a weak pussy and actually try to talk to you. You had seen him. Even if you wouldn't want anything to do anymore, the worst had passed.

��So… Sorry about your walls. Didn't know you had a fancy place now. I would've totally died in another alleyway, I promise. And, sorry, for-uhm, you know. The character shattering abandonment”

He coughed some blood. You just furrowed your eyebrows and as slowly as you could, so he could actually stop you this time if that was what he wanted, you removed his mask again. Your eyes pierced him with earnest intensity.

“You are a fucking asshole. And I fucking hate you. And I'm so glad you are alive”

"I know, I know, baby. And thank you for going all Mother Teresa on me. Well, wrong comparison. But, yeah. I'll be okay in no time. It's hard to explain right now. But, I will do right by you and paint your walls bright white when my leg and everything grows back! Pinky promise. I'll also buy you new shoes. It's kinda gross that you are footless. Or, well, it could be h-”

“Oh my lord, Wade. Just shut up and get some rest. Eat when you feel better. And scream if you need something”

And just when you were about to leave the room he softly said “Hey. I'm sorry. I-, I didn't want to bring you onto the whole cancer show. I was going to fix myself and come back. And then everything got fucked. I couldn't let you see me like this. Understand that. I'm a monster now. Inside out. I would have never left if there had been a way of staying without ruining your life”

You just looked at him for a long moment. Tears began to appear in your eyes, threatening to come out again. As soon as he saw your face, he immediately tried to lighten up the mood. “Hey, how long have you been obsessed with me?

Still keeping that old thing?” He said as he gestured at the now empty emergency kit.

He didn't have the heart to explain to you that it was a waste in him.

Saying nothing in response to Wade's dumb joke, you just rolled your eyes. Hearing him talk that way about himself hurt your soul. You couldn't help yourself anymore, so you walked towards the injured man with tears running down your face. You sat down on a chair beside the bed and rested your head on his lap.

He called your name softly “there's no need to cry. I know I belong to a fucking circus, but this is getting a little offensive" Wade finally got a chuckle out of you. You smile at him and wipe out your tears. Wade winces slightly when you tenderly leave a kiss on his forehead. He feels ashamed of the tact his ruined skin probably had left on your soft lips. It has truly been so long. You notice how he reacts. So you put your hands around his face and gently kiss each of his cheeks, and then the bridge of his nose. As softly as you can.

"I'll go now before you make some lame Greek kiss joke. Get some rest. We'll talk in the morning. I know you are sorry.” With a more serious voice, you added.

“Just no more running away in the middle of the night. Okay?”

Wade softens. He really missed you. As much as he liked Al's old ass, his true home was with you. Even after all these years. Even after what he did to you. Even with how he looked. Wade was certain he would be able to sleep soundly for the first time in years. He was safe now.

“Never again. I promise. I'll do right by you. Okay? We'll be friends with a ton of disgusting unexplored sexual tension in no time and who knows where that could lead to”

You laughed again. And there it was. His favorite sound in the world. It sounded just like the first time he heard it all those years ago.

"By the way, you do owe me those heels. And white walls. You pinky promised it. Oh, and you also owe me the biggest fucking explanation of the century.”

“Sounds like a start to me”

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Notes: OMG my first big one! I’m excited to post this. I hope it makes sense, if it doesn’t, feedback is always welcomed! -Sidey xxo

[Edited on October 2024! This was poorly written and I was fully proud of it 😭 shoutout to @nikkiwho, who I fixed this fit for] btw, I’m working on your request for part two even if it’s been a while! Hope you like it.

[axgmented]

a little bit of an explanation as to whats happened in my life, to keep yall up to date if you wish.

idk really how to start this off, so if it seems a little jumbled & out there I'm sorry!

it's been three years since i left my ex "husband". So by legal standards, no we weren't married. I had a place holder ring. Stayed with him for 9 years. He was emotionally abusive, narcissistic, and isolated me from my friends. Honestly, I can't even put plural for that-- I was "allowed" one friend, and that was the girl who is practically my sister from HIGH SCHOOL. And even then? it was a big to-do if I wanted to spend time with her. I never got to see my mother, who I have a strained relationship with already.

In those three years, I have bought a house (i dont recommend doing what I did. Just.. explore your options.) My situation was that my mother didn't want me living with her anymore and thats fine-- she is entitled to her own space and what not. I'm grown, 30 years old this year, and she has raised me so I get it. I bought this house hastily and to its credit it's a great little starter house for two people. Only issue is, it's small but like I said I just wish I had waited a little bit and shopped around, but I felt the quicker I could get out the faster I could get my cats back! And did.

I've also gotten a new car, a better position at my job (but fuck that place tbqh. grateful for the paycheck but man... 6pm-6am is ROUGH when you are chronically ill.) and....maybe....just maybe... a new partner. I've went from 21lbs to 150 (and that was honestly all in the first year-- I've maintained that weight just about constantly for 2 years running now).

But with new changes, there isn't always a silver lining.

My depression got bad, my anxiety worse, I've developed new health issues such as POTS (thats really fun to have in a warehouse work setting in the middle of summer), seizures (these are non-epileptic), and as of today, chronic hives (and I thought eczema was hard to deal with) on top of my insomnia just absolutely taking the piss out of me. Then one of my moms got into an accident on 4th of july weekend, my co-worker just had to be taken off of a vent because he was denied a lung transplant (guy was only in his 60s if best) & I've fallen out of friendship with what used to be a good coworker (who is now my boss...it's going exactly how you'd imagine lol). Something happened with my partners family, but that's for them to share if they wish.

So all in all 2024 has been absolutely KICKING my ass but I'm still here. I'm sorry for having to disappear for so long, but I do not have the spoons to be here constantly. I am trying to get back into the swing of things, since they're adjusting my medicines and trying to get me on the correct dosages and what not (i've had Serotonin Syndrome & thats' drastically cut what medicines I can have with my mental health, in half.

In short, thank you for sticking with me this long & I hope to come back in full swing eventually, but I'm just slowly trying to chip away at everything and your patience means a great deal! Small little note, my handle used to be Loh on here-- ive changed it to Runnii! (or Rune) and I hope you guys like it!

[thisisthebratpack]

1969 - Rooftop Concert (Fanfic)

“I don’t understand” I said softly, not once looking up from my tea. “I don’t either, that’s the point.” He stirred his coffee gently, trying hard not to make any noise. “These last three weeks have been insane Lorelai; I just can’t live like this.” “That’s not fair.” I mumbled. “What’s not fair? That I never know how you’re going to act when you come home? That you change your mood and your mind every twenty minutes? Is it fair that some days you’ll come home and be all over me, and other days you won’t let me touch you at all, and there’s absolutely no warning at all?”

 I knew this was coming. It had been coming for a while. What I didn’t realize was today would be the day. I was buzzing, really excited, when James called me at the office and asked if I’d like to meet him at a little café on Savile Row for our lunch hour, but as soon as I saw his face when I walked in, the pit of my stomach dropped, and my throat turned to cold stone. It was his eyes that gave it away.

 “It’s not fair James. I can’t control it. I don’t even know what’s going on half the time. It’s exhausting! I’m not in control of this!” “How long have you been seeing that therapist for?” “Does it matter?” I finally look up from my cup, a single tear rolling down my flustered cheek. “Yes, it does. You really should have a hold of it by now.” His eyes met mine. They flamed with frustration. “Have you deliberately stopped taking the medication or something?” “You know I haven’t.” I crossed my arms, the anger in my chest rising and bubbling in my throat. “You know I take the damn things every day even though they make me ill.” “Don’t make a scene.” He sighed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs. “Make a scene? Jesus, James. Did you really think you could drop this bombshell on me in a public place and expect me not to react?” “Any other person would be able to hold themselves together.” I sat back in my chair and wiped my cheek, biting my lip so hard I started to taste that familiar metallic tang. “Where am I supposed to go?” “I don’t know Lore. Go back to your parents. They’ll take you back in.” “Oh great, so you’ve really thought this through. What about work? How am I supposed to work in the middle of London and live with my parents in Aberdeen?” “Well maybe you’ll have to find your own place then?” “With what money? James, the last paycheck I got, I spent mostly on fixing up our kitchen!” “My kitchen.” “Sorry?” “Well, it’s my kitchen, isn’t it? It’s my apartment.” He shrugged.

 My arms fell limply by my side, I just stared at him. There were so many things I wanted to say. I wanted to scream at him, to explain that he didn’t understand how hard things were for me. He could never understand what its like to not be in control of yourself, to be so aware of your every move, every breath, wondering if you’re talking and acting normally, if you’re thinking is logical and reasonable, never being sure. Not knowing the difference between happy and manic. Not being able to tell if the sadness you’re feeling is proportionate to the situation. People constantly telling you ‘You’re overreacting’ but not being able to moderate your own behavior. The years and years of therapy, the medications, the hospital visits. The literal blood, sweat and tears. I also wanted to beg. To promise that I would change and that I would try harder. Anything to stay with him. Anything to not be alone.

 “James, please.” My voice was smaller than I remember it ever being. “Please don’t give up on me.” He closed his eyes and his eyebrows furrowed. “Please, James. You know I’m trying to be better.” I placed my hand out open on the tabletop. “I’m trying, please don’t give up on me now.” After a silent eternity, he dug his hand into his pocket, pulled out a £5 note and put it on the table next to my open hand. “I’m staying at a friends place for the next few days. That should give you enough time to pack up some boxes. Don’t call me.”

 I watched, wide eyed and breathless as he stood up, put his coat on and walked out into the busy street. I was to in shock to cry, to confused to breathe, all I could do was sit and stare at the lunchtime crowd outside the café door. Eventually I stood up, still numb and in a daze. I wiped my eyes, pulled down my skirt and put on my coat. It was only when I opened the door and the cold January air hit my face that I took a breath. People swarmed around me, as I spun around trying to find James in the crowd. I was a rock in the stream, being pushed and knocked by the flood of people around me. I quickly forced myself against the wall and stood there, trying to fade into the stonework.

 Suddenly from above, a distant guitar chord rang out, followed by another. It seemed to get louder and louder and sounded somewhat familiar. I looked around, trying to see where the noise was coming from. An upbeat song started playing on the distant breeze. Other people on the street were also looking around confused, trying to locate the source of the noise. A businessman with glasses and a briefcase on the other side of the road shaded his eyes as he looked up towards the rooftops, the smiled and nudged his friend next to him. They both squinted up at the roof of the building and started smiling and tapping their feet. A group of three fashionably dressed girls also stopped and looked up, then dissolved into frantic whispers and gasps. “Could it be?” “Surely not.” “It sounds like them though, doesn’t it?” “Yes, I suppose so, it could be. I thought they broke up though! That’s what it said in the magazines.”

 I crossed the street and stood next to the slowly but steadily forming cluster of people, all looking and pointing at the skyline with a mixture of joy and confusion. “Do you think maybe it’s a new album?” “Maybe! How groovy would that be! A brand-new Beatles album!” My eyes widened and I stood on my toes, desperately wishing I was taller, or that I had access to a rooftop. I’d been a fan of The Beatles ever since my mother bought me the ‘With The Beatles’ album for Christmas in 1964 when I was 17. Actually, to call myself a fan would be a lie; to call me a Beatlemanic was probably more accurate. I had spent my late teenage years and my early adulthood listening to them, buying all the albums, plastering my walls with posters and memorabilia; much to my father’s disgust. Their music had been the soundtrack to my early adult life. James and I had danced to ‘Rock And Roll Music’ at one of the first dance halls that we went to together, I had cried to ‘Yesterday’ when my beloved terrier passed away, I had begged my parents for money to go and see the ‘Help’ movie when it finally came out in theatres in my hometown, ‘Norwegian Wood’ was playing softly in the background when James and I had our first drink after moving in together, my best friend Lillian and I drunkenly sung along with Ringo to ‘Yellow Submarine’ in the back of my father’s car on the way home from a party; The Beatles and their music was interwoven with some of the most important events of my life. They seemed to be able to express the emotions that I couldn’t, say the words that I couldn’t bring myself to say, they were a joy and a comfort in good times and bad.

 Only when the music stopped did I realize I was smiling. For the length of one song, I had forgotten that my life felt like it was falling apart. For the briefest of moments, I was snapped back in a wave of happy nostalgia, and everything seemed okay. The crowd was spilling out onto the road now causing motorists to sound their horns in frustration and peer out of their windows trying to see what all the fuss was about. People seemed bewildered, but clapped and smiled, looked up to the rooftop and tapped their feet when the music started up once more. I didn’t know what the future held for me. I didn’t know what I was going to do. My life was up in the air and made no sense. There was only one thing I did know. I knew that whatever happened, I had their music to turn to. This impromptu jam session atop a roof in London didn’t change anything, but it altered everything.

 The police started ushering everyone away and dispersing the crowd. I looked at my watch and realized that my lunch break was all but over, and I’d need to run to get back to my office on time, but the small glowing ball of excitement inside of me didn’t extinguish. I had witnessed history, and I knew that with a little help from my friends, I could make it through.

[captainimprobable]

guys ive been so good at staying positive and not letting my anxiety drown me so pls let me complain for a sec as is my god given jewish right

quitting starbucks was great for my mental health, but the gap in between stopping that and starting my new job has completely depleted any money i had left. the rest of the money i still have needs to be dedicated to ubering to and from my new job bc its expensive and ONE WAY is more money than i make an hour. I'm anxious to start but so far I only have 2 hours scheduled and not only is that not enough but also i have no clue when payday even is. I get my tiktok payout in a couple weeks and its not a lot but at least itll HELP. But it's also like...this year has genuinely been SO bad and every single time it starts to get better something happens! like why did the eating disorder i didnt even realize i had flare up recently???? like??? why cant i eat suddenly???? I'm so fucking hungry dude. i have brain fog all the time and im constantly on the verge of passing out bc i only manage to eat one full meal every few days. what do you mean i cant eat anything but theres no reason??? worlds silliest eating disorder holy shit! and this is a huge first world problem but on top of not being able to pay back people I owe money to and also, you know, buy groceries, katsu is in 2 months and im starting to realize i literally might not be able to get everything done in time. katsu is my favorite weekend of the year i look forward to it ALL YEAR and I want so badly to make my plans a reality! but if i dont get paid til the end of december thats only a month and a half left, and i can only allocate so much of my paycheck bc im making less than ive ever made. also not related but my gf lives so far away and not seeing her sucks so bad!!!!!!! it sucks!!!!!!!!

anyway the point is im hungry and poor but im very privileged and lucky but also im still hungry and poor GOD

[llycaons]

Section Four: Part XI

In another life: modern AUs - no magic

*giant mancala* by astrolesbian

summary: uh oh! wwx, jc, and jzx get locked in the basement the day before the xuanli wedding! they proceed to get smashed. family bonding ensues. I just love this fic - very funny and heartwarming work issues: none author issues: has written genderbends

A Temporary Fix by bosgood

summary: wen qing, wen ning, and wwx are living paycheck to paycheck and on the run from us immigration authorities, who will deport them to face death if they’re discovered. wq pov, and not long, but a harrowing and painful journey, especially when they run into a familiar face while seeking medical care. this fic is devastating, but it’s really well-done, it does not end on as depressing a note it could have, and it’s not without its moments of levity and humor work issues: none author issues: jl/lsz

*Unstrictly Ballroom by Ariaste

summary: WOW. professional dancing AU. lwj reunites with wwx after 13 years away from the scene and they embark on a quest to challenge heteronormative dance regulations. the characterizations are good! the writing flows well and is funny. the juniors are really a delight, jc is great except he’s maybe too heroic, and wq is a bit too mean :( also we never saw jyl which bummed me out. but mianmian had a really prominent role, and I loved how they incorporated sl and xxc wwx is well characterized as a wonderful but not perfect teacher, and someone who masks constantly to avoid letting his true feelings or wants be heard. maybe a little more insecure than I’d like. lwj is correctly portrayed as an intense, obsessive, harshly disciplined professional who cares about doing right. however in the flashback part in his early 20s he was totally normal about stripping which I really don’t think would be faithful to his rigid, judgemental, traditional outlook as a younger man the drawn-out miscommunication plot is really annoying but their dynamic and chemistry is so good and the final scene is such a brilliant amalgamation of the setting and canon themes and characterizations. really blew my expectations out of the water and definitely worth reading. either canon work issues: the issues with the drunk kissing scene were not as well examined as I would have liked but it was whatever author issues: xiyao, jl/lsz

*strangers on the shore by seularen

summary: a super fun cold war-era spy fic where wwx and lwj, together and on the run, have to outmaneuver a nefarious blackmailer! on the ocean! not quite a modern AU, but close enough. switches between jyl pov and wwx’s. all the characterizations were excellent, especially lwj. special shoutout to this jyl, too - she’s personable, kind, bright, protective, daring, sneaky, and very human. the wx was really lovely. I enjoyed the drama and interpersonal tension and secret identities and intrigue, and the way relationship dynamics mirrored canon was very impressive. extremely well researched, and not really taking the side of any country, but instead exploring the people and philosophies behind the conflict, and the injustices all government commit. all the espionage in this fic is really for the safety of the characters, not to benefit any government. there is some violence but really not as much as the tags make it sound. easily one of the best fics that actually confronts societal homophobia and how it would impact a wwx who knows he’s into men and knows that’s dangerous for his family. not ignoring homophobia, but recognizing it without making it gratuitous unfortunately the jc in this one is awful. just really disrespectful and ‘jokingly’ homophobic and he’s never called on it and he never apologized and I hate him, but him and wwx work together for some action scenes. and I think the writing also got a little away form the author at certain points, because the pacing got weird at the end and events seemed disconnected, and I could never tell where anyone was, country-wise. it was a bit confusing. still a satisfying finale, though! work issues: none author issues: none

你吃饭没有 / have you eaten? by heuheu_the_goose

summary: so lwj hasn’t seen wwx in almost a year, and neither has anybody else. he’s still in touch with some of his friends, but hasn’t contacted lwj once in all that time. why did he vanish? where has he been? is he okay? what was their relationship before he disappeared? what happened between them? and will lan wangji ever be able to speak to speak to him again? this modern AU has lovely characterizations - it's about recovery from grief, and the expression of love through food, with a well-written trans lwj. the mystery is fun in the first few chapters but I think it spends far too little time on actually dealing with grief and too much time getting really elaborate on the minutiae of self-analysis and guilt and ‘he’s going to hate me!!! he should hate me!!! which gets tiresome. it’s overall nice, and I liked it a lot, but it wasn’t quite as magical or romantic towards the end as I would have liked. the wq and a-yuan were really great though, as well as the lwj and wwx. work issues: none author issues: none

on your marks, get set, bake! by BlackWiresOnHerHead

summary: if you don’t already like great british bakeoff, you probably won’t enjoy this fic. but I watch gbbo and I am just floored by how accurate this fic is to the show in terms of structure, dialogue, judging, tone, atmosphere, and food. a bit ooc by necessity, but not too much. mostly a lighthearted, funny, and engaging work depicting the characters we all know and love competing in this baking competition, with a satisfying conclusion. half of the fic is the juniors watching the show from the future and getting super invested, but I think that section is bad so I skip it. also there is wx at the very end, but I find the lwj and the romance very dull and forgettable, even cringe work issues: wwx (the juniors’ RA at college) just loves calling himself their mom. super fucking annoying author issues: well. see above

An Ache Like This by sofriel

summary: trans wangxian! fic starts with lwj mourning his mother and follows him through his childhood and young adulthood. it skips through years and arcs and ends at a really tender postcanon get-together scene work issues: none author issues: none

Everything You Wanted to Find by brooklinegirl

summary: wwx and lwj visit the jiangs as a couple and things are good! it’s a sweet fic, I thought the character dynamics were all very natural and I enjoyed it a lot work issues: none author issues: age gaps, lsz/jl, and sex pollen

*and after all…by BlackWiresOnHerHead

summary: a funny little oneshot where characters keep trying to play wonderwall and other characters get mad and interrupt them before they can finish. that’s it. wangxian are cute. jyl is horny for her boyfriend. nhs is secretly a menace. jc is clowned upon. it’s good fun. note: this work uses the term ‘chengxian’ in the tags to refer to wwx and jc’s platonic sibling relationship work issues none author issues:: genderbends, wwx calling himself a mom

varied my velocities by fantasiavii

summary: ballet dancer lwj and soccer player wwx. lwj is gnc and works through internalized homophobia exacerbated by other members of the ballet community. emotionally powerful and clearly written out of personal experience, so I both cried and learned a lot about ballet as an art form lwj’s issues here are rather specific to ballet, so he feels somewhat disconnected from his canon character. and wwx isn’t quite ooc, but he’s rather generic and nothing jumps out about him that the reader would recognize as wwx without being told. it read almost as original fiction, and therefore I found the chemistry rather lacking because I didn’t feel like I knew the characters. but it’s a good story nonetheless lwj is a sub in this and it’s actually explored quite thoughtfully and beautifully as an important part of his identity work issues: none author issues: none

My Heart’s Desire by phnelt

summary: established relationship. either canon. a funny and sweet little fic about lwj taking a shot at some jin event and getting drunk and trying to steal a painting and wwx wrangling him to take him home. really funny! I love how judgemental wwx is about the jins work issues: none author issues: has written genderbends, cnc, A/B/O, and sex pollen

the whole day alone with you by fantasiavii

summary: hurt/comfort oneshot - wwx is trans and having a bad period. a very loving little fic written by a trans author work issues: none author issues: none

merry christmas ya filthy animal by belovedmuerto

summary: jzx pov! he, jyl, and their baby fly from china to california to spend the holidays with wwx, lwj, and their baby. jzx is endearingly awkward in this fic and he clearly loves his family so much. it’s funny to watch him and lwj vibing without needing to talk while their respective spouses carry the conversation, and the writing for the babies was really cute work issues: it described wwx as a gremlin and make him kind of annoying and immature, but not to the point where it ruined the fic. also, wwx and lwj start celebrating christmas here, which I don’t love, but they’re taking it as a family holiday/tradition for themselves rather than a religious event. since this is modern AU and set in the usa, I can see it. my roommate did the same thing author issues: none

the thought of us seems wholly make-believe by fensandmarshes

summary: very short, very fun oneshot where wwx, jc, lwj, and some others play dnd. jc gets mad. it’s hilarious work issues: none author issues: none

Back to Start

[unrelaxing]

UPDATE!

Priorities have had to shift this year. There's been a terminal cancer diagnosis and after some discussion, J and I don't think a 2025 Japan trip is a smart idea. Instead, we'll be doing a 2026 Europe trip, potentially 3-4 weeks. I am, however, on track to make that 9,000 dollar goal for September 2025 (after some help from friends after ANOTHER bout of illness + tax return). I set up an entirely new bank account this month, every time I get my pay check, a certain amount will automatically go into the new bank account. This is new, and came from the realisation that I hated living paycheck to paycheck, and that whatever I was doing before wasn't working at all.

Guys, it's hard. I'm putting money in my savings but it's stressful. I had to buy a new mattress and borrowed money from my sister, and then had to get endoscopy + colonoscopy and had to borrow money from my mum. I have two separate 5,000 dollar debt from other times money got too tight and I had to take out loans. All in all, I'm trying to pay off 14k while also saving. This fortnight, in order to cover all my bills, I'm gonna have to take on another small loan.

However, it will mean that by 25th of July, I'll have $1,043 in savings. Next month, I'll have wiped off 2k of that debt and I can have a bit more breathing room, I can increase the amount I put into savings, and the amount I pay off. It sounds ... difficult typing it all up, but at the same time I feel like I'm getting in control of my finances in a way that I wasn't before.

Alas, starting a new system can be tough. It's better, too, that we moved the Japan trip, because things happened for me this year that really highlighted what a precarious situation I'm in financially, and how a month of illness can wipe out all my security. I need more time to build.

BOOKS. I've read 10 books out 20, so I'm going pretty well. Started a new system of reviewing so that I feel like I'm actually taking in the things I'm reading. I've decided that next year I'll focus less on the amount of books, and I'll probably only be doing 12 books as goal.

I haven't started Bear's scrapbook because INSTEAD I made two scrapbooks for my mum's birthday. I'm still gonna work on Bear's scrapbook, though!

Bear's nature places is going well, and so is my walking. Recently, I'm walking 6,000 steps or more at least 4x a week, which is great. Bear is getting walked and we're visiting some neat places for him to go to during the weekend, even if it's just a man-made lake another suburb over.

The weekly lists is now my review posts, but I think those are still happening - I also have a media list in an app, and I love it! So this one is working out really well.

RIP, no driving yet.

I'm wanting to focus more on health, as opposed to weight. I've given up spicy food and am eating more home-cooked meals. I've also been fasting so I don't feel bloated, which seems to be working. I've been feeling really good for the past months, and I want to remain healthy and active, to read and write, to walk more and enjoy things. I really need to have a better relationship with my body instead of constantly abusing it and then hating it. That's its own post.

This is an interesting check in because I feel like my priorities have really shifted - I want to write more, and publish a story, but that gial isn't here at all. I'd replace Bear's scrapbook with that, mostly because I already completed two scrapbooks this year, but technically I 'm unlike to finish Bear's scrapbook even if I started it.

I'm caring less about weight and more about my health and how I feel, physically and mentally. Am I getting enough sleep? Am I eating well? I'll need to think about a way to measure this so i can see how successful I am, but weight loss is not the goal at this point.

Then there's the financial goals, which is a BIG thing I've been working on, but is no longer about a trip next year but just about feeling like I have emergency funds before I even think of saving for a trip.

I feel a lot better about these priorities, and I feel so disciplined lately, too. I'm 45 days into a 365 day journal! I'm 22 days of fasting! I'm about to hit 1k in savings! I feel so excited about what I'm doing, even if it wasn't what I had planned at the beginning of the year.

new year's goals 2024

I've started the year a week after everyone else because of Th Great Gastritis Attack 2023-2024, but I like goal setting and I like using tumblr as a place to do my journaling (sorry). You can tell this is an Official Post™ because I'm using capital letters.

GOALS:

Save for Japan - this one is a bit complicated because the plan is to go in 2025, but we don't have what month we're going or the set duration (10 days sounds good?). I didn't go too well on saving this year because I kept getting sick and having to use unpaid leave, so I'm behind on where I want to be financially. On the other hand, I've always been good at saving for something rather than saving for saving's sake. My goal at the moment is $9,000. I have a new job and I'm earning a little more, so I'm hoping this isn't outside of my capabilities. I have to take a look and adjust accordingly based on how everything looks after my first full pay at my new job (and how my health issues go). I've actually never been able to save $9,000 ever, but maybe it's possible if the 2025 trip is later on in the year (September?). TO BE FOLLOWED UP ON.

Read 20 books. Two more than last year, just to challenge myself.

Finish Bear's scrapbook.

Take Bear to more new nature places (doubles as a good way to go out without any spending + giving Bear more stimulation and fun times, especially as he's 9 years old this year.

Joanna and I split Bear's walks - I do 3x a week, she does 3x a week, and one joint walk.

I want to do free online courses as opposed to language learning. I don't feel cut out to learning a language, but I've always love learning new things. (I've actually started my first course already, so this one's off to a good start!)

(Not a goal, but I want to try doing a weekly list of articles I've read and podcasts and albums I've listened to - especially since my new job allows me to just listen to them all day. I think it would be so fun to look back on at the end of the year.)

Learn to drive. GAG. The goal is to drive to my parents' house and the grocery store. Both 10 minutes away. Small steps.

5kgs.

[mageoftime]

remind meto draw my two favorite lads and karlat the echidna later when i reawaken

[dracononite]

i dont want this to sound mean because i absolutely dont mean it that way.

but genuinely how do you feel comfortable setting prices for your comissions so high? do they sell out?

i ask because to sell comms i have to criminally undervalue my art (legit 8$ for a full body drawing) but no one ever buys comms if its more expensive.

how do you do it.

It's not mean! Artists pricing their work fairly is something I strongly advise and would like to advocate for more often, because I used to undercharge a fair bit as well. I don't take offense to people thinking my prices are high, because I know they're not anywhere close to industry standard, and that plenty of people can afford my commissions, because I do get a consistent stream of clients.

I'd like to get a little more in detail with commission pricing since I know it could be useful advice to artists who have less experience. But it's the end of my work day and this all might be somewhat scattered, so TLDR: I'm comfortable with how I price my commissions because of the time and skill that I put into them, and because I need to price them like that as art is my full-time job.

Now for the long version... To start off with, this is all based on my multiple years of doing art as a full-time job. I started doing commissions in 2017, supported myself through college with my art, and now am financially independent with an apartment lease. In the end this is all from my opinions / perspective, but I do have experience.

I base my prices on an hourly rate that I determined using this wonderful Twitter thread on accurately pricing commissions as a full-time artist. This may not be what you specifically need, but I recommend anyway since it's a great example of pricing your commissions in a way that's fair for you.

Once you've calculated an hourly rate, it's just a matter of timing how long it takes for you to finish a commission-quality piece from start to finish and using that to figure out what the base price of that specific commission type should be. Then you can consider things like add-ons (rendering, additional characters, etc) and upcharges (deadline fee, multiple correction rounds, etc.)

Adjusting your prices to your needs, demand and turnaround time can take a lot of finagling. I constantly adjust my prices, though I try to bump them up by a small bit every few months to account for my growing portfolio and audience, economic inflation, and how much I need to charge in sales taxes. Yes - add sales tax to your prices if you make any substantial amount with art. You can do so easily on Paypal and Stripe invoices! Otherwise, you're gonna get slammed with owed taxes come tax season, since taxes aren't automatically being deducted from your "paychecks" and sent to the gov like salary jobs. Trust me, it's happened to me, and I'm still paying off my 2021 taxes.

Also, doing the actual art is only half of, well, doing art as a job. The other half is what I call "housekeeping" or "agent" work - communicating with clients, building and updating a website/portfolio, posting finished pieces to art galleries, building a recognizable online presence/brand/aesthetic, and actively advertising your work in a way that gets both old and new eyes on it. And you need to keep in mind that this is work too, that you need to be paid for.

Adding all of that on top of what you might originally price your work at may seem excessive or intimidating, but everyone deserves a living wage. Learning to keep that in mind will help your confidence in pricing your work fairly.

Now for a few more tips:

Advertising can be hard because of social media algorithms and economic hardships, but you just gotta keep at it. Learn what type of posts work for you! I recommend using concise, clear language and easy-to-read layouts. Keeping a kind of consistent "template" to your advertisements can help people recognize that it's you before they even start reading.

As you grow your audience and portfolio, you can build a good reputation by being consistent and honest. Communication and turnaround time are huge. I personally give an estimated turnaround of 1-2 months to allow for sick days, weekends, delays and other obligations. Having a solid terms of service is really helpful too. I'm a-ok with anybody referencing mine, even copy/pasting it and adjusting it as you need. Feel free to!

Having small income on the side has been a huge help to doing art as a full-time job, if you're at all interested in it. I get pocket change every week from lineart base sales on my Ko-fi shop, but it really adds up. Patreon is a bigger investment since it operates on a monthly subscription basis. Personally, I use about half of the monthly pledges I get to pay for manufacturing stickers and postage. Even if you don't have a LOT to offer, if you want to do art for an audience and have people looking to support you, Patreon or similar sites might be worth looking into. Monthly sketch dumps, speedpaints, streams etc for a few bucks is more appealing to people than you might think, especially if it's things like storybuilding or character designs. People like getting invested in things!

I hope this helps you in some way, and maybe others out there too. It's taken me years to get to this point, so don't get discouraged! Underpricing art has become such an issue, especially on sites like Amino and DeviantArt that it's affecting artists' self-esteem and view on how they should price their work. But there are always people willing to pay for art. Art is a luxury and should be priced as such! It should be available for those who are seeking it out, not for everyone.

[aphrostarot]

Wheel of Fortune Pick a Pile

What has been going on in your life recently and what are some changes being made in your life that you may be unaware of?

Please remember that this is a general reading and some things may not apply to you. Don't force it to fit. I offer paid readings on my page if you would like a personal reading. Prices are listed there. Please message me or email me if you are interested!

Pile One (amethyst):

Who are you currently?

The Devil:

At this current stage in your journey, you are feeling pretty passionate. It seems to me that you might be feeling passionate about the wrong things. You seem to be taking a break from your journey to pursue more "fun" activities. It feels to me that you are on a journey towards the career of your dreams and that you have been working hard for so long that you feel as though you haven’t been able to have fun, which is why you are currently going out and doing things that you deem as “fun”.

How is the environment surrounding you affecting how you make decisions?

Four of Swords:

What has prompted you to take this break has been your environment. You may feel as though nothing has been progressing in your life for some time now which is why you have decided to take a break from this journey.

What are you taking a break from right now?

Seven of Pentacles:

Right now, you may be taking a break from planning your future. Maybe you were the kind of person who always felt as though they had to have a plan for everything the Universe threw at them and as of lately, you felt you didn't have to do that anymore. You want to be a person who goes with the flow, rather than someone who obsesses over the what-ifs.

Obstacles and Challenges:

During your journey, you may have felt like you were being faced with challenge after challenge. It got tiring constantly fighting to maintain your position on top, which is why you decided to take time off. This card tells you not to play the victim, that sometimes life can be hard and there will be challenges and competition that pops up every now and then, but that does not mean you should quit. Make sure you come back to this journey after this break.

What is gaining momentum in your life right now?

Five of Swords:

You have felt pretty defeated throughout your journey because you feel like you are losing to your competitors. Recently, you may have even lost an opportunity to a competitor. In a nutshell, this card is telling you that the thing in which you feel defeated was not all it was cracked up to be, and you did not miss out on anything.

Fulfillment of Wishes:

Your wishes will be coming true soon. Your guides urge you not to give up on this journey because soon all of your hard work will pay off. Wish fulfillment is on its way to you which will then bring happiness and contentment along with it. Don’t give up on your dreams!

What is something you should celebrate, appreciate, and be thankful for?

King of Cups:

Being kind and understanding is something you have worked really hard at. This card is telling you that all of your hard work has paid off. You are who you have been working so hard to become. You are a kind and empathic person, and it is time to realize that. Celebrate the fact that you are who you've always wanted to be.

Prosperity Begins:

You may have worked very hard to build a solid foundation for your life. This card is signaling to you that your hard work is beginning to pay off, you are starting to see some of the benefits come through. You may have just received your first paycheck or received a gift out of the blue recently. Both of these things are symbols of your hard work paying off. Now that you are starting to see the benefits of all the hard work you have put in, it's time to celebrate.

What thing is leaving your life/no longer needed?

Four of Cups:

Maybe you've been bored with your journey, feeling as though your hard work hasn't paid off, causing you to think, "what's the point? Why do I continue to do this if it's not working?"?This mindset is starting to fade from your mind as you see the results of your hard work. This means that your passion for your dreams is beginning to return.

Queen of Wands:

As that mindset slowly begins to fade away, it will be replaced by your ambition. As you continue on your journey, you will gradually feel more ambitious, feeling as though you can accomplish anything you are faced with. When this happens, you will finally be able to climb that career ladder that you have been trying to climb for so long.

Accelerated Motion:

Another thing that will happen once you lose that mindset is that your journey will be accelerated. You will be able to achieve greater heights on this journey than ever before.

Pile Two (sodalite):

Who are you currently?

Queen of Cups:

Right now you feel very loyal to the people and things in your life. You might have recently been presented with a new opportunity, one that would have caused the loved ones in your life to feel betrayed. Because you don't want to be the person who sells others out to be on top, you declined the opportunity. Loyalty has taken you far in life, and you feel that it can still take you even further.

Queen of Pentacles:

For most of your life, you have worried that the money you have gained will not return, which has led you to not treat yourself. However, this mindset has recently changed. You have begun treating yourself more often, doing things that you have always wanted to do but never did because of your fears.

How is the environment surrounding you affecting how you make decisions?

Temperance:

The environment you live in seems to be stable, which is a good thing. Recently, you have begun to find equilibrium in your environment. Due to this equilibrium, you have noticed that your relationships with your loved ones are improving. This equilibrium has also resulted in a mental and physical healing process for you.

What are you taking a break from right now?

King of Cups:

It seems you are taking a break from your more empathic side. Perhaps this side of you has caused you some difficulties in the past. It may have been that you were surrounded by energy leeches and you allowed them to stay in your life because of your empathetic side. Once you realized that they weren't good for you, you lost your sensitivity towards them.

Solar Plexus Chakra:

Your inner feelings are dealt with by this chakra. When you realized there was an imbalance in yours, you began to make changes that would help you to restore it. Such as cutting out those energy leeches. You can also balance this by practicing yoga.

What is gaining momentum in your life right now?

Ace of Swords:

Your stamina and determination are increasing. This is due to you getting rid of those energy leeches. You now have more energy to accomplish things in life, which is causing your journey to speed up.

Crown Chakra:

For so long, your intellect has been put on hold by your emotions. Now that you have put your emotions on hold, your crown chakra has begun to gain momentum. Your brain is being used more often than your heart. You may be able to maintain this alignment through meditation or yoga.

What is something you should celebrate, appreciate, and be thankful for?

The World:

Recently, you have completed some stages of your journey. One of these things is you releasing the people in your life who were not good for you. You are encouraged to celebrate your accomplishments and acknowledge the progress you have made in your life.

Power:

You are being asked to recognize your power. Due to the difficulties you have faced in your life, you have become an extremely strong individual. It is time for you to recognize your strengths.

What thing is leaving your life/no longer needed?

Four of Pentacles:

You have been pretty possessive over the things in your life. This possessiveness and jealousy are leaving your life soon. Or it has recently just left your life.

Recognition and Reward:

Throughout your life, you may have felt you needed recognition for all your hard work. You have faced a lot of problems as a result of this need. You seem to pursue only those things in life that will bring you recognition. When it comes to people who have gotten the things you want, you tend to be jealous. The constant need for recognition will soon disappear from your life.

Pile Three (rose quartz):

Who are you currently?

Four of Pentacles:

You may fear that everything you have accumulated over time is going to leave. Because of this fear, you are pretty possessive over the people and things in your life. In addition to being possessive, you're also quite jealous of people who get the things you want, as well as jealous of your loved ones.

The Tower:

In the past, you suffered great loss due to something or someone. It is this loss that has made you possessive and jealous in response to things not sticking around and your fear of losing them. It seems to me that the journey you are currently on is all about self-love and care.

How is the environment surrounding you affecting how you make decisions?

Knight of Pentacles:

After experiencing such a great loss, you think twice before making any major decisions. You do not want to rush headfirst into anything like you did in the past. As a result of your environment, you have become more patient. It has been this patience that has guided you further on this journey.

What are you taking a break from right now?

Three of Swords:

A recent heartbreak may have affected your life. You have suffered a great deal from this heartbreak. Perhaps this heartbreak is caused by the loss you experienced. It has been this pain that has driven you for quite some time now. You make decisions because of your fear of recurring pain.

Temperance:

You have been so caught up in your pain that you are not letting yourself heal physically and emotionally from these wounds. By taking a break from your healing journey, you only prolong your suffering. You shouldn't do this to yourself.

Love Begins:

Right now, you are taking a break from love. This person who hurt you may have been a lover and this has caused you to hold off on pursuing a relationship that could possibly bring you the same amount of pain that you experienced with that person. If it wasn’t a lover who hurt you, then it may just be that this pain has caused you to take a break from love for the time being.

What is gaining momentum in your life right now?

Ace of Cups:

Although you are taking a break from love, there is still love coming towards you. New beginnings in love are blooming. This feels to me like a new beginning in self-love. You may not have been able to give yourself the self-love you deserve because of the pain you have endured and your guides say that this break you are taking is allowing your self-love to bloom.

Memories of Love:

Perhaps you were really on top of your self-love and self-care before you got heartbroken. It was clear to you what you needed and how to show yourself the right kind of love and care. But now you aren't doing that, whether it is because you got used to someone caring for you, or because you are so stuck in your pain that you have no time for yourself. It is time for you to regain control over loving and caring for yourself.

What is something you should celebrate, appreciate, and be thankful for?

The Empress:

You have grown so much in your life and you need to recognize this. You are now fully in touch with your divine feminine. You are an embodiment of feminine energy, knowing your own worth and never settling for anything less than what you deserve. This is something your guides want you to fully recognize and celebrate about yourself.

Intuition:

You also have a very strong intuition that needs to be recognized and celebrated. You should listen to your gut more often because that gut feeling is your intuition and it seems to never be wrong.

What thing is leaving your life/no longer needed?

Ten of Cups:

In the past, you may have dreamed of a fairy tale ending. Maybe you thought that the person you were recently with would be your forever, but then it didn't work out, which left you heartbroken. Those dreams of a fairy tale ending seem like a naive version of yourself. It was a past version of yourself who didn't know their own value and didn't know what they truly desired in life. Your guides tell you that now that you know your own worth you know what you truly want, which is not a fairytale ending.

Financial and Material Changes:

Your life has been filled with loss, and because of that loss, you are very possessive of the things around you. Your possessiveness is a result of the fear of losing everything again. With this card, your guides are saying that you must let go of those fears and allow yourself to be who you are.

Pile Four (amazonite):

Who are you currently?

Queen of Wands:

You are feeling pretty ambitious about your journey right now. You are ready for whatever the Universe throws at you. It seems as if there is no limit to what you can accomplish. The path you're currently on seems to be a career path, and you're now climbing the career ladder.

How is the environment surrounding you affecting how you make decisions?

Ace of Wands:

You may be in the beginning stages of a new hobby or passion. This is something that you are extremely passionate about and may even want to pursue as a career one day. This new beginning is what is fueling your ambition right now.

What are you taking a break from right now?

Six of Wands:

You have always dreamed of being successful in anything you set your mind to. You believe in your heart that you can do anything and be good at anything. Whatever you do, you want to be recognized as an authority figure. Developing a following for whatever it is that you do is one of your dreams. It has been your driving force for quite some time now that you want to become famous, to be a celebrity. However, you may have recently realized that those dreams were not healthy for you, that having that be the sole reason for your ambition was not a good thing for you and your own personal journey.

Trapped in Fear:

You may also be a pretty anxious person. Your fears and anxieties seem to control your life, or at least they did in the past. You are currently taking a break from the above to better control your anxiety. Those dreams may have made you even more anxious, which is why you decided to take a step back from them.

What is gaining momentum in your life right now?

The Sun:

Your happiness is gaining momentum. You haven't been lacking in happiness, in my opinion. I believe that you can find happiness in small ways in your day-to-day life. In your day-to-day life, however, you have not been able to be extremely happy. This is what is gaining momentum for you.

I am getting strong Leo energy from this pile.

Power:

Having lived with your anxieties for some time now, finding the strength to overcome them has been pretty difficult for you. Strength seems to be on its way. Currently, you will be experiencing greater levels of strength within yourself to overcome some of your anxieties. If you are not experiencing that right now, you soon will be.

What is something you should celebrate, appreciate, and be thankful for?

The Wheel of Fortune:

For quite some time, you have enjoyed good fortune. Although you may not have noticed, your guides tell me that you have. You seem to be very lucky, especially when it comes to succeeding at everything you put your heart and mind to. You are being asked here by your guides to recognize and celebrate this.

Movement, Choices, Decisions:

Additionally, you are a very hard-working individual. In most cases, you don't quit and keep working no matter how hard it gets. Your guides are urging you to recognize and celebrate the progress you have made so far on your journey.

What thing is leaving your life/no longer needed?

Page of Pentacles:

In the past, you may have felt that you needed to continuously learn more and more about what you are pursuing in order to succeed at it. Or maybe you felt that, in order to travel forward, you needed to constantly learn about where you are on your current journey. According to your guides, you already know everything you need to know and you do not need to learn anything else. There is no need to second guess yourself here, you are on the right track.

New Beginnings:

Your guides are telling you that the path that you are currently on is the correct one. You do not need to change your course of action because you are doing everything correctly right now. Keep up the good work and stop second-guessing yourself!

Though tips are not required, they are very much appreciated. Thank you! Venmo: @ aphrostarot Paypal: paypal/aphrostarot

[alpacaparkaseok]

The Other Side

Part One

Genre: KSJ Soulmate au

Warnings: none

Word Count: 8.7k

What is tachycardia?

Tachycardia: abnormally high heart rate

Causes: exercise, stress, anxiety, fear, anger, or love

Ventricular tachycardia: may be life threatening; please see: “soulmate”

Since I could begin to retain information around the age of four, I have been taught one thing over and over again.

Soulmates = mortal danger.

Granted, I wasn't the only one who was taught this. I wasn’t raised in some strange cult or taught that love was discouraged.

No, actually. It’s just a part of life.

Soulmates are commonplace, my own parents being an example of that. The world we live in is riddled with beautiful contradictions, one of the most prominent of all those lovely contradictions being the existence of soulmates.

There is no fancy system put into place, no timer or thread of fate that ties us together. There’s really no way of knowing who or when or where you’ll meet the person that is supposed to complete you and bring joy to your life.

I’m sure there’s some sort of way that fate decides when, seeing as the majority of people meet at a fairly young age. The number of soulmates that meet over the age of fifty are few; although it’s been known to happen a couple of times among senior citizens placed into nursing homes.

Soulmates are the sole reason that most children can pronounce the word “tachycardia” before they reach the age of seven.

Tachycardia typically isn’t fatal, it’s something people tend to experience quite often when the circumstances change. Out on a run? You’re probably experiencing tachycardia. Terrified that there’s a burglar in the house? Yep, tachycardia coming right up.

Have you just stumbled across your soulmate for the first time? Tachycardia in its most extreme form will hit you like a brick wall in just a second.

“Who can tell me what the first response you should have when you see that someone has made contact with their soulmate?”

A flurry of hands fly up to the sky, my own included. The steps are rushing around in my brain, just begging to be let out.

“Haneul?” I’m called on and fight a smile as I answer my instructor’s question.

“First, move one of them to a separate room. Place a door between them if possible, and then call 911 if there are no soulmate assistants available.”

My instructor nods, smiling warmly at me. “Exactly. Now can somebody go through the calming exercises step by step…”

Somebody nudges my side, and I turn to see my friend and fellow applicant, Yuri, smiling at me.

“You’re totally getting in,” she whispers to me.

I roll my eyes. “Just because I answered one question right?”

“He remembered your name...that definitely means something.”

Turning my attention back to the front before we’re caught whispering, I entertain the idea before kicking it out. It’s best to not think about it too much, I can’t look like I’m bored or not paying attention. This is too important a day to give a bad impression. The sigil on the instructor’s shirt only serves as a reminder.

The Bighit entertainment logo stands out like a beacon as the instructor moves about, calling up a couple of applicants to demonstrate how to properly restrain someone without hurting them.

His movements call attention to the yellow circle below the Bighit logo, the color that marks him as a ‘soulmate assistant’. Basically just a fancy word for someone who has to make sure if an idol accidentally meets a soulmate at a concert or any other event, nobody dies.

Everyone goes home happy. Alive, and newly bonded.

And if I get this job, that means I’ll go home happy and paid. That’s all I could ever want, isn’t it?

If we’re being completely honest, being hired on as a professional soulmate assistant for Bighit or any other big agency would be a dream come true for someone like me. I would get to travel, meet new people, all the while receiving a steady paycheck while attending concerts for free.

Sure, it’s a tough job. It requires constant vigilance; a single yawn at the wrong time could mean disaster. Which is part of the reason why my parents thought I was a bit crazy wanting to go into such a profession. They backed off a little once I showed them what kind of money I’d be in for, though.

All of it has led to this moment: going through one final walkthrough before we’re called in for individual interviews and eventually left to leave things up to fate. It’s a pretty big deal to have even made it this far. The actual interview process with the soulmate board of Bighit entertainment is rigorous, eventually leading to a one on one interview with one of the managers of either TXT or BTS.

Our group that started off with just over 200 applicants has been filed down to ten. Tensions are high, Yuri’s near constant fidgeting is a sure sign of that.

Ten remain, but only two will be hired on. One for BTS, and one for TXT.

Not gonna lie, I’m hoping I’m getting interviewed for TXT. I have a hunch that Yeonjun, Beomgyu and I would get along great.

Not that I’m picking favorites.

Our small overview comes to an end, the instructor getting to the part we’ve all been waiting for.

“If you’ll remain here for a few minutes, we’ll be pulling a few of you in for interviews. Remember, if you don’t get interviewed today that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Don’t overthink it too much.”

The instructor leaves the room, and a collective sigh goes throughout our small group. Yuri is bouncing her knee, keeping her eyes planted on the wall in front of her. All I can do is wait, I suppose.

Life is cruel that way. It’s the same way with soulmates. All there is to do is wait. Live life as if you aren’t waiting for that one heartstopping (or rather, heartstarting), moment in which you come face to face with the person fate has decided will love you better than anyone else on earth.

It would be foolish of me to say that everyday for the past four years I haven’t entered my classes on campus or any restaurant holding my breath in hopes that today would be the day. College campuses are a kind of hotspot for soulmate activity; one of my trainings was actually spent just shadowing different classes and waiting for something to happen. It was my first hands-on training, and it only lasted a week.

In a single week I assisted in four different soulmate placings.

And that was in the middle of midterms; when the odds of meeting your soulmate are fairly low because stress levels are high. People are less likely to mingle with different groups of people, if they even bother to look up from their textbooks at all. So needless to say I was always waiting for it to happen.

Always waiting, never experiencing. It’s safe to say that after I graduated both my parents and I were a bit disappointed. While it’s not necessarily uncommon for people to reach college graduation age without a soulmate, it’s also an instant way to get everyone to pity you.

Sure, I wallowed for a while in self-pity. However, once I set my mind on pursuing a career in soulmate assisting within an idol group, I was an unstoppable force. And as for finding my soulmate? I used the possibility of working for Bighit as another way to make my parents feel better about their lack of a son-in-law.

If I get the job, I’ll be traveling the world. The chances of me meeting my soulmate would surely skyrocket.

“Choi Haneul?”

I jerk out of my stupor to see the instructor waving me over. Yuri gives me a light nudge, smiling at me encouragingly as I make my way over to the door with a pounding heart.

Fun fact: many people panic and think they’re experiencing what are referred to as “soulmate spikes” the second they start to feel a spike in their heart rate. 9.9/10 times they’re wrong. One way to tell if you really are experiencing soulmate spikes (the initial spike in heart rate upon seeing your soulmate) is if you’re also experiencing intense tunnel vision.

The instructor gives me a curt nod, refusing to give anything away. He simply escorts me down the hallway and into a room where someone is looking over some papers.

Sejin, manager of BTS.

Maybe he’ll pass me along to TXT if he thinks I’d vibe better with them? No, I think to myself. There’s no way I’m about to undermine myself.

“Choi Haneul?” Sejin asks me, a light smile on his face as he looks up at me. I nod, unsure of whether or not I should even say anything. “Please, take a seat.”

The instructor closes the door behind him as he leaves, and suddenly I’m alone with someone I never realized could be perceived as intimidating.

“It’s very nice to meet you, I’m Sejin.”

I nod, fighting a sarcastic chuckle. Does he actually think I don’t know who he is, or is he just being polite? “I’m Haneul, thank you for having me.”

Sejin smiles again, looking back down at his papers. “Of course. Now, this probably won’t be a very long interview. Your stats speak for themselves.” He waves the paper in the air, and I see my application form as well as my transcripts from college. “I do just have a few questions for you, if that’s alright?”

“Of course.” I put pressure on my legs, reminding myself to keep still.

“Wonderful. First off, how comfortable are you with constantly being in new environments and having to adapt to an idol’s schedule? It’s a rigorous one.”

Chewing on the inside of my cheek I process the question. “I wouldn’t say that I’m very comfortable at all.”

Sejin’s eyes grow wide, but he proceeds. “And why is that?”

“I wouldn’t want to grow comfortable with it. That would draw away my attention from my job, and my job pretty much depends upon me remaining alert at all times. Now, could I adapt to the schedule? Without a doubt.”

Sejin gives a small chuckle, leaning back against his seat. “Huh. Interesting.”

☆

“C’mon, we have to celebrate!” Yuri bounces up and down, practically glowing. “I can’t believe we both got interviewed!”

I smile along with her, still a little giddy. “Yeah, but don’t you think that’s a little premature? It was just an interview, after all. The really important part is if they call you after.”

“Whatever, don’t you want to celebrate with me? I never thought I’d make it past the first week.”

That I can definitely agree with. It’s a competitive field for sure, and the agency does its best to weed out the weak. For good reason, obviously. Nearly half of the applicants the first week in were fangirls hoping they would match up with one of the idols they might work with. And the other half? Those were the ones who quickly realized that they weren’t crazy enough to want a job that required excessive time and effort.

“Alright, where do you want to go?”

Yuri jumps in place making me laugh. Dragging me along behind her, we take the first taxi we can find. The streets of Seoul are filling up now that the evening is coming along. It’s a Friday night; everybody is going to be out and about, celebrating the end of another week.

When we make it to the little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that the two of us have frequented a little too much over the past few months, there’s a fairly large crowd mulling about. We squeeze into a booth after paying for our food, finally able to eat without feeling like I’m going to throw up from the stress.

“Wow, is it just me or does this taste even better now?” Yuri looks up at me with wide eyes and full mouth.

“Is it just me or do you look like a gopher right now?”

If it wasn’t for the piles of food between us I’m sure she would have smacked me. She settles for a quick kick to the shin instead. Hissing at her, she offers me a sweet smile.

“So what’s Sejin like? He’s always seemed like a sweet little teddy bear to me.” Yuri asks before shoving more food into her mouth.

I shrug, thinking back over my interview. The entire thing probably only lasted about 20 minutes, but I think it went well. “He’s nice. Professional, but he honestly wasn’t that grueling. He just said my stats pretty much did all the talking. I think he was just trying to see if I was crazy or not.”

Yuri snorts, nodding along. “Same. Do you think you passed the crazy test?”

“Too soon to tell.”

We delve back into our food, talking more about our interviews. Despite the huge unanswered question hanging between us, did we make it?, the stress from earlier has dissipated. There’s nothing left to do except wait. I feel satisfied with all the work I’ve put in; there’s not a lot more I could’ve done.

It’s the sound of someone’s phone ringing that has us pausing. We look at each other with wide eyes, but there’s no way they’ve already made their decision-

“It’s just my mom,” Yuri sighs out as she brings the phone to her ear. She chats with her mother for a few minutes, reassuring her that everything went well today. I mindlessly push my food around, the sound of Yuri’s ringtone put me on edge for a moment. They definitely won’t call tonight. We just finished!

“What did your mom say?” I ask once she hangs up. Yuri shrugs.

“Just wanted to know if I was interviewed. She said she’s rooting for the both of us, she seemed pretty relieved that we’re not going for the same position.”

That’s right. While I was pulled in for an interview with Sejin, Yuri was pulled in for an interview with TXT’s managers. As far as we’re concerned, we’re now contending for our spots as soulmate assistants to two different groups. And considering that each group is only looking for 1 assistant, it’s pretty competitive. The instructor did say there was a small chance of hiring two per group, just depending on their needs. One of those would only be a part-time assistant though. Definitely not the ideal position.

“Yeah, same here-”

Yuri’s phone lights up again, and this time there is no sigh of relief as she sees who’s calling.

Looking up at me with wide eyes, she looks like she might throw up all the food we just ate. “It’s the agency.”

Gasping aloud, I drop my chopsticks and wave at her to hurry. “Answer it! Quick!” Yuri gives me a terrified look before slowly bringing the phone up to her ear. I chew on my lip as I watch her expression change from terrified to startled.

“R-really? That’s great news!” Yuri bounces up and down in her seat, and I mirror her movement. “Of course! 9am? Sounds perfect...I’ll be there! Thank you so much!”

She drops her phone on the table as she pants. “...so?” I ask her, and she grins up at me.

“I got the job!”

We both scream a little louder than necessary, the people sitting in the both across from us glaring in our direction. “No way! That was so fast!”

She nods, running her hands through her hair. “I know! They just said the decision was easier to make than they expected, seeing as I have the most experience out of the people they interviewed. I’m supposed to head in tomorrow to go over the contract and get to work.”

There’s a little twist of uncertainty in the pit of my stomach as I realize that Yuri was hired within a matter of hours. What does that mean for me?

“That’s amazing, Yuri. I’m so proud of you.”

She shakes her head, unable to stop smiling. “I’ve got to call my mom, should we head out?” I nod, following her out of the restaurant. She’s practically skipping to a taxi, waving it over. I laugh at her behavior.

“I can’t believe it though. Make sure you tell Yeonjun that we’re meant to be best friends.”

Yuri slides into the taxi, and I follow after her. She fixes me with a dazed smile as she gives directions to her apartment. We live in the same complex, so it’s easy to go anywhere with her.

“I’ll be sure to tell him. Who knows, maybe the two of you are soulmates!” Yuri winks at me even as I cringe.

“No way, he’s way too young for me.”

Rolling her eyes, Yuri manages to get one more comment out before her mother answers the phone. “Whatever, you’re only like what? Three years older? Mom! Guess what!”

By the time we make it to our apartments Yuri is still gushing to her mom on the phone. My own parents texted me, I just responded and told them I was interviewed. Their obvious excitement over making the interview fails to buoy me up, though. Not when I’m becoming more and more convinced that I’m not going to be receiving a call tonight.

Perhaps I’ll wake up to a consolation email in the morning, thanking me for my time and sending me on my way.

Yuri invites me over to her apartment to continue in the celebrations, but I opt out of it. She frowns, about to apologize or something but I speak up before she can. I don’t want any apologies; not yet. That makes it seem like it’s really over.

“My parents are begging me to call them and you know how long they can talk for,” I say, backing away. “I’d better go call them now so I can still get to sleep at a decent time. Congrats again, Yuri. You deserve it. Let me know how everything goes tomorrow, ok?”

Yuri nods, still frowning. “You sure you don’t need anything?”

“Nope! I’m all good. Good night!”

I wave before turning and heading up the stairs. Yuri lives on the ground floor whereas I live on the third. It’s a small apartment complex, and it’s pretty quiet most of the time. Tonight though, people are celebrating the weekend, and the sounds delve into my ears until I have to screw my eyes shut and press my hands up to my ears.

Leaning against my door the second I close it behind me, I sigh. The thoughts are too loud in my head right now.

What started off as a hopeful day has effectively crashed and burned right before my eyes.

Peaking one eye open I glare at the big world map I have hanging up in my living room. To anyone else it’s just another lovely piece of artwork. Painted on a thin canvas with vibrant greens, blues and purples it draws the eye and fills people with wanderlust.  

For me it represents a dream that is becoming more and more unobtainable.

My best friend from my childhood found her soulmate five years ago. We were freshly graduated from high school, it was perfect. I thought that it was perfect, at least. They were able to finish growing up together, figuring out college and taking time to really fall in love before life became too crazy to hardly eat.

They got married two years ago. It was beautiful and they made it look so easy. They finished up college together and moved to Gwacheon. I haven’t seen her for a year now, we’ve just been naturally growing apart.

She’s always been supportive of me trying to find my soulmate. It’s odd, seeing that I’ve always been the one obsessed with learning about them and preparing for that moment and she’s the one that just happened to stumble upon her soulmate right after she turned 18. But she never made me feel like I was falling behind or at a loss.

Our last phone call reminds me of the entire reason why I bought that gigantic world map in the first place, hanging it where I would see it every time I walked in the door at the end of the day.

“You know Haneul, he’s out there. There’s no question about that.”

“I know...just, where? I’m starting to think that he doesn’t want to be found.”

“That’s not true. And if it is, I’ll personally slug him for you.”

“Thanks, I think?”

“You know what you need to do, Han?”

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“Of course I am. You just have to go out there! Get out in the world, get out of Seoul, and go live your life! The second you get out and start living your life will be when everything falls into place for you. I’m certain of it.”

“I’d love to do that, really. But how on earth do I manage that? I need a stable job, I have an apartment to pay for. I can’t just leave everything to go in search of someone I’ve never met and who maybe isn’t ready to be found.”

“It’s up to you. But I know you, and you’re not happy. I can’t imagine it, I’m not going to pretend to understand. We both know I got lucky...but really Haneul. I know it’s scary and there’s a lot that you don’t know the first thing about, but I just think that if you want to move on from this you have to leave the apartment and get out there. And you think he isn’t ready to be found? Nobody ever is. But I can guarantee that the two of you are both ready to be loved.”

It’s been nearly ten months since that phone call, and it’s been nearly ten months since I became friends with Yuri and found out about the agencies beginning their hiring process. It seemed too good to be true, especially once I found out about the heavy schedule filled with nearly nonstop travelling and meeting people.

I always knew there was a reason I went into the soulmates studies. Finally it seemed like the opportunities were appearing that I so desperately needed.

Ten months. Rigorous training and exhausting schedules that sometimes had me wondering if this really was the right path for me.

But every night, sometimes late enough to see the black sky begin to turn to a hazy gray with the promise of dawn approaching before I even had a chance to sleep, I stumbled home and saw that map.

Somewhere. Every night, I’d see it and chant the word to myself. Somewhere. You’re somewhere out there.

It’s worth it, isn’t it?

Slowly standing up from my position against the door, I glare at my phone as I take it from my pocket. No phone call.

Another glance at the map, the beautiful colors and lines mocking me as it tells me that while he may be somewhere, I am still here. And as long as I remain here, where my soulmate is will be a big question mark.

No phone call. No job. No soulmate.

Rubbing the back of my neck, I make my way to my bedroom. Now would probably be a great time to shower, but I’d much rather just lay here on my bed and stare up at the ceiling as I wallow in self-pity.

“Happy Friday night to me.”

☆

I think it’s on the third ring that I wake up from my slumber, still in my clothes from the day before. Groaning out a few incoherent words, I search my blanket for where my phone is ringing incessantly.

“Who…?”

Finally grasping my phone, I hold it up to my squinting eyes. My mouth drops open of its own accord, my heart rate spiking. Clearing my throat, I attempt to sound like I didn’t just wake up as I answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, I’m calling for Choi Haneul?”

My voice gets caught in my throat. “S-speaking.”

“Wonderful. My apologies for calling you so early, I’m manager Sejin, I interviewed you yesterday?”

Straightening out my clothes even though he can’t see them, I nearly scoff at the idea of him having to introduce himself. Like I’d forget.

“Right, no worries. How may I help you?” Slipping into the role of gracious host, I chew on my lip.

Sejin wastes no time getting to the point. “We certainly didn’t expect to come to a decision so quickly, but after reviewing the interviews and applicants, you were a standout Miss Choi. As a representative of Bighit entertainment and manager of BTS, I would like to offer you the position of central soulmate assistant. That is, if you’re still interested.”

I’m practically floating above the floor by the time Sejin finishes speaking. “I- yes! Yes, I would be honored.”

Sejin chuckles lowly. “That’s perfect. Let’s see it’s...6:30 am now? Would you be alright to head in to the company by 9 to go over your contract and meet with the senior soulmate assistant?”

He could have asked me to show up wearing nothing but a garbage bag at 3 in the morning, and I wouldn’t hesitate to say yes.

“Of course, I’ll be there!”

“I’ll send you an email with where to go and further instructions.”

“Thank you!”

Laughing again, Sejin allows me this bit of joy. “Thank you, Miss Choi. I’ll see you shortly.”

I’m nearly panting as I end the call, falling back against my bed and staring up at the ceiling with a mad grin. Then, body bursting with excitement I leap up from the bed and hurdle into the front room.

Hurtling to a stop before my map still hanging on the wall, I call my parents.

☆

“I wonder what it’s liiiiike,” I sing at the top of my lungs as I rummage through my closet for something to wear. Double checking the email from manager Sejin, I decide that it might be best to bring in some backup.

Bringing my phone up to my ear, I wait for Yuri to answer the phone. It’s barely seven in the morning, chances are she’s just getting ready as well.

“Haneul?”

The grin that’s been a permanent resident on my face for the past thirty minutes grows wider. “Yuri! I was wondering, could I carpool with you to the agency?”

It’s silent on the other side while Yuri connects the dots. “What do you mean...wait, shut up! You got it?! You got the job?!”

Yuri screams louder than I did while I was on the phone with my parents, but now I can’t help but scream right back. “YES! I got it! They just called me this morning!”

We’re both a happy mess as Yuri decides to bring her things upstairs to get ready with me. “I already picked out my outfit last night, I’ll just bring it up. Be right there!!” She really doesn’t waste any time, because less than two minutes later I open the door to find a panting Yuri nearly buried beneath her pile of clothes and makeup bags.

“Here, let me take that,” I mutter, laughing as she lets me ease some items of clothing off of her pile. “That was fast.”

“Han!!! I’m so happy for you!” As soon as we dump her stuff on my bed, Yuri pounces on me and begins trying to strangle me like a boa constrictor. “I was so nervous for you, and I didn’t want this to drive us apart. I knew for a fact that you were by far the most qualified, they would’ve been complete idiots to let you go!”

Laughing, I drag the both of us over to the closet. “What are you wearing to this, then? What does ‘casual-nice’ even look like?”

Yuri takes the opportunity to show me her outfit, my jaw dropping as she puts it on and shows it off.

“I was thinking something like this,” Yuri says as she straightens out the sleeves of the sweater she wears beneath the checkered brown dress.

My mouth drops open of its own accord. “Wow.”

Yuri frowns as she goes to look at herself in the mirror. “Is it too much?”

“No,” I shake my head as I delve into my thoughts. “I’m just thinking that you’re going to make everyone in there wish you were their soulmate.”

Cheeks turning a furious red color, Yuri waves off my comment. “Whatever. Let’s find you something to wear.”

In the end I try on four different outfits before settling on one that I think will do the job. It’s certainly more simple than Yuri’s but I find that it’s more functional.

“So pretty,” Yuri coos as she gets ready beside me, the vanity proving to have just enough space for the two of us.

“Me or you?” I question, smirking at her. Yuri grins.

“Both.”

☆

Yuri ends up driving us to the agency, much to my eternal gratitude. Once the time came closer, I began to become more and more nervous. It’s been a long time since I’ve started a new job; I’ve been working at the university for the past four years and only quit about a month ago in order to make room for the rigorous training that was a result of making it to the final round of applicants.

I’m grateful for Yuri’s company as she chatters about how excited she is, it’s keeping my mind off of the nerves that are currently tying themselves into a knot in the pit of my stomach.

“I just really think that the boys seem really genuine, you know?” She says, tapping out the beat to the song playing on the radio on the steering wheel. “From everything that I’ve seen and heard about them, they seem really cool. I’m excited to meet them.”

Shaking my head numbly as we slow to a stop before a red light, I try to remember just how badly I wanted this job. “Yeah, they do. I’m jealous, I wanted TXT!”

Yuri cackles as she glances over at me. “You can’t even complain, you’re probably going to be paid way more than me!”

That much is true. While Yuri will still be traveling a lot and certainly have her hands full with the five members, I’m going to be paid more. With the constant traveling, meetings, and seven total members, my job will be nonstop.

Either way, the moral of the story is this: we’re about to make some major money. But there won’t really ever be enough time to spend it.

That’s not why people become soulmate assistants. Those that go after it for the money are quickly weeded out. A job that requires all of your time and then some is exhausting, and the uncertain element of every situation is enough to drive some people crazy. I’ve heard about how concerts can be nightmares sometimes, especially when the crowd is huge.

Just imagine it: one of the group members makes eye contact with someone for less than a second, and suddenly they’ve got tunnel vision and are trying to jump off the stage into the sea of adoring fans that are all too happy to receive them. Then, somewhere in the crowd of thousands of fans, there’s a poor person who’s freaking out and feeling the symptoms of tachycardia, but guess what? So is everyone in the crowd. Adrenaline is pumping through them all since they’re at their favorite band’s concert.

Long story short, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The biggest thing is for one of the soulmate assistants to grab the idol before they can abandon all reason and their heart gives out, and the other assistant has to find the fan who’s wildest dream just came true.

It doesn’t happen that often, but it has been known to happen on occasion. The most recent was at a TWICE concert, where Sana happened upon her soulmate in the middle of a set. The video of the soulmate assistant acting in record time to contain the situation went viral and it’s one that I had to watch several times throughout my training.

“You guys have a senior assistant, don’t you?” I ask, wondering at my title as central soulmate assistant.

“Yep,” Yuri starts back up again as the light turns green, checking the clock. We’ve still got plenty of time. “From the email they sent me it sounds like I’ll be a junior assistant for about six months before moving up to senior.”

“So fast?”

Yuri shrugs. “Sounds like the senior assistant is about ready to retire. What’s your title?”

“Central.”

“Oh, so fancy.”

There are typically two different forms of soulmate assistant hierarchy; the junior/senior pattern and then the central system.

Junior/senior system is pretty self-explanatory: the senior assistant has typically worked with the group for a while already, and the junior assistant acts as an apprentice of sorts. Learning the trade and preparing to someday take over the responsibilities of the senior assistant. They work as a team to ensure the safety of the group.

A central assistant is a more in-depth and new system. Essentially, I’ll have eyes and ears everywhere from various staff members, who are constantly updating me on potential soulmates. All of the staff have been educated in the basics of soulmate studies, so they know what to do to subdue the situation if need be.

According to Sejin’s email, I will most likely be the only licensed soulmate assistant on the team. My job is to remain close to the members so I can hopefully be the first on the scene to help and get everything under way.

It’s exciting, but also a lot of pressure. My only hope is that the boys don’t run into their soulmates for a while; I would like to at least get to know everyone before having to get all up in their personal space.

The agency looms before us in the morning sun, looking somehow inviting and dreadful at the same time. Yuri follows what the security tells her at the front, parking in the parking garage before turning the car off.

8:42.

“We’re a bit early, but at least now we’ll be able to find where we’re supposed to go.”

I nod numbly at her words, trying to fight the pounding in my heart. 

Side Effect #1: Rapid Pulse Rate

“I’m kind of freaking out.”

“Me too. I’m glad you’re here, though.”

“I’m glad you’re here, too.” I grin at Yuri.

It’s quiet in the car before we build up the courage to get out. Our shoes tap against the ground, filling the silent garage with noise. Once inside, we’re directed by a receptionist toward the offices of Sejin and TXT’s management. They’re on the same floor, so we take the elevator together.

As soon as the doors close, Yuri lets out a squeal. “I’m going to dieeee!”

Laughing giddily at her reaction, I lean up against the wall of the elevator and try my best to control my breathing. “Same. Same. Whoo, I need to breathe.”

Side Effect #2: Shortness of breath

The elevator ride is entirely too short, because before I know it Yuri is dragging me out into the hallway and searching for the office #12. I’m supposed to be looking for #17.

Of course Yuri finds hers first, my friend coming to a stop just before the door, turning to grab my hand with surprising strength.

“Quick, tell me that I’ll be fine,” she hisses.

Gently removing her hand from mine, I give her an encouraging smile. “You’ll do great, and everything will work out just fine, Yuri.”

Rolling her shoulders, she gives me a mock salute before stepping up to the door. “See you later?”

“Good luck.”

I scamper past as she knocks on the door, looking back as she’s ushered in by a middle-aged man who must be the senior soulmate assistant. He wears the tell-tale yellow circle on his shirt, his eyes wide and alert as though always on the lookout.

He must have left an apprentice with TXT; there are always a few mulling about the agency to step in for the main assistants when they need to attend to other things.

#17 is just a few doors down, the door already wide open as I walk up to it. I don’t allow myself to pause and freak out again, because I’m scared that they’ll hear me start screaming out here or something.

Shoving down the nervousness to the corners of my mind, I take a deep breath and tap the open door lightly.

Sejin sits at his desk, talking quietly to someone sitting in the chair before his desk. He looks up at me, smiling politely. The person in the chair before him turns around at the sound of my knock, and I find myself face to face with none other than the leader of BTS.

“Miss Choi, great to see you,” Sejin stands, Namjoon as well as he waves.

I bow, hoping that my face isn’t too red as I look into the office. It looks like it’s just Namjoon. What a relief.

“Thank you for calling me back,” I say, nodding to Namjoon. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Namjoon smiles at me, gesturing for me to take the seat beside him. “It’s nice to meet you, too. Sejin spoke highly of you.”

Shuffling into the office, I give Sejin a surprised look. “That was kind of you.”

“I was only telling the truth. Namjoon helped me make the decision in regards to the position, so don’t just thank me.”

Namjoon gives me a sheepish smile before settling back down in the chair. I follow suit, mumbling out a small ‘thank you’.

Once we’re all settled, Sejin produces a packet and slides it across the table to me, another one to Namjoon, and keeps one for himself.

“Ok, shall we get started?”

Sejin begins explaining the contract, Namjoon listening intently beside me. The fact that Namjoon helped with all of this makes me feel a little better somehow. It makes me feel like I won’t be quite so out of place with BTS.

We’re stuck in his office for nearly an hour just going over the finer details of the job, and by that time I’ve finally come out of my shell enough to form a few intelligent questions.

“How many staff members do you have that went through soulmate training within the past three months?” I ask, leaning back in my chair as I examine the Staff Preparedness section in the contract.

Sejin looks over something on his computer. “Within the past three months? Only two; the rest are within the year. We have them renew the course once a year. Why three months?”

“There was a technique that was completely discredited by Léo Dupont and they just began applying it in soulmate training within the past three months. While it may not seem that important, it can sometimes make a big difference in timing.”

Namjoon looks at me with wide eyes, a hint of respect blooming there. “What was the technique he discredited?”

“The glass door technique. It was believed that if the soulmates could still see each other but refrain from actual physical contact, this would assist in the ‘come down’ from the surge in heart rate.”

“It doesn’t?” Sejin asks.

I shake my head. “No, in fact, recent studies show that it nearly doubled the ‘come down’ time. It also served as a spike in the heart rate, long after it should have returned to a normal range. It nearly killed Jennifer Aniston before someone moved her to a more secure location. Best case scenario is a complete cut-off from view, and engaging in verbal contact rather than physical.”

“That’s good to know,” Sejin mumbles, typing something out on his laptop. “I’ll send out a memo with that information as well as advise staff to renew their training as soon as possible.”

We go over a few more details before Namjoon sits up in his seat. “We’re about done, right? I just got a text from Soobin saying they’re all gathered up and ready to go.”

My heart rate spikes again as I realize that we must be meeting together after this. And from the sounds of it, it’s practically the entire agency.

“Yeah, just about. Do you want to sign, Namjoon, and you can head out?”

Namjoon signs Sejin’s copy of the contract before getting up and heading toward the door. “We’re excited to have you join the team, Miss Choi.”

“Thank you! And you can just call me Haneul, don’t worry about it.”

Namjoon’s dimples make an appearance as he smiles back at me. “Then I’m just Namjoon to you. See you guys in a bit.”

Sejin covers the last few points in the span of ten or so minutes, clearly ready to get going like I am. We finish up going over vacation days when he leans back with a sigh.

“And yeah, I think that’s about it. Any questions? Today you’ll be getting a feel for the schedule and meet the boys and staff you’ll be working closely with, so don’t hesitate to ask them any more questions as they come.”

Palms starting to sweat with the idea of meeting the rest of Bighit shortly, I give a curt shake of the head. “I think I’m good for now.” Ignoring the tightness in my chest, I reach out for the contract.

Side Effect #3: Chest pain

“Wonderful. Just sign here, and I’ll send you a copy of this.”

☆

Sejin and I walk down the hall after being dropped off at the fifth floor. The second the elevator doors opened I could hear the ruckus of two kpop groups in one room.

To my shock Yuri’s voice rings out, followed by a bout of laughter. It would appear that she’s already found her place.

Sejin gives me an encouraging smile as we inch closer to the room at the end of the hall. “You ready? It’s been a pretty big couple of days for you.”

I can’t help but find comfort in Sejin’s attitude. I’m glad he understands the deer in the headlights look I’m probably sporting right now.

I hope my soulmate is like him.

The thought passes through my mind suddenly, making me go blank for a moment. While it’s a true sentiment, I have to focus on making a good impression today so I can find my soulmate another day.

One day at a time, Hanuel.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I respond, offering him a shaky smile in return. Sejin chuckles, and I wonder if he felt the same way early on in his manager days. I wonder if he still occasionally feels that way, now that BTS has grown more than anyone ever expected.

He goes before me, entering the room and already falling into a conversation with someone. I hesitate for a second, my heart pounding so hard that it’s hard to focus. Rolling my neck, I take a step into the room.

“Ah, there she is!” Yuri chirps out, leaving from where she was beside Beomgyu, who was showing her a video on his phone. “You guys took a long time.”

If my heart wasn’t currently trying to leap out of my ribcage, I would come up with something funny to say.

“Haneul is very thorough,” Sejin comments from where he stands beside one of the TXT managers. “Would you like to introduce yourself?”

“Quick,” I hear someone speak up, “Everyone pretend like Sejin didn’t just say her name!”

It was Hueningkai that made the comment. I can tell who it was because the boy in question is currently dodging an elbow to the ribs from Taehyun. Yuri laughs at their behavior before looking back to me expectantly.

“Oh,” my voice sounds a bit croaky. After clearing my throat, I try again. “Hello everyone. I’m Choi Haneul, it’s nice to meet you all.”

The seven members of BTS come up to the front, gathering in a line like it’s second nature. Namjoon gives me a small smile, which I take comfort in.

“Well, you’ve met me already...this is everyone else.”

Taehyung steps forward, giving me a small wave and grinning wide. “Just call me Tae.”

Jimin gives his friend a wide-eyed look. “Isn’t that a bit informal for just meeting?” Tae’s cheeks go a little red.

“Is it?” He asks, and I nearly pass out from the amount of sweetness in the room. “I think we’ll be good friends, so why not just skip the formalities?”

The boys reflect various levels of long-suffering as Jungkook shakes his head while the rest of the room laughs at Tae’s odd manner. “We both know it doesn’t work like that.”

Sejin answers the question I didn’t even know I was thinking. “In case you’re wondering, they’re always like this. Might as well get used to it.”

Yuri giggles at my reddened cheeks, but I brush off the embarrassment enough to look back at the boys. “That’s good to know.” The boys break from their line in order to return to wherever they were lounging about earlier. Once they turn to leave I feel a bit better; my heart calming down. Hopefully, with time, I’ll be able to breathe properly around them.

I remain near the door, unsure as to what to do next. It looks like Sejin and the other managers are preparing to give a debriefing of sorts and everyone is just waiting around for it. Thankfully, Yuri remains beside me.

“How are you holding up?” She asks me quietly. I give her a long look, conveying the depth of my feelings perfectly.

“I can’t calm down. I feel like I’m either going to pass out or going to run the length of Seoul in five minutes flat.”

Side Effect #4: Lightheadedness and/or fainting (syncope) 

Yuri snorts. “Now that I’d like to see.”

Taehyung calls out to me, pulling me from my conversation. “You’re from Seoul, Miss Choi?”

I smile warmly at him, already taking a liking to him. He’s one big contradiction: his looks make him appear intimidating, but he has the warmest personality.

“I’m originally from Anyang, actually. But I’ve been in Seoul for the past five years.”

“Oh, we’re neighbors!”

Jin is the one who spoke, and I look to where he stands behind the couch, leaning down to watch something on Jungkook’s phone. His eyes are turned up to me, a hint of excitement at being from neighboring cities evident in his expression.

Less than a second is all it takes.

In the second grade, I learned that within the span of a single second, a bumblebee can beat its wings 200 times.

That fact fascinated my young brain; 200 times in a single second?! Of all the wonders in the world I had discovered and had yet to discover in my life, this was the fact that stayed with me. How could such a small creature accomplish such an improbable feat, all within the confines of the time it takes to blink?

My junior year of high school I learned that the average pair of soulmates begin to experience the initial spike in heart rate that leads to tachycardia within the first 0.002 seconds of eye contact. That means, even if it’s a passing glance, the moment those two sets of eyes make contact, everything is about to change.

As I hold eye contact with Jin across the room, I believe that there is a small part of me that knows I should be thinking about everything I’ve learned about soulmates over the past few years. Where are the steps I used to recite day and night in order to keep them memorized?

Yet, that little 8 year old girl with wonder-filled eyes as she learns about bumblebee’s amazing abilities is the only thing I can come up with. Almost as if she’s in the room with me, looking back and forth between Jin and I with that same expression.

Something clicks for me in that single moment as my heart rate continues to jolt and jump. Something seems to connect between bumblebees and soulmates.

Like a bumblebee’s wings frantically beating to keep itself aloft, my own heart begins to do its best to meet the same pace.

Side Effect #5: Heart palpitations (a racing, uncomfortable or irregular heartbeat or a sensation of "flopping" in the chest)

I’m barely aware of distant voices all around me, a few growing in volume as the truth sinks in. I feel arms trapping my own against my torso, and I gasp for air as breathing becomes more difficult. Frowning, I realize that someone is trying to move me away.

Away?

Jin seems to notice I’m being moved away at the same time I do, because the frozen posture he had is broken as he straightens and lurches forward.

He’s all I can see. It strikes me in that moment that he looks a bit different in real life. Sharper, yet somehow more welcoming. Those eyes, although frantic, have kindness imbued in them. The fingers that are outstretched toward me are a bit crooked, and I can’t help but wonder for a moment if our hands will fit together like everyone always says soulmates do.

Wait, soulmates?

Amidst the pounding in my chest and burning lungs, I suddenly have a moment of clarity. The wiry arms wrapped around my torso must belong to Yuri, and she’s speaking calmly into my ear.

“Count with me, Haneul. 1, 2, 3…”

Opening my mouth and marveling at how dry and scratchy my throat feels, I croak out, “...4…5…”

“What comes next, Han?”

“...6.”

Yuri hums, gently trying to ease me backward. When my body locks up, she tries a new method. Coming around to face me, she keeps a firm grip on my shoulders, and gets up on her tippy toes to look me in the eyes.

“We’ve got to move you to a separate room, Han. You remember, don’t you?”

There’s a small voice in my head that wants to tell her that yes, I do remember. However it’s drowned out by the sound of my heart beating in my ears as it continues to pick up speed. Yuri is instructing the boys to grab Jin as he continues marching toward me on shaky legs. He’s only about three feet away, arms extending toward me while Yuri pins my arms down and shoves.

“Grab him!” Yuri shouts even as I cry out from being shoved away. In a flash I see a couple of different pairs of arms reaching out to Jin, effectively stopping him in his tracks as he struggles against them.

“Please,” Jin says in a surprisingly calm voice even as he pushes against Jungkook and Sejin. “Please, just let me-”

“Han, I know your mind is a jumbled mess right now, but please. Remember that this is a matter of life or death. You want to see him?” Yuri doesn’t wait for my response, which makes sense as I haven’t once looked away from Jin. “Then get out of here. Now.”

Like an electric shock to my senses, I breathe in deep. Still unable to look anywhere other than Jin - his sweater has a loose thread on the collar, I should fix that for him - I do the only thing I can.

Closing my eyes is like swimming through concrete, but gritting my teeth I just manage to do it. The second I break contact with Jin, my body relaxes just enough for Yuri to push against me and shove my unwilling feet out the door.

She has a firm grip on the back of my shoulders still as she shouts out to nobody in particular, “I need a room!”

Someone must answer her, because we abruptly change directions before coming to a stop. I refuse to open my eyes for fear of falling back into the imobile state I was in before, and Yuri still hasn’t given me the clear.

“Yeonjun, grab my bag! Bring it to me.”

The sounds of everyone scampering around are drowned out as I hear Jin’s broken voice calling out once more.

“No, don’t take her. Please don’t take her from me.”

Like a dam of freezing water breaking over my head, my eyes open and I spin around, seeing Jin breaking free of Sejin’s grasp and dragging Jungkook along with him.

Just as my eyes find his once more, the door slams shut.

Part 2

masterlist

taglist: @taylorroe3​ @dreamcatcherjiah​ @thecaffeinatedscribbles​ @marianeamine 

[twelvedy7]

Twisted - One shot

warning: sensitive topics (drugs). 

I just wanted to write something a bit different. It might be a bit OCC but I thought it might be a great fit for the manga universe.   This story won’t be published anywhere else than tumblr so feel free to save the story if you like it.

Oh and also english isn’t really my native language so sorry if there are incoherences. 

Takano had no sense of self-control. From a very young age he has been a witness of the sheer harshness of his mother and the complete indifference of his father towards their family. Despite how much he tried to convince himself of his difference he inherited from most of their flaws, which filled him with anger every time he thought about it. 

No wonder that whenever he met someone bright, kind, generous and appreciated he became more aware of his whole dark gloomy personality. That was the case with Ritsu he was still viewing today as the 16 year-old teen he used to be a decade ago.

No wonder that when he met this bright, kind and generous highschool kid he had become more aware of his dark gloomy personality. He was still viewing Ritsu as the 16 year-old teen he used to be a decade ago and yet he couldn’t understand for the life of him the reason why such a lovable person would waste their time with him rather than finding another likeable person that would be such a better companion than him.

If all the open rejections from the brunette could make him believe he hated him, he was at least smart enough to read between the lines and see what the other tried so hard to conceal under feigned anger and flustered reactions. 

What seemed to be like a bitter-sweet genuine love story from two ignorant teenagers who lost each other from a foolish misunderstanding was driving him straight into madness. Ritsu was constantly on his mind, invading his thoughts at any time of the day, reminding him of the terrible person he was and how he will never be nowhere near enough for him. Even in the poorly credible reality where the younger one would actually build up the courage to admit his feelings, he knew that their relationship was sealed to failure. 

One day Ritsu would mature and realise how incompatible they were and how idealistic they’ve been this whole time before leaving him to find another person that could offer him the support and love he needed. Maybe one day Ritsu would find the man of his dreams, different from senpai in every way, to finally live the blissful life he aspired to. That’s what broke his heart the most: they were not made for each other. No matter how hard he tried, it will never be enough because they were simply not meant to. 

He imagined Ritsu’s soulmate to be fun, social, caring, communicative and considerate which would make him forget all the turmoil he went through for all this time. His parents might be so enchanted by their personality that the fact they weren’t An-Chan wouldn’t even bother them.

The truth is he was physically and emotionally drained. He couldn’t feel a thing if it wasn’t his love for Ritsu and sometimes he felt as if that was his last tie with sanity. There were times where he would shut down his emotions. When it became too difficult to confront their inevitable fate, he would put himself in a semi-automatic mode working up to 15 hours straight without paying attention to anything or anyone, only accomplishing what he ought to.

Over time, he came to accept that he wasn’t able to love anyone without causing them a great deal of pain and suffering. That’s why he decided to distance himself from the few people who actually cared about him in his life and managed to bring him some split meaningful moments of happiness. It was like a lightning bolt shaking him from side to side, making him surrender to the hope of one day being able to spend the rest of his life with Ritsu and recovering from his long-lost friendship with Yokozawa. He hurt them both and didn’t deserve to be part of their lives. 

His phone vibrated. He broke off his thoughts to center his attention on the alias displaying on the screen: “Taisho” along with a message “I’m here.”

He stood up from the floor, came up to the entrance of his apartment and opened the door. A man of average-height in his mid-thirties was waiting for him. At first glance, he gave the impression of being a regular salary-man coming back home to his family after a long day of hard work. However, he came to discover that the man likely had a long history of debt behind him involving matters such as a costly divorce and low paychecks.

Not bothering to greet him, he pulled out 6,000 yen from his pocket and handed it to the fearful looking man who replaced the notes with a small transparent plastic bag containing a white powder. 

“Same thing next week?” asked the anxious black-haired man, his light blue eyes too faithful to be a dealer squeezing behind his oval glasses. 

“Yeah. See you.” 

Without giving him a second glance, he double-locked the door and came back to his dimly lit living room that felt so lonely without Ritsu here. It would take some time, if not forever, to prevent this heavy load in his heart from manifesting every time he would find himself alone without the prospect of his first love joining him any time soon. 

It still pained him… Nao came unannounced in the office earlier in the morning and asked Ritsu out for something that too likely looked like a date. A walk in the city center, a restaurant, and a nighttime exposure. That bastard. 

The rare times he had managed to take Ritsu out for a date was by forcefully dragging him out of his apartment or bluntly lying by message playing the card of ‘emergency’. He remembered the dull ache he felt in the morning as he realised how easy it was for his “best-friend” to take him out to a full outing while he had to prepare a strategy days ahead just to drink a coffee together. 

Opening the tiny bag in his hands, he chased away his dark thoughts and kneeled in front of his coffee table, pouring half of the powder out on its surface and realigned it in two fine lines with the help of an old credit card. He usually didn’t take such high doses in one shot, but tonight he knew that he needed it. The accumulated pain and overthinking were taking a toll on him. Rolling a paper, he brought it to his right nostril and sniffed the first line, ignoring the burning pain in his cavity before passing it to his left one and repeated the action.

A few seconds later he started feeling the tiny molecules flowing through his blood system, noticing the faster pace of his heart beat and the gradual relaxation of his muscles as the drug invaded his mind.

He closed his eyes. 

As always, the thrill was exquisite. The far away sounds of ambient city noises echoed and at some point the only thing he could decipher in the absolute silence was his own breath. His body was soft and any psychological pain he felt instantly disappeared. It was as if someone had covered him with a warm fluffy blanket while stroking his hair with a gentle grasp, providing him an endless feeling of comfort and security he so desperately needed. 

At that moment, everything stopped and all his troubles went away. Nothing mattered anymore. He was back being a young child pampered by a protective mother he never had with an unconditional sense of love. Pleasurable sensations coursed through his body from head to toes until his spirit went numb and he lost any notion of space and time. 

He reached that moment of nothingness that he wished could last forever.

___ 

“Takano-san!” 

...

“Takano-san!” 

Who was it? 

The voice seemed so far away he wasn’t even sure it was real.

“Masamune!” Why would someone try to break the silent darkness that was surrounding him?

For what seemed like hours, he felt himself trapped in-between the process of gaining and losing consciousness. He didn’t want to be drawn from his deep slumber yet.

He recognized some familiar voices in the background but it was hard to put a name on them as they seemed to continuously echo. 

It took him several more minutes to realise that people were present and it shook him. He became hyper aware of his environment.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a bunch of white blouses around him scampering around the room at a feverish speed. 

His mind whirled. The world seemed to be going so fast but his brain was so slow. 

His golden eyes blinked several times to adjust to the brightness of the room. In an instant he was blinded by the artificial light of the leds on the ceiling. 

In the chaos of all the fast-paced strangers around him, he felt a delicate hand fondling with the hair on the short back of his neck and let out a soft tired moan escape his lips. 

“Takano-san can you hear me?!” 

He groggily stretched out his limbs while burying his head on the petite body frame behind him and looked up to see who was the kind stranger offering him such soft intentions. 

Above him were two wide teary green eyes displaying a worried expression. Despite his blurry vision, he could recognize the refined and familiar traits of the man he loved. It looked surreal, having the both of them like this sharing such intimacy in a restless atmosphere.

Next to him was standing Yokozawa in his usual professional attire. He could only watch them through half-closed eyes all the while trying to figure out what they were doing in his apartment in the first place.

“He’s stable now. Overdoses happen regularly when cocaine and other powerful stimulants are added to the equation. That’s what producers do nowadays to boost the effects”. Said a firm feminine voice. He could see the lady in white gesturing around to her colleagues and immediately realised what just happened. She was staring at him, probably trying to jauge how awake her patient was. 

“You were lucky Takano-san. This could have been much more serious.” 

He saw his friend sitting next to Ritsu, his usual severe expression ruptured by the deep crease in his eyebrows. 

“How did you find me?” asked the raven, his voice so weak he wasn’t sure the two others heard him. 

The brunette brought his face closer to his ear, petting his forehead as he replied in a shaky shy voice: “Yokozawa-san found you like this…” he heard a sneeze. “The front door was unlocked and your phone was ringing without you answering it. You… You stopped breathing.” 

He felt absolutely miserable. 

Trying to shift his position to have a better view of his comrades, he caught the look of utter disappointment and guilt from his older friend. He probably thought that he was long done with this dark hazardous period of his life. 

“I’m… I’m sorry... I didn’t want to…” 

His battle to stay awake was getting harder and harder. 

“It’s okay Masamune. Just rest for now.”

The nurse took a hold of his wrist and stuck the intravenous line with a patch. 

“We’re going to transfer you to the clinic as you need to take several tests. You’re safe now but your body needs to recover.” 

The hand that was playing with his hair resumed and he let his head fall back on his lap. This combined with the liquid in his body led him to a sleep without dreams.

___

When he woke up again, he found himself buried under the sheets of a hospital bed. It took him some time to become accustomed to the artificial lighting of the room. Gathering enough energy to finally keep his eyes open, he gazed at the clock at his right indicating 4:55AM.

The first thing he felt was an atrocious headache that hit him with a massive chest pain undertaking his whole body. He noticed the numerous wires connected to his skin accompanied with the steady regular bips of a machine.

He heard a light snore on his right. Shifting his head, he immediately saw the small fragile figure crawling up into a ball on the couch. A cheap blanket was covering him from toes to his neck. This sight made him feel so terribly selfish. As seconds went by he started getting back to a normal state of awareness despite a fizzy pang at the back of his skull. 

With as much strength as he could gather he sprawled a hand towards him and rested it on the others’ laps. He stroked his thigh lightly with the help of his thumb and stared at his seemingly exhausted resting face. He felt so worthless. He knew he had hurt him badly in the past already and the only thing he could think of is that this was too much.

“I’m so sorry Ritsu…”. 

After reuniting with his first love following the 10 years they had spent apart from one another he had started to believe in fate. Yet he had been too trustful, using it as a justification for every one of his impatient and inappropriate moves towards the younger one. Everything became painfully obvious. This whole thing they had was destructive and that was mainly his fault. It was time to finally respect the distance that Ritsu wanted and deserved. He could not go back to these college years pretending that nobody cared about him. 

Now Ritsu would need him. 

Still, they were nowhere near close from getting into a relationship. Too many mistakes had been made. It was crucial for both men to work on themselves first as jumping the steps one more time would only bring them unhappiness.

That day Takano swore he would stop pursuing Ritsu. He’s forever been broken and finally accepting to get help was a start towards a less twisted life.

“It’s okay Ritsu.” 

One day they would be okay. They would get the life they both secretly wanted. 

[bitchapalooza]

Hetalia actor AU(yes, inspired by the BNHA actor AU specifically)

• Alfred and Matthew are irl twins that got their start in acting as children. They both at first tried out for the roles of Northern and Southern Italy but they were seen to be better fits for the North American brothers. That and their Italian accents were not the best. No one cared they have an Italian uncle. Literally no one asked them. In fact their bad accents prompted the casting list to go more international faster than it already was. They both look exactly the same without the addition of the cowlick or ahoge so it's pretty good Matthew grew his hair out for this role. Otherwise they'd constantly have to correct everyone like they used to in the other shows they worked on.

• Arthur thought he was auditioning for the newest James Bond movie but turns out his agent tricked him. Arthur ended up liking it however and stayed. He managed to drag his son Peter in to audition for the role of Sealand, as Peter wanted to get into acting in something bigger than school plays. His character may be annoyed by his son's character but irl you can catch Arthur being a loving and caring father. Peter however is embarrassed to be around him, just as many kids are to their parents. Arthur is much more relaxed than the character he plays. And Peter isn't as annoying as Sealand is. He's actually always on his phone or doing homework when not working.

• Francis did not know a lick of English when he auditioned. He went into this blind. And yet he got the part after staying up 3 nights in a row beforehand listening to the Google translated script(from English to French and back) to memorize it that way. Presently he may be on par with a 10 year old's basic knowledge of English but that doesn't stop him from frequently speaking only French on set when no one else but Yao and half the writing staff understand him. He even only does his interviews in French because WHY put effort into a second language??? Y'all he's the epitome of lazy.

• Ivan is the prankster on set. He teams up with Kiku, Basch, Peter, Alfred, and Mathias very frequently to prank everyone else in the cast. He also purposefully messes up his lines when his character is being creepy. He'll say the weirdest shit while in the most intense scenes. During the magical pipe of pain scene, Ivan caused almost 20 retakes because he kept making bad innuendos causing everyone to lose their shit. He's the exact opposite of his character.

• Roderich really is a former pianist and former child actor coming back to acting because gosh he missed it. He's actually SUPER irresponsible with his money despite the character he plays. The first paycheck from the show he spent on a bulk of 200 rubber ducks just so he could set them up in his bedroom on his and his wife's 3rd anniversary. All for a chuckle. And to get a use out of them. That was an impulse buy. And he does not regret it. The scenes where Austria is playing the piano really is Roderich playing it, and he asks there to be almost no sound editing to those takes whatsoever. He's extremely forgetful so the staff has resorted to sticky noting his lines into the scene then green screening it out later. He's a good actor but someone help this man's poor memory.

• Timo basically already was Finland before ever auditioning. His friends already called him the dad of their group to begin with. He's a sweet guy and he bakes cookies and other sweets the night before just to bring them in to the set the next morning for not just the cast but the entire film crew too; he has two ovens for this and really knows how to speed bake. He just wants to make sure everyone's morning is as good as his own is. He's just a darling. Everyone is glad Berwald recommended Timo for the part of Finland and even happier that he got the role.

• Gilbert is a brunette with brown eyes irl so no one recognizes him without the white wig or red contacts. Fans meet him and are like "You remind me of that Prussia guy from Hetalia! You'd make a great cosplay of him!" and he just accepts it every time by this point. Every convention he goes to, every interview he does he is in costume. At least he isn't constantly bombarded by fans like Ludwig or Ivan are.

• Feliciano is a very mature and professional guy despite the bubbly and goofy character he plays. Feliciano does have his relaxed and fun moments though, learning to let go from his time acting as North Italy. He's a really pleasant guy to be friends with but it can be a little tough to break through his shell. He's kind of shy, different from North Italy's friendly nature.

• Lovino is a nice guy. He's kind but not super kind, but also not an asshole. He does a lot a Instagram live streams after episode recordings, mostly of him hanging out with the other actors. He and Feliciano get along well but Lovino tends to hang around Ludwig more because he feels so bad for how he screams at him and insults him on set, even though its purely for the show. He apologizes immediately after filming is finished.

• Ludwig is pretty orderly but he isn't exactly mature. He's the one to recite bad jokes and puns to everyone, his favorites being dad jokes. No one likes this. At all. He's a fun loving guy that everyone can get along with. He has fun acting. He's very grateful Gilbert pointed him in the direction of the auditions.

• Kiku is glad his very first acting gig will probably be one of his most successful and popular. He's freshly graduated from college and completely chaotic. He's got a degree in business he's never going to use. He collects weird Japanese products as well as gifting them to his coworkers every Christmas without fail. He once walked into Ivan's trailer and tossed a whole bag of hard boiled eggs at him and ran off. The eggs all had individual faces drawn onto them. Ivan still does not know why he did this and he's honestly too afraid to ask at this point.

• The actor for Chibitalia also plays chibi Romano! His name is Emilio and he's Lovino's nephew. Emilio is a sweetie that pretty much stole everyone's heart. He loves working on the show, especially when he gets to curse and not get in trouble for it.

• Holy Roman Empire's actor was originally a kid who had no prior experience in acting neither had he really been near a camera before. He ended up freezing up his first day. He was recasted by Ludwig's son Otto, especially since Otto had been around a film set dozens of times before. The dad jokes really escalated once Otto was brought on set....

This is all I'm going to do for now without the post getting too long. Plus I'm tired and have a headache. But I really wanted to get this out lol I spent 3 hours figuring this all out with a really bad glaucoma headache please at least appreciate this for my eyes' sake lmao

[thealwriteytrashdump]

Coincidence (a Jeff the killer short story)

The feeling of waking up in the middle of the night is a strange one. The heaviness in your limbs and in your soul. It seems like time has stopped and the world has gone still. Until you hear the faintest wail of a siren in the distance and suddenly the nightly sounds of your city arise. The sudden hum of the AC kicks in and every so often, a helicopter flies to the nearby hospital. Someone speeds by on a motorcycle, revving to their heart’s content as they drive. You looked at the clock, 3 am; not yet time for you to begin your morning but ultimately too late to go back to sleep. The old apartment building creaks with age, and you hear the faint jingle of your recently acquired kitten. She has decided to keep you company as you both lay in a comfortable pile in your sheets. Truth be told, you’ve adopted out of sheer loneliness, the empty silence of your small apartment has driven you slowly mad over the months.

Sure, you had friends and loved ones, but you’ve since isolated yourself in an attempt to be independent. Before you had moved out, you lived with your sister, and while the company was nice, she had bullied you into doing household chores on top of paying a fairly decent size of the rent. Your parents assumed she paid for everything herself and you were living scot-free but that wasn’t the case. Both you and your sister worked very hard to keep your respective lives afloat, she worked hard for her children and was rarely home, hoping you’d be there for her kids when they needed it.. You, however, worked full time as well as went to the local community college to build up credits. After a couple of years of constantly fighting and losing, you had enough and moved away to a different part of town, burning the closest bridge you had for support. Now living in a smaller rundown apartment, working several jobs, and trying to make it through the semester, you lived paycheck to paycheck; making ends meet but not by much. At first, you’ve felt free, you’ve been living like how you wanted to and no one could stop you. For several months, it was your dream come true, you did whatever you want when you wanted. However, slowly but surely, you felt the loneliness creep in; working hard no longer filled you with a sense of purpose, and college work drained you of your motivation. Living the bare minimum began to take its toll on your mental health and your sheer iron will, or perhaps stubbornness, began to tire out.

You hear the soft jingle again and feel the comforting hum of your kitten’s purr. The madness you experienced in the past months drove you to make a rash decision on your part to adopt a kitten from your brother and his spouse. As rash as it was, it was also a decision you’ve yet to regret. As this tiny grey tabby proved, just a small amount of company did wonders for your sanity. Your kitten took some time to adjust to you but has come to love you as her caretaker and companion, and you’ve come to love her as your baby and loved one. Her eyes were a bit bulgy and her head just a tad too small but she was a beautiful kitten with a feisty spirit. Her name was a bit strange, and your family didn’t hesitate to let you know, but she was yours and you had thought her name was perfect. Now that little kitten slept soundly near your inner thigh, purring loudly and kneading your left calf.

You laid very still, looking up at the ceiling and listening to the world around you. The silence simultaneously existed with the noise. The quiet hum of the AC, the excitement of the world beyond but also the barely audible sound of your breathing and your heartbeat. The soft noises of your kitten and the settling of the walls. Noisy and yet not so.

Eventually, the sharp call of your alarm tells you four am has rolled around, and it is time for you to begin the day. You get up slowly so as to not disturb your cat, stretching, and yawning. You walked through the bathroom to the kitchen to turn on the lights and to boil some water for coffee. As the water began to heat and the kettle slowly whistled to life, you decided to take a quick shower. Your first job starts in two hours, with plenty of time to get ready and have a quick bite of breakfast, however, you preferred to be early rather than late. As the sun starts to peek out, you brew yourself a cup of caffeine and gather your backpack. It’s time to set out for the day, you leave extra food out for your little babe, and make your way to the bus.

The day usually passed by uneventfully, the coffee shop you worked at opened at six in the morning and stayed busy until 11 am. You stayed until noon, then caught the metro to your classes. It was just a couple of hours before heading back home to your little kitten to check up and prepare for your second job. As you walked onto the large campus, fellow students came and went as you headed up towards your classes. You heard bits of chatter and gossip,

“Did you hear-”

“-vered with blood-”

“That’s party was si-”

“There were so-”

“-arely slept las-”

“So what-”

Unable to hear full conversations or even full sentences, you passed by absentmindedly. There was something going on about a string of break-ins and robberies, but you paid no mind to it. Of course, you always needed to be careful, even in the safer neighborhoods. Gunshots were always heard every now and then, and there were lots of police around but nothing really happened in your immediate vicinity so you didn’t feel the need to keep your guard up. Still, you were very careful to keep to yourself and to check for any suspicious behavior regarding your person. You head to your first class as the crowds thicken, walking up the stairs to the central courtyard. As you approached the large area, you see in the distance a rather tall building with very large windows. These classrooms were for the English and History classes with some other misc. classes and a fairly large library. Unfortunately, the building was across campus from the Metro station, and mostly out of the way. The large courtyard is filled with hundreds if not thousands of students, you opted to take a roundabout through the large parking garage, most likely full of cars and other modes of transportation. As you round the corner, you bump into someone moving fast and land heavily on the concrete. You yelped in surprise and almost immediately excused yourself. Instead of a response, you hear the sounds of skates or rather a skateboard and look up just in time to see the man, with a dingy white jacket, already on his way without a second thought. Picking yourself up, you huff in annoyance and begin rushing away, muttering obscenities under your breath.

Jogging away, you dusted yourself off and started gathering your homework to turn in as you entered the building, you spotted off in the distance, your professor speaking to some of your classmates. She was delightfully wonderful to students, especially the younger ones who just started college for the very first time. The older woman was tall and very beautiful, she had a powerful presence that intimidated most. She was not afraid to speak her mind, and she was very much sassy to both students and professors alike. Her class was still boring and most of the troubled students disliked her for a number of reasons. While she was kind to the students, she didn’t believe that excused them for slacking off or failing her class. She was open and willing to help those who were failing but there were no favorites in her class. Slipping into the classroom, you sit in an empty spot around the middle area where there were a couple of seats open. Everyone liked to sit up front or near the back, and usually, you’re able to snag a glorious three seats of space in the middle area. Today wasn’t that spacious, but you aren’t complaining as you are seated next to the large nearly spotless window that looked out onto the small park nearby. The very last of the class files in and you begin your first lesson of the day, taking out your notes and doodling little figures.

As the class began, your professor walked in and greeted the class. The first order of business was to remind the class that assignments were due tomorrow and if the paperwork wasn’t in her inbox by the end of the day, she was giving out failing grades and speaking to the offenders personally. You continued doodling little figures and half-listening for important information. Fortunately, you had finished your assignments for your classes a few days ago. You were currently working on assignments due in a week’s time. It was better to be ahead to buffer workload and make it easier for yourself in the long run. Luckily, most of your professors allow you to be proactive in your learning so long as you still took notes and listened to the lectures. It was a great opportunity for you to keep yourself and some of your professors sane for the most part.

Some other students groaned quietly, but you continued to sketch out a face in the corner of your notebook. Your professor finished her speech and turned to start the lesson for the day. An hour dragged by, and a yawn escaped your lips involuntarily. You stare out the window, bored, the trees sway silently as clouds pass overhead. You tap your pencil against your notebook, you have already written down notes and important timestamps and pages for your books. You were confident you would pass the open notes exam next week, and you’ve made it so you had a light schedule that day as well. The day was almost perfect, you thought about getting takeout and treating yourself to some video games. Your jobs had you take a day off so you could focus on your schoolwork, and you were grateful for it. You smiled to yourself and yawned again; it would be a nice time to catch up on sleep as well. Another hour passed by uneventfully, and as class ended, you half jogged to the professor’s desk to turn in some work and to ask for the homework for the week after next week. She squinted at you and sharply said, she only had a rough idea of what the week entailed but she was more than happy to email you some copies when she wrote out the assignments. You nodded and thanked her, wishing her a good day and heading out to the hallway.

The two other classes you have for that day go by slowly as you fight to keep your eyes open. After the last hour of history was over, the plan was to head home for your “second job,” as you call it to your parents. In truth, it was a glorified online data entry job you did for a friend who started a business a while back. It was steady tedious work, but as a friend, you were called into action. It was your first job and the only reason why you were able to move out and start college. The pay was good and your buddy gave you great “benefits” as they were. He just needed some paperwork and bookkeeping done for his clients. While it looked legitimate for tax purposes, he mostly dealt with some particulars who preferred to keep their business and their lives private. It was a decent job, and most of the time, you never dealt with the clients themselves thankfully. It was just simple work done in the safety and privacy of your apartment. As a lower-tier worker bee, you were relatively safe, however, you never really knew if it was ever a guarantee. You never minded, you hadn’t died yet, right?

As the day ended, you spent the five-hour shift working and listening to the news. A tiny cat jingled around at the speed of light; she’d nipped at your toes before speeding off to tackle a chew toy. Working until you hit a wall in terms of motivation, you get up to make some tea, watching some of the news that you played for background noise.

“-Tonight at 11; In other news, a horrific breaking and entering at McCorrick and Washing Dr tonight as security cameras catch the nightmare unfolding. Police say two adults: one male, and one female, were found with three stab wounds in the chest and fatal cuts on their faces and throats. They were pronounced dead on arrival. One survivor, a young girl, escaped with heavy injuries and extreme loss of blood. EMTs rushed her to the hospital where she remains in critical condition. The footage shows the brave girl jumping from her second-story balcony and making her way to the local gas station where the cameras were located. The suspect seems to be a man in his late 20s, wearing what seems to be a white jacket and a face mask; although later eyewitnesses account that he, himself, was brutally mutilated.

This seems to be another case in a string of homicides by who authorities call the Glasgow killer, named so because of what he does to his victims and what he has apparently done to himself. Although, there’s nothing connecting the murders in terms of age, gender, or race, and there is no apparent pattern to each home hit, the suspect does cut a Cheshire smile cut into each unfortunate victim. If spotted-”

The whistling of the kettle catches your attention and you finish making hot tea with milk and honey. You had a light supper of leftovers and now you were drinking some tea to wake up a bit, You still had a few hours left before you could clock out and get some sleep. Sipping and holding your mug close to your body, you sit back down and stare at your computer screen. You knew what the underbelly of your city was capable of, the things people were uncomfortable talking about. Your city wasn’t the safest nor was it the place to go start a long and prosperous life, but it was a city of opportunity for those willing to cross that line. It was a hellscape sanctuary in the desert where the old and the rich come to vacation for the winter, only to leave when the summer heat arrives to cook the denizens unfortunate to live here. Only people with nowhere else to go were desperate enough to live in this scorching concrete jungle. Your city, the city of hope and of ruined pasts, was also the city of new beginnings for the rotten. Rated one of the highest for crime and deaths by murder. The land of opportunity was often paved in blood and sacrifice. You were no different, you came here for the promise of a better life just like the rest of the people. You turn back to the tv where the news showed a picture of the survivor and what looked to be a professionally drawn picture of a zombie with an unnaturally large smile. His sunken eyes seemed to be too large for his thin face and his nose seemed to have rotted away. Eyewitnesses described him as a moderately tall man with a sturdy build, wearing a tattered dirty white hoodie. His drawn picture bored into your soul and you were grateful when they decided to go into more detail about the victim instead, as you stretched again and continued working.

A young woman in her late teens, not much younger than yourself but definitely still a minor by law. You watch as the newscaster shows a picture of her from her social media, happy and smiling in a sea of blurry faces. She was very pretty and had a nice smile. You take a sip of tea, ready to get back to work when the stoic newsman claims police say they have security footage from a store nearby the incident. Pausing once more when you hear the name of said store, you focus on the tv as it cuts to the grainy video. It showed the gas station lot but in the background, there seemed to be something else going on. You see the distant apartments’ second-story homes. A small figure jumped from one of the balconies onto a brick wall and frantically crawled over: the young survivor barely covered and clutching her shoulder, struggling to make it over the brick wall. She landed heavily but crawled to her feet and limps to the gas station. A larger figure, suspected to be the killer, emerges from the balcony and follows her albeit with more grace akin to a cat. He leaped onto the balcony railing and used the brick wall as a stepping stone. He landed running and looked to be ready to grab the poor girl, but she was fortunate enough to make it inside the gas station and out of his reach. He skidded to a stop, looking through the glass before making his way away from the building and into the darkness.

Something is knocked into the camera and it abruptly ends cutting back to the newsman explaining the poor girl’s fate. She was carted away to the nearby hospital but as she had lost a lot of blood, she was still unconscious. She had stab wounds on her right shoulder, right thigh, and both in her hands. She was beaten to near death with bruises on her throat and face. Her family wasn’t so fortunate, having similar stab wounds, but a fatal cut on their throats and mutilated faces. Whoever has done this likes to cut joker smiles into his victims, leaving them to bleed out to steal anything of value from the residents. The news cuts to another story but not before showing the professional drawing of the killer again and cautioning viewers to be safe.

You let out a shallow breath you didn’t know you were holding, your hands trembled slightly. Closing your eyes, you knew that this was the very same gas station you visited the night prior. You had recognized the hospital to be the very same hospital you lived near. According to the timestamps, this seemed to take place right before you woke up. You had heard the very ambulance that took her. Small world. You steadied your breath and continued working, feeling much more alone and vulnerable than ever. The jingle of tiny bells rings out and your little kitten runs into the bedroom, chasing invisible prey into the night.

[jilytho]

and they were roomates

Jily/Marauders roomate thing just for fun. Happy Jilytober!!!! 

Read below or on AO3 of FFNT

Moving in together had always been the plan. The Marauders, out in the real world. Throughout Uni they were always forced to split up into different apartments in groups of two, usually ending with Sirius and James in one apartment and Remus and Peter sharing one down the hall. Remus insisted it be that way because he insisted he wouldn’t be able to focus on schoolwork if he had to deal with his idiot of a boyfriend 24hours a day but separate apartments in no way made them spend any less time together. James swears he spent more nights on the floor of Remus and Peter’s kitchen than in his bed. Still, once they were done with school and off in the Real World having an apartment for all of them to live in was the ultimate goal. 

They set out to look for a spot that was nice enough to fit the bizarrely high standards of Sirius, while still not breaking the bank for Remus or Peter who insisted on paying their own way without any help. 

It was Remus who ended up finding their place, somewhat dodgy area of town but right down the street from his favorite Thai takeout place, three coffeeshops with adequate reading vibes within a four block radius, and a seven minute commute for Remus to get to the lab everyday. 14C was a once cute three bedroom apartment now covered in years of dust and grime and now officially theirs.

Sirius and Remus claimed the master with its very own ensuite so James could stop having to pick Sirius’s hair out of the shower. It wasn’t a perfect set up but they all found ways to mesh together and make it just right and just theirs. Peter was immediately made interior designer and found a couch and two armchairs off of craigslist so that they could stop sitting on the floor in front of the TV. James was in charge of the kitchen and bought real utensils and bowls so Sirius would stop pouring his cereal onto frisbees. Remus developed his very own homemade cleaner filled with bleach and alcohol and was likely poison in a bottle but it somehow made the beige counters white and sparkling. 

Technically James and Sirius were the only names actually on the lease, a Sirius suggestion, so that if they were ever late on rent it wouldn’t impact the credit Remus had spent so long building up. It had the added benefit of Peter and Remus not having to worry if their paycheck was being delayed and they had to pay Sirius or James a few days late because the boys were always good for it. 

Being adults in the real world never stopped any of them from still behaving like children. Sirius refused to take out the trash so James took to dumping the trash on his head while he was sleeping, and accidentally got day old noodles onto Remus’ pillow. They broke two TVs during two separate games of indoor football and Peter was a world class baker but was the worst at cleaning in the whole flat and left flour everywhere, constantly. But still, they were happy. They ate dinner together almost every night and had movie nights on Thursdays. Peter and James invested in heavy duty ear plugs within three weeks of moving in and realizing just how thin the walls were. 

After a full year of making Apartment 14C home, the lease was up they unanimously decided to resign because this was their place. But then one day they wake up to find that Pete has his bags packed and is all “I got a job across the country bye”. They want to fight him and Remus, always the logical one, brings up that they literally just signed for a whole year and are only 20 days into this new lease. And Peter, the little slimy rat, smirked and said “Not my name on the lease, not my problem” and just left. 

They learn from Facebook that he was working for some politician that stands for everything the boys do not. The kind of politician who would actively root against the happiness and togetherness of Sirius and Remus. Once they learn that, they are officially done missing him. 

At some time in the middle of the night all the pictures that Peter was in from school are mysteriously replaced with pictures of James’s cat. 

Sirius wants to keep He-Who-We-Do-Not-Talk-About’s bedroom empty and make it into a yoga studio/library combo but Remus says that it's ridiculous to pay that much extra in rent and he refuses to let Sirius pay for the room and so the roommate hunt begins. 

Everyone they met with was either too sweaty or too loud or was great on paper but had a super distinct death like scent so the room sat empty for almost a full month. James was content to let it stay that way and just keep finding reasons because it was good with just the three of them. They weren’t the same and James was sometimes a third wheel but these were his brothers, he didn’t need anyone else. 

It stays empty until one day, Remus comes home from work one day saying that he has a friend from class, a nice well mannered and smart girl who would pay her rent on time but is in urgent need of getting off of her sister and terrible brother in laws couch before she “sets it and the house on fire”. Sirius isn’t sure he wants someone willing to commit arson moving in across the hall from him but a quick look from Remus shut him up and he was suddenly all for the mystery girl coming in. Remus said she would be moving in in three hours and would James be available to help her carry in her bags? James felt slighted that he wasn’t even given a vote or a chance to meet the girl, but that was mostly because despite Peter leaving and betraying them, James is loyal to a fault and still saw the room as Pete’s room and Pete’s stool in the kitchen despite the fact that the lying bastard just took off with no warning and changed his phone number and was a traitorous little bastard. Still, he couldn’t argue the point too much or he’d look stupid so fine, let the new girl move in but “Remus I swear, make it clear that this is just temporary until she figures it out and we find someone else we can all agree on”. He decided he just wouldn’t hang out with the new girl. They’d be apartment mates but they wouldn’t be friends.

She shows up with seven boxes and three bottles of wine to her name. James’s mouth is full of pasta when she introduces herself to him and he is so startled by the green of her eyes that he swallows without chewing and starts hacking noodles up while waving hello as she watches, green eyes wide with concern and amusement, hand still held out to shake. 

The first week after she moves in, he avoids her like the plague. He mentally insists that he has no need to get to know her because this is just temporary and she is going to find a new place and it doesn't matter how green her eyes are if he just doesn’t look at them. 

By the start of the second week, it stopped mattering if he didn’t directly interact with her because she was still everywhere. The living room was transformed from a bare bones TV and couch room to completely cozy with scented candles and fuzzy blankets and fun, colorful throw pillows that James instantly became obsessed with. He couldn’t lie and say he didn’t love the lemon scented soap in the kitchen or how she always made sure there was coffee in the pot for him or how the scent of her rose body wash somehow fills the whole apartment everytime she showers and is amazing or how the whole apartment just felt warmer and better now that she was there. 

He stopped getting surprised when she found ways to just fit with them. He always thought Peter worked well with them, they were brothers of course, but now he couldn’t help feeling like Peter had been a square peg squeezing into a circle hole. He fit but it was also just a little tight or tense or unequal. Lily, on the other hand, clicked in just right. She was instantly just one of them, even before James had accepted it. On her 10th day of living with them (a celebration Sirius insisted required an ice cream cake) all reservations about her completely imploded because there was no arguing that she belonged with them and they belonged with her. When he woke up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, he wasn’t at all shocked to find her and Remus reviewing chemical formulas at 3am on a Tuesday. Like of course they were, why wouldn't they be. It felt even less surprising that he just walked himself over and sat on the ground in front of her and stole her flashcards so he could quiz them both. It felt only natural when he saw her and Sirius getting ready to go to spin class together, even though Sirius never brings James to spin class with him anymore because of the one time he fell off his bike and caused a ruckus. He’s barely even confused when he ends up at a sunrise yoga class with her even though he had never been awake to see sunrise a day in his life. He’s even less surprised to learn that he enjoyed it immensely and had never been so happy to be up that early. He tells himself that it's just the impact of the yoga that he is in such a good mood but knows it has a lot more to do with the laughing goddess in the downward dog next to him. 

They get glared at all through the class because he keeps whispering things to her and making her giggle and then he becomes so transfixed by her laugh that he loses his balance and falls out of his pose, almost toppling the woman next to him. She laughs so hard her face matches her hair and giggles every time she looks at him for the rest of class. 

And then it’s Sunday and Blokes Brunch easily becomes “Lily, let’s go time for brunch” and when she pops the champagne (which had always been James’s job but he couldn't’ even fight her properly for it) he sees the sparkle in her eyes so much clearer than the sparkle in the drink and he lets himself actually see her and oh my god did she look good.

It still hurts when they see a picture of Peter on facebook or in Snapchat memories but slowly their memories start to fill up with green eyes and red hair and lovely smiles. It is no surprise when just the suggestion of her moving out became criminal. It was no surprise to any of them except for James when she stopped sleeping in her room and started sleeping across the hall with James. None of it was how the Marauders expected their lives to be at all but there was also more joy and warmth and love than any of them could have ever predicted. 

[calzona-ga]

She might change her mind; she certainly has before. But midway through an interview, Ellen Pompeo casually drops the bomb that after more than 360 episodes, the upcoming 17th season of “Grey’s Anatomy” may be its last.

“We don’t know when the show is really ending yet,” Pompeo says, answering a question that was not at all about when the show might end. “But the truth is, this year could be it.”

Pompeo has played Meredith Grey — the superstar surgeon around whom “Grey’s Anatomy” revolves — since its start. The show, created by Shonda Rhimes, premiered on ABC on March 27, 2005, and became an immediate, noisy hit. Since then, for a remarkably long time in Hollywood years, the drama has been among the most popular series on TV, even as the landscape of television has changed seismically. At its Season 2 ratings height, the program drew an average audience of 20 million viewers. And all these years later — in a TV universe now divided by more than 500 scripted shows —“Grey’s” ranks as the No. 1 drama among 18- to 34- year-olds and No. 2 among adults 18 to 49. In delayed, multiplatform viewing, Season 16 averaged 15 million viewers.

Strikingly, technology is such that teenagers who were born when the show premiered, and later binged “Grey’s” on Netflix, watch new episodes live with their parents. The series has spawned two successful spinoffs for ABC, “Private Practice” (which ran from 2007 to 2013) and “Station 19” (which enters its fourth season this fall). “Grey’s Anatomy” has been licensed in more than 200 territories across the world, translated into more than 60 languages, and catapulted the careers of music artists — from Ingrid Michaelson and Snow Patrol to Tegan and Sara and the Fray — whose songs have played during key emotional sequences.

In its explosive initial success, “Grey’s Anatomy” was an insurgent force in popular culture. The Season 1 cast featured three Black actors — Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr. and Isaiah Washington — as doctors in positions of power at the Seattle hospital where the show is set, and Sandra Oh played the ambitious intern Cristina Yang, who would become Meredith’s best friend. For the women characters, the “Grey’s” approach to sex was defiant and joyful, starting in the pilot with Meredith’s one-night stand with Derek (Patrick Dempsey), who turned out to be one of her bosses at the hospital.

Rhimes presented these images to the world like they were no big deal, when in fact, nothing like “Grey’s” had ever been seen on network television. Krista Vernoff has been the “Grey’s Anatomy” showrunner since Season 14, as anointed by Rhimes, and was the head writer for the first seven seasons. She remembers the moment she realized how radical “Grey’s” was — a medical show driven entirely by its characters instead of their surgeries — as she watched an episode early in Season 1. “My whole body was covered in chills,” Vernoff recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, we thought we were making a sweet little medical show — and we’re making a revolution.’”

Still, no one expected “Grey’s Anatomy” to become the longest-running primetime medical drama in TV history, outlasting “MASH” and “ER,” the previous record-holder. Since 2005, “Grey’s” has inspired countless women to become doctors, and along the way, its depiction of illness has even saved a few lives. The show has remained popular through three presidential administrations, the Great Recession, tectonic shifts in how people watch TV and two cultural reckonings — one feminist, one anti-racist — that demonstrate how ahead of its time “Grey’s Anatomy” has always been.

And they’re not done yet. When Season 17 premieres on Nov. 12, “Grey’s Anatomy” will tackle the subject of the coronavirus as experienced by the doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial, all while filming under strict COVID-19 protocols. The season is dedicated to frontline workers. And Pompeo, a producer on “Grey’s” — whose Meredith has removed a live bomb from a patient’s body, was in a plane crash, was widowed after Derek died in a car accident, was beaten nearly to death by a patient and, in a separate incident, actually did die briefly after a ferry accident — is intent on making the show top itself once again.

“I’m constantly fighting for the show as a whole to be as good as it can be. As a producer, I feel like I have permission to be able to do that,” Pompeo says. “I mean, this is the last year of my contract right now. I don’t know that this is the last year? But it could very well could be.”

Pompeo has been refreshingly transparent about her fight to become the highest-paid female actor on television, having detailed a few years ago how she negotiated a paycheck for more than $20 million a year. She clearly knows what she’s doing with these frank pronouncements as well.

As Pompeo laughs over the phone from her car, she says in a near shout: “There’s your sound bite! There’s your clickbait! ABC’s on the phone!”

The “Grey’s Anatomy” team — led by Rhimes and executive producer Betsy Beers — created the first season in a vacuum, because the show did not have an airdate. The 2004-05 season was a comeback year for ABC because “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost,” both of which debuted that fall, became phenomena — not only ratings successes but also watercooler events.

But at “Grey’s,” Rhimes was getting noted to death by network president Steve McPherson. According to Vernoff, McPherson — who resigned in 2010 under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations — stonewalled with “pushback every step of the way,” as ABC’s then- head of drama, Suzanne Patmore Gibbs, fought for the show. Vernoff was close with Patmore Gibbs, who died in 2018, and recalls her talking about her clashes with McPherson.

“He just didn’t get it; he didn’t like it,” Vernoff continues. “Honestly, I’m going to say, I don’t think he liked the ambitious women having sex unapologetically.”

Wilson, when she was cast as Miranda Bailey on “Grey’s,” was a New York theater actor (“Caroline, or Change”) relatively new to series television. But she was well aware of the network’s issues. “We took a creative break around the Christmas holiday, which to me meant ‘Oh, we’re out of a job.’”

Pompeo was frustrated: “Once we finally got an airdate, two weeks before that airdate they wanted to change the title of the show to ‘Complications.’”

In an email to Variety, McPherson disputed these assertions, saying, “I made the original deal with Shonda. I developed ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ at the studio. I picked it up at ABC.” He praised Patmore Gibbs, and added, “As for defaming me again and again, I don’t know what to say other than it’s sad that anyone feels the need to spread lies about me.”

Yet there was so little faith in the show that the writers were asked to clear out their offices when they finished the season. But to Vernoff, who had clicked right away with Rhimes, the early episodes had “felt like a labor of love.”

And it was worth the battle. “We fought for the right for Meredith and Bailey to be whole human beings, with whole sex lives, and not a network TV idea of likable,” Vernoff says. “You might not have been likable, but now you’re iconic.”

As far as the medicine went, the cases were often ostentatious. “Every kind of crazy accident that had ever caused terrible harm to any human ever, that was our homework at night,” Vernoff says. It was up to Zoanne Clack, an emergency room doctor-turned-writer, to be a sounding board in the writers’ room. She began as the only doctor on staff during the first season, and is now an executive producer. “What was interesting was that the writers don’t have those boundaries because they don’t know the rules, so they would come up with all of these scenarios, and my immediate thought was like, ‘No way!’” Clack says. “Then I’d have to think about it and go, ‘But could it?’”

When the program finally premiered — on a Sunday night after “Desperate Housewives” — to massive ratings, it was a shock to the cast and crew, given that they had shot the first season under a cloud, Pompeo says, adding, “So the fact that the numbers were that huge the first time we aired was a big f–k-you to McPherson!”

With Season 2 now a given, everything changed, Vernoff says: “It was like a hurricane-force gale, and everyone was just trying to hold on.” They had made 13 episodes for Season 1, airing nine of them and holding the final four for Season 2 — Meredith finding out that Derek was actually married (to Addison, played by Kate Walsh) had felt like the perfect finale. But upon the writers’ return, Vernoff says, the feeling was “Holy s—. We have to make 22.”

The entire cast — mostly unknown actors like Katherine Heigl as the sunny Izzie Stevens, T.R. Knight as the chummy neurotic George O’Malley, and Justin Chambers as the troubled, secretly vulnerable Alex Karev — had become famous overnight. For Wilson, whose Bailey was the stern teacher the interns called “the Nazi,” it was a new experience. “Folks were scared to talk to me, like in the store or in the Target — people would just kind of leave me alone,” she says. “It was like, ‘What’s going on?’”

According to Vernoff, “Paparazzi were following the cast to work — it was wild.”

The mid- to late-2000s were the height of glossy gossip magazines such as Us Weekly (and its copycats), as well as the inception of TMZ and Perez Hilton as celebrity-hounding, news-breaking forces that fueled (and soiled) the fame-industrial complex. The cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” was firmly in the sights of these new, often toxic forces in media.

Pompeo says the cast was so talented that it “was all worth it” — but yes, the transition to stardom was hard for the group: “At the time, it was just a real combination of exhaustion and stress and drama. Actors competing with each other — and envious.”

Heigl, Knight and Isaiah Washington all went through press cycles that made the show seem scandal-prone. To rehash it all now seems pointless; you can look it up. Washington was fired in June 2007. Knight and Heigl asked to be written out of the show preemptively, in Seasons 5 and 6, respectively.

Vernoff and the other writers were watching the internal messes unfold. They had to deal with how the fallout affected the show’s plot, as when Washington was fired just as Burke, his character, was about to marry Cristina. “When word comes down that an actor is leaving the show, and what you’ve got scripted is a wedding …” Vernoff trails off, laughing.

“There was a lot of drama on-screen and drama off-screen, and young people navigating intense stardom for the first time in their lives,” she continues. “I think that a lot of those actors, if they could go back in time and talk to their younger selves, it would be a different thing. Everybody’s grown and changed and evolved — but it was an intense time.”

Pompeo doesn’t want to talk about what happened with individual actors from the show, because when she has in the past, “it doesn’t get received in the way in which I intend it to be.” But she does make a point about the way television is produced. “Nobody should be working 16 hours a day, 10 months a year — nobody,” she says. “And it’s just causing people to be exhausted, pissed, sad, depressed. It’s a really, really unhealthy model. And I hope post-COVID nobody ever goes back to 24 or 22 episodes a season.

“It’s why people get sick. It’s why people have breakdowns. It’s why actors fight! You want to get rid of a lot of bad behavior? Let people go home and sleep.”

Debbie Allen would eventually be Pompeo’s savior in that regard, but that was years away. Allen — an actor and a dancer — began her directing career when she was on the 1980s TV series “Fame” as a “natural progression” because, she says, “I was in charge of the musical numbers, and so many directors didn’t really know how to shoot them.” She went on to be a prolific director and producer, most notably overhauling NBC’s “A Different World” after a tumultuous first season. As a fan of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Allen wanted to work on the show, and in Season 6, she was hired to direct. To prepare for it, Allen shadowed Wilson, who had been tapped to direct by executive producer-director Rob Corn. (“He came to me and said, ‘You should direct,’” says Wilson, who has now helmed 21 episodes. “And I said, ‘OK.’ Because I didn’t know what else to say.”)

Directing that sixth-season episode led to Allen’s fruitful relationship with “Grey’s.” In Season 8, Rhimes wrote Allen into the show to play Catherine, a star surgeon, a love interest for Richard Webber (Pickens) and the mother of Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams). Ahead of Season 12 in 2015, Allen became the show’s EP/director. Her duties included hiring all of the directors, weighing in on scripts and casting, and, as Allen puts it, “minding that people feel good about themselves.” Several years before the revived #MeToo movement would lead to calls for systemic changes behind the camera in Hollywood, Allen set a goal of hiring 50% women directors. She also increased the number of Black men who directed “Grey’s” during her first season as executive producer, among them Denzel Washington. (When she sold him on it, she recounts, he said to her, “I’m going to say yes, Debbie Allen.”)

Pompeo and Allen are close. Allen began her new role the year after Dempsey left, “at a time when we were really broken,” Pompeo says. “And so much of our problems were perpetuated by bad male management. Debbie came in at a time when we really, really needed a breath of fresh air, and some new positive energy.”

Pompeo continues with a laugh: “Debbie really brought in a spirit to the show that we had never seen — we had never seen optimism! We had never seen celebration. We had never seen joy!”

According to Pompeo, Allen began advocating for her to have more humane hours — Fridays off (Pompeo: “And I was like, ‘What? What? Fridays off?’”) — and for the show to shoot 12-hour days maximum, and ideally no more than 10 hours (Pompeo: “And I was like, I love this woman.”).

Allen speaks affectionately about her bond with Pompeo. “Coming out of Boston, she’s so earthy and real in a way that you might not know,” Allen says. “There’s a sisterhood between us — I guess you would say it’s almost a Blackness that exists between us. And she’s part of our tribe.”

Allen has been a key member of the “Grey’s Anatomy” brain trust since Season 12, and two seasons later, Vernoff returned to run the show. She’d left at the end of Season 7, consulted on “Private Practice” for a few years, and then went to Showtime’s “Shameless” for five seasons. As her contract was set to expire, Rhimes asked Vernoff to lunch, and told her she wanted her to take over. “It felt like she was saying, ‘Hey, our kid needs you,’” Vernoff says.

Before accepting the offer, Vernoff had to catch up on the show. She had always written “Grey’s” as a romantic comedy, and what she saw on-screen during her binge was dark as hell — especially after Derek’s death. “If this show that you are currently making is the show that you want ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ to be,” she recalls telling Rhimes, “I am, in fact, not the right writer for it.” But Rhimes was insistent, saying it was time for a change after the mourning period for Derek.

Vanessa Delgado, who started as a production intern during the seventh season and has worked her way up to being lead editor and co-producer, says the show’s trajectory shifted when Vernoff came back — it was a return to the original, saucier tone of “Grey’s.” “We changed the music completely,” Delgado says. “The dialogue felt lighter and more fun, and wewere having fun again.”

That lightness will be difficult to maintain this year, of course, when, as Allen puts it, “COVID is No. 1 on the call sheet right now.”

Vernoff at first wondered whether “Grey’s” should ignore the coronavirus, thinking the audience comes to the show “for relief.” But the doctors in the writers’ room convinced her this wasn’t the time for escapism, saying to her, “This is the biggest medical story of our lifetime, and it is changing medicine permanently.”

When they’ve had doctors and nurses come speak with them this season, Vernoff says, “they were different human beings than the people we’ve been talking to every year. And I want to honor that, tonally. I just want to inspire people to take care of each other.”

Pompeo, who is not shy about offering criticism, sounds positively enthusiastic: “I’ll say the pilot episode to this season — girl, hold on.

“What nobody thinks we can continue to do, we have done. Hold on. That’s all we’re going to say about that!”

Pompeo has a few more months before she decides whether she wants to continue — and as Rhimes and ABC have made clear in recent years, the show will likely end when she leaves. “I don’t take the decision lightly,” Pompeo says. “We employ a lot of people, and we have a huge platform. And I’m very grateful for it.”

“You know, I’m just weighing out creatively what can we do,” she says. “I’m really, really, really excited about this season. It’s probably going to be one of our best seasons ever. And I know that sounds nuts to say, but it’s really true.”

Vernoff doesn’t worry about the creative well drying up. “We’ve blown past so many potential endings to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ that I always assume it can go on forever,” she says.

And Wilson knows how important “Grey’s” is to its audience, in that the characters have essentially become people who “live in their house.” As one of only three actors who’ve been on “Grey’s” since the beginning — the other is James Pickens Jr. — Wilson is in it until the end: “In my mind, Bailey is there until the doors close, until the hospital burns down, until the last thing happens on ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ That is her entire arc.”

Whenever the show does conclude, part of its legacy will be about the talent it launched into the world, beginning with Rhimes, who will soon release her first shows for Netflix, after her company, Shondaland, made a lucrative deal with the streamer in 2017.

But it will also be about the characters of “Grey’s Anatomy”— mostly women and people of color — who are trying to make the world a better place as they find friendship, love and community.

“The show, at its core, brings people together,” Pompeo says. “And the fact that people can come together and watch the show, and think about things they may not have ordinarily thought about, or see things normalized and humanized in a way that a lot of people really need to see — it helps you become a better human being. If this show has helped anybody become a better human being, then that’s the legacy I’d love to sit with.”

[eganantiquus]

Capitalism: Its Effects on Heaven, Hell, and a Few Others // A Good Omens Meta

I think the discussion about capitalism in Good Omens is a very interesting one to have- specifically in how it relates to Heaven and Hell. I saw a post about it recently, about the Quartermaster saying Heaven would “take the sword out of [Aziraphale’s] celestial wages,” which begs the question: does Heaven have money? A system of checks and balances on the Angels’ miracles, perhaps? Heaven is, after all, the original monopoly. But how does that affect them? Or affect Hell, for that matter? (Keep in mind, I will primarily be discussing events and dialogue from the TV show, as that’s the canon I’m most familiar and comfortable with extrapolating on.) So let’s move out a bit to take stock of the bigger picture. First of all in this discussion, let’s remember that the entire structure of Heaven and Hell blatantly showcases the shittiest parts of capitalism. As a reminder, the cons of capitalism can include: a monopoly on trade, goods, or services; social/emotional necessities ignored in the pursuit of profit; lack of concern for the environment; driving need for exponentially increased profit, allowing no space for slip-ups or less-profitable cycles; Inherited wealth, and big gaps in economic equality, which creates social divisions, which cause people to resent their fellow citizens. Let’s first take a look at something we’re all familiar with. Heaven’s and Hell’s relationship with Crowley and Aziraphale. Both Heaven and Hell have an inherent monopoly on basically everything, which is something we see both Crowley and Aziraphale struggling with in different ways throughout history. They want to exist outside of the hierarchy, but there literally isn’t any outside. In terms of social/emotional needs… do I need to go into the trauma and anxiety that Heaven and Hell instill in Crowley and Aziraphale? A post for another time. And it’s apparent, however much they try to hide it, that both of them fear authority, and would do practically anything to get away from it. So, they wiggle out from under it in whatever ways they can. (See: the “arrangement,” Crowley’s “there’s more to evil than killing people, eh?” and Aziraphale’s “Well, if you put it that way, Heaven couldn’t actually object… ”) Lack of concern for the environment can be extrapolated to Heaven and Hell’s lack of care for humanity. (See also, uh, nuclear Armageddon.) Inherited wealth/prestige is definitely a thing: see the Archangels lording their power over the lower Principalities. There’s a bit more room for mobility in Hell, where doing more evil deeds = more prestige & (...dis)honor? Anyway, this is where Hell begins to deviate. Exponential need for profit in Heaven and Hell translates to their increasing intolerance of Aziraphale’s *ahem* lies. Hell is more lenient in this area too- perhaps because of their disorganization. So Heaven and Hell are capitalistic. But in what capacity, and what is the effect on their respective denizens? In practice, who’s the winner in this capitalistic structure? Hell isn’t, no matter how inherently hellish capitalism might be. They’re clearly the losers in this situation- they’ve got terrible service, (see: Hastur having to “[wait] for maintenance to come and fix another bloody pipe,”* and the Demon Eric’s “we don’t get this view down in the basement.”) lack the organization to rise up against Heaven, (see: the frankly concerning lack of organized preparation for The Great War) and are constantly put down. They all have to fight for their positions, and are intimately familiar with what the failure to succeed in this “business” means. Not to mention that their entire hierarchy is performance driven, showing the capitalistic values they, for lack of a better term, grew up in, are still ingrained in all their practices. Heaven is at the top of an office building, has views of the entire world, is clean and obviously well organized. It’s clear what the hierarchy is there- everyone walks in lines, Gabriel always stands slightly in front of Michael and Uriel and Sandalphon, all of the higher Angels we see interact with Aziraphale treat him like he’s less than them. Heaven clearly benefits from the organization and driving force that capitalism provides, while Hell is just getting by.

To dive further into what the effects of capitalism are on Heaven and Hell, let’s go into depth more about Heaven and Hell’s respective war preparation to analyze their motivations.

Hell’s war preparations are disorganized, at best. All the Demons of Hell, gathered around two ‘generals,’ getting ready to hear a pep talk best described as being far from premeditated or sophisticated. On top of this, the second something goes wrong, Beelzebub says it. Just like that, to all the Demons. It makes me cringe every time I watch it, to see the rest of the Demons turn to each other and wonder if they’re following the right leader. The thing about this, though, is that they don’t have another option for a leader. This is the place for the people who couldn’t make it in Heaven, the outcasts and Fallen, so they don’t care. There’s nowhere else for anyone to go. Hell is far more transparent about their hate, their evil, but also about their vulnerability. Perhaps not individual vulnerability, (see: Crowley needing to be Cool and Collected at every moment) but in their overall anxieties and problems, Hell is very transparent. There is no need to hide the problems Hell has, because there’s no worse place to go. In this way, Hell has accepted their fate at the bottom of the totem pole.

Now let’s talk about Heaven’s war preparations. When Aziraphale arrives prematurely in Heaven, his “whole platoon” is “waiting” for him. So, Heaven has an organized war effort. They have uniforms. They have someone checking everyone in, putting them into place. (Where do they all line up to go to war? Where does the war Occur?? Questions for another time.) However, here is the interesting part: Heaven’s whole spiel to get everyone motivated, unlike Hell, is based on fear. While Hell brings up the actual motive for fighting, saying “we lost” and “we have had thousands of years to… get smarter,” Heaven tells Aziraphale that he’s a “coward” if he doesn’t fight, while not providing any reason besides ‘he’s supposed to.’

Here lies the beginning of the difference between Heaven and Hell: their motivators. Now let’s talk about how they carry out justice, and how that is an indicator of the effects of capitalism on them both.

Hell’s trial for Crowley is a mockery of the word, let’s be perfectly clear. They don’t provide him with a defense, and have an implicitly biased jury. However, it is a trial. A trial with evidence presented against him, a prosecutor, and a judge, and everything. What’s so interesting to me, about this, is that they don’t think for a minute that there wouldn’t be a trial. If they had thought such a thing was possible, they would have taken the opportunity. But they didn’t think of it. And that is what is so important here. Hell is the one that carries out a just trial. And I think that really speaks to their experiences as the Fallen. They know what no mercy looks like, what it is to be cut off from God’s love, with no hope for recompense. And, however evil they are, they know how much that hurts. Hell is just because they were given no justice. 

Heaven, on the other hand? There’s no preamble to Aziraphale’s “trial.” There isn’t even a trial. There’s just the characteristic fake-niceties boiled down to their basest component: a complete lack of empathy for anyone who deviates from the norm. (See Gabriel’s “into the flames,” and “don’t talk to me about the ‘greater good,’ sunshine.”). And, oh yeah by the way, what kind of good and just society uses capital punishment? Isn’t that the exact sort of thing Heaven should be above? I should sure hope so! Their believed moral code, the idea that because they’re Angels, divinely Chosen by God, that whatever they do is predestined to be right, has all the flavor of a strong dictatorship. So convinced are they of their superiority that even outright capital punishment is not below them. This is an interesting contrast to their motivation of fear that we looked at in the previous section. Perhaps higher Angels use fear to keep Angels in line, but feel exempt from the process itself. Very similar to the way big CEO's in the human business world accumulate wealth and power while their workers work paycheck to paycheck.

So Heaven is fundamentally bad, and Hell is fundamentally… good?

Not quite. 

Both Heaven and Hell are operating under the millennia of repressed trauma and baggage that came with the first war. For example, let’s look at their refusal to see nuance in the issue of war Take a look at Gabriel’s “We can fight! And we can win!” to Aziraphale and Beezlebub’s “Don’t you want to rule the world?” to Adam. They can’t comprehend that someone would want to, or, for that matter, could look at the structure of The Way Things Are and go, ‘No, this is not for me, I think I’ll just do this quietly over her instead.’ Heaven and Hell have each been indoctrinated in their own ways, by God and by Heaven and by their own inability to look past their instructions.

So, Heaven and Hell operate under the guidelines of a capitalistic system because of their respective experiences with authority and punishment.  

What does this say about Crowley and Aziraphale? That they’ve managed to dodge this system (mostly) altogether, and made one of their own… based purely on joy, mutual respect, and They still have their issues, (See: Being unable to communicate effectively. When? Oh, just for all of history) but for the most part, they’re living their own lives. It takes an especially strong will to stand up to a faulty administration, even if the standing up part consists of drinking a lot of wine, sliding around killing people, and consorting with an enemy who’s actually quite nice. It takes what a lot of Angels and Demons, simply put, don’t have. Like Hastur, who doesn’t have an “imagination.” Crowley invented one for himself. Crowley and Aziraphale practically invented free will for themselves, too. Part of their ability to so wholly reject their ‘upbringing,’ if you will, must be connected to the fact that they spend so much time around humans. If we go with TV show canon, they’re practically the only ethereal/occult entities that are on Earth for any long period of time. Of course they’re going to catch on from the humans. So Crowley and Aziraphale are the only celestial beings who have been able to get free of this terrible system, and so are able to better ‘guide’ the humans, which inevitably leads them to attempting to stop armageddon. (And of course, the apocalypse, according to Aziraphale, is something no “reasonable person would permit!”)

This brings us to the humans. Specifically, how Heaven is supposed to guide them. Heaven doesn’t, insofar as we are aware, care about the humans. Perhaps other Angels do, ones who have walked among them. But for the most part, especially with Gabriel, Michael, Sandalphon- the people in charge- the humans are an afterthought. They’re one knight on the chessboard, easily moved, taken, and discarded- perhaps with a bit of regret, but dispensable all the same. In this way, the exponential growth mindset that Heaven has goes to show just how far they’ve deviated from God’s design. Now, far be it from me to speculate on the nature of the Ineffable Plan, but as far as I’m aware, the Angels were created to love humanity, and to nurture them. Doesn’t sound like what they’re doing at all, does it?

So in this way, we can see that both Heaven and Hell have gotten the short end of the metaphorical capitalism stick. Hell, at the bottom of the ranks, desperate to climb back up and regain their glory, but unable to do so because of the weight of their Falling trauma; Heaven, in all its Jeff Bezos glory, unable to see the consequences of their actions close up because of their disassociation with “reality.” 

Capitalism and economics in general are incredibly nuanced things, and I do not at all pretend to fully understand them. However, I fully enjoy imagining how the complex dynamics of Good Omens universe Heaven and Hell deal with the repercussions of existence and their own actions through the lens of capitalism.

*side note from paragraph seven: I think maintenance work would be a more fitting job for Crowley and Aziraphale, and frankly, I would love to read a fic about that.