#WRT that first note

[mystxmomo]

Given how little we have on Ellaniath, I am forced to raise my own hand (Decide design elements about it on my own.) (I'm really bad at this, so I have to dissect everything Canon has given us to draw up some ideas.)

Under the cut is things off the wiki I want to consider while choosing design elements. Take it or leave it as you will, this is for my own use in my writing and art.

Nobody outside of Ellaniath, save the ruling god, had an idea, where the realm was located, apart from the very general knowledge "somewhere on Colothys", and how it looked like. Vhaeraun wiped the memories of those who stumbled on his realm, which was considered a demonstration of his abilities as a thief.[0.1]

[0.1] So this is an immediate aside, and a far less important note when it comes to trying to decide the aesthetic sensibilities of his realm, but I kind of loving the Homestuck God-teir ass logic of Vhaeraun as a thief not just being a thief in the physical sense of a word, but also being able to steal things from the mind and sense of self. It actually kind of interests me how much of Vhaeraun's portfolio deals with the mind alongside more explicit dealings of stealth.

But that's not why we're here today. I will have some self control, we can talk about that a different day.

While we don't get a physical description of Ellaniath while Vhaeraun is strictly in control of it, what we do get is a very brief description of it while Eilistraee is combined with him.

During the realm’s time on Arvandor, Ellaniath merged with Eilistraee's realm, the drow goddess of moonlight. It looked like a forest under perpetual night with the half moon being the only source of light. The forest had shining moonstones as decoration, half among them gradually lost their light after Ellaniath's incorporation until they became pitch black.

And I think, given that we have that and not one but two of the realms Eilistraee likes to spend her time in, I would say it's entirely possible to reverse engineer the effects she had on his realm and he had on hers.

Svartalfheim

Like all realms in Nidavellir, Svartalfheim was a system of underground caverns. Unlike the rest of the layer, however, the realm's stone walls emitted a silvery glow, while natural springs and geysers warmed up the rivers and kept the caves at a comfortable warm temperature. The entire realm emanated a feeling of peace and love that was atypical for Ysgard. The realm had wild regions covered in dark forests that thrived on the earth's warmth and required no sunlight. Some of the caverns displayed abundant deposits of quartz, mica, and pyrite, of which the drow were overly fond and employed them abundantly as decoration and jewellery.

Arvandor

Eilistraee had her home in Arvandor, a plane of natural beauty, with the elven gods of the Seldarine. Within its borders, the night was perpetual, with the moon ever-shining in the deep blue sky. Faith was more potent here than in the rest of Arvandor, and all followers of the other drow gods of the Dark Seldarine suffered minor impediments.

Getting the most obvious point out of the way, the moon going from full to half in the masked ladies era is interesting. I think the conclusion I would come to that is that if you could see a sky in Vhaeraun's realm, it would be eternally new-moon. However, I would personally want to put emphasis on the stars as a result of that. In fact, I think it would be interesting for there to be no emphasis on stars in Eilistraee's realm to play into the parallel of that. It's just a blue sky, with a brilliant moon. Compared to Vhaeraun, who could have a starry sky, with no moon....

To bring in a source from a third wiki page to justify this choice, I want to grab the depictions of his temples for a moment. Because I think while temples and things directly involving the religion are just as likely to be influenced by the type of people worshiping him, it's also easy to short hand the core design elements as the gods personal preference.

Temples to Vhaeraun were built both on and under the surface. On the surface, shrines were built in shallow woodland caves, usually where little light shone through the trees. As a general rule, it was inside a Vhaeraunite settlement or in the vicinity of one. In the Underdark, deep natural amphitheater were the site for temples. They were hidden through multiple darkness spells, which looked like patch of black stone to darkvision. Interestingly, the Underdark temples were usually built with a "starry sky", actually beljurils placed into high ceilings to look like stars.

While the forests and stone came from Eilistraee, I think it's worth looking at that it's still nature and forest. The change that he has on Eilistraee's realm isn't about the biome itself, but the way the biome manifests itself.

I think there are two directions I would want to take that. The first, and easiest conclusion, is that his realm could have the first description of his temples. If there are caves, they are shallow (I think he's so very tired of caves) and it has forests so thick that it creates perpetual darkness on it's own. However, I think playing into the opposite could also be interesting? Something about the emptiness of sweeping grassy fields under an endless night, perpetually in the state of a new moon tickles the mind. ( I think these aren't mutually exclusive either.)

A follow up thought, however. I think that this is all Ellaniath at it's most natural state. There's another point to consider with all of this. As follows:

Vhaeraun, as a lesser deity, could not only alter his realm in some fashion like setting temperatures as he liked or fill it with special sensory information [1], like light, sound and smell, when it came down to sound, he could also make intelligible speech as background sounds in his realm [2].

As part of the Demonweb Pits, Ellaniath was divinely morphic, meaning Vhaeraun had an easy causing physical changes in his realm. While there, Ellaniath was mildly chaotic and strongly evil aligned, meaning that the plane itself worked against individuals who followed lawful philosophies by weakening their power of personality [3], and limiting in general the mental capacities of those who weren't evil. The realm had also a strong faith factor, meaning that those, who didn't follow the Dark Seldarine suffered even more limitations, with followers of the Seldarine suffering a drop in mental capacity more severe than others. [4] Once the realm was in Carceri, Ellaniath was mildly evil aligned and still divinely morphic.

[1/2/3] So, resident fucking edgelord Vhaeraun. I know he's already pulling away the memories of people who intrude into his realm, but I think that if someone slipped in that wasn't supposed to, they probably wouldn't get Ellaniath at it's base and most natural. I think that Vhaeraun is best, at his core, at defense through psychological horror. While I don't think making the realm look evil because it's in an evil aligned god's domain/in the demon webpits is very interesting, I DO think Vhaeraun has the tendency to be a bit. Theatrical. A Drama queen? And part of those theatrics are in the aesthetics of evil.

My point being. I think if you're not supposed to be there, the environment responds to you as such. The tree's suddenly loom too tall over you, whispers come from the environment around you. There's an ever-present feeling of being watched, or or something breathing down your spine. Shadows reaching out to grab at you from behind the trees. I don't think he's beneath playing into the decay of the forest for the horror of it as well. I think it would be easy to get lost in his realm. Forests can be confusing, and dizzying places, especially if you're unused to navigating them. Especially those dark corners of the forests, where tree's blackout the sun.

I think he's good at causing anxiety to those that don't belong, and the world he exists in reflects that.

[4] Short personal opinion, but if I were to change anything about the actual environment and effects of his realm, I would also MAYBE include Lolth worshipers in the "followers of the Seldarine suffering a drop in mental capacity more severe than others."

[tsunosagun]

i flew too high, please catch my fall

[lavernius]

I was so happy about getting multiple 1A requests that I decided to just dump all my recent 1A doodles in one post :-)

[citriarchive]

one of the potential Soulmate AU Tropes™ was/is feeling the same emotions your soulmate does and i'm just thinking that that must be the absolute worst time to be "Mr. All Of My Tomodachi Life Catchphrases Are 'I'm Fine'" and have a soulmate who is "Mr. Feeling Everything All The Time All At Once". like me personally, i think i'd just die if i randomly felt waves of his emotions when they changed. and i put a lot of myself into him. the call is coming from inside the house.

in addition it's going to be very interesting when nithral inevitably tells yaevinn that he's fine when he's not and yaevinn is just like. ok i'm gonna let this go until you're ready to talk abt it but you know i know that's not true right. like it's not a hunch this isn't me being perceptive. like you. you know i know right. ok just making sure ok ok i'm letting it go for now

[rynliadon]

i really want to see seyka and talanah interact tbh. i think that aloy had a massive unrequited crush on talanah through zero dawn (and some of forbidden west!) and seyka would simply see the two of them talk to each other and Know and be insanely jealous. talanah and seyka would be best friends tho

like just PICTURE these interactions with me. seyka enthusiastically telling aloy about hunting machines with talanah and learning about the lodge. aloy being interested and referencing her time as a thrush. seyka getting pouty and playfully jealous. talanah has no idea any of this is going on while also being in the room.

[pe4nutastic]

In the interest of having a full image to my profile picture, here's an OC of mine that I drew in a recent re-design of her concept. Her name is 'Moon' (alternatively known as the 'Wicked Witch of the Void' in ancient Psion folklore or as per her original titled given by Ancient Ones 'Witch of Wishes') and she's an Ancient One which, as a result of a time-space warping catastrophic event on her home-planet, ended up stuck in a desolate and existence-erasing place, the very antithesis to lived reality; the Void.

Her powers are heavily intertwined with time-space, fate, and probability. As a result, some of the most noteworthy things that she can do would be: rewinding, pausing, or forwarding sections of space or specific subjects, either as a whole or just certain aspects of them; from the point before, time manipulation; perceiving the 'threads' of reality (to be expanded later on) & the associated 'threads' (including fate-specific ones) around and between specific subjects; and making a particular event happen or outcome to result, no matter how astronomically small the probability (more common) up to a probability of zero (rare because her full power hasn't manifested/she's still developmentally immature).

Despite the nature of her powers and the plight of her imprisonment, she's a very hopeful, upbeat, and idealistic (maybe a little too idealistic) person with a touch of whimsy and the heart of a true romantic and hero.

[ladystoneboobs]

idt we talk enough about how a song of ice and fire is also the song of incest and cannibalism. i mean, sure, obviously both of those subjects are noted as present, but the saga feels much more known for its incest, which idt is fair or accurate to the later materiel. iirc, jaime fucking cersei next to their dead firstborn is the last instance of onpage incest happening in present tl, and after that it's all about the cannibals, baby.

(disclaimer: cw/tw sa, cw/tw rape, and i'm not counting cousincest as that's normal in-world even for non-targaryens and also still legal in many places in our world today, nor counting the faux-incestuous freudian mess that is littlefinger/alayne(sansa)/sweetrobin, nor any dark humor jokes and/or unfulfilled threats wrt forced cannibalism)

in fact pretty much all the active incest during the present tl happens in those first 3 books:

the twincest as a major plot point ofc, kicking action off when bran saw them fucking in a tower

and viserys creeping on dany and twisting her nipple

tyrion relating his backstory to bronn wherein he and tysha were both raped by proxy by his father, tywin (tho tyrion does not use that terminology)

craster still being alive to rape and impregnate his own daughters (resulting in dozens of forced incestuous relationships)

and theon unknowingly groping his own sister while she (knowingly) groped him in return

jaime's early pov recalled how he shut up cersei with kissing when they fought after bran refused to die

bella of stoney sept trying and failing to seduce gendry who is (unbeknownst to them both) her half-brother as both were sired by robert baratheon (only example in these 3 books where incest was averted before any sexual activity or incestuous contact occurred)

the aforementioned sept twincest next to joffrey's corpse

tyrion learning from oberyn about cersei twisting his penis when he was a baby

cersei's failed attempt to seduce jaime in wst, pulling out his dick for either a bj or hj until her talk of tyrion's death made him lose his boner

while incest is not exactly absent from the text after that, it seems to exist in the feastdance only in hypotheticals or past memories:

aeron's trauma flashbacks of his (implied only in published text) csa by euron

jaime still feeling lust when seeing cersei nude

and her fond reminiscing about them fucking behind robert's back/brief dream of them as a married couple before her walk of shame

and cersei remembering another time she twisted baby tyrion's penis

victarion misinterpreting asha's offer of partnership as a marriage proposal and suddenly looking at his niece in a new way with "his manhood beginning to stiffen"

jaime's recollection of fucking cersei at darry next to robert as he was passed out drunk before cersei sent him to hunt arya (which would have happened back in agot and the point of this scene is more his failed hunt for a child just to make cersei happy)

arianne's "uneasy" memory of a past fantasy about being seduced by a man whose description is suspiciously similar to her late uncle oberyn

the aborted marital match of aegon/young griff to his purported aunt dany

illyrio saying (the now dead) viserys tried to rape dany the night before her wedding to drogo (another event from agot concerning a guy we already knew was into incest)

and tyrion once saying he wanted to rape as well as murder cersei

conversely, the cannibalism in the earlier books is most often only unproven hypotheticals alluded to as possible cannibalism:

old nan saying the others fed their dead servants the flesh of human children (which we have not yet seen with any wights so far, whether or not one counts walking undead eating human flesh as straight-up cannibalism)

the mystery meat in flea bottom's bowls o' brown which may or may not contain symon silver tongue after tyrion had him killed

renly's recollection that cressen kept stannis from catapulting their old master-at-arms by saying they may need to eat him later (which did not come to pass thanks to davos)

joffrey telling his people to eat their own dead (with no way of knowing if any actually did)

lady hornwood eating her own fingers (though bran's pov only notes them being chewed on, not swallowed. it's only in adwd that people talk of her eating the fingers.)

the mentions of the ice river clans being the cannibals beyond the wall (who are def not among the free folk jon snow gets to know onpage, making it just background detail)

bran's (possibly mythical) story of the rat cook

and biter chewing on people he attacked and other corpses (which seems to be just a side hobby connected to his killing method moreso constituting a snack than a full meal from a person butchered for meat. this tendancy of his is just background detail in acok, with biter chewing a corpse in the background after the weasel soup operation, and the hindsight implication that it could well have been him rather than dogs or wolves who had "been at" the corpses after the skirmish where yoren was killed)

while the feastdance feels much more in your face with cannibalism, having not only more total mentions of the practice but also more confirmed, actual cannibalism (as opposed to the ambiguity of each and every bowl o' brown), for those who know how to look at the evidence:

jaime learned that his father's mad dog aka the mountain fed parts of vargo hoat to all his prisoners (including vargo himself) after recapturing harrenhal

and euron bragged about pulling a similar trick with the warlocks he captured (the only twist being that the warlocks knew what they were being forced to eat, which vargo hoat and wylis manderly etc at harrenhal likely didn't)

the elder brother of the quiet isle told of biter eating all of a woman's breasts at saltpans after she'd been raped and killed (prob the largest amount of flesh biter's confirmed to have eaten from one corpse)

bran and co. ate "pig" supplied by coldhands which had to be long pig aka human meat

brienne felt her face being eaten by biter in her own pov (which is so much worse than him chewing others in the background of the weasel soup scene)

theon was told that two ironmen at moat cailin were found eating their dead comrades

the astapori were said to eat their own dead while under siege by the yunkishmen

and then were said to do so again in refugee camps outside meereen

sam and davos sailed past skagos and each remembered stories of skagosi cannibalism

khrazz the pit fighter cut the hearts from his defeated foes to eat them

cotter pyke's last letter to jon snow said the wildlings were eating their own dead at hardhome

4 of stannis's men were executed by burning for butchering and eating other men (with asha wondering how many others had done so without being caught)

and ofc the frey pies with wyman manderly having his 3 former guests killed and serving their meat to their own kin and the other guests at ramsay's wedding while eating some himself too

two of these examples (involving gregor clegane and euron greyjoy) must have actually happened during the course of asos, but grrm chose to give us the gruesome details in affc, which was brand new information about men we already knew were villains but did not know were into that fucked-up shit specifically, unlike being reminded that agot-era jaime and viserys wanted to fuck their sisters. (and not unlike how adwd has the clarification of multiple characters saying lady hornwood ate her own fingers as opposed to bran's acok pov just saying she chewed on them.) it's as if after craster was killed and jc effectively broke up grrm decided cannibalism was the taboo subject matter he would fill the later books with, so we'd really feel the increasing danger of starvation-induced cannibalism with winter's arrival (and have no trouble believing rickon's new home of skagos really is a cannibal island). however, in-universe it feels like there's some sort of environmental balance connection so that the decrease in one formerly common behaviorial abomination just allows another such abomination to fill in the gap with a sharp increase in activity, like deer overpopulation resulting from lack of predators as if all the active incest somehow stopped more people from eating themselves or other people.

[stopaskingme]

The curious case of Adeyemi's (missing) watch in Conclave (2024)

the longer watch friend and I think on it, the more it blows our minds how intentional the costumers were wrt to the friggin watches in this movie. If you're interested in watch meta for Lawrence, Benitez, Bellini, Tremblay and Tedesco, I have linked the previous posts :D

This post is about Adeyemi's watch and what it means.

To do that, we've to highlight the different shorthands the watches have throughout the movie because despite like 100 close-ups of hands in Conclave, only six characters are depicted with watches.

Only the serious contenders for the papacy.

Before the conclave starts, watches are windows to a Character

they are quick snapshots of who a character is, or their current state of mind.

Tremblay and Tedesco: Watches with black dials, signalling their roles as antagonists;

Bellini and Lawrence: White dials. more on Bellini later.

Benitez: Digital watch face, neutral unknown

Two characters stand out because of how plainly the camera shows us their watches:

Benitez's Casio in his first full-profile shot, and

Lawrence's Orient in the emotionally vulnerable bathroom scene

– and then how completely those watches disappear once the conclave begins, which leads into the second role the watches play once the conclave begins.

x

Watches as Signals of Ambition

Because Benitez and Lawrence lack any desire to be pope, the watches are gone. Even in settings which you'd expect to see them, like the bedroom.

What's the point?

Well, Adeyemi's Watch.

We see glimpses of it when he was still in the running for the papacy.

But that's all we get. Glimpses. His watch cannot be identified.

It can't be an accident, since the movie has been so deliberate about who wears the watches.

Rather, the camera refuses more details on Adeyemi's watch because there's nothing more about him we needed to know.

He didn't need to prove himself. He was the 'natural' successor. He led the votes in the first three ballots. He's the closest thing to a shoo-in candidate.

When Lawrence comes to confront him, he is still wearing his watch. After Adeyemi realises he's lost his chance however, he's stripped of his watch by the next vote.

To hammer the point home, the camera shows us the individual candidates following the results of the next ballot.

Adeyemi sits with his hands tucked under the table.

Tremblay (as the new frontrunner) has a watch, but we don't get to see it fully

Bellini and Tedesco's watches are full-faced, out in the open. They are still actively chasing the papacy

Lawrence, on the other hand, genuinely doesn't want it, so his hands are firmly under the table.

Bellini

The same happens with Tremblay's watch when he's outed for simony. More interesting to note is the one time Bellini loses his watch; when Lawrence shares the report with him.

True, he was in his nightgown. It doesn't make sense for him to be wearing a watch. But he'd also given up on his own candidacy because he'd bought into the idea of a Tremblay papacy.

After Tremblay is out of the running, look who's wearing a watch again!

Lawrence

Most telling of all is Lawrence's watch. The only time it appears after the conclave begins is – you guessed it – WHEN HE VOTES FOR HIMSELF.

And Benitez?

Even during his game-changing monologue, his watch was hidden. We only see it after that in the final voting scene.

Benitez might not have wanted the papacy but he'd grasped the situation. He knew what direction he'd steer the Mother Church if he were elected. His watch is symbolic proof of his conviction and visual proof of his character.

In short, the watches show up when the candidates need to prove themselves worthy of being the next pope.

And they lose their watches when they are no longer eligible.

Going back to Adeyemi, when he realises he's lost his chance, Lawrence places his hand over Adeyemi's wrist when praying for him, covering where his watch would be.

Adeyemi's watch makes its last appearance when Tremblay is outed; his hope rearing its head. But he also realises he doesn't stand a viable chance.

When Benitez is elected, Adeyemi claps in resignation without a watch.

Tremblay's hands are beneath the table. The camera lingers only on the crack in his glasses.

Bellini's Seiko Dolce is there in its full tank face glory. He was never 'disqualified' from the race. Should there be another conclave in his lifetime, he might run again.

Tedesco's Oris out and in even fuller, naked display. He hadn't been 'disqualified' either. He could and would run if he's alive for the next conclave.

x

After the conclave

In the Room of Tears, Benitez holds Lawrence's hands. Benitez wears no watch. There's nothing more we need to know.

We already understand who he is and why he deserves to be Pope.

🐢 Conclave watches part 1 / part 2 / part 3

[glitter-stained]

Damasio, The Trolley Problem and Batman: Under the Hood

Okay so @bestangelofall asked me to elaborate on what I meant by "Damasio's theories on emotions in moral decision-making add another level of depth to the analysis of UTH as a moral dilemma" and I thought this deserved its own post so let's talk about this.

So, idk where everyone is at here (philosophy was mandatory in highschool in my country but apparently that's not the case everywhere so i genuinely have no clue what's common knowledge here, i don't want to like state the obvious but also we should recap some stuff. Also if I'm mentioning a philosopher's or scientist's name without detailing, that means it's just a passing thought/recommendation if you want to read more on the topic.)

First thing first is I've seen said, about jason and the no killing rule, that "killing is always bad that's not up for debate". And I would like to say, that's factually untrue. Like, no matter which side of the debate you are on, there is very much a debate. Historically a big thing even. So if that's not something you're open to hear about, if you're convinced your position is the only correct one and even considering other options is wrong and/or a waste of time... I recommend stopping here, because this only going to make you upset, and you have better stuff to do with your life than getting upset over an essay. In any case please stay civil and remember that this post is not about me debating ethics with the whole bat-tumblr, it's me describing a debate other people have been voicing for a long time, explaining the position Damasio's neuropsychology and philosophy holds in this debate, and analyzing the ethics discussed in Batman: Under the Red Hood in that light. So while I might talk about my personal position in here (because I have an opinion in this debate), this isn't a philosophy post; this is a literature analysis that just so happens to exist within the context of a neuropsychological position on a philosophical debate. Do not try to convince me that my philosophy of ethics is wrong, because that's not the point, that's not what the post is about, I find it very frustrating and you will be blocked. I don't have the energy to defend my personal opinions against everybody who disagrees with me.

Now, let's start with Bruce. Bruce, in Under The Hood and wrt the no kill rule (not necessarily all of his ethics, i'm talking specifically about the no kill rule), is defending a deontological position. Deontology is a philosophy of ethics coined by christian🧷 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The philosophy of ethics asks this question: what does it mean to do a good action? And deontology answers "it means to do things following a set of principles". Basically Kant describes what are "absolute imperatives" which are rules that hold inherent moral values: some things are fundamentally wrong and others are bad. Batman's no-kill rule is thus a categorical imperative: "Though Shall not Kill"🧷, it is always wrong to kill. (Note that I am not saying Bruce is kantian just because he has a deontology: Kant explained the concept of deontological ethics, and then went up to theorize his own very specific and odd brand of deontology, which banned anything that if generalized would cause the collapse of society as well as, inexplicably, masturbation. Bruce is not Kantian, he's just, regarding the no kill rule, deontological. Batman is still allowed to wank, don't worry.)

In this debate, deontological ethics are often pit up against teleological ethics, the most famous group of which being consequentialism, the most famous of consequentialisms being utilitarism. As the name indicates, consequentialist theories posit that the intended consequences of your actions determine if those actions were good or not. Utilitarism claims that to do good, your actions should aim to maximise happiness for the most people possible. So Jason, when he says "one should kill the Joker to prevent the thousands of victims he is going to harm if one does not kill him", is holding a utilitarian position.

The debate between deontology and utilitarism has held many forms, some fantastical and some with more realistic approaches to real life like "say you're hiding from soldiers and you're holding a baby that's gonna start crying, alerting the soldiers and getting everyone in your hideout massacred. Do you muffle the baby, knowing it will suffocate and kill it?" or "say there's a plague going on and people are dying and the hospital does not have enough ventilators, do you take the one off of the comatose patient with under 0.01% chance of ever waking up to give it to another patient? What about 1%?", etc, etc. The most famous derivative of this dilemma, of course, being the infamous trolley problem.

This is what is meant when we say "the UTH confrontation is a trolley problem." The final confrontation at the warehouse is a variation, a derivative of the utilitarian dilemma that goes as follows: "if someone was trying to kill someone in front of you, and that murder would prevent the murder of thousands, should you try to stop that murder or let it happen?"

Now, here's a question: why are there so many derivatives of the trolley problem? Why do philosophers spend time pondering different versions of the same question instead of solving it?

My opinion (and the one of much, much smarter people whose name i forgot oops) is that both systems fail at giving us a satisfying, clean-cut reply. Now, most people have a clean-cut answer to the trolley problem as presented here: me personally, I lean more towards utilitarianism, and I found it logical to pull the lever. But altering the exact situation makes me change my answer, and there is very often a point where people, no matter their deontological or utilitarian velleities, change their answer. And that's interesting to examine.

So let's talk about deontology. Now my first gripe with deontology it's that it posits a set of rules as absolute and I find that often quite arbitrary. 🧷 Like, it feels a little like mathematical axioms, you know? We build a whole worldview on the assumption that these rules are inherently correct and the best configuration because it feels like it makes sense, and accidentally close our mind to the world of non-euclidian ethics. In practice, here are some situations in which a deontologist might change their mind: self-defense killing, for example, is often cited as "an exception to the rule", making that rule de facto non-universal; and disqualifying it as an absolute imperative. Strangely enough, people will often try to solve the trolley problem by deciding to kill themselves by jumping on the tracks 🧷 which is actually a utilitarian solution: whether you're pulling the lever or you're jumping on the tracks, you are choosing to kill one person to stop the people from being run over. Why does it matter if it's you or someone else you're killing? You're still killing someone. Another situation where people may change their answer would be, like "what if you needed to save your children but to do so you had to kill the ceo of united healthcare?" Note that these are only examples for killing, but the biggest issue is that deontology preaches actions are always either good or wrong, and the issue with that lack of nuance is best illustrated with the kantian problem regarding the morality of lying: let's say it's the holocaust and a family of jews is hiding in your house. Let's say a nazi knocks on your door and asks if there are people hiding in your house. You know if you tell the truth, the jews in your house will be deported. In that situation, is it morally correct to lie? Now, Kant lived before the Holocaust, but in his time there was a similar version of this problem that had been verbalised (this formulation is the best-known derivative of this problem btw, I didn't invent it) and Kant's answer, I kid you not, was still "no it is not morally acceptable to lie in that situation".

And of course, there are variations of that problem that play with the definition of killing- what defines the act of killing and can the other circumstances (like if there's a person you need to save) alter that definition? => Conclusion: there is a lot more nuance to moral actions than what a purely deontological frame claims, and pushing deontology to its limits leads to situations that would feel absurd to us.

Now let's take utilitarianism to its own limits. Say you live in a world where healthcare has never been better. Now say this system is so because there is a whole small caste of people who have been cloned and genetically optimized and conditioned since birth so that their organs could be harvested at any given moment to heal someone. Let's say this system is so performant it has optimised this world's humanity's general well-being and health, leading to an undeniable, unparalleled positive net-worth for humanity. Here's the question: is this world a utopia or a dystopia? Aka, is raising a caste of people as organ cattle morally acceptable in that situation? (Note: Because people's limits on utilitarianism vary greatly from one person to another, I chose the most extreme example I could remember, but of course there are far more nuanced ones. Again, I wasn't the one to come up with this example. If you're looking for examples of this in fiction, i think the limits of utilitarianism are explored pretty interestingly in the videogame The Last of Us).

=> Conclusion: there is a lot more nuance to moral actions than what a purely utilitarian frame claims, and pushing utilitarism to its limits leads to situations that would feel absurd to us.

This leads us back to Under the Hood. Now because UTH includes a scathing criticism of Batman's no kill rule deontology, but Jason is also presented as a villain in this one, my analysis of the whole comic is based on the confrontation between both of these philosophies and their failures, culminating in a trolley dilemma type situation. So this is why it makes sense to have Bruce get mad at Jason for killing Captain Nazi in self-defense: rejecting self-defense, even against nazis, is the logical absurd conclusion of deontology. Winick is simply taking Bruce's no-kill rule to the limit.

And that's part of what gets me about Jason killing goons (aside from the willis todd thing that should definitely have been addressed in such a plot point.) It's that it feels to me like Jason's philosophy is presented as wrong because it leads to unacceptable decisions, but killing goons is not the logical absurd conclusion of utilitarianism. It's a. a side-effect of Jason's plot against Bruce and/or, depending on how charitable you are to either Jason's intelligence or his morals, b. a miscalculation. Assuming Jason's actions in killing goons are a reflection of his moral code (which is already a great assumption, because people not following their own morals is actually the norm, we are not paragons of virtue), then this means that 1) he has calculated that those goons dying would induce an increase in general global human happiness and thus 2) based on this premise, he follows the utilitarian framework and thus believes it's moral to kill the goons. It's the association of (1) and (2) that leads to an absurd and blatantly immoral consequence, but since the premise (1) is a clear miscalculation, the fact that (1) & (2) leads to something wrong does not count as a valid criticism of (2): to put it differently, since the premise is wrong, the conclusion being wrong does not give me any additional info on the value of the reasoning. This is a little like saying "Since 1+ 3= 5 and 2+2=4, then 1+3+2+2 = 9". The conclusion is wrong, but because the first part (1+3=5) is false, the conclusion being wrong does not mean that the second part (2+2 =4) is wrong. So that's what frustrates me so much when people bring up Jason killing goons as a gotcha for criticizing his utilitarian philosophy, because it is not!! It looks like it from afar but it isn't, which is so frustrating because, as stated previously, there are indeed real limits to utilitarianism that could have been explored instead to truly level the moral playing field between Jason and Bruce.

Now that all of this is said and done, let's talk about what in utilitarianism and deontology makes them flawed and, you guessed it, talk some about neuropsychology (and how that leads to what's imo maybe the most interesting thing about the philosophy in Under the Hood.)

In Green Arrow (2001), in an arc also written by Judd Winick, Mia Dearden meets a tortured man who begs her to kill him to save Star City (which is being massacred), and she kills him, then starts to cry and begs Ollie for confirmation that this was the right thing to do. Does this make Mia a utilitarian? If so, then why did she doubt and cry? Is she instead a deontologist, who made a mistake?

In any case, the reason why Mia's decision was so difficult for her to make and live with, and the reason why all of these trolley-adjacent dilemmas are so hard, is pretty clear. Mia's actions were driven by fear and empathy. It's harder to tolerate sacrificing our own child to avoid killing, it's harder to decide to sacrifice a child than an adult, a world where people are raised to harvest their organs feels horrible because these are real humans we can have empathy towards and putting ourselves in their shoes is terrifying... So we have two "perfectly logical" rational systems toppled by our emotions. But which is wrong: should we try to shut down our empathy and emotions so as to always be righteous? Are they a parasite stopping us from being true moral beings?

Classically, we (at least in my culture in western civilization) have historically separated emotions from cognition (cognition being the domain of thought, reasoning, intelligence, etc.) Descartes, for example, was a philosopher who highlighted a dualist separation of emotion and rationality. For a long time this was the position in psychology, with even nowadays some people who think normal psychologists are for helping with emotions and neuropsychologists are for helping with cognition.(I will fight these people with a stick.) Anyway, that position was the predominant one in psychology up until Damasio (not the famous writer, the neuropsychologist) wrote a book named Descartes' Error. (A fundamental of neuropsychology and a classic that conjugates neurology, psychology and philosophy: what more could you ask for?)

Damasio's book's title speaks for itself: you cannot separate emotion from intelligence. For centuries we have considered emotions to be parasitic towards reasoning, (which even had implications on social themes and constructs through the centuries 📌): you're being emotional, you're letting emotions cloud your judgement, you're emotionally compromised, you're not thinking clearly... (Which is pretty pertinent to consider from the angle of A Death in the Family, because this is literally the reproach Bruce makes to Jason). Damasio based the book on the Damasio couple's (him and his wife) study of Phineas Gage, a very, very famous case of frontal syndrome (damage to the part of the brain just behind the forehead associated with executive functions issues, behavioural issues and emotional regulation). The couple's research on Gage lead Damasio, in his book, to this conclusion: emotions are as much of a part of reasoning and moral decision-making as "cold cognition" (non emotional functioning). Think of it differently: emotional intelligence is a skill. Emotions are tools. On an evolutionary level, it is good that we as people have this skill to try and figure out what others might think and do. That's useful. Of course, that doesn't mean that struggling with empathy makes you immoral, but we people who struggle with empathy have stories of moments where that issue has made us hurt someone's feelings on accident, and it made us sad, because we didn't want to hurt their feelings. On an evolutionary level (and this is where social Darwinism fundamentally fails) humanity has been able to evolve in group and in a transgenerational group (passing knowledge from our ancestors long after their death, belonging to a community spread over a time longer than our lifetime) thanks to social cognition (see Tomasello's position on the evolution of language for more detail on that), and emotions, and "emotional intelligence" is a fundamental part of how that great system works across the ages.

And that's what makes Batman: Under the Hood brilliant on that regard. If I have to make a hypothesis on the state of Winick's knowledge on that stuff, I would say I'm pretty sure he knew about the utilitarism vs deontology issue; much harder to say about the Damasio part, but whether he's well-read in neuropsychology classics or just followed a similar line of reasoning, this is a phenomenally fun framework to consider UTH under.

Because UTH, and Jason's character for the matter, refuse to disregard emotions. Bruce says "we mustn't let ourselves get clouded by our emotions" and Jason, says "maybe you should." I don't necessarily think he has an ethical philosophy framework for that, I still do believe he's a utilitarian, but he's very emotion-driven and struggling to understand a mindframe that doesn't give the same space to emotions in decision-making. And as such, Jason says "it should matter. If the emotion was there, if you loved me so much, then it should matter in your decision of whether or not to let the Joker die, that it wasn't just a random person that he killed, but that he killed your son."

And Bruce is very much doubling down on this mindset of "I must be stronger than my feelings". He is an emotionally repressed character. He says "You don't understand. I don't think you've ever understood", and it's true, Jason can't seem to understand Bruce's position, there's something very "if that person doesn't show love in my perspective and understanding of what love is then they do not love me" about his character that I really appreciate. But Bruce certainly doesn't understand either, because while Jason is constantly asking Bruce for an explanation, for a "why do you not see things the way I do" that could never satisfy him, Bruce doesn't necessarily try to see things the way Jason does. And that's logical, since Jason is a 16 years old having a mental breakdown, and Bruce is a grown man carrying on the mission he has devoted himself to for years, the foundation he has built his life over. He can't allow himself to doubt, and why would he? He's the adult, he's the hero, he is, honestly, a pretty stubborn and set-in-his-ways character. So, instead of rising to the demand of emotional decision-making, Bruce doubles down on trying to ignore his feelings. And Jason, and the story doesn't let him. Bludheaven explodes. This induces extremely intense feelings in Bruce (his son just got exploded), which Jason didn't allow him to deal with, to handle with action or do anything about; Jason says no you stay right there, with me, with those emotions you're living right now, and you're making a decision. And there's the fact Bruce had a mini-heart attack just before thinking Jason was dead again. And there's the fact he mourned Jason for so long, and Stephanie just died, and Tim, Cass and Oracle all left, and the Joker is right there, and Jason puts a gun in his hands (like the gun that killed his parents)... All of that makes it impossible for Bruce to disregard his emotions. The same way Jason, who was spilling utilitarian rhetoric the whole time, is suddenly not talking about the Joker's mass murder victims but about he himself. The same way Jason acts against his own morals in Lost Days by sparing the Joker so they can have this confrontation later. That's part of why it's so important to me that Jason is crying in that confrontation.

Bruce's action at the end of the story can be understood two ways:

-he decides to maim/kill Jason to stop the insupportable influx of emotions, and him turning around is his refusal to look at his decision (looking away as a symbol of shame): Bruce has lost, in so that he cannot escape the dilemma, he succumbs to his emotions and acts against his morals.

-the batarang slicing Jason's throat is an accident: he is trying to find a way out of the dilemma, a solution that lets him save his principles, but his emotions cloud his judgement (maybe his hand trembles? Maybe his vision is blurry?). In any case, he kills his son, and it being an accident doesn't absolve him: his emotions hold more weight than his decision and he ends up acting against his morals anyway.

It's a very old story: a deontologist and a utilitarian try to solve the trolley problem, and everyone still loses. And who's laughing? The nihilist, of course. To him, nothing has sense, and so nothing matters. He's wrong though, always has been. That's the lesson I'm taking from Damasio's work. That's the prism through which I'm comparing empathy to ethics in Levinas' work and agape in Compté-Sponsville's intro to philosophy through.

It should matter. It's so essential that it matters. Love, emotions, empathy: those are fundamental in moral evaluation and decision making. They are a feature, not a bug. And the tragedy is when we try to force ourselves to make them not matter.

Anyway so that was my analysis of why Damasio's position on ethics is so fun to take in account when analysing UTH, hope you found this fun!

[rationalnerd62]

Every time I see a post about how someone doesn't understand Bell's Hells distrust/dislike of Gods, I just don't understand what show they were watching.

First of all, most of Bell's Hells don't even dislike the Gods. They just don't particularly care for them, which is a completely different thing.

Orym is from the Air Ashari, and as a result expressed very similar feelings towards the Gods than Keyleth in C1. Aka, of course the Gods exist, of course they've got a purpose for some people, but Ashari folks don't particularly care for them and are fine with mutually staying out of each other's businesses.

Fearne is a chaotic fey who honestly doesn't really care about religion. Sure, some fey are into the Moonweaver or the Archheart, but Fearne grew up with an Archfey that was having fun on the Matron's playground, so that's not really an environment with a big respect or admiration for Gods.

Chetney is an old dude who was minding his own business for a while. There wasn't really anything in his background to push him into religion, his deal was woodworking and then figuring out the werewolf stuff.

I don't remember Dorian mentioning anything religious based, so I'm putting him in the "do not care much / neutral" category. At least until shit happened with Opal. It doesn't matter that it's a betrayer God here, especially when you know the primes could have gotten rid of them.

For the rest, yes, there are religion related background components to mention. Both Braius and FCG were definitely pro Gods, but FCG started very neutral on that topic. Then they kinda started praying to the Changebringer as a thought experiment. I'll note though that their first (or one of their first? I don't remember) interaction with the Changebringer was her threatening them if they weren't helping her regarding the Ruidus stuff. And like, I get it, the Gods were scared as fuck, but having a shit day doesn't allow you to be a piece of shit to others 💀.

Laudna is an undead woman who got kicked out of places multiple times by religious folks for what she was, without a single care for who she was or her humanity. Gosh, she crossed paths twice with the same exemplar of the Lawbearer, decades apart, and both interactions were shit (Meghan, I'm in your walls!). Despite that, she doesn't particularly hate the Gods, but she's learned to stay away from religious folks & deities as a result. See her surprise at being accepted by clerics of the Matron! She wasn't expecting religious people to not hate her on sight.

Imogen was a depressed isolated pariah in her small town, praying for help with no answers (see one of Nana's team building exercises), and when she was finally out, it was with the help of her undead friend who she's very protective of and who doesn't have a great rep with religious folks. Yeah, she'd probably stay away from that too.

Meanwhile Ashton was raised in a cult that ended up very poorly (they've got long term health issues from that time!), and would rather avoid any sort of organised religion (no matter the topic) as a result, which honestly, that's fair.

And that's mostly just background stuff! During the campaign, they also met someone who got brought back to life and is still kinda resentful about it, they found a whole village that was very much not happy about religious folks coming up to their town and trying to order them around (and had to fight a temple as a result, which left a bunch of contradictory feelings there), and saw Gods destroy a whole city to keep their siblings safe, in the middle of the Calamity which saw many deaths because Deities were fighting against one another. Ah, and Vasselheim is apparently deciding who gets to know what wrt history and would hunt people who know too much. Like, the Grim Verity was hiding from both Vasselheim & Ludinus.

And I know a lot of stuff here is more about religious folks rather than Gods themselves, but you gotta understand that if the Gods are away and only talking to a select few, then their followers *are* their marketing team. Followers being shitty to some people *will* lead those people to be suspicious about religion and Gods (or at least to want to stay away from it).

Trust isn't owed to Gods, even Prime Deities. It's something that is gained through background, time, opportunities... Even in Exandria where the Gods are real, there are probably a lot of common folks who don't particularly care about religion (or maybe some of them just follow along with the dominant religion of their hometown, without diving much into it).

So no, Bell's Hells aren't particularly big Gods lovers. They're also not Gods haters (nuances, what a blast). Hey, in a different scenario, they probably would have loved staying away from Gods and religion entirely.

But guess who in the group actually had the biggest connection to a cosmic entity that significantly impacted their life? Imogen with Predathos.

And no, this doesn't mean this group wasn't appropriate for the plot of C3, or whatever funny thing people like to say about C3 and BH! I think C3 was made a lot more interesting by folks disagreeing on their relationship to Gods - it'd be boring if they all agreed lol.

But if you're looking at BH and are tearing up about "why don't they love my blorbos deities", seriously, have you paid attention to who those people are.

[slitheringghost]

There's been a lot of discussion on how JKR paints ambition and social climbing in a bad light, and something that sticks out to me is how JKR specifically demonizes wanting material power and material status and material wealth.

Like, I think part of the reason Snape's desire to escape poverty is portrayed more sympathetically than Tom Riddle or Percy Weasley is that he is largely framed as wanting power to escape Schoolyard Bullying and Social Ostracism by rich kids, and wanting Acceptance and Belonging (of course all of that is also tied to material power, and it's not that craving for material stuff just isn't incorporated at all, but it's clearly not the main focus of Snape's arc IMO).

This is also just A Thing with JKR - she said She Loathes Bullies and focused on like, Neville and Luna as bullied underdogs rather than exploring i.e. the trauma of Muggleborns petrified during the Chamber attacks. The fact that she compared Peter Pettigrew's reasons for joining the Death Eaters to Snape's also ties the powerlessness to school social dynamics more than anything else. JKR also thinks Pansy Parkinson is worse than Draco despite Draco being a Literal Actual Death Eater because she's a bully, lol (as explained in this meta).

(Note that I don't actually agree with the following reading of social dynamics, particularly Snape as a friendless bullied loser, but I'm explaining the Doylist reasons here) The Marauders are described as "the height of cool" and popular vs. Snape being an "oddball". Similar wording is used for Luna and Neville's ostracism - Luna says “People expect you to have cooler friends than us", and Harry replies “You are cool. None of them was at the Ministry. They didn’t fight with me.” Likewise Ron's resentment of Harry is addressed by Ron saying “That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was" and Harry replying “Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was. I’ve been trying to tell you that for years.”

Slughorn is definitely tied to material power (job opportunities, etc), but there's still a small element of jealousy that Oh You Got Invited To Cool Fancy Parties in Snape's comment to Harry about his invitation to Slug Club (which Snape presumably wasn't a part of). And of course that's part of Snape's resentment of Quidditch too.

But the text doesn't depict, for example, the Death Eaters offering Snape financial compensation as a reason he joined, and Snape is even still living in Spinner's End in canon era, which we're meant to see as admirable.

It all connects to JKR's simplistic Power vs. Love dichotomy. For example, Tom Riddle is described as looking greedily at Dumbledore's wand when Dumbledore first comes to get him from the orphanage, and later the Founders' artifacts (Hufflepuff's cup and the locket) at Hepzibah Smith's place, while child!Snape is described as looking greedily at Lily. Tom is hungry for material treasures, Snape is hungry for a friend. Tom wants power, Snape wants love. There's probably similar stuff to be analyzed wrt Ron, though I can't currently remember details on that or how he was framed.

[sephines]

Declan O'Hara x Reader: you say you wanna go slow

Declan O'Hara x cis woman reader

Summary: Takes place after Maud has left for London. You're working for Venturer, and you and Declan have been secretly sleeping together for a while now. After a long day of pent up sexual tension shared between the two of you at a garden party at the Priory, you're finally alone together, and desperate to get your hands and mouth on him.

Word count: 3.8k

Content: pure smut, 18+, reader age not mentioned so can be whatever you want, mostly reader pov w small instances of Declan pov, swearing, infidelity (sort of), smoking, alcohol, lots of teasing, dirty talk, relatively fluid power dynamic (both Declan & reader alternating between being a little more submissive or a little more dominant), slight instances of inflicting pain, blowjob (inc face fucking), not enough here to constitute a praise kink but definitely praise, basically all about my oral fixation

Author's note: This is the first time I've ever written smut so I'm a little apprehensive to post but I really enjoyed writing it! Not me saying 'I'm only going to write little snapshots' and then writing almost 4k words of achingly slow, drawn-out foreplay culminating in a blow job. This is essentially a long, slow, sensual tease. Not sure if it'll be everyone's cup of tea but I tried to just write from a place of my own fantasy. Bc of the slow pace I imagine it would be best read slowly and taking time to imagine everything if possible!

There are probably some inconsistencies wrt what Declan's study looks like. I also initially played around with writing in an Irish dialect for him but wasn't sure about it so scrapped that - so imagine him speaking in his gorgeous accent.

Title is from the Haim song Gasoline.

If you enjoy it I would really appreciate feedback/reblogs/likes! Thank you 🌹

It’s dusk on a hot July day. You and Declan are in his study, the taste of cool whiskey and melted dark chocolate on your tongues. You’ve been at a garden party for Venturer at the O’Haras all day, and the grounds had only cleared out about half an hour ago. The two of you have spent the day teasing one another from afar - a stolen glance here, long, lingering eye contact there. About two hours into the sweltering afternoon, knowing how much it turns you on to see his chest hair peeking out, Declan had caught your eye over the buffet and loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, smirking at you before turning around to speak to someone you didn’t recognise. Forty five minutes later, when you noticed him watching you from across the dancefloor, you rested your hand on the bicep of the good-looking man chatting to you and leant forward to whisper something in his ear, knowing that seeing you flirt with someone else would amp up Declan’s desire for you. The day was littered with moments like this: loaded looks, subtly suggestive comments in company, finding small ways to push each other’s buttons.

You’ve been alone in the Priory, having encamped in Declan’s study armed with a leftover bottle of whiskey and slabs of dark chocolate from the party, for thirty minutes now, and still neither of you have made a move. You’re relaxing in the sunshine streaming in through the glass doors, but the tension in the air is thick - it’s like you’re each silently daring the other to give in first, neither wanting to buckle. 

Declan��s sitting in his chair, legs splayed, head tilted back over the headrest as he takes drags from a cigarette, letting the low evening sun fall over his cheekbones, his mouth, his neck. In the heat, he’s taken off his shirt, and his bare chest rises and falls slowly, luxuriously, in front of you. You take in the coils of dark hair - thick up top and leading down his stomach to the top of his belt - and the light sheen of sweat glistening atop it. Your breath hitches and you feel your own head tilt back in desire, your teeth biting down on your lower lip.

Declan’s eyes are closed. He can’t see you drinking him in like this - it adds a thrill to the experience, almost lends him a little vulnerability, you a sense of getting to indulge in your own desires unwatched, unseen. The thin gold chain draped across his collarbones catches the sunlight, and there’s something about the delicacy of it against his strong, muscled shoulders and torso that you find impossibly sexy. Declan doesn’t usually put an enormous amount of effort into his appearance, and imagining him taking the time to clasp the chain around his neck feels so deliciously at odds with how unbothered he comes across.

He slowly lets his head fall back down to center, and opens his eyes lazily. He sees you looking at him intently, and immediately clocks the look in your eye. A smirk spreads across his face as he stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray beside him, not once taking his eyes off of yours’. He knows the effect he has on you. It’s enough to make your pulse quicken. 

Involuntarily, you bite down harder on your lower lip. You feel exposed now - it’s an entirely different experience to watching him without his knowledge. You feel suddenly as though you’re the one under inspection. You’re sitting on your knees on the hardwood floor across from him, dressed in a low-cut crop top and flowing mini skirt, palms on your thighs. Your hair is pulled into a claw clip at the back of your head, and you can feel beads of sweat across your neck and your cleavage. Declan might be shirtless, but you feel just as naked, achingly aware of how little fabric covers your body, of how little Declan would need to do to have his hands on your bare skin.

He tilts his head at you, raises his eyebrow almost imperceptibly, exhaling the last plume of smoke from his cigarette. You know what he’s saying: I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of telling you, “c’mere.” I need you to act. I need to see how much you want me. You meet his gaze, frustrated and turned on in equal measure, and smirk at him in return. You love the little games you play, the way he teases you, the way you can communicate without words.

You crawl forward until you’re kneeling between his thighs, letting your eyes drink in the swell of his chest and the slope of his stomach. His body is muscular, but there’s a slight softness to it, too. There’s something about this that feels rawer, more primal, more sensual to you than if he were incredibly chiselled. You let out a sigh. You’re so heady with want for him. You let your palms slide down his pecs, move to follow them with your mouth. Before you can feel the touch of your lips against him, he reaches down and cups your chin in a strong hand, lifting your jaw gently but firmly, to look up at him. You let out a whimper of frustration. He brushes his thumb over your bottom lip, your mouth opening slightly in response to his touch. 

Desire glows in his eyes - it’s intoxicating to see how much you want him. He wants your mouth all over him just as much as you do, but he wants to tease you, too, to build the suspense for both of you. Your big eyes look up at him intensely, heavy lidded with lust. Both of you are breathing heavily, letting the moment of anticipation stretch out. 

“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” he says.

You moan and take his thumb into your mouth. He lets out a groan and grasps the other side of your face, pulling you up towards him. His thumb slides across your bottom lip as your mouths meet. The kiss is hard and messy, your lust for each other spilling over. You clasp one hand across his throat, feeling the cold metal of that delicate chain under your thumb. The other is tangled up in his hair, pulling sharply on his dark curls. He removes the claw clip from your hair and tosses it to the side, allowing loose tendrils to fall down around your shoulders. You feel as though you’re melting into one another. 

Declan breaks away to murmur, amidst ragged breaths, against your mouth, ‘I’ve wanted you like this all day.’ The kisses you share become urgent, fervent, hard. ‘Needed you like this.’ 

Hearing him say this makes you moan. You pull away from his mouth just slightly, catching his eye and murmuring, ‘I know,’ a smirk spreading across your face. 

He chuckles and shakes his head. ‘You’re such a fucking tease.’

You smile at him, smug, before he pulls you into another kiss.

His hands travel down your shoulders and over your tits, your waist, until he reaches the waistband of your skirt and slides it down your hips along with your white lace underwear. You feel a little thrill at being so exposed. 

Declan positions you gently away so he can look at you, taking in the swell of your breasts in your crop top and the curve of your hips, your lush pussy and swollen clit. You’re so gorgeous. He feels his cock straining against his trousers. He sighs and shakes his head at you, ever so slightly, as if in wonder. His thumb circles your nipple, causing you to sigh in pleasure, before his hand travels down your waist and to the soft swell of your ass, squeezing hard. 

You reach up to kiss him again, your touch firm yet caressing on his jawbone and neck, and this time it’s deeper, more languorous. Your tongues slide against each other and you moan into one another’s mouths. 

Moving one hand to those dark curls, you tug gently at the nape of his neck until he tips his head backwards, letting you kiss lightly across his jaw, then deeper down the soft skin of his exposed throat, feeling the vibrations of his low moans against your lips. This is what you’ve wanted all day: to put your mouth on every inch of him, to feel his hot, strong body against your lips, under your tongue. You’re so hungry for him. 

You pepper your kisses with little bites, and he responds by tightening his grasp on your hair, making you moan in turn. Your kisses meet his collarbone, and then you sink onto your knees, moving down to his chest. You’re just melting into the moment, into him, into the swell of his pecs against your lips, finally, when he uses his grasp on your hair to tilt your head back and away from his torso. His thumb brushes against your jaw. You look up at him, whimpering in frustration. 

He returns your gaze intently. You’re breathing heavily, dizzy with desire. The moment unfurls out in the silence between the two of you, in the eye contact you share. The anticipation feels delicious - so overwhelming you almost can’t bear it, and yet somehow satiating in itself. 

‘Declan….’, you breathe, ‘...please..’

You can see his breath quicken in the way his chest moves. He moves his thumb gently from where it rests on your jawbone to stroke your lower lip. ‘I just want to hear you say it. How much you want me.’

You let out a sigh. The desire you feel for him, the frustration in not being able to fulfill it, has you weak. You want to tell him just how much he drives you crazy, how incredibly sexy you find him, but you can’t find the words - they swim in your mind untethered from one another.

‘Declan…I…’ you begin in between ragged breaths, looking up at him, ‘...I don’t even…have words for how much I want you.’ Your voice is quiet, almost a whisper. He’s brushing his thumb ever so lightly, ever so gently, back and forth over the center of your bottom lip. You let your gaze drift down to where his muscled chest rises and falls in front of you. ‘You’re so fucking…sexy to me…’ You shake your head slightly in wonder. ‘I can hardly stand it…’

He lets your words hang for a moment, his eyes growing heavy with lust, his pupils widening.

You’re wondering how long he’s going to keep you waiting, if he's going to make you say more, when a softness fills his eyes. 

‘Open your mouth,’ he says, gently. It’s more like a suggestion than a command, and you feel safe following his instructions - Declan knows your desires so well, knows what you want and need. You can trust him to give it to you.

As you do so, he reaches to the bronze side table beside him and curls his fist around his glass of whiskey, lifting it towards the two of you. Drops of perspiration coat the outside of the glass. 

Catching his eye and realising what he’s doing, you offer up your tongue to him. Slowly, one hand still wrapped up in your hair, pulling your head back, he tips the glass downwards, pouring the cool, strong whiskey onto your outstretched tongue. The feeling of the cool liquid hitting your tastebuds, the rest of your body so hot in the evening sun streaming through the windows, sends a shock down your spine. Declan continues pouring, so the whiskey flows onto your collarbones and down to your breasts, soaking through the white cotton of your crop top and coating your nipples. It feels luxurious. 

It feels like he’s touching you without touching you.

Declan watches intently as the whiskey drips down your body. Your hair is messy, your lips swollen. Your cheeks are flushed, and a slight tan has formed after a day spent in the sunshine - across your forehead, your cheekbones, the bridge of your nose. Across the swell of your cleavage, which rises and falls heavily, droplets scattered atop your bare skin. His gaze gets stuck there - the now wet, whiskey-soaked cotton of your white top clings to your breasts, revealing the full curve of their shape. Your nipples peek through your lacy white lingerie, even harder now, having been drenched in the cold liquid. Seeing you like this has his cock aching for your touch. He lets out a sigh, the hand in your hair softening slightly.

Slowly, deliberately, you reach up and take the glass from his hand. His eyes follow your movements. After a moment’s pause, you position the glass just below his jaw, and pour the remainder of the whiskey onto his chest. He tips his head back in pleasure as the amber liquid flows down his pecs and onto his stomach. 

Without thinking, you lean forward and lick, slowly, from the soft skin of Declan’s stomach upwards to his chest. The taste of the cool, strong whiskey mingles with the salt of his sweat on your tastebuds. Feeling him hot against your tongue like this, finally, makes you moan. He lets out a groan simultaneously, the hand in your hair tightening its grip. Finally, you have him where you want him. You begin kissing the soft flesh of his throat again; bite down hard on his earlobe.

‘Fuck,’ he whispers.

‘I love it when you swear for me,’ you whisper, almost inaudibly, into his ear. You know the feeling of your breath against those sensitive nerve endings will send shivers down his spine.

He lets out a small noise - half moan, half chuckle - and then tightens the grip on your hair, hard. The movement sends a sharp sting through your scalp. You gasp in both pain and pleasure, just as he had intended.

Moving down, you pepper his collarbones with light kisses, before placing a deep kiss on his chest. Your hands roam across his strong shoulders and arms, and you let your desire overtake you. You’re guided less by what Declan might want, now, and more by what you need - where your mouth wants to go, the sensations you want to feel against your lips, against your palms. You’re barely even thinking at all. You want to taste all of him. You let your mouth roam, kissing deeply across his pecs - the taste of his sweat and of the whiskey, the texture of the dark coils of hair coating his chest, the hardness of his muscles against your lips and tongue all make you moan into him. You kiss down his stomach slowly, luxuriously, taking your time.

As you inch closer to the waistband of his boxers peeking out from over his belt, you feel his breathing quicken, and feel achingly aware of the rock hard bulge just centimetres from your face. You let your lips brush delicately against the soft skin of his lower stomach, looking up at him as you do so. He’s gazing intensely down at you in anticipation. 

You undo Declan’s belt and the button of his trousers, unzip his fly. He lifts his hips, watching you, so you can slide his trousers down to his ankles. As you do so you sigh at the sight of his hard cock constrained in tight grey boxer shorts, at his thick, strong thighs, covered in those same dark coils of hair. You sit back for a moment, taking him in, and stroke him from his stomach to his inner thighs. You squeeze slightly, feeling the strength of his muscles, then use just the lightest touch of your fingernails to stroke the sensitive skin there. His breathing quickens more still. He can’t keep his eyes off of you. 

Hungrily, you lean down to kiss deeply along his inner thighs. You can hardly control yourself now - you want to be full of him. Pausing once you reach the edge of his boxer shorts, you look up at him, lift his hand to your mouth and suck his index and ring fingers in one motion, deep and slow.

Declan can’t help but let out a deep moan. Seeing you like this - your face mere centimetres from his throbbing cock, your lips wrapped around his fingers - and feeling your hot, soft mouth around him, so close to where he wants it, is almost too much for him to bear. The look in your big eyes only adds to the intoxication: there’s a mixture of mischief and innocence there. He knows you know what you’re doing to him, and at the same time, you’re surrendering to your desire for him. 

Desperate now, impatient, you slide down his boxer shorts and let out a sigh at the sight of his thick, hard cock breaking free from its restraints. You feel a pleasurable tightening in your lower stomach, in your pussy. You hover above him, letting your heavy breaths tease him, before brushing your lips gently up his length. You moan softly at the feeling of him hard against your lips, at the feeling of finally getting what you’ve been aching for all day. 

Declan bites his lower lip, breathes in hard. He doesn’t want to let himself go, not just yet, but it’s taking every ounce of his willpower not to moan. He reaches a hand down and brushes the side of your cheek and jaw gently, before using his fingers to pull those messy waves away from your face, keeping them clasped in a fist at the back of your head. He wants to see you, and he wants to make things easier for you.

Unable to hold back any longer, with your hands on his hips, you take Declan into your mouth in one swift motion, both of you moaning loudly at the sensation. You don’t have the patience to tease him any longer - you’re greedy for him. You take him deeper, sliding him in and out, sucking him deeply. His moans drift down to you, consistent now - he can’t stop himself. Neither can you. It feels so fucking good to have him hard and aching in your mouth, finally. His grasp on your hair tightens, and you pause for just a moment at the tip of his cock, looking up at him. His eyes are glazed over, and an expression of frustration overtakes his face as you let the seconds pass, unmoving. Needy, he begins to thrust, slowly, into your mouth. You feel your own eyes glaze over as he does so, let them close as you begin sucking him again. 

Your hands are clasped on his hips, feeling the soft flesh of his stomach and the hard muscles beneath, your thumbs circling around the dark hair. The feeling of your hands on him like this; of his hot, thick, throbbing cock thrusting slowly in and out of your mouth, against your tongue, filling you, his fist bunched up tightly in your hair, is bliss. You feel entirely in the present moment, lost to anything but the sensations overtaking you. 

Declan is the same. His head is thrown back now, eyes closed too, overcome with pleasure.

A sudden cool breeze floats through the ajar glass door, caressing your bare clit, your wet opening, your nipples still coated in whiskey. Your moans deepen in response to the new stimulus. The cool air against your naked skin only highlights your arousal, how exposed you are. 

The same sensation is enough to break Declan out of his dazed state for a second. He dips his head down in your direction, watching you through heavy-lidded eyes. He lets his thumb trace down your jaw. The sight of you on your knees, flushed lips wrapped around his cock, eyes closed, blissed out, makes him dizzy. 

‘You feel so fucking good,’ he murmurs, through ragged breaths. ‘You’re so fucking good to me.’

You whimper at the sound of his praise in that thick irish accent, and his grasp on your hair tightens again, sending sharp stabs of pleasure through your scalp. Declan leans back again, giving way to his pleasure. His fist clenches in your hair, his breaths quicken, his groans deepen. You muster up the energy to open your eyes and look up at him, and see his head tipped back, mouth open, strong chest heaving. The hand not clasped in your hair is digging his fingernails into the soft flesh of his thigh. That delicate golden chain glints against his throat in the soft sunlight. God, he’s gorgeous.

There’s something about being in the position you’re in that allows you to feel submissive and dominant all at once: on your knees below him, your pussy slick, exposed and aching for him, his cock sliding in and out of your mouth, you desperate to take him. And at the same time, seeing him come undone before you, unravelling, entirely at your mercy. Exactly where you want him. 

You move your arms down to his thighs and hold them down, sending a signal to him to stop thrusting. He follows your lead, sighing as he looks down at you for a second before tipping his head back. You wrap one hand around the base of his cock and begin pumping, working in tandem with your lips and tongue.

Declan lets out a loud moan, his fist curled around your hair even tighter now. As you work him harder and faster, his breaths become quicker still and your name begins to float down from his mouth to you repeatedly, peppered with the occasional ‘fuck’ and ‘Christ’. 

Suddenly, he stiffens, moaning loudly, and you work him fast through his orgasm, his release filling your mouth. You swallow deeply, and feel the hand in your hair soften, his body going slack. 

You kiss up his stomach and chest lazily, before positioning yourself flush against him and placing gentle kisses on his neck, caressing his collarbones. His head is still tipped back, chest heaving, spent. He brings a strong arm up to your head and strokes your hair, the other on your waist.

‘You’re amazing,’ he murmurs, finally lifting his head to look at you. He tucks your messy waves behind your ear and brushes his thumb across your cheekbone, before pulling you in for a long, deep kiss.

When you break apart, you lift your top and bra over your head, needing to feel your bare skin against his. He sighs at the sight of your bare tits and gives you a lazy smile. You let yourself drape over him, your nipples brushing up against the hair on his chest, your arms wrapped around his neck, lips brushing against the soft skin of his throat. Declan moves his strong hand through your hair tenderly. Both of you catch your breath, spent, the rest of the evening laying luxuriously ahead of you.

[mamawasatesttube]

Janet lives au my beloved, I love the difference in the Janet lives vs the Jack lives au :)

Happy holidays! :D

thanks, happy holidays to you too!!!

also aughgh right??? there is so much to ponder wrt janet our collective beloved janet... i think often about this. like. his issues with jack would both shrink and grow because on the one hand jack is no longer actively around to do shit to feed into tim's many complexes. on the other hand, he now has jack up on the Perfect Dad pedestal in his mind because he's dead. can't criticize your dead dad that's fucked up and horrible. right?

and on the other hand. man. so lets posit he has a better relationship with janet than he would with jack (because janet is a better parent than jack, and let's be real, that isn't really a high bar. but given jack's... everything, i just kinda really get the vibe that he left most of the actual parenting to janet). now at first you'd think this is solely a good thing! ...but can you imagine how much more agonized tim is about having to lie to his beloved mommy???? all the time??? he's even more torn between The Mission and his filial piety this time around!!! augh!!!

like all those times jack didnt notice tim hiding bruises with makeup ? if janet's around it is sooo possible that tim steals HER makeup for this specifically at least once and She. Notices. deeply possible that she puts together "tim showing up with mysterious injuries he keeps trying to hide and also lying to me about it" with "tim getting closer with dick grayson and bruce wayne while i was away" and deduces that she doesn't know WHAT they've gotten her little baby boy into, but she IS going to kill those guys. tim keeps insisting that they're very nice to him but that really isn't helping anything. but just the entire concept of janet actually paying attention to tim's injuries - noticing if he steals her makeup!!! - or paying attention to things like. *checks notes* one of his classmates being SHOT DEAD at their SCHOOL ???? hey jack how did you not even check on him once after this. whats wrong with you. i just wanna talk jack

so i think she'd find out tim's robin way faster than jack. he probably would agonize about wanting her to know but The Mission and the need for secrecy, etc. but notably, when she finds out, i don't think she'd force him to quit - she'd really really want him to, because this is so dangerous and he's her baby and she doesn't want him to get hurt!!! but if he pushed back and tried to explain his side of it, she'd actually be willing to at least hear him out (unlike jack).

but also. not to be predictable but. i think it would be really funny if at some point during this drama kon-el shows up on the front doorstep looking for robin, and eavesdrops just enough to understand that janet knows now. because. hear me out. this is how we once again arrive at tim walking into his own house and home and just balking because kon is at the kitchen table hanging out with his mother. mom why the heck are you giving superboy my oreos!!!!

(also, calling back a little to the concept of baby kon somehow befriending janet, but. very specific vision in my mind of "janet lives past identity crisis too au" where at some point baby kon mentions to tim in her earshot that hes never had a mom and wonders whats it like?? and she doesnt say anything but this strikes her to the heart. several years down the line when timkon are established at some point she's like conner sweetie i know a long time back you said you don't have a mother, and i understand that completely and don't mean to try and take any place in your life you don't want me in, but if you ever would like to have a mother-in-law… and tim is just like. MOM. ARE YOU TRYING TO PROPOSE TO KON FOR ME??? THIS IS SO CRINGE. UGH MOM STOP)

[adhdo5]

I was prompted to post these a bit ago bc of my madness posting abt the Xiyao laundry audioextra upload someone posted like last week and I think there is really a lot there in the Xiyao laundry thing in general (hashtag release the Yunping tapes) and not all of it is smth I see ~talked abt as much as I think it deserves SO . Collected thoughts on Xiyao laundry

OK so like Yeah they're cute. I absolutely get why people's primary reaction to this is that it's cute and I think this is not even wrong. The politics of uselessness r complicated and I Will be returning to this but a legitimate angle of this is that LXC, who has spent his life largely defined by the fact that he pretty much excels at everything expected of him, has nothing expected of him and gets to be incompetent at something he ~feels obligated to do and have that not actually be a fail state, still get offered the same kindness regardless of his ability to be exceedingly capable/responsible etc.; meanwhile MY, who historically has had pretty much no one ever gaf about whether he's struggling or overworked or generally about him as a person (and the audiodrama extra version even has a bit where MY's coworkers are shit talking him including talking abt how he's probably not even actually doing any work), has someone earnestly caring about that, if ineffectually, and materially recognizing his workload as important and effortful and trying to help him with it. That is I think legitimately kind of sweet! Especially if one interprets the "he didn't even know who I was" line as true and as in the audiodrama extra this is set b4 MY figures it out! They appreciate each other in ways they don't usually get to be appreciated and it's nontransactional in this way and ;x;

HOWEVER. #Nuance. There's Other Angles.

I've talked abt this before inc on my blog but I do kind of never get tired of thinking abt it: there's a reason LXC is incapable of doing laundry and it's not just inexperience it's that he is physically incapable of the task bc of his cultivator strength!!!!! And the disparity of cultivation level is explicitly a class thing w/ JGY wrt 3zun especially!!! No matter his intention Zewu-jun CANNOT SULLY HIS HANDS WITH THE TASK bangs my head against a wall. It's such an innocuous detail yet it captures how from even this early on in their relationship and in this context it's not ignorable how much LXC is in fact a nobleman where JGY is not and this is a literal physical difference and it's in his very flesh and it has explicitly destructive results. See again vampire AU posting

And going off that it's notable how this does in fact also end up creating more work and while MY doesn't begrudge that in the moment and it's pettier here and arguably inextricable with the first point (LXC is not only incapable here he's actively bad at something, he actively makes smth worse and he's forgiven for it and that's genuinely kind of nice) it's it's also worth noting more grimly given how their relationship ends. It's not just destructive it's destructive to MY specifically

And on the notes of "inextricable from first point but also tragic" – it's sweet tht LXC gets no external consequences for this (yet lol) but is that really something he can Accept. It is an arguably underexamined element of Sunshot Xiyao how fucking miserable LXC is; he might be in an environment where this isn't fucking him up but he did bring his complexes here and you don't suddenly know how to accept that kind of grace yknow – and, and this is tangentially related to the stuff I was posting earlier today, this is one of the first of several kinds of vulnerability that LXC's almost only able to experience with MY/JGY. Considering how much that's arguably a running theme for them and considering where that leads that's also quite Foreshadowing Dismal!!

This is an audio drama exclusive but the way in the audiodrama extra ver that MY realizes who LXC is here and then ~lies about it is also crunchy as helllllll

AND between the coworkers thing in the audiodrama extra and the added scenes in the donghua and this and the notion in general (which comes from MXTX's post) that it's important they do the laundry themselves bc the robes would give LXC away it's a highlight of how genuinely precarious this is for MY which is another thing that both makes it more sweet and more. Despair.

It's just so lovely how it is both indicative of how genuinely good they are to and for each other, the ways in which they're meaningfully and significantly compassionate and helpful to one another, and also of the ways in which their situation here is precarious and high-stress and dangerous as fuck, AND also the ways in which they hurt each other so so bad, and how all of those things are largely different facets of the same qualities and the same significances. And That's My Post. Stream Apple Pie by the Scary Jokes

[yeonboy]

𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 ♡ choi yeonjun.

If you had known that a fun night out eating junk food with your best friend that you have always harbored a crush on would turn this sour because he misunderstood your words, you would have kept your mouth shut. Now Yeonjun has gone radio silent on you and if you want to salvage your friendship, you will have to get over your feelings first because he will never forgive you if he finds out. Right?

❧ choi yeonjun x f. reader | 16+ | college!au ♡ best friends to lovers!au ♡ angst ♡ humor ♡ fluff

❧ 7 k words

❧ warnings! inaccuracies wrt college sports/scouting/ice hockey, profanity, suggestive language, suggestive scenes, discussion and exhibition of puck bunny behavior, mentions of slut-shaming, misunderstandings, miscommunication, jealousy, some pining, yeonjun is stooooopiiiid, yn is also stooooopiiiid, one (1) singular heavy makeout sesh that gets a little out of hand hehe (:

❧ note! hi, world! this is a sideblog i created v v recently, but you won’t find links to my main anywhere bec i’ve decided to be a catfish on this one (: LOL jk, i just wanted a fresh start. i will be cutting back on the hoeing around i used to indulge in w my writing on that blog, and keep this place as sfw as i can - we’ll focus on tummy-aching angst instead! w a happy ending ofc bec ya girl is a softie 😔

leave me feedback if you like this! follow for more! (:

❧ masterlist | inbox ⁘

"Dude, this has gone so fucking soggy, it's like chewing leather. Please stop eating it."

Your words of disgust and grimace of distaste were, unsurprisingly, nothing to deter your best friend from munching on the cold fries he'd left for the last when he'd been too busy gobbling down his burgers. Stuffing a handful into his mouth like an actual ape, he in fact wiggles his eyebrows at you in a challenge.

"I feel like I've seen an orangutan eat exactly the way you just did, Choi Yeonjun. Please stop."

That makes him giggle and clear his mouth, finally raising his hands in surrender. "Kay, I give up. They do taste like leather."

"Not even gonna ask how you know that… But this is why you're supposed to have your fries with the burgers and not after it."

"But they mess up my palate!"

When he pouts like that, it's so hard for you to believe that he's the university’s senior ice hockey team’s ace, their Center, their captain, and that he’s looking to get scouted professionally, this year. When he pouts like that, he takes you back to the time you first met him on the first day of your high school, both clueless freshmen with wide, innocent eyes full of huge dreams about your future.

Dreams that you're both very, very close to making a reality, now – him as a professional hockey player, and you interning at the law firm of your dreams.

Damn. Time sure flies fast.

“What? Is there something on my face?” Yeonjun tilts his head and you blink away from your thoughts, averting your gaze from his to instead stare at his shitty, soggy fries.

“Yeah. Stupid. A lot of it.”

Yeonjun rolls his eyes and rips a tissue out of the dispenser on the table to dab around his mouth just in case, and that gives you room to breathe in and out and try to will away the heat you can feel in your cheeks.

See, now, the thing is – you don’t necessarily have romantic feelings for your platonic best friend of eight years. That’d just be absurd and kind of creepy. But you sure as heck have always harbored a crush on him.

It’s just impossible not to! 

Guy has always been literally the most gorgeous human being you’ve ever seen, even at the universally ugly age of fourteen. He’s a gentleman, always kind to every single person in his life, would probably cut a limb off for a friend in need, and ever since your sophomore year of college, he’s gotten into manically coloring his hair, which…is seriously injurious to the onlookers’ health because dear God, the dirty blonde of his hair with the dark roots peeking through from his middle part? Makes your heart literally pound.

And he isn’t even doing anything! Other than being gross with a tissue paper and inedible fries, which should absolutely turn you off from ever liking anything about him, but it does the opposite.

That is another thing about him – he’s too freaking smooth and sexy about every damn thing in his life. The day his hair turned from black to blue, nearly two years back, he developed all these flirty charms on top of his kind ones. Now he isn’t just an insanely handsome dude who’d hold your hand to help you cross the road, but he’d also freaking wink at you when you thank him for his kindness.

You as in a person, not – not you. He’d never wink at you, you're too friendzoned for that. And it's kind of a blessing because you’d probably run the risk of jumping back into oncoming traffic if he did.

Wow.

You can’t count on one hand the number of times you have had to tug on the reins of your heart when it’s tried to take a flight, jumping off the cliff of your very inconvenient crush and into the bottomless abyss of having actual romantic feelings for him. Because that would be catastrophic. And not just because you fear he'd reject you and you’d lose the one person who means the most to you in the world.

“Should I get more burgers?”

Your gaze snaps to him in surprise. He’s pouting again, this time looking at the greasy fingerprints laden menu card kept on your table. The anxiety that had started to churn in your stomach at the prospect of your very concerning crush turning into something more, suddenly leaves and you huff out a small laugh.

“You’ve had six in the past hour, Jjun. I’d say stop for the night, maybe?”

“Hey, I have a big appetite!” He scowls at you. “And it’s close to midnight, already! You know I begin my diet for the season from tomorrow!”

You groan. “Well, then, why did you ask?”

“To be encouraged, of course! To be comforted.” He widens his eyes and blinks at you. “Or did you forget I’m also supposed to be nursing a broken heart?”

The groan you release at that is loud, drawn out and filled with a year’s worth of exasperation. This is the other reason why you catching romantic feelings for him would be catastrophic. His emotional quotient is seriously questionable when it comes to the matters of heart. If he could love a partner half as much as he loves dogs, maybe he wouldn’t be ‘nursing a heartbreak’ because of the fifth person that has dumped him since your final year began. And you aren’t even done with your mid-sems yet.

But you don't tell him that, instead patting on his leather jacket clad forearm with a fake sympathetic expression. “Ah, yes, poor you. My deepest condolences to your heart.”

He knows you and your bullshit and you know he does, so the attack that his hands launch at your throat in the next two seconds doesn't surprise you, and your defensively raised shoulders don't surprise him.

You're both dissolving into giggles, then, having nothing short of a wrestling match across the small cafe table. "I really liked Lea, okay?"

"Oh yeah? You didn't even—oof, that tickles! You didn't even know she was Kai's sister!"

At that he lets go of you and slumps back in his seat with a scowl. "Please don't remind me. I still worry he's gonna stab me in my sleep someday…"

You place a palm over your mouth to stifle your laugh. "To be fair, Lea shouldn't have been indulging in puck bunny behavior if she didn't want to be treated like one."

"Don't say that wo~rd," Yeonjun whines with his whole head thrown back. "She's Kai's sister! And she's younger than me!"

"Just by four months! Stop being dramatic, Jjun. She's a junior at college – she knew what she was doing."

Yeonjun doesn't look convinced. "I mean… I don't think she was with me only because I'm hockey captain. She knows all of HK's friends personally."

You wonder why he is defending her. Did he actually, genuinely like the girl? Romantically? What are the odds of Yeonjun finally making an attempt to open his heart up to someone and them ending up dumping him? He doesn't really look that dumped, though, so you figure that this must be out of some misplaced protectiveness he feels for one of his best friend's sisters.

Man should've thought of that before he dated her. Sigh.

"Yeah, which makes it worse." You wince when he frowns. "Come on, Jjun. She's known you since middle school but decides to make a move now? Only to break it off in three weeks because others are 'slut-shaming' her”—you make air-quotes around the term, rolling your eyes—“when they call her out for wearing another guy's jersey in preseason when she's supposed to be dating you. Can't tell me that's not manipulative and experienced puck bunny behavior."

Yeonjun’s eyes are wide when you finish speaking. “What…?”

“She didn't have feelings for you, Jjun! I mean, you obviously didn't have any for her either, but I hope you keep it that way with these girls. I highly doubt Lea even tried to get to know you at all, given how busy she was posting pictures of y'all on all her socials." His expressions haven't changed much, so you try to conclude your point quickly. “All I'm saying is, it is actually a good thing you’ve never taken these relationships too seriously. There’s more business than emotion with these clout chasers, Jjun.”

Yeonjun is gaping at you now and you're a little confused as to how to take it. Is he surprised at the revelation about Lea? You doubt that to be the case when the entire tale of their romance had been broadcasted all over the campus this past week.

So then…is he surprised at your opinion of things? You sure hope he isn't about to pick a fight with you because you're in no mood to concede. Not about this. Not when you've died multiple deaths every minute that Lea has spent being a pick-me by your best friend's side.

"I… She did have feelings for me, Y/N. They—the girls that I date all have some feelings for me, come on." He gives a small chuckle that is so wry, it makes you fidget in discomfort. “I haven’t taken these relationships that casually. I'm – I’m not some vain playboy, sleeping my way around the college.”

Okay, hold on – what?

What?

How did he take that away from your rant? He's really defending himself when you never even attacked him? When you never would attack him?

"Yeonjun, no… That's not what I'm trying—"

"Let's – let's just drop this." He looks distressed, and the frown on his lips makes your heart hurt. More so because you are the one who put it there. "You won't get it, anyways."

Now that – gives you a pause. "I won't…get it?"

He gets up, unbothered and unabashed, and walks with his tray of empty wrappers and inedible fries to dump it into the trash can near the exit of the cafe. You wordlessly follow, tilting your head in an attempt to catch his eye, but Yeonjun's got some 5 inches on you so you can't really force him to look at you when he doesn't want to.

And now he's walking out of the cafeteria.

"Jjun?"

He sighs and stops, looking over his shoulder, straight into your eyes with a bored stare. "What?"

"What? You're, like, not even gonna explain that last sentence?" 

This time you're the one with the wry chuckle while Yeonjun fidgets in discomfort. 

"What won't I get, Yeonjun?"

"Look, it's… well. You’ve always subtly looked down upon all the girls I’ve dated in college, and that was fine. You’re my best friend, you’re allowed to be a critic.” He shrugs with a nonchalant look in his eyes, but his lips are still twisted sourly. “But… I never realized you thought I was the problem. Someone so vapid that my only appeal is the fame hockey gets me.”

No… literally when did you insinuate that?

You're rendered mute, taken aback by how badly Yeonjun seems to have interpreted your words. He exhales and it sounds very loaded. You don't miss the way he keeps avoiding your gaze; nor the disappointed frown that decorates his forehead.

“You won’t get it because you don’t want me, you’ve never wanted me – and that is absolutely cool! But just because you like to have me as a comedic relief character in your life doesn’t mean that no one sees any depth in me.”

“A… comedic relief character?” your voice comes out low and hoarse and almost tattered, a little shrilly from disbelief. You're not even gonna touch on his 'never wanted him' claim because the rest of his speech has your brain actually spinning. “What the hell are you talking about? This isn’t about you – it’s about these girls… You’re my best friend, Yeonjun!”

“And yet you can’t find one reason why these girls would like me beyond using me for clout.” He gives a shrug and finally meets your eyes again. But his stare is absolutely vacant and unreadable. “You don’t use me for clout, though, and yet you keep me around. You obviously don’t care about my opinions, or you wouldn't have exchanged numbers with Changbin when I told you he was bad news. What else is there to our friendship other than laughing together, then?”

His words are like death blows – each syllable laced with a different kind of poison. Every inhale you take from the air his words have contaminated seems to sear a painful path through your lungs. Breathing hurts. Looking at him hurts. Your eyes are filling up and your tummy is aching.

There’s so much wrong with everything he just said, so much misinterpretation, so many actual blatant untruths, that you don’t even know how to begin correcting them. 

How did you even get here?

You’d only been trying to warn him about girls that might use him. You were only trying to protect his heart.

How did that turn into him thinking you don’t value your friendship with him? That you don’t value him?

“Oh, and by the way,” he continues, pushing both hands into his leather jacket and looking into the distance, “Changbin’s probably gonna ask you to cheer for him this season, which is kind of a big deal because… you know, this out final session and there will be professional scouts present and all. So if you decide to say yes…” He pauses and turns to look at you again, gaze tired and eyes lidded. “If you say yes, I hope you know it’ll mean a lot more.”

Why is he bringing up Changbin again? You’d only exchanged numbers to get that guy's incessant ass off your back – you haven’t even responded to a single text he’s sent you in the past two months. Cheering for him? In a season as important to their careers as this one? 

Absolutely out of the question.

Does Yeonjun not know you at all?

You’re about to tell him that, when he suddenly pulls his phone out with a sigh. “I’m planning to hand my jersey over to Chaeyoung – you know, running for senior cheer captain? Thought I’d ask for your opinion, but… You’ve already made that pretty clear tonight.”

Angry tears blur your vision and your heart hurts as if it’s dying a slow death in your chest.

Chaeyoung, really? So he’s skipping seamlessly from Lea to Chaeyoung. 

Of course. 

Why did you even bother worrying about his heart when he clearly doesn’t even have one. How could you forget.

Maybe it’s a good thing you never let yourself fall for Yeonjun beyond a crush.

“For what it’s worth,” you finally manage to mutter, brows furrowed and gaze focused on your worn out sneakers, “I’m sorry. I was trying to look out for you, not – not hurt you. You’re the most important person in my life, Yeonjun. I could never hurt you.”

You don’t wanna wait around to hear his response, so you just wordlessly walk away. Your dorms are hardly half a mile from here; you can shut yourself in your room and sob into your pillow in less than twenty minutes from now.

The fact comforts you enough to make you walk faster.

And also helps you ignore the pain that runs across your entire body when Yeonjun doesn’t even attempt to stop you.

You haven’t checked your phone in a while now but it has to have been over six am currently because you can hear your roommate moving around. Stealthily, you pull the comforter down from your face to peer into the dark room, only to hear a loud sigh echo around the place.

“You’re seriously still up?” Yuqi’s disappointed voice calls out. “The crying sounds stopped sometime after four so I reckoned you fell asleep.”

You wince in guilt. “Fuck, Yuqi, I’m so sorry I kept you awake—”

“Woah, what?”

She turns the lights on, suddenly brightening the room. Your roommate’s dressed in her cheer outfit, probably on her way to early morning practice. She is running for captain as well and the voting concludes in five days.

Cheer captain… Chaeyoung…

You can feel another bout of tears coming on, the back of your raw eyes stinging anew. Your head is pounding like someone’s cracked your skull open, but it still doesn't hold a candle to the ache that originates from your heart and makes your entire chest cave in on itself.

“Oh my God, babe, you look worse than you sound!”

You click your tongue and rub at your eyes. “I… Ugh, it’s been a weird night, Yuqi.”

She kneels beside you on the floor, face drawn in concern. “Are you okay?”

“I will be.” You try to sit up with her help. “I guess?”

“Oh, babe…” Yuqi sits next to you and draws you in an embrace. “What happened?”

“Y–Yeonjun,” you can barely articulate his name before your throat closes up again.

“Ah, man. What’d the idiot do this time?”

Yuqi has been your roommate and your closest friend since freshman year. Needless to say, she knows all about your friendship with Yeonjun and more than a little about your crush on him. She believes he’s too oblivious and doesn’t particularly like him for that reason. More often than not, you’re batting for his defense against Yuqi.

Right now, though, you feel like you’re gonna agree with every colorful word she uses for the guy.

So you tell her exactly what happened – give her a play by play of all the words said and reactions given, receiving hisses and grunts of annoyance in response, until you mention what he said about Changbin and Yuqi breaks your narration with a gasp.

“What the fuck?”

You just sigh and shrug a shoulder. “And he’s picking Chaeyoung to to wear his jersey for the most important season of his life, so I guess it’s whatever.”

“You know, it seemed to me like he was upset and acted out defensively… which would have been okay to a certain point, a misunderstanding that could be cleared out – had he not pulled that Changbin card. Why would he ask you to go after a teammate?” Yuqi tugs at the end of her ponytail in frustration. “And Chaeyoung? Literally the enemy? Now he's just an asshole.”

That last bit makes a small chuckle tumble out of you. “How… how is she, though? As a person?”

It’s so stupid of you to still attempt to look out for Yeonjun when he just dismissed your whole friendship. But you cannot help it.

“She’s… not a bad person, to be honest. As much as it pains me to admit.” Yuqi sighs. “She’s friends with the entire cheer team, friendly with the players, never been a bully to anybody. Hence why she’s running for captain alongside me.”

Should that comfort you? You believe it should. You warned your best friend about girls that might try to use him – and Chaeyoung sounds like she might not be that kind of a person. That’s good news, right?

So why does your heart seem to ache even more?

“Everything just...hurts, Yuqi. So much.” You tip your head against her shoulder. “What do I do?”

“Admit to yourself that you don’t just have aa crush on Yeonjun, for starters?”

You turn to look at her with surprised wide eyes. “What?”

Yuqi just rolls her eyes. “Come on, Y/N. You can’t move on if you don’t admit to it first, can you?”

Move on…?

Is that what you have to do now? Maybe. 

If you want to attempt to salvage any bit of your bond with Yeonjun, it’s best if you at least get rid of the affection that permeates the boundaries of platonic friendship.

“And then maybe text Changbin back,” Yuqi continues. “He’s their goalie. I’ve talked to him a couple of times, he’s nice. Kinda cute? If nothing else, he'll help take your mind off of Yeonjun and Chaeyoung.

You just exhale a deep breath. “Maybe.”

16:37 | changbin (: congratulations to yuqi! tell her i knew she would make it :D

↪ Haha thanks! Will do!

soooo our first match’s three days away kinda wanted to ask u something before that meet me at the lockers after practice today lol?

↪ Oh it’s Monday already right? ↪ I’ll see you at the lockers, sure! ↪ How does around 7 sound?

perfect~~ just like your eyes >.<

“Ew, man, ewww…”

You press your phone to your chest with a gasp, turning to glare at Yuqi. “Hey! It’s rude to read over someone’s shoulder!”

“No, what’s ruder is you not telling me how cringey this guy is!” Yuqi is very close to rolling on the floor, and you really can’t blame her. 

You’ve been texting back and forth with this Changbin guy for over a week now. He’s definitely nice and definitely more than a little cute, Yuqi didn’t lie to you. 

But – the way this dude flirts? Good God. 

Cringe must be an understatement. You have permanent goosebumps at this point because of how often you experience full body shivers out of the absolute secondhand embarrassment he has made you live through, every single day.

On the other hand, there's been radio silence between you and… him. Your best friend. His name sends a painful pang through your chest, so you've been avoiding even thinking about him. And Changbin's been a great distraction on that front.

That is not to say it has helped any feelings to blossom in your heart for the guy. His sweet but cringey self is a friend, at best. Your heart…is obviously elsewhere.

Things became so much clearer once you let yourself think everything over without any pressure and pretense, and admit to what you feel for your best friend, like Yuqi suggested.

Turns out you were wrong, after all. You really haven't succeeded at managing to stop yourself from falling further than a harmless crush for Yeonjun, because this constant hurt that has made home in your chest ever since he stopped talking to you? The wave of gloom that overtakes you whenever you so much as think about him? Surely a lot more harmful than what a crush warrants and surely surpassing best friend territory; by a leap.

The next step was attempting to move on with the help of Changbin, but that clearly fell flat on its face.

Exhaling a tired breath, you send a blushing emoticon back to the guy, and wonder why you're responding to his flirting when you know you've already failed and this is gonna end in tragedy.

“He sends you congratulations for making captain, by the way," you inform Yuqi when she's finally stopped giggling.

“Aw, did he say that was cool? As cool as your hair, maybe?”

You just groan and roll your eyes. “I’m gonna go see him tonight. He’ll probably offer me his jersey…”

That sobers Yuqi up. “Oh. So it’s time, huh? What’re you gonna tell him?”

You give her a wry smile. “What do you think?”

Understanding flashes across her face as Yuqi pats your shoulder in comfort with a sympathetic smile. “Well… At least you tried, yeah?”

Yeah… and failed spectacularly.

And are now hopelessly in love and helplessly heartbroken.

The locker rooms are nearly empty when you get there by seven. According to Changbin's text, he'll be there in the next five minutes and you are to wait by the rows immediately opposite the entrance to the bathrooms.

For a men's locker, the place is fairly clean and pleasant smelling. 

You're in the middle of inhaling a chest full of some citrusy fragrance when the pitter-patter of a feet reaches you – and then abruptly stops. The small gasp that meets your ears before you've even fully turned around is enough for you to recognise him. 

Why're you bumping into him here of all places?

He's been a ghost around the campus, as absent from your shared classes and the cafeteria as he is from your inbox – your life. 

But here he shows up – to catch you waiting for a guy he's always warned you against and only told you to accept when he was mad at you.

You're beginning to regret this whole thing you began with Changbin even though you're here to end it tonight.

Swallowing, you swerve on your heels to come face to face with a freshly showered Yeonjun, dressed in a fluffy hoodie and a pair of sweatpants. Your heart hammers against your ribcage, head filling up with thoughts of burying yourself in his embrace. His hair isn't fully dried yet, with some of it sticking to his forehead, but…what draws your attention is how gaunt and tired his face looks. 

There are large purple bags beneath his eyes and permanent frown lines around his lips. You're willing to bet this is not all due to the season's stress, because the last time you saw Yeonjun with dark circles was when you came down with a bad flu in high school and were bedridden for a week. He stayed by your side the whole time, despite both your mothers warning him about catching the infection, and barely slept.

You know it's a little unfair of you to think this way when you're the one that hurt him first, even if unintentionally, but you can't help wondering whether Yeonjun would still care if you caught a flu now. Would he even bother checking up on you, now that he's made it clear that he believes you don't think much of him and your friendship.

Does he still value you and your bond, despite the conclusions he's drawn about your feelings?

"What are you… oh."

Those are his first words to you in over a week, and the absolute disappointment on his face kinda makes up for the lack of verbal cues.

Your fists tighten on your sides, hating the way his eyes fill up with nonchalance and the way his lips purse. Why's he acting like he doesn't care? He should care!

But at the same time, you don't want him to think of you even worse than he has been. So you clear your throat and try to explain, "I've… I'm gonna clear things out with Changbin. Tell him I'm not interested so that he doesn't – he doesn't hope for anything more."

Yeonjun raises an eyebrow up, setting his jaw and lowering his eyelids. "You're good at that, aren't you? Ensuring that people aren't living with false hopes?"

Hearing his voice after so long fills your heart up with an emotion you're probably too inarticulate to explain. But his words, as snidely delivered as they are, confuse you. "What…?"

Rolling his eyes as if explaining himself to you is a waste of time for him, Yeonjun waves a hand in dismissal. "Nothing at all. He'll be heartbroken, though. Was really counting on you cheering for him. Are you absolutely sure you're not interested?"

His patronizing tone is a little too much for you, and even the lower pitch of voice he's using – one that you have always secretly fawned over – isn't able to curb your frustration. "Yes, Yeonjun, I'm sure. He'll live, he'll find someone else." And because you're beginning to feel irritated and jealous, you add, "If his second choice isn't Chaeyoung, that is."

You see the way a vein pops in his forehead and a sense of satisfaction runs through you at having struck a nerve. "Oh, so you've got words to say about Chaeyoung too, then? I thought you'd let her pass because she's famous enough by herself. Cheer vice captain, and all."

He's throwing you bait to rile you up, you know that – but you can't help the fiery fury that overtakes your senses either way.

Stalking up to him, you push a finger against Yeonjun's chest and glare into his wide, surprised eyes. "If you really think she's interested in you for you, go ahead and date her. Don't goad me into giving an opinion when you won't even care about it."

He brings a large hand up to wrap around yours, holding it tight in obvious anger. "Like you care about mine?"

"I'm literally here to say no to Changbin, Jjun! What the hell is your problem?" you yell out, pushing at his chest with your free hand – but to no avail because he holds your other wrist with his other hand as well.

"My problem is that you're saying no because you think this is beneath you!" he yells back, leaning from his towering form to bring his face to the same level as yours. "You think my girlfriends, my lifestyle – everything's beneath you!"

Your mouth falls open in utter shock because once again – this was never about him! "Yeonjun – no! For the last time, no, I don't think that! I don't think you're vain or unlikable, or that anything you do is beneath me, I just – I just fear someone will break your heart if you're not careful!"

"Is that so? You're not judgemental of the girls I date? Didn't you call Lea a – a puck bunny?"

"I didn't mean it like that!" you scream back and lean towards him, leaving barely inches between both of your fuming, frowning faces. "I was just getting metaphorical and, hell, maybe I was jealous because you've never asked me to cheer for—fuck…"

Panicked, you pull away from Yeonjun's loosened grasp, looking away from his raised eyebrows and open mouth.

You did not mean to say that. Not like this, not now… maybe never.

Face heating up like a damn furnace, you stumble away from your frozen best friend in a hurry. If he thought you were sabotaging your friendship before, he's going to absolutely hate you for harboring feelings for him. It's a blatant breach of his trust.

Shit, you should've begun to distance yourself when you first felt the tender tendrils of affection for the cutest fourteen year old guy you'd ever seen. You shouldn't have let those feelings fester – you shouldn't have let them grown into this beast that now stands to swallow your years' long friendship.

Tears prick your eyes, but there's no time to mourn right now – you need to get back to your dorm and bury yourself beneath a pillow before that.

But you've barely made it to the gates to the locker room when a firm hand grips your upper arm from behind and twirls you around. Back pressing into the wall, a gasp is torn from your chest when Yeonjun's huge, twinkling eyes cage you in. His arms resting on the wall next to you are completely unnecessary; you'd stand still through an apocalypse if he pinned you with this gaze of his.

"What…what do you mean you were jealous I never asked you?" he breathlessly questions, literal stars sparkling through his dark irises at you.

Now. If you were not adept at reading your best friend like a book, maybe you would have wondered if coming clean right now would make his eyes brighter or dim them instead. Maybe you would have debated whether lying your way out of this situation and apologizing later would be a good idea. Maybe you would have ducked from under his arms and made a run for it.

But because you have known this boy for more than seven years now, have observed every single expression of happiness and excitement that his face is capable of producing, have admired how adorable hope and anticipation looks on him – because you've loved him since the time you could barely even understand what love meant…you have no reason to doubt.

"I mean I wanted you to ask me, Jjunie. I wanted to be the one that'd be by your side, wearing your jersey and cheering from the stands for you," your voice comes out as a hoarse whisper, but Yeonjun clings onto every single word, given the stutters you can hear in his breathing. "I… I wanted you to look at me when you scored, point at me and tell everyone around us that…"

Your gaze flickers down his face, running across his nose to land on his parted, plump pair of lips. They spread a little to allow an airy chuckle to pass, and then form a wispy, questioning: "That?"

He's moved incredibly close to you, nearly touching your foreheads together and leaving an inch of space between your mouths. You look up into his eyes and they are hooded, spilling happiness, adoration but also something sincere.

"That," you rasp quietly, slowly in the small space between you, "that I'm your girl."

Yeonjun's exhale of minty toothpaste breath washes over your face, forehead tipping over yours and nose sliding against yours. When he speaks next, his lips brush the corner of your mouth and your body grows taut like a bowstring, ready to snap at the barest flick of his hands.

"Are you my girl?"

His voice has gotten incredibly lower and guttural and you just bring your hands up to clench into the fabric of his hoodie to ground yourself. Your eyes slide shut against the intensity of his own, breaths coming shorter and faster.

"I'd – I'd like to be. If…you'd have me?"

"Of fuck, baby, don't you know you've always owned me?"

You barely get a moment to process the term of endearment and the acceptance, let alone the actual depth and true implication of his words, when the softest pairs of lips you have ever felt brush against yours. Tentatively, so lightly that they almost tickle. Gasping in an exhale, you part your eyelids to find Yeonjun looking at you through a similarly shuttered gaze.

"Can I kiss you?" 

Oh God, oh God, oh God—

“Yes, please.”

The words have barely exited you before Yeonjun is erasing any remaining space between you completely by pressing his mouth fully against yours. His lips feel even more softer than they look, molding against yours like a pair of clouds. Combined exhales of relief leave the two of you, breathing just as in sync as your bodies are. Your hands move from his jacket to run across his broad shoulders and your fingers wrap around the back of his neck, pulling him impossibly closer.

As if waiting for you to do just that, Yeojun guides both his hands to your waist, bringing you closer to him, before one of them detours to run past your waist and down your thigh to hook around your knee. His mouth opens against yours, then, teeth biting into the flesh of your bottom lip. With a shuddering gasp, you hold onto him tighter and allow him to lick into your mouth, lost in the taste and feel of him.

His hand grips onto your leg to lift it from the ground and wrap it around his thigh, allowing him to slot his hips against yours perfectly. You can feel yourself spiraling, unable to form coherent thoughts beyond the heady rush of electricity that zaps through you with every pull of Yeonjun's lips. When you begin to grow breathless, his lips detach from yours to slip down your chin and press against your throat.

A mixture of gasp and whine escapes you, making his grip on you tighten and his lips turn bolder in their exploration of your neck. You feel his teeth scraping over your collarbone and shivers run through you, causing your back to arch and press further into his body. He groans against your skin and runs his hand up your leg to caress the delicate skin of your thigh.

You realise this is getting kind of out of hand because you've just confessed your feelings and you're still in the damn locker room, but your eyes can't help but clench shut as your fingers tug on his silky soft hair, silently asking him to keep going. 

But Yeonjun is far more in control of the situation than you are, given the way he turns his kisses from hungry to chaste, slowly. Pressing a closed mouth peck to your cheek, he rearranges his grip on you to pick you up with his hands beneath your thighs, and carries you to a bench. He sits down and drapes your legs over his own to make you straddle him, holding you firmly but softly in place.

He plants a soft, sweet kiss to your lips and rests his forehead against yours. Your eyelids part to the blurry sight of his shining eyes. It takes you a moment to realise you have tears in your eyes – and that he does as well.

With the softest smile that you have ever seen on him, Yeonjun brings a thumb up to your face and flicks at the corner of your eye.

"I've liked you ever since high school, you know?"

Your lashes flutter in fascination. "Really? But you never… you always…"

His cheeks grow pink when you scrunch your nose up instead of finishing the sentence, and he shuts his eyes. "You just never really showed any interest… You never looked jealous or bothered by my love life."

"I was being a good friend!" You chuckle when he rolls his eyes. "Besides, I had plenty to say about the girls you dated?"

He tucks a piece of your hair behind your ear, still looking at you with a soft gaze, but his lips have twitched into a devastating smirk. "But you never said I could date you instead."

A blast of heat flushes your entire face at his words. Remember when you said he never flirted with you and you were grateful for that? Yeah, you still stand by that. Your heart's racing so fast, it's a wonder it hasn't malfunctioned yet. Yeonjun reads your face, too, and pecks your nose with a giggle .

"I'm so sorry it took me so long to figure it out, baby," he then whispers to you, sounding so forlorn that the sound of his voice, especially with that pet name, makes you wanna cry again. "I should've realized you were jealous…"

"I'm sorry, too, Jjun," you whisper back, hands coming up to play with the drawstrings of his hoodie that your eyes focus on as well, suddenly hesitant to meet his open gaze. "I wasn't careful about my words and hurt you. I was a bad friend."

He chuckles at that, which draws your eyes back to his own again. "To be honest, I was more hurt because your words made me conclude that you would never like me back. So you literally don't have to apologize at all."

A smile blooms on your face. "Can I kiss it better, then?"

"Oh, you can always kiss it better, baby." Teeth flashing and eyes squinting, Yeonjun nuzzles into your neck, full of giggles that you mirror as well.

Right then, a call of your name resounds across the locker rooms.

Wait…

Fuck.

Changbin!

Yeonjun's wide eyes look at you with questions. You just sigh and shrug your shoulders.

"Back here, Bin!"

"Bin?" Yeonjun raises an eyebrow with his eyes narrowed, making you stifle a giggle.

"Should I try Binnie, then?" 

He gasps in outrage, threatening to bite into your cheek, while you lean away to escape him, still suppressing your laughter.

Footsteps echo across the hall before a gasp is heard at the end of the aisle you're seated next to. Changbin stands rooted to his place, mouth agape and eyes wide. You've corrected yourself in your seat, but – your seat's still kinda Yeonjun's lap.

"I… um?"

You purse your lips in apology. "I'm sorry, Bin. I can't accept your jersey."

"I… can see that, I guess…"

To his credit, Changbin doesn't look a lot upset. Just very confused. You decide to try and help him.

"I can, however, get you Song Yuqi's number if you want?"

Instant fireworks explode in his eyes. "What? The – the cheer captain, Song Yuqi?"

"Mm hm. Cheer captain, my friend, my roommate. You know, the one."

"Wow, Y/N, that'd be so cool, man! Thank you!"

And then Changbin's hopping his way out of there without another word. Yeonjun breaks into laughter the moment he's out of sight.

"Poor guy kept asking me if it was okay to approach you and I kept saying we're just friends. He must be so confused, right now…"

You look at the boy who's still cradling you in his lap. "So. We're not just friends anymore, I hope."

He tightens his grip around your waist, eyes doing that thing where they switch from being rounded to suddenly narrowed and intense. "That depends. Do you kiss your just friends like that?"

You nudge his nose with your own, heart thumping at the intensity of his dark eyes and the reality of your changing dynamics with him. "Only the ones I intend to do more with."

Yeonjun's eyes widen in surprise and then narrow further with mischief. "Is that so, baby? Well, how about I take you to a nice dinner date tonight and then we can discuss what more can happen later, hm?"

"I'd like that very, very much." Swallowing past the lump of emotions that suddenly lodges in your throat, you bite your bottom lip and smile. 

He smiles back, but then brings a thumb up to tug your lip free. "Don't bite your lip, baby. You've got me to do that for you, now."

And then he kisses you again.

© yeonboy 2023 // do not steal, copy or repost. respect your local content creators, kaythanks.

[cbrownjc]

Theory: Why this second 'Interview' is happening

So a few weeks ago, Rolin Jones said that there was a reason the second interview had to happen, which will be revealed this season. And we would learn the reason why one character needed it to happen in ep 2x05; then we would learn why another character needed it to happen in 2x08 (the season finale).

Now the person we will learn needs the second interview to happen in episode 2x05 will, IMO, be Louis. For now, he seems the most clear as being one of the two people IMO. For, as we saw in ep 2x01 Louis knows he hasn't been remembering everything correctly, but that he really wants to. At the moment, Louis has been (deliberately) sidetracked from thinking/wondering if anything else he remembers might not be fully correct but, by ep 2x05, he'll start questioning that again IMO.

Plus, for some reason, Louis is very insistent on this interview taking place and happening no matter what. Because just thinking over everything that has happened storywise up to this point? I actually don't think Louis is in any way fully aware of just how off his memories are. I think he knows something feels off or wrong but he can't quite fully place what that is.

So yes, IMO, Louis is the first character who needed the second interview to happen.

But who is the second character who needed the second interview to happen? Well, this theory very much includes book spoilers (that IMO the show is very much hinting at) to talk about, so I'm giving fair warning right now: this theory very deeply goes into something from the books, as well as tying into another theory I have for what might happen at the end of the season. So, just to be safe, I'm going to place this next part under a spoiler cut:

The character who, IMO, will be revealed as needing this second interview to happen, which we will learn in ep 2x08, will be Claudia.

Yep. IMO Claudia is the one who needed the second interview to happen. Or, more importantly, her spirit/ghost does.

And what clicked this for me is remembering something Delainey herself noted in an interview before the season started which was -- yes, Claudia's journals are there but even they can't give you a full and accurate picture of Claudia and her story. So how can Claudia speak and tell her story?

And that is where this second interview comes in. Because, if you know the book, Merrick, then you know that book contained what was thought to be an appearance of Claudia's ghost/spirit. But that wasn't the only book where we see Claudia's ghost/spirit. We also see her in Tale of the Body Theif . . . or, at least Lestat sees her.

And who was the main antagonist of TotBT? Raglan James. Who, hell, even if Justin Kirk really isn't Raglan James (and is actually Marius or someone else) still works IMO -- in the context of hinting toward that storyline that had Lestat haunted by memories of Claudia and dealing with seeing her "spirit" talking to him.

Because yes, I do think very much that Louis is seeing Claudia's spirit right now, in some way. Just like he did in the book Merrick.

And it's from seeing her spirit and just feeling that something is wrong wrt all of what's going on about it, that has Louis so insistent that this second interview has to happen.

And it's why four other people have come to do this same thing Daniel is doing and either ended up dead . . . or undead.

Hell because again, if you know the story in Merrick then you know Merrick Mayfair herself is the one Louis enlisted to help him summon and speak to Claudia's spirit in the first place; and she ended up putting Louis under a spell to make him turn her into a vampire.

Maybe that comment from Raglan James was a hint about that having already happened to the show's version of Merrick Mayfair. Who's maybe already been there to help summon Claudia's spirit in the first place?

Anyway . . .

IMO, Claudia's ghost/spirit is not only around, but IMO she wants what really happened to her to be known; the truth of not only why Louis and Lestat created her, but how she was failed by them and, most of all, the full truth of not only how she felt about both of them about it all, but also the truth surrounding her death (The Frankenstein Experiment) to not just be revealed but understood . . . mainly understood by Louis and Lestat.

And no, the reason Claudia's spirit wants this isn't benevolent. Just as the spirit of Claudia in the books wasn't benevolent when Lestat and Louis encountered her in them. What she wants, I think most of all, is for them both to face the truth of their actions and what that makes them (in her eyes).

I don't think Louis knows all this of course. I think he just knows Claudia's spirit is still around for some reason and that he thinks going over everything that happened wrt his life will help him figure that reason out.

And after four previously failed attempts Daniel was brought in for the simple reason that, unlike maybe three of the first four, Armand won't kill Daniel to stop this whole thing. (And, you know, if Merrick Mayfair was the first of those four, Daniel can't steal either of their blood to try and make himself a vampire.)

And can I just say, if this theory is correct, then I don't think Claudia's spirit is going to rest after she convinces Louis to do in the show what her spirit in the book convinced him to do. Because again, Lestat also got haunted by the spirit of Claudia in TotBT. And while I'm not sure he'd see her spirit in Season 3 when he begins to tell his story and POV of things (and so when we see Claudia it will be when she's alive during flashback sequences) I do think the show would be setting up for her spirit to do so going forward after that.

Because spirit entities do play a major role in what is to come in the overall story I think the show is heading to (which I and others think will be a combination of the Akasha and Amel threats in Queen of the Damned and Prince Lestat). Starting off by showing Claudia as a spirit entity can be used to begin to ease non-book readers into this concept IMO.

And all of this fits very much with why Armand not only doesn't want this interview to happen but still reluctantly let it happen. Because, if you know his backstory, Armand very much can see spirits and ghosts unaided. That is how strong his Mind Gift abilities are. So if Claudia's spirit/ghost is around in the Dubai penthouse, Armand would very well know that. And so would very much not want her spirit hanging around anymore if at all possible. Because of what Claudia's spirit could, at some point, communicate about him. ("My name is in some of those pages.")

Because I do think that while Louis does know about the role Armand played in Claudia's death, IMO Louis doesn't know about The Frankenstein Experiment. Because, in the books, nobody knew about that -- least of all Louis and Lestat -- until Armand himself revealed it over a century later in The Vampire Armand.

And the show is very much not cutting that moment out but, instead, has been hinting and foreshadowing about it.

I said in another post that I think Armand is, for lack of a better metaphor, like a little kid who wet the bed and now is trying to hide the sheets when it specifically comes to this. This is why he's against the interview happening because it being revealed will crumble the contented life he feels he's built with Louis in Dubai. Because Armand just craves love and being loved so much and not being alone . . . and is fearful he very much will be if this all goes in the direction it could.

One of Armand's major faults is that, when he loves someone, he tends to go way, way, WAY overboard in trying to either secure that person's love . . . or to keep it. If you know the book TVL, Armand did that with Lestat, (forcing himself into Lestat's mind and drinking Lestat's blood without permission), and that is the reason Lestat, in the end, could never trust Armand enough to be companions with him.

And Armand repeated that same pattern with Louis in Paris in allowing Claudia to be killed when, as coven master, he very well could have prevented it.

And now Armand is doing something way overboard, once again, in Dubai, in trying to hide the one thing regarding Claudia in Paris that Louis doesn't know about -- as well as keep Louis safe from doing something extreme if Louis remembers everything the real way it happened . . . as well as hiding the one thing about it all -- regarding Armand's own role in Claudia's fate that Louis still doesn't know about (and in the book Armand says he kept closely hidden until this moment).

Many book readers have always wondered about that Frankenstein reveal because, once Armand reveals it, it's never brought up again. We never hear how Louis and Lestat felt about learning about it. However, I think the show is very much going to give Louis and Lestat both a reaction to and about it when they learn of it. (And no, they are not going to kill Armand for it. But Armand might just be right to worry that Louis learning about it very well might cause his life with Louis in Dubai to be destroyed.)

So yeah, IMO, the second character that Rolin said would be revealed to be wanting this second interview in ep 2x08 is Claudia. And, IMO, this theory also fits with what Jacob said about this being Claudia's season more than anyone else's.