#a man who pleases is a thing of wonder

[mywebfoot]

Expectation Management.

Love Scout Fanfic.

In Episode 8, I was wondering what happened to create those naughty faces when returning to the office. The last we saw, they'd agreed to steal a date in the middle of the work day, and hunt down some coffee and salted buns.

I think it was this conversation, told from poor Ji Yun’s point of view. 

—

“Sex.”

He splutters. I watch him drop his coffee on the table. Ice cubes and Americano splash onto the mat. I just keep nibbling on the edge of my mocha salted bun.

“What? We have to do it,” I say. “It’s an important part of being together, right?”

He glances about the coffee shop, his gaze resting on a nearby sofa, then a bench for two. 

I chuckle. “I don’t mean now. Later.”

He looks relieved and I feel a little offended. 

“What do you mean then?”

“Well, I want to know when you think the time is right. I mean, do you expect to sleep with me right away? Do you have rules for when it’s right?”

Eun Ho processes this for a few seconds. I wait. This inscrutable man. I make a living giving people what they want by reading their faces for their tells. I’m good at it. That’s how I’ve built my company from 2 to 20 people in 5 years. But this man? He might have a second career as a poker player. 

“Do you have a suggestion for when we… er… for how, no… Tell me what you are thinking of?”

Answering a question with a question. After two months of working with him, I’ve come to think of him as ‘driven by service’. People work for all kinds of reasons. Money. Recognition. Yu Eun Ho? He’s happiest when he's needed, fulfilled when he successfully gets you what you want. And so he waits, and absorbs your wants before building them into his own response. 

“I think that I am very attracted to you. You’re a sexy man, as you know, and I cannot imagine I will be very restrained once we begin.” His eyes widen a little.

I admit it. I’m blunt, but I also enjoy flustering him. Still, I’ve had this on my mind for a while, and I need to know what he expects. Expectation management. When everyone knows what to expect, there's no disappointment. It’s just Business 101, right?

“I had precisely one lover, ever, and that was in college. He pursued me and I was curious about what it would be like.  We lasted a week.”

“Did he hurt you?” A small tilt forward and a tiny burst of anger in his eyes. He gazes at me, maybe determining if there truly was no hurt. How can there not be?

 “He lost interest.” I shake my head, a bit rueful at the memory. 

“In you?” I take comfort at his frown. 

I shrug. “He never said.” 

Oh the tragedy. Thinking back, I remember being broken when he ghosted me. Despairing at what else I could have done. Then it clicked - no one stays. This is life. What else did I expect? One takes. One gets left behind. 

“It was good while it lasted. I wanted more, but he seemed to be happy with time in bed and little else. So that’s what we did. At least I discovered I like sex. I like the sense of a man between my legs, the intensity and the focus. I like chasing after orgasm. Mine and his.”

Eun Ho is still. His back straight, his eyes fixed on me, but he’s mute. Ah, a tell. His ears are bright red. There’s a panicked glance around the cafe, checking for listeners I suppose. He’s 35 and he has a child, so why is he like this?

“Eun Ho-ssi.” No reply.

“Director Yu?” I insist, using my meeting voice. 

He blinks. “You are… a menace.” His voice is raspy and it sounds like a thousand other words are jostling in his throat. My lips twitch. See, this is why I like flustering him. He’s adorable. 

But I need answers, so I get back to the point.

“So this is what I want to know. What do you expect? When do we start? How often should we do this? What do you like?”

Those dark eyes finally focus on me. I suppress a small shiver. After that disaster in college, pursuing sex never seemed quite worth it. Until him. 

He looks down at the bun in my hand. I do too. I have squashed it into an indeterminate shape between my fingers. Ah. Reaching out, he rescues it from my grip. He’s about to take a tissue to wipe my buttery fingers when he pauses. 

Instead he raises my hand to his mouth. He licks away the salty-sweet crumbs, then his eyes flick to mine. 

“Ji Yun-ssi.” A nibble. He’s still watching me. Watching my response. I control my face, but my fingers flex. He seems satisfied.

“Here are your answers, Ji yun-ssi.  Sorted in order of last one first."

"What do I like? I would like very much to find out what it feels like to have your legs wrapped around my body, around my waist, over my shoulder. I like taking it slow, because each discovery is going to be delicious and I want to savour all our firsts. I like thinking of you half-naked, but in my lap, in the back seat of the company car at night. I like working out what makes you wet.”

I am shaking. I can't seem to hide it. He covers my fingers with his other hand. 

“I don’t know how often, exactly. I can’t give you a days-per-week metric. But we’ll do it as often as it takes for me to figure out how to give you an orgasm, and then I’ll practice that to perfection. If you want, we can compete on who comes harder. ”

“We start? We start when you are ready, when you can trust me to cherish you fully, in all the ways you should be cherished. We stop? When I have eased some part of my need for you. I am so desperately hungry for you that if you said now, I could make it happen. That bench over there has possibilities.” The corner of his lips tweak up.  

He can joke. I want to kid him back but I can’t. There are only pictures in my mind. Pictures of skin and muscle. Sweat and movement. 

“Ji Yun-ssi. You know what I expect? I don’t expect to have ‘sex’. I expect to make love with you.”

Oh God. I still have to work this afternoon?

--

Go to Part 2/2

[kiivg]

.please please please please please pl.

[moeblob]

[marquezism]

sometimes i just say stuff and then you guys are like “yeah!!!” and im like. pause. we fuck with this? we fuck with marc/ago 70s shenanigans??? for real?

[shikai-the-storyteller]

It's taking me ages to write this chapter because every time I look through old VODs / notes to check something, I come across moments like this that make me want to lie down face-first on the floor:

[Context: Pac commits to the idea of taking the Happy Pills so he can create a cure. He's about to write a note to Cellbit to explain his plan.]

Pac: If Cellbit puts himself in this position, it's worse for everyone, because Cellbit is smarter when it comes to coming up with strategic plans, so he is the thinking mind of the Favela Five group, so if he no longer has the mind, he’s not capable of solving this whole problem, you know? But if I put myself in this position to help Cellbit so he can get the cure... You understand? It's better if I'm the bait. Right? I can't- I can't carry things alone guys, I've already lost Mike [...] if I lose Cellbit and I alone had to carry things, I won't be able to. But I think Cellbit can manage better. He is more independent, and he has Roier. He has a husband. I'm trying to– to be lucid here, understand? That's all.

Date: September 11, 2023 || Timestamp: 03:10:10

[destinymoore05]

IM SORRY WHEN WAS THISSSSSS

🤯

This one is too funny (if it's true), imagine the stan crashout if that train wreck happened 😭

I also heard she followed him on IG and unfollowed him when he didn't follow her back? Maybe that's what happened?

@allittakesisoneflight

[gomzdrawfr]

making mood boards as banners reminded me the time I would draw banners for fics

[uncanny-tranny]

Something I love about art is, often, you won't be able to tell who made the piece of art - no matter what, no matter one's background, gender, or anything - people want to surround themselves with beauty, creation, something which stirs ones emotions, warmth, fear, care, and love. There's something special about that.

[wildsaltair]

UNMATCHED

[bloody-wonder]

A big problem with the way Nora handles the diversity is that it only matters in the story when the characters in question are getting called slurs or generally being victimised. Outside of that it has no influence.

Like when Laila (I get them mixed up too, so maybe not her, but Cat) gets called the n-word. When does her identity ever matter in the story outside of that? Because I can't remember a time it ever did.

If Nora doesn't have the time in the book to unpack what it would've been like for Laila in that time period properly, and truthfully I think it's okay if she doesn’t, then I think she should opt for it to not matter at all. In my opinion, it's better for it to not matter at all than for it to only matter when a character wants to be racist.

But then I would also then say there's the issue of nobody but the two main white characters having any depth. If Laila did have depth, I'd probably be more forgiving about this.

Even more so, it's not helped by the fact that the excuse for slurs in the original was often that it's accurate to the time period - which is true and, I think, fair. And while that is also true in the new book, she also doesn't stick to the time period fully in the new one like she did in the old. You can't have time period accuracy as a reason for slurs if you're okay with having group chats in the early 2000s.

i don't entirely agree with your first point: the diversity also comes to the fore when characters are cooking or eating traditional foods from their cultures as well as when they are speaking different languages. in the og trilogy the multilingualism is more so a plot-related contrivance but in jean's books each of the main characters beside jeremy has a native language that isn't english. even so, none of the languages beside french are really focused on. and as for the food idk this is my personal pet-peeve but due to having limited interest in culinary arts irl i also couldn't care less about what fictional characters cook or eat and i'm annoyed when authors try to use that as a character-building device. so when coach rhemann's husband, our token slavic character who otherwise entertained me by some lively dialogue, served jean the obligatory traditional dish it made me roll my eyes. stop overcompensating, nora😅

the slurs thing i would categorize not as a diversity writing issue but as a villains writing issue. the slurs and different flavors of bigotry are nora's way of having her bad guys kick a puppy in these new books. jeremy's conservative family are racists and homophobes so we hate them - no particular depth there. riko is also shown to have been a raging homophobe - it just makes sense, you know, on account of him being evil and all. except in the og books he and nathan didn't need to kick any queer puppies to be successfully and convincingly evil. i'm not posthumously defending riko lol i just think it was more compelling when problematic words used to be said by the characters we're generally meant to root for and the bad guys used to be more fucked up and scary. to come back to your point: i agree that nora's best option would be to forgo the bigotry and focus on other ways how to make her villains evil. (maybe even some plot-related ways who knows who's to say)

(lol this reminds me when i first read son nefes it was so jarring to see the f-word in the scene where nicky and the twinyards are first introduced to the team - not bc it's a problematic word but bc it's signaling a completely different level of discourse. like we were just fighting for our lives with murderous sociopathic mafiosi and now this? oh you sweet summer children😅).

and yes, as per the previous tgr diversity ask, i do think that the real issue is that poc characters in jean's books just aren't interesting enough / lack depth / however you want to put it. like, nicky is biracial. yes, his mexican identity isn't foregrounded much and yes, nora might have tapped into some problematic stereotypes - but despite all that nicky is undeniably a whole ass character. he has a function in the story, he influences the plot and the relationships around him, he has iconic lines and dedicated scenes. he's totally the comedic relief archetype but also i'm never in any danger of mixing him up with any other character - bc all of them are distinct and help each other stand out even more. i can't speak to how satisfactory this rep is but given a choice between a whole ass character like nicky and someone like laila who i can't tell apart from the rest but who does cook traditional foods, speak her language to her parents and get called slurs - aka the trifecta of poc rep written by a white author lol - i will always prefer the former.

totally agree with the last point. if we're in a trans inclusive 2000s sports au other utopian time period inconsistencies can be allowed. i would have preferred it the other way round tho. i enjoy the 2000s vibes of aftg and i don't like how the new books feel as if they take place in 2024. i want to escape into the distant past (2007) thank you very much

[starpros-sunshine]

I think the reason I'm so uncomfortable in conversation with cis men is because in my life the image I've grown up with is that from the American movies and while there's so much to be said about how women in those are basically objects or exclusively love interests or just Really Really forgettable I feel like there's also something to be mentioned about how most of these men are all the same pseudo-tough-guy character that's cool and suave and sexy and the only emotion he's capable of is nonchalant banter (it feels worth mentioning that the American movies I'm referring to are all from the last century I have no idea if that's changed in these last years but a gut feeling tells me no) and I also barely talk to the guys from my grade so the result of kind of growing up with that is that I just genuinely can not imagine real cis men with a complex inner emotional landscape. Maybe this is also an empathy thing but I genuinely can not imagine most cishet guys doing normal people things in their free time that aren't gaming or going to the gym or...idk. making music too I suppose. It's quite comical really but I just can not imagine cishet men with interests or doing stuff like having crushes and it's so strange because I know for a fact I am generally speaking not a sexist person but this little tidbit of apparently just not being able to view cishet men as normal people? Can't get that to go away even if I logically know it's silly. There's a point in this post about how toxic masculinity is a huge issue and affects even those not affected by it and runs really really deep or whatever but I'm too tired to coherently put it together. On the positive side now I get really happy when I see men online talk about how much they love their wives and all that because it's like "wow! Crazy you really are just a normal dude and not some James Bond knock-off like I thought every cishet man was supposed to be! Thank god!"

[nebulousfishgills]

BROTHER YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME I'M IN DISTRESS

[themyscirah]

Just saw a bunch of atrocious wonder woman takes and I hate everything

Someone google nearest bridge to jump off of im so done w this

[mellarked-katnisseverdeen]

/Vent. Ignore please.

[seilon]

yet again I am whimpering and sobbing at hyatt to give me a job at the big fancy hotel. this is like my 7th application to a job at this one hotel specifically. i should really get the job from sheer dedication to applying over and over again for 7 months alone

[katierosefun]

mom and dad :)