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jasonscaramel · 1 year ago

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i guess only the stars would know the truth - chapter two - jason todd x reader

series summary: there's something going on in gotham. you transfer into gotham university's journalism program. simultaneously, people are going missing in gotham at record rates. it's only a matter of time before your curiosity gets the best of you.

words: 1.9k

cross-posted on ao3 | series masterlist

You feel like you’re starting to get your footing.

All things considered, you’re acclimating well to the city and the new school. Tim and Bernard are the only reasons for it, but you can’t be too upset by that fact. Tim had added you to a group chat with them as soon as he saw you Wednesday, and Bernard started spamming instantly, which made you feel weirdly at home with them.

So the first week went off without a hitch. You’re settling into your apartment more, the empty space is starting to feel more like home. There’s a thrift store you can take the subway to get to, so you’ve added more odds and ends and decor pieces to the place. It’s nice. You think, despite everything, that you’re going to like it here.

Which brings you to now. Tim and Bernard had invited you out for dinner to a small diner right by campus. It was a great way to begin your weekend—last week you spent Friday night alone on your couch doing homework. Definite upgrade. Especially considering most of your meals in the past week had originated in your freezer.

“So how are your other classes?” Bernard asks, a mouthful of fries garbling his words. Tim playfully shoves him with his elbow, which makes Bernard’s cheeks turn pink. They’re cute, you think. Good for each other.

You idly (mostly jokingly) wonder if Tim has a brother.

“They’ve been good. It’s a lot of good information, but I haven’t met anyone else as nice as you guys yet.” They both chuckle and while you laugh along, you aren’t joking. You still haven’t been able to penetrate any of the cliques in your other classes, not for lack of trying. You’re beginning to wonder if you’ll ever befriend a woman ever again.

“We’re glad to be of service. My first year here was daunting, I can only imagine transferring in like you did.” Tim’s stabbing at his salad as he speaks, somehow both faraway and present at the same time.

“It was at first, but I think—”

“Babe, is that Dick?” Bernard interrupts you with a wild look in his eye. He’s looking toward the register at the front of the diner, and you can’t help but follow his eyes. There stands a tall, lanky man flirting with the waitress at the register. You can see the beaming smile on his face from here as he turns, a hand smoothing out his hair.

Tim groans. “Yes. Unfortunately.”

Bernard looks confused. “I thought he was in Bludhaven?”

“He is.” Tim says, stabbing his salad particularly hard. “But he’s home for a bit. I don’t know, but he’s been an asshole the whole time.”

Oh shit, does Tim have a brother?

“Well, don’t look now, but he’s—”

“Timmy!” Dick’s voice booms as he approaches, the wide grin never leaving his face. “Good to see you, Bernard.” His attention turns to you suddenly, and you shrink. “Who’s this?”

With an unsure smile, you give him your name. “I just moved here for the journalism program.”

Dick’s eyebrows raise, a smile still ever-present on his face. You wonder if his cheeks ever get sore. “Journalism? Hey, I know someone at the Gazette, I can pass along her info if you want.”

It was your turn to be surprised. “Oh, that’d—yeah, that’d be amazing.”

“Cool. I’ll give her card to Tim when I find it.” His smile doesn’t falter. You’re beginning to think, whatever’s going on between them, Dick is blissfully unaware. “I’d love to stay and chat, but we’ve got that… thing. Tim, you coming?”

Tim shakes his head, still not making eye contact with the man. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Dick seems to finally pick up on the one-sided tension and bids everyone farewell before the awkward air could get any worse. It didn’t stick around, thankfully, as Bernard was quick to fill the lull in conversation. Tim finished eating while you and Bernard spoke, and when the waitress came over, he handed her his credit card before she could produce the bill.

You try and intervene with, “Tim, wait, I can—”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it.” He pauses, a snide look taking over his face. “Dad’s credit card.” He says it as a joke, but without the proper context, you’re unsure how to proceed.

“I’ll get you next time.” You promise, but he shakes his head.

“You need a lift home? We’re getting an Uber, but—”

“No, it’s okay,” you answer quickly. “I like to walk.” Tim and Bernard share a smile like they’re not so sure about your decision, but decide it’s best not to voice whatever opinions they have. You’re not exactly sure you’re ready for them to know where you live; you feel like that’s reasonable. Also, you have actually grown fond of your nightly walks home. It’s proven to be a great way to destress before coming home.

As you all get up to leave, check having been paid, Tim tells you to text him when you get home. You assure him you will with a smile, and give the two a group hug before heading in the direction of your apartment.

Gotham is a dark place, you’ve realized. Metaphorically, absolutely, but also literally. The sun sets early here, and the inky sky seems to absorb any light that the city emanates. It feels isolating as you begin your walk home, with only the stars in the sky to keep you company. You keep your eyes peeled for vigilantes on rooftops, hoping that might ease your thoughts.

You were, unfortunately, looking in all the wrong places.

The sounds of what can only be described as someone getting their ass beat are coming from the next alley up ahead. It makes you stop in your tracks. Just a little bit further, and you’d be at your apartment. You take a deep breath and quietly begin to make your way to the other side of the street, but something in you can’t help but look. You hide yourself behind a parallel parked car and peek into the alley.

Holy shit.

It’s dark, but what you can see is a man verging on seven feet tall with a red helmet on beating the ever-living shit out of some guy with his bare hands. As you continue to make your way around the car in the direction of your apartment, the street light shifts and gives you a better look into the alley. There are four more men at the tall man’s feet, clearly beaten to a bloody pulp. You can’t help but freeze, staring in shock.

Your eyes lift back to the helmet, and you try to remember what this guy’s superhero name is. Red something. Red Mask doesn’t sound right. Whatever. This feels like the wrong thing to be worried about, you think miserably. As you’re contemplating this, though, the mask turns toward you, stopping to make what you feel is eye contact. You have no proof of course, but the eyes on that mask feel like they look into the depths of your soul.

Oh fuck.

Freeze is taken over by flight. You book it around the car, picking up your pace as you run in the middle of the street to make it to your apartment complex. Sure, he’s on the side of the good guys, but getting caught in the middle of something is never good. You know better than to put your nose in business that you’re not actively investigating. No unnecessary danger, you promised yourself, especially in this city.

You’re panting as you scan into your building, pulling the slow-close door shut behind you to lock the horrors of the city out. Your running pace slows down to a fast walk as you make your way to the stairs, taking two at a time to get to the fourth floor in record time.

As you lock the built-in deadbolt behind you, and then your own separate locking system you bought on the internet, you start to feel a bit safer. Despite living in a less than savory side of Gotham, it wasn’t known for being the worst, so you were beginning to feel a lot safer than you had the first week you slept here. Sure, you still have a baseball bat by your bed, but that’s just practical.

You turn the TV on to drown out the silence of your apartment and the sounds of your heavy breathing while you get a glass of water to calm your racing heart. You’re safe. Red… guy is one of the good guys. You’re pretty sure.

You plop onto the couch, a meteorologist keeping you company as you fling your laptop open to search Gotham vigilantes into your web browser. Wikipedia, the holy grail it is, seems to have a cohesive list. You skim it, realizing there’s a lot here you’re not familiar with. Finally, you find a blue link worth clicking.

Red Hood.

You look through his article, and the more you read, the better you feel about him being right down the street from you. Yeah, there’s some murder on the list, but it looks like you could claim that each one of them deserved it. (You’re not going to, but someone could. And you might even believe them.) Even so, the most recent photos of him available are alongside Batman, so you assume there isn’t any more killing in the equation. You know that much about Batman, at least.

Honestly, you thought you’d only have to worry about Batman. That’s why you know the most about him. The others seemed like sidekicks. Clearly, you were wrong.

With a full glass of water and a pack of chewy chips ahoy, your mind is set on familiarizing yourself more with the cast of vigilantes in Gotham. The little bit you brushed up on before you moved here won’t be sufficient, you realize.

A vibration from your phone pulls you out of your research.

Tim: You good?

You: Yeah, sorry. Saw Red Hood on the way home, got kinda spooked. All good tho

Bernard: Oh shit!!! You sure???

You: Swear! Goodnight guys

Tim: Night

Bernard: Goodnight!!!!

You smile, happily content at the care that your new friends have shown you in such a short time. You’re grateful for them; you didn’t realize just how lonely you’d be out here without knowing every single person in town because you grew up with them.

With a yawn and one final look at a photo of Red Hood perched on the edge of a rooftop (damn is a thought you couldn’t help but have) you close your laptop and place it on the couch next to you. Your ears perk up when you hear the pretty news anchor’s voice again.

“We have Ashley Sanders’ mother, Susan here to make a public appeal. Susan?” The camera pans from the gorgeous, put-together news anchor to a fragile-looking older woman. She looks like she’s been crying for the past two days and hasn’t slept in just as long. Susan pulls herself together enough to begin pleading with the camera for the safe return of her daughter.

Another new name on the missing person’s list, you think with a sigh. Another college kid, too. You’re far too tired to complete any more research, though, so you click off the TV and stare up at the ceiling.

You’ll go to bed eventually. And you’ll definitely dream of the man in the red helmet when you do.

#jason todd fanfiction #jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #red hood x reader #red hood x you

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grailfinders · 2 years ago

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Fate & Phantasms #312: Faerie Knight Lancelot

Today on Fate & Phantasms, we’re building the last of the faerie knights, Faerie Knight Lancelot, a.k.a. Melusine. she’s got an unusual fighting style, but it’s nothing too wild. now I just gotta look at her third skill, and- oh. oh no.

we’ll… figure out a way to make it work.

she’s an Ascendant Dragon Monk to turn into a living jet, and a War Cleric to keep that speed up even while wearing heavy armor. and the giant tum-tum laser.

check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet here!

next up: lemme take a selfie

Race & Background

Melusine is a faerie, but she’s also half dragon. that does all sorts of fun stuff to her existence, so we’ll make her a Custom Lineage instead. that could be anything, it could even be a faerie- that’s what Melusine is!

as a custom lineage, she gets +2 Dexterity, a small size since she’s a compact combatant, and the Mobile feat for extra speed event in first ascension, as well as the ability to prevent opportunity attacks from opponents you’ve tried to attack this turn. life goes fast, and so do you.

Melusine also gets a little Darkvision thanks to her special faerie eyes.

like every other faerie knight so far, Melusine is a Knight of the Order. that means she gets proficiency in Persuasion bc dragons are naturally charismatic, and Nature to know what a dragon even is.

Ability Scores

first up is Dexterity. I know that doesn’t actually control speed at all, but it powers your fists and your sword…fist…things. we’re calling them shortswords. after that, Wisdom. it powers your noble phantasm, so it has to be pretty good, all things considered. third up is Constitution, dragons wouldn’t be half the game’s title if they were easy to kill. and I know we don’t need Strength, but we need the other stuff less. like Intelligence! you grew up by yourself, so you probably didn’t get tutored much. finally, dump Charisma. you are doomed to die alone; it’s engraved into your spirit core. sorry.

Class Levels

1. Cleric 1: your first ascension uses actual armor, so we’re starting as a War Cleric so you’ll have proficiency with martial weapons and heavy armor. we’re mostly just doing this for the spell list, but the fact that you can flavor this choice as being a priest of bahamut is just a nice coincidence. another nice coincidence is that as a war cleric you are a War Priest, letting you make a bonus action attack a couple times a day. we’ll get an upgrade for this real soon, but this one always works, regardless of how you’re dressed.

as a cleric you also get proficiency with Wisdom and Charisma saves, as well as History and Insight.

as previously implied, you also get Spells, which you cast and prepare using your Wisdom as the baseline. since you can swap your spells every day picking the perfect spell list isn’t that necessary, which is nice since the only one I really want this level is Inflict Wounds. it inflicts wounds. as a war cleric, you also get to grab Divine Favor and Shield of Faith for free, the former giving you a little bit of radiance in your attacks and the latter adding +2 to your AC for up to 10 minutes, which will pair nicely with your unarmored defense. oh wait that’s a spoiler.

2. Monk 1: okay now it’s not. as a monk you get Unarmored Defense, adding your wisdom to your AC as long as you’re not wearing armor. obviously, as the name suggests this only works when not wearing armor. you also gain Martial Arts, letting you use dexterity instead of strength when using monk weapons, you do at least a d4 of damage, and you can make a bonus action unarmed attack each turn for free. this too only works when unarmored, so… I guess this is kind of a dead level rn. having the variety is nice though.

3. Cleric 2: second level clerics can Channel Divinity once per short rest in one of two flavors. Turn Undead certainly exists, and making crowds of zombie run away is fun, but we’re here for the Guided Strikes. when you make an attack roll you can add 10 to the roll without spending an action- this is basically your first NP. not a ton of damage, but it always hits.

4. Monk 2: second level monks get Unarmored Movement, increasing your speed by 10’ and growing as you level up… as long as you aren’t wearing armor. I promise some of these features will be actually usable soon.

like now. you also get your level in Ki points each short rest, which you can spend on cool dragon stuff, like attacking twice as a bonus action, dodging as a bonus action, or disengaging/dashing as a bonus action while doubling your jump distance. all of these can be done without doffing your armor. hoo ray.

5. Monk 3: at level three you become an Ascendant Dragon, allowing you to use the Breath of the Dragon to roast anything around you. sadly, we can’t get radiant damage this way, but fire is pretty close. you substitute one attack with either a cone or line of energy, forcing a dexterity save on all creatures in that area, and dealing 2 martial arts dice of damage.

you’re also a Draconic Disciple helping you pass one intimidation or persuasion check per day, and you can make Draconic Strikes to supplement your unarmed attacks with elemental damage, even if you’re only dealing 1+ your strength while armored up. you also learn Draconic! it’s a language.

(also as a third level monk you can Deflect Missiles as a reaction and throw them back at people. lancers are strong against archers, after all.)

6. Monk 4: fourth level monks get their first Ability Score Improvement, so bump up your Wisdom for stronger spells and higher saves on your monk abilities. you can’t fly yet, but you can Slow Fall, reducing falling damage as a reaction. you also gain Quickened Healing, letting you spend an action to heal yourself using ki. once again, dragons don’t die easily.

7. Monk 5: fifth level monks get an Extra Attack each action, and their martial arts die grows a size, and I mean, by this point you’ve probably ascended at least once, right? yeah probably. go nuts. you can also turn your melee attacks into Stunning Strikes, trivializing any boss you come across who is bad at constitution saves. you can also spend ki on your Focused Aim, adding 2 to the attack roll for every point spent, up to a total of +6. so now if you want to hit someone, the absolute lowest you can roll (barring a natural one) is 21. I’m pretty sure you’re better at gae bolg-ing than Cu is at this point.

8. Monk 6: at level six, your Ki-Empowered Strikes make your unarmed attacks magical against resistances, though your dragon fists kind of solved that problem already. you can also use Wings Unfurled to fly for a turn a couple times per day, after using your step of the wind.

9. Monk 7: seventh level monks get the ever-popular Evasion, basically turning any dexterity save you have to do into a complete joke. you also gain a Stillness of Mind, so you effectively can’t be charmed or frightened for more than a turn or two.

10. Monk 8: at level eight, you can use your next ASI to round up both your Dexterity and Constitution for a stronger offense and defense. remember, HP is affected retroactively, so you gain a whole ten extra points of HP this level!

11. Monk 9: ninth level monks get an Unarmored Movement Improvement, letting you run up walls and over water as long as you end the turn somewhere solid. weirdly enough, this doesn’t care about your armor either! you won’t move that fast until you doff, but you can still run up sheer surfaces just fine. #justmonkthings

12. Monk 10: tenth level monks have a Purity of Body that makes them impossible to fall ill or be poisoned. you ever see a dragon with a cold? no, no you haven’t.

13. Cleric 3: Okay, so you’re draconic enough to fly, now we just need a big ol’ belly laser. easy. maybe even peasy, some would say.

going back to cleric gives you access to second level spells. you get Spiritual Weapon for free if you’d like to have a bonus action attack that isn’t limited by proficiency or outfit, and you can also turn one of your swords into a Magical Weapon so it can cut through enemies as well as your fists can… cut… don’t worry about it.

as for spells you choose to have, I suggest picking up Aid to improve your HP total, and Hold Person to destroy your opponents’.

14. Cleric 4: bump up your Wisdom again. we’re really only focusing on one spell, but it’s your noble phantasm, so it better be good. also grab Toll the Dead while we’re here, why not.

15. Cleric 5: at fifth level clerics can Destroy Undead if they’re CR ½ or lower and they fail their turn undead save. you also get third level spells. Crusader’s Mantle gives that sweet sweet divine favor to the whole party as long as they stick close, and Spirit Guardians will lock down an area with a glowy dragon, I guess.

this is another level we only really care about one spell in, so pick up Spirit Shroud to finally have a decent amount of radiance coming from your swords. now any close-range attack you make gets a little extra boost, and you prevent healing and movement for enemies in your area.

16. Cleric 6: sixth level clerics can channel divinity twice a short rest, and you can channel that divinity into a War God’s Blessing, giving any player that +10 bonus to an attack as a reaction. I wouldn’t, but you do you. just saying, faeries aren’t known for their helpfulness.

17. Cleric 7: seventh level clerics get fourth level spells. Freedom of Movement is what I really care about, since it keeps you from getting your jet engines grounded, but you can also use Stoneskin for a scalier hide, if you so desire.

18. Cleric 8: with your last ASI, grab the Tough feat for an extra 36 HP now, plus another 2 every time you level up from here on out. you also destroy undead of CR 1 or lower, and you can make a Divine Strike once per turn, adding more damage of a type your weapon’s already doing. if you’re only focusing on making one attack hit, it better do extra damage.

19. Cleric 9: your fifth level spells are not ones to be slept on. Hold Monster is just as strong as hold person is for a melee-based fighter, and Flame Strike is your third stage NP- a giant flaming laser from heaven that’ll wipe out anything in its way.

you can also pick up Holy Weapon if you want to mix your two NPs together. first you deal extra damage with a radiant sword, then you detonate it for an aoe.

20. Monk 11: our final level of the build takes you back into monk to gain the Aspect of the Wyrm. you can activate this as a bonus action, creating a 10’ aura around you. for a minute, it either lets you frighten creatures within if they fail a wisdom save, or you and allies in the aura gain resistance to one elemental damage type.

your martial arts dice also grow to d8s this level, and your dragon breath deals 3d8 as well.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

you’re mobile, with a walking speed that matches most characters’ sprinting speeds and the ability to fly, which is always great. you get damage where it needs to go.

you’re also super versatile. I know we skimmed over the cleric spells since they’re not in-character, but cleric has one of the best spell lists in the game. and even ignoring all the cleric’s healing and buff/debuff spells, you’ve still got tons of damage variety and multiple attack options to keep things interesting.

you also deal consistent damage, with a ton of attacks in a short time as well as ways to make those attacks really count. you can usually attack 3-4 times a turn, and with a spell like Divine Favor or Spirit Shroud up you can pump out some juicy damage in a variety of flavors. mostly radiant, but that’s in character anyway.

Cons:

we’re trying to mix the no armor class with the heavy armor class. while donning and doffing armor is both in-character and frankly not terrible for the build, it’s still rough that your armor basically gives you a dead level immediately at the start of the game. still, the only thing you really miss out on is some speed and your martial arts attacks (just use two swords). also- donning and doffing armor takes forever, so don’t expect to bust out of it mid-combat.

you also have a lot of stuff you can only do in your Bonus Action, so figuring out what to prioritize could be tricky. as stated above, your damage relies on your bonus action attacks to help both with consistency and total amount of damage. if you use your bonus action for mobility or spellcasting, your DPS will drop noticeably.

you have low charisma, which means you won’t be popular with the nobles and you’re likely to get yeeted to another dimension. still, you know when this con shows up in a build it’s pretty solid stuff. just try to avoid being sent to another plaen, or you’ll have plenty of alone time to think about what you’ve done.

#fgo #fate grand order #D&D 5e #DND #Melusine #Cleric #Monk

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wirewitchviolet · 9 months ago

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The Entire Plot of Final Fantasy 14 Bonus Part- Jobs, Deep Dungeons, and Adventuring Forays

Over the course of all these other posts, I've definitely covered the main plot of FF14 to date, and for good measure also talked about the tribe quests and raids which for the most part are technically optional. But there's a few scraps of story here and there I haven't gotten into, some of it good even, so today we're going to be talking about... well the stuff in the title of this post. Starting of course with all the job quests... and all the class quests. Which are technically sorta separate things, for reasons of weird legacy code.

For historical reasons I'll keep these pretty much in release order, and for the first few we'll mostly go city by city. First though, let's just get the non-combat classes out of the way. We've got the three gatherers (miner, herbalist, and fisher), and eight crafters (alchemist, armorer, blacksmith, carpener, culinarian, goldsmith, leatherworker, and weaver). Each one has its own little storyline, but for the most part they are all pretty rote. You meet someone who teaches you the ropes of your new little profession. They are extremely impressed by your rapid progress. By the end of ARR you're pretty much the best there is and spend Heavensward showing someone else the ropes, and then during Stormblood you wander off to one of the new hub cities to either help people rebuild Ala Mhigo, or have a bit of cultural exchange in Kugane. The only real notable exceptions are that the leatherworker leader is weirdly hard to please, the alchemist storyline actually develops into a weird murder investigation that evolves into a confrontation with someone messing with immortality treatments, and the Heavensward arc of the culinarian quests involves a cooking contest and at the end we go all Ratatouille with the judge.

One weird quirk with FF14 is that which of the three starting cities you spend the first few hours of the game in is determined by your starting class. It's where your class quests start, after all, and getting between the three is annoying at first, so there's just three versions of the intro, three kindly innkeepers to tutorialize you, and different Scions in each region to initially bump into. The other weird quirk is that because once upon a time the game had this weird system where you had to unlock the proper iconic Final Fantasy Jobs by leveling different combinations of more generic MMO style Classes. They dropped that, but you still go from a Class to a Job at level 30, so the base game ones all have two different names to keep track of, and you pick based on the vaguer one. Anyway we'll be starting off with the Gridanian set, because Gridania is nice and boring!

Up first, we have Archer, which eventually transitions into Bard. You start off basically joining the militia, doing some target practice, dealing with some bandits, and helping a catgirl peer deal with how her family of hunters kinda suck a lot. Then you meet an old retired guy who's into music and whistful memories, do some traveling around the world learning his backstory, and helping some loser friend of his self-actualize. The whole thing honestly left the least impression on me of the whole lot, but when you do officially switch over to bard, you not only get songs as a combat ability, there's this whole surprisingly elaborate music performance system that unlocks for roleplaying. People form bands and hold concerts in major cities pretty often. It's neat.

Then we have Lancer, which transitions to Dragoon. Up to level 30 it's the same basic deal as Archer, but after that you go meet Estinien to learn how to jump around a lot. From Heavensward on, Estinien is a major character/party member, which is a nice upgrade for him, and means that after a bit of friendly rivalry as he teaches you the ropes and challenges you to a duel, the rest of this questline is inherently tied to the ongoing events of Heavensward and a bit of epilogue to it. You sorta take on an apprentice who's pretty sure she's going to turn into a dragon because she was low dosed with blood as a child (this was a whole thing, go reread the Heavensward summary) and later have to deal with an unruly dragon who wandered off to the east. Not bad stuff overall.

Finally we have Conjurer, which transitions into White Mage, and hey, this one has cool lore attached! I just called Gridania "nice and boring" in reference to how it's kind of this sleepy peaceful little rustic village, but it has some of the juicier background lore, it just doesn't tend to come up outside of this quest line. See the big ancient forest it's smack in the middle of is the home of these ancient elementals which are all weird and mysterious and presumably make things nice if they're happy, and definitely make giant tree monsters try to kill everyone when they're upset. Every so often a human (hyuran if you insist on making me look up dumb official names) is born with a big ol' set of pointy horns, which marks them as a padjal, weirdos who don't age right and can cryptically communicate with the elementals. This gives them the two jobs of governing Gridania according to the whims of their weird primordial spirit religion, and teaching people how to magically summon wind/rocks/healing spells in exchange for them directly taking care of the elementals' problems. So early on you are training with/mentoring a girl who thought she was just gonna learn how to heal people and does not get that she's also signing up to deal with this Evil Dead stuff on behalf of the elementals, then you learn some more of the history to all that, deal with a weird cultist during Heavensward, and in Stormblood discover this younh padjal whose mother freaked out and took her off to live in the middle of nowhere because she didn't want her taken away and given over to this weird cult with all the other horny people. Understandable, but she ends up doing weird magic stuff when she's upset which isn't great and also attracts demons like catnip so you and that girl who finally embraced rock tossing need to go teach her the ropes and keep her from summoning demons and keep her sick mom from dying in a moldy cabin in a blighted forest. This one is actually pretty good.

For some direct contrast with that, swinging down to Ul'dah, let's start off with Thaumaturge, which transitions into Black Mage. We've got some spooky lalafel nerds with a big ol' library who are way into magic, and do a bit of dealing with demons when rifts to hell open up and let some out. Mostly though these guys suck beyond the recluse who's really running the show, and serving as part of this secret shadow council whose other members come from the various "beast" tribes who you probably won't pick up on as not all just being evil monsters if you pick the class up early on. Once you're hanging out with them, the whole deal is handling demons with dangerous magic that kinda draws on hell as a power source. Which seems a lot less edgy post-post-Endwalker, but they've got this nice "seem evil, actually super good" thing going. Moving forward into the expansions, there's a bit of a conflict there, where some white mage who grew up on too much propaganda from the big ol' three-way mage war responsible for one of the less talked about past apocalypses, and needs some firsthand lessons that no, they're standing around the hell portals all the time because they're closing them, not opening them. And then there's an odd arc where the original black mage, who may or may not be the one who's a major FF11 character ends up posessing your mentor to fix a problem/brag/lead into a sort of out of left field love story. Not bad, could be better.

Gladiator transitions to Paladin eventually, but for Stormblood the focus shifts back to the gladiators, which is marginally the better of the two, but these are rough. Gladiatorial combat is the big sporting event of Ul'dah, and you EVENTUALLY get to participate in a bit of it first hand in the 60-70 range, but the bulk of the gladiatorial story is that the head trainer of the guild has this will-they-or-won't-they thing going with the old star of the arena who kinda skipped out on her to wander the world and right wrongs a bit and... the thing with these two is that both of them could really do better and they really don't have any chemistry at all. The whole thing gets old fast, too. In the middle of all this though, you sort of accidentally half-join the paladins who are largely the royal guard of the city, getting jumped in by a big boisterous guy who's kind of on the outs with everyone, and once you patch that up he immediately fakes his own death to lead some new paladin recruit (and you, his babysitter) on a big wild goose chase with no real payoff. Everyone seems to hate this whole thing.

Pugilist transitions to Monk, and eventually ends up where you'd expect, but the path is a weird one. We've got the local fight club, nominally run by this old guy who's kinda lost his mojo. You train with him but it's really more about you waking up his old fighting spirit than you learning much, and you also rough up some local gangs so that's fun. Then on formally becoming a monk you... help a scientst travel around the world taking readings because he's pretty sure all that stuff about "ki" and "fighting spirit" and such is total BS and people are maybe just getting high off fumes or something. Basically he's wrong in the end, and you end up with a rival-turned friend, and an evil rival dojo, and there's this whole light fist/dark fist conflict where facing each other powers both up, where eventually you defeat the dark leader and talk his students into the totally sensible arrangement of practicing both together because it's just kinda win-win.

Moving on to Limsa Lominsa, we have the star of the show, Marauder, which transitions to Warrior. In intro movies and such, this is the default class of the protagonist. They don't call you the Monk of Light. It's also the class of your dorky evil twin eventually. It's also pretty simple. Go to pirate town, have someone hand you an axe, learn to hit things really hard with it. Early on that's largely rocks, and large rampaging animals, with the nerdy sister of the lead axe-swinger helping you out because the famous self-healing of the class isn't until later. Then you meet a guy named Furious Gorge. Which, yeah. Roegadyn names are either Welsh if they're blue-ish or terrible rock puns if they're red-ish. It's a thing. Anyway Furious Gorge teaches you how to unleash/tame your inner berserker beast mode, and then it turns out he's actually really terrible at managing that himself. So you spend some time trying to help him get a handle on it with his nerdy brother, and then come Stormblood you're all training this tiny litle au ra girl with clear romantic tensions all around. Eventually Furious Gorge gets the courage to go up to her and go "hey, I know you've secretly been into me, and it's mutual" at which point she basically responds "what the hell? You suck dude, I'm hot for the protagonist." Which, yeah, you get that a lot, really. So that's... funny, ish? Mainly the name Furious Gorge.

The final starting class, Arcanist, is a weird mutant that transitions into both Summoner and Scholar, which then end up sharing an experience level as a result. It also has a further identity crisis in that it USED to be a pet-focused class where you had minions to order around while you focused on other things, as of Endwalker it's just a caster. I mention this because the early Arcanist classes still really play up your role as a battlefield tactician, discussing with your mentor how to split up and deal with large numbers of enemies and come up with plans like disguising her as a hapless floozy to track kidnappers to their base, and it no longer really makes sense. After level 30 this is less of an issue though as things branch away. The summoner quests are all about learning how to bring forth smaller, more controllable versions of the gods who were relevant in ARR from the start (Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Bahamut, Phoenix), and dealing with an evil summoner bringing them about in a less safe fashion. Scholar quests are a bit more interesting, as you replace your normal pets with a fairy and start learning about the third faction in that three way mage war, who were afflicted with a weird disease turning them into those good ol' knife-and-lantern spooky pals the tonberries. They're not actually murder monsters, just suffering from a horrible mutating skin condition. Whoops. This one too ends in a love story between a normal lalafel and a fishy hooded one.

In the post-ARR patch cycle (when the Doman refugees show up), we did get a third Limsa-based class, but they aren't available when first creating a new character. Rogue, which transitions to Ninja, has this whole secret society thing going, where you can start leveling it it as soon as you unlock multi-classing at level 10 or so, but you need to be tipped off about where they meet. You'd figure the secrecy is because they're a bunch of criminals, but the actual deal with the rogues is that they're basically Limsa Lominsa's secret police. They're still all about the backstabbing and hiding and getting a mug skill, and they're still a bunch of charming low-lives who speak thieves' cant, but the idea is that when you have a whole city-state of pirates you need to draw a hard line between jaunty adventurous crimes like plundering Imperial shipments, and hardcore crimes like kidnapping people to sell as sex slaves, or large-scale terrorism. Rogue quests are actually really fun and varied, sneaking around spying on people, identifying targets based on how they're dressed, running all over town hacking up terrorists and disarming bombs. Good good times.

At level 30 there's a real shift in things as you instead hang out with some ninja, looking for their sacred scrolls and dealing with their honestly pretty goofy rival, but there's still some variety getting someone drunk in a hot spring and spying on people from rooftops. And much like with Paladin, come Stormblood they realized which crew is more fun and you're suddenly back in it with the rogues. This is a genuine high point of the whole game that really stood out to me at the time, and like several others, oh, turns out that the woman who took over as head writer for Shadowbringers handled these.

Moving on to Heavensward, the impressive number of alternate meanings that title has includes the stuck-up blueblooded order of holy knights making up Ishgard's military. As they are just the worst, some nerds form the Machinist job and work on constructing guns and training the common people in how to use them. There's an active rivalry there, and the gun nerds are generally pretty likeable, so there's some nice investment. While not as bad off as Arcanist had it, there was a bit more tactical consideration when the quests were first written making things awkward, and after proving that guns are great, there's a bit with proving this one gun prodigy gal is better sticking with this than marrying some noble or whatever. I feel like I'm forgetting a whole arc here too.

We also have a girl with real cool looks coming down from Sharlayan (AKA Nerd Town) to teach these primitive screwheads how to be Astrologians. It's like a white mage, but with more tarot and constellations. Very scientific. Everyone in Ishgard freaking sucks so they all think it's witchcraft until you use it to personally save their lives, and the whole field trip turns out to be unsanctioned, with the lead trainer's father sending hit squads after her. Eventually she gets a haircut and switches to manlier clothes to avoid him. This may be a low-key early transition thing. Oh and then we combine this with similar far eastern traditions.

Then there's Dark Knight, the job with hands down the best writing in the game. You meet someone named Fray in cool all-concealing armor, crumpled in a back alley in the slums, with a stupidly big sword they aren't in any condition to use, so they offer to teach you to be a Big Sword Edgelord too. There's a lot of cryptic talk about tapping into your inner darkness and hearing some powerful voice, and also just a lot of hanging out with your cool new friend who hates the religious classist scumbags running Ishgard as much as I do, so you end up killing a lot of them to defend the common people as Fray becomes more and more depressed, and more inclined to kinda half-break the fourth wall, asking if you're getting as burnt out as they are over how many boring pointless quests you keep having to do for every NPC who apparently can't even bring a bag of groceries home from the store without needing you to come along and help. And yeah, we are still in the portion of things where the filler quests are unforgivably common instead of just way too common. Then somewhere in the middle of dealing with other people's problems, one of your respectable Ishgardian friends comes up to talk to you about how apparently you're being accused of heresy because aside from killing the local jerk knights a lot, someone says they've been seeing you having one-sided conversations with a corpse in an alley lately.

Neither Fray nor you particularly take the revelation that uh... Fray was absolutely a random corpse in an alley when you first met, and you just kinda lifted a cool sword and a job crystal out of their cold dead hands, and have kinda just been psychically projecting your own depression and irritation with boring filler quests into an imaginary friend, so after killing a bunch of these jerks trying to arrest you, the two of you have a bit of a fight, Fray's mask comes off, you get a cool glowing eyed wraith sort of look before we go proper evil twin mode.

Then while you're sitting there dealing with the fact that you kinda hallucinated your best friend in the world here, some au ra guy named Sidurgu walks up and just kinda goes "hey! Someone told me you knew my friend Fray?" So... yeah? You start hanging out with him, sharing stories about a probably more alive Fray and learning about how he has this whole thing going where he rescued this little girl from her horrible religious zealot mother and he's her big defender now. They have a weird relationship where she correctly calls him out as not really having her best interests in mind and just being caught up in playing the role of hero. You wander around with them, do some soul searching, and eventually confront her mother, fight her, and try to patch things up. She continues to unrepentantly shout about her daughter being a horrible demon who needs to be killed, kid basically says "well if you like your god so much, I guess you can go join her," and Sid, finally getting over himself enough and really learning to help her with what she really needs, cuts this horrible woman's head off, and you all go out for drinks. It's a great moment.

Then for the Stormblood quests (and yes I am giving the Dark Knight plot three or four times the space as the rest of these, it deserves it) some weird androgynous kid walks up (looking kinda like the halfway point between your two NPC pals who die at the end of Heavensward funnily enough), asks if they can borrow your job crystal as a battery for their cool ability to manifest people's dead loved ones and give them closure, and breaks it. So you have to follow them around while they do all the closure stuff on their agenda before fixing it for you, and consistently, turns out coming face to face with weird simulacra of their dead loved ones mostly just really distresses people and they aren't into it. Eventually when it starts to sink in that this kid is just you psychically manifesting your own hangups again, Fray just suddenly shows up, says some cool pal stuff, apologizes for the whole bit before with going full embodiment of your darker nature and trying to kill/replace you, and teams up to trash this little punk, after which you can summon them in combat, so that's cool. Again, hands down best writing in the whole game, and again, this is the writer who took over as lead for Shadowbringers, where things generally get more enjoyable.

But yeah, there's other expansions' jobs to cover too. These have less to them though, since Stormblood's don't start at a low enough level to squeeze in three arcs of story and just give you the one, and past that they basically phased out job quests in favor of role quests, so the classes from those also just get a quick intro really. In other words, lightning round!

The Red Mage quests are about helping some cool cat help a girl with amnesia realize her past doesn't really matter and she should try being a red mage too. Blue Mage is a mutant job you learn from a conman with a heart of gold, suckering people into signing up as blue mages and faking magic shows/duels to raise money to send to his lizard pals in fantasy America. Samurai's quests are your standard cool old guy with a sword has big regrets, trains you hoping you'll kill him to atone for stuff he's ashamed of. Gunbreaker is kind of also that but with a lot of wandering mercenary stuff first, and the amazing revelation that in this setting guns are called guns because the concept of bullets is derived from the magic cartridges used to give extra oompf to the swings of gunblades, and gunblades get their name from being the blades of Queen Gunnhildr. We'll circle back to her. Dancer like Rogue is a job where cool charismatic people have a secret mission, in this case killing these weird horrible emotion-based monsters after luring them out with sexy dance performances. It's kind of a preview of Endwalker's whole deal. Sage is about being a science nerd who heals people even when they suck. Reaper is about joining a found family of mostly Garlean ex-pats who make soul contracts with demons to get cool edgelord powers to fight demons, and keeping scythe-mom from going all self-sacrifice. Seems like a terrible idea when you can just kill them normally, but then post-Endwalker we learn most demons are actually pretty chill nerds who just want out of hell, so it's cool.

I think I already covered the role quests elsewhere, but real quick: In Shadowbringers, we help a set of mercenaries deal with the monster-angel forms of Ardbert's old crew while learning along the way how most of them were originally pretty cool people, and help some crafty types with humanitarian work and also with finding where invisible dinosaurs hang out. Then in Stormblood, we revisit every major city to help their leaders get fleshed out and deal with the one person each had suicidal enough to turn into a big monster, and then go help a bunch of college nerds awkwardly date each other and work out the secret of healthy bread that doesn't taste disgusting.

Next on the agenda- Deep Dungeons! At some point in the process of wedging extra stuff into this game, someone realized that tacking one of them randomly generated 100 floor dungeons where you can only use what you get inside is a welcome addition to basically anything, and FF14 has three of them. The Palace of the Dead is a horrible hole in the ground tied in with some of the spookier quests in Gridania where you finally confront a nasty ghost girl you had unresolved business with and some stuffy old necromancer. Heaven-on-High is a mysterious Jenga tower off the coast of Doma which turns out is actually a high tech training ground built forever ago. Eureka Orthos is a sub-basement under the crystal tower with conceptual ties to Eureka, which we're getting to, because... somehow the writers still had more to say about ancient Allagan superweapons, somehow. You know there's a bunch of apocalypses in this timeline you never really dug into right? It doesn't all have to be this ONE ancient evil empire. Anyway these are actually all pretty story light, I'm just covering my bases.

Finally, let's talk a bit about relics. Every post-whatever patch cycle has some set of weapons that have this whole multi-stage evolution to them whose acquisition is this WHOLE THING. ARR's just involve entirely too many sort of tedious steps replaying the whole game up to that point multiple times over with a vague reference to creating the weapons of the Zodiac Braves, you know from FFT. Heavensward has some weird nerd all about bringing into being this weird fairy-like new form of life by letting it hang out in your sword/stick/gloves/whathaveyou while you absorb elemental essence for a good long while, and has an unrelated side project where crafters can raid sky islands for supplies and help rebuild the lower levels of Ishgard as kind of a theme park. After that though, they made these pretty beefy chunks of game.

The Forbidden Land of Eureka is... that island Krile and her grandfather were hanging out on before it was suddenly wiped off the map while on the phone with Minfilia near the end of ARR. It just somehow... passed through the center of the earth and popped out by Kugane. It's kind of a wreck and is particularly all elementally imbalanced and supercharged, and it is basically a whole second MMO with older sensibilities stashed away inside the one you were already playing, as you explore a bunch of really well-rendered biomes, grind tons of monsters which had a surprising number of new art assets, actually deal with elemental paper-rock scissors mechanics, and get a bit of a retelling of FF5's backstory with Galuf's weird old friends as flashbacks between fixing up teleporter networks and dealing with Krile's evil little smug nerd rival... who ultimately turns out to have just been fake evil. The whole thing caps off with this homage to FF11's most infamously nasty content with a high stakes dungeon that gates some progress behind people out in the overworld killing bosses in sync with those inside. Very grindy but I actually like the vibe a lot.

Then post-Shadowbringers when we're re-building the hype of the Imperial threat and getting into how its various holdings are rebelling, we have the Bozjan Southern Front, where a bunch of Big Women and Cat Men are fighting the empire in full force with honestly a bit of a World War I vibe to it with the trenches and big tanks and such. There's some pretty cool grand assaults on major fortresses, and a bit of backstabbing intrigue with a spy who eventually uses the local resource of crystalized traumatic memories to brainwash a recreated-from-the-past version of the country's old leader Queen Gunhildr and then kinda merge with her in this like-summoning-Shiva-but-technically-this-isn't-a-god-it's-its-own-thing-but-yeah-people-still-get-tempered deal. This one is written by the same guy as Final Fantasy Tactics who wanted to have a much more involved storyline with way more NPCs but this got truncated down to fun facts on collectable trading cards, essentially. Still pretty neat and show-y though.

And... is that it? Am I done? I think I already covered the variant dungeons and made at least passing mention of the private island farming thing (which, I confess, I have not looked at... but I'm told Sadu and her girlfriend the other au ra leader swing by on a date at some point). I might quietly add that in later, but otherwise, that's really it. That is all the plot of FF14 as of this time of writing. There is nothing else left for me to summarize... until Dawntrail comes out like... this Wednesday, time of writing.

As usual, here's my patreon. Here's my Amazon wishlist full of other games I could be playing instead of talking about this one. I am in bad financial shape and these articles are a lot of work, so, maybe help me out?

#ff14 #ffxiv #final fantasy 14 #final fantasy xiv #Fray really is just the best even if they always freak me out in tough boss fights by standing still hacking away when it's time to run awa

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eurofox · 2 years ago

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Lost judegment review

Finally played all the Yakuza’s and both Judegements, just Ishin to go. This was one of the most hyped games of them all and while it was really good, I think I still prefer the first game, not playe dthe Kaito files yet

Spoilers anyway:

The good shit:

The style switching was great. Crane actually felt useful this time, especially with the speedboost. I didn’t use Snake much as I found the timing with disarming tricky. Some of the best combat in the whole series. Far more fluid and less stiff

The story was good. It kept me invested anyway. The parts about the bullying were the most interesting,

I liked the Yakuzas references, like the Zhao cameo and talk of Daigo’s deal. It helps the world make a bit more sense without going overboard. I couldn’t work out if the first game was supposed to be the same universe, aside from onomichio but this confirms they are.

Skateboarding certainly helped with the size of Yokohoma this time around.

I’d heard complaints that the Kamurocho crew didn’t get much of a role here but they appeared more than I thought they would. Aside from Mafuyu. It was nice to see tsukomo coming out of his shell too. Bit sad to see Hoshino just get picked on nearly the whole time though.

Soundtrack is still pretty good.

The part with your phone being unavailable for healing after it gets snatched is neat.

Beating up teenagers is pretty funny.

That stupid mortal wound gimmick is gone.

As well as those fucking Keihin gangs

Dice and cube can be entertaining.

Dance class is funny as well.

Sega master system is a great addition

Fully playable sonic the fighters is really fucking cool.

I enjoyed the parkour segments. Pretty simple but a nice change of pace. Hell of a lot better than tailing which seem to be mostly gone (did they open with tailing for badness?)

Forklift Higashi

The game felt more like it’s own thing, a crime thriller with mor detective based gameplay instead of diet yakuza, which the first game felt like at times.

The Bad Shit:

I’d only recently played LAD7, I’m not the biggest fan of Yokohama. It’s so big and fairly empty.

Can’t interact with Wagi :’(

While the first half of the story was good, it started losing focus though with all the stuff about Public security and feels kind of rushed once they find Soma is a double agent. None of the villains feel as intimidating as Kuroiwa. The part about RK rounding up goons in one area for easier monitering made sense, but as soon as the stuff about pensions was brought in I felt it really started losing the run of itself.

That fucking bossfight insta death QTE with Watanabe got me about 10 times, that drove me nuts. Same with the one during Kuwana’s, but at least he didn’t kill you.

I can’t remember if this was the case in the first game, but Yagami seems to take a lot of damage without reacting to it. So I check my health bar and see it’s suddenly way down when I didn’t notice being hit. Never had this issue before

Yagami going on about Sawa sensei is annoying but I do get why. What I don’t get is why the fact his parents were murdered by vigilantes is never mentioned as part of his reasoning for opposing Kuwana.

Kaito is out of action for a fair chunk. of the game

Some ability upgrades feel pointless, like smoking.

Having Saori go undercover again felt like a retread. Plus she doesn’t even bother changing her name, very sloppy for a dangerous task with someone whose supposed to be sharp. The bit with Hoshino and Genda was funny though to be fair.

I couldn’t get into most of the school stuff, might go back to it later.

Ehara suddenly losing his resolve when yagami was going to delete the video, turning the tides in yagami’s favour, felt like a reach...

Between the two Judgements, I’m going with 1 for the story, the ADDC storyline felt more focused, with better villains and atmosphere and I’ll go with Lost for the gameplay, fun and fast with annoying elements removed. While I didn’t find Kuwana as intimidating, he was a very interesting villain.

#When I come back hopefully 8 and gaiden will be released #judgement #lost judgement #yakuza #rgg #judge eyes #foxgames

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despair-to-future-arcs · 1 month ago

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Aaaand we're back at full speed with another great episode wrapped up! With the last one being a mixed bag of great things tied up with not-so-great elements along the way, it made me like this episode a lot more than I feel I would have if the last one didn't have those issues I brought up in previous reviews since a good chunk of the major ones feel like they've been dealt with here to form another really solid entry to the storyline. While the character dialogue is still a little rough, which is understandable, it's a big thing to work so I didn't expect it to change completely overnight, the pacing issues from the last episode have been completely taken care of. No scene felt as if it went on way too fast or dragged for more than it should and it worked wonderfully to create an episode where each scene flows really well into the next one and we really feel the plot moving forward with each new segment. A great quality of life upgrade from the previous instalment!

And while I'm talking about things that aren't necessarily super tied together to the episode itself, I figured I should give my two cents on the Lore bits we got during the long wait between episodes. First and foremost; I found them a pretty nice way to spend time during the sprite making process and it kept the blog from becoming completely inactive, and they actually proved to be nicer than I expected them to be since I was under the impression that there would essentially be just recaps of things we saw through the episodes thus far, but instead they were their own lore building pieces which provided a lot of small information we didn't even know about and or that I found them very enjoyable to go through. The one about the afterlife theater specifically eased a few of my worries about its role in the story, even though I'll remain wary of it for the time being, just to be safe.

Now, onto things that happen within the episode; I was surprised at how much we saw of Jabberwock island and the DR2 cast on this one. Since the last episode ended with Nagi going on a break I was under the impression that we wouldn't see them all that much and spend the bulk of it going to other areas of the story, and while we did see a lot of the other parties, we still received a lot of Jabberwock island content, with a good chunk of it being the aftermath of the last episodes events showing how the many different characters have turned to deal with the situations presented moving forward. Truly, we had a bit of everything; The Remnants of despair finally realizing how much of an asshole they were and apologizing to Nagi for how they treated her, Koyuki deciding she wants to distance herself from her class once she can be set free, Nagi coming forth and telling others that she has devine luck and warning them about Void’s plans, Makoto finally giving up on his idea of reopening HPA, Miaya realizing she failed as a psychologist by trying to use the program to save Satoko's bitchass and formerly apologizing to Nagi and the Remnants for it, which in turn led to the NWP being finished sooner than the previous due date and while I can think of a certain group that definitely didn't take that well, I'll talk about them in a later segment.

A highlight of the DR2 side of things to me was the remnants of despair all leaving jabberwock to assist in some smaller missions around the place, all of which featured the remnants realizing how the harm they caused during the tragedy affected areas they didn't even imagined, which in turn pushed them to come forth and really strive to undo the wrong they've done. Peko’s one specifically not only revealed to her how her mother just wanted to protect her and didn't abandon her for no reason, and now she wants to try and save her from the HSS if she's still in their clutches by now, which is something I am really looking forward to seeing whenever the FF tackles the group and their personal little drug dealer. Overall these scenes served to show a great deal of character development for many different people, but this episode also turned out to be a lot more Nagi centric than i expected it to be, delving into her relationship with Hajime, lack of confidence in her own skills and even her first real direct clash with the voids. Enjoyable stuff overall but I don't have much to say about that corner of the episode when other segments and characters caught more of my attention than the one we see in literally every episode.

In fact, out of everyone from the Future foundation side of things, the cherry on top of the cake, in my opinion, has to have been Hiyoko during this episode. Her role may not have been the biggest but it was incredible enjoyable to see her finally turning over a new leaf and try to change through the episode, her talk with Kotoko being the one that ultimately brings her to consider change as well gotta be my absolutely favorite scene of the episode because even though Hiyoko is not in the place where she can say she's fully changed yet, she is putting in so much effort that she is tete to offer guidance to someone who's in a position she was just in the last episode! And the fact that Ibuki could actually talk to Kotoko fine but let Hiyoko take the lead was just perfect, can't wait to see where you take Hiyoko's character through the course of the story. Another DR2 character that's been turning over a new leaf this episode was Nagito, who's really starting to see not only how bad HPA was but also how much harm his old mentality caused to him and others, his heart to heart with Hajime as they were heading to the amusement park was the highlight of the entire segment to me as it felt like he was finally leaving his old ways and stepping into the light in a sense.

Leaving the DR2 side of things, in a way, this felt like quite the Another series centric episode as well since not only followed up with the Kisaragi foundation’s mission to locate Akane's body, but we also saw changes within Void and the very beginning of their ultimate downfall with them all getting doxxed by the end of the episode and fleeing to god knows where. These were actually my favorite segments of the whole episode, as we got to learn about a couple new characters and the SDRA2 storyline really started to pick some steam. Starting with our not-so-good good guys, the main source of Kisaragi foundation content this episode was Setsuka and Naoto’s mision but more specifically; Naoto and Mai’s proper debut into the story. Yes, I'm aware Naoto has been around for a handful of episodes now, but when his entire character could be resumed to “Yes, Kinjo, sir.” I might as well count this as the introduction to his characters than whatever episode he actually appeared in for the first time, especially given his and Mai’s connection to one another.

And MAN isn't Naoto just as bad as I thought he'd be from the little we saw of him in previous episodes. The guy’s only focus is work to the point where Setsuka had to remind him to eat or take bathroom breaks, furthermore, it really seems like he actively shuts himself off from bonding with the other foundation workers or even Setuka who's working with him temporarily. This behavior is highlighted when Mai comes into the picture and while she speaks of him as an actual friend, Naoto talks of her like she's nothing more than a work partner. Worst of it all is that it really feels like Naoto doesn't want to get over the deaths of his family, seeing as he talks about his one night stand with Mai as of he cheated on his fiance even though she's been dead for years and outright reacts with anger and avoidance when the anons pointed out he should open up to others and seek help. This paints a picture that his “auto-pilot mode” isn't there because he's depressed and can't bring himself to do anything but follow orders, but it's instead almost like an anti-coping mechanism where Naoto piles himself with work so he doesn't have to go through the stages of grief, which in turn I suppose makes him feel as if his family isn't gone? As if him getting over their deaths means they're gone for real and that seems like the one thing Naoto doesn't want the most.

It's honestly a really depressing situation to see play out, especially with Setsuka being there and trying to nudge him in the right direction only for Naoto to dismiss her efforts. But you know who else latches onto work to avoid working through their issues? That's right, despite the fact that their personalities couldn't be any more different, Mai seems to share this behavior of Naoto's when it comes to working at the foundation to the point that she's happy, and downright impatient, to get back to work there despite everyone else talking about how terrible the workplace conditions are. This is probably what led those two to grow closer, alongside the fact that both are the last members of their family and in high position within their divisions. And since I'm talking about her, I might use this as a space to say I was wrong about what kind of character she would be. When we first heard of her through the Lore bits i thought she would have been an antithesis to Bashira; whereas Bashira defends Ayame to no end and refuses to believe she could be a killer out of her own volition, Mai would follow Tsurugi's beliefs heavily and condemn her niece as a vile murdered, justifying her position as 3rd in command despite her ties to one of DRA’s killers.

Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong about her, which actually paints a very interesting picture regarding the higher-up on Tsurugi's side of the foundation, as neither Naoto nor Mai actually follow Tsurugi's black and white beliefs and only follow his orders without question out of running away from their own personal problems. Which means that those two can probably be reasoned with when it comes to tackling Kinjo's poor management of the foundation, unlike a certain blue haired clown which, so far, seems to be his most loyal follower. Kinda like how Nagi was able to get Rei to change her mind about devine luck users, that served almost like a parallel to what Tsurugi was doing in the episode, whereas he sunk deeper in his beliefs and now wants to arrest all ultimates*, Rei actually took a step back and reevaluated her views on divine luck users, which was interesting to see play out especially when she directly clashed with Tsurugi when he wanted to put down Akane once they located her body. Though I fear he will use Syobai stealing it soon after as “proof” that they should have followed his ways and blame Rei for what happened.

Back to the characters in the spotlight, more specifically on their relationship. So far it's early to say if they're meant to be a future pairing or not, but the fact that Naoto described Sarina as calm and patient only for Mai to show up and be the exact opposite of that feels like too much of a coincidence to not have been intentional. Opposites attract is a trope as old as time, but even if nothing blossoms between those two I'd still like to see how their dynamic plays out when there isn't any post drunken fling awkwardness roaming around, especially since I couldn't quite understand what tone this issue was meant to have when it was brought up, if it was meant to be something comedic like Hotaru walking in on Hajime and Nagi doing the deed or actually taken seriously given how uncomfortable Naoto appeared. Another nippick of mine comes in regard to Mai specifically since she feels like a bit of a meathead from what we've seen thus far, but this is just her introduction so I'm sure we'll see her being proficient at her work eventually. I'd love to see her planning or leading a mission in some future episode, and I'm sure she will come around even in non Kisaragi foundation manners seeing as she used to be Sae’s bodyguard that saved her from some kind of attack in the past. Considering the track record of a certain teacher around her, it wouldn't surprise me if she had something to do with these matters.

Continuing on the topic of Another series related characters who were introduced in this episode, how could I not mention Sachiko? After learning of her sad existence and Utsuro's mess of a family I think it's safe to say that we were all curious to see how she's doing and what role she would play in the overall narrative. While her scene reads to me as a way to tell us she won't actually get involved in the whole SDRA2 storyline shenanigans, seeing as she's being taken care of by a Future foundation agent far away from where everything is happening, it was still nice to check on how she's doing and see she as been recovering from her horrific childhood in the hands of their parents. It's bittersweet in a way as it gives me the feeling that this could have been Utsuro's life as well if Yasuyuki had broken into his daughter's house just a little sooner and rescued him. But for what it is, it was nice seeing Sachiko doing well and her relationship with Hiroko was really cute and wholesome.

Onto our bad apples of the Another series, gotta say, I enjoyed the villain’s part in this episode exponentially more than in the last one since not only did they move the SDRA2 storyline along quite a bit but we also got to see Void in action in ways that weren't just constant failing for the sake of comedy like the last episode. Not to say those were bad, it's just not the kind of thing that really interests me, so I liked seeing them act and succeed or fail to varying degrees here. Syobai managed to steal Akane's body, Emma and Hajime stole the info on the NGOH ages but not without exposing themselves as targeting them, Kokoro stole the buggy version of the NWP and Nikei and Iroha failed miserably in trying to get Hajime to side with them, aside from being the one that jump started their eventual exposee in the first place. The scene at the end with Nagi scaring the shit out of them by the end was absolutely amazing, and this whole in the run status of their makes me believe we'll start to see the rest of the SDRA2 disappear seeing as Void is essentially on a time crunch to start their killing game before the Kisaragi foundation comes for their necks.

Which brings me to theorize the one thing that's always on the anons minds ever since these characters began to gain relevance in the story; Will the SDRA2 be brought back to life from the simulation or will they remain dead? We know from canon that the deceased cast remains dead after the game was over since not only was the program incredibly glitchy and held together by sweat and duct tape, but also because Mikado's plan was never to help the voids anyway so keeping them dead is actually advantageous to his goals. However, given the nature of this blog a lot of people have been wondering if this time around the characters will actually return to life. I originally thought this wouldn't actually be the case and actually felt my idea had been validated by the inclusion of the afterlife theater since, with the cast dying, that would be the place where they finish their character arcs or get their comeuppance, after all I sincerely doubt that with a place like that on the table we won't see a single character go through permanent death around the course of the story. But overtime there were a lot of lil bits of information that began cracking parts of my beliefs away, first there's small comments from the mod every once in a while when someone brought this up, then there's the connection between Kokoro and a certain character that does exist in the blog as well, which I won't namedrop or get into detail here to avoid spoilers as I'm sure a percentage of readers here don't read RA’s Voidship sketches as well. But for those who do keep up with her work, you guys probably have a very good idea of who the orange line connected Kokoro to in that family tree Mod Carol sent a while back.

But the main instance that drives me to think their fates will go differently here was the finisher to the blog's Christmas special. Yes, I’m aware the mistletoe asks aren't canon, I do feel like the characterization on them matters, especially since the mod herself had a conversation with Hibiki where she leads me to believe things won't be so bleak for the cast around here. So what do you think, Critic anon? Well, my personal theory is that while the non-void members of the SDRA2 cast will be brought back without issue, the voids will remain permadead an get their comeuppance from Utsuro himself once they arrive in the afterlife teather. Since their luck is basically running out, I could see their deaths in the sim being permanent as a consequence of the luck reversal, plus what better way to trash them than those words coming from their god himself? Especially with the threat of getting the Kizuna treatment or being erased from existence in the table.

Now that we're got positives and theories out of the way, it's time for the downsides of this episode, which will be quite short since I already expressed my biggest complains about this episode in a previous ask, so what I'll talk about here are very minor issues or straight up nippicks that I felt was worth mentioning. The thing is that while Hiyoko and Kotoro’s talk was my absolute favorite part of the whole chapter, I actually didn't enjoy most of the Towa city task force segment here, which surprised me in a way because I expected to dislike them because of a ghost channeling of Kotoko's parents, which ended up not even happening in this episode, since it plays into a trope I dislike, but my actual distate for these segments of the episode came from minor things that sorta piled up in my head an I found myself not very interested to keep reading whenever we cut back to the crew. The main thing to me was Kanon yelling at Kotoko over what she did to her. Now, she had absolutely every right to dislike her and make that clear, in fact, this is the kind of thing Kotoko needed to hear in order to really take in the damage she caused to others, but Kanon constantly repeating that she raped her over and over through the scene felt such a tactless execution of a serious topic that it took me out of the scene and I just didn't feel good reading through the rest of it. Another thing that bothered me was the whole Shoji debacle, I'm sorry but you're telling me that with everything awful that happened to the WOH that Junko and Monaka could exploit to get them to turn to their side the thing that actually drove them to that point was a photo of a random guy being a pedo? It's just so random and disconnected from things regarding these characters that it really felt like a needless inclusion of Ocs in an issue to me. And speaking of Shoji, his sister and was-going-to-be adopted dad were the first instance where I agree with RA that there's way too many Ocs in this blog because when those two stepped into the picture I had zero recollection of why they were there or what the relationship between Naoki and Yuzuha even was for her to be looking for him so badly. Onto the more nippick-y side of things, I think the reveal of Toko’s relative would have benefited from happening late in the episode, because Toko questioning if she should go to jail and then almost immediately after meeting with a long lost relative that told her to do just that felt way too convenient to feel natural and don't really get where this huge worry over telling Komaru that Toko will go to jail eventually comes from? They're betsfriends, sure, but sh never striked me as THAT dependent on Toko to the point she'll have a mental breakdowns or something hearing the news like the characters seemed to be worried she would.

But overall, great episode! I do think I had more fun with this than the last and I really can't wait to see where the story goes from here.

*For the record, I'm still not happy with how Tsurugi acted in that scene with Mayumi, but I will take a step back and admit that I am somewhat biased when it comes to him, as Tsurugi is one of my favorite DRA characters and I feel like it's very easy to get him wrong and overdo with his terrible behaviours if you don't look into his character well enough.

-Critic anon

//Ah look at that, another review and yeah - I think I'll say that this episode was weirdly one of those I wasn't sure how it would go but in the end I quite enjoy since originally I was going to have both Future and Despair Episodes be of Nagi's vacation but I felt that was too short so I wanted to add more.

//Also yeah I think I was excited to get to writing about Naoto and Mai as character and to show that the 2 aren't just 'yes men' to Tsurugi but just have some issues going with them to sort out, Naoto's biggest issue is with grief and Mai just wanting to work and not taking a moment to herself to calm down - again it's something that is going to be address - also to address the one-night stand with Naoto and Mai, I play that up as a more comedic scene then anything serious and it was meant to show Naoto is like Haruhiko in some aspects.

//The thing with this episode is that it was mostly about the Another series and where the story was going and I do think that I'm planning for this to be the last time we see Void in a while since I do want to focus on Future Foundation and Monaca along with Satoko since again, those 2 are bad guys of course so I'm gonna and I think by now we already got enough of a good idea how flawed the other organizations are that Future Foundation's don't seem as bad but trust me, will start to see issues coming up next episode.

//Also yeah... I'm starting to realize the 'too many OCs' might be an issue and I think there's 2 more that we do have set but I think as soon as we are done, I'm not gonna add anymore until Hope Side: Re-Write since I do have some OCs show up there but that's about it. Mostly the reason I wanted to have more OCs is to make the world feel alive and open-worlded meaning that there are people effected by the tragedy but I do agree that I think we already got a big cast and I want to stop there.

//As for Naoki and Yuzuha, there whole thing is that they are meant to show how mentally mess up the kids with the mask were like at the orphanage along with Sunako claims being completely correct about them wanting blood and the stuff with Shoji was mostly Monaca was trying to assure the WoH that they were doing the right thing by saving Yuzuha from him but not realizing that his girlfriend is working with Junko as well aka saving Class 77-B was actually a good thing and trust me, he isn't the only one - meaning that Monaca's lies start to fall apart and starts to make them wonder if the other kids weren't abused and Monaca manipulated them to think they were 'saving them' and that was the whole point.

//As for the stuff with Tsurugi, while yes I do understand where your coming from and I do like Tsurugi as well but I did want to show that his reaction to learning that Juu had a very good reason to why he sided with Junko, especially if the Ultimate Defense Law being a thing and how even his view points are going to feel validated, especially what I got plan for the next episode...

#mod poi talks #ask mod poi #critic anon

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thegrassisaalwaysgreener · 2 months ago

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Honeymoon Part 1- Barcelona 2024

While we got married in 2022, we decided to go on our honeymoon during a time that Henrik would be with his mum for a week- naturally this ended up being March Break! It took us several months to land on a location for our honeymoon. Mike loves the heat but while I enjoy a good beach day, I get too bored. We decided on Europe and had a short list of countries that we wanted to visit in March. We ended up choosing Spain since neither of us had been there before and the weather would be (hopefully) decent. Since we would only be gone for just over a week, we wanted to stick to one city and one more chill spot. We chose Barcelona and Seville. A good friend of ours is from Seville (pronounced Seh-vee-ahh we were told) so we were able to get lots of tips and ideas from him. My parents have been to Barca and loved it so we had lots of plans for out time there.

March 8, 2024

Since we both work Monday-Friday, we decided to take the Friday night redeye. We booked with British Airways which was a first for both of us. Park4U is one of my old faithful companies to use to get to the airport and for car parking. We did have to wait 10 mins for them to take us to the airport but it wasn’t too bad. Mike breezed through security while I took a bit longer thanks to the need for my pat down (thanks T1D and all of my devices). Eventually, we took our matching luggage tags and checked into the Plaza Premium Lounge to start our honeymoon off right. I was slightly disappointed with the Lounge this time as they had half of it blocked off for different flyers and it was quite dirty. It didn’t get in the way of my vodka soda drinking and snacking though. Unfortunately, Mike had a bunch of work to get done before we landed so he worked the majority of the time in the lounge and on the flight. Since I am only planning on going on one honeymoon, we decided to upgrade our seats and boy was it worth it! Our seats had more room, leg rests that you could adjust and comfy blankets, pillows, a nice amenity bag and noise cancelling headphones for the seats. They served champagne just after boarding along with a hot towel to freshen up. While the meal was less than desirable (I got stuck with spicy curry while mike had delicious beef), the service and comfort was excellent. I enjoyed the 7ish hour glight napping and watching a movie while mike worked away beside me.

March 9, 2024

We had a short hour and 15 minute layover in London before boarding our smaller plane to Barcelona. The flight was lovely and congratulated us on our honeymoon and gave us a card and champagne. We arrived in Barcelona mid-morning to miserable rainy weather. I did most of the planning (shocking I know) and chose a hotel that was centrally located in the gothic quarter. We hopped in a taxi to the hotel and dropped our bags off. Sadly, we couldn’t check in yet but we were able to freshen up before we headed out for the afternoon. For all of my packing (will post a short post about all that I packed as a T1D), I forgot a rain jacket! Clearly I didn’t do enough research as it ended up raining 2 or 3 days of our visit. The first thing we did once we left the hotel was find an umbrella. We wandered around the gothic quarter in the windy rain checking out the Christopher Columbus statue, waterfront and of course La Rambla. We had booked a cooking class for 3 pm thinking it would be a great jet lag activity and we would be done by 8 ish and could have an early bed time. Mike and I wandered up La Rambla up to Placa Reial which is the square where our cooking class was taking place. We stopped for a quick bite before the class since we hadn’t eaten since the flights. We ate at Les Quinze Nits which I gave 6.5 out of 10. We had our first Jambon on bread with classic tomatoes. We tried our first croquettes as well which were decent (truffle, cuttlefish and potato).

Since we had some time to kill, we continued to wander around Las Ramblas in a jetlagged, excited delirium. We made our way to Placa Reial meet our cooking instructor. We had found this event on AirBnb and we were so excited. It was a small group activity in a large bachelor apartment set up like a cooking studio. It was beautifully decorated, welcoming and had a small balcony overlooking Placa Reial. We met our chef Horea who was just lovely. There was one other couple that joined us and they were from Texas. They were there on their 20th wedding anniversary trip. They had four daughters and one of them had Type 1 Diabetes so we were able to connect on a different level which was neat.

Horea was a wealth of knowledge. He gave us a history lesson on Catalonia (a a northeastern region of Spain that include Barcelona) and discussed some traditional foods in the area (lots of tomatoes, artichokes, croquettes etc.). He had some appetizers ready for us which were fabulous including meat, cheese, sardine on cheese and the most delicious raw octopus of life (with a small amount of paprika added for flavor). We had our own station and own little aprons that were so cute. There was also plenty of water and wine which is key when cooking. He also had a fry dish, shrimp dish and famous croquettes ready for us as we were prepping our cooking.

Horea taught us a lot about the foods we were prepping, how to cut things in a certain way and tips and tricks (many of which I cannot remember since we had been up for almost 2 days). We made a beautiful seafood paella in our couplings along with a traditional potato pancake (Tortilla de Patatas) and pan con tomate (traditional tomato on bread) We also made cream Catalan for desert which is very similar to crème brulee except that a cream Catalan(a) is lighter since it is made with milk instead of heavy cream. He let us each use the blow torch which was very cool.

We sat down to eat as a group and it was so nice to enjoy the fruits of our labour. After dinner, Horea took us on a tour of the famous Boqueria. He gave us some great tips (like eat at the bars instead of the restaurants) and suggested a restaurant at the market that we ended up going to and it was one of the best meals of my life.

The market was SO cool. They had everything you can imagine and so fresh! The meat, cheese and seafood looked amazing. Horea left us around 8 pm to get back to the apartment for his second group of the night! It was an amazing experience and I highly suggest it if in the area. Not only did he teach us about cooking and Catalonia, he gave us lots of insider tips for the area. We left our new friends and headed back to our hotel (Hotel Catalonia Port) for a good nights sleep.

March 10, 2024

We had a great night sleep and were up fairly early so that we could make our reservation at Guell Park. Word to the wise… book tickets for everything! We prebooked our hop on/hop off tickets, Guell Park and the Familia Sagrada so that we wouldn’t miss our and be disappointed.

It was a Sunday and we realized quickly that it was some sort of holiday and that there was a big marathon happening in our area. This made ubers and taxis a nightmare. We had several issues trying to get transportation- we waited for an uber than never came and tried to get several taxis who did not want to take us where we had to go (which was maybe 6 km away). We ended up taking the metro which was a feat in itself because we didn’t have wifi. Thank goodness for offline google maps! The metro to the Park Guell Station was quite quick and we arrived a bit before our reservation time. The streets of Spain are a bit hard to navigate so we asked for some directions and ended up finding the large set of stairs that led up to Park Guell (beside the escalators that they are building). Even though we showed up 30 mins late, we still were able to enter.

Park Guell is a privatized park designed by designer Antoni Gaudi . It was built from 1900 -1914. It opened as a park in 1926 and was recognized by UNESCO in 1984 as a World Heritage site under the “Works of Antoni Gaudi”. It is filled with over 17 hectares of gardens and various architectural elements. There are beautiful areas filled with mosaic tiles and lots of different architecture.

The park itself is very cool. The rules are a bit weird (some places are one way only and once you go down you can’t go up the way you came and have to walk all the way around. It wasn’t super busy which was great. We wandered around and enjoyed our bakery breakfast.

We spent about 90 mins enjoying the park before we headed down the hill towards La Familia Sagrada. It took us about 40 mins or so to walk there. It was SUPER busy. We had already downloaded the app that you need to listen to the information about the church so once we went through security (and another pat down) we were in learning about this beautiful church. The app was great and allowed us to listen at our own pace to the history of the church.

The Familia Sagrada is the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world. It was designed by Gaudi as well and was also added to the UNESCO World Heritage sites in 2005. The original construction started in 1882 by a different architect (Villar). Gaudi then took over transforming the project using his gothic in and “art nouveau” interests. This was the final big project that Gaudi worked on. It was only ¼ completed by the time Gaudi died in 1926. There is even a crypt in the bottom level that holds Gaudi’s tomb. The history of the church is much more complex and I urge anyone interested in it to look into it (and visit it of course!)

The church was truly one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. Even Mike was impressed! We had bought tickets to go up the Passion Tower. While there are four towers, only two (Passion and Nativity) are available for tourists. The towers are almost 110m tall with the middle tower (Glory Façade) being even taller. The Passion Façade was built 25 years after Gaudi’s death with it’s base slightly elliptical in contrast to the perfect circles of the Nativity tower. The views at 90m (which is as high as you can go) were just amazing. The various fruit and sculptures are so full of detail, its truly amazing. When you looked out you could see the towers I the Cathedral in the Gothic Quarter, Olympic Village Towers and Montjuic Hill.

Once we had spent enough time in the church (and I took enough photos) we activated our Hop on Hop Off tickets and did the green loop over to Tibidabo street. This is a high-end street ending in a hill and the mountain where the funicular takes you up to a beautiful look, amusement park and church.

We grabbed coffee and a snack before venturing up Tibidabdo street. The street was beautiful. The homes were older but so beautifully maintained and you could tell they were very high end. The funicular up to the top of Tibidabo Mountain was 12 euros and was pretty fun.

We enjoyed about 30 mins at the top checking out the replica of the Avio (which was the first aircraft to fly from Barcelona to Madrid in 1927 powered) and the rest of the amusement park. The view of the city was just amazing. After the funicular down, we hopped back on the hop on/hop off bus that was continuing on the green (east) circuit. Of course, it started raining again and I hadn’t packed our umbrella. It was quite cool on the top of the bus with the rain hitting us but we couldn’t do much about it since it was Sunday and many of the stores were closed (to buy a rain jacket for example).

The hop on/hop off tour bus was great as it served as not only transportation but also history about the city and the stops. While our earbuds intermittently malfunctioned, it was a great option. We took the bus as close to our hotel as possible which was near the ports and the World Trade Centre. There was a neat mall called Maremagnum near where many F1 teams store cars/items. We walked around the shopping centre and picked up a Sim card so that I could use my phone in case we got into another direction pickle.

Once we headed back to our hotel, we freshened up before hopping in an uber to Alba Granados. It was not very busy and we had a beautiful dinner of escargot, steak, cake and a special shot compliments of our server. On our way home, we walked down La Rambla where we walked by Casa Batllo at night, which was just amazing. It was great to get even more steps in before tucking ourselves in for a good night’s sleep

March 11, 2024

After grabbing a pastry down the street from the hotel, we waited for the Hop On/Hope Off bus at the beach front stop (Barceloneta on the green route). It was a beautiful sunny day and we were excited to enjoy the weather and lots of sites. Our first stop was the Torre Glories. The Torre Glories was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel who was inspired by the Montserrat Mountains and the great waterfalls and blue colour of the sea. At a height of 125 meters, you get a beautiful panoramic view of the city. We booked our tickets online for 15 euros and were the only ones in the main part of the museum at one point. It was super neat as it talked about the city, agriculture (get more info etc.) After watching a video about Barcelona, we made our way up to the top of the building. There was one other gentleman there. It was pretty neat seeing the city from another vantage point. Sadly, there was outdoor observation deck but we enjoyed our time. Right near the Torre Glories is the Mercant des Encants. I thought it was more of a food market but it turned out to be a large flea market. There was a cute restaurant in the market that was very Spanish. We each had a different tortilla de patatas (with mushrooms) and coffee while enjoying the feeling of being faux locals. The market was interesting to say the least but definitely a fun way to spend the morning.

We hopped back on the hop on hop off bus and made our way to Playca Catalunya where both routes intercepted. The orange (West) route went up and around the mountain which is pretty neat. We saw the Olympic park and where the FC Barca plays currently while Camp Nou is being renovated. We got off at Poble Espanyol (thanks IG for the suggestion). It was a neat, artsy vibe with a few restaurants, art stores, clothing stores etc. Unfortunately, it was afternoon siesta time so many of the restaurants were closed. After Poble Espanyol, we took the hop on/hop off bus back down the hill and got off where the fountains of Montjuic usually go off. Unfortunately, the city was in water conservation mode so the fountains wouldn’t be going off sadly.

Right near Placa de Espana, there was an awesome shopping center called Las Arenas which used to be an old bullring that they turned into a modern shopping centre. We checked out some of the stores and enjoyed croquettes, sangria and tacos on the top floor of the building. It was super windy but a really neat vibe. The restaurant we went to was called 11 Nudos and I highly recommend it.

The hop on/hop off bus took us along the orange route where we learned more about Camp Nou and how it was built in 1957. Barca (the team and the vibe) is more than just a soccer club, it is almost a way of life. Camp Nou seats 100,000 people and is the 3rd biggest stadium in the world and the second biggest one in Europe. We had planned to go to a game but when we looked at tickets, they were grossly expensive as they were playing at the Olympic stadium which is much smaller (thus jacking up the prices of tickets). I like soccer, (or football depending on where you are from) but not enough to spend 300 euro on tickets. We ended up getting off the orange route near Casa Milla where our evening activity was taking place. Since we had some time to kill (and it was cold) we had jamon, queso, bread and tomatoes along with sangria at Dora. We decided that Mike really needed a warmer jacket so we went shopping which was fun. He ended up getting a brilliant wool coat that while pricey, is something he can wear often in the winter.

Our tickets for Casa Milla were for the late night show which included the tour, show and champagne. With these tickets, you couldn’t see the whole apartment but that was ok with us. Casa Milla or La Padrera is the last civic project of Gaudi. Padrera means stone quarry and the people in the area called it that because they didn’t like it (or so the tour guide said). The buildings had multiple levels of apartments before and currently. There are even people who still live in them. This building had an underground garage and elevators which was not common at the time. Since Gaudi’s designs were based in nature due to his believe that nature is the beginning of everything, much of La Padrera was wavy and very natural with the style and materials. We took the stairs all the way to the attic and learned more about the columns, arches and structure of the building.

After learning about the history, we went outside and watched the impressive light show. It was so neat to be in the middle of the gothic area at night (up above other buildings) watching the lights and effects on this cool building. The building itself is somewhat of a square and the middle of the building is hollow which is pretty neat. That is where the tour starts and ends (with a glass of champy!). We (well I,) took lots of photos before we made our 3 ish k walk back to our hotel.

March 12, 2024

We had booked a half day trip out to Monserrat and a winery that I was VERY excited about. I had seen photos of Monserrat on Instagram and it looked just amazing. Since it’s only a 45 minute from Barcelona, we thought it would be a great half day trip. We met at the central station for the trip and boarded a coach bus. Our tour guide was wonderful! She and the other guide took turns giving lots of facts and information about the creation of Spain and the various wars/battles that have occurred. Monserrat is part of the Pyrenees mountain rage and is named Monserrat due to its serrated look. Forever ago, it was under the sea and then 20 million years ago, the tectonic plates hit and the sedimentary rocks took its unusual shape. Montserrat is considered the heart of Calaunya and true Catalonians are supposed to walk from your hometown to Monserrat as a pilgrimage. Many people also visit Monserrat to see the Black Madonna which they have tried to move multiple times but it was too heavy so they build the temple/basilica around it. The Basilic was built in 1025 making it almost 1000 years old. Beside the basilica is a special boarding school with a boy’s choir from the 12th Century. There are approx. 50 kinds and 30 teachers and the kids are 6- approx. 14. They recently allowed girls to go to the school but they cannot sing in the choir yet. It is a very hard school to get into.

The Basilica at Montserrat is known for its Gothic architectural significance, its masses/choral concerts but mostly for its status of the Black Madonna. Our guide explained that there are two different dates on the front façade of the church and that is because of fires that ruined the original. At the top of the facade are all of the disciples looking down.

Once we went inside the church, we were allowed to be free to enjoy the area for an hour or so. We took lots of photos and then did the walk to San Michel’s Cross. The Cross overlooks the whole area and the view is just beautiful It took us almost 45 mins round trip but we still had time to check out the little vendors on the side of the road and try a traditional food called Mato (or mel I mato) which was fresh ricotta with honey on top. On our way down the mountain, our guides mentioned that all roads lead to Monserrat and that there are 300 hiking roots in the area.

Our lunch and winery tour was at Oller del Mas. The original winery building was from the 920 and there had been 36 generations of family members caring for this winery. It is one of the smallest regions in Catalunya to make wine out of the 12 in the area. The sommelier explained that it is a very dry region due to the mountains and monastery.

We enjoyed some delicious snacks (tomato bread, meat and cheeses and a desert) while enjoying various types of their wine. Then we were able to walk around the winery for a bit where mike and I tried a very expensive sip of wine (38$ for 1 ounce or something). We were chatting with a couple from the UK who were there on a weekend trip- how cool is it to just fly to another country in Europe for the weekend!

The bus ride back into the city was uneventful and we got off mid downtown near Placa Catalunya. We still had many sights to knock off our list including the Spanish Arc de triompfe and the Parc de la Ciutadella. We made our way back to the Boqueria to buy some spices (paprika especially) and enjoy a sangria and seafood at one of the bars. We had a late dinner planned so we went back to the hotel to pack and take a nap.

We took Horea as well as the American couples opinions and we made a reservation at Direkte which is a very small restaurant in the Bouqeriia. Inside, it seats 7 people. They do have additional seating outside but it is not the same vibe. The chefs work in the smallest area I have ever seen! They have a prix fixed menu and they make things that are locally sourced and fresh. The food was honestly, so delicious.

The experience of watching them prep the food in almost a dance was also amazing. We had:

-Espadilla soup which was a Catalonianian flavourful soup with pumpkin seeds

-Seafood flan with uni and radish (one of my faves)

-Scallop marinated in miso with local pickled mushrooms pumpkin and pine nuts

-House mackerel from Galicia that is preserved with wine and vinegar with oranges and creamed pine nuts

-Surf and turf ; Surf clam and pig ear terrine Escabeche of carrots

-Veggie surf and turf- Oyster leaf ; Peas from the region on the grill ; Wasabi and seaweed

-Spider grab wonton with iberico jam jowl In a sauce

-Grilled monkfish, Homemade fish sauce, Fish stock foam artichoke

-Eel in a dashi broth with mushrooms and Jerusalem artichoke

-Oyster with mushrooms? That looked like tripe? Or was maybe it was tripe- regardless, it was delish with boiled peanuts and foam

Desserts:

-Clementines and spicy sunflower seeds Mato (ricotta) sabayone Italian eggnog with limoncello

-Cracker with a caramel

-Smoked cheesecake with matcha (overpowering)

-Cacoa 3 ways using the whole thing Pulp for the cacoa gel, chocolate for the pancake filling, Then the skin for the biscuit (not my fave).

It was probably one of the top meals I have ever had. The only one I can recall that comes close was a sushi restaurant in Vegas where the chef made the sushi fresh to order in front of you so very similar to this vibe.

After our amazing dinner, we walked home and packed up for our final sleep in Barcelona.

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robo-bat · 3 months ago

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2025 Media: Final Fantasy 1 - Pixel Remaster

I'm once again keeping track of media I've consumed this year which is usually contained to just a pinned twitter thread, but this time around I wanna share my thoughts while playing and overall experience in a more extended format. So first things first, Final Fantasy 1!

The first time I played Final Fantasy 1 was on my cousin's original NES cartridge. I was young and didn't have a ton of experience with turn based RPGs and after just going in with the starting team I proceeded to die continuously and didn't really make it past the initial introduction, but had fun. Fast forward some years and I got the FF1+2 collection on GBA, wherein I finally experience both titles all the way through. I've had a soft spot for FF1 in particular for a long time because it has such a charming atmosphere and vibe that just really works with me. It's a simple adventure with a lot of heart and despite your characters not talking for themselves they feel like a passionate bunch on their way to help the world and try their best along the way.

I finally picked up the Pixel Remaster physical edition last year but put off playing them until I had some downtime between other major games and after finishing up a couple others decided to sit down with some good 'ol FF1. The first thing that blew me away was the music. The orchestrated soundtrack is something I didn't realize my ears so desperately craved. Final Fantasy is filled to the brim with iconic songs through and through but I can't deny the first game in particular just hits in a lot of ways cause it's where so many iconic themes originated. I swapped back and fourth a few times but mostly stuck with the orchestrated renditions cause my ears were just unbelievably enamored.

Since I wanted to still have a life and keep the playthrough pretty casual I played with increased money and exp to cut down on any grinding. I occasionally turned off enemy encounters if I was getting a little too strong or was tired of encounters while running into my fifteenth dead end because I have none of these dungeon maps memorized to save my life. These features are one of those things that really made the experience better overall cause it's just nice to pick and choose when i want things to be easier or more difficult along the way. Especially cause I wanna replay FF2 again at some point and turning off enemies will be a godsend

I feel like at the Pixel Remaster's initial launch I remember a lot of chatter about the new character sprite work. Although that may have been mostly aimed at FF6 in particular, I was personally really happy with how the characters looked. Especially once they got class upgrades I thought they looked phenomenal.

Overall I think I enjoyed this playthrough more than the one I'd done in the past because I got to experience a lot more of the game than I had before. As a young teen playing it on GBA I didn't do all it had to offer and definitely skipped over a lot of things I didn't realize existed. This time around I basically did everything there was to do (outside of hunting warmech but that could have taken hours so I made a realistic call) and I fell more in love with the world than I ever have been before.

I think at the very end the thing that touched me the most was a very simple line:

"With the memory of their struggle buried deep in their hearts, they will quietly watch over our world."

A strong sentence that speaks volumes for a game with silent protagonists. A line that encapsulates so many RPGs to come, and so many forms of media that came before it and inspired Final Fantasy as well. The hero's journey to save the world isn't one that is always filled with fanfare and celebration. It can simply be given a quiet reminder that heroes will arise when needed to aid those around them, and continue to play their part long after their work is done.

I'm so thankful to have replayed this beautiful journey, which pleasantly surprised me for how heartfelt it still is after all these years.

Overall ranking: Game good, someday I'll go back and do a solo class challenge run.

#FF1 #Final Fantasy 1 #2025 media #I started writing this with the intent of being haha funny #instead i got emotional #Look at this loser who feels things over video games!!!

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handelplayssims · 2 years ago

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Forgot to check age at this point! Autumn has...81 days until ageing up. Plus three for Saturday, Friday, Thursday and then minus 15 is 69 so...adding a few more days makes it 65 days until ageing up until we leave this household. Eating breakfast of mac and cheese and then editing and uploading video of mixology. And then Autumn sleeps.

...so Sims can now just turn up asking to become best friends. High School Years addition. I thought it was only for teens but nope! I got Belle Brandt popping in to ask to become besties. Listen lady, it was one chat on the dance floor. We ain’t that close. Waking up and Freddie’s whims are to buy a new computer and chat with Mitchell. ...sure he would think the downstairs computer needs to be upgraded. Also since Belle is here, might as well tend the massage chair and see if she wants to go for it. And she does! Nice! And hey! So does Mitchell! Nice nice nice. Need to make that money back. Also Mitchell seemed drawn to the keg I bough for this household so...I have a second idea! But in setting up for that idea, Mitchell woke up Autumn with playing the guitar nearby! How rude!

JUICE! JUICE! JUICE! JUICE! JUICE!

Let’s check on Autumn now. Her whim is to – be friendly with a non-household Sim. Sounds like a good launch off point for making another teen friend! Going off of who I remember at school, and wanting to make another gal friend, we’re visiting the Caliente household! To visit Maria Caliente During our chatter we find out that she likes video games! Well, why not head home and play on Autumn’s console then? (And it works for the, ‘win a competitive game whim.’) Annnd she lost. Welp. Over to Freddie and his whims are to level up in Charisma, as a tie-in to his aspiration, and to have a drink at the lounge. Hmm. Let’s pre-plan a party shall we? A keg party on Tuesday! Anyway, whim is still up on Autumn to win a game so uh, let’s go with a chess game against her brother. ...results inconclusive, I set her up to go to the restroom and it somehow took priority. Also the two are now good friends. Woo. Autumn’s heading to bed and- hmm. Freddie probably has too little energy to properly enjoy a lounge drink. Alas! Vibe until bedtime!

Neighborhood Watch!

Avani Srinivasan in the Srinivasan household has died. Avani blushed so much she exploded.

Fabian McMillan in the McMillan household has died. No cliffanger here; Fabian slipped while rock climbing.

Autumn is waking up sore from punching a boxing bag in her gamer rage. Things I wish I had when I am in gamer rage. First whim is to- oooh, list an outfit on Trendi. That is something that’s tied into this aspiration. We got four hours until school so let’s save that for after. Second whim is to make someone happy. Easier said than done with Meaningful Stories. I mean, making friends is one way to do so. Things to do, things to do before school… like actually doing homework? Sure why not. Only got it 25 percent done. Alas! Let’s see...now is the time to make judgements on the teens and their fashions so I can make a new friend. Let’s go with...Sidney Price! Introductions and finding out he’s active guy and a cheerleading dude. To math class! Which raises logic skill! Fair enough. Fashion judgement round 2! Let’s go with...Koichi Takeuchi! He’s a Cat Lover! ...and also Mean. Welp. Next school job thing is to...do the T-pose challenge. Well, hey, we can do that! And we have a little time left so let’s chat with Sidney some more. Next is Science class. Also raises logic! Right! Enough of school! Let’s finally check out the Thrift-and-Bubble Tea store! Weird combo but eh, Sims.

This is my first time actually checking out this place! Even in an alt file where I played the Prescott household, I didn’t find too many excuses to come over here.

Anyway, this is a tie-in with a fashion reseller called Trendi, where evidently, you do similar things on this app that you do here. Find fashion and resell it. As someone who’s not into fashion normally, this is WAAAY out of my league. Also -leers at advertisement- Hilariously, this is considered the most well-realized part of the pack. But also, this reminds me that styles are a thing also introduced in this pack. I might as well poke through the fashions and see if any of Autumn and Freddie. Seems to be a basics lean for Autumn and a preppy one for her brother. Annnd we’re over at Freddie since he was the one I was on screen last. Back to your sister! Food seems blech! It’s sliders and corndogs. That’s stuff high school sells!

Fashion is certainly...a thing. Anyway, what’s trending is Country stylings. Heh. Topical considering what other packs are released....I’ve having fun seeing that what I would like to wear veers more boho than country. Sound about right!

So I got my country look and what I would personally wear. Of course it's comfy casual. Let’s go and sell the Country outfit on Trendi. Now from what I understand, you can make LOADS of money just selling stuff but for right now, all I have is 164 followers from repeatedly posting my look. Let’s just keep it neutral and sell it for a modest price. Anyway, enough with fashion! It’s time to go and talk with Sidney some more! Found out his fashion preferences which is, dislikes outdoors, likes basics and likes streetwear. And it’s time to work for Autumn! Man I completely forgot about that. A few more socials and- welp. She has a crush on Sidney. I am PRETTY CERTIAN he’s gay. Weeeeeelp. Let’s head home and get to work. Let’s see what’s trending on the video machine and if any can have lifestyle reviews...same as before so not really! Anyway, Freddie wants to watch sports on tv, which I would leap into like, playing with the soccer ball or basketball or something but it’s far too late. Perhaps a run on the treadmill before bed. Oh and I checked my inventory before sending Autumn to bed and Akira Kibo wanted the dress-y outfit. You do you, you ghost.

Neighborhood Watch

Brindleton Bay: The Cormier household has moved in.

#sims 4 #blogging #bougie duo #freddie hatton #autumn ziggler #sidney price

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overfedvenison · 2 years ago

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Looking over the new Tau rules... - It’s lame there’s no Mont’ka - Farsight Enclaves is still in the base rules - You can use Commander Farsight at the exclusion of Ethereals. I don’t see any other benefits yet, though. At first it seemed like Farsight was kinda lame in this edition - He just has a statblock, the ability to reroll hits and wounds in melee 1/battle, and buffs his squad to add 1 to the Wound Roll within 9″ (Albeit, including in melee.)

Notably, his stat line does not seem to change much for his new model, not even with his in-built anti-psyker Talisman. This seems lame.

However... Battlesuits are now Vehicles again. That that means, he can Tank Shock:

Which... 10d6; more likely 12d6. That’s... A lot. That is going to be remarkably out of it’s weight class.

- Everything is a lot more modest, overall. Weaker profiles, etc. And Commanders (except Farsight) are hitting on 3+ now. But I’d like to point out the Commanders... Each seems to have a role

(Coldstar has Move 12, but pairs well with Strike and Fade to allow everyone to move 24″) ...I’ll note that this means Farsight should be particularly stand-out with a band of Flamethrower guys. Good for me, that’s my MO. Crisis Suits themselves are about what you would expect... But they do get a surprise in that they can now innately advance 6″ which is very nice. As was stated, Assault weapons are now way less common and you mostly need a Coldstar to use them. So choose your role carefully. Note that Gun Drones got a stealth upgrade since they are no longer divided into Drones and Non-Drones (That is, a Crisis Battlesuit now just HAS the drone weapons as part of it’s own profile) and so anything that buffs the Battlesuits also buffs the Drones. - !!! SHAPERS HAD A FUGGIN GLOW-UP

6 attacks after charge, grants an entire squad of Carnivores 6+ Feel No Pain, and give their squad The Grisley Feast strategem automatically. Not that normal Kroot also get this, but only 5+. If you can eat someone in melee? That’ll be damn good, especially if you can get like a full squad of 20.

Not only that, but Kroot and Shapers both have Stealth - they get an innate -1 to-hit; that seems EXCELLENT. - Aun-shi is still around, pretty decent, and can now lead some kroot - Krootox hit on a 3+ at range if they are near other Kroot, and a 2+ in melee. Hounds can get a +1 to wound, which is nice with their 3 strength, but I feel like utilizing that is impractical and prevents you from eating your enemies properly. - You can now have some battlesuits behind a Tidewall Shieldline to give them cover, which is going to look very cool

- The Farstalkers are here to stay, it seems:

And they’re good! Look at that: Precision, Lethal Hits, and Ignore Cover. The entire squad can now take aim at one character!

#40k #farsight enclaves

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morg-among-the-stars · 2 years ago

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Grow

Word Count: 7,384

This is the best one-shot I’ve ever written as well as the longest. Just look at that word count! This started out as a cute and fluffy (community) college fic, but it turned into a lot more than that, so I hope all you Kliensen enjoyers like it!

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Jared has never been all too nice to Evan.

For a long time, he found ways to excuse it. He'd excuse his rudeness as jokes and dark humor; always telling a speechless or borderline-offended Evan, "I'm just messing with you, it's a joke!"

It wasn't until he started a term at the local community college that he allowed himself to get hit with the truth. (Not to face it, for he'd faced it a long time ago. Getting hit with it is something all it's own.)

From what Jared remembers, Evan kept his head low for the remainder of senior year, got his diploma, and had plans of starting community college.

Evan was the most paranoid anyone had ever seen him, genuinely fearful of not getting into a two-year school with a one-hundred percent acceptance rate.

He was also paranoid for a separate reason entirely; still trying to shake off what senior year had done to him.

Jared went away for one final year of summer camp and Evan spent his summer working at the local Pottery Barn, trying to save up money for his classes in the Fall.

Unlike Evan, Jared procrastinated heavily on starting community college.

When the Fall semester came around, Evan kept to himself for the most part.

By high school graduation, he had upgraded from being a family friend to a good friend, which Jared would refer to Evan as to his extended family, who vaguely remembered the anxious boy's name.

Jared didn't talk about Evan much, but when he did, he kept his words positive.

Knowing that Jared talked positively of him even after senior year and all those damn emails he paid him to write made Evan feel genuine happiness in his soul. He was Jared's good friend.

Though, not having Jared around during the start of community college did something to him.

It sounds desperate and he is painfully aware, but he was lonely and for the first time in his life, too busy to reach out.

Always worried about one thing or the other; a paper to work on, or a continuing afternoon shift at Pottery Barn.

It felt good to be busy, for Evan has never been busy with work or school. (His anxious habits led him to be a diligent student and employee; he didn't mess up many things and when he did, he tried hard to fix them. The people skills aspect of customer service was still a work in progress.)

But now, a semester is under his belt and the following Winter semester is fast-approaching.

Evan was smart enough to register ahead; one less thing to check off his to-do list.

On the first day of the Winter semester, Evan rides the shuttle bus to the campus. It's an hour long commute that isn't the best thing in the world, but he makes do.

He is grateful for his schedule, he only has a general English course today and then he has time to kill before the commute to work. Mondays for the next handful of weeks won't be terrible, unlike every other Monday in existence.

Though, other days of the week aren't so nice, which he takes note of when planning his first week.

Take life day by day, a motivational phrase that's written in the margin of his planner.

A mantra of sorts that Dr. Sherman told him during a recent session.

Habitually, he gets to class early and picks a seat near the back of the classroom by the window; not in the way back. A sweet-spot to listen well to a lecture, but not make any eye contact with the professor and risk being called out if he mumbles an answer to himself.

Students file in, some one-by-one and others, in small pairs or trios.

As the classroom gets full, Evan sits alone in the sort-of-back near the window.

People don't pay him much mind, except for the occasional friendly, "Good morning."

There's a face he sees walking in the door, wearing those same dorky circle glasses and having the same affinity for graphic t-shirts that Evan has always been familiar with.

But Jared looks different, the months of summer and the midst of Fall have treated him well.

Maybe a little too well, because Evan is struck by something strong that he's felt one other time in his life.

Jared sees him and without a second thought, goes to sit next to him; at ease that he has a friendly face to talk to.

His good friend, Evan.

Evan looks at him, specifically at Jared's biceps.

There's muscle on them that wasn't there when they were in high school.

Jared isn't shredded by any means at all, but he looks strong, looks good.

He swears he doesn't have a thing for muscular people, but he wants to ask a million questions about what happened during summer camp and why Jared didn't warn him of his new build.

But Evan has learned better than to ask blunt and odd questions as a means of conversation, so he starts off simply and prays that the small crack in his voice goes unheard.

"Jared- Hi, how've you been?"

He wants to also ask how Jared's time at summer was and what he's been up to in the last few months.

He also wants to apologize for never asking any of these questions before now, when he hasn't asked anything yet.

His mind is trying to slow itself down and organize his thoughts in a coherent way. Being scatter-brained does him no good.

"I've been good, ready to get back to work." Jared tells him, it comes out lighthearted and a bit sarcastic, "I need this class for my major, so I'm getting it out of the way."

It's the same kind of sarcasm that Evan has grown accustomed to, though it's not used at his expense for once.

That feels good, the comfortability that'd sprouted around graduation a few months back is still there.

Before there's anymore time to continue on, the class starts and Evan readies himself with a notebook and pen, and flips through his other notes for a clean page.

Jared, getting himself straight (awful choice of words) at the same time, glances over at Evan's page-flipping and he sees vibrant highlighter marks and neatly written words printed line-after-line down the page.

As the introductory lecture progresses and assignments are laid out, Jared finds himself looking at Evan, at his organized, colorful notes.

Evan became the type of person that Jared mocked in high school. For one reason or another, he hated those people who's notes were written in neat handwriting with little doodles in the margins and color-coded to stay on-top of things.

But now, that he's older but also because it's Evan, the pretentious note-taking isn't pretentious at all.

It's almost cute is the coherent thought that Jared comes up with.

He gets back to his own notebook and before either of them know it, they have an essay due next Monday and class is dismissed.

"Where are you going after this?" Evan asks while packing up his belongings.

There are a few hand-sewn stitches to rips and tears in Evan's backpack that Jared notices, along with two minimalistic patches sewn onto the small front pocket.

One patch is a yellow smiley face and the other is a rainbow that's out of order with the words, "Choose Kindness" printed underneath it.

Both patches are most likely from Heidi, a little too bright for what Evan prefers. (Or maybe not, maybe Evan doesn't mind that vibrance and showiness anymore. Jared wouldn't know.)

"I was gonna go home for a while, I have a late shift tonight."

"Where are you working?"

"The Best Buy down the road."

It makes perfect sense in Evan's mind when the answer comes from Jared's mouth, he wouldn't expect anything different.

Jared must be able to sense this, because he's smiling as soon as he says it, smiling faintly as it clicks into place that he's still the same geek who thought he was too cool to proudly be friends with Evan Hansen.

But now he sees it, Evan is still the same introverted guy he knew, but he's found his footing now that they've gotten away from the hell that was high school.

Evan is put together. Well, more put together than what he used to be.

He looks good, standing a little straighter, and his dark, sunken under-eyes aren't as dark nor sunken.

Granted, they aren't at the place of a person who gets a square eight hours of sleep a night, but Evan looks like he has been improving at least somewhat in the taking-care-of-himself department.

"What about you? Do you have work right after, or...?"

"No, I don't have work until later. I mostly sit in the library and get homework done until work."

Jared looks at him a little oddly and follows him out into the hallway,

"Are there any study-buddies you have in the library?"

Evan laughs a little to himself, something he wouldn't have be able to do a while ago.

"No, but I don't mind the alone time." (He didn't mind the alone time when his best friend wasn't a viable option, that is different now.)

"I was going to go home, but I don't have to," Jared states, in a way he thinks is cooly, pushing his hands into his jeans pockets. "And, I have no idea what to write my essay about and you're a genius writer, so I thought you could... help me out some?" (Smooth, Jared. Smooth.)

There's light that flickers in Evan's eyes, he can sense it that Jared doesn't want to simply mooch off his work like he did back in public school.

If that was his intention, he would've been more direct, like every time he was stumped or blatantly uninterested in high school. Saying something along the lines of, "Evan, there's no way I can get this done on my own. Give me your notebook, I'll be done with it in a minute..."

Evan separately takes, "genius writer" that isn't laced with sarcasm for once in their damn lives, sets it into his heart, and makes his way to the library with Jared walking right beside him.

Amidst the whispered catching up that they do, Evan learns that Jared is genuinely scratching his head about this first essay, trying to figure out how to answer the prompt that was written across the whiteboard during lecture: What is one thing a person can do to maintain happiness?

Evan already has a vague outline drawn up, he is going to talk about the importance of going outside and getting away from screens and the internet, and how too much of it can be damaging to one's mental health. (Writing about hard-hitting things can sometimes be healing; this wouldn't be the first time Evan wrote something that would make his heart ache. When consistently reassured by his eleventh-grade English teacher that only she would see it, he wrote a paper about his dad and all the feelings he had towards him. Allegedly, the teacher had gotten teary-eyed when grading it.)

Jared is sitting with a few ideas in his head now, but he would rather listen to Evan ramble about the importance of going outside.

Though it's understandably dampened, his love for cool, dewy grass under his feet and warm, golden sunlight on his face is still there.

Evan more-so talks about sitting on a front porch for a moment or going for a walk around the neighborhood as opposed to hiking or forest-bathing.

He is without a doubt passionate about this subject, maybe he's been itching for someone to ask him why too much time online isn't good for a person's mental health and why soaking in the sun can be greatly beneficial.

Every few seconds, he looks at Jared to gauge whether he's bored or not, he definitely falls into the latter category.

Jared listens to Evan talk and damnit, the truth hits him. He's still fluttery in the chest around Evan Hansen, still in love with him.

In love with him and all those articulate words in his head that he never lets out. (Until his fluttery-hearted best friend shows up on campus and wants to listen to him talk for hours. Jared was always too cool to admit it, but he thought Evan was quite smart and liked listening to him talk about this, that, and the other subject he was interested in at the time. He thinks that now, still.)

They are only in the library for thirty minutes before Jared shuts his laptop and flips backwards through his notebook, checking the watch that's in front of a few colorful paracord bracelets: one lime green and another, blue and forrest green braided together.

"You know, we have time before work." He starts, Evan looks at him past his own laptop, a little curious. "We can go back to my place for a bit if you want. I've got some camp stories," He leans a little forward, grinning, "that I can't say here."

That intrigues Evan, who looks down at the corner of his laptop to check the time. He has roughly three and a half hours before he has to get to work, plenty of time indeed.

He wants to hear these camp stories, but he also wants to gain answers to the millions of thoughts and questions that are racing around in his head like bumper cars.

So, he begins to pack up once again, telling Jared (maybe a little too eagerly) that he would love to catch up, and Jared drives them to his house.

Jared's bedroom has not changed one bit.

Evan spent many an afternoon practically breathing down Jared's neck to make sure that the emails for the Murphy's were perfect down to the last detail. (Which failed him in the end, but Jared has forgiven him for it all. Memories that are fading little by little.)

Before that, he visited on occasion, when Mrs. Klienman wanted Jared to hang out with him. They were each other's one-and-only true friend.

Unbeknownst to both of the boys, Ms. Hansen and Mrs. Klienman shared the same sentiment of lonely sons who needed someone their own age to spend time with.

When Jared and Evan were little, time spent in Jared's room was always one adventure or another. They would take turns trying to beat Crash Bandicoot levels on Jared's well-loved Xbox 360. Other times, they would wreck his bedroom for the sake of a grand pillow fort.

Though, during the warm months of Spring and Summer, the boys would be told to, "Get off that game and go play outside!"

In the backyard of the Klienman household was Evan's favorite thing in the entire world: a big climbing tree with a long rope attached to a tire swing.

As much as Jared liked to crack a cruel joke, the irony of a tiny seven-year-old Evan Hansen falling out of that tree, only to fall out of a tree three times its size roughly a decade later has never been brought to light.

As a child, Evan was a brave little boy, climbing higher and higher to focus on the burning sun on his skin as opposed to his tired and stressed mother. His tired and stressed mother who would not explain why his dad hadn't brought that really big truck back for him to pretend to drive.

Jared liked to swing in the tire swing and have Evan push him higher and higher until his stomach flipped and he felt like a superhero flying through the sky.

Though his life wasn't the best during those times and forward, Evan's play-dates with Jared gave him something to look forward to.

He doesn't remember when they stopped happening, though Jared does and he has apologized for it immensely in recent years; facing the truth and stitching up slowly-healing scars.

At the abandonment done by his father, Evan fell into depression and anxiety, which labelled him a "spaz" by the kids in middle and high school. (Elementary school kids didn't see that anything was different about Evan. All they knew was that he took many trips to the nurse for nervous stomach aches and that he was called to the counselor's office weekly for reasons their teachers wouldn't say.)

Jared never knew how to console and comfort Evan during the troubling time of elementary school, which made him feel quite sad.

In an attempt to make up for it, he learned to always be ready with one dumb joke or another to get a laugh, then another, then another, out of Evan.

Though, come middle school, Evan's nervous tics and ever-present anxiety became worse with budding adolescence.

He never got viciously bullied, but the teasing and being called a "worry wart" and a "crybaby" weren't much help to his already damaged self-esteem. (Was I a bad son? Why did Dad leave?)

Jared was picked on by association, besides the typical "four eyes" and "weirdo" comments he'd always known.

His jokes turned into teasing Evan, not to the extent of the other kids at school (he was never that much of an asshole), but to an extent that hurt his feelings.

Jared would always cover it up, "I'm just messing with you, it's a joke!"

Freshman year of high school came and Evan's straight and short hair had started to grow out over the summer, curling up at the ends and sticking out in one odd place or the other.

Maybe Heidi didn't have the time or money to take Evan to get a back-to-school trim, or maybe Evan didn't want to burden her with it in the first place.

Nevertheless, he was sporting brand new, unruly curls and Jared couldn't even think of a witty comment to make about them when he saw Evan in the hallway on the first day of school.

Evan was self-conscious, of course he was.

"Does it look bad?" He asked Jared while walking towards their shared homeroom.

Jared, dumb and unable to say something for the first time ever, just shook his head and tried to be as cool as a cucumber. (If cucumbers were suddenly warm all over and colored pink.)

"What- No! It doesn't, doesn't look..." He was sputtering and stammering, and Evan was looking more and more panicked, thinking that Jared was trying to cover up the true disaster of the curly coffee-colored mop on top of his head.

Jared was trying to cover something up. He was trying to cover up the stupid, queer thought that struck him.

The first thought of it's kind, a quick arrow stabbing his heart.

He would deny it was Cupid or any God of love for many, many months.

"It doesn't look bad. You look... good, Evan."

Good, that was what he'd said, but not even close to what he'd thought at thirteen years old.

But now, Jared is nineteen years old and so is Evan, both in Jared's bedroom.

The former is sitting on the bed with his back against the headboard and the latter is sinking down into a bean bag chair near the TV stand across the room.

"So," Evan starts, shifting to get himself comfortable in the lumpy chair, "What are these... raunchy camp stories that you couldn't tell me in the library?"

He sounds a tad snarky, but still genuinely intrigued.

Jared didn't think he could love Evan more if he tried; Evan has always more relaxed in private, especially in an empty house where Jared double-checked to make sure the door was locked for him.

Snark is a thing he's heard from him one or two rare times, one or two rare times that left him surprised and some sort of proud, with heart-shaped pupils in his eyes.

He looks across the room at Evan and leans a little forward, as if he's going to tell a grand tale.

The tale is not grand, but Evan leans in with him.

"So, there was this guy in my bunk, right? A little scrawny, but really smart. Like, really smart, he was a poetic genius." Jared stresses.

Evan asks him bluntly,

"I didn't know you were into poets. What about that, that Brazilian guy from last year? Wasn't he trying to join the military after graduating?"

"Eh, I didn't see him this year." He shrugs, moving on, "And, yeah. I'm into poets, writers, wannabe folk artists."

The last archetype throws Evan off, but he's brought back in when Jared scoots to the edge of his bed and thumps his chest with his hand, enunciating his words like the dramatic son-of-a-bitch Evan is so grateful to have in his life once again.

"I like the sensitive guys! I wanna feel, Evan!"

Evan is laughing at the dramatics, but he can't help but think: a scrawny writer. Well, a scrawny poet. Evan is not a poet, but he is an apparent, "genius writer."

The complete opposite of the strong man Jared bunked with the summer before senior year.

Evan re-focuses and instantly goes for the obvious joke, smiling because he knows how dumb it is,

"Let me guess, you felt him?"

Jared laughs, a loud, "Ha!" from his chest,

"You bet I did!"

He goes on for bit, leaving out the nitty-gritty of everything, but the point is made that second base was reached again.

There are a million stories from camp and one involves an array of rock climbing walls, where Mr. Scrawny-Sensitive-Poet said he'd give Jared fifty bucks if he could get to the top of the tallest one.

It explains Jared's strong biceps, he earned his fifty bucks through many failed attempts and trips to the camp nurse.

He flexes those biceps (being dramatic again, posing like a buff, male model in a magazine or a wrestler) and Evan looks at him. He can hear a buffering dial-up tone ringing in his ears.

Evan tells the eventful stories of being a Pottery Barn employee and by eventful, he means mundane to a hilarious level.

The most eventful thing that's happened in the last few months is one family who argued greatly over the couch they should buy for their living room.

What feels like seconds is truly hours, Jared takes a glance at his watch and looks at Evan, telling him.

"I don't want to say it, but I think you gotta get going for work, so do I."

Evan retrieves his phone from his pocket and as disappointing as it is, Jared is right.

"Oh, yeah. You're right." Evan says, pushing himself out of the bean bag chair. "I had a great time, I missed this."

It's a little too honest, coming right out of his heart. He missed hanging out with Jared and he wants to find time to do it more. Though, he can't even try to apologize before Jared nods,

"I did, too."

He has one more thing from camp to show Evan. "Before you go, I wanted to give you this. I know it's kind of lame; I tried to mail it with a letter to you, but the mail got blocked up."

Getting up off the bed, Jared pulls off the blue and forrest green paracord bracelet and hands it to Evan.

They've never been into sentimental gifts, let alone homemade ones. Let alone ones where Evan would've logically been out of sight, out of mind to Jared.

But Evan wasn't, Jared thought of him all summer long and got to second base with a guy who vaguely resembled him, but would never measure up to the real freckle-dusted Evan Hansen.

Evan is a caught off guard, but he's smiling like an idiot, thanking Jared over and over again.

"It's nothing, really, Evan." Jared tells him, smiling himself. He pushes forward, "Do you have classes tomorrow? I could drive you."

Now, Evan smiles for a different reason, but calms it down.

He thinks about Jared climbing a tall rock wall, muscles flexing, and he thinks about wanting to have a million more afternoons like this one.

He quickly pulls up the class that's marked on his phone’s calendar and shows it to Jared.

He then wishes him a good night, and walks out the bedroom door, fiddling with the bracelet as he goes down the street towards his house.

He's a well-organized young man, he walks briskly, but a giddy feeling fills his lonesome heart up.

Jared stands in front of his bed and the words on Evan's digital schedule are all he can think about.

ENG - Introduction to Poetry

He should've kissed Evan right then and there. It would've been abrupt and out of the blue, but Evan has wit.

Either wit or well-timed college scheduling, whatever makes the difference.

Evan makes it home in time to change and catches the bus to work.

After his shift, his mom is home and fast asleep after a tiresome shift of her own.

He nestles himself in bed after pulling off his uniform and checks his messages one last time before turning on his alarm.

Usually, there are no messages, save for a mobile game notification or a calendar reminder, but there is a text from Jared:

good night. see you tomorrow at 9 :)

He sleeps soundly that night, excited for the sun to come up.

Evan tells his mom about seeing Jared yesterday during and after class; he is happy with every word he says, euphorically happy when he shows her the bracelet Jared made him.

Heidi will give him that, he's making friends in college.

More like reuniting with old ones, but a friend is a friend nonetheless.

Jared is right on time at nine o' clock and Evan rides off with him a little while after his mom is out the door.

The semester goes on and they are frequent study-buddies in the library as well as Jared or Evan's houses.

It is a no-brainer as to what Jared writes that first English essay about.

He writes about the importance of good friends, how having good friends and people in a person's live can help them maintain happiness.

He gets an A and Evan is insanely proud of him, reading the final submission and smiling at the anecdotes about himself.

They continue on to other the other papers that need writing as well as their other separate class work.

It hit him at first, but the thought creeps into Evan's mind over time. Over the period of weeks that he spends up in his room or Jared's, getting sidetracked from studying to talk until his tongue is dry and to laugh until his stomach is hurting.

He wears the blue and forrest green bracelet every day without fail and he sometimes cannot help but think about the scrawny poet that Jared had something with.

Evan is a sensitive person, Jared always teased him for it.

But if Jared is into the soft-spoken, sensitive type, then what does that mean for Evan?

Could he- could Jared? No, that's not it!

Is it? (Evan's better sleep schedule is still maintained, but he finds himself staring at the little smiley-face emoticon that is tacked on the end of Jared's good night messages every night, trying to find some meaning in it.)

That's what good writers do, find meaning in small things.

But there are no lines to be read between, a smiley-face is just that, a smiley-face.

It's everything else that Jared does that allows Evan to find meaning.

He listens extremely well to Evan talk about anything, he is more attentive now than ever.

He's nicer all-around, continuing on from graduation.

And that feels good- great. Evan feels giddy as hell the more he is around Jared.

The Winter semester goes past them and the Spring one starts up in early January.

They don't have any classes together, but they'll be damned if they don't make time for each other.

A revelation hits Evan like a sharp arrow to the chest.

He's sitting up in his room with Jared, halfway trying to convince him to get some work done and then they can goof-off, and halfway saying, "Screw it!" so he can hear laughter rumble in Jared's chest.

He realizes that he may have a bit of a staring problem, an issue he never thought to discuss with Dr. Sherman.

Or maybe he just doesn't know how to bring it up.

How is he supposed to bring up the fact that he found Zoe Murphy to be incredibly beautiful, so he stared at her from across the hallway like a creep, hoping but never able to walk over to her and say something?

Or how he thinks that Jared Klienman is incredibly handsome and attentive and funny- fucking hilarious, and he is mildly (extremely) freaking out that he feels something fluttery in his heart for a man.

How does he bring that up?

The answer is that he doesn't.

He keeps his feelings to himself for the most part, until he gets blindsided with sickeningly sweet ideas of Jared that swim around in his subconscious day and night.

He has to tell him, he can't stare at him like a creep forever. (Or stare at those damn biceps or his lips forever, either.)

It has snowed recently and the roads are covered in ice, road-salt is trying to melt it but with a little difficulty.

Though, the sidewalks are good and ice-free.

Evan, with incessant thoughts racing and swimming in his head, makes a stupid decision one frosty Friday night.

A partially illogical one, one that could wait.

But he can't wait anymore.

So, he bundles up, makes use of the "As Needed" label on the Ativan bottle, leaves a quick note on the refrigerator (I went to visit Jared, I'll be back soon! Love, Evan), and goes out for the twenty-five minute walk to Jared's house. (Evan is stupid, he should've reached out during Fall. Working his ass off in school is a good thing, but he should've brought Jared back into his life before now. Maybe this whole falling in love thing could've happened when it wasn't so cold outside.)

Mrs. Klienman's car isn't in the driveway. If Evan remembers correctly, she goes out most Fridays and leaves Jared to his own devices.

He knocks on the front door and it takes a minute before he can hear Jared coming down the stairs.

The door opens and the warm air from inside the house hits him in the face.

"What- Evan, hey. What the hell are you doing here?"

Jared looks confused (completely understandable when your best friend/the adorable-dork-you've-been-trying-to-get-with-for-years-but-to-no-avail shows up at eight-thirty at night) but there is joy present underneath the confusion.

It's like he's in one of those stupid rom-coms his mom likes to watch. Maybe Evan has some Love Actually note cards hidden away in his puffy coat.

Evan looks at Jared for a solid few seconds. It's dorky as hell, but Jared standing in the doorway in his pajamas like he is right now, is an image that Evan likes quite a lot.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer." Jared quips, then gets a tad serious. "It's freezing outside, get in here." He somewhat pulls Evan into the house and shuts the door behind him to keep the frigid air out.

"I didn't- I don't mean to show up like this."

"It's fine. You know I don't mind you coming over." Jared says, walking Evan up the stairs toward his bedroom, "I was just playing a game, nothing serious."

Evan shrugs off his coat and beanie, which leaves his hair a little frizzy.

He sets his coat and hat down by the bean bag chair and takes a seat, though he is jittery beyond belief, gently tugging at the paracord bracelet.

Jared sits on the edge of his bed, looking over at Evan in all of his fidgety, frizzy-haired, rosy-cheeked glory.

Good lord, he is extremely gay; that is an accepted fact. Never too cool to proudly be in love with Evan Hansen.

"So," Jared says, "Why have you come to pay me a visit tonight?"

Evan shifts is his seat, the weight of what he's going to say is coming to him now all of a sudden.

He mumbled everything to himself on the walk here, rehearsing and revising the scrambled thoughts in his mind in an attempt to make them coherent.

Jared is looking at him, itching to know what he is going to say, but knowing not to push him. The last thing either of them need is for Evan to be thrown into a panic attack or go running for the bathroom to vomit out his worries.

But, the Ativan helps to calm his nerves. He's already gone through the worst-case scenario: Jared rejects him and never wants to see him again. While that does scare him, Evan thinks of the sensitive poet and how Jared wants to feel.

If Evan can do one thing, it's feel.

"I wanted to- okay... I- come on," He mutters, "come on" under his breath and Jared wholeheartedly has all the time in the world to let him get his thoughts in order.

Evan looks down at his lap for a second, mumbling to himself, then looks back at him.

"So- no. You know how I really, really liked Zoe when we were in high school?" He asks, trying and wanting to get to the point so he can rip this band-aid off.

Jared nods, somewhat begrudgingly, letting the opportunity for a snide comment roll on past him. That is what maturity is, that is what getting out of high school did to him.

It helped him out for the better.

Evan ceases his fiddling with the bracelet and goes for a hangnail on his finger, picking at it and continuing on. "Well," (Rip the band-aid off in one fell swoop) "I feel that way- like that about you."

Jared doesn't know what to do. He feels like that kid during freshman year all over again, looking at Evan with mushy-gushy feelings swelling in his heart.

"Wow." is all he can say at first, then a second time. "Wow. Holy shit. Really?"

Evan nods and his voice is soft, relieved that he said it, but trying to figure out what is going through Jared's mind.

"Yeah. Really."

Jared has always been a hard person to read, that remains true right now.

Evan doesn't know if he should feel guilty or not for saying it; Jared's "Really?" wasn't out of disgust or mockery, it was out of hope.

The hope is unmistakable now, not up for Evan's anxious interpretation.

Jared smiles to himself and a quiet laugh whistles in his nose.

"Can I tell you something?"

"Yes."

"I really, really like you, too."

It is almost instant, Jared sees those words click into Evan's brain and he watches all of his nerves fall away.

Well, there's one tiny nerve left,

"Are you sure?"

That earns Evan a hearty chuckle and Jared tells him to sit with him on the bed.

"Yes! Yes, I am sure. I've really, really liked you for years!"

Jared has wanted to say that for years, Evan feels a little dumb when he asks the obvious question.

"Why, why didn't you tell me before now?"

Jared grins, in love with the most oblivious person on the planet.

"You were steadily making goo-goo eyes at Zoe Murphy since ninth grade, I didn't stand a chance. And, I didn't want to deal with that rejection. I was never going to tell you, truly."

He sighs and rests his hand on Evan's shoulder, a friendly juxtaposition to what he has just revealed. "But, there was no rejection, you confessed first."

Evan, like when he first saw Jared at the top of the Winter semester, has a million questions. He starts with one, the most important one next to the obvious question.

"When did you... I guess... first start feeling all this?"

"Freshman year, when this started to get curly." Jared emphasizes "this" with a gentle flick of a curl by Evan's ear, "I said you looked good, but you didn't just look good."

"What did I look like then?"

"You looked hot, still do."

Jared will say it straight, Evan has always appreciated that, even if his bluntness has been used for worse than for better. Evan thinks to himself for a moment, looking straight ahead.

He was infatuated, then in love with Zoe, meanwhile Jared was infatuated, then in love with him.

And he couldn't see any of it.

Evan laughs at himself, smiling softly.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry-"

"Don't apologize, you were into someone else at the time. You couldn't have known."

Evan thinks of all the guys Jared has known and gotten to second base with and bragged about whilst calling Evan a virgin (while he, himself still is one).

Above all of them, Jared likes him the most. Has liked him the most for a long, long time.

"What do we do now?" Evan asks, a little unsure. Jared's arm goes over his shoulder and Evan relaxes a little bit.

"What do you want to do? I wouldn't mind a date, maybe first base... or second-"

"What?"

"I'm kidding!" Jared tells him quickly, "Well, only a little bit."

Evan sighs, a relieved "phew!" Jared's arm around his shoulder is making his heart excited enough as it is.

Start out slow, start out simple.

"A date would be nice."

"Are you busy tomorrow?"

Evan doesn't check his phone's calendar. He can sort anything out if he needs to.

"No, no. I'm not busy."

An idea comes to Jared instantaneously, something in him subconsciously pulls Evan a little closer to him. (He has wanted to hug Evan like this forever, but cool guys don't hug, and they definitely don't hug each other as guys who really, really like each other. Screw them, they aren't living!)

Jared's gaming laptop on the desk has gone idle, the clock displayed on it reads 9:04pm.

"Does your mom know your here?"

"Yeah, I left a note." Jared snickers, he has to ask,

"What'd it say? 'Mom, I went to go tell Jared that I'm really gay for him. B-R-B!'."

"No, I just told her that I'm over here to visit you." Evan states directly, but he does know that he'll have to explain this to his mom at some point or another.

Right now, he sets his mind to "another".

It's getting late and he has to head home.

Jared understands and lets Evan go, but not before sending him on his way giddily.

Evan pulls on his coat and beanie and steps halfway out the bedroom door, and Jared leaves him with,

"See you tomorrow, handsome."

A hot, handsome, genius writer.

Evan says goodbye to Jared and makes his way out the door and down the road. (His heart may burst at any second. He blames the cold winds, but he is flushed rosy pink when he arrives home to his still-empty house.)

At around eleven-forty-five, when Jared finally goes to bed, yet Evan is in the bathroom in the middle of the night, a by-now routine good night message is received on Evan's phone:

good night! see you tomorrow!! <3

The date Jared thought of instantly was nothing special, but he took Evan's passionate explanation about spending time outside and put it to use.

While it is still cold, the daytime is much more forgiving than the night.

It's sunny out, which makes the cold less brutal.

Jared takes Evan out for a walk through the park.

Extremely simple, but Evan is grateful for it and more than happy to walk along a frozen pond with him side-by-side.

Eventually, when they manage to walk through the entirety of the park, they go back to Jared's house.

They're adults now and they spent some time outside, Mrs. Klienman can't yell at them to play outside.

So, they sit close together in front of the TV, taking turns at impossible-to-beat boss levels.

Boss levels and fights have always intimidated Evan, but he's full of love which manifests itself in determination to win.

It manifests in Jared's enthusiastic cheering and encouragement.

It takes a little more than ten minutes, but though encouragement and love-struck adrenaline, he beats a hard fight.

Jared can’t help himself, he cheers, “Yes!” And kisses Evan’s cheek when he’s still looking at the pixelated, “Save” marker.

Evan can physically feel his heart float around in his chest, on top of the fucking world.

As the days go on, Evan and Jared are at the happiest anyone has ever seen them.

Heidi sees it, all of her son’s euphoria, and asks Evan about it after he comes home from work.

He’d asked Jared if and when he could tell his mom and he was told to, “Tell her whenever you want to.”

So, he did just that, found time to sit her down and tell her that he’s going out with Jared.

While she wasn’t expecting it in the slightest, Heidi is accepting of it. All that matters to her is that Evan is safe and happy, which he is.

He very much is.

Evan’s anxiety sometimes shows itself as organization and perfectionism, still not wanting to draw much attention to himself or mess anything up.

Which is why he tries to find a way to give himself and Jared a perfect first kiss; waiting for a sunset or picture-perfect day that he learns doesn’t exist.

He learns that what he may view as perfect does not exist.

He learns that because it happens when Jared picks him up for school one day in mid-February.

A few days before Valentine’s Day, where everyone and their mother is going out and depleting the store shelves in a hurry.

There’s a grocery store bag behind the driver’s seat and Evan looks right at it.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” Jared tells him.

“It doesn’t look like nothing.” Evan tells him, the bag looks full and Jared should’ve put it in the truck. (No, he shouldn’t have. Everything falls into place.)

Jared sighs and looks right at Evan,

“Alright, you caught me. Just wait for a couple days, can you do that?”

Evan is aware that Valentine’s Day is in a couple days and the mere thought that Jared got him something makes his simple heart oh-so happy.

Jared’s heart is oh-so happy as well, because Evan is leaned-in close and kissing him without a second, hesitant thought.

Grinning like the biggest dummy on the planet, Jared just tells him to, “Oh, come on. You know I’ve been waiting for that! How about another one, for good measure?”

On top of the fucking world.

Both dealing with class work and mundane part-time jobs, but on top of the world nonetheless.

Jared is still sarcastic and quick with a joke, but they aren’t cruelly at Evan’s expense.

He doesn’t need to do that anymore, he doesn’t need to be mean to avoid his love for Evan or the scrutiny of middle and high school kids.

Evan was on a path of self-improvement since graduating, a path that continues and intertwines with self-love. (If Jared loves him amongst everyone else he’s ever been with, there must be something really there.)

They’ve grown a lot, improved a lot over time.

Matured and found ways to persevere though the worst of days.

Collectively, they could not be any prouder of each other.

#dear evan hansen #kliensen #i love kliensen <<33 #dear evan hansen fanfic #evan x jared #movie evan hansen #movie jared klienman #it’s set in the movie universe #and it’s my own idea of what takes place after the movie so it’s my creative liberties and ideas #I love the backstory #so much backstory oh yeah 💪💪

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bubblesuga · 4 years ago

Text

Young, Dumb, & Broke

Summary: It doesn't take you long to realize that materialistic possessions aren't what makes a home. Yoongi is your home, wherever he is, you're happy. genre: fluff, smut word count: 2,415 tags: strugglingproducer!yoongi, established relationship A/N: this isn't written with the intent of romanticizing poverty but rather feeling comfortable and thankful for what you do have. As someone who lives in the lower middle class, I've slid my own experiences subtly into this fic. Hope y'all enjoy it:)

There's an art to Yoongi when he's working.

He's...ethereal. Insanely concentrated, like the rest of the world doesn't exist. His eyes and ears are only trained in on the old laptop he bought from a pawn shop for 50 dollars in 2016. It still runs well, after some incredibly tedious upgrades, he managed to make all his programs run smoothly, and has continued to for the last five years. He calls it his baby, 'like a project car, but more useful'.

It's a dewy morning, Yoongi's cup of coffee steaming on the ledge of your shared studio apartment's window. The window doesn't open all the way, only enough to fit the small swamp cooler that you found at a yard sale for cheap. It's an oldie, but it works and that's all that matters.

Though standing in the doorway of your bathroom and looking out into the humble life you've began sounds like a gorgeous day, you can tell Yoongi has noticed you staring by the way he slips his ear phone out of his left ear.

"I made you coffee," Yoongi says, not looking away from his laptop, "we ran out of that creamer shit you like so I put milk and sugar. I hope that's okay."

"That's perfect, baby." a small smile stretches across your face.

You met Yoongi nearly 15 years ago to the day. He went to an all boys school about a mile and a half away from yours (you only know that because you timed the trip each time you went to visit him, thinking that somehow you could make it faster), and it was him who took an immediate interest.

When he first spotted you, your friend had dragged you along to the neighborhood boys' usual basketball game. It was on a tacky green court and the nets were hanging onto the hoops by a thread but none of the boys minded. They all played, and yelled, and cheered, and you were incredibly endeared even at 13 years old. Yoongi noticed you in the group of girls that usually watched him and his friends play, and he didn't stop. His eyes kept glancing to you every chance he got.

Needless to say, your eyes never left him either.

It wasn't until long after school did you and Yoongi really talk. He was working as a waiter in one of his friends' bars. You really only found yourself there after an incredibly long study session in your second year of college. Hoping for a nice drink and some shitty bar food to distract you from the impending doom that is finals season, you instead ended up with Yoongi resting on your chest the next morning on the twin bed in your dorm room. You still remember the soft snores leaving his mouth, and the way he whispered 'good morning' like he had done it to you so many times before. Like his lips had always been yours, like his hand always rested in the crook of your neck, drawing small, comforting circles below the hickeys he bestowed upon you.

Your parents showing up for a surprise visit while he laid against your naked chest was also pretty memorable but definitely not for the same reasons.

"What are you staring at?"

Yoongi's voice breaks your thoughts, his words drifting through your consciousness and gripping your attention.

"Was I staring?"

You had been so preoccupied with your memories that you didn't remember moving across the room and sipping your coffee quietly next to Yoongi. You were staring, but it's hard not to when it's him.

He chuckles for a second, his eyes brightening when they meet yours, "Yeah. You got that crazy look in your eye that you get when your mind won't stop," he closes his laptop, "which begs the question of what exactly is going through that pretty little head of yours."

"Well," you shrug, this won't be new information, "you."

"Ah," he sets his laptop on the chair beside the bed, "as you are on mine, my darling."

"Oh?" you cock your head to the side, "what are you thinking about specifically?" Curiosity always gets the better of you in these situations.

"Hm," god, even the way he hums makes you feel insatiable, "you first."

Rolling your eyes, you sip your coffee again, "I was thinking about how we ended up here."

Yoongi furrows his eyebrows, "I- in like a bad way? Listen baby, I'm working hard. We're going to get out of here soon, I pro-"

"No, no," you giggle, "you know I don't care where we sleep at night as long as you're there. I was thinking about how we ended up in each other's lives. Just by chance."

"Oh," Yoongi seems delighted, "that's much cleaner than what I was thinking about."

Raising an eyebrow, you don't have to verbally ask your question. Yoongi smirks, leaning to your ear and pulling you close, "I was thinking about how good you were for me last night."

Sure, the butterflies swarming your stomach was enough to last you a lifetime, but that didn't stop you from smacking Yoongi's chest lightly. He laughs, "Can you blame me?"

Yoongi's eyes travel over the bare skin of your thigh and you can feel your breathing pick up.

Yoongi has the incredible ability to make you feel secure in every aspect of your life. Even on the darkest of days, where the simple image of your body in the bathroom mirror makes you want to crawl into a cave and never return to society, Yoongi grabs your hand and yanks you out of the seemingly eternal abyss. It's his super power, whether you're dressed up or dressed down or naked, he manages to always worship your body, mind, and soul. You've never felt more loved than now, with him.

His hand brushes against your skin, causing you to swallow. Despite having been intimate with him hundreds of times, he still manages to steal your breath away.

"I guess I can't blame you," you smirk, grabbing his hand and moving it up to your chest, "I am pretty hot."

Yoongi grins, kneading your breast gently in his hand, "There's my good girl."

Finally, he leans forward and kisses you. His tongue tastes of black coffee, a stark contrast to the sweetness on your tongue moments before. His lips are warm, his teeth peaking through every once in a while to nibble softly at your bottom lip. He smiles into the kiss, a low moan falling from the bottom of his throat.

He hums softly, "The things you do to me, darling."

The words ignite a fire in your abdomen, unintended encouragement on his part pushing you over the edge. You're always okay with just a small make out session but now you need him. You need to please him, to hear him whimper beneath you.

You pull away and begin to pull your hair away from your face, "Let me suck your dick."

Yoongi's eyes go wide, "You never cease to amaze me."

"Chop chop, music boy."

Yoongi shakes his head, lifting his hips and allowing you to pull the old basketball shorts off of his body. You move slow, watching as his dick twitches while the hem of his shorts brush against the base. Your mouth begins to water, anticipating the faded out look in Yoongi's eyes that was to follow soon.

Finally, you completely discard the shorts from his body and watch as his dick slaps against his abdomen. He gasps when you grip the base of it, squeezing softly then stroking up and down. His usual calm and collected self disappears the instant that your lips wrap around him. "Oh, fuck."

Your tongue swipes just beneath the head of his cock, his most sensitive area. He inhales, tossing his head back.

The power you feel over Yoongi in this position is intoxicating. Though the basis of your suggestion was to please him, you can feel yourself growing more and more wet as you watch Yoongi. A thin layer of sweat has collected across his forehead, his hair sticking to it. There's redness over the tops of his cheekbones, and his eyes are completely blown out while the watch you.

He reaches forward, tenderly touching your cheek. Though stuffed full of his cock, saliva dripping down and you gasping for air, Yoongi still thinks you are the most gorgeous girl in the world and you can feel that love radiating off of him.

"Pretty girl," he moans, his chest heaving, "always so pretty for me. Do you like sucking my cock?"

There goes that power you thought you had over him.

Instantly, you're soaked. You moan around him, feeling the vein crawling up the side of his dick pulsate in your mouth. He has always had such a dirty mouth.

"Answer me," He tugs at your hair, pulling you completely off of him and making you look in his eyes. He smirks, tilting his head as he takes in your swollen lips and watering eyes, "gorgeous."

"I love it," you breathe, giggling as you watch his hips flex from the way you stroke him, "I love watching you squirm."

"Yeah? Now its your turn."

Without warning, Yoongi pulls himself up and pushes you backward. You let out a squeal, your head falling onto the pillows and the bed squeaking as Yoongi straddles your thighs. He's warm above you, undressing you hurriedly but not missing the chance to massage you on your bare skin. Drawing his rough hands down your abdomen, he stops at your hip bones and spreads your legs apart.

He doesn't give you time to be embarrassed of how wet you are, because his fingers are instantly inside you. Scissoring and stretching your pussy, Yoongi has learned everything he needs to do to make you as comfortable as possible. You toss your head back as his knuckle brushes against your clit, the heat radiating from you evident by the way sweat drips down your chest.

"Are you ready?" Yoongi asks, bending your knees and resting your thighs on his.

"Always." you breathe, and he lines himself up at your entrance.

As he presses in, he leans over and kisses your lips gently. It eases the initial sting, bottoming out quickly and staying there while you adjust. He doesn't start moving when you think he does, instead keeping his cock still and encapsulated by your heat. His mouth works quickly though, a stark contrast to the shakiness his hips feel while you periodically squeeze around him.

He's driving you insane and he knows it from the way you're desperately moaning against his lips. He likes hearing you beg, though, and if that means prolonging the wait for an orgasm, then so be it.

"Please," you whimper, "please fuck me."

"I am." he grins, rolling his hips once then stopping again. His pelvic bone brushes against your clit and you feel an electric pulse swipe through your body.

"No," you plead, "fuck me." You reach down, grabbing his ass in your hands and begin trying to guide his hips in and out of you. He chuckles, "Always so desperate for me."

"Yes, Yoongi. Please."

It's not until your moans turn into a whine does he begin to move. It wasn't slow in the slightest, his hips rhythmically thrusting into you while his kisses turn sloppy. You can smell him, taste him against your tongue and feel him so deep inside you that the feeling is euphoric. You can't compare it to anything else, he's the definition of perfection in everything that he does. You want to stay with him like this forever.

You can tell by the way his thrusts lose their rhythm that he's getting close. His breathing is harsher against your lips, his arms shaking on either side of your head.

"Cum inside me." you say, tossing your head back as you feel the bands in your stomach about to break. With the newfound access to your neck, he instantly sinks his teeth just below the curve of your jaw.

He doesn't seem to think much of your request, continuing to push the two of you to your highs.

"Yoongi," you repeat, "cum inside me. Please, I want you to fill me up."

"Fuck," he growls, "you can't just say stuff like that."

"Yes, I can," Yoongi and you are strong believers in the pull out method. Yet, there's something about right now that makes you want to feel everything he has to offer, everything there is to give. You want him to feel the truest extent of pleasure, down to his primal instincts, "cum for me, Yoongi. Cum."

The desperation in your voice has Yoongi spilling into you instantly, his head burying itself into your neck. The moment you feel him release, the bands in your stomach snap and your orgasm takes over.

He holds you close while you both ride out your highs, repeating your name and collapsing on top of you. The rest of the world doesn't exist in that moment, only you, and Yoongi, and your squeaky bed.

Describing the feeling of the aftermath seems impossible. When the two of you make love, it makes you realize that all of the hardships you've endured are all worth it. That even though you do live in a small apartment with chipped paint and watch netflix off a five year old laptop and both work your asses off just to make ends meet, it's all worth it. His words, his kiss, his love... That's all you need. You could lose everything you have right now and you know that you would still come out on top.

"I love you," he whispers after a while of laying there. His eyes are closed, sleepiness taking over his features, "and I hope you know we can't afford a baby."

You giggle, turning your head to press a small kiss to his temple, "Not yet, no, but I have a birth control that works."

"Oh?" he smiles sleepily.

"Yeah, it's called Plan B."

Even with his eyes closed, you can tell that Yoongi is rolling his eyes.

And so you find yourself with your home, resting on a squeaky bed and imagining the future with the man you love as he falls asleep on your chest. You're not sure where your life is headed, but you know that you'll always have Yoongi by your side, and that's all that really matters.

#min yoongi #yoongi #min yoongi x reader #yoongi x reader #yoongi x yn #suga x reader #bts #bts x reader #agust d x reader #min yoongi x reader smut #min yoongi x reader fluff #yoongi x reader fluff #yoongi x reader smut #bts x reader smut

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chloe-the-ice-queen · 4 years ago

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This Doesn’t Mean We’re Friends - Ch. 2

Hey guys! Another chapter done and posted, I hope y’all enjoy it!! Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist, I probably won’t cap it unless I really need to :)

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Marinette and Chloe rode in the Bourgeois limo from Marinette's bakery to the Grand Paris. Chloe filled her in on what to expect and what to do. "I'll be with you most of the time, so I can tell you who to steer clear of, and who you should try to talk to. I'll try to introduce you to a few people I know would be interested in your designs. You made that dress, right?"

"Yeah, designed and created it from scratch." Chloe eyed Marinette's dress appreciatively. It was tastefully made, the dark blue complementing the girl's dark hair and bluebell eyes. The top was halter-style, with a high neckline and no sleeves. It fit Marinette's form, with rhinestones glittering on her torso. The bottom half of her dress was long and elegant, falling loosely to the floor, the front hem higher than the back, showing off Marinette's silver heels. It wasn't half bad.

It was actually quite impressive, as most of Marinette's designs were. She had upgraded from her normal pink capris and grey cardigan outfit after Lila had come back to school, transitioning to a more stylish, modern look. But this dress was nothing less than gorgeous on the small girl, but wasn't overly classy and overdone like some dresses she was sure to see throughout the night. It looked nice, but it didn't look like she was showing off, which Chloe could appreciate.

Chloe herself wore a sleek, sleeveless yellow dress that highlighted her fair skin and bright blue eyes. Chloe's hair flowed freely around her shoulders, curled and styled, while Marinette had hers up in an elegant bun, with loose curls framing her face. Together, the two girls contrasted each other, but the stark differences went well together.

As they pulled up to the front of the hotel, paparazzi and reporters swarmed the red carpet, bombarding the famous partygoers.

"They shouldn't be too interested in us, but just ignore them." Chloe advised Marinette, before opening her door and sliding out of the car. Marinette slipped out behind her, adjusting to the flashing of cameras and the buzz of conversation. She shut the door behind her, and joined Chloe in walking up the front steps.

Just going to the event was sure to bring her some recognition, especially accompanied by Chloe, but she wasn't too worried about being bombarded by paparazzi. Only a few reporters bothered them, and as instructed, Marinette tuned them out.

Once they entered the ballroom, the chatter became more of a dull roar. Chloe greeted a few people mingling just inside the doorway, before they were accosted by a very familiar voice. Adrien, who was dragging a disgruntled Lila along behind him. "Hey guys! It's nice to see you here!" Adrien enthused.

"I'm sure." Chloe said, unamused. "Now if you don't mind, we need to-"

"I thought that you could introduce us to some of your friends here, Chloe. That way Lila can make some new friends-" Adrien interrupted. Lila suddenly looked interested in their conversation.

"Well, since we know how many connections Lila has, I'm sure she doesn't need me to introduce her to anyone." Said Chloe.

"Don't be like that Chl-"

"Chloe!!" Someone near them half shouted, turning the heads of people around them. A boy around their age was walking over to them, waving. "I wasn't sure if you'd come or not. It's been a while."

"Henri!" Chloe said, looking entirely amused. "I haven't spoken to you since that party in London."

"I doubt either of us will ever be invited to that again." Henri said, making Chloe laugh. Now that he was closer, Marinette studied him. He was very handsome, objectively, of course. The kind of easy beauty that makes you want to laugh or cry. He had dark brown curls, and kind brown eyes that sparkled with amusement. When he glanced at her, she felt her face flush a little. Chloe and the stranger, Henri, traded stories and jokes for a minute, while the other three observed. Adrien seemed to recognize the newcomer, and Lila was waiting for her chance to jump into the conversation.

"Now," his voice was quieter, teasing, but making sure the other three heard him as well. "You should introduce me to your very pretty friend here. I don't believe I've seen her at any of your events before." He smirked at Chloe, who rolled her eyes.

"This is-"

"Lila, nice to meet you." The green eyed girl said, sticking out her hand, which he ignored, looking at her with annoyance and slight disbelief, if Marinette had to guess.

Chloe seemed taken aback, "This is Marinette, an amazing up-and-coming designer who my mother and Gabriel Agreste have both scouted for their brands." She turned to Marinette, "This is my friend Henri, his parents are both models and his mother is a designer my mother has collaborated with. I'm sure the two of you have quite a lot in common, so why don't we go find a table to chat?"

"Why don't we come with you? You know that I happen to be friends with quite a few designers and models myself, I might be able to give some input." Lila said, while Adrien, who had been looking angry at Chloe, perked up.

He and his date began to follow the trio, when Chloe said, "Sorry, you two, but my mom reserved a table just for three. And I'm sure Lila can get you guys seats next to someone much more important anyways." She grabbed Marinette and pulled her along with her to a table near the front, Henri following behind them.

"Adrien's gotten worse since last time." The boy remarked as they sat down.

Marinette looked at him disapprovingly, when Chloe responded, "I agree. I thought it was just because of his dad, but his social skills have somehow become even worse since he started going to school."

Marinette looked surprised. Probably because she felt surprised. Didn't Chloe like Adrien? Wasn't he her best friend? Maybe they had a falling out, or maybe Chloe had stopped liking Adrien for the same reason Marinette had. Whatever the case, they could all agree on one thing.

"That girl is nasty." Henri said. "Do you know her?"

Marinette and Chloe looked at each other. "Unfortunately," Chloe supplied. "She's in our class."

"Ah, my apologies. Anyways, it's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Marinette. If you're as good as Chloe said, I'm sure I'll be seeing you around more."

Marinette smiled as Chloe said, "She is quite talented. She made the dress she's wearing."

The bluenette looked at her shoes under the table. "Ah, an excellent designer then. I'll be sure to mention you to my parents when I get the chance. In the meantime, though, Chloe, I need to be going. I need to talk to a few people before I head out, it was good to see you again."

The three stood, and Henri turned and hugged Chloe, and then turned to Marinette. She smiled. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Henri."

"The pleasure is mine, I'm sure." Henri said, and took Marinette's hand, kissing the back of her knuckles lightly, his eyes teasing. Marinette laughed, blushing slightly.

The trio separated, Chloe pulling Marinette off to meet other people.

Through the entire interaction, two pairs of green eyes watched the small group from across the room. One filled with jealousy, one with annoyance and maybe a little sadness too.

----

Throughout the night, Chloe introduced Marinette to dozens of people. A few designers, models, artists, business moguls, celebrities, you name it. In return, Marinette stayed with Chloe and endured tedious conversations she had to engage in for her parents' sake. Chloe would never admit it, but having the baker girl there was nice, it made the evening slightly less unbearable.

For the bluenette, it was great exposure into the fashion world. She got to meet several of her idols and make connections with influential people. People started to hear about her designs, many of them admired the dress she wore that showcased her budding talent.

Style Queen herself was thrilled to see her there. Chloe had let her mother know who she was bringing once Marinette was invited, of course, but Audrey was still happy to see her favorite young designer.

At the end of the evening, Marinette and Chloe rode back to the Dupain-Cheng bakery together. When the limo pulled to a stop, Marinette started to get out, then paused. "Thank you so much for everything Chloe. I know you don't like me much, but tonight was so much fun and I'm so grateful that you introduced me to so many people. And thank you for inviting me to come with you, even if it was just to tick off Lila." Marinette gushed, honestly honored by Chloe's thoughtfulness, even if it was caused by spite.

"Yeah whatever, you're welcome Dupain-Cheng, this doesn't mean we're friends, okay?" Chloe grumbled.

Marinette smiled. "Good night, Chloe." She closed the door before Chloe could respond, and walked into the bakery.

----

When Marinette went to bed that night, she went to sleep with a happy buzz in her chest, Tikki nestled beside her on the pillow.

Alrighty then, I guess that’s Chapter 2 done! I hope y’all liked it!! And that should also be the end of these super short chapters, the next one will definitely be a lot longer, and will hopefully be posted sometime tomorrow?? I love you guys, thanks for all your support!

@agentofscifi

#miraculous #miraculous fic #marinette #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #adrien salt #alya cesaire #alya salt #nino lahiffe #lila rossi #lila salt #chloe bourgeois #chloe deserves better #chloe redemption #chloe redemption fic

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choibinn3 · 4 years ago

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GET IT TOGETHER, JUNGWON!!

[ nine. hehe ]

series masterlist

⋆·˚ ༘ * in which jungwon had meant for that love letter to go to yeri, and not you—her bff. for some reason though, he finds that with each moment he spends together with you he's closer and closer to forgetting all about that damn letter.

no song for this chapter!

WRITTEN PORTION. 2.1k

also partially unedited, sorry if some things don't make sense or are confusing T_T

—

The bell rang.

You made eye contact with Jungwon across the room, and yet his brown pools nervously flitted towards Yeri's direction instead. They were President and Vice President though, so you didn't question much. She was packing up her bag, and had sent you a small smile.

"I'll see you next class, ok?" she said, "Make sure you eat a full meal before work."

You grinned at her. "Got it! I hope you have a good time with whatever you said you were doing, sorry I couldn't eat with you today."

Being the only two people in your friend group with the same lunch period, you usually sat with her for it. Talking about classes, chatting mindlessly, idly looking around the cafeteria for people you knew was fun only when it was with her.

"It's fine," she replied, waving off your apology and placing her notebooks away. "It's your first day with a boyfriend, I want you to be happy."

You appreciated her genuine gladness for your own happiness so much, you could barely hold it in. You wrapped your arms around her, sending her stumbling a bit with your weight. "Woah, YN!"

Having someone so positive, so supportive, and so authentic as Yeri around you for so long had definitely brightened your outlook on life. Such a friend was a one in a lifetime chance, and yet you lucked out. You just hoped she thought the same of you too.

"Thank you! I love you so much!" you exclaimed into her shoulder.

She released a giggle, patting your back with one hand as if to ease you down. "It's the bare minimum of friendship, YN. I just hope that Jungwon doesn't hurt you."

The tone in which she said it felt more serious than it usually was, which was a bit odd. You understood her concern though, of course your friend wouldn't want you to be hurt! And yet, everyone and their mother knew that flower boy Yang Jungwon would be the least likely person to do such a thing.

You loosened your arms a bit, tilting your head at her confusedly. "Why would Jungwon hurt me..? You know he's too nice for that!"

You knew that Jungwon and Yeri had definitely gotten closer to each other since the Student Council elections, but your faith in Yeri had outshined any insecurities or suspicions that could've ever formed. She had definitely talked frequently to him, especially with all those times they've had to stay after school for paperwork, so you would've thought that she'd know Jungwon's personality by now.

She took ahold of your arms, smiling at you before wrapping her own limbs around your form. Gahh, hugs from Yeri! You giggled into her shoulder again, from where your face had buried itself into. "I know, I know. I'm just being worried, I think."

You nodded. "I get it, thank you."

Yeri and the rest had always been like this. Even though Niki would act disgusted towards your displays of affection, he loved it when you made time for him. Heeseung too, actually. Yeri and Heeseung were both equally protective of Niki and you, even though Yeri was your age.

Since the day you had became friends she was the one looking out for you. Not to say you were irresponsible, but because she was just naturally a protective person. It was a quality you and many others admired about her—her loyalty to her friends.

"Remember that guy that was obsessed with you? Back in middle school?" she muttered.

You hit her arm playfully, and she let you go. "He wasn't obssessed!" you insisted, "I thought the snacks were cute!"

Yeri laughed. "Ok, whatever you say, but he was always buying you stuff. Can't believe you turned him down, though."

Your eyes glanced towards Jungwon, who was waiting by the door with his hands in his pant pockets. The large mass of students filtering out of the opening had covered his figure at times, blocking your view when they did, and yet you knew you could point him out in any large crowd. He stood out in a way that had you nervous all over again.

"Yeah well," you started, looking away and instead down towards your shoes bashfully, "I told him I liked someone else, and now we're just buddies."

You slung your bag over your shoulder as Yeri decided to nudge it. "Wonder who that could've been," she teased, and you let out a indignant whine.

"You don't have to wonder!"

She pinched your cheek, and you pretended to attempt to bite at her finger playfully. As the both of you exited the doorway, you sent a smile towards Jungwon.

The brief eye contact made him look away again, for whatever reason, you didn't know. "I'll see you in the cafeteria, right?" you asked, a bit hopefully. Yeri stopped beside you.

He fidgeted a bit, nodding his head. "Yeah, I'll find you there."

You grinned at him, and went onto your tippy toes. Jungwon's large brown eyes widened, and he almost leaned back when you planted another chaste (burning) kiss onto his cheek. Again?! You're kidding!

Neither of you knew how relationships worked, but were you sure a kiss on the cheek could be considered the first step? He had to hold his breath, otherwise he would've made a noise.

"Ah—" Like the previous time, you moved away too quickly for him to have comprehended the situation fully—or to say anything.

Your bag slightly jostled as you promptly walked down the hallway. The figure of your back going further and further down, becoming smaller and smaller as he stood there once again. He held onto his cheek. The ghost of your lips were still there, faintly, but the touch was evidently still imprinted into his mind. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to get used to that.

As you left, Yeri looked over towards him. Her smile was devoid, which was the first odd thing, and suddenly she grabbed his wrist—the one still tracing your kiss.

Jungwon looked after at her shocked, but she provided no explanation as she dragged him along with long, big strides. "What are you doing?"

"I said it'd be quick, you have to get to YN, right? Lunch with them?" She turned her head to the side, awaiting an answer.

"They told you?" he asked, but of course they told her. You were best friends. "I mean yeah, nevermind. I do."

He was going to tell you about the misplacement of the letter, too.

With how fast Yeri was rushing them both, they made it to the Student Council room much quicker than they would've if they had walked casually as they had done before. The windows of the Council room were open, the long curtains blowing with the passing wind.

The room was fairly old, not yet upgraded as the other classroom in the Hybe building were. They still had gray, cloth curtains connected to their windows, and Jungwon had found the curtains annoying when they decided to brush against his face while he was working.

Still, he found the sun and its brightness too pretty to try and close the windows. As he looked at them, Yeri had made a point to shut the door.

Jungwon glanced over in time to see her lock it, too. If he wasn't anxious before, he was now. "What did you want to talk about?" he inquired, placing his bag down.

No answer. He looked up, and blinked at her as she said nothing, just staring at him with her head tilted.

She took a step forward (he took one back, he had to), and another (his sneakers squeaked against the polished floor), and another, and another (Jungwon stumbled a bit, feet confused with his backwards direction), and more until—

Jungwon's back collided roughly with the wooden surface behind him, making an aching pain build upon the lower part of his body. Before he could even think about the spreading heat, Yeri had already slammed her hands on either side of the desk, shocking him into straightening back up.

She was close.

Not closer than you were, but close enough to where he was panicked on where to look. They had shared such a proximity before. Only once, but it was still near. He had leaned over to take a look at some paperwork on her desk, and her face was inches away.

He didn't notice her lashes though, nor her bright eyes like he did with you.

"I called you here today to speak to you," she began. Her voice was steady, calm, confident. Whatever she was planning to say, she had either rehearsed it or was steeled in her resolve.

"A-About what?" A stutter. Not good. He hadn't meant to stutter, so he just gulped down his next nervous words.

"About YN."

All of a sudden, Yeri had surged forward. Her stands of hair had flown with her, falling off her shoulders and hanging over Jungwon. Even though he was taller than her, he had to lean back to not come in contact with any part of her skin.

He held his breath again, like he did with you, but because he was terrified he'd accidentally breathe on her face.

Her eyes had narrowed. Yeri's eyes never narrowed. They had always been slightly curved from a smile, or fondly closed in thought, but never once had they even become close to those dangerous slits on her face.

Was this the same person he knew? What had initially drawn him to her was her sweetness, so how could she look so stone cold (read: terrifying) in this moment?

"Look, I know we're kind of close and all, but YN was my first friend and one of my only long-standing friendships since I was 9 years-old." Jungwon couldn't take her gaze, so he turned to look out the window as she spoke.

"They've been my rock ever since I started having trouble with my parents, and was always supportive of everything I did. YN is self-sacrificial and diligent in a way you'd only notice if you were friends with them, and observant to the small details, playful when you need them to be, and highly emotionally empathetic—"

She paused, as if finally noticing Jungwon's attempts to distract himself.

"—I'm talking to you here." His eyes snapped back towards her face at the harshness of the tone she used, and a bead of sweat formed at the back of his neck. Ok, never trying that again. "You're not a bad person, Jungwon. I know you're not the type to hurt someone like that, but I'm not taking that chance. YN is a very sensitive individual, ok?"

Yeri waited, long enough for the frightened boy in front of her to get the memo. Eventually, he nodded.

"Good. So don't you ever attempt to hurt them—actually, even if it was a mistake, I couldn't care less. I will make sure you won't live past the age of 30. You won't even be alive to see your grandchildren, Yang Jungwon."

To make her point clear, she turned her glare burning. He could feel it through his soul. Such a stare would generally leave his heart palpitating, and it was surely, but he'd be an idiot if he didn't know the difference between it beating in fear and from affection. Right then, it was fear.

As if she was finally satisfied, Yeri leaned back from the cornered Student Council President in front of her, and took several steps backwards.

"Take this as my blessing for your relationship," she offered, hand coming to give a small pat at his shoulder. It took every fibre of his being not to flinch. He did Taekwondo for God's sake, what was with him?

The words hadn't come out of her mouth, but it was silently spoken from one party to another. This wasn't just a blessing, this was a warning. A threat too, all in one.

Yeri took it upon herself to exit the room first, even making sure to close the door gently as to not disturb anyone around them, and Jungwon's legs took him to his Council President seat—because if he didn't take a seat, he was sure he'd faint somewhere along the way back.

Kim Yerim had just threatened him like an overprotective Mob Boss whose child had just gotten their first boyfriend. Kim Yerim, his crush, the girl he had been pining over since they had both been elected for Council positions, Kim Yerim—who he had apparently not known enough about.

Outside of the room, Yeri was making her way down the hallways, checking messages on her phone as she did so.

(10)! unread messages from Heeseung!

All with the same premise. What did you talk to Jungwon about? What did you say? Yeri? Where are you?

She should've known Jungwon would tell his other friends, it was only natural he would. I'll deal with that later.

She tucked her phone back into her skirt pocket, unaware of the frantic footfalls of someone running down the hallways in the opposite direction.

—

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TDLR: you kiss his cheek again, yeri drags jungwon to the stuco room, yeri will make sure jungwon wont live past the age of 30 :D

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i hope this was worth the wait you scoundrels

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