#Which can be simplified to “it's about finding the truth of life”

[subconsciousmysteries]

Oh yeah it just occured to me...

This "counterphobic 6" "I'm full of shame about being a 6" *typing everyone who acts embarrassing or annoyingly as 6* nonsense was probably invented by a lot of bitchy ass 3s. Struggling with their 3 -> 6 line and hating on their integration type as we all do.

Every 3 sees 6 as a massive loser type and a shameful thing to be. Because 6s *gasp* believe in conspiracy theories and they even *faints on chaise* talk about them in public sometimes! How embarrassing to be a human being that speaks the truth! See if you're an image type and you have the vice of Deceit this makes sense.

Also part of speaking the truth is talking about your earnest feelings and how your vulnerable humanness is being violated by the corruption in the world. Another big no-no thing for 3s.

[localcatmutt]

OTHERHEARTED

What does it mean to be otherhearted?

Otherhearted is a term primarily used in the therian/otherkin community that means “to identify WITH a non-human animal/creature/being.” You may have a deeply rooted connection/relation to it, and experience shifts or traits similar to the species, BUT not identify AS it. For example, I experience many bear traits and shifts, I feel a deep connection to these animals and identify WITH them, rather than identifying AS them. The “as” or “with” are very important to distinguish a theriotype/kintype from an otherhearted “identity”.

Another common term that holds the same meaning is kithtype. The etymology of the word “kith” originally means familiarity (not family), or something/someone you are connected/close to. Then the word “type” refers to what kind of identity it is (which is kith in this case). 

To simplify the difference between kintypes and kithtypes; kin (to identify as/to be) and kith (to identify with/to be like).

Importance of Otherhearted

In the community people tend to showcase their theriotypes over kithtypes. They are held at a higher standard, and they are viewed as more important when it comes to our identity as a whole. But that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, being a therian and being otherhearted can share most of the same experiences. You can indeed have shifts from kithtypes, mental and phantom. Being otherhearted can impact your life just as much, and you can wear all the same gear as a therian. Both are a part of your identity. Kithtypes can be just as prominent as kintypes.

The questioning process can be all the same as well. 

Belonging in the Community

People who are otherhearted are just as valid as therians, and belong in our community all the same. We all identify as, with or simply connect to animals in different ways than people who aren't in our community. Our animal hearts, minds and souls are what connects us. Not the labels. Therians, otherkin, otherhearted, coping identities/coping links… they all belong.

As I have said before, these all share similar or same experiences. Any of us can wear gear, do quads, make posts, educate or share our identities. The sole differences are the origin of these identities, and whether you identify as or with the animal/creature/being (or if it's a voluntary identity like in the case of coping links, which I will eventually address in a separate post). 

Confusing the two

It’s easy to feel lost when we’re trying to figure out what we are, and where an identity stands. Is it a theriotype? Is it a kithtype? Is it a cameo? It can be quite the confusing process. Although I think that if people knew how important being otherhearted is, they might find it easier to understand if they're kith or kin. I mean, in the end the major difference is just… are you LIKE the animal? Or ARE you the animal? Shifts don't immediately mean theriotype, so I think that's where most of the confusion lies.

Quick definition of cameo for those who don’t know of them : Cameos are simply shifts that can suddenly come and go, that arent from a known kintype. They may make a brief appearance in your life. Think of the actual word “cameo” that is used for actors who make sudden appearances in movies, and may bring an element of surprise to viewers. 

I am otherhearted

I have six primary kithtypes. Each has different levels of relevance/importance to me, but are still very important to who I am as a whole. These kithtypes are; Canines (coyotes and jackals especially), Kermode Bears/Black Bears, Ravens, Snakes, Giant River Otters and Arthropods as a whole. It's a lot, but over the years, deeply rooted connections to these animals have planted themselves into my identity. I have shifts, behaviours and traits just like them!

Sometimes I even feel confused because of how prominent they can become. 

Well, that’s all for now! I thought it would be important to talk about otherhearted identities for a change. Its not shared enough and I think that spreading more information could help people figure out experiences more easily.

Hope you enjoyed!

Last note - If I made spelling errors or definition errors let me know. Everything is based on research, and what I've been learning throughout the years I've been in the community. I have been active here for more than 7 years, and have been on many different platforms including Instagram, Amino, Tumblr, Discord groups and a few Forums. So I don't only explore newer information, but also older ones. 

[briebysabs]

I’ve been deliberating for a couple days now and have decided to discuss in-depth about Kim Dokja and the tendencies of putting his life on the line. For most of the novel, I was split on whether I should view KDJ as a self-sacrificial bastard or a suicidal character. And by the end, I’ve reached the conclusion that he is both.

Before I elaborate further, it should be noted that while we all meme about KDJ’s dying count, he actually isn’t that careless with his life. What I mean is he sacrifices himself usually as a last resort, plans A to F didn’t work and it’s the only option left to hope for kimcom’s safety-ditch effort. Usually. We’ll circle back to that when we bring up OD. But his sacrifices are always done as granting his companions salvation, utterly blind to how they feel about it. But to understand his constant need to do this you have to first start with where he learned how to love. Lee Sookyoung’s love was sacrificial, she’d take the brunt of her husband’s rage to shield KDJ, she’d take on blame for his death and be incarcerated for years so Kim Dokja won’t discover the truth. All of this, in my opinion, unbeknownst to KDJ, imprinted onto him this interpretation of love. As nobody else until the scenarios began had loved him (Yes HSY technically but he doesn’t know that). Which gives the irony that multiple characters KDJ resent in the story such as Kim Namwoon, his mother, the constellations are ultimately revealed to be reflections of himself.

Another component to his self-sacrificing is “Kim Dokja the reader”. I’m not going to dive deep into how orv interweaves dissociation and escapism into its narrative, I’ll do that some other day. But KDJ views himself as the reader, an outsider, the sole member in the audience watching the story unfold before him. Yes he grants commentary, the players notice and acknowledge his existence, but he isn’t part of the play. So if he decides to step out of the auditorium for a while, if he decides to leave a bookmark where he left off and close the book, nothing should change. The story will continue in his absence, the characters cannot possibly miss him because Kim Dokja was not a character. He was not part of their world so even if he’s gone, the ending will still happen. And that is something I want to stress here.

KDJ says “he wants to see a certain story’s epilogue”. Specific choice of words, “see”. He doesn’t say he’ll be part of it,that he’ll be with them, or any close variation of those phrases.

This is where I want to diverge to talk about KDJ's suicidality. You can say “Ok then, KDJ has a clear goal in mind to reach the ending he desires. Yes he may feel the need to step out of the story every now and then, but he does so reluctantly. So obviously, he doesn’t want to die.” And you wouldn’t be wrong really but that simplifies it to an overwhelming degree. That’s how I initially thought of it until I realized how complicated it actually is. Because most people who deal with suicidal thoughts aren’t searching for death but rather feel there’s no other choice. It often isn’t as clear cut as 1863 YJH who, anyone that read this arc will say with certainty that he was suicidal. Yes KDJ isn’t chanting in his mind over and over that he wants to die but why does he want to live? To see the proper ending of a web novel that stopped him from attempting again to begin with. Over the course of orv he finds people he loves and who love him back deeply. People he longs to live for but despite that because of the disconnect between them, his self-loathing, accompanied with what I said before, believing he has no other way out of these threatening situations. Yeah it’s to save his companions but in the end Kim Dokja still feels the need to die. Even if you do not see KDJ as a suicidal character, it is undeniable that so much revolving him, the impact it has on those who care for him, and the visceral descriptions used to convey their thoughts, is a direct metaphor for that.

Or in a few cases, straight up what’s going on and now we arrive at what I think was the final straw for Kim Dokja. Meeting the Oldest Dream. For me, this is THE scene of orv. The biggest twist and what finally irreparably broke KDJ. Prior to this, Kim Dokja had become the “Enemy of the story” but it was unlike his previous dances with death. This time he truly had no intention of dying, he wants to be a part of the ending with his companions, he understands now that his sacrifices do hurt them. That according to him “I, someone of no redeeming quality, could be loved by the others.” That he is a character and that just maybe, he does deserve to live happily ever after with them. And then Kim Dokja meets a 15-year old boy with the same face as his, doodling in a notebook his ideas for Ways of Survival and a notification tells him to ‘Please end the Oldest Dream’. All of that progress is shattered in an instant.

KDJ tries to excuse himself by recalling his promise to SP to kill OD but we all know if that was any other kid, he would not have tried to kill them. He would’ve hesitated much more, he’d look for a loophole, he would’ve tried talking which is his biggest strength for every corner he gets into. Killing them would not be the first option but now it is. Because this isn’t an instance of sacrifice anymore, KDJ is sick of himself. OD is a presence that confirms KDJ’s worst fears. That he’s meant to be weak and pitiful and alone, that he was always an outsider, that he unintentionally causes pain and misfortune to people he loves, that everyone would be perfectly fine and better even without him. And Kim Dokja is the physical manifestation of them: a monster. And there’s only one way to get rid of this monster.

The chain of events from him swinging his sword at OD, trying to stab himself with the blade only for YJH to stop it desperately with his hand, everyone restraining and begging him to stop, KDJ crying and screaming for SP + the other Outer Gods to kill OD. Everyone else is forgiving him and KDJ is only thinking of getting a blade.

This is Kim Dokja’s relapse. It’s real, it’s harrowing, and he never recovers from it. He reaches the conclusion that he has to be alone, it’s his atonement, it's what he deserves. So he splits himself 49-51. I interpreted this when I first read it as presenting 49% of what you believe people want to see. More real than a facade but it’s not the true you. The true, fucked up version of who you are is trapped in a prison of your making, trapped in a darkness you feel you don’t deserve to escape. Which is why it’s so powerful that KimCom went after that 51%. They didn’t want just their version of KDJ, they wanted everything KDJ is including the larger side of him that he wishes didn’t exist. But the plan fails, they managed to turn that full stop into a comma but they couldn’t save KDJ. Because you can’t drag someone out of that train, out of that mentality, you can’t force someone to love themself. All you can do is reach out to any corner, every worldline you can and let them know you’ll always love them. That you’ll always love every aspect of their story and hope that perhaps one day, they’ll accept your hand and believe it.

[ID: Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint art by Blackbox: first of Kim DOkja smiling, seen through a space in a bookshelf, and second of astronaut Yoo Joonghyuk floating upside down as letters float around him. End ID]

[so-idialed-9]

It's been over two weeks since Liam, and I'm...still not that OK. And I don't know if I will be. It hit me so much harder than I imagined. It still feels like we are in the wrong universe. This never should have happened. So this is just a rant about how I am feeling, in case you are feeling it too. Please, don't forget Liam. And don't let hangers-on steal his truth again.

I find relief and joy seeing videos and photos of Liam, or reading fanfiction about him. Thinking of him as joyful and silly and complex and loved and having challenges he can triumph over...we should never lose that. I never want him to be erased. I'm glad that wasn't stolen from us.

Seeing the fandom come back together, new people fall in love with Liam, and Directioners not let his entire life story be simplified or tragically recast or the bullshit narrative they tried to place on him, has been mixed.

On one hand, I'm deeply grateful Directioners were cultivated to analyze the shit out of PR-spun industry bullshit and know exactly how to undermine it LOUDLY. Without that, the sloppy, contradictory, false narrative about Liam would've been fully accepted. And now it never will be no matter how hard they try.

But I'm also sad because I would give anything for Liam to have had five minutes in a world that openly adored him as much as he deserved. See him bashful and glowing as people raved about his voice, dance moves, leadership, songwriting abilities...his warm eyes and cuddly affection and kindness to so. many. people.

I feel rage thinking about how Liam was FUCKING TELLING THE TRUTH about everything. He told the truth when he said the band was formed around him, that Simon promised him. He told the truth about leading the band - ten seconds of watching This Is Us shows that. He told the truth about Zayn's lack of parental support especially from his father, which must've impacted him severely. He told the truth about the industry and what he lived through. And people unfollowed and laughed at him, made him into a joke, but he was telling the truth the whole time.

And now, my biggest fear is that we could lose another member. I'm very worried about Zayn but almost afraid to not worry about the others as much. I know that all my worry isn't helping anyone and that feels worse, that there's nothing I can do.

And I fear that soon, people will stop paying attention and forget him all over again. Or let his story get swallowed up by people who never did anything but opportunistically live off of him.

[rrxnjun]

dancing in my backseat ✲ l. donghyuck

pairing. film student! donghyuck x film student! fem! reader starring. uchinaga aeri genre. college au, acquaintances to lovers. fluff, comedy, suggestive warnings. mentions of alcohol and weed, swearing, sexual innuendos word count. 24k (24.047) a/n. please dont hate me for the fact that this does not have any expected smut in it i tried and it felt too awkward i just COULDN'T. also this fic doesn't fit the image of it i had in my head at all but i actually kind of prefer this version over the prev idea i had anyway <;3

playlist. marvelous - wallows / crash my car - coin / test drive - ariana grande / streets - doja cat / no manners - superm / feather - sabrina carpenter / AEAO - dynamicduo / wet tongue - thomas headon / car crash - eaj / delicious - the boyz / but i like you - boynextdoor

there are only a few things in which men value their social status; one of them being the number of girls in their bed, the next one their rank in league of legends, and lastly, their cars— or— where you would never fuck a guy without a driver's licence.

✲ PART 3 OF THE SIMPLIFY ROMANCE SERIES ✲

If anyone asked you about your relationship with Lee Donghyuck, you’d scoff at them and simply state that the resident gemini was your moral enemy. Was that true? No. No, of course it wasn’t– there was nothing this man has done in his life to get on your bad side, and you truly don’t feel any hatred towards him, but at the end of the day, it’s always easier to say this than to explain the exact feelings you have towards the male without sounding at least a bit overly-dramatic.

See, you don’t hate Lee Donghyuck; you don’t think he’s your enemy either– you just find him absolutely, excruciatingly annoying.

And it’s not his personality, no– although you do admit that the way he carries himself and has such high mind about himself is quite alarming– the way your toes curl and the hair on your body stands up, all alert in sheer ick and disgust, has nothing to do with his ego and everything to do with your experience with the man. 

The first time you find Lee Donghyuck intensely annoying is when you get a text one day (having acquired his phone number from one of the class group chats, since the two of you major in the same program), at 9 in the morning, approximately 15 minutes before you have to leave your apartment to get to your fist class of the day. The man picked the wrong time to bother you, since it was Monday, of all days– the beginning of the week always manages to rile you up just because it exists in the first place– and you could give him the benefit of the doubt and say that it wasn’t his fault at all and you woke up grumpy already, but the events that happened after made you so deeply disturbed and annoyed to your core that there truly wasn’t any other word left in your vocabulary to describe Lee Donghyuck than the adjective already mentioned – annoying.

lee donghyuck (film theory class) – hi im in a crisis lee donghyuck (film theory class) – can u pls throw some toilet paper lee donghyuck (film theory class) – we ran out and my roommate already left for class lee donghyuck (film theory class) – pleaaaaase

Staring at the texts appearing on your phone screen in a hurry, you stop in your tracks and furrow your brows at the contact name in confusion. The truth is, you haven’t spoken to Lee Donghyuck that many times– you just know that he’s friends with your friend Lee Yangyang from high school and you two meet occasionally at the said friend’s gatherings. Plus, you had a discussion or two about the beauty of Quentin Tarantino movies when you met at orientation in freshman year, and that's also when you learned that he’s your neighbor; in fact, the window to his flat's bathroom and his very own bedroom face yours. But that’s about as far as it goes when it comes to your closeness. You’re not familiar enough with him to text each other or to think of each other in a time of need, so to have his first texts to you be about him being out of toilet paper is a thing to really dwell on to fully understand the extent of the bad impression this man had on you.

you – what the fuck

lee donghyuck (film theory class) – just open the window and throw me some lee donghyuck (film theory class) – i am good at catching

you – im in a hurry rn. gotta get to class

lee donghyuck (film theory class) – SO DO I why else do u think id be up this early lee donghyuck (film theory class) – so PLEASE throw me the damn toilet paper so im not late today

Shaking your head in disbelief at the conversation you’re currently having, too confused and tired to deal with it so early in the morning, you walk up to your room and look out of the window. Right opposite of you, not being further than 10 meters, if you’re being absolutely exact, is Lee Donghyuck’s head popping out from the bottom rim of his bathroom window, seemingly still sitting on the toilet. The look in his eyes is desperate as he clasps his hands together and mouths “Please!” at you, his face forming into a truly humiliating scowl that makes you wonder if he's truly done with what he'd been doing on the toilet only a few minutes prior. 

Sighing, you turn on your feet and escape your room– not noticing the absolutely disturbed and mortified face Donghyuck’s pulling behind your back, thinking you abandoned him and took off for class– and you truly can’t believe yourself when you walk into your own bathroom and take the half-used roll of toilet paper off the stand, murmuring a silent “Fucking hell” under your nose as you walk back to your bedroom and open up your window wide. Donghyuck’s eyes light up now, as if he was a kid under a Christmas tree about to receive a gift from Santa.

“If it falls to the street, I’m not getting it!” you yell after the boy, seeing as he eagerly nods and ushers you with a wave of his hands.

“Just throw it and I’ll be sure to catch it!” he nods, waiting for you to start your career in the new twist on baseball– a sport you’d call a toilet roll throw against the street. His eyes seem focused, knowing this is his only opportunity at wiping his ass this morning (why neither of you thought of suggesting to use the shower instead, you don't know to this day– perhaps it was too early in the morning for such complex strategies), when you surprisingly do your best at aiming for his window– thank god you both live on the same floor– and throw the roll across the alleyway, the paper unwinding only slightly before it lands on the floor of Lee Donghyuck’s pearl white bathroom.

“Thank you so much, you are my savior!” he yells, his head disappearing from the window, leaving you alone in your room to watch the commotion. When nothing happens for a while, you only shake your head in disbelief once again, deciding your job here is over and you can finally take off for your dreaded lecture.

“I’ll get going!” you scream into the void, scratching the back of your neck, aimlessly. 

“Mhm! See you later!” 

Nodding to yourself, you sigh, closing the window and doing a double take as you’re about to leave your flat for class, hopefully still on time. In disbelief, feeling the second-hand embarrassment seeping to your bones, you put on your shoes at the entrance and swear to yourself that you’re never gonna answer any of Lee Donghyuck’s texts ever again.

The previous scene already established that you’re no stranger to second hand embarrassment. I’m sure all of you have experienced it before– seeing someone desperately flirt with your friend, knowing that they’re not interested… Watching a drama and being absolutely grossed out with the script, wondering how the actors got convinced to take on the role… Hearing someone say an absurd answer in class… There are many, for sure, and the list could just keep going. You saw it with your own eyes as well, when your friend Choi Beomgyu tried hard to impress a girl at the skate park and managed to fall off his skateboard mid-trick, tearing his jeans in the crotch area in the process. Or when your roommate Aeri got tipsy at the club and who she thought was a very fine gentleman to flirt with was actually her ex boyfriend. The list goes on and on.

What about first hand embarrassment, though? You’re sure you experienced it before as well, but if anyone asked you, you’d tell them you don’t remember any embarrassing stories. If it’s because you just don’t want anyone knowing about the shame in your bones or if you really hated those experiences so much you chose to bury them and extract them out of your memory, you won’t tell. You just won’t let the shame haunt you for any longer than it has to, that’s for sure. 

So when you walk home from the hairdresser one afternoon and you’re met with your roommate Aeri looking at you with lips pressed together, yet the corners tugging upwards in what you assume (and fully know) is her trying to hold back an amused laugh, you admit that your suspicions were indeed correct when you saw yourself in the mirror at the salon and you’re going to have to live through another embarrassing moment. One that will take days and weeks to outlive as well, since your hair doesn’t grow back overnight– and when you look into the mirror again, you’re terrified.

“Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing, it’s just… you look… well, you know, it’s just…” she mumbles, before she finally breaks into a loud laugh, standing behind you and examining the state of your hair in the mirror of your entrance hall with you, hands coming up to play with your strands and hold them up and down, brushing your bangs out of your face and ruffling the top– trying everything possible to find a single good hairdo with the haircut you have going on right now. “Oh babygirl… what did the do to your beautiful hair…” she mourns, the tone of her voice still amused, but now also kind of considerate.

“I told her I only wanted a trim,” you say, voice weak in what you realize is you holding back your tears and suppressing a mental breakdown, “how the fuck am I supposed to show my face to the world tomorrow?” 

Your roommate sighs at you, spinning you around so you no longer can see the disaster on your head, a pout forming on her face as she lightly shoves you deeper into the apartment. “At a second glance, it’s really not that bad, you know–”

“You don’t have to lie to make me feel better,” you cut her off, annoyed at her soft eyes.

“I don’t?” she looks at you, shocked irises hardening when she realizes you no longer need her sympathetic words. “Okay, thank god. Man, she fucked you uuup, leave a bad review like, right now. I’d cry myself to sleep if I got a haircut like that–”

“I take it back, I liked your lies better,” you roll your eyes at her, walking over to the kitchen to fix yourself a glass of water to calm down your racing heart. The mental breakdown is still right around the corner and you realize you have to do everything in your power to stop it, because you already have a fucked up haircut– you can’t afford to show up to class tomorrow with puffy eyes and stress-induced pimples as well. Gulping down the cold liquid, you decide to hop into the shower (and avoid looking in the mirror at all costs, which is kind of difficult, since there's three of them just on your way to the bathroom). 

Meeting the encouraging eyes of your roommate once you come out of the shower, hair tied up in a towel so you don't have to think about it any longer, Aeri's words reach your ears in the living room. “Come on, I’m sure we can manage to do something with this tomorrow morning,” she smiles, “at least you have a pretty face. You can pull off everything!”

And the truth is, even though Aeri is nice, she’s not always right. You’re met with the fact the next morning as you watch your reflection in the mirror before you both leave for your shared Film theory class, standing next to each other defeated; one breathtakingly beautiful and one looking like the main character from Chicken little. You'd be fine with it if it was only you who was aware of your disastrous image, you would be able to deal with the shame and insecurity silently– but that's not what happens as you’re only reminded by the fact that other people, sadly, do perceive you, against your biggest wishes, throughout the whole day.

You’re reminded by the fact that your haircut is fucked up when Ji Changmin, the guy you share an Animation class with, sees you in the corridor and does the yikes face at you and his friend Sunwoo hides his face from you as they turn the corner. You’re reminded by the fact again when you see Jisu, the ever-so-sweet girl that majors in Finance, the girl that’s friends with everyone in this school, look at you with a considerate look, patting your shoulder when she passes you by before you enter your Film theory classroom. 

And most importantly, you’re reminded by the fact when you finally sit down– at the very back of the classroom, which is both valid and understandable, considering your current state– and you’re met with a thud of a backpack to your left, a figure sitting down on the usually vacant spot. Clenching your jaw and looking up to see its owner, mentally preparing yourself for the teasing that’s about to come, you meet eyes with a tall, sleek man, shirt tucked into his black jeans and a sigh of relief escaping his throat as he sits down on the uncomfortable chair. Lee Donghyuck waves at you in greeting when he notices you there, running his hand through his neatly styled hair.

“Hi there,” he breathes out, “can’t believe I made it on time. My alarm didn’t go off and my roommate couldn’t be arsed to wake me, even though our morning lectures start at the same time, so I had to run and my usual seat is taken already… hope you don’t mind me sitting here– woah.”

And here it is again– the feeling of absolute humiliation as the man scans you up and down, eyes bearing into yours with an unreadable look on his face. Is this how he felt when he texted you to throw toilet paper through his bathroom window? Or was he immune to the shame? 

“Did you get a new haircut?” he asks, squinting his eyes at you in question.

“Shut the fuck up,” you sigh, already annoyed with his antics– because frankly, you know what will come next. 

“That’s an interesting answer to a yes or no question,” he muses, chuckling to himself, “I’ll take it as a yes, though, but it seems like you’re not satisfied with the new look…”

“Woah. You should work with the FBI or something,” you mumble, averting your gaze from him and looking straight in front of you, praying for the class to start fast so you don’t have to interact with your neighbor any longer and listen to him make fun of you for your new look.

“Why? It doesn’t look bad at all,” he says, the tone of his voice fakely considerate, making you want to punch him in the gut, “It’s interesting. I like it. It shows off your eyes and your forehead more, since your bangs are way shorter now,” he says, putting emphasis on the fact that your bangs truly are half their original length– which wasn't your original plan at all– only riling you up more.

“Only thing left to add is that I have a massive forehead, isn’t it?” you ironically smile at him, and the male takes your word for it as his eyes focus on the exposed part of your skin, furrowed eyebrows and all, as he examines your features.

“Not massive, but it’s a little… like, I wouldn’t say–”

“Just don’t say anything, okay?” you sigh, cutting him off and folding your arms at your chest in a poor attempt at defending yourself.

“Geez, why are you so snappy? I was complimenting you, y'know,” he says, and if you were more stupid, you’d even believe him– the tone of his voice still sounds genuine, but that’s just the way your neighbor likes to deceive people, and you know that; you’ve seen it happen multiple times before. “It adds character.”

The comment makes you roll your eyes, all words taken off your tongue– you simply think there’s no use defending your atrocious haircut now (not that you tried defending it before, even you aren't that oblivious). Your gaze is focused anywhere but at your seatmate, counting down the minutes until the class starts and you're taken out of your misery for at least an hour and a half. Your Film theory professor is almost never late and now is the only day you’re content and happy about the fact, because it means you won’t have to listen to Lee Donghyuck for more than approximately 2 more minutes until the small, hunched over frame of your professor strides through the door. 

Still, you feel his burning gaze to the side of your face, and despite your best intentions, you snap your head towards him and bite at the annoying gemini.

“Take a picture, it will last longer,” you spit, scoffing at the male.

“Can I really?” he asks, and before you have a chance to disagree, his phone is shoved into your point of view and the shutter comes off, making you lounge after the man in a poor attempt at taking his phone away and deleting the first picture of your new hair ever taken. (Well, except for the one you took crying last night, with a peace sign and your tongue darted to the side against your mirror. You don’t need any more traces of your current haircut than that one.)

lee donghyuck (film theory class) – hi neigbor whatchu doin lee donghyuck (film theory class) – u have a car right

Squinting at the next text conversation with Lee Donghyuck, the first one since he asked you for toilet paper 3 weeks ago, you feel nothing more than pure confusion at the strange questions the man asks you in the middle of the night. It’s Friday evening and your roommate went out with a guy named Eric she met four weeks ago in the gym, and even though you were slightly concerned when she texted you to say she was staying over at his house for the first time, you only showed her support as you went to lay down with no other plans for your evening. Falling asleep to your midnight playlist playing in the background (thanking God for the smart feature that makes the music shut off after 30 minutes), it's completely understandable and predictable that the noise of an incoming text annoys you when you hear it only a few minutes after 2 in the morning. The fact that it’s your neighbor texting you, out of all people, only makes the fury in you bigger as you click your tongue and shoot him a quick text back.

you – what do u want

lee donghyuck (film theory class) – neighbor!!!!! lee donghyuck (film theory class) – you do have a car 

Staring at the text that just appeared on your screen, you sigh and decide to spill the truth, preparing for whatever request that’s about to come after you admit to the fact that you do, indeed, have a perfectly functioning vehicle parked behind the building.

you – yes 

lee donghyuck (film theory class) – perfect lee donghyuck (film theory class) – do u hav sm time on ur hands

you – im sleeping

lee donghyuck (film theory class) – veryfunny youre replying rn tho lee donghyuck (film theory class) – come on itsa simple request

Breaking your back just to decipher the words through the amount of typos Lee Donghyuck’s making, your annoyance only grows bigger. Has he always been a bad texter? You don’t remember him struggling as much when he was sitting on the toilet three weeks ago– his texts were absolutely clear and with 0 mistakes back then. Maybe he was in a more desperate situation back then, after all…

you – what do u want hyuck its late

lee donghyuck (film theory class) – can u drive me home

And here it goes– in the back of your mind, you somehow knew it was coming. There were only a few reasons why someone would ask if you owned a car, and judging by the fact that it was now 2 in the morning on a Friday night, your neighbor wasn’t trying to sell you a new vehicle just in case you didn't have one yourself. Getting a drive home would be the only logical request from someone asking if you owned a car– it would only be more logical if the person asking you was your friend, and not an acquaintance at best.

Staring at the screen of your phone, counting down from 10 to not snap at the ridiculous request, you watch as the device lights up with an incoming call. You don’t even have to look at the caller ID to know who’s calling, and despite your best assumptions, you pick up with no more thought given, waiting for the person on the other side of the line to speak first.

“Y/N,” he says, voice breathless. 

“Lee Donghyuck.”

“Can you please drive me home?” he asks, tone of voice lazy and tired, something about the dragging of his words hinting you that there’s more to the request than you’re grasping right now.

“Are you drunk?” you ask, right off the bat, to clear out any confusion. 

There’s a short silence on the other side of the line, one that hints that you’re completely right in your assumptions, but you still want to hear it from the guilty man himself. “Maybe a little,” he admits, snickering, “I was over at Yangyang’s and then he kicked me out and I… my legs hurt too much to walk home.”

Sighing loudly at the man’s antics, you shake your head in disbelief and clear your throat. “I don’t see how that’s my problem?”

“Oh, come oonnn,” he drags out, “it’s not that far.”

“Yeah, so I don’t see how you can’t walk back, then?” you mutter, rolling your eyes at the demanding tone in your neighbor’s voice. If it was anyone else, maybe, just maybe, you’d be on your way already. You never decline your friend’s requests for favors, since you know they’d do the same if you asked, but you don’t really see how Lee Donghyuck, a man you’re not even close to in the first place, could repay the favor. What on Earth was he thinking in the first place when he called you? Were you his last option? Is he out of his mind?

“Because my legs hurt, if you were paying attention, you’d know that I told you before–”

“I don’t really care,” you mutter, “this is not my problem, I’m ending the call now, goodbye!”

“Y/N!”

The tone of his voice is desperate. Laced in agony, even. Still, you don’t care as you cut off the line and close your laptop that's been your source of music during the late night, settling deeper into your sheets. This is not your circus, not your monkeys, and frankly, you don’t really care what happens to Lee Donghyuck on his way home from Yangyang’s house, no matter how drunk or high he is right now. The man has done nothing but annoy you in your short, 23 year old life, and you’re not going to change out of your pajamas just to drive a few miles to get your dumb neighbor back home.

You’re not going to lose your beauty sleep for this. No, not at all.

Still, your eyes only close when you see the light in Lee Donghyuck’s room go on and the shadow of his slouched figure safely hits his bedsheets, another smaller frame coming to close his door and shut the blinds off, turning the light back off. 

The next Monday, you find yourself sitting in your Film theory class alongside your roommate Aeri that’s currently snoozing in the middle of the lecture. You can’t really blame her, since she only got home from her romantic retreat (read as: hanging out at Eric Sohn’s house the whole weekend and having sex possibly on every surface of his little flat downtown) on Sunday evening, and you can only imagine that she didn’t have much sleep during her stay there. 

And the class was boring, to add another reason for your roommate's nap. It’s not like you weren’t interested in the theory behind every movie, like the topic itself wasn’t interesting– you quite enjoyed wondering about all the special details in each movie that complete the story and make the atmosphere pop just in the right way– but the professor currently standing at the very bottom of the auditorium is old enough to be there when the Lumiére brothers showed the first ever movie to the public back in the 19th century, and his age only matches with the monotonous style of his teaching. Which means that his voice is mellow, but close enough to a lullaby, and with the amount of issues you have when paying attention in general, the lack of focus caused by this only feeds your distraction during the lectures, resulting in you not really being the top of the class in this specific subject.

So when you hear the professor mutter something under his nose about a project in pairs you’ll have to submit until the end of the semester, you feel your heart drop down to your stomach, all alert. Suddenly, you’re 100% present, brain racking about all the possible solutions and ways you could go around this just so you could pass the subject this year. 

Because frankly speaking, at the moment, you’re failing the class. And if you don’t manage to get a good grade on this final project, you’re going to have to retake the class next year– and trust me, another year listening to the monotonous lectures won’t make you pass easier, since you can only imagine the boredom will only grow once you’re in this class the second year in a row and you'd already heard all of the lectures once before.

“What was that?” Aeri mumbles under her nose when she notices you staring at the front of the classroom with wide eyes, an expression close to one you'd wear after seeing a ghost (with the age of your professor, you might as well have). She often tells you you look like a deer in the headlights when you get shocked or stressed-out, and you can’t say that comment doesn’t make you insecure. Still, you can’t quite control it when you sigh and turn to your roommate with a distressed look on your face.

“We have a final assignment to do,” you mumble, “in pairs.”

“Amazing, we’re doing it together, then,” she yawns, stretching a little before slumping over the desk again, ready for round two of her nap. 

“Fuck no,” you quickly dart, looking at her with furrowed brows.

“What do you mean, no?” 

Sighing, watching as she opens her eyes and looks at you with an offended expression on her face, you shake your head in disapproval and lower your voice, careful to explain yourself. “Look, girl, I love you, you know that,” you assure, “but we are both failing this fucking class. And I can’t afford to do badly just because the both of us suck, because I am not retaking this atrocious class ever again, so I suggest that the both of us find someone with good grades to leech from and get this over with.”

Aeri squints at you, seemingly lost in thought– more so contemplating your master plan– before she leans back in her chair and cautiously looks around the room. “You have a point there.”

“See? It’s nothing personal,” you chuckle, seeing as your roommate nods to herself.

“Okay, I’ll flutter my eyelashes at Shotaro,” she turns to you, eyes bright with the newly made plan, “we’re both Japanese, so he’s not legally allowed to turn me down.”

Rolling your eyes at her comment, you only nod in approval to her idea. Shotaro was one of the best in this class, so you can imagine that working with him would satisfy your professor enough to let Aeri pass the class this year. The only thing left to do was find the culprit to your own plan– you needed to team up with someone good enough to at least make you get a D on your final. And since half of the class was just as good as you in this particular subject, there weren’t many candidates left.

Eyes scanning the crowd (thank god you chose to sit in the back again), your gaze lands on a particular man sitting a few rows under you, a little bit to your right. Helplessly searching through the flood of your classmates currently occupying the auditorium, you sigh to yourself in realization, already dreading what’s about to come when the class is dismissed and you hurriedly walk over to the only person that can help you now, before he escapes the university grounds and you’re going to have to shamefully text him or ring his doorbell this afternoon.

“Donghyuck! Wait!” you yell after him, legs taking you closer to the man in question, now standing still in the middle of the moving crowd, watching you in curiosity.

“What’s up, neighbor?” he asks with a lazy smile, the tug at his lips only making your blood boil and your insides tighten into a bundle of nerves. Everything about him was ticking you off, the slouch in his shoulders making you want to stand behind him and fix his bad posture and slap the back of his head so you no longer have to look at him standing like a hermit crab, the glint in his eyes making you want to curl your fingers into a fist and slam your hand against a wall. The seemingly strong emotions of annoyance run through your veins whenever you interact with Lee Donghyuck, it seems, but the senile voice of your professor keeps repeating itself somewhere in the back of your head throughout the whole interaction, and so you choose to take a deep breath in and out before you smile at the man and prepare your best speech– you can't afford to be picky with this any longer.

“Who are you doing the project with?” you ask innocently at first, trying to get some info out of him.

He offers you a suspicious look, but replies nonetheless. “I’m not sure yet,” he sighs, “I was thinking of chasing down Haknyeon, but you stopped me in my tracks…” he shakes his head at you, teasing. 

“Hmm, I see,” you mumble, more for the effect than for anything else, “well, what if we do it together?”

There aren’t many instances in which you could catch Lee Donghyuck completely silent. Now is one of them, though, as he watches you with wide, surprised eyes, furrowed brows and his plump lips slightly agape, breathing in a few times before he shakes his head as if to reset the system, snickering to himself. “Us two?”

“Yeah, why not?” you peep, shrugging.

“Look, respectfully,” Donghyuck starts, and you brace yourself for the impact, “your grades in this class aren’t as good as mine, and even though I’d love to do it with you, I don’t wanna be the one doing all the work and–”

“I’ll help!” you snap, maybe too urgently for your own liking. “I promise. I’ll do everything in my power, I just really need your help with this,” you plea, looking at him with what you pray are your best puppy eyes, seeing as the man in front of you chuckles at the expression and averts his gaze from you for a heartbeat, signaling that you were most likely unsuccessful at the attempt.

“Sorry, Y/N,” he shrugs, shaking his head at you, even going as far as taking one step away from you, “see, if you hadn't declined my call on Friday, maybe I’d take this offer as a way to repay the favor, but you know…”

“I threw you toilet paper before, Donghyuck, you can’t be shitting me right now–” you feel your blood boil at the note, the ever so familiar annoyance seeping back into your bones.

“That was nothing–”

“You seemed pretty desperate back then.”

“That was the past, sweetheart,” he chuckles, taking another step away from you, somehow overthrowing your annoyance with pure, embarrassing desperation as you chase after him and stop him with a swift motion of your hand, catching him by his wrist. He stares at you with a shiteating grin on his face, one he always uses to get a reaction from you, and somehow, you know this is all a game for him, a stupid tug of war, but you can’t help it– you are in a desperate situation. So if you need to say please to the man and humiliate yourself in front of him just to pass this class, then so be it.

“Please, Hyuck? Just this once, I swear I’ll make it up to you. Literally, say anything, I’m gonna do it, I just really need to pass this class,” you mumble, a pout forming at your lips as you clasp your hands together– much like he did back when you two communicated through the window of his bathroom– and you swear you can see the gears in his brain turning when he calculates his next move and tells you his answer.

“Anything?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” you nod, hoping that Lee Donghyuck still has some dignity in him and wouldn’t ask for anything that would make you uncomfortable. He’s annoying, sure, but he’s not a dick, after all.

“Okay, then,” he nods, tone of voice airy, underlined with laughter, “be my personal driver for the entirety of the project, then. I’ll do it if you drive me places,” he grins, and that’s when your composure falls.

“Absolutely not.”

“Well then, say goodbye to the grade!”

Putting your arm around the passenger’s seat headrest, twisting your whole body as you look back and reverse the car into the parking spot in front of the mall, you see the figure next to you still in its place, eyes alert and staring at you. “If you’re so terrified of me driving, why did you want me to do this in the first place?” you sigh, finally turning back to the front and turning the engine off once you're standing straight between the lines, satisfied with your job.

“That’s- that’s not it,” he clears his throat and gulps nervously, shaking his head. “Anyways, let’s go,” Donghyuck says, slapping his thighs like parents do when it’s time to leave a family gathering, grinning at you widely as he waits for you to get out of the vehicle.

“What do you mean, let’s go? I drove you here, I can go now,” you glare, not satisfied with the way your Wednesday afternoon was going. You only agreed to the deal on Monday, and Donghyuck already made you drive him home after class twice and also asked you to drive him to the school this morning. Having him constantly leeching around you and making you drive him places wasn’t exactly fun, since he always asked weird questions and made fun of your bored face at every red light, so you really, desperately, needed him to be gone already so you could head home and scream into your pillow to unwind the nerves. 

“Well, how am I supposed to get back when I’m done shopping?” he innocently asks, pouting at you. “My hands are gonna be full with bags and you’re gonna have to come pick me up, because that’s the deal, and I can’t afford to wait with my hands full until you get back here, so you might as well stay and come with me, so it’s convenient.”

“Nothing about this is convenient for me,” you mumble, but comply with his orders nonetheless. “Why don’t you get a car? Or take a bus back?”

“Buses smell and I don’t have a license,” he mutters, “besides, I have you now to be my personal taxi driver, so I don't need a car,” he shrugs, walking alongside you to the mall. 

His confession startles you, makes you halt in your step as the boy looks at you with defeated eyes, already knowing what’s next. This scenario has happened to him multiple times before– he’s best friends with Huang Renjun and Liu Yangyang, he’s in for a teasing at every single action of his that goes just slightly wrong– but to hear it from you will surely feel more humbling to the man. Closing his eyes as if to not see the grin overtaking your features, he sighs. “What?”

“You don’t have a license?” you tease, snickering. “For real?”

“No.”

“Why? You failed the test?” you ask again, catching up to the male and falling in with his quick pace, enjoying the fact that you now have the upper hand on him for once.

“Never really tried getting it in the first place,” he mumbles, shrugging. 

“Why?”

“I dunno,” he shamefully ducks his head, “it seems scary,” he adds, making you snort out at his confession.

“Fucking hell dude,” you laugh out now, swatting his shoulder in a teasing manner, “that’s so embarrassing, it’s not even really that difficult in the first place–”

“I don’t know what’s more embarrassing,” he cuts you off, tone of voice laced with frustration as he realizes you are a bit too amused at him admitting to one of his fears, “is it me not having a license or you driving me around because you're failing a class… Hm?” he asks, locking eyes with you, lips pressed shut into a straight line, and suddenly, your composures exchange. He won. Again.

“Anyways, let’s get going!” he smiles, dismissing the previous discussion as he tugs you by your hand into one of the stores right in the middle of the mall.

You should’ve already predicted that shopping with Lee Donghyuck would be exhausting. Not only did he demand to know your opinion on every single thing he tried on, he also wanted you to pick up something for him to try– as if driving him here wasn’t too much work for you as it was. All you wanted to do was walk back to your car and get away from him as soon as possible, but with the way he teasingly poked your sides every time you weren’t paying attention and turned to your phone to entertain yourself with some mindless scrolling on social media, you weren’t able to escape even mentally, no matter how hard you tried. 

“Why don’t you try something on?” 

“I’m not in the mood,” you glare, walking out of the last store in the whole entire mall, the sky behind the glass doors already dark from how late it’s gotten. You’re pretty sure it’s gonna close soon, but checking the time on your phone, you’re relieved to learn that you still have enough time to get boba from the stand at the entrance of the mall. You deserve a little treat after involuntarily hanging out with Lee Donghyuck the whole day, after all. Call it your girl dinner, or something.

“Taro milk tea with coconut jelly, please,” you smile at the tired barista behind the counter, noticing the way Donghyuck stands next to you and looks at the menu. You expect him to order a drink for himself as well, and surely, he doesn’t disappoint as he smiles at the girl, the tone of his voice sweet and considerate– so far away from the way he speaks to you on a daily basis– as he asks for his own drink.

“Will you pay together or separately?” she asks.

“Separate–”

“Together,” your companion cuts you off, grinning at you when you glare at the man, sighing at his antics.

“Come on, I already drive you everywhere, do you think gas is cheap? Now you want me to pay for your boba as well?” you whine, reaching for your wallet as you frown at the male, his confused eyes bearing into yours when he slightly nudges you from his way, offering the girl behind the counter his card instead. The action shuts you up, making the gears in your brain turn faster as you watch him in the action, and it doesn't fully register yet, but you're left feeling a bit taken aback and sheepish when the cashier hands him the receipt.

“I was gonna buy it for you as a thank you for the nice day, but now you’re making me look like I felt pressured to,” he sighs, shaking his head at your little tantrum. His actions still don’t register in your brain, though, his words resonating all the way through your ears to your Wernicke’s area and right back, hanging everywhere in the air of the mall, shock making your body still. Then, it hits you.

“Ah,” you gasp, feeling the tips of your ears burning with shame at the fact that you managed to ruin his nice gesture, your eyes scanning the space in a poor attempt to not look at him or the cashier still watching your exchange.

“Get your drink and let’s go,” he nudges you instead, rolling his eyes for good measure as he walks out of the mall, nearing your car in the parking lot.

“Look at this, look! Isn’t it funny?” Donghyuck hovers over you with his phone in his hand, giggling to himself as he tries to make you look at the screen. You don’t really know why he’s trying to get a laugh out of you, honestly, but he’s currently doing everything but that as you’re sat in his living room, legs plopped up onto the sofa and crossed in front of you, waiting patiently– but also kind of boiling on the inside out of frustration– for him to pay attention to you.

“Hyuck, I didn’t come here to watch Tiktoks with you,” you say, eyes sharp, tone of your voice cutting like razors– efficiently making him look up from his screen and meet your gaze with an amused grin, “I’m not really sure if you forgot, but I came to discuss the project,” you mutter, sighing.

“Jeez,” you see him roll his eyes, the energy around him still not shifting as he maintains his casual and unfocused composure, but you know that on the inside, he's enjoying the view– your angry face seems to be his most favorite thing to stare at recently, “didn’t know you lack a sense of humor.”

“What?” you look at him, confused, quite frankly, before you shake your head in disbelief at the comment. “You know what, just put the phone away for 5 seconds and finally talk to me about the project, smart boy, or else I’m not wasting my time here any longer and I’m leaving.”

“You’re acting as if you’re the one putting in work,” he mumbles, snickering.

“I will be putting in work when you tell me what to do!”

At your sentence, Donghyuck finally puts his phone back at the coffee table and shifts a little in his seat, facing you and scratching the back of his head, seemingly lost in thought. You let him, convinced that if you speak up and cut off his train of thought, the poor boy wouldn’t be able to get back to it again, waiting for him to be done with his brain weaving so you can pick up on them and ride them out, seeming at least decently smart (or not completely stupid). When he finally speaks up, he licks his lips and shrugs.

“We just gotta pick a theme and do our best portraying it with no words in a 3 minute clip, right?” he asks you in reassurance, as if you were the most reliable source of information when it comes to this class and its assignments.

“Yeah,” still, you agree.

“Well, then we just gotta pick a theme and the rest will be easy,” he nods to himself, reaching back for his phone, which you swiftly take from his hold and hide behind your body. 

“Hey–”

“We’re not done talking about this! I’m not letting you use your phone, because you’re just gonna scroll on Tiktok instead of thinking about this,” you squint at him, twisting and turning in your seat as his hands try to sneak around your sitting figure and take the device out of your grasp. 

He seems determined as his arm lands on your elbow, a victorious grin smoothly swiped off his face when you sit on his phone and flash him a wide grin. “I’ll give it back when we have the theme down!”

“That’s an invasion of my privacy,” Donghyuck mumbles, and you roll your eyes at him, pointing a finger to his shoulder.

“That’s not what an invasion of privacy means, but whatever floats your boat…” you mumble, watching him sit back in his seat, defeated as his shoulders slouch and his gaze is glued to the wall in front of him. You’re not sure what’s so interesting about the white paint, but at least there’s not the noise of his phone filling your ears right now– you’re more than okay with silence, since you don't get to hear it often when Donghyuck is present. You would like it better if he spoke up and talked to you about the assignment, but if you had to choose between him being annoying and him being quiet, you think everyone knows which one of the two you’d prefer.

“So?” you test the waters after a while, seeing if your project partner decides to finally comply with your request and discuss the important matters.

“So? Do you got any ideas?” he teases, watching you with challenging eyes.

Clearing your throat, caught off guard at the request– you assumed he’d tell you exactly what to do and you just have to do it and follow his lead, essentially not putting in much effort and still being sure of passing the class– but it seems like Lee Donghyuck won’t let you off that easily. You should've expected it. Being difficult is his favorite hobby, after all.

“Well, you’re the smart one here, so…” you shrug, trying the method that always works on men– and that is praising them.

“So you’re saying you’re stupid?”

“If it works in my favor during this conversation, then sure,” you nod, smiling at him in irony. Hyuck gives you a defeated sigh, shaking his head at you before he clicks his tongue at you and finally gives in.

“Okay, so, I was thinking we should pick a theme that fits the current social struggles, but after hearing this, I don't think feminism is our best choice,” he mutters.

“Like you’d know anything about feminism–”

“What do you have me for?” Donghyuck sharply glares at you, clicking his tongue at you in pure offense. “I am a fan of Little women, I'll have you know, of course I’m a feminist.”

“Well, you must be a fake fan, since everything about this deal is just me majorly girlbossing,” you point out, trying really hard to prove your point.

“Are you even being serious right now–”

“Anyways,” you cut him off, “what were you thinking?”

The man sighs and shakes his head at you in disbelief, but still speaks up again nonetheless. “I was thinking, well, maybe we could pick something that would really play into the old man’s feelings, you know, so we get him all sentimental and moved to tears…” he starts off, tone of voice now completely serious, making him sound kind of smart– startling you in the process, “that leaves us with a few possible options. We could do something with the 18 hundreds, or… fishing? I heard he’s into fishing. Or we could do something more abstract and shoot something about youth, since he’s very old and this could get him nostalgic. Or!” he suddenly perks up in his seat, eyes wide and a disturbing grin sitting at his lips, “we could include nudity! He’s a man, after all… wanna shoot porn? We don’t need words for porn.”

In absolute disbelief, you stare at the man with eyes wide open, blinking a few times and taking a few seconds to yourself to process the monologue you just listened to. You knew he was absolutely insufferable, but you didn’t know he was this much of a dumb freak. 

Taking your silence for disgust, Donghyuck just nods to himself and purses his lips.

“Youth it is, then… I mean, nudity would be difficult to present in front of the class for sure–” he admits, pouting.

“Yeah, like that’s the only problem with that idea…”

Afternoon classes aren’t your favorite ones of the week and although you absolutely despise waking up early and having to commute to university while you’re still half-asleep and absolutely irritated, there’s nothing that infuriates you more than knowing you could be done with the day already, sitting at home and watching your favorite TV show, only if it wasn’t for the responsibility of having to stay at campus and sit through another hour and a half lecture on a Thursday afternoon, way too late for your brain to be working in those hours.

This is one of the only classes you don’t share with your roommate Aeri– which makes the lecture that more excruciating, since you don’t have anyone with you that you could gossip with about your classmates or friends from back home when it gets too boring and you can't bear sitting in silence and forcing yourself to focus anymore– but there is one person from your circle that you do share this class with, and yes, you already guessed it; it’s Lee Donghyuck.

You don’t know when you’ve gotten so close to the point where he sits in the vacant seat right next to you almost immediately, followed by his friend Ju Haknyeon who you’ve never even spoken to before, but he still does so nonetheless, every Thursday, just so he could annoy you with his only half-funny remarks to every other sentence that comes out of your Animation class professor’s mouth. 

“What are you doing this weekend?” you hear Haknyeon ask the devil sitting on your left, and trust me, you don’t really like listening to other people’s conversations (that’s a lie, you live for gossip. You just wish you knew the least amount of information about Lee Donghyuck as possible, because sometimes you learn fun facts you wish never joined your brain), but you can’t really help it this time, can you? Haknyeon doesn’t know what whispering is, and you’re convinced Donghyuck would love everyone to hear him talk and give him attention anyway. 

“Not really sure,” Donghyuck replies, “Renjun bailed on me, said he’s going to the shelter with his girlfriend again, so I was thinking, right? You know, I’d looove to go on a road trip, and it’s crazy, you know, because–”

The words coming out of his mouth instantly make you alert, snapping your head around to make eye contact with the man that’s already staring at you with a shit-eating grin on his face, knowing you’re listening to them talk. “Lee Donghyuck, I am not going on a road trip with you–”

“See, Y/N here is my personal driver for the semester, so she can’t really say no–” Donghyuck continues, enjoying the way your face distorts into a pained scowl, your hand coming up into your hair to tug at the roots in frustration.

“If you make me do this, I’m going to open your door while we’re going 120km/h on a crowded highway and throw you out so you die under the wheels of someone else and I don't face the consequences,” you propose, shaking your head in disbelief, your voice shushed due to you still not wanting to be heard by the whole classroom, but still loud enough for both of the boys to chuckle.

“Come on, I bet you’d have fun. I have the best playlists for road trips, you know,” Hyuck teases, poking you with the tip of his pen, to which you click your tongue and move a bit further away from the male. 

“The last time I drove you somewhere that was more than a 10 minute drive, you had Céline Dion on loop, so I don’t know just how believable this claim is.”

“That’s disrespectful to the legend Céline Dion is, dear Y/N, and I’d take it back before her ghost comes to haunt you at night.”

“Is she even dead in the first place?” you squint at him, at disbelief of his words.

“She’s not,” Haknyeon chimes in from the side, shaking his head at the both of you before he chuckles, “you two argue like a married couple.”

“I would rather die than to marry him–”

“See, Hak, Y/N just hasn’t realized she’s in love with me yet,” Hyuck adds, clicking his tongue at his seatmate, “but she’s gonna realize it somewhere during our 5 hour long road trip, I’m sure. Just wait, it’s gonna happen soon.”

The class gets dismissed somewhere in the middle of the argument, and as you’re gathering your things to go, you hear the two of them talk among themselves, not really including you in their conversation anymore (which you’re glad for, frankly). 

“Are you going home after class?” Haknyeon asks.

“No,” Donghyuck shakes his head in disapproval, and there it is– the shit-eating grin appears on his face when he initiates eye contact with you and snickers, “Y/N and I are actually getting fried chicken at this place downtown, since I got coupons– well, Renjun got coupons for free chicken from his uncle last week, but he doesn’t like chicken that much, so I stole them from him–”

“Huh?” you scowl at him, wondering if you heard right. “I’m not getting chicken with you.”

“Of course you are,” Hyuck announces, “the coupons expire tomorrow, so we gotta do it today. I know you’re not busy, come on.”

“I’d rather choke than to spend any more time with you than I already have today, Donghyuck. Go with Haknyeon,” you say, pointing to the clueless senior staring at the both of you in wonder.

“Yeah, go with me, man,” he shakes his head, “I like chicken.”

“Unfortunately, this offer only applies to people that have a working car that could drive me there, so in case you wanna get your shiny BMW fixed in the next 24 hours, I can save the coupons for you,” Hyuck chimes, smiling innocently at his friend.

“What are you even talking about?” you mutter, tone of voice pained.

“Look, do you wanna get out of the road trip on Saturday, or not?” he stares at you, his gaze flaming as you sigh more for him to hear than to get out your frustration– you learned long ago that it does nothing to calm you down, worse, it makes you even more infuriated.

“Woah, Donghyuck!” you exclaim, fake excitement written all over your features. “Chicken actually sounds so good right now!”

That’s how you appear in one of the fried chicken places downtown, your car parked in their tiny parking lot, with Donghyuck excitedly skipping towards the restaurant with the bunch of coupons in his hands. You don’t really know why he insists on spending time with you– he could get a bus here or drive with one of his other friends that own a car, and you’re certain you are not the only one on his list– so the whole interaction makes you slightly confused. Still, you enjoy the free meal– like any other broke college student would– and when Donghyuck eats, his mouth is usually shut, so you don’t find that many negatives in this whole thing, after all.

“What are you thinking of doing for the project, by the way?” you ask, wiping your greasy fingers on one of the napkins Hyuck had offered to you just a few seconds prior after noticing your dismay at the state of your hands. You don’t like it when you get dirty with food, but you’d rather not eat at all than to eat fried chicken with a fork, so you guess this is the price you have to pay.

“You keep talking about the project,” he shakes his head, chuckling, “don’t worry about it. I have it covered.”

“What do you mean, you have it covered? This is supposed to be teamwork. Just because I drive you around, it doesn’t mean I won’t put my hand in– you’ll complain too much if I don’t,” you mutter after you swallow, rolling your eyes at him. He keeps saying the same thing each time you ask him– you’re suspecting that he has zero idea at all, and he’s just bluffing to make you feel more comfortable. Hell, you might even fail while working with Donghyuck and your whole plan is going to be ruined, for all you know.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, grinning, “we got the theme, so half the work is already done. We’ll just have to take one day to shoot some scenes on a field or something, and then I can edit it and put some sad music over it, and we’re sold. Trust me, I am a straight A student, I know what I'm doing.”

“You are not a straight A student, Lee Donghyuck,” you glare at him, not believing a single word that's just came out of his mouth.

“Okay well,” he shrugs, taking a sip of his coca-cola that he got for free with the order, “maybe I’m not. But you can count on me with this, hon.”

Sighing to yourself, you shake your head at him. “Don’t ever call me that ever again.”

“Hyuck,” you call for the male, nestling a little in your seat and scratching the back of your neck in frustration.

“Hm?”

“You said we were going to work on the project today, am I correct?” you ask, watching as the male walks up to you from the kitchen area of the room, a bowl full of popcorn in his hand as he plops on the sofa next to you (on the only area that allows you to lay down comfortably and still face the TV, also known as the spot you’ve already laid on, making the two of you almost uncomfortably close in the small space), a bottle of coke situated under his right shoulder.

“Correct,” he nods, reaching for the TV remote he spent approximately 15 minutes searching for in between the cushions of the sofa when you arrived, screaming at his poor roommate for losing it again as the shorter boy just grimaced at you and escaped the flat to hang out with someone you heard him call RJ! y/n.

Humming to yourself, you nod. “Okay, then… why the living fuck are we watching Hunger games right now?” you ask, tone of voice laced in frustration.

Donghyuck doesn’t reply to you for a while as he fumbles with the TV remote (and frankly, you don’t really know why he’s so focused, it doesn’t take much to just press play), but when he looks back at you and sees your gaze impatiently glued to his forehead, he shrugs. “We gotta find some inspiration first, you know,” he innocently states, “Hunger games is a movie about youth if I’ve ever seen one.”

“We’ve both already seen Hunger games, Hyuck,” you whine, but take a hand-full of popcorn out of the bowl that’s currently sitting in his lap. 

“How do you know that I have seen it already?”

“You just said so, you dumb fuck,” you mutter as you roll your eyes, watching the opening credits start. You can do nothing else than settle deeper into the sofa and watch the painfully long movie with your annoying neighbor now, and you despise the fact.

Well, you could do something else. There are many things, to be exact– you could either protest so much that Donghyuck finally gives in and turns the movie off, focusing his efforts into actually working on your project. If that doesn’t work, you can fight him for the remote, but you can’t really know if that wouldn’t make him pettily give you the silent treatment, which is exactly the opposite of what you’d like to be doing right now. Or you could just give up– seeing that you’re not gonna get much work done today– and stand up and go home. It’s not like you live that far away anyways… 

But still, you stay and watch the movie with him. You’ve seen it at least three times already, having watched it recently with Aeri when the movie had its second wave of fame on Tiktok, so you’re pretty sure that if you tried hard enough, you’d be able to recite the script alongside the actors, word-for-word, 100% correct and exact, right on time. You stay and watch Hunger games with Lee Donghyuck– why exactly, you still don’t know– and you find yourself enjoying the experience. It’s not as boring when you hear your neighbor annoyingly comment on each and every little thing that happens in the movie, his nasal voice cracking jokes and jumping into the conversations as if he was a part of the cinematic universe. Somewhere along the way, you join in with him, laughing and giggling when your roleplay gets too silly, and before you know it, the movie is about to end and you’re finally going to be free to work on the project with him.

Donghyuck gets unusually quiet towards the last part of the movie. You turn your head to him, ready to crack jokes at the tears you’re expecting to see in his eyes because of the emotional outro– Katnis and Peeta’s berry scene got you the first and the second time you watched the movie, the third time not so much, since Aeri kept pausing the movie for pee breaks, ruining the full effect– only to witness the man’s head falling to your shoulder the exact second you try to lock your gaze with him; your neighbor having passed out somewhere in the middle of the movie. You foolishly jump just the slightest bit at the contact, opening your mouth to say something to him that could wake him up, your instincts telling you to move away from the already uncomfortable closeness of your bodies and give yourself more space.

But as your lips part and you’re about to protest, you notice his own lips apart in a small pout, his cheeks appearing softer now that one of them is smashed against your shoulder, his long eyelashes fanning over the bones of his cheeks. The blue hue of the TV paints his cheeks rosier in the dim light, making you notice the moles on his face for the first time– leading you to count them and mentally create constellations between them as your gaze focuses from all the different places of his face to another. Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you shut your mouth and awkwardly make yourself look away from your annoying neighbor, cracking the knuckles of your hands that have been resting in your lap; but when the credits of the movie roll and you have nowhere else to focus your gaze on, you find yourself scanning the man up and down again, orbs catching every detail of his suddenly so pure being.

He is wearing gray sweatpants, the fabric hanging low on his waist, a plain black tee adorning his upper figure. He doesn’t often look this casual when he comes to class, opting to wear jeans or pants more formal, so you foolishly admire the cozy fit he has going on, not quite used to seeing Donghyuck looking this homey. His clasped hands resting in his lap catch your attention next, the soft skin adorning his slender fingers looking way too inviting right now as you subconsciously want to glaze your fingertips against the surface of his palm, just to see if your suspicions are right and his skin is just as gentle as it seems to be to the eye, and you almost do it– for scientific reasons, of course– before you catch yourself and almost mentally slap yourself for being so foolish.

What the hell is going on with you right now? You should wake him up now– the movie is already over, there’s no use in you staying over any longer if he’s asleep and won’t work on the project with you anymore– but you find yourself freezing each time your eyes focus on the creature sleeping against your shoulder, so soft and comfortable it makes your insides squeeze in warmth. It’s a strange sensation, and even a stranger one to feel for a person that annoys you the most in this world, and you can't bring yourself to do anything else than to overthink the simple fact. 

He can sleep for a few more minutes. You don’t mind. He must be tired, you think– he deserves 10 more minutes, maybe even 15– you won’t disturb him. The silence is strangely comforting, after all.

He can sleep for a few more minutes, you think– but the exact moment those thoughts roam around your head again, the front door to Donghyuck’s apartment opens and his roommate stands still in the doorframe of his living room, gazing at you with suspicion in his gaze. You quickly jump away from your project partner when eye contact with Huang Renjun is made, feeling the tips of your ears heating up in shame as you scatter to your feet and scramble for your things. You feel like you were just caught red-handed, doing something you shouldn’t have been doing, and you can’t bear the thought any longer. You need to get out.

A dissatisfied noise leaves Hyuck’s mouth as he wakes up to the impact of your movement, squinted eyes watching you as Renjun just laughs at your antics, shaking his head as if to tell you that he knows something you don’t. You don’t wanna hear it.

“Where are you going?” Donghyuck asks, voice laced with sleep. 

“Home,” you snap, running your hand through your hair as you move through the door frame that separates the living room from their entrance hall. “We can’t work on the project if you’re asleep, so I might as well just go and not waste my time here any longer!” you offer him, making sure to save your face by putting just enough pretended frustration into the comment as you put on your shoes and don't look back at him– however inviting the mental image of him seems in your brain– before you shut the door after yourself and leave.

dongfuck – drive me to mcdonalds

you – well hello to you too you – no.

dongfuck – >:( dongfuck – please

you – its 2am dude

dongfuck – your point..?

Sighing, scrambling for your things as quietly as possible to not wake up your sleep deprived flatmate, you get dressed in comfortable sweatpants, throwing a hoodie on to shield yourself from the chilly air. The walk down the stairs doesn’t take you more than a few minutes before you’re standing in the parking lot of your apartment complex, already seeing Donghyuck’s figure leaning on the side of your car, almost looking like he owns it– he does act like it lately, to be fair. 

“I knew you’d come,” he snickers as you roll your eyes at him, pressing the button on your car key to unlock the doors, watching as the man swiftly opens the driver’s side for you and then jogs towards the passenger’s side to get in, an excited stride in his step.

“I’m only here because I haven’t eaten dinner and chicken nuggets sound absolutely amazing right now,” you mutter, “don’t get too ahead of yourself. None of this is for you,” you grin, fastening your seatbelt and adjusting the rearview mirror just the slightest before turning on the engine and driving off the parking lot.

Donghyuck only shakes his head at you, a bright grin playing with his features. “Of course,” he hums, “wouldn’t want me to think that you actually want to hang out for once.”

“Of course,” you nod, “because that would be a lie. My goal is chicken nuggets, nothing else. And if I manage to get them out of you for free, that’s even better.”

“Who said I’m paying?”

“The gas station clerk did when I last went to get gas, actually! He told me I’m using twice as much gas lately because I’m driving a certain dumbass around, and I’m paying for all of the gas myself, can you believe it?” you shake your head, teasing him as you turn right on the main road, already seeing the McDonald’s in the distance. 

“That’s a strange way to talk to a customer,” Donghyuck squints his eyes at you, watching as you slow down when getting into the food chain’s parking lot, ready to drive up to the drive-through window and order your late night snacks.

“At least he’s looking out for me,” you shrug, teasing the male. “I better order a hefty meal, since you’re paying and all…” you mumble, looking over the poster to your left, tapping your chin, trying to look lost in thought. 

Hearing the man next to you scoff– already satisfied with how frustrated you’ve managed to make him– you pretend to look over the most expensive parts of the menu. “I’m starting to regret my decision,” Donghyuck adds, but the tone in his voice is light.

After a few more minutes of picking out your menu, you both order your meals and wait for them at the window. It doesn’t take long, since you’re the only ones in the whole place, and before you know it, Donghyuck is pressing his card into your palm, nudging you to pay for both of your meals. The gesture should be expected– you pretty much plastered him into doing this with how much you teased and complained– but it still shocks you when he does it with no other annoyed comments, watching as you offer it to the cashier and smile at him in thanks, taking the bags of food and driving off into the very back of the whole parking lot, turning the engine off and settling into the dark.

You tug your feet up to your seat, sitting crossed-legged in the small space as you face your companion, watching as he offers you the bag of food and digs into his own fries as well, scanning you from the corner of his eye. Now is the time you finally get to admire his attire for the first time the whole night– you never knew you had a thing for guys in sweatpants and oversized jackets, but the way your breathing almost catches in your throat at the sight of Donghyuck dressed so cozily again should be enough of a warning for you to the future. Forcefully taking your eyes off the male next to you, because you’d rather not think about the way you find yourself eyeing him lately, you eat your chicken nuggets– the ones you’ve dreamed of the whole night– and listen to the sound of your neighbor chewing on his burger. 

Feeling his eyes on you, you glare at him. “What are you staring at?”

“No take a picture, it will last longer this time?” 

“I learned my lesson from the last time,” you laugh, reminded of one of the first interactions you had with the male. “I hope you deleted the pictures, by the way.”

“No, I stare at them every night before I go to sleep,” he says, “so I’ll dream of you,” he sing-songs, laughing at the way your face distorts in discomfort at his words.

“Ah, so annoying,” you roll your eyes at him, but can’t battle the way your heart jumps a little at the sound of a laugh escaping his throat. Your eyes automatically trace his movements, noticing the way the far standing lamp post illuminates his face in just the right way, casting orange shadows over his features, making his eyes glimmer when they catch yours. Clearing your throat after being caught staring at him, you avert your gaze and finish the last of your fries, noticing the male done with his meal as well. 

“Now what?” he asks.

“We go home, what else?” you laugh, shaking your head at his question.

“But I don’t wanna go home yet,” he whines, and you already know what’s coming– pursuing, weird ideas, absurd arguments just to make you stay longer. And you’re immune to them on most days, but it’s too late in the night, so you have to cut yourself some slack. So what if you don’t want to come back yet either? It’s not a crime to want to spend some time with Lee Donghyuck.

“What a shame,” still, you tease, waiting for him to come up with a bright idea that you could use as an excuse to stay out longer.

“Oh come on,” Donghyuck mutters, “you always ruin the fun. Teach me how to drive, what do you say?”

Shocked at his preposition, you turn to him again, wide eyes and mouth agape. “What? Absolutely not.”

“Why? The parking lot’s empty. I can’t possibly be that bad that I crash your car into nothing. Come on!” he pleads, going even as far as pouting at you– not really knowing that the expression has you shamefully stare at his lips for a split second, insides heating up– and realistically, you should have warning signs blinking at you from everywhere in your brain, an alarm going off to tell you that this is not a good idea at all, but you’re too stunned to come up with another plan for the rest of your evening, and, well, you may be getting a little weak for the annoying gemini. He's right, though– what could possibly go wrong? 

So you only sigh in response, opening the door and getting out of your seat, watching as Donghyuck excitedly mirrors your motions and jogs to the driver’s seat, ready to possibly ruin your evening and your car at the same time. When you’re back safe inside of the car, you quickly fasten your seatbelt, a sign of your sense of self preservation still working well, watching Donghyuck move your seat further back so he can comfortably reach the pedals. His focused face is in your full view as he adjusts all the mirrors possible, and only then is when you notice him chewing on the inside of his cheek– in either nerves or concentration, you can’t really tell right now– and the sight makes you halt him in his motions before he manages to start the engine.

“Have you ever done this before?” you ask, watching as he turns to you with wide eyes, shaking his head in disagreement.

“No,” he peeps, laughing to himself, “Yangyang declined me the last time I asked.”

“Yeah, because he has a working brain,” you whisper under your breath, still in disbelief of what you allowed to happen, “so… can you reach the pedals?”

“I can.”

“And you see the whole back window in this mirror, right?” you ask, pointing to the rearview mirror, watching as Donghyuck nods.

“Positive.”

“Great. So… start the engine now, I guess?” you say, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you see him nod and reach for the keys, turning them. The car instantly comes alive right in front of him all while Hyuck seems  absolutely clueless, looking at you with big, adorable eyes, and you take it as your cue to instruct him on his next moves.

“Now press the clutch– the far left pedal– and move the gear stick into the first gear,” you say, watching as the boy slowly does as you say, reaching for the device and moving it to the desired place. “Good. Now, keep pressing the clutch and slowly start pressing the accelerator– the far right pedal– while also slowly letting go of the clutch until you get to the point where the car starts moving on itself. That’s when you don’t let go of the clutch, but keep it at that same exact spot, and put a bit more acceleration until the wheels spin like, once or twice. Only then can you keep your leg off the clutch.” 

“You’re kinda hot when you tell me what to do,” Hyuck mumbles, but the flirting doesn’t quite come through when his face is focused at the road and his composure seems shaken, too stressed out to actually mean the words coming out of his mouth.

“Shut up and do what I said,” you snarl, seeing as the man nods and tries moving with the car. It takes him some time, but it seems that he is a natural– the car moves without the engine dying, and suddenly, you find yourself cheering him on. “Good! Good! You’re moving!”

“Oh. My. God.” 

“Don’t panic!”

“I’m not panicking!” Hyuck hums, nodding to himself as he turns the wheel and makes a circle around the parking lot, grinning to himself with confidence. The car moves painfully slowly, and you, despite your best interest, find yourself enjoying the view– although you should probably be more worried about your own safety than you currently are. That's when you decide to challenge the male further.

“Okay, then we can shift into the second gear, it’s gonna go a little smoother,” you muse, seeing as the male nods.

His eyes stay focused on the road, though, so you take it as your cue to instruct him again. “Press on the clutch then, and move the gear stick straight down.”

“Mhm,” he hums, and presses on the clutch, but the struggle comes next as his hand flies all over the car, not quite used to the placement of the gear stick yet. Stressed, eyes glued to the road in front of him to not run into any possible obstacles in your way, he refuses to look away for even a second, and the whole sight makes your heart race in anxious agony as you reach for his hand and grip it, guiding him towards the stick and placing his palm on top of the device.

Your hold on his hand doesn’t loosen up as you guide his movements further and do it for him, just to make sure the stick really gets to its designated place and doesn't get stuck in neutral, which would make the engine die with the next press of the accelerator. His skin is soft under your touch, just like you imagined it to be, and you find yourself growing hotter the more your skin is in contact with his, the touch so innocent yet still sending you to overdrive.

“Now let go of the clutch,” you order, eyes glued to the side of Donghyuck’s head as he nods, listening to everything you say. The car now goes more smoothly and you watch him take another lap around the parking lot before you realize your hand is still gripping his on the gear stick, the information making you jump slightly in your place, clearing your throat in the awkward, tense atmosphere you managed to create for yourself.

“Okay,” you announce, “the trial is over, it’s time to press the brake– the middle pedal, if you haven't figured that out so far– and get out of my place,” you say, hoping the tone of your voice sounds as light as usual. 

The car comes to a strong halt, since Hyuck doesn’t really know how fast the brakes react yet, and if you weren’t buckled in, it’s certain that you’d go flying in your seat and smash your head against the dashboard. Breathing out when the car stills, you finally feel yourself relax, having been alert this whole time, as you squeeze Donghyuck’s hand for the last time, amidst selfishly, before you let go of it and turn towards the door, opening it and thanking the chilly air of the night for slapping you to your face. You really needed that wake up call.

Do you really need to drive a fucking manual? 

hyuck – can you drive me to yangyangs at 8

Staring at the text message on your phone, sighing to yourself at the weird discomfort in your stomach when it appears and registers in your brain, the sound catches attention of your roommate Aeri currently getting ready on the floor of your room, pressed almost uncomfortably close to the mirror. She should really wear the glasses she was prescribed.

“Donghyuck again?” she asks, staring at you through the mirror, a mischievous grin sitting on her face as she asks the crucial question.

“How’d you know?” you roll your eyes in irony, walking over to your closet and picking out your tonight’s outfit.

“Well,” she shrugs, “one, he’s like, the only person that ever texts you except for me, and two, you had that disgustingly doe eyed look on your face.”

“I so did not–”

“You so did,” she notes, putting another coat of mascara onto her long eyelashes.

“You know what? I regret telling you about this,” you mourn, scrambling for your things around your room and putting them into your bag, practically already ready to leave the apartment alongside your roommate slash best friend. When you came home last week after the McDonald’s run at 4 in the morning, you decided that sleep really wasn’t worth it anymore– as if you could fall asleep after the hotness in your whole body despite your window being wide open– and so you took a cold shower and decided to stay up in the living room, watching Netflix (more like having the show in the background as you tried hard to not have a mental breakdown at the newly found information about yourself). Aeri found you like that at 6 in the morning when she woke up to get a glass of water, and even though she was sleepy and groggy– which was probably why you decided to spill the beans so quickly– she interrogated you about the weird look on your face and it’s been a running joke between her and herself for the whole week.

“It’s really not my fault that you find our neighbor hot,” she notes, shrugging to herself.

“When did I say that? When did I say that!” 

“Well, you said you came home all flushed and that you imagined making out with him when you dropped him off back home, so that’s basically the same thing.” 

“I did not say I wanted to make out with him!” you defend yourself. You didn’t say it. You thought about it, that’s for sure, but your roommate really doesn’t have to know that. Unless she can read your thoughts, of course.

“Yeah, whatever. You and I both know it’s true.” 

Sighing, deciding that you’re ending the conversation with your roommate as long as the topic is your annoying neighbor, you turn to your phone and finally reply to his text message.

you – can’t

He replies almost instantly, as if he was waiting at his phone for the last 15 minutes, and the predictableness of his message almost makes you chuckle.

hyuck – why

you – cuz im going you – and i wanna drink you – so i cant drive

hyuck – ok that changes things then hyuck – my original mission was to get you to go there with me but this has to do i suppose hyuck – see you there ;)

Yes, you admit that you reread the messages a little too many times for your own liking. Trying to decipher the hidden meaning behind his words, you swear your brain is running a thousand miles an hour, and realistically, this is the part where you reach for your girl best friend and ask her what exactly is happening in the chat with you and the guy you’re talking to, but after the endless teasing you’ve already heard from her side, you decide against it and just turn off your screen and put the phone into your bag with the rest of your necessities.

“If you mention something about this tonight in front of Donghyuck, I’m locking you out of the apartment.”

“Ay ay, captain!”

The journey to Liu Yangyang’s house isn’t long. He’s the only one that still lives with his parents, but you can’t really blame him– the house is huge, and they are hardly ever home, because they are always on business trips in Taiwan. Half the time, it’s like the guy owns the place, and he also acts like it too, since half of the parties you’re invited to in a year are taking place at his house. 

When you get there, it seems that everyone was already there– at least the usual group, you suppose. You don’t know who else is invited, but when you arrive to Yangyang’s basement– the part of the house where he usually hosts the more chill, laid-back parties, with low music in the background, laughter resonating through the place and alcohol being passed around between people drinking straight out of the bottles– your eyes instantly zero on Donghyuck, dressed in a light bomber jacket and skin tight jeans, you decide that burning your throat with alcohol is the best thing you can do instead of audibly moaning at the sight.

Taking one of the opened bottles of Bacardi off the little camping table situated near the corner of the big room, you take a swig, not really caring about the people who have drank out of it before you– because the pandemic has taught you nothing, it seems– when you finally walk over to the group and say your greetings. Deciding that avoiding the object of your desire for the whole evening is the best plan how to survive without doing something you’re going to regret, you engage in conversation with pretty much everyone else, completely unaware of the way your neighbors eyes are burning a hole through the side of your skull, kind of offended that you haven’t come up to him first, since as far as he’s concerned, out of all the people present in the room, you spend the most time with him in the first place (with the exception of Aeri, of course, but you two live together, so it doesn't really count). In his opinion, you didn’t need to be talking to Na Jaemin right now– you’re not even friends with the man.

But still– drinking beer out of a bottle Lee Jeno passes you somewhere in the middle of the night before he disappears with his best friend to dance with them under the cigarette haze (pretty embarrassingly, you may add) – the only thing resonating through your brain is that you got this, you’re not gonna give him a single glance, you’re not gonna think about how attractive he looks in all black.

You guess that everything about the way this evening has been going is the prime example of every single college kid’s usual Friday. Sitting in a basement of Liu Yangyang’s house, your vision cloudy with a bit of alcohol and also the sweet, piney smoke of the joint that’s been passed around the room only a few minutes prior, music lowly plays in the background, adding a relaxed, yet exciting and bubbling atmosphere to it all– it’s the epitome of the experience you imagine before you go to college when you’re 15 and gazing longingly outside of your window, wondering if life when you’re older will be better and more fun.

And while you don’t necessarily think life is better now– you do have a shitton of assignments to do and stress eating up your insides– you do think it’s kind of fun. Everything is more bearable when you have a group of friends by your side, and while you wouldn’t call every single person in this room right now your closest friend– a friend for life, even– you’d say everything is better than being stuck in your house on a Friday evening, mourning the break up of One Direction one more time as you watch This is us again with spoonfuls of ice cream shoveled into your mouth, figure cuddled up under the blanket with your roommate by your side.

The fun only lasts until a round of Truth or dare takes place, though. You must admit that it’s the fundamental part of the whole hang out, and yes, it’s the thing you always see in the movies. It adds a bit of spice to it all and it’s twice as fun to play when you’re a little intoxicated, but still– you’d like to think you’re too old for the game now, even though your friends believe otherwise and never fail to bring it up again.

This time, it’s Jaemin who brings it up. You shoot daggers to his skull, annoyed eyes and all, but you don’t think he notices as he continues to excitingly sway his arms in the air when he repeats the submission over and over again, finally heard by his roommate Jeno that’s just come back from the weird dancing session with his best friend that he’s very obviously pining over, and grins at his roommate in agreement, starting the game. 

“Not again,” you whine audibly, because frankly, if you wanted to survive the evening with no embarrassment and no weird thoughts about one of the party guests, you don’t think a game of Truth or dare is your best move. Your disgust makes your own roommate– that’s suddenly glued to your side, too tipsy to even walk (you heard her exclaim that her legs are too heavy to be used)– giggle, already familiar with your thoughts on the game. And frankly, that makes you even more terrified– because when Aeri is drunk, she talks even more than she does when she’s sober, and well, there’s no promising that all of the information you’ve ever shared with her will stay truly confidential when she’s under the influence.

“Don’t start again,” she says, shaking her head, “you always say you hate it, but you always end up playing it anyway.”

She’s right. It’s not like anyone is pressuring you, but you kind of feel like the situation calls for you to join in– because what else are you supposed to do, watch them? There’s no fun in watching if you’re not involved, and you’d feel like an intruder if you just watched them do all sorts of dares while not being in on the game. 

“Yeah, because you’d all whine if I didn’t,” you say instead, taking a sip of your drink, letting the bitter taste of beer slide down your throat as she rolls her eyes at you, nudging you in your side with her elbow.

“Just say you end up having fun,” she snickers, “nobody would think that’s weird, you know.”

“Yeah, whatever you say,” you shush her and pet her hair, taking advantage of the fact that you’re very obviously less tipsy than her, as you turn to the middle of the circle and wait for the game to start.

Usually, a couple of rounds pass before your name is called. You enjoy the tension– it feels like you have time to prepare to do whatever task their hazed minds come up with or answer whatever question that’s been burning on their tongue, yet, it also feels like a buildup before the big thing– a strange sense of climax, if you will. 

This time, it’s no different. A couple of minutes pass as you watch Yangyang lick the bottom of Jaemin’s foot– because Jeno always likes to come up with the nastiest, most worrying dares of them all– followed by the sight of Shotaro kissing the forehead of the most attractive guy in the circle (Renjun wasn’t happy with the wet peck left on his skin). The guys almost always pick a dare, and you think that’s an advantage, since before it’s your turn to finally participate in the game, they run out of ideas for dares that are possible to do in the weed-smelling basement of Liu Yangyang’s house and you can safely choose truth instead. It’s not like you’re not brave enough to choose dare– you did so many times before and never once backed away from the task, not even when you were dared to kiss the person on your right (that was the night you learned Kim Sunwoo wasn’t all that, because the drunken peck he pressed to your lips wasn’t all that appealing) – you just simply tried to pick the safest strategy for the game. 

Another kissing dare could suggest that you kiss the person you find the most attractive in the room right now. Or they could ask you for a lap dance on one of the guys. The possibilities are endless, and even though choosing the truth isn’t that much safer, since their questions could vary all the way from ‘What’s the color of your underwear right now?’ to ‘What is your favorite sex position?’, you’re trying to comfort yourself with the fact that you could just lie. You know it’s kind of prohibited, and that it also defeats the whole purpose of the game, but still– you’re not planning on embarrassing yourself tonight, and you were always a pretty good liar when it came to words. Actions? Not that much.

Sinked deep in the stained light orange fabric of the sofa, eyes half-lidded, you await Jaemin’s question as you tell him you did indeed pick the truth. And you were right, there are no protests coming out of the boys’ mouths this time around, seemingly tired of coming up with original ideas for their dares. 

“Come on, man, we don’t have the whole day,” Renjun nudges the boy into his ribs, annoyed with the lack of words from his friend. 

“Actually, we do. I don’t see the issue-”

“Just ask something already!” Shotaro whines from his position on the floor, his back pressed against the side of the sofa.

“Fine,” the man straightens up in his position, as if struck by a newly found sense of clarity, the look on Na Jaemin’s face reeking of insanity, “I've got something.” 

The room cautiously looks at the platinum-haired boy sitting on the floor, his back resting against an armchair in the corner of the room as he blinks a few times, seconds passing, yet there’s still nothing coming out of his mouth. 

“Are you gonna say something, or will you continue to act all dramatic…?” Jeno snickers, making his roommate roll his eyes at the jab, finally breaking the silence.

You’d argue that he just forgot what he wanted to say– with how Jaemin gets when he’s drunk, it wouldn’t be half surprising– but it seems like his roommate knows him better than you do, because the man speaks up fast, and suddenly, you take back all your impatient thoughts that urged him to ask you something already, because the question takes you by surprise and leaves you in shock, staring wide eyed and speechless.

“If you had to have sex with anyone in this room, who would you choose?” 

You no longer wish he took longer to ask you the question. No, you wish he would’ve sent it to you telepathically, so you could prepare your answer beforehand. You’d save yourself a lot of trouble– being met with the gaze of everyone, looking at you as they await your answer is truly not helping you with the difficult task of responding to the truth, when in reality, you don’t think you can manage to even say anything.

Because truthfully, if you were asked this question at any time prior to the weird situation you found yourself in with Donghyuck– who’s, just by the way, still present in the room, but more quiet that usual, which you shamefully notice and worry about on your insides, but don’t mention out loud– you’d think that you wouldn’t have sex with anyone in this room. It may be hard to believe– even though the men in this room aren’t the sexsymbols they often think they are– but that's the sheer reality.

But now? You feel like the truth is written all over your face, you feel like everyone can see right inside of your head and read the words straight out of your brain. It’s embarrassing. You feel ashamed.

Looking around the space, shiteating grins meeting all of their expressions, you shrug and finally get some words out, hoping they satisfy their needs for an answer. 

“No one,” you say, praying you sound confident. 

“Yeah, no-”

“Oh, come on-” 

“That’s a lie-”

Multiple voices cut into your confession, all in disbelief. If this isn’t the proof of their impressively big egos, you don’t know what is. All of them now staring at you with furrowed eyebrows, not believing a single word that’s just came out of your mouth, you start to wonder about how to convince them that you are, indeed, telling the truth, even though you’re obviously aren’t, so you don’t have to take a shot of whatever liquid the host of the party has hidden in the closet of his basement as a punishment.

“I’m serious! I’ve never looked at any of you and thought, ‘yea, I’d let him get it’,” you shrug, taking a nervous sip of the beer in your hold again.  

“Okay, but if you had to? Like, imagine someone is holding your mother captive and telling you they’re gonna kill her if you don’t have sex with anyone in this room. Who are you choosing?” Jeno squints at you, and you’re starting to believe that the man just wants you to pick him. 

“I’d have sex with Aeri,” you muse, pointing a finger to her as she’s leeching to your right shoulder, snickering.

“That’s a cop out!”

“Look, man, I don’t find anyone here hot, okay?” you shake your head at the commotion, grinning to yourself to seem more believable. And with how they roll their eyes and sigh to themselves, you think it’s working. There’s a premature feeling of relief in your insides, thinking that you’ve done it, you haven’t exposed yourself, before you hear your roommate mumble from her slumber, making your heart drop deep down into your own fucking asshole.

“Not even Hyuck?” 

Slowly spinning your head towards her, the tight smile on your face suggesting that you’re going to kill her in under approximately five seconds if she doesn’t take back what she said, you’re painfully aware of the fact that everyone’s staring at you now, grinning to themselves with a look that says they believe that Aeri knows something they don’t– she’s your best friend, after all– and you realize that you’re going to have a hard time getting out of this one. 

You should’ve expected this the moment you saw her drink that much. Maybe you should’ve stayed home today. The information about Lee Donghyuck was still too fresh in her brain to not mention when she has some to drink– you understand, in a way. At least, you’re trying to understand.

“Fuck no,” you grunt out, furrowing your eyebrows in the best acting performance you’ve managed to put on since your theatre kid days. You don’t think you’re convincing anyone, though. You’re not even convinced.

“Was that my name I heard?” 

And again, your heart drops at the familiar tone coming from the place straight opposite of you, the place that’s very obviously in your point of view, yet you’ve been successfully avoiding the whole evening to not seem as obvious to everyone that the very man has been occupying your every thought for the last week or two. You realize this is the first time he’s spoken to you this evening, if you’re not counting the text messages you exchanged before you got here, and something about the fact makes you shiver.

Meeting his eyes, because it’s the natural thing to do when someone speaks to you, you mentally curse and feel your heartbeat quickening at the grin sitting on his face. Eyes roaming his body– all against your will–  you notice the comfortable way he’s sitting on the armchair in front of you, legs parted wide and his thighs on full display, hair a little messy and eyes glossed over and blown out, since he smoked just a few minutes prior to the game, making you realize just how painfully he resembles someone who just had a long make-out session; the thought automatically leading you to think of the fact that you’d like to have a make-out session with him right now, and wow, his thighs do look inviting to sit down on.

“You wish,” you spit instead, still wanting to save the situation. Averting your gaze from him to keep yourself sane, you choose to focus on the floor instead, heat rising to the tips of your ears. 

“I mean, it seems more like you do,” he grins, the whole group snickering at the sudden quarrel in between the two of you. Your conversation suddenly reminds you of the ones you had with him before the two of you started properly talking, and something about the confident smirk on his face makes you remember just how annoying you’ve always found him whenever you encountered him at this very place. You’re back to square one for a minute, with your defensive remarks, similar to the way you used to quarrel with him before, and the familiarity engulfs you like a warm blanket.

“Your confidence amuses me,” you bite back, choosing to look at him as you say it to add more impact to your words; your decision seems to only worsen the things for you, though. The conversation admittedly sounds a little too much like flirting, and the way you notice him clutching the can of beer in his hand only makes you more flushed under his gaze.

“You don’t seem amused.”

“That’s because the idea of having sex with you makes me want to leave this room,” you grunt, shifting uncomfortably in your seat.

“I’ll take you home if you’d like,” he winks at you. Alarm sound goes off in your mind, your hands clammy as you run them through your hair, and suddenly, you’re on fight or flight. And if you can’t escape the situation, you decide to choose the latter– throwing him the most jabbing remark you can think of at this moment, fighting to keep your dignity.

“On a bike, or something?” you snicker. “As if I’d let a guy without a licence fuck me. You know that’s below my standards, Hyuck.”

An amused gasp is heard in the room when this remark leaves your mouth. The main source of the noise is Liu Yangyang, the host himself, since he likes to laugh at times when it’s the least socially acceptable. 

Now, you know that there are only a few things in which men value their social status; one of them being the amount of girls in their bed, the next one their rank in League of Legends, and lastly, their cars. And while Lee Donghyuck is known to be quite the player when it comes to the first thing in the list of social ranking between guys (or at least you’ve heard so from the girls in the locker room in the past years. Not like you were listening to their conversations whenever his name was mentioned… you just have very good hearing) and he was known to be the one that carries the team whenever any game on Yangyang’s PS5 is played in the dimly-lit basement on nights much like this one, there was something always setting him back in the neat ranking, and that something was the state of his car. 

Why? You guessed it– he doesn’t have a car. Or a licence.

To be quite frank, by the expression on Donghyuck’s face– all wide eyes and mouth agape in shock– you hit him right when it hurts, the grin falling off his face when he takes a sip of the beer in his hand, seemingly to chase down the taste of being put in his place and to have something to do to not seem as awkward and embarrassed as he must be feeling right now. 

You feel victorious, in a way– you managed to mask your very obvious sexual frustration caused by the man, while also managing to rile him up with your comment, which is definitely a first in your dynamic– adrenaline rushing through your blood as you look at him with expecting eyes, awaiting his response. The rest of the crowd laughs at your remark, only fueling the joy you feel when he suddenly averts his gaze from you, licking his lips for only a millisecond (yet it doesn’t get unnoticed by your eyes) before he snickers again, shrugging.

“Okay then,” he grunts, pressing the tip of his tongue to the inside of his cheek in annoyance, “you won.”

You know what? Once he admits to it, the feeling of victory quickly fades. Watching his frustrated face, eyebrows furrowed as he looks everywhere but at your face, suddenly, you choose to drown yourself in the rest of the beer in your bottle, relieved when you notice the game progressing without you. 

You won, he says, but you don't feel like you did. Quite the opposite, actually. You feel a tad bit defeated. 

You managed to lie to the crowd, but the very obvious pit in your stomach reminds you that you can’t lie to yourself– and now, bear with me as I say something cheesy, yet true– because even though Lee Donghyuck can’t drive, he’s still very successful at driving you crazy.

You feel like the universe is punishing you for every little, smallest thing you’ve ever done wrong in your life. You feel like whatever force is there that’s making this world go around, absolutely, completely, wholeheartedly hates, despises you, and won’t have mercy on you as you’re left dealing with the text message shining on your phone screen four days after the party, at 8 in the evening. 

hyuck – drive me to a date hyuck – please ig 

Sighing, one, two, three times, you chew on the bottom of your lip as your eyes scan over the messages, and something about the very few words makes your stomach turn and twist in an emotion you’d describe as a weird mix of disgust and shock as you mentally try to come up with a reply. And it’s hard.

It’s difficult, because you hate it, you hate it, you hate it– the way Lee Donghyuck just managed to score himself a date only four days after your ever so growing sexual frustration has started to see the light of the day, you hate the way he’s asking you to drive him there– as if to show you that he still has it, that you’re wrong, and that even though he has no car and no license to boost in front of other girls, they still want him and you’re about to witness it as you drive him there. 

And you hate it so much you start to think you’re going to chew on your own fist and throw a rock through your own window, but you strive hard not to show it. And is there a better way to seem unaffected in this situation than to comply with him? If you weren’t so jealous about the whole thing, you’d surely just make fun of him and do it, no questions asked– a friendly favor, or something. And so you do it. Like it’s nothing.

you – ok text me when you’re ready 

After a few minutes, you end up sitting in your car, hands on the wheel ready to turn (and run into the nearest car out of pure rage, possibly), waiting for Lee Donghyuck to appear on the passenger’s seat, all dolled up and dumped in cologne, presumably– and that’s exactly what happens when the door swings open and your nose is filled with his usual smell but somehow amplified, and you catch a glimpse of his leather jacket and the shirt tucked into his black jeans. You don’t outright look at him– because you’re still trying really hard not to show all of your inner thoughts on your face– and so you only turn on the engine and hum at him, already making your way out of the parking lot.

“Where are you going, then?” you ask, tone of voice completely unbothered and not too stingy or tight. “And I’m just dropping you off this time, right? Because I won’t sit there and watch you have a date and wait to drop both of you back,” you say, playing with the car radio and trying to find a station that would both satisfy your need to tune out your thoughts with a good song and the need to do something with your fingers to seem occupied.

“Of course not,” he snickers, “wouldn’t do that to poor you. And just go the way I tell you. Now turn left at the end of the street.”

Sighing to yourself at his orders, you do your best at driving your neighbor to his date while trying to ignore just how ridiculous this whole situation is. You should’ve said no back when he first asked you to be his personal driver for the semester– failing Film theory class doesn’t seem like such a bad thing in your eyes now, when you look at the situation in retrospect.

“Can’t believe you have to be dropped off at your own date and you still pull bitches,” you shake your head in disbelief, hoping, praying you seem annoyed because of your duties and not because you’d much rather have him staying in so you could catch a glimpse of him in his window, crouched down in the blue light of his room (yes, he has neon lights in his room. Yes, you teased him about it countless of times before) as he plays League of Legends or stays up on a discord call with his friends, playing Minecraft.

“See? You’re missing out,” he chuckles, shrugging to himself. 

“As if I’d ever go on a date with you,” you huff, moving to turn the volume of the radio higher so you don’t have to make small talk with him anymore, agitated, yet completely ignoring the fact that it was you who brought it up in the first place.

Hyuck moves his slender fingers along the knob of the radio and tunes the volume back down, and you’re eager to repeat your previous steps just to anger him and also so you don’t have to listen to his sneaky, egoistical remarks for any longer, when you hear him tell you the next directions and you realize that you still indeed need to hear Donghyuck’s voice, or else you’re not gonna be able to drop him off at his destination and drive away as fast as humanly possible.

The terrain around you starts to look more stranded. There are more trees than buildings in your sight, lampposts decreasing in amount as you drive further away from the city center, and only when you pass the sign that tells you that you just left the town you speak up again, now truly concerned.

“Where the fuck are you taking your date, man? To the middle of the woods?” you huff. “Is she meeting you there?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he laughs, shaking his head at your furrowed brows. Something about his casual composure makes your nerves tick off and goosebumps appear all over your body, as if you were sensing danger, when you sigh out heavily in frustration and turn to look at him for only a split second, eyes meeting with his. 

“Or are you making me drive to another fucking state, you fucker? I don’t have that much gas right now, you dumb ass–”

“We’re almost there, don’t worry,” he rolls his eyes at you, pointing somewhere into the distance again. “Just turn right there and drive up the hill.”

“Up the fucking hill?” you repeat, concerned.

“I told you to not worry about it,” Hyuck hums, settling deeper into the car seat, letting you battle your own thoughts as you follow his orders and drive up the hill for him, praying no deer decides to jump onto the road and total your car right now. 

“I worry about the girl that agreed to go on a date with you, Donghyuck,” you mutter, “I’ll tell you that, she clearly doesn’t have everything alright in the brain, because this is ridiculous.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he swats your worries away with a swing of his arm, pointing towards a place that extends out of the main road– if you can even call it that, since no cars are passing through the hill ever, much more in these hours of the day– and tells you that you can park the car there. 

And you do as you’re told, despite your never-ending complaining– that’s the dynamic you have with Lee Donghyuck, it seems. 

Stopping the car out of the main road, your car shielded from one side by a row of trees, you step on the break and look at the man to your right in question, the engine still running. “Is this it? Is this the place?”

“Yeah,” he nods, a grin slowly starting to play with his features. Something isn’t right– you feel it in your bones and see it in his eyes, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, still utterly confused and in the dark about everything. “Come on, get out of the car.”

He wastes no time in unbuckling his seatbelt and hopping out of the vehicle, his figure circling the car as he leans on the hood, turned away from you and seemingly waiting for you to follow his actions. Confused, figuring that you can’t do much more about the situation right now– where the fuck is his date? Why are we on the top of a hill? Will his date show up? – all swimming around your brain, you hop out and find his warm being, standing one step ahead of him and staring at him with stern, frustrated eyes.

“Look, isn’t it pretty?” he asks, pointing somewhere behind you. It takes everything in you to turn and gaze at the sight in front of you, your heart still weak and angrily beating against your ribcage, but you do as you’re ordered, eyes bearing into the view. 

The whole town is stretching out right below you. Now that you’ve turned the engine off and your headlights have gone out, you see the lights even better, shielded by a blanket of stars glimmering above the horizon, and you can’t help but gasp out in the beauty of it all. This place makes you want to take a picture, so you can remember how you felt while standing here and admiring the city forever– so you can remember how you felt while standing next to Donghyuck, heart foolishly drumming against your ribcage– and you suddenly realize just how badly you despise the fact that he showed this to you just to send you off while he waits for his date, as if to show you everything you could have if you went out with him, even though the question was never even on the table in the first place.

Clearing your throat, you turn to him, eyes glazing his side profile. “Where’s your date? Is she turning up? I don’t think it’s safe to make her–”

“My date’s already here,” he hums, nodding to himself. 

This does nothing to clear out the fog of confusion from in front of your eyes. “Huh? Where?”

“Here,” he repeats. The word has you wearily looking around yourself, furrowed brows and all– and that only makes the man chuckle at your antics, low voice cutting out of his throat making its way straight to the bottom of your stomach. “There’s no one else here. Just us. And no one else is coming, so will you chill out and enjoy our date, finally?” he asks, locking his gaze with you in a lazy, yet attractive manner that has your hands shaking and your brain instantly panicking.

Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you process his words for a few seconds, doing mental acrobatics and racking your brain in thought. Nothing helps. “Our date?”

“Mhm.”

“Yeah, no,” you giggle out in awkwardness, feeling unarmed and like somebody’s just dunk a bucket of hot water over you. Shaking your head, you try hard to mask the way you’re feeling on the inside right now, because what are you even feeling right now? As you do some unreadable gestures with your arms as a way of declining and canceling everything that’s happening right now. “Us? A date? Yeah, not happening–” 

You mumble out, ready to escape the situation as fastly and as efficiently as you can while you try to make your way back inside of the car, not really thinking of the journey home you’re about to have to make with him on the passenger’s seat, when a hand grips your wrist, making you stop in your tracks. You take a few steps away from him nonetheless, and the man soon follows you before your body is swiftly turned against your car, the small of your back coming in contact with the driver’s door. Your breathing is quick when the man hovers above you, and you don’t feel danger– you just feel a bit panicked at the way tonight’s playing out. A date? You wouldn’t have thought of this in your most insane dreams.

“Why are you trying to run away?” he asks, his hand still holding your wrist, his fingers firm, yet gentle on your skin.

“Because– um– because-” you stutter, eyes instantly meeting his– regret pooling in the bottom of your stomach when you realize the proximity of his gaze, something tense bundling up in your insides, “this is ridiculous, Donghyuck, you can’t just–”

“I can’t just?” he tempts you, eyebrows rising to make you continue.

“You can’t just lure me into a date with you, that’s not how this works–”

“Would you go if I asked, then?”

“No, of course not!” you shake your head at him, tone of voice a few octaves higher than usual. Your eyes scan over your companion, his face reflecting the moonlight, and you find yourself counting the moles on his cheeks and noticing his sped-up breathing, automatically matching it despite not realizing it yourself. 

“Why? ‘Cause I don’t have a driving license, or because you’re just scared to admit that you’re attracted to me?” he challenges you, quirking up his brows at you in tension. 

Something about it makes you lose all the air in your lungs. He’s so close now you swear the scent of his cologne has made you drugged up, since you can’t seem to take your eyes off his lips for the next few seconds, completely in trance and electrified, and before you know it, you’re a blubbering mess, too lost in everything that is him to come up with something coherent. “That’s- that’s just not-”

He laughs at you, he snickers, as those words escape your mouth, not even a full sentence. You bet it’s enough of a confirmation for him that you’ve officially lost all control– you can’t seem to get out a teasing remark like you usually can, no smart words calculated and thrown his way to scatter down his ego, and you think he realizes that he won. You’re defenseless, you’re weak, and you really want to make out with him right now.

Which he might have sensed out of the way you’ve been yearningly staring at his lips the whole exchange. Still, he mumbles out a small “Stop me now if you don’t want this,” just to be completely sure.

And you don’t. You don't stop him when he leans in and captures your lips with his. You’d be a fool to.

His lips crash against yours with a fever-like pace, the tension that’s been building up between the two of you making itself known in the hurried motions of your lips. His kiss is deep, hands cradling your cheeks as he angles you to lock your lips with his better, not a hint of shyness or hesitance in his motions. Your fingers shakily grasp at the front of his shirt, trying to steady yourself when each motion of his mouth against yours leaves your knees weaker and weaker, your body pressed harder against the car door.

He tastes of mint, making you suspect he planned this and chewed on a gum before meeting you, and when his teeth gently pulls at your bottom lip, eliciting a gasp from you, his tongue is left exploring the inside of your mouth, making you grow hotter and hotter under his ministrations. Your hands occupy themselves as they finally let go off his shirt and sneak around his small waist, pulling him closer, and you swear that you’ve never experienced a kiss that would leave you so eager for more before, a kiss that would leave you so weak and open for anything that’s about to happen– as if you were already naked and bare, a puddle in his palms. 

You’re soon left out of breath, gasping for air when he pulls away from you, and his kisses turn into pecks left on your lips, open mouthed kisses slowly trailing to the corner of your mouth and down your jaw, lips hungrily attaching to your neck, his nose glazing the soft skin as if to smell your scent and ingrave it into his memory. Something inside of you unties and makes you lose all of your control, finally falling fully into the sensation of the novelty of making out with Lee Donghyuck against your car, and you find your hands tying themselves into his hair, tugging at the roots when he finds the soft spot on the crevice of your shoulder that makes you squirm, and you suddenly know what all the girls in the locker rooms were talking about. Each action of his has you gasping for air, eyes pressing shut in the blissfulness of it all– the bites he leaves on your neck, smoothing them down with kitten licks each time surely leaving bruises, making your insides light up with the acts of possession.

“Hyuck–” you gasp, his mouth sucking into another spot on your neck, your head instantly moving away from his way to give him more space to work his magic.

“Hm?” he hums, a satisfied sound cutting out of his throat as his actions get more slow, more lazy, but still just as electrifying. You don’t really know what you wanted to say– perhaps you had no point of calling his name just to say it, and the hazy look in your face is enough of a proof to him when he unattaches himself off your neck and locks his eyes with you, a grin settling onto his face. “Feels good?” 

Nodding eagerly, almost a bit fast and a bit too soon to your own liking (but you’ll worry about that later), you watch him lean towards you again, lips locking with yours in need. Your fingers trail up and down his clothed back, his fingers mirroring the same, but up your loose shirt (which reminds you that you didn’t even dress prettily for the occasion– since you didn’t know this was your date you're attending), cold hands against your heated skin. Shivering from the fresh breeze of the night, you feel him grin against your lips before detaching himself from them to speak against your mouth. “Let’s move this somewhere warmer,” he murmurs before he tugs you away from the car and opens up the back door, pushing you inside.

Swiftly getting inside and closing the door behind himself, Donghyuck appears hovering above you, caging you against the uncomfortable seat. Still, you don’t have time to feel any sense of discomfort as his fingers move your hair from the way and his lips are back on yours again, leaving you no time to think of the implications of the whole situation. 

“See? Isn’t this much better than arguing with each other all the time?” Hyuck snickers again in a moment of weakness when he pulls back from your face to admire your swollen lips, and the teasing has you pushing him towards the seats, a dissatisfied look on your face. 

“Shut up,” you whisper almost hurriedly, climbing onto his lap (not before you admire his sprawled-up legs and the sight of his thighs, though).

“Make me,” he challenges.

“Gladly,” you nod, attaching yourself to his plump lips again, since you can’t seem to get enough of the sensation of them against your weak self, every sweep of his tongue with yours making you feel more heated and impatient as you move against him in his lap, the motion earning you a dissatisfied grunt sent against your mouth as his palms grip your hips with unsaid urgency.

“Don’t start something you wouldn’t want to finish,” he breathes out.

Nodding, you hum. “Who said anything about stopping?” you muse out, grinding against him harder.

You’ll worry about the consequences later.

“Why am I the only one in the shot?” you squint your eyes at the male, watching him as he points his camera to you and tells you to smile and act natural. Donghyuck has on his varsity jacket and his hair is sitting messy, a bit curled on the top of his head, his legs are covered with loose gray sweatpants instead of his usual black jeans– he looks casual, and yet, he looks amazing, you foolishly think as you sigh to yourself and walk across the field, much like the male mentioned a few weeks ago when the two of you ate fried chicken with his free coupons, trying to capture the energy of what youth feels like to you.

“Because you are the main star, honey,” he grins at you, the nickname making you trip over a little on your own feet, before you turn back to him and send him a glare.

“I told you not to call me that,” you mutter, but feel the heat from your stomach slowly rising to the tips of your ears and the tops of your cheeks, your composure slowly crumbling under his gaze. Not only are you watched by his deep brown orbs, there’s also a camera pointed at you now, and if he doesn’t stop with the weird flirting he has going on– especially after what happened between the two of you last week– you don’t know how you’re supposed to contain yourself and act so you don’t look like an utter fool in front of everyone, when the clips will be played in class next week.

“Besides, the project is due next week and this is all we’re doing? Are you sure we’re going to be able to pull this off?” you ask, wary of his confidence. You’re not really sure if Donghyuck knows what he’s doing with this assignment. Why did you even trust him with it in the first place?

“I told you to leave it to me,” he says, “now be a good girl and run down the field, maybe twirl a little like a ballerina, I dunno… Hum a little tune to yourself, do anything remotely interesting and youthful, okay?” he instructs you, and you comply, ignoring the fact that he told you to be a good girl, because after what the two of you did last week, you’re not able to register those two words in a way that would not be mildly sexual in your brain.

You two haven’t spoken about the fact that you hooked up in the backseat of your car after your weird date last week. Truth be told, you two haven’t spoken about anything since it happened, because you felt too awkward and hesitant to bring any conversation topic up. The first time you two spoke was when Donghyuck texted you yesterday about the project, and you told yourself that you simply can't ignore him when it comes to these things, and so you agreed to meet up with him, hoping he won't bring up the events of last week. You were scared. What were you scared of, exactly? You have no idea.

Something in you was almost a bit shameful to admit to yourself that you managed to fall for Lee Donghyuck this quickly. Something in you was a bit embarrassed at the fact that you let yourself be so intimate and so close with the male, and although you don’t regret it, you don’t think you want to talk about it with him (or anyone, for that matter) just yet. Or ever, actually.

And although you could be rational and tell yourself that surely, Donghyuck wanted you in just the same way you wanted him, and there was nothing embarrassing about it, you didn’t feel comfortable with talking about the act with him, because deep down, you know it wasn’t just about the sex for you and you were afraid that it was for him, and you’d rather stay in the blissful unknowingness than to know he only wanted to have sex with you and not try to go somewhere further with your relationship. Did this inner monologue reek of disgusting insecurity? 

Yes. Yes, it did. But somehow, you’re not able to do anything about it.

And so you run down the field like Donghyuck told you to, and you twirl and twist and shout and dance around, trying your hardest to act silly and youthful and exactly like he would like you to, because you’d hate to be unnatural around him, and you pray it’s enough for both the project and him included. Turning back to gaze at him from the distance, you notice that he’s not even recording anymore, only watching you with a lazy grin on his face, eyes glimmering under the direct sunlight, and you wonder how you haven’t realized just how beautiful he is when he’s simply just existing all those months ago, and how foolish you feel with the thought and both without it now. Walking up to him, you muse. 

“Are we done here?” 

“I think we got all the shots we need,” he hums, nodding to your question. There is something reassuring in his smile, and if you were confident enough to grasp at the straws, you would try to talk to him about the events of last week. You lack in many ways, though, and you were never so self-assured as you try to portray yourself to be, and so you don’t. 

“Let’s go, then,” you say, shuddering from the cold November wind as you walk away from the man, expecting him to follow you. You drove here, since the place is a few miles away from the city, and the fact that this marks the end of your project didn’t really make you as relieved and happy as you thought you’d feel back when you agreed to be his driver for the semester. 

A soft fabric envelopes your shoulders, his varsity jacket hugging you into warmth. You smell his cologne when you shyly push your limbs through the sleeves– a self-indulgent desire, too strong to be fought away– and when you look at him to thank him, he wears a soft look in his eyes that glazes you with such tenderness you feel like combusting from the inside with the strengths of your own emotions. Your heart beats fast in your chest when he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear as you walk towards the car, and when a stronger wind hits your heated face, you think that maybe Donghyuck was right, after all. 

You do think this perfectly captures what youth feels like.

“So we won’t talk about it?” he asks, and you turn away from him in fear of your emotions being clearly written on your face. He doesn’t have to name it– you know what he means.

“No,” you shake your head, determined, yet a little scared of his response, “not now.” Not yet, you think. You want to enjoy today a little longer.

“Why?” he asks.

Taking a shaky breath in, sensing that you won’t get to avoid the confrontation like you wanted to, you shrug. “I don’t know if I’m ready to hear it yet,” you bitterly laugh, meeting his eyes with something close to fear in your eyes.

“Hear what?”

“That you… you didn’t really mean anything by it, y’know,” you mumble, “I mean, you probably just did it to stroke your ego, or something, after everything I said at the party, so… yeah, I just don’t know if I wanna hear it.”

There’s a heartbeat of silence after your explanation, and Donghyuck only stares you down with a blank expression. It's not often that you don’t get to clearly see and experience all his emotions flashing through his face, letting you know what he feels even before he gets to speak it out loud. Now is one of the situations, though, and it scares you– it makes you so deeply afraid you’d rather back away from this conversation– damn you for entertaining it in the first place, and so you pretend it never happened in the first place.

“You think I did it to stroke my ego?” he clarifies.

“I- I mean…” you stutter, shying away from his gaze.

“Okay, then,” he mumbles, jaw hardening, his eyes not meeting yours when he circles the car and gets to his designated place on the passenger's seat, “that’s fine, I guess. I’ll try to show you my intentions clearer next time.”

Sitting in class, head resting in your hands as you stare right in front of you, mentally counting down the seconds until the last class of the semester starts, you are only vaguely aware of the things happening around you. You register Aeri talking to you about the new episode of her favorite drama somewhere to your right and you are also aware of Haknyeon and Shotaro sitting in the row in front of you, laughing loudly to themselves about the way their weekend went– yours went terribly, just for everyone’s information, since you decided to drown your feelings in alcohol alone in your apartment, having to be led to bed by your roommate after she got home in the middle of the night from one of her dates with Eric. You don’t really realize it when the class starts, because the monotone voice of your professor doesn’t do much to wake you up, but you are painfully aware of Lee Donghyuck’s body slumping next to yours into one of the only vacant chairs approximately 10 minutes after the class starts, out of breath and slouched over.

Aware of his presence, yet still acting like a scared deer around him, you don’t make any effort into turning to him and greeting him upon his arrival. Still, you sense the smell of his cologne filling your nostrils and making you just a bit more tired and sleepy, your eyes closing on themselves before you’re woken up by the sound of your name coming out of the professor’s mouth.

Scared you’re getting scolded for sleeping in class, you straighten your back and put on your best polite expression, but then you realize your name wasn’t called, just mentioned, and the name of none other than your neighbor was following, when the projector on the wall in front of you lights up and a file named Final projects is opened on the professor’s laptop, each .mp4 file named with a pair of surnames, and two clicks after, your final project is the first one of many presented in front of the whole class. You tried to tell Donghyuck that you could help with the final editing, but the male said he had a vision he needed to achieve, and for that, he wanted to be in charge of it alone, and frankly, out of fear of interacting with him more than was absolutely necessary, you left him to do his thing, resulting in this being your first time watching the final video as well.

There’s a few seconds of silence, a point of complete blankness as the clip starts, and a song played on an acoustic guitar starts playing when the word YOUTH, all capitalized, flashes at the screen. 

A clip of you running down the field in your flowy dress starts the video, the camera zooming in on your figure when you twirl and skip around in the tall grass, and then you laugh over the background music, the sound making you gape in surprise. You didn’t know your laugh sounded like that, and with the hazy coloring of the clips and the solemn, youthful atmosphere Donghyuck managed to capture in the video, you find yourself thinking the sound was kind of beautiful. 

Then the clip cuts into another one– and you widen your eyes at the sight, because Donghyuck told you he’s only going to include the clips from the field, and you believed him, well, because you never saw him record anything else– as the screen shows you a bunch of moments, all wordless, of you just going on with your life. The very next one is of you arriving to class late, a grumpy expression playing with your features. You didn’t notice Donghyuck filming back then, when he offered you a cup of coffee as you laid back on the desk, and a fit of giggles erupts around the class at your behavior. The next clip shows you laughing at Aeri’s shoulder in Yangyang’s basement– a couple of clips of that night following, capturing you playing beer pong with your other friends, or taking sips of your beer when you sat down on one of the folding chairs in the corner of the basement– each one showcasing you completely natural, unstaged, and raw. You had no idea anyone was watching you, yet alone taking clips of you. Did Donghyuck have his camera with him all those times? Or was he just taking those with his phone, since you never even noticed?

There’s a clip of you showing him the middle finger through the window when he called you late at night one day. Another one of you driving, and frankly, you don’t even know where you were going, but the sound of you giggling breaks through the speakers and you slouch deeper into your seat, shy at hearing the sound. The very next one is of you sipping at your boba through your straw, and that’s when you realize those were taken by his phone– at least some of them– because you attempt to hide from the lens by showing your palm against it. Another clip shows you digging through bags of McDonald’s take out in the driver’s seat of your car, another one lets you remember the time you went to get fried chicken with him, thinking he’s sending the video he took of you to tease his roommate with the free food he got with someone else back then, unaware that he wanted to use it for the project later. 

There are a few clips that only last a second. You walking a few steps ahead of him– you think it was the time you two went to the mall, you angry with his antics. Another one of you picking out cans of soda from the rack in the convenience store. A clip of you driving, once again, but now the sky is starry and dark, and you remember the night too well, since it wasn’t that long ago. A clip of you glaring at your bangs in the rear view mirror, another one of you staring into your textbooks at the library. 

There’s only one clip that shows Donghyuck as well. It’s one taken without you knowing, much like the previous ones, and how you missed the phone plopped up against the corner of your dashboard, you really don’t know, but the video shows you two in the McDonald’s parking lot, your hand touching his on the gear stick as you show him how to drive. Only then do you notice the flustered look on his face and the nervous laugh he gets out in the clip, the sound making your heart jump in your ribcage. 

The last part of the video is of you walking a few steps ahead of him, his varsity jacket hugging you around your shoulders. It’s the latest clip of them all, and it makes you painfully shy to look at it. The video comes to finish with a few last strums of an acoustic guitar in the background, and you come back to your senses when you feel a hand squeeze your thigh under the table, the whole class erupting into claps. The video was beautiful, and you feel moved.

Although you should be more mad about the fact that Donghyuck took videos of you without you knowing, there is something incredibly moving about the fact that somebody was looking at you and felt the need to capture the moment before it went away. The clips were candid, real, raw, showcasing exactly how the memory went, how your laugh sounded, and how you looked through Donghyuck’s eyes. The video was exactly what it needed to be and more. 

There’s something about the fact that all of the clips were of you that made you feel weak in your knees. If the video was what youth feels like, does this mean you were his youth?

If you felt beautiful in the video, loved the way your eyes crinkled in joy, liked the way your expressions morphed into the purest form of whatever emotion you felt at the moment, did that mean this was the way Donghyuck saw you with his eyes?

“See?” you hear him whisper into your ear, his hand still resting at the top of your leg. “I told you I had a vision. I did a good job, didn’t I?”

You chuckle, then offer him a nod. “I didn’t know you were recording all of those,” you whisper, ignoring the words coming out of your professor’s mouth– surely evaluating your work right now. You don’t really want to hear it, though– you’re sure you’ll pass. After seeing what your neighbor’s capable of, you have no doubts.

“I wanted it to feel authentic,” he peeps, “to the way I see you, I mean.”

“Is this what you meant when you said you’d prove your point later?” you wonder.

“I mean, the fact that I’ve always had the biggest crush on you was supposed to come across when I liked your objectively terrible haircut you got at the beginning of the term, but yes,” he admits, sheepishly smiling.

“Okay, uncalled for,” you shrug off his hand from your thigh, to which he giggles and captures your limb with his again, interlacing your fingers. He sways your hands back and forth, offering you a soft look that drives you slightly insane. After all of this, you’re really not sure what you were so afraid of.

“How does that roadtrip sound right now?” 

“Still absolutely terrifying,” you note. 

“Even if I pay for gas?” he laughs.

Squinting at him, admiring the boyish grin playing with his lips, you sigh. “I’ll think about it.”

[catboxcoffin]

On Furniture

(Apologies for discursive definition-talk..)

I believe the label of ‘furniture’ itself, like anything that isn’t given a complete answer, to host a catbox of meanings, so I’ll list some thoughts and categorize them by factual/thematic v.s. (meta-)fictional. I am separating these categories based on the word’s two ‘origins’: [1.] the ‘in-universe’ coinage; and [2.] the first usage within the episodic structure.

Regarding/defining categories:

Factual/Thematic:

The canon, chronological storyline [1.] underneath the story’s presentation tends to connect more to the Factual—I use this term to refer to the material events upon which everything else is built (‘Prime’) because Umineko likes to play with the word ‘Truth.’ Extra-gameboard events are as close to ‘factual’ as we can hope for, as they should occur outside of the Catbox. I willfully ignore the gestures pointing otherwise, as that would completely ruin the entire game’s truth-search, but I will concede differing ‘perspectives’ as a means of obscuring, and stories told by catbox pieces to be dubious. Literal and Thematic are not oppositional here; all metaphor/hyperbole/concepts in this category are rational extensions of the in-universe ‘reality’ because they remain as such—by this I mean that they are not visualized as chairs or rabbits, but instead concepts as intuitive as love and evil that exist among the world's inhabitants. Although these themes are delicately woven into the meta-fiction, they are born from ‘reality,’ not personified from a third source or a tool within the game.

2. (Meta-)Fictional:

The story’s presentation [2.] aligns more with the subjective, fantastical elements within the story. Considering the nature of an ‘endless witch’ and voyager witches in general, the Meta-World falls into this category as well (Also... take my usage of 'Meta' lightly—I am referring to fiction-within-fiction and the common term for the worlds, not asserting that Umineko is an effective work of MetaFiction). The gameboards in their entirety cannot logically exist without Meta interference, because their planes often (arbitrarily) merge. To simplify the discussion I’m treating the layers somewhat like this: —> (Note: it would take me ages to map out a consistent meta layer system for Umineko, so bear with the simplicity)

Prime - Umineko’s ‘real’ universe. The fragment of authored message bottles and (pardon my presumption) Ange/Eva’s survival. + What can reasonably be gleaned chronologically from the following layer (2) along with flashbacks.

Gameboards and the pieces within them. Were written with an intended purpose & elements of reality. In order of importance: 1, 2 > 3, 4 > Chiru

The Meta-World 1. Where Battler and Beatrice fight & the presentation/narration of the board. Seems to seep into every other layer somehow. Hypothetically contains Yasutrice as-author

The Meta-World 2. Whatever the hell was going on with Featherine and Ange reading about MW1. Arguably any extra-catbox people (voyager&endless witches of the future) contribute to this layer.

My Factual-thematic category focuses nearly entirely on layer 1, with extrapolation from persistent themes/discussions in 2. My (Meta-)fictional category encompasses layers 2 & 3. 4 can be relevant but I largely dislike using it for theories. In other words, category 2 is everything that is non-factual, meaning mostly presentation and interpretation.

I. Factual / Thematic

The in-universe coinage of ‘furniture’ is only disclosed in Reqiuem. I find this to be an interesting choice considering the inverted ‘answer sheet’ theme of EP7; Ryukishi is handing us a short, retrospectively logical explanation, but its brevity leaves much to be interpreted.

"This body that isn't even capable of love...!! / What's...what's the point in living like that?! / This isn't a Human's life...!! / It's like being furniture!! / That's right, I'm...furniture...!!"

The term is suddenly flipped on its head. Prior, furniture was presented as unable to love because it was furniture (implied to be status-based, seemingly just an effect of inferiority). However, it’s the other way around: one is furniture because it cannot love. The condition of the body precedes & defines worth. Unlike the dramatized, bodiless nature of Beato’s fantasies, this solution is grotesque and earthly. Being physically alienated from the universe of two makes one sub-human. Yasu-Shannon-Kannon’s—I’ll use ’YSK’—mutilated organs make ‘them’ (collective, not gender-neutral) unable to form a sexual union with any of their respective partners. Shannon cannot fulfill the marital duty of motherhood or even sex with George, Kanon is literally impotent, both physically and emotionally/volitionally in his pursuit of Jessica, and Yasu is so alienated from the feminine ideal that she cannot allow herself to ‘exist’ without performing through the former two (&Beatrice). None of them are sexually ‘complete.’

Continuing the material interpretation, its application to Genji is obvious: He loyally serves Kinzo as a friend and confidant, possesses a flamboyant, flirtatious fictional counterpart, and remains unmarried with a certain sterility towards women... He is gay. Blatant subtext aside this answer also ties up some of my personal qualms with his characterization. His senseless, sociopathic dedication to the head and his successor, complete unwillingness to intervene regarding Kuwatrice, and legitimate desirelessness can at least partially be humanized by lolgayforkinzo… If anything, a possible envy of Beatrice(s) could have solidified their doom. This unrequited love makes Genji too ‘sexually incomplete.’ While not literally mutilated, there is metaphorical castration in being a sexual minority. Kinzo would never love him, and I doubt Genji even respected himself enough to wish for it. He is the other half-universe that complements YSK, and possibly the only one who could begin to understand them. Their dramatically fatalistic tendencies can be narratively justified by their banishment from (yet proximity to) the world of love. There is no purpose in ‘living’ without the single element of life.

On a simpler note, we can also reverse-engineer the label simply based on those excluded. On my first read, ‘furniture’ initially, obviously seemed to be a hyperbolic representation of servitude. Being barricaded from the rest of society by class would certainly render one ‘sub-human.’ This, however, is self-eliminating by exempting Gohda and Kumasawa from the label. My immediate conclusion then was that the basis was not physical status, but psychological servitude. KumaGoh always felt far more human to me, which I chalked up to abysmally poor writing of ShKaGenji—a belief I still hold to an extent, but have found ways to cope with. Kumasawa and Gohda are distinctly rebellious, obviously thinking little of their status as servants. They are petty, greedy individuals who fit in well with the Ushiromiyas despite their class differences. Kumasawa is a pathological slacker, and Gohda is a skirt of responsibilities, but this doesn’t make them 'bad' in any sense. They have a passion for and qualms with their employment because it is their job, not their identity. The same cannot be said for SKG, who literally embody their vocation. I could never take their little spats with Beatrice seriously because of how bizarrely complacent they were in the face of reality; to this day I get irritated with searching for satisfactory answers in EP2. Thus, ‘furniture’ can be taken to mean a lack of humanity constituted by a lack of will & individuation.

In a similar (& more personally satisfying) vein, ‘Furniture’ can represent a debt and unbreakable tie to Kinzo. ShKanon and Genji are closer than anyone to being his property, yet they obtain strange respect from him, bearing the One-winged eagle as both a brand and honor—prized possessions. The magical perspective refers to them as his ‘creations,’ which works literally with Yasu/Lion as his paternal creation and Genji-as-servant as a circumstantial creation. Genji owes Kinzo as his savior, his remaining existence eternally devoted to paying back the favor of being spared from death in the seizing of Taiwan. Serving for so long, and so absolutely, definitely degraded his sense of humanity and began to merge his identity with his master’s.

(GEN): ”......We must continue to return the favor we received from the Master...until our final moments."

YSK, on the other hand, are tied to Kinzo by blood. Even in their ignorance and physical distance, and much to their personal detriment, they cannot escape him. They merge with projections of Beatrice without even meeting him, they come to work in the mansion without knowledge of their ancestry, and they become treasured servants seemingly by coincidence. Both ShKanon and Genji have a sense of being Kinzo's above all else, to the point of being distrusted as servants by the rest of the family, an unfortunate state since neither has families of their own. I think of this as a semi-intended and enforced alienation by Kinzo, furthering their already lonely situations for the sake of dependence and loyalty (I do not find this entirely loveless, though…). This loneliness could explain the affective resignation felt by furniture, and their inability to ‘love.’ YSK’s case is cemented in youth due to special treatment both inciting bullying and cultivating a strange relationship between them and Kinzo—Kanon’s mention of shooting with Kinzo and participating in pranks tugs on a heartstring I can’t explain. I am particularly fond of this interpretation…

II. (Meta-)Fictional

There is a stupid amount of facets to furniture in the 'fictional' portion of the story, to the point where it’s difficult to speculate on a cohesive definition. 50 new characters now fall under the label, and they must be encompassed as well. Is the term simply an extension of its connotation in reality, or is it morphed by meta-context like many of the other themes? My vote? Entirely Meta.

As I did earlier, I will begin with the first usage—this time, the coinage within the episodic structure [2.]. Doing this, I found something interesting:

The first use of furniture is Self-Referential and used as a reason to not do something: Kanon not giving a real interactive greeting, or accepting sweets; Shannon not fighting off Battler’s assault. It actually takes a while for the term to be used by non-furniture, making it appear entirely self-imposed. The word is persistently used despite the discomfort and intervention by others. It’s not self-deprecation or knowledge of one’s place; it’s a rule—a rule seemingly ingrained into the fabric of their existence. This is what I assert in this section—it is.

Shannon, Kanon, and Genji to a lesser extent, are wholly pieces owned by Yasu as their author. Not in the sense that Piece-Maria or Piece-Eva are pieces—I mean literal fiction. SKG are Yasu’s characters. Their differentiation from ‘humans’ all hinges on what can be ascribed to their fictionality.

They have an unchangeable position in the world because they are born with a singular practical purpose: to facilitate the gameboards’ culprit. (The strife that appears down the line is due to the conflicting purpose of creation) They cannot obey promises, only orders. Furniture does nothing but rot with the passage of time (…due to the triumph of new truths, I presume). Furniture is a reliable ‘tool,’ aptly fitting for characters who exist to fit neatly into the logic of murders, allowed meta-sentience but not autonomy. Writing about Humans is inefficient; you must cater to their flaws and desires, bound by what they Would or Wouldn’t do. What they are shown to be like is what they are like; the room for duplicity is small in stories corroborated by the Truth of the outside world. To surpass this—to create the perfect culprit without constraints, morals, or ties to reality—one only must ensure they are embodied. Embodied, they must be, by someone who could feasibly be them, due to an intentional lack of information. The benefit of the ambiguous identity is the excusability of multiple identities and secret motives. Yasu, with the least history, is the default, practical culprit for such a scheme. It would be entirely possible for Yasu to have no motive against the family at all, and through a simple desire to write the most effective story possible, just happened to write herself as the villain (though I obviously do not believe this, based on… well… everything).

Genji is not quite ‘fictional’ in the way that I’m claiming ShKanon are, but his nature makes him the perfect culprit-tool. Little can be known regarding prime-Genji aside from his undying loyalty to Kinzo and his successor (and how this makes him starkly morally bereft). Without family or distinct loyalties aside from the aforementioned, he too becomes a motive-mystery, and can be written to feasibly facilitate and assist almost any act if dictated by the ‘Master.’ The role of Master is pretty significant regarding Genji’s utility, considering that if the boards are chronologically honest (which they must be), Kinzo is dead and Yasu is ‘the Master.’ This aggressively recontextualizes most of Genji’s references to being furniture:

(GEN): ".......I believe everything has proceeded as the Master has hoped and arranged for. ...To distrust that would exceed my role as furniture in service to the Master.”

(KAN): "...............I wonder if this means the Master's ceremony has already begun." / (GEN): "...Probably. However, that has nothing to do with furniture like us.”

Obviously, we could read this as commentary on Yasu literally carrying out the murders, but the passivity and strange sentience regarding the ceremony leads me to believe this comes from a character aware of his narrative function. He was Yasu’s original ‘piece’ in reality, remaining her greatest asset in fiction as well. His loyalty was not just feasible, but real. Like ShKanon, he functions as a limitless Queen. Unlike SK, though, he does little to ever interfere or reject his status. Although, there is that scene of him knifing the butterfly…

Before I discuss the other(s)’ fictionality, I have to preface: I will not suspend my disbelief—I do not think ShKanon was a ‘thing’ in prime. I don’t doubt the mental manifestation of Kanon as an ideal, and am even open to a Kanon ‘alter,’ but I cannot accept that YasuShannon regularly dressed up as him or that anyone knew of a Kanon (besides maybe Genji, and even that’s tenuous). I honestly don’t mind the impracticality of performing Kanon, more so the meaninglessness. Within a gameboard ruleset where absurdities being ‘technically possible’ warrants its writing as truth, why would Kanon be real? Wouldn’t that be stripping Yasu of her hilarious authorial tricks? His existence as “extra person without extra body” is the perfect tool for a game, but totally worthless in reality. It’s not unreasonable that he ‘existed’ at Jessica’s school festival as a favor, but I wouldn’t push further than that. Besides, he was 90% covered and still considered strikingly young and androgynous, which only confirms the difficulty of genderswapping in reality. Plus, most of the ‘confirmation’ of PrimeKanon exists among swaths of half-truths (i.e. Requiem stating that a whole separate kid is being summoned out of thin air and Yasu is doing magic). Don’t take this as discrediting his significance, though; Beatrice also isn’t ‘real,’ and she’s more interesting for it.

As for Shannon, she is also largely fake. Yes, the servant named ‘Shannon’ exists in Prime. That is Yasu (or, well, what was left after the Clair-trice fragmentation [Ironically enough, I do actually take this absurd plot point at face value. Because it’s interesting]). However, I truly believe that Gameboard Shannon (GS) is a fictional entity born to serve (exempting murders) the desire for conformity and traditional femininity as much as Kanon was born from loneliness and repression. Again, these facets and desires absolutely existed in reality, I just don’t see them as being sustainable, performed identities. The fact that Battler’s memories of his first love aren’t remotely jogged by GS, and the fact that such memories would make the culprit obvious, insists upon the idea that GS is an intentional construction for the sake of the story. Battler isn’t an idiot, his androgynous intellectual gf just morphed into a moeblob tradwife over 6 years…

I feel like there’s a sticking conception that either: 1. Shannon is literally mentally Beatrice le evil culprit mastermind and is just inhabiting a servant body; or 2. Shannon is completely disconnected and the evil witch is hidden in her head as a separate consciousness and possesses her and seriously fights her alternate personas. I find these neither compelling nor reasonable. As for the first, I really do not feel like labeling a character’s entire real-world existence as a facade, no matter how boring they may be. Besides, it would be quite difficult to earnestly repress your true self enough to love not one, but two other people on the side. As for the second, a split personality is meaningless and nigh impossible when within the board’s logic you can literally kill, resurrect, and swap identities at will. They’re all fiction. That’s it. They’re all Yasu’s characters. Granted, they each contain large, separate amounts of herself, but none are uniquely her. As Zepar and Furfur said, “Their soul is less than a single person.” Existent, in a sense, but not fully ensouled.

It should go without saying that I reject Prime!JessiKanon or and ShaGeorge (for the most part). I think their inclusion in the story is a mechanic to solidify just how disconnected Yasu’s desires and ‘selves’ are, and to provide ample commentary on Love. It’s entirely likely that Yasu fantasized a romantic pursuit of George to distract herself from Battler, but I have a hard time reconciling her character with that sort of activity unless, again, Shannon was a literal split identity. Besides, the love square serves to soften the absolute disingenuousness of ShKanon for being what they are—tools.

However, Shannon does have an undeniable centrality, a ‘Heart’ that the others are not afforded, including Beatrice. My answer for this is that she is the only one truly Embodied outside of the board, pushing her into a strange half-furniture, half-human category. Kinzo is said to have made her by hand without a demon and to have given her a heart. This alludes to her being a child born from flesh, not contrived by circumstance. As always, Kinzo is paralleled by Yasu, who has a similar (meta-)relationship to Shannon.

Gameboard-Shannon does not ‘exist,’ but she surely contains the most real rudiments of Prime-’Shannon.’ Though less than human, she is Named and privileged with a body the others could never have. Her higher existence can also be explained by her being the simplest to potentially ‘exist’ (no gender-bend, no blonde witch). The conflict between her narrative role as Yasu’s piece and the narrative constraints of her ties to reality affords her a special rebelliousness, manifesting as a stronger Heart. Shannon’s bindings to Prime are a hindrance from an authorial perspective, narrowing culpability, but a privilege to the piece herself, who may circumvent fate with her ‘humanity.’ This is why she always precedes Kanon, and why she wins the love duel (Yes, I think the duel was identity>love). I also believe that Yasu envied the conceptual GS (The Beatrice/Shannon clash is enough to evidence this) and that Shannon’s internal strife is a consequence of Yasu’s teetering consideration of embodying her completely—hence the “heart that can know love.” By abandoning her Self and personifying this ideal, she could pursue a love beyond Battler, but it would be a charade. Thus the ‘Shannon’ character was trapped in a dream she wasn’t allowed, with a new purpose outgrowing the old, fighting her own authorship.

“…Burning with infatuation and worried by love, being tempted constantly and eternally with a way out was truly a cruel trial.”

This could easily be read as Yasu’s conception of Shannon—her last way “out.” However, her piece is not allowed to transgress its role, or the catbox games would shatter.

Though I have agonized over it, I don’t think my thoughts here ignore the heart. To understand the nature of furniture, one must deconstruct each character and what makes them human. Metaphors & representation are crucial to Umineko and, by extension, Yasu. The motive compelling one to author iterative ‘selves’ containing neuroses invisible in reality yet contained in one body for the sake of their nature being solved is far more bittersweet than reverse-engineering a split personality because it’s the only way to make the Logick Work. Applying the sentiment of Eva-trice and the black witch, internal conflict may be made comfortable through literal bifurcation, but the mind in reality is painfully united. The possession of multitudes can justify the inability to understand or accept yourself; to love yourself. Many but one.

I consider the Golden Land’s ‘liberation’ of furniture into love & bodies of their own to be the opposite of what it seems—instead of external fabrication, the identities unite cohesively within the single mind, thus allowing them ‘each’ a body and the capacity to love.

TLDR; Furniture in the meta-perspective is the role of a character & narrative tool. Furniture in ‘reality’ is a physical, psychological, and relational condition.

[fairestar]

“awakened imagination” by neville goddard · a summary

this post is the first of a forthcoming set in which i summarise and simplify neville goddard’s book “awakened imagination”. you can read the original here, and you can check other summaries here. please note this book is heavily reliant on his religion and, as much as i will try to make it as non-religious and simple as possible, there are still passages and comparisons that i can't take out without hindering neville words’ meaning. take these posts as if i were taking notes for future reference during class.

❁ chapter I : who is your imagination?

“imagination” is the kind of word that has been used for so long it has gathered plenty of different meanings, which often oppose each other: thought, hallucination, suspicion... neville identifies “imagination” with the power that makes achievement of our goals inevitable. there is only one thing in the world: imagination, and all our deformations of it. imagination is the very gateway to reality.

according to blake, man is only a natural organ subject to sense; the eternal body of man is imagination: god itself, the divine body. by imagination we have the power to be anything we desire to be; only as we live by imagination can we truly be said to live at all.

with this book, neville wants you to function imaginatively, to open your “immortal eyes inwards into the worlds of thought”, where you have all of your heart's desires ripe and ready to harvest. imagination is the hidden mystery from the ages, the hope of glory.

“every man is mary and birth to christ must give”.

imagination's birth and growth is the gradual transition from a god of tradition to a god of experience. if the birth of imagination in you seems slow it is because you are unwilling to let go of that comfortable, but false, grasp to tradition.

man is the garden in which christ —imagination— sleeps. man is awakened by his imagination getting lifted up to heaven and being made god-like. in the moment of awakening, he meets the test of sonship, of his imagination being christ: the forgiveness of sin (“sin” meaning failing to achieve one's aim in life, falling short of one's ideal; “forgiveness” meaning identification of man with his aim/ideal in life). this tests man's ability to inhabit the nature of his opposite (go from the state of the undesirable self to the state of the desirable self), to perform the work of an awakened imagination.

is imagination power sufficient to, not only enable us to assume, but to execute the idea too?

suppose i desire to be in some other place, but i lack the social and financial resources to do so; could i, just by imagining myself in such place, cause the physical realization? would only my imagination be sufficient to incarnate my desire? does imagination understand what is deducted from the senses? does it recognise the outer world?

suppose i am capable of sustaining the feeling of the wish fulfilled, of acting with continuous imagination; will my assumption harden into fact? and if it does, will i find that my actions throughout this period have been reasonable? after assuming that i already am that which i desire, must i constantly guide myself by “reasonable” ideas and actions so as to cause the fulfillment of my assumption?

the answer to all these questions is that an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact; continuous imagination is sufficient for all things, all of our “reasonable” plans and actions won't ever make up for our lack of continuous imagination.

“imagine that you are and you shall be”.

truth depends upon the intensity of imagination, not upon external facts. you become what you imagine. you have a self-determined history. imagination is the truth, the life revealed.

but the thing is, we cannot get hold of truth with the logical mind (stop thinking and worrying about the how! logic does not come into play here, let it go, you don't need it), it cannot be enclosed by facts: as we awaken to the imaginative life, we discover that imagining a thing is to create it, that true judgement doesn't need to conform to the outer world to which it relates (this means, the truth doesn't always look the same as the 3D does at that moment).

the imaginative man does not deny the reality of the sensuous outer world (3D), but knows that the inner world of continuous imagination (4D) is the force by which the outer world comes to pass. he sees the 3D and all its situations as projections of the 4D. to him, everything is a manifestation of the mental activity present in his imagination, without the outer, reasonable man being aware of it. he knows that everyone must become aware of their inner activity, and the relationship between the inner and outer worlds.

the moment you discover that your imagination is god-like, you accomplish acts that can only be described as miraculous. but until you realise that everything you come across is part of yourself, you won't accept that you are the one that has chosen the conditions of your life, that they are in affinity to your mental activity. you must firmly believe that reality lies within you, not without; although others have bodies and lives of their own, their reality is rooted in you and ends in you.

it is a marvelous thing to discover that you can imagine yourself into the state of your wish fulfilled and escape the prison of ignorance. embrace this new knowledge and let go of your past beliefs for they're untrue. live in continuous imagination and make your desires come to pass.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤ© fairestar, 2023.

[aspoonofsugar]

Oshi No Ko - A Family Of Stars

I caught up with Oshi No Ko, so here are some opinions and meta thoughts.

AN INVERSION OF NAOKI URASAWA'S MONSTER

Oshi No Ko and Monster are 2 very different stories, but some plot elements and conflicts are similar:

Monster is the story of a surgeon, who must track down a serial killer whose life he has saved. This monster is one of 2 twins and the story deals with the brother and sister uncovering their past

Oshi No Ko is the story of a doctor, who is murdered and reborn as his favourite idol's child. Together with him there is a twin sister and they must track down the killer of their mother. The series leads the twins to find closure with their previous selves, so they can embrace a new life

In short, in both series there is a pair of twins and a murderer. It is just that in Monster the twins have no memories nor sense of selves, while in Oshi No Ko they have too many memories and baggage.

Finally, in Monster the characters must uncover the truth behind Johan, while in Oshi No Ko they must find out who Ai really is. The former is about understanding a monster, whereas the latter is about empathizing with a goddess.

(A)IDOL

The invincible smile that tears up the media Wanna know her secret, so mysterious Even the things she lacks end up in her area Such a perfect liar, you are: [Miss] ingenious, godly idol (You're my savior, you're my saving grace)

In religion an idol is:

An object which represents a deity, so it can become a manifestation of the god itself

A fake god, at least in monotheistic religions, like Judaism, Christianity and Islam

So, idols are gods. And yet, they are fake gods. In particular, monotheistic religions refuse idols because they are over-simplified representations of the divine.

Similarly, people worship celebrities, but only aknowledge their simplistic personas. Actors and idols are put on a pedestal, but also objectified:

So, what'd you eat today? What's your favorite book? And if you wanna go to play, where are you gonna go? I haven't eaten at all That's a secret No matter what you ask She's elusive, evasive Yet still shining bright; Her secret: out of sight, as if visible, has the taste of honey

They aren't seen as people with complex emotions, but as blank slates fans project their feelings onto.

This is why Ai Hoshino is the ultimate idol:

Drawing everyone's eyes You are the perfect, ultimate idol Never to appear again A reincarnation of Venus With that smile, with that "I love you" You captivate everyone Even if those eyes, those words, are false They make up a perfect love (Ai)

Ai's whole self is a lie. Not because she is malicious, but rather because she lacks a sense of self:

She is not sure of her own emotions and can't tell truth from lies. Everything is mixed and unclear. What does it even mean to love? What does Ai even want?

Ai is supposed to embody love. After all, she is associated to the Morning Star, which is called Venus, also known as the Goddess of Love. And yet, Ai's true eyes are dark:

Similarly, the word "ai" means love, but our idol's name is written with no kanji, which makes it the Japanese transcription of the English word for eye.

Ai's name is the sound of love, but with no kanjis (no meaning) attached. Ai is an empty love with empty eyes. This is the pun she is built on.

Still, why is that so? Well, Ai's parents don't put kanjis in her name, just like they don't love her:

So, Ai's character is defined by these 2 ideas:

I have never been loved by anyone Nor have I loved anyone else

On the one hand she was never loved. On the other hand she has never loved. Because of this, she thinks of herself as a fake.

AI (PURPLE) = AQUA (BLUE) + RUBY (RED)

Ai has stars in both her purple eyes. Aqua and Ruby instead have only 1 star each. Moreover, Aqua has blue eyes, while Ruby has red eyes. The idea is very simple. They are Ai's 2 sides:

Aqua is blue, right, mind and an actor

Ruby is red, left, heart and an idol

Together they make Ai, down to her 2 parallel careers (as an actress and as an idol). That said, the twins' foiling with their mother gets deeper:

As Miyako highlights, both Aqua and Ruby are liars. It is just that they lie about opposite things. On the one hand Aqua hides his most positive and vulnerable side. On the other hand Ruby hides her negative feelings. Aqua always sulks, while Ruby always smiles.

Aqua suppresses his wish to love others and to be happy with them

Ruby suppresses her fear to be unloved and abandoned by those around her

In short, each twin explores one of Ai's complexes (to love and to be loved). They really are the 2 faces of Ai (love).

AQUA - THE UNLOVING ACTOR

Aqua's story starts with Gorou Amamiya:

Gorou is a person strongly defined by guilt, which is at the root of his backstory. His mother was a young girl, who died by giving birth to him. As a result, Gorou feels he lives at her expenses and does all he can to rectify this mistake. For example, he becomes an obstetrician, even if he really wants to be a surgeon. Not only that, but he ends up developing a saviour complex. He feels it is his failure that Sarina dies, even if her illness can't be cured and has nothing to do with Gorou's area of expertise.

So, it is really no surprise that once Ai arrives, he projects on her the 2 people he could not save:

Ai is Sarina's favourite idol and a young girl like her

Ai is a teenage mother and is desperate to give birth in secret, just like Gorou's own mother

Ai represents Gorou's chance of redemption and catharsis. He could not save neither his mom nor Sarina, but he can help Ai. She needs the kind of doctor he is and this time he can make things right. However, Gorou is negated this closure and gets killed and reborn as Ai's own son. A son, who is destined to witness his mother's death. This time again, Aqua is powerless and can't save Ai. So, the story repeats and Aqua is left broken:

Aqua's real wish is to save people, but he keeps failing, so he chooses the path of revenge. He becomes his own antithesis.

He feels he doesn't deserve to live happily with others, but his wish to connect is too strong and he ends up forging some of the deepest bonds in the series:

He insists he is only focused on revenge, but ends up warming up to Kana and Akane to the point he goes out of his way to support them multiple times. Even when it doesn't help his avenge quest.

This is made clear in recent chapters, as well. Aqua has decided to give up on all his bonds. He cuts ties with Akane, decides to manipulate Kana and betrays Ruby's trust. He insists he is ready to go to hell alone. And yet, even after he takes such a dark turn, he can't help, but to save Ruby:

As Crow Girl says, this is a bad move on Aqua's side. His revenge would be easier if Ruby hated him, but he lets his true feelings out. He tries to repress his love and care for others. And yet, it keeps manifesting through the cracks of his vengeful persona. Aqua decides not to love, but he still does.

RUBY - THE UNLOVED IDOL

Ruby's story starts with Sarina Tendouji:

Sarina's life is doomed by her illness, which results in her parents abandoning her. Not only does she suffer physically, but she feels unloved. Despite that, she refuses to give up and laces on 2 people, who become her personal lights (stars):

Ai is the girl Sarina wishes to be. A person who is showered with love, as she shines brightly and moves freely on a stage.

Gorou is a parental substitude, as he is the only adult, who supports Sarina throughout her illness. He is even the person who stays with her, while she dies.

So, Ai and Gorou are around when Sarina's parents aren't, which is why she ends up idolizing them. Ai becomes some kind of ideal self, while Gorou becomes her first crush. The truth, though, is that they are the 2 pillars of Sarina's life.

Ironically, Sarina's make believe family becomes Ruby's real one. In particular, Ai becomes a mother, who loves her children with all her heart. This is healing for Ruby, who projects her wish for love on Ai:

It is Ai's strong emotions, which make it possible for Ruby to recover from the loss of her mother:

Ruby pursues the career of idol earnestly to become a star who never lies. And yet, she keeps lying to herself, as she refuses to confront Sarina's past. This negation is why her reaction to Gorou's death is so strong. This discovery becomes a catalyst for all of Ruby's negative feelings:

Ruby becomes her own antithesis and starts to climb up high through manipulation and lies. It is implied she weakens her relationships and later on she enters a violent fight with Aqua, which breaks their bond.

And yet, when Ruby hits rock bottom and confronts the painful truth that her parents have abandoned Sarina, it is Aqua who comes to her rescue:

Even if Ruby breaks their relationship and is prepared to live without trusting anyone anymore, she is still loved. The girl who fears rejection and abandonement is loved even in her darkest moment.

IDOL + FANS = MOTHER + CHILDREN

Aqua and Ruby are opposites. Aqua is scared to be loved and can't let go of Gorou. Ruby is scared to be unloved and can't face Sarina. And yet, they are also the same. Both project their deeper issues on both each other and Ai.

Gorou's feelings over his mother are projected on Sarina. Similarly, he projects his feelings for Sarina on Ai

Sarina's feelings over her mother are projected on Gorou. Later on, she decides to become like Ai because of her promise to Gorou

In short, Gorou wants to protect Ai because of Sarina and Sarina wants to become like Ai because of Gorou. As a result, Ai ends up as the object of their fantasies and wishes. A real godly idol.

Obviously, Gorou and Sarina's feelings towards Ai grow deeper and more complex as they are reborn as her twins. Slowly, their relationship goes from that of idol and fans to that of mother and children.

So, Aqua and Ruby's story is about overcoming the idealization of Ai. Both as fans towards their favourite idol and as children towards their mother. After all, isn't a mother their child's idol?

SUSANOO, AMATERASU AND MARIA

Among other things, the theme of idolisation is conveyed through the religious motif of the Hoshino Family.

Even the flowing sweats are beautiful Aqua These eyelids that hid the Ruby within

The lyrics reference the legend of Susanoo and Amaterasu:

According to tradition, the 3 god siblings Susanoo, Tsukuyomi and Amterasu are born from the creator god Izanagi. as he washes his face in a river. Tsukuyomi (Moon Goddess) is born from Izanagi's right eye, Amaterasu (Sun Goddess) from his left eye and Susanoo (Sea God) from his nose. In short:

Aqua is a composite version of Tsukuyomi and Susanoo. He has inherited Ai's right eye, like Tsukuyomi. However, the opening associates him to his mother's sweat, like Susanoo is born from Izanagi blowing his nose. Finally, his name links him to the sea

Ruby alludes to Amaterasu. She has inherited Ai's left eye, the opening links her to her mother's eyes and she herself mentions the goddess

This reference loosely comments Aqua and especially Ruby's arcs.

Amaterasu and Susanoo enter a fight, which leaves the Goddess crying and depressed. She hides in a cave and without the light of the sun, the world is left in darkness. The other Gods come up with a plan to lure Amaterasu out of her prison. In particular, the God of Enterteinment Ame-no-Uzume organizes a celebration for a new bright Goddess. Amaterasu gets curious and eventually comes out from the cave, so the world gets sunlight back.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Ame-no-Uzume is mentioned multiple times together with Amaterasu. Moreover, the characters visit the Goddess of Enterteinment's temple and they metaphorically enter Amaterasu's cave:

What the story does is clear, right? Ruby's arc is loosely an inversion of Amaterasu's story.

The Sun Goddess enters a fight with her brother and hides in a cave, only to be rescued by the Goddess of Enterteinment. Ruby is guided by Crow Girl (who could be a composite character between Yagatarasu and Ame-no-Uzume herself) and enters a cave, where she finds Gorou's body. This leads to Ruby going through her eclipse phase, where her eyes go dark. Eventually, she is helped by her brother and she finds her inner light again.

It is possible that Aqua's story will mirror Susanoo's in a similar way. After all, the God of the Sea is famous for killing a monstrous serpent to protect a Princess and for finding a Magical Sword within the beast. This may reference Aqua's quest for revenge, who leads him to find a princess (Akane-Princess Saya) and a blade (Kana-Tsurugi). That said, it is too soon to say.

As a final note, Ruby and Aqua's fight ties into the mythological motif. After all, Amaterasu enters into conflicts with both Susanoo and Tsukuyomi. In Amaterasu and Susanoo's case, they go through a divination ritual, so that Susanoo can prove his good intentions. Susanoo passes the trial, but the aftermath leads to the siblings fighting. When it comes to Ruby and Aqua, Ruby gets angry at Aqua for betraying Ai. As a result, Aqua has to mend his bond with Ruby by revealing his past self. To do so, he proves his identity through the Ai-keychan (a divine sign). He passes the trial.

What's most interesting about these references is Ame-no-Uzume's role. The Goddess of Enterteinment is an ally of Amaterasu, but Crow Girl leads the characters towards darkness. Thematically, she may embody the darkest part of the enterteinment world, which finds fun in people suffering.

So, what about Ai? What is her religious symbolism? Let's turn to Christianity:

Sing, dance, flutter, I am Maria — Right, lying is the most exquisite form of love

Mary is famous for having Jesus, while still a virgin. She is so perfect that God chooses her to bear his child. Similarly, Ai is an idol and is requested to be pure, so for her to have a sexual partner is out of question.

Still, Aqua and Ruby's reaction to the idea of a father is interesting. It speaks of their idealization of Ai both as her children and as her 2 biggest fans. At the same time, it betrays a wish to repress everything related to the final member of the Hoshino family.

MEPHISTO

As @hamliet explains in her meta, Hikaru Kamiki's name means God of Light, which is a reference to Lucifer, the fallen angel turned king of hell. It is a fitting imagery for Ai's enemy. Ai is Aqua and Ruby's goddess, so her killer can only be the devil. Similarly, Lucifer betrays God and Hikaru betrays Ai.

So, what is known about Hikaru Kamiki? Only 2 things:

He was raped and forced to have a son when he was 11

He is a serial killer, who targets famous celebrities

In particular, it is probable Hikaru idolises Ai, just like his children do. As a child, he is raped by a woman, then he meets Ai and has a relationship with her. However, his unsolved trauma almost surely ends up compromising his story with the idol and he eventually kills her. Later on, he projects his feelings over Ai on women similar to her, whom he targets in a neverending cycle.

This psychological mechanism makes him the embodyment of the most twisted love possible:

He was loved wrong (he was raped)

He loves wrong (he kills women he is attracted to)

Given this premise, he is clearly going to be defeated and he will probably die in the end. Still, the way he goes down will be important for Aqua and Ruby, as it will decide their future, as well.

In general, Hikaru is probably meant to be a negative foil (a jungian shadow) to the twins, as he represents their darkest parts. In particular, it is gonna be interesting if he foils them not only on the main theme of love, but also on the theme of lies and truth.

Aqua explores the idea of lies. He hides things from others and manipulates them. At the same time, he also experiences how good beautiful lies can be (his happy life when he thinks his father died). Most of all, though, he embodies the idea that a lie can become truth and vice versa. For example, his most effective manipulation technique is to mix his true feelings with his lies. He tells Kana she is cute because he thinks so. He tells Akane he is interested in her as an actress because it is true. He manipulates both girls, but his feelings are genuine.

Ruby explores the idea of truth. She hates liars and doesn't want to lie even if it would help her become an idol faster. Still, she experiences how painful truth can be (her discovery of Gorou's body). This leads her to lie to both herself and others. In the end, though, an even more painful truth comes out (her parents do not love her). No matter how much Ruby tries to hide her feelings, truth will come out. And yet, despite how agonizing it is, truth also leads to happiness. She is devastated after seeing Sarina's mother again, but this lets Ruby and Aqua find each other as Sarina and Gorou. As a result, Ruby is now happier and stronger.

So, in which way may Hikaru foil his children here? There might already be hints:

Just like Aqua, Hikaru is a master at manipulating others with truth. After all, it is implied he manipulated his rapist's husband to kill her by revealing her infidelity. Similarly, he orchestrates Ai's death by telling an unstable fan about her pregnancy. Even when it comes to Yura Katayose, he openly tells the actress to watch her step. An open threath masked as advice.

Just like Ruby, it is possible Hikaru values truth and hates liars. This could easily tie in his backstory and explain why his relationship with Ai degenerates:

I shall lie today as well (Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!) Hoping that one day, these words will become true (Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!) And yet, still, (Hey! Hey!) I have been unable to tell you, and you, alone (Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!)

Ai sees herself as a liar unable to love. This is obviously the real lie, as her heart is full of love. Still, it wouldn't be surprising if Ai's own issues exasperated Hikaru's fear to be used again. From what we know, it is probable Ai and Hikaru have feelings for each other, at a certain point. Then things go bad. What if Ai's inability to express her love and Hikaru's inability to understand lead to their breakout and eventual tragedy?

Obviously, this is all a theory, but one thing is sure. Ai and Hikaru's relationship is key for understanding their characters and their legacy to the twins. Still, Ai is already dead and Hikaru will die in the end. How can their story find a closure, then?

A WORK OF FICTION TO SHOW THE TRUTH

The climax of the series is building up towards the movie, which is gonna represent Hikaru and Ai's story.

Interestingly, Aqua is playing Hikaru, while Ruby is playing Ai. It is obvious a lot of emotional payoff rides on this. On the one hand it is gonna be a chance for Aqua and Ruby to sort out their feelings towards each other. On the other hand Kana and Akane will probably do the same, which will solve their love triangle with Aqua. (spoiler - KanaXAqua is probably endgame).

What is really interesting, though, is that the movie is set up to reveal who Ai really is. After all, the godly idol asks the director to film the real her and this request should be satisfied. Not only that, but Ai leaves her children 2 tapes whose contents are still to be shown. So, whatever Ai's legacy is, it will be made clear. This is true also for her bond with Hikaru:

So, does Ai forgive Hikaru or not? Her children seem to believe in the latter. However, the former is probably true.

First of all, it is probable Ai realizes Hikaru is behind her murder. The stalker arrives with a bouquet of white roses, which are associated to Hikaru. Moreover, Hikaru is the only person, who knows both about the twins and the new address. Secondly, Ai shows no rage nor fear for the fan who murders her. The man is clearly a stand-in for Hikaru in the scene. Despite his actions, Ai does not lose time hating him, but spends her final moments affirming her love for her and Hikaru's children. In short, Ai possibly knows of Hikaru's involvement, but doesn't regret their kids.

Still, will Aqua and Ruby portray this in their movie? And does Aqua's revenge ride on Ai's forgiveness or hate towards Hikaru? Will the twins understand their mother?

Whatever the result, it is probable Aqua and Ruby will eventually run into their father. In particular, Hikaru is set up as a threath to the 3 main girls:

He sends Akane white roses and she is determined to stop Aqua's revenge, which may put her in harm's way

He is the thematically opposite of Kana. He embodies twisted love and twisted truth. She embodies healthy love and genuine feelings

Finally, there is several build up towards him trying to eventually kill Ruby:

He comments that Ruby is growing up beautiful

He kills Yura, who is the original first choice for Ai's role

Ruby ends up playing Ai in the movie

If this third scenario becomes true, it could give closure to all the character arcs. Ruby may empathize with Ai and forgive her father. Aqua may be given the chance to save Ruby (symbolically both Ai and Sarina) this time. Finally, the outcome may offer catharsis to Hikaru before he dies. In short, I think Hikaru is gonna die, but that the twins are not killing him. Rather, they are gonna understand their mother's feelings and survive their parents' tragedy.

A SECOND CHANCE

Hikaru and Ai's story is a sad one, but Aqua and Ruby's is gonna have a happy outcome. After all, the whole series is about overcoming death and getting second chances.

Gorou and Sarina both go past their deaths and are given brand new lives

The new B Komachi is a second chance for all its members. It is a second chance to live for Ruby, a second chance for Kana's career, a second chance to fulfill Mem-cho's idol dream. Finally, it is the second chance of Ichigo and Miyako's wish to come true

Miyako and Ichigo's love story will also be given a second chance

The movie is the director's second chance to realize Ai's wish to film her real self

In short, this theme is everywhere and it is possible the series ends with B Komachi performing in a dome, exactly as it starts. This time, though, things will go well.

Still, doesn't something feel odd? After all, if the series is about second chances, why isn't Ai given one?

THE REAL AI (TRUE LOVE)

I think there are 2 reasons Ai isn't reborn:

1- Aqua and Ruby are Ai's second chance

The twins are Ai's legacies and will fulfill her dream for her:

Someday, surely, I will have it all in hand I am such a greedy idol Because I wish to love everybody properly in a life-sized way

Ai's wish is to reconcile her family with her idol career. She wants to love both her children and her fans. She wants it all. Well, Aqua and Ruby come to embody these 2 different forms of love:

Aqua is given a lot of focus when it comes to personal relationships. An important part of his arc is his feelings for Akane and Kana and he is not that much interested in the enterteinment business per se. In the end, he may also choose to fulfill his dream to become a surgeon

Ruby's dream is to become an idol, who shines even more brightly than Ai. Moreover, Ruby's wish is pure in how she doesn't want to lie nor to manipulate others to get there. She is right now also stepping into the role of actress, so by the end Ruby may catch up and surpass Ai in both her careers (idol and actress)

In other words, Aqua may live the love of a happy relationship and family, while Ruby may live the love of openly loving the world and people in general. Whatever the case, Aqua and Ruby will fulfill Ai's main wish which is for them to grow up healthy and happy.

2- Ai doesn't need reincarnation because she in fact does fulfill her dream

Ai wants to love both her family and her fans, which is what she does at the very end.

She remembers the stalker's name and his present. She proves to him she never took her fans for granted

She is able to tell her children she loves them and realizes she is not lying

Ah, I've said it now at last This is definitely not a lie; I love you

Ai's wish is to love and to be loved and she gets it through her twins. Aqua and Ruby feel they owe their mother something and that it is cruel they get to live a second life, while Ai doesn't. Still, they are wrong. If Gorou and Sarina were not reborn, Ai would have had a stillbirth, which would have broken her. Just by existing, they fulfill Ai's dream. They give Ai the love she so desperately craves.

By the end, Hoshino Ai becomes the embodyment of true love. True love isn't perfect. It is complicated, as people struggle and make mistakes. Still, if the wish is genuine enough, it shines incredibly bright. So does Ai, not as an idol, but as a real person (the true Ai).

[zee-the-zebra]

About The Kaveh Reincarnation Theory

I will make this theory make sense and no one can stop me.

Story Parallels

We know very little about the Goddess of Flowers but her connection to Kaveh is less about backstory and more his personality.

What do we know about her? She foresaw her own death in the cataclysm and didn’t run away from it. She facilitated her so she would leave a legacy greater than herself behind. And she did, creating the Jinn and the Khvarena. And what does Kaveh do on a near daily basis? Break himself over and over again to create things that will outlast him. And while he has succeeded in creating great things, he is still trying to make a legacy, no matter how much he brings himself to a closer ending than he should ever have.

Artifacts

Honeyed Final Feast

"In those days, the moonlight would tell of their happiness to the nightingale and the rose." "And they were so frightened and abashed that they could sing no song in response." "Peace and ease reigned, and there was no division or misfortune in this worriless paradise..." "If only these wonderful days, as lovely as a shimmering mirage, could last for eternity, and that they should never have to taste the bitterness of parting."

Could possibly parallel Kaveh and Al Haitham’s relationship before their falling out, as well as how Kaveh was living at what he thought to be the high point of his life before he ended up homeless.

Later, time sundered the contract between day and night, destroying the ancient oath. The gentle moonlight sank into the quicksand. The sun shrouded all things in its fearsome gaze.

The mention of quicksand is interesting, considering that is how Kaveh’s father died.

Dreaming Steelbloom

"When the moon leaves your palm, and the lonesome silver light retracts from atop the labyrinth on the sand ocean," "One hopes that you will remember how your companion in the dreams shone like the burning sun."

This is the same line I pulled for the Al Haitham write up but it still tracks as a possible parallel to Kaveh and Al Haitham’s falling out. Or rather, an implication that if things were to continue as they are, history might repeat itself between the “sun” and the “moon”

Ay-Khanoum's Myriad

In a bygone time which only the Jinn recall, the Lord of Flowers was cast aside by the heavens. Her magnificent vessel was left a savaged husk, her kinsfolk punished by way of being stripped of their minds... Legend has it that the Lord of Flowers wandered the barren wastes for seventy-two nights... Her heels were worn through by the merciless gravel. Her wounds gushed into limpid springs, turning into streams with no boundaries.

Could act as a parallel to Kaveh losing everything he has to create the palace and being homeless afterwards.

Wilting Feast

The Lord of Flowers capitulated to her friend's folly, finding a most admirable rebellion burning within the ambitions of the god. An idea that joined the wisdom of thousands, and the great attempt at binding their dreams to power. What hides here is more than lies, but also the future of humanity, burning like the sparks of hope... Dreams will always dissolve, their landscapes fated to collapse — this is the true meaning of the blooming flowers. Only by suffering through the destruction of a god's delusions can humanity learn to rise against divine will... Just as the stubborn God King orchestrated this secret rebellion, surviving on the strength of individual will alone. However, the Lord of Flowers never knew a love that could be as sweet as wine, let alone the paltriness of human emotion. Brilliant as she was, even she could not easily predict when these little beings would finally realize the truth... "... Have these so-called gods not been superfluous to you since the beginning?"

Oh boy, there’s a lot to unpack here, but I’ll attempt to simplify. 

This is the very culmination of the parallels between Deshret and Nabu Maikata as well as Al Haitham and Kaveh. The main purpose here is that the Goddess of Flowers never truly agreed with Deshret. She could never fully believe in his ideas, yet she stayed by his side anyway in a hope that they could do something truly selfless for their people. This is almost one to one Al Haitham and Kaveh’s dynamic. They will never see eye to eye. Yet they are each other’s mirror, equals in every way.

And like the past, eventually these ideals clashed and the dream died. Deshret, like Al Haitham, chose to do all his work on his own. And Nabu, like Kaveh, did everything she could to be selfless, but could really only watch as her world crumbled. Nabu and Deshret’s love, like Kaveh and Al Haitham's, wasn't sweet. It was chaotic, all over the place, impossible to fully pin down and yet it was still there. After every tragedy, after every hardship, after the times where they believed they were nothing to each other, the emotions there had never grown dull.

The final thing to connect is the question Nabu was asked and the question Al Haitham asked Kaveh.

“How has realizing your ideals gone for you?”

For Nabu, the answer was to design a legacy born of both bitterness at life and the gods, as well as so those after her could live on. For Kaveh, he hasn’t figured out his answer yet.

Secret-Keeper's Magic Bottle

In a bygone time on which the Jinn alone are silent, King Deshret poured his deepest ambitions out before the Lord of Flowers... As the moonlight's visage drifted across ripples within a glass of pomegranate wine, the Lord of Flowers finally succumbed to the persuasion of a friend most beloved. The words King Deshret spoke that night remain unknown to all. Even the eldest Jinn bestow only silence when asked about that which was said. None know what secret desires King Deshret revealed in the dark past daylight, desires that might shock even the wisest of gods. But the Lord of Flowers herself drew enlightenment from the exchange. It had been within her calculus — something long foreseen. . . . "Know this: if there is to be hope in this world, it will be found kindling within mortals most ordinary."

Acts as a parallel to Kaveh and Al Haitham’s project while they were still in school. Also parallels Al Haitham’s closed off self reliance and Kaveh’s desire to give pieces of himself to others.

Connections to Real Life

The only name given to the Goddess of Flowers is Nabu Malikata. And while the first half of her name can’t really be attributed to Kaveh (Nabu being an ancient Mesopotamian god of literacy, the rational arts, scribes, and wisdom), the second half of her name can. Malikata can be translated to the ideogram of the Middle Persian word for queen, MLKTA. More proof of this is found in the Eternal Oasis, in her name is written as “NABU MLKTA” in the in-game Deshret Script, the same as the ideogram of the Middle Persian word.

Kaveh’s name, as I’ve learned (shout out to my friend Cado, who unintentionally helped me with a lot of this) is a very common Iranian/Persian name for boys. That’s just a fun fact, more specifically, the name came from the Shahnameh, or the Book of Kings. The name Kaveh was used for a character in the tale of Zahak the Serpent King, in which the Zoroastrian gods played major roles. 

The Goddess of Flowers, created something known as Khvarena, which in Genshin is a purifying spirit, but in Zoroastrianism, is a concept of a divine power projected upon and aiding the appointed. While it could be considered grasping at straws, reincarnation or being the vessel of divine power could be considered a form of Khvarena in real life Zoroastrianism.

Now, we have no Goetic name or twisting of a Goetic name for Nabu Malikata, we can also lift from Egyptian mythology considering Deshret’s true name is Amun. The consort of Amun/Amun-Ra is Mut, sky, fertility and matriarch goddess said to be born from the primordial waters of Nu.  This could be the proof of Nabu Malikata’s true name as she has been shown to have connections with Egeria, who wielded the power of the Primordial Sea. And, while not directly from Fontaine does have connections to it as his mother moved there.

As for Mut as a name, it could be twisted in Mathim, an alternate reading of Bathin, a demon said to know the virtues of precious stones and herbs.

Conclusion

Oddly enough I feel like this theory is far more concrete than the one with Al Haitham. With references to Persian mythology, mytho-history, and history in both the Goddess of Flowers and Kaveh, as well as the parallels in their stories, the theory actually feels very water-tight. Perhaps my theory with the most proof to date.

[redgoldsparks]

February Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon. Reviews below the cut.

Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross read by Alex Wingfield and Rebecca Norfolk

This book started a little slowly for me, as I waited for Roman to regain his memories and for Iris to get back to reporting at the front. Luckily, the magical typewriters once again play a major role in this story as they did in the first one; Roman and Iris's letters are the emotional heart of this series. I also love how it fore fronts the importance of journalists during wartime. Iris's bravery and constant willingness to move towards danger and the unknown in service of sharing the truth makes her a very compelling character. Unfortunately, the magical divine conflict behind the war just didn't compel me very strongly in this book. I think the gods were introduced too slowly into the narrative, and that a lack of a human motivation behind the war simplified the conflict in a way that sucked some of the tension from the text. If you are looking for a solid romance with a strong epistolary element and the aesthetic of wartime setting, this series delivers; if instead you want a complicated, devastating, deeply emotional story of young people surviving a real historical war, pick up Code Name Verity or Rose Under Fire.

Mamo by Sas Milledge

Jo has lived in her small seaside hometown her whole life, and loves it there. But then things start to go wrong- curses, bad luck, mysterious illnesses. She seeks out the town witch and finds a teen girl about her own age, named Orla, who Jo has never met before. It turns out Orla has just returned to town after the death of her grandmother, the previous witch. She wasn't buried properly and her bones are scattered around the town, stirring up bad energy, disturbing the local fae and trolls. Jo and Orla set out of lay the old witch properly to rest, but there's more going on than either of them realize. This is a fairly short but well told tale, queer and magical, and with a little bittersweet edge.

Look on the Bright Side by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann 

This is a very charming follow up to Go With The Flow, taking place over the friend group's following high school year. Brit, who was diagnosed with endometriosis at the end of the previous book, had a surgery to remove it over the summer. When she goes back to school, she finds her affection caught between two different boys. Christine has finally admitted to herself that she likes Abby as more than a friend... but telling Abby that is another matter. Abby is still working on her campaign of menstrual justice on campus, while Sasha struggles to balance her homework, sports, and time with her boyfriend. The girls learn, grow, make mistakes, and support each other.

Gathering Moss written and read by Robin Wall Kimmerer

It took me a little longer to get into this one than Braiding Sweetgrass, mainly because I had much less personal knowledge of mosses than the larger types of plants which Kimmerer wrote about in Sweetgrass. It doesn't help that mosses do not have common names, so are referred to mainly by scientific names, and I was rarely able to picture them well in my head. However, by about a third of the way through I had fallen into the miniature world of mosses and the striking and insightful ways Kimmerer links them to all other organisms in their ecosystems. I loved learning how mosses, like tardigrades, with which they probably co-evolved, can survive desiccation and be revived by water even after all seeming signs of life have disappeared. I was intrigued by the story of a moss species which changes its gender over its lifespan, starting out producing only female reproductive stalks in its early days, shifting producing a mix of male and female stalks as it matures, and then producing solely male stalks as the patch reaches peak density. I was frustrated by stories of the illegal moss harvesting which is stripping Oregon rain forests bare. And I was once again completely charmed by the beauty and generosity of Kimmerer's writing and worldview. She's a bestseller for a reason; I highly recommend everyone pick up at least one of her books at some point.

The High Desert by James Spooner 

James' white mother and his black father divorced when he was in elementary school, and he moved around a lot. For high school, he moved with his mom to Apple Valley, a barren small town in the desert an hour inland from Los Angeles. Already a skater, James encountered punk music just went he needed it most: as an isolated and angry teen in a racist town with little to no underground scene or counterculture. The music, and later, the politics, of punk raised James in the semi-absence of parents and role models. This memoir, chronically roughly a year, is an unflinchingly honest look at the cruelty, creativity, friendship, and solidarity of teens. It has the density and scratchy texture of a 90s zine without ever sacrificing clarity. I was very impressed by how clearly and in what detail Spooner was able to recreate his high school angst and activist awaking in this coming of age tale. Punk wasn't the music that found me, but I still remember the high of finding a new favorite band or song that felt as if it spoke right to my teen soul. This book is a testament to the power of music to reach into the dark and pull someone out into the light.

Falling Back in Love With Being Human written and read by Kai Cheng Thom 

Short and sweet, this book is half confession, half spell book. Each chapter is written as a letter- to trans women, to activists, to sex workers, to johns, to those contemplating suicide, to TERFs, to children's book writers- each followed with a little action or ritual. I listened to it as an audiobook and loved hearing the letters in the author's voice, but I can also see how reading it in print and lingering over each letter one at a time would be wonderful too.

The Great Beyond by Lea Murawiec translated by Aleshia Jensen 

Manel Naher is an anti-social and idiosyncratic young woman living an endless city in which everyone advertises their own names on street signs, sandwich boards, at social events, on business cards, and by simply shouting them at strangers. This may not sound so different from our own world except that it's driven by an even more intense desperation: if one's name is not known, and one's presence fades fully from people's minds, and the forgotten person will literally die. Manel wants nothing more than to escape the city into the wilds beyond it, but her presence is so low she suffers a near fatal heart attack and is scared into a fearful scramble to gain enough fame to live. Her attempts to claw her way into people's memories is surprisingly successful, and in the process of becoming one of the 1% she leaves behind everything and everyone she loved. Never before have I read a comic that felt so much like literary spec-fic. The concepts are fascinating and the cartooning knocked me off my feet. A visual masterpiece I'll be thinking about for a long time to come.

The Spectred Isle by KJ Charles read by Ruairi Carter

Saul Lazenby is a disgraced archeologist who served time for a war crime during the recent WWI. Back in England, disowned by his family, he struggled to support himself. The only job he is able to secure is as a personal assistant to a batty old major who believes in fairy stories and keeps sending Saul off to various parts of London to investigate supposedly occult sites. Saul knows it's all fake but he keeps investigating anyway... and then a tree bursts in flames in front of him. And a mysterious gentleman keeps showing up at the same sites of sacred groves or ancient wells which Saul's been sent to look at. That gentleman is Richard Glide, who just happens to be the heir to one of the oldest arcane families in England. And he can't tell if Saul is causing the spiritual problems that keep occurring around him or if it's all an unlikely coincidence. This historical romance is a fun and quick read, shorter than most of the KJ Charles books I've read before. Be warned, the end sets up a sequel which has not, and may not, ever actually come out- but I still enjoyed this one on it's own.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson 

A gorgeous, nonlinear novel about three generations of a Black family living in New York between roughly the early 1990s to the mid 2000s. The chapters rotate between multiple POVs, covering moments of change, tension, or reflection for the family. The opening scene is the evening of a debut party for sixteen year old Melody, who wears the dress her own mother was supposed to wear at her debut... except that she was already pregnant. From that moment, the narrative spins back time to how each character arrived there: Iris, a teen who refused to give up her baby but also refused to settle into motherhood; Aubrey, a young man in love with a girl who was already leaving him; Iris's mother Sabe, a daughter of a survivor of the Tulsa massacre, a women who stores her money in gold bars hidden around the house; Iris's father Po'boy, who as a young man ran races, and as an old man holds more love for his family that his body can carry. The character work here is so strong- I was immediately swept away into the cares, worries, secrets, and longings of the family. I read the whole book in one day, but I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

We Are The Land: A Native History of California by Damon B Akins and William J Bauer Jr 

It took me a long time to read this book, as it was challenging to read a history of genocide while also seeing genocide in my phone every single day. But I'm ultimately very glad that I finished it. This is a well researched, approachable, indigenous-authored history of the native people in the land now called California. I enjoyed how place specific this book is. I felt much more connected to the history recognizing nearly every place name, and once the book got passed around the year 1900 I started to also recognize names of organizations that still exist and activists who I'm familiar with. I have a much better understanding of the patchwork creation of and the broken promises of the reservations, land allotments, and rancherias. I was happy whenever the book mentioned Pomo master basket weavers Elsie Allen and Mable McKay, who my mom has been telling me about for years, or Greg Sarris, Santa Rosa based chairman of the Graton Rancheria and author. I have a better understanding of this land where I have lived and worked all my life after reading this book.

Zodiac: A Graphic Novel by Ai Weiwei, Elettra Stamboulis and Gianluca Costantini

I've been following Ai Weiwei's work since about 2010, and was absolutely delighted to learn he was releasing a comic memoir. I managed to snag a signed copy though the Comix Experience Graphic Novel of the Month Club and I will treasure it. This book is organized into 12 chapters, each themed around one animal from the zodiac. It weaves together slice of life moments from Ai Weiwei's day to day life, stories of his father (the revolutionary poet Ai Qing), memories of Ai's time as an art student in New York, his incarceration, time spent with his mother, his partner, and his son, conversations with artist friends and some of his international exhibitions. It is not a tight narrative; it wanders, it indulges in myths and fairy tales, it is open ended and I enjoyed it so much. It was written along with Elettra Stamboulis, and draw in a delicate lose line art style by Gianluca Costantini. A few of the lines from the end of the book haven't left my head since I read them: "Freedom of speech and human rights are not given to anybody for free. They always come through fighting and struggle" (101); "Any artist who isn't an activist is a dead artist" (165) and "... the purpose of art, which is to fight for freedom."(166)

Witchy Vol 2 by Ariel Salmat Ries 

This volume was just as beautifully drawn as book 1; the cartooning is masterful, but I don't have a very good sense of where the larger plot is going. This book was mostly a long side quest in which Nyneve learned how to make a broom under an exiled gay broom making master. I enjoyed this! However it didn't particularly seem to move the story forward. I will keep reading, but the sense of drama and urgency from the beginning of the first book is slightly missing here.

No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull read by Dion Graham  

What a ride! I went into this book knowing almost nothing, and I think that was the right way to go so I shall not summarize the plot. This is the first book of a series; it's ambitious, it's weird, it's got a very large and extremely diverse cast; it is such a fresh and original take on a contemporary sci-fi in which the world realizes that monsters, gods, and magic have existed all along. I worried a little in the first third that the book maybe had too many POV characters, most of whom seemed very unconnected from each other except by geographical proximity to either Cambridge, Mass, or the island of St Thomas. However by the end almost all of the characters had been at least tenuously linked by plot events in a way that really worked for me. The book also has trans, nonbinary, asexual, queer, and poly characters whose identities are only revealed slowly, and usually after you've known the character for a while. I am very impressed by the scope of this story and definitely plan to continue with the series.

Arrive In My Hands by Trinidad Escobar 

Sensual, at times tender, at times haunting, this beautiful little book is a collection of lesbian erotic comics from a poet artist at the top of her field. I am definitely biased, having been friends with the author for years, but I also deeply admire this work. The women, witches, and creatures in these stories yearn for pleasure and for freedom; they chase both through oceans, forests, broken suburban towns, and through dreams. The book is perfectly sized to hold close to your heart.

Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott read by Susan Bennett

I've been hearing about this book for years as a writing guide, but it is almost equally a memoir or collection of anecdotes about the writing life. Parts of it worked for me and other parts didn't. The author has a very different type of brain than I have, and the chapters on working through the anxiety, neurosis, and depression she suffered from when trying to write didn't really speak to me at all. I also did not enjoy the handful of flippant jokes about killing yourself when the writing isn't going well. However. There are also some genuinely really moving pieces about writing books as gifts to loved ones, especially loved ones who are soon to leave us. I thought a lot of the advice in the middle about focusing on details, on recording memories, on research, and on character development was really solid, and I want to keep some of it in mind when I start developing my next book. There was also a set of lines in the introduction, about how writers are able to participate in public life while also working from home and without leaving the house which hit the nail on the head of why I entered this career!

Recitatif by Toni Morrison read by Bahni Turpin with an intro written and read by Zadie Smith

I've been wanting to try another Toni Morrison, since the only one I had previously read in high school went completely over my head at age 15. Recitatif is Morrison's only short story, and this audiobook version is read by the wonderful Bahni Turpin (who you might recognize from Angie Thomas or Akwaeke Emezi's audiobooks). Also included in an excellent essay written and read by Zadie Smith. This comes first in the audio, but if you are new to the story as I was, skip the essay and listen to the story first! Then go back and listen to the essay afterwards. This way the cleverness and impact of the story can hit you fully. It is so smart, so well crafted, and such a master class in writing that both reveals and conceals so much about the complicated relationship of two damaged women.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 1 by Ryoko Kui 

I can immediately see why so many people are charmed by this world and these characters! This is the start of a really fun D&D infused adventure story, with a small group of down on their luck adventures deciding to cut their adventuring costs by eating the monsters they kill in the dungeon. The man behind this idea, Laos, is also searching for a missing sister who may or may not have already been eaten by a dragon. I already have books 2 and 3 on hold; I haven't been so captured by a manga series since starting Witch Hat Atelier.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 2 by Ryoko Kui

I devoured this book as quickly as book one. Our adventure party gets a bit deeper into the dungeon and begin to have more meaningful interactions with the beings who dwell there, including an Orc family just trying to get by, golems which grow vegetables on their backs, and living paintings which might reveal more of the buried castle's history.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 3 by Ryoko Kui

A flashback reveals more of the school friendship of Marcelle and Falin; a deep underground lake leads to many encounters with watery monsters of various types. I continue to have a very fun time with this series!

Bunt by Ngozi Ukazu and Mad Rupert

Molly grew up in Peachtree, Georgia, in her lesbian moms' hardware store, in the shadow of the town's prestigious and expensive art college, PICA. Every since she can remember, she's wanted to attend PICA- despite the fact that her best friend dropped out last year and says the school chews people up and spits them out. But Molly got a full ride scholarship, so her first semester should be a breeze, right? No! Because when she shows up to orientation, no one can find her scholarship or even her registration. It turns Molly will have to pay for her first year after all; she takes out some dodgy loans and scours the financial aid booklets for any other scholarship she can apply for. It turns out, if she can scrape up a full team of softball players... and they compete against other college teams in the same division... and they win at least one game over the course of the semester... the whole team gets a free tuition! Is it possible to win one game with a bunch of big-ego, burned-out, athletically-challenged artists? I loved the energy of this story, with many well-informed digs at art school culture and hypocrisy. The team has great chemistry and the art style is full of action, physical humor, and delightfully expressive cartooning.

[creature-wizard]

Sorry for taking so long. This is shy system ROMCOA anon and after seeing your response I realized I needed to write a narrative explanation of things rather then just a list of painful or difficult truths that have helped us which is more difficult then I expected. I'm going to do a bit of both I've decided. Jumping into it though, IMO simplified Narcissistic Abuse discourse can be a gateway to ROMCOA stuff when it is clear that people who hurt them aren't 100% evil monsters and another explanation is needed. I think that's how I got more interested in it. The NA explanation felt overly slanderous, plus being bitter isn't healing and is actually incredibly exhausting. The sentiments that undercut the issue of intent in a helpful way I think are these: - You don't have to know why someone did something because abuse doesn't need justified. - It is unfortunately true that love does not prevent mistreatment and abuse. - Something doesn't have to be intentional to have hurt. - It's harder that there is no such thing as someone who is pure evil and that nobody is born evil, but eventually you will find many truly kind but still imperfect people. - Intentional or otherwise, cruelty towards someone does not reflect on or diminish their inherent value.

I think people either want to absolve or hate those who hurt them because loving someone who has deeply hurt you adds an additional pain. The questions of "How could you have done that?" or "How could you not remember doing that?" tend to haunt people. Unfortunately, I also think life and trauma are often complicated in mundane ways. Nobody has to be evil or be targeting you specifically for abuse to take place, and no amount of good intentions invalidates harm done. I think this middle ground has helped me because it is tempting to imagine that my family was merely neglectful but not harmful towards me. To imagine that it was someone else with clear and bad intentions.

At the same time it is hard for others to see a middle ground where they didn't need to be evil to have hurt me. It's easier to invalidate my experiences then to own up to anything and it's hard to determine what owning up would even look like. In that regard I try to remember these things: - Everybody is affected by things differently and trauma is thus relative. (i.e. Autism made anything food related worse.) - Strong feelings do not indicate a trauma's relationship to what society considers serious, but it is no less valid to have those feelings. - "Lowercase t" traumas can stack into a bigger issue that is hard to discern the origin of because there is no clear bad thing or cause. Those seem to be the two major sticking points, intention and validity. I think they have so much sway as sticking points because if shit sucks and that's totally valid but most people and even you yourself may never fully understand it, what are you supposed to do then? It feels like a terrible hand to be dealt and an unfair game to play. While I do think the most realistic explanation also sucks ass, I also think that's not where things have to end. Some things that have helped me and system friends: - We'll never be someone without a painful history, that's ok, and it's valid to grieve. - You can't time travel, the unknowns and what if's are ephemeral so eventually the only thing left to do is make a better path forward. - Don't let the valid hurt and anger turn and bite you. If you can, use that energy to assert your value and make something better of life. (i.e. Spite is why I choose gentleness.) - Managing big feelings is a skill everyone has to learn and the process ebbs and flows, but it gets easier. - You're not alone in having complicated feelings and history and experiences. - If you can't believe the future will better, it could at least be interesting. It's worth it to wait and see.

(Please do not assume anything about me or the "level" of my trauma from this. We are diagnosed, though a diagnosis doesn't determine whether or not anyone has issues. I just gives them a name.)

(To anyone reading this: If you've heard the term "RAMCOA" but haven't heard how it originated among conspiracy theorists and was always meant to push conspiracy theories within legitimate psychiatry, further information is provided at the end.)

Oh oof I really forgot this in my inbox for over a month. 😵‍💫

And yeah, I'm not surprised that the whole "narcissistic abuse" thing can lead into RAMCOA stuff.

Like, the concept of "narcissistic abuse" is another iteration of the cultural myth that there's a distinct category of person that if we all just avoid or exclude, we can protect ourselves from abuse and toxic behavior, and it makes a pretty effective grift for people who've experienced severe abuse from people who just had zero interest in treating them well for one reason or another. The question of why anyone would engage in relentless bad faith behavior often torments people who've been through these experiences, and the concept of narcissistic abuse seems to finally provide an explanation that, while right about some things (for example,, it's true that people may lash out when their egos have been injured), is severely wrong about others (an NPD diagnoses is not a guarantee that someone will do this, and not everyone who does this has NPD). Basically, it's yet another half-assed solution to the problem of evil.

But like you say, many people have more complicated experiences with their abusers. And the alter programming conspiracy theory is absolutely a myth that seems to explain these kinds of experiences. Many people don't fully realize how someone might be handling a bad mental health day badly, or might be under some kind of stress they don't know about, or might have internalized some toxic belief that makes them act really shitty over some things, but not necessarily everything. "Your mom acted differently because she's actually a programmed multiple system, and what you experienced were different alters" is the kind of thing that makes sense when you know a little bit about DID, but not enough to understand why the idea of TBMC/alter programming is pseudoscientific nonsense.

I dunno how much you know about Michelle Remembers (the book that formed the blueprint of this mythology), but if you don't (and for the benefit of anyone else reading this who doesn't know), ritual abuse absolutely became a way to rationalize complicated relationships with parents. While Michelle Remembers didn't incorporate the DID aspect into the narrative (it just stuck with repressed memories), the short of it is that her mother was a single parent of three in the 1950's (her father basically walked out) who at least occasionally used alcohol. There's no way this lady didn't have some bad days. Plus she also died when Michelle was pretty young, which couldn't have been great on her psyche.

So yeah, it makes sense that people are getting into it today as a way to explain why their own parents were Like That.

For anyone who isn't aware: RAMCOA, which stands for "Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, & Organized Abuse" is not an innocent catch-all term for religious abuse, institutional abuse, sex trafficking, etc. It was coined by conspiracy theorists to try and make far right conspiracy theories sound respectable within legitimate psychiatry. For more information, see Cathy O'Brien - The First Project Monarch "Survivor" and Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler: Two Of The Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theorists Most People Have Never Heard Of.

[writing-in-verse]

So I Finally Read A Restless Truth by Freya Marske

I've been debating what to say about this book since I finished it late last week. Not because I didn't enjoy it - on the contrary, I loved it possibly more than the first - but rather because I have so much I could say.

A friend of mine recently mentioned, in a poorly-phrased statement out of context, that he didn't really know me. In context he's referring to how little I talk about myself, the self behind the ADHD masque and trauma and deflection.

It's hard to write a character that who's entirely public persona is a facade without making them seem either two dimensional or just two separate characters in one body. Sarah J. Maas is a great example of how to do this terribly with her main character of Throne of Glass, Celaena.

Anyone who knows me knows I have contempt for these books in a way I rarely do for any other. There's so much wrong with them but that's not the point, the point is Celaena is a terrible character who feels like a separate person depending on what the author needs her to be. She's either a snarky, sexy assassin who has no real moral compass or a fashion-loving, sexy princess who finds being an assassin horrifying. The two sides of her talk and act entirely differently with very little crossover to the point where they have different names by the latter half of the series.

Violet, and by extension Freya Marske, shows how someone who has a lot of ptsd tends to deal with their trauma. Of course, everyone is different and hiding behind a sharp wit and rebellious distraction isn't the healthy solution but it is relatable to me. Violet's background on the New York underground stage scene (a part of performance history I'm not well educated on so it was fun to see in historical fiction) gave her the knowledge needed to play a part, whatever part the audience expects of her without ever revealing who she truly is.

I'd be loathe to suggest Violet's public persona is fake as that's simply not true: my own outward way of being is still me even if I keep much of my life away from scrutiny. Violet is sharp and quick witted and rebellious but she uses her stage skills to leave people with a simplified impression, without any of her fears or anxieties mixed in. It's not inauthentic but rather safe and controlled. It's why everyone but Maud Blyth accepts what they're given.

What's more insightful is Violet's inability to see the way she is limiting herself out fear for survival. It isn't until Maud gives her the perspective to see the cage she has constructed for herself that she starts to realise the walls keep you in as much as they keep others out. Of course, Violet can see it on some level but that lack of true introspection is as much a trauma response as everything else. The walls are built around the most vulnerable parts as much to protect as to ignore the damage that's already been done.

I've never seen a character manage to portray the complex realities of living with trauma quite like Violet does, not in the immediate aftermath but in the long periods living with part of yourself you think need to be hidden lest they be taken advantage of or are seen as flaws which makes you less worthy of love rather than a tapestry of someone who deserves more love than was ever afforded.

Violet is fascinating from a character design perspective but she's also incredibly well written, she feels like a person who contains multitudes, who is not 'fixed' by the end of the book but she is willing to let Maud in little by little. Step by step.

Okay this was a long one, turns out I had a lot to say (and honestly still do (I haven't even gushed about Maud!!!)) but I hope you enjoyed reading it.

[name-s-are-not-important]

Headcanon: Autistic Horace

In this essay I will...

(And I wrote the essay this time)

If someone has already written about this I apologise, I hadn't noticed, Kudos to you and I'm happy to add to the talks about it

Actually, we've already established that Halt is autistic. Right. It's Horace now.

I've already written a bit about him in terms of this headcanon and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. So yes. Horace is autistic. (He's also dyslexic but there's no evidence for that in the canon any more, I see him that way).

We know he thinks very straightforwardly, which is what the canon makes fun of. He doesn't understand what the Lone Raven is about, he annoys Halt with his lack of understanding of dramatic symbols.

Horace sometimes doesn't understand that he's being made fun of. Canon juxtaposes him as this dumber warrior with these super-smart Rangers. But, Horace thinks strategically and is great at it. When he's the one planning the action, he figures things out faster than Halt. Replacing the king in the 8th book and making Halt's disguise, including make-up a'la goatee?

Horace doesn't understand why Rangers think so much instead of taking action on personal issues. But at the same time, he has low self-esteem himself and quite seriously assumes that he was sent abroad because he doesn't deserve to love Cassandra.

And now him and Halt. Like... think about it. The whole 'what? what?' conversation in the 3rd book is just two autistics who have passed each other by in terms of interpreting the code of conversation that has been in imposed and both as long as the other person in the conversation ko impose it. The combination of Halt and Horace, on the other hand, is at times a series of misunderstandings and at other times excellent communication, because few people understand them as well as they can understand each other. Teaching facial expressions in 8th book by Halt I've Got One Face And It's Not A Smile? Please....

Horace simplifies a lot of things, so that some he understands faster than others (like Wilyss being a thing) and some he doesn't. Because in his reasoning the cloak makes him invisible, so they shouldn't see him and that's it. Because Halt can't die since he's been through so much. And Will loves Alyss, and Alyss loves Will so what the hell to talk about, why the waiting here.

Horace has a fencing talent and doesn't follow orders mindlessly, when he's allowed to rely on intuition and his own reason, he goes awesome early on in his training. (Well, and he kills Morgarath with a technique he learned as a fun fact).

He doesn't immediately understand some of the jokes or subtext, but eventually he understood what the 'couriers' were about and had a contrived retort about thinking that he wanted to use at the right moment.

He interjects somewhat socially awkward remarks on the fly, which he interprets as offensive or rude after the fact and apologises for them. But at the same time, he then simply tells the truth. Ferris was a weak king, but they had no other.

And Halt must have taken notice of Will earlier, since he watched him while he was stealing the pies. Will didn't jump to that conclusion, having heard the explanation. Horace did, though he turned it into a joke. Equally, Horace notices the similarities, patterns and associations. People may recognise Halt as Ferris when they ride through Clonmel.

He has a strong sense of justice. How can you kill someone with poison instead of in an even fight? How can the king's seals be forged? You can't break out of a duel when you can't see anything if you've already stood up to fight. And one cannot fail to risk one's own life to defend friends or someone one has promised to help. Since there's bullying of junior cadets at the Batttleschool, Sir Rodney must know about it, it's probably the rules and that's it. And since Halt is moving to find Will, it's only right to go with him.

In conclusion: one of us. Neurodivergent Horace Altman.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

(So far I can't think of any more examples from canon. But there probably are some and I'm still going to fight for this theory.)

[artoflured]

I love your art!! Do you have any advice on finding an artsyle and drawing bodies?

Hello there pal! Thanks for stopping by!

Apologies if this is a bit long, but I feel like these are rather complex questions and I wanted to make sure I answered them right!

I think that the internet has made folks too preoccupied with finding their “style” to a point at which it’s detrimental. I’ve seen a lotta newer artists draw in one way as though everything they make’s gotta be on model for a television series or somethin. But in the art world I’m accustomed to, consistency in specific projects is certainly valued but variability overall is the mark of a stronger artist.

What I’m saying is, don’t worry about it, and don’t lock yourself into any one approach. Just draw a lot, whenever you can. By simply doing it and seeing other art you’ll subconsciously develop a personal style that’s very malleable to different tasks. So rather than saying “I’m going to draw eyes in this specific way” and then getting stuck when you suddenly have a project that doesn’t suit, draw however you’re feeling! And as much as you draw cartoons, draw from life! It’ll all come together with time.

These are all what I’d consider my style, but put to different uses to give different feelings!

Now about bodies!!

I assume you mean living people, though if you meant bodies in a more morbid sense I’m sure Norma down there would probably know more about that than me.

This is a tough one because the only truthful answer is to observe and practice, there’s no real shortcuts I’ve found.

But here’s a fun exercise to simplify things and improve your gestures! Try drawing some figures as near silhouettes! This forces you to think in terms of expressive shapes by making the subject almost abstract. I like to do this a lot not just because it’s good for practice, but also because I think it looks neat!

Anywho! Thanks for enabling my doodling!! 🖤🖤

[bciphergrl]

A List Of My Sam and Max AUs

It has been a long time, since I posted anything here. I originally was just gonna make only one AU. But, funny enough, I have way more than that now XD

I've made this list, if you're interested in any of the AUs and/or you have any questions about them. I'm more than happy to answer them.

Itty Bitty: During one of Sam and Max fights against a criminal at the toy factory, Max gets hit by a ray and disappears. It was supposed to teleport him somewhere far away. But nope! Max has been shrunken in size and fell into a toy box that was meant to be delivered to the next city over. Now, it's up to him and his new human friend, Jess, to help him reunite with Sam and get him back to his normal size, while also fighting crime together (and learning about Jess' past) along the way.

Error 305: Sam and Max try to escape their universe as it started to collapsed. But they didn't get out without getting physically and mentally damaged. Max really got the short end of the stick, while Sam is still sort of sane. Now, they live in a white void, while Sam tries to find a way to get both of them back to normal.

Trading Minds: It's basically 'what if Sam and Max switch minds?' The results? Max is a more level headed lagomorph, while Sam is a pretty chaotic dog.

The Monster I've Become: After the Events of the Devil's playhouse, Max somehow survived the explosion and became his normal self. But he doesn't look the same though. He looks partly like an eldritch horror monster and a lagomorph. He kept his identity hidden since then and has made an abandoned subway train station as his new home. Sam sadly has no idea that he's still alive.

The Beast Within The Sea: Sam is the captain of the pirate crew who is after a magical jewel on a mysterious island. He manages to get it successfully and was about to leave the island with it. But then, a huge sea creature emerges from the ocean and attacks the ship. It kills everyone except for Sam. Instead, it keeps him on island and refuses to let him leave. Now, he needs to find a way to escape the place without the beast ever finding out.

The Multiverse Traveling Thief: Nobody has seen face or learned the name of the person who steals the artifacts from different universes and destroys those said universes. He keeps his mask on, while out in public to keep his identity hidden. But this lagomorph is known as "The Multiverse Traveling Thief".

Doodle: Sam and Max are simplified doodles who are alive.

The Circus Of Astral Magic: Deep within the forest, there's a magical circus that lures people there. A small lagomorph finds himself there. He thought it was all fun and games. Until he starts to see the dark truth behind it. This isn't an ordinary circus. This one is ment to keep people there, once they enter it.

Shattered Realities: Darla is a fan of a video game franchise, Sam and Max. She really likes playing it's third and final season to the TellTale's game, Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse. However, one night, she deeply wished that she can change Max's fate during his 305, even though it was pointless because he's not real, right? Well, the next morning, she woke up in a bedroom that doesn't belong to her. She quickly scanned the room, which she doesn't recognize at all. She slowly gets out of bed and walks to a nearby phone. However, she froze in her tracks when saw her reflection. Max's reflection to be exact. She has no idea if this is some sort of dream or if it's actually real. But, one things for sure, she needs to change Max's fate before she loses her life in a 305.

Heartstrings: Max is a florist who is so madly in love with his 'soul mate' that he'll do literally anything to make them his. Even if it means to kill as many people as it takes and pull some strings behind the scenes to make that happen.

The Pursuit Of Blissfulness: The world was once full of color, before it faded away from the world. Everyone has long grown used to it being Monochrome since then. Now, a lonely lagomorph tries to figure out the mystery behind it. But will it be worth the price of losing the very person that he believes to hate?

System Override: Sam is a child who got dared by his group of friends to sneaking into an abandoned toy company and bringing back a toy. He was pretty scared. But he managed to find a dusty A.I robot which surprisingly looked like a rabbit. He has no idea how to carry it back home. But yet, it turned on by itself and scanned him for a moment, before happily greeting itself. It really did caught him off guard. It was almost as if it woke up. But that didn't stop him from being amazed by it and taking it out of the building. If he only knew the reason behind the toy company's downfall and the danger behind the robot.

An Elder God In Lagomorph's Clothing: The universe where Junior disguised itself as a Lagomorph named Max on Earth who pretends to be a silly and crazy person who is partners with Sam and they still work together as the freelance police. However, it has a much sinister agenda for the universe.

Human: A universe where Sam and Max are humans. Sam (who goes by Sebastian) works as a detective for the police. Max (who goes by Mathew) makes comics for a comic series 'Sam and Max: Freelance Police'. They're bffs in this universe and hang out together, whenever they're not busy with work.

Driven To Insanity: Sam lives in the world where alot of people were infected by a terrible unknown disease that causes the infected people to suddenly attacked non-infected people. They show signs of discoloration with purple patches on their body and make sounds that sounded like gibberish to any non-infected. Sam is one of many few who aren't sick and has been one his own for a decade now. He ran into Max, who has the disease but he claims to be strangely immune to it. Together, they survive in the zombie-like apocalyptic world.

The Hare And His Lapdog: Sam goes to a seemingly ordinary casino and he has a really good luck streak at poker. This catches the attention and interest of the owner of the building. So, they walk up to him and gives him a deal. If he can beat them at poker, he can walk away with a trillion dollars. However, if he loses, he'll lose all of the winnings and will have to work for them. Sam doesn't see it as much of a challenge and played a game against them. He ends up losing though and had to work for them. However, what he didn't realize that he didn't sign up for the casino. He signed up to work for the Mafia and the owner, who is revealed to be Max, is a the Mafia Boss. Now, Sam is on edge of life or death as he tries to find a way to escape from him.

Tiny Detectives: A universe where a tiny version of Sam and Max somehow ended up in the real world and found their way into my house. Now, I'm taking care of them, while trying to figure out how they ended up here.

I'll most likely update it, if I make more Sam and Max AUs.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

●Half-Truths◌

A fine blade, but seems like it's missing something…

A star I think. We count on stars as steady friends because they always rise and always shine but a star's a delicate truce: an explosion caught by its own mass so that it can't erupt and can't collapse. Thus I imagine the state of the machine might be. But one force or another has gone awry and now it rests here, snuffed and broken, waiting for the two rival forms of ruin to be set in balance again.

"Duality is not a curse, but a gift." —Author unknown

"The road ahead is unknown, but time tells us many things. The moments that become past in turn become blueprints for the future. In this space, there is no right or wrong. "We find a contemporaneous merging of what is known and what is unknown here. Somewhere between the knowns and unknowns lies the real. The tangible. "There is a weight to it; a feeling that tells you what you hold is true. "But what if the truth hasn't been told? What if the truth is a lie? "New paths present themselves. Blueprints change. We walk the line of truth every day. "But now, the line that holds the gentle balance has been crossed. "The truth is, this won't be the last time." —Excerpt from the Symmetry pamphlet, "A Place Between"

◯Feet alone cannot take us to where we're going.❍

Matt, Matt, wake up!

I was thinking about how there's no true end to anything

Everything comes from and goes to the same place

Nowhere!

So, if the beginning is the end

And the end is the beginning

Then what's the end anyway?

Does that help you sleep better?

Like the rosy haze of an apocalypse sky

Or the comfort inside of a lie?

◐Close your eyes, and open your mind.◑

"To have Light, we must have Dark. This is the symmetry of the Universe." —Controversial Warlock Ulan-Tan

I propose a simple experiment—look around. You see light. You see darkness. There could not be one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin. If it is true for these Newtonian echoes, why would it not be true of the purest, paracausal forms? Therefore, I conclude: the reason you persecute me is not because of the symmetry. It's because of the truth beyond this truth, the truth which you most dread: if we could destroy darkness, but we had to give up our Light to do so, how many of us would make that trade?

◯Turn your eyes inward, upon your ideal self.❂

No matter where you start or where you end

You are in between the Where and When

You are in the middle of The Loop

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Do you feel half empty or half full?

Is everything beautiful or dull?

Flip a circle and the middle stays the same

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Halfway

We're halfway home

Slow down

The day's boutta be gone

The sun goes

He sleeps until dawn

Slow down

The day is gone

A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game called Possibility. This is a game about a garden, which is to say that it is also a game about flowers, just as a game about a living being must also be a game about organs and bacteria. A gardener and a winnower collaborate to create a protein. Whose hand is it in the design, that shortens one life to extend the rest? It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade. All of these are true. All of these are false, for metaphor simplifies as the knife does. It pares incalculable concepts into shapes your wrinkly little brains can comprehend. The weight of billions and the simple curve of a planet give you pause, and how then are you to be expected to grasp the forces that created your nth-removed creator?

//

ACCESS: RESTRICTED

DECRYPTION KEY: 2CA9SXUO2C$IKO-006

REP#: 011-PSYCHOMETER-TEST

AGENT(S): TRU-135

SUBJ: PSYCHOMETER FIELD TESTS

1. The new version works. Love all the knobs and antenna; very analog. I took readings off a hatch control out here on Europa and Cowlick was able to retrieve badly distorted voices in some kind of distress. I don't know if it's doing exactly what you Warlocks want, but it's doing something all right. Cowlick says it's probably tapping into her scrutiny, if you permit that term in your ivory halls.

2. Now, I'm not much for gadgets, so I won't ask you how you rigged this thing. But I am one for gossip. Weren't we closing in on some kind of workable theory of exactly how our Ghosts resurrect us? One which was, if I am not mistaken, based on research by the Future War Cult? Did any of that work survive Lakshmi?

3. You know they did try to recruit me once. The Cult. Over a game of poker. Fifty-two cards in a deck don't seem like many, this hard-ass Titan told me. But there are 80 658 175 170 943 878 571 660 636 856 403 766 975 289 505 440 883 277 824 000 000 000 000 different possible shuffles of 52 cards. You could walk back and forth across the observable universe faster than you could count all those possible shuffles. A lot faster. That's life, she said, and she had daisies impaled on the spikes of her skull. Life is endless permutation. So many possibilities. But the rules are what matter. Who cares how the deck shuffles if you don't know the rules of the game? We play this game over and over. Life and death. Light and Dark. But the only way you learn the rules, the only way you're ever gonna get one of those Truces you're named for, is if you come inside. Come into the Cult. Come on in and see. But I didn't.

We don't get a choice about the rules. We just play the game.

4. Another thing she told me is that you can play poker with just three cards and two players. Jack, Queen, King. Ante one, max bet one more. High card wins unless one player folds. And in this game, there are many strategies available to the first player, but very few to the second, who acts to exploit the choice made by the first. Many possibilities against few. Sounds like you'd rather be the first player, huh? But if both players play perfectly, that second player wins in the end. Mathematical inevitability. Ain't that something? But I said, your game's just a toy. It's just a contrivance. That's not life. Life isn't one player always exploiting and beating the other.

5. Anyway, back to testing. Might go back to Cocytus and aim this thing at the gate. See how wild it goes. If you never hear from us again, you know Truce and Cowlick finally found something too spooky.

MESSAGE ENDS

If the Light forgets while the Darkness remembers, then why does a Ghost's power of determination let it access latent memories imprinted in the dead? That's paradoxical. That should be a property of Darkness. How can such fundamentally opposed forces do the same thing? Am I as shallow as those Guardians arguing over power levels? Trying to force a simple binary upon a complex spectrum… ? The Drifter talks about "spectrums of Light"—powers his Ghost can access because of its modifications. Forcing the metaphor, I thought. Light is not light. It doesn't have frequencies or spectra. But if we are all constrained by our internalized ontology, by our tacit understanding of how the world works… maybe the circumstances of extreme survival compelled the Drifter to explore a new ontology. Maybe his Ghost achieved a new way to think about the Light.

△To know true color, you must first know Darkness.▼

"We are unique emanations of the same shared Light." —Cult of the Aeons

We are prismatic. We are fractal. We are microcosmic.

"You must learn to tease apart the hues of your own heart." —Parables of the Allspring

I turn

I turn my headlights on

I turn my headlights on

And suddenly I can see

I learn

I learn of right and wrong

I learn to follow one

And suddenly I can breathe

I turn

I turn my headlights on

I turn them on

I'm aware of all my parts

And suddenly I see everything wrong

Then I get tunnel vision

Closing in over me

I forget, with love as my witness

I can stand on my feet

I fall back then I see

Tunnel vision

Closing in over me

I forget, with love as my witness

I can stand on my feet

I fall back then I see

Can I get, can I get out?

Can I get, can I get, oh

Can I get, can I get out?

Can I get, can I get, oh

I burn

I burn my candle out

I burn my candle out

(Can I get, can I get

Can I get, can I get out?)

So nobody else can see

I've learned

I've learned what made me start

What turned me on

Now I'm scared of all my parts

'Cause suddenly I can see everything wrong

Then I get tunnel vision

Closing in over me

I forget, with love as my witness

I can stand on my feet

I fall back then I see

▶The courage to walk into the Darkness, but strength to return to the Light.◁

Fear. That’s the only vivid memory left in me. It’s the moment when my fear was so thick and urgent that I gave up breathing. I stopped pretending to think. How I remained on my feet was a mystery, because the terror was bearing down on me, like a mountain about to crush my soul. But I have to ask, “What was terrifying me?” Darkness ruled the sky. The world around us had shattered, and it seemed vanishingly unlikely that we would outlive this one awful day. Yet the fear didn’t come from the surrounding mayhem and despair. The source was inside my skin. I was utterly terrified of my own awful nature. And which part scared me? Inside me was an essence woven from beyond. Was I Awoken before this? She was still in my head. I could hear her song growing fainter. Gone? Not yet. A new crippling terror was taking over. I was focused entirely on my fear. But I had to make an effort. And it occurred to me then that nothing in the universe was more dangerous than human hubris. I still had this Other within? But the human side was what mattered: Weak and foolhardy, sure to fail in the next moment. That’s why I was afraid. Then someone spoke. Maybe it was me. I don’t remember. I was trying to focus, and a new thought took me: My soul lay between those two entities. And that’s how I am still: The boundary, the seam. The friction. And that’s when the fear began to fade.

◮One day, you will see them both.◭

Let's make a toast to the damned

Waiting for tomorrow

When we're played out by the band

Drowning out our sorrows

What will become of us now, at the end of time?

We'll be fine, you and I

Let's draw a line in the sand

Keep it straight and narrow

We had it all in our hands

We begged and then we borrowed

What will become of us all at the end of love?

When we've stopped looking up?

You can take my heart

And hold it together as we fall apart

Maybe together we can make our mark in the stars we embark

And keep us together as the lights go dark

Let's tell the truth, just for once

Asking for an answer

Now that it's all said and done

Nothing really matters

What will become of us all if we dare to dream?

At the end of the scene?

You can take my heart

Hold it together as we fall apart

Maybe together we can make our mark in the stars we embark

And keep us together as the lights go dark

Let's open up to the sky

Askin' it for closure

'Least we can say that we tried

But it's never really over

What will become of us all, at the end of the line?

Will we live?

Will we die?

You can take my heart

Hold it together as we fall apart

Maybe together we can make our mark in the stars we embark

And keep us together as the lights go dark

⍱Let the heat melt your body so your soul might flow with the river of time.⍲

Raise your voice and sing.

"The Veil." It names itself, as the Human mind named itself, with the weight and presence of sound on the lips, translated into a form that you can physically comprehend. Encompass. Envelop. A touch of teeth and tongue. A vibration of an eardrum. Air moving through a chest cavity. A taste of breath. More than that. Not nearly as much as that. That was the beginning. "Be known." This is next: you see the whorl and weft, the place where it joins itself in one smooth, unbroken surface of light. Make an incision, and from the wound of light will pour forth colors you have never seen. You are pigment, the pigment closest to those colors. "Be seen." Wet matter set against that light, the light that determines what color you are. But each color is a note, and each note is a mind. You are a choir. A chorus. You open your mouth to join it, and you are flooded with the taste of color, with the taste of sound. The sound and color that you are, translated. A means for you to understand. "Be heard." You raise your hand and hold it steady.

|| There is whispering from the deep-dark, alluring and terrifγing—a reminder of things left behind, bittersweet and abhorrent. ||

⬤Does one life across infinite realities equal immortal life?♾

We are thinkers, daring to dream about the universe and its infinite expanse.

⨀Perhaps that is all we are.☯

I see an abyss. Small and distant shapes. I'm walking in your nascent memories. Flickering motes. I sense… curiosity. You've always pondered, from the very beginning. As did we. I see tessellation. The pulsating hum of cosmic structure; a kaleidoscopic symphony of Light and Dark. What was the Veil to you? Since I woke, I've always felt like I was still dreaming. I'd like to think that's how you feel as well. Those of us that hunger for a great truth—we dream with you. —Unknown Warlock

The Other Half

If only there was a way to combine them…

Even the most perfect of pearls has grit at its center.

…it's within you too.

There's that wild, incurable curiosity.

A long time ago, there were three sisters. A Voice in the Darkness put a lie in their hearts, and they've acted on it ever since.

Just as you've been lied to.

Light and Dark. Witness and Traveler. Always doubled. Always pitted against each other in some grand game. Well, I've had enough of their games, haven't you?

Let's break their rules. Together.

Pnuvyhujl pz h wypzvu jlss. Zvtlaptlz hu lunyht pz aol rlf.

When I was a New Light, our trainers made us meditate for hours on end. Sitting in silence, focusing on a single point: a candle, a mirror, the Traveler in the distance. I thought we were focusing our Light to manipulate the physical word. But now, centuries later, I finally see what they were trying to teach us. The point is not the Light. The point is THE POINT. The singularity through which all power flows. Darkness and Light becoming one in an endless cycle, like electrons bouncing between anode and cathode. A prismatic circuit.