#alright! last author spotlight!

[5sos-fic-fest]

Meet Hazel!

Name:

Hazel

Tumblr URL:

@allsassnoclass​, but also @5sos-fic-exchange​, @5sos-writing-week​, and this one, because I am the mod!

Archive of Our Own Username:

allsassnoclass (brightblackholes)

Favorite 5sos song?

Babylon!!!!!!!!

Three songs you’ve been listening to?

Romeo & Juliet by Peter McPoland Stick Season by Noah Kahan Talking Business by Dessa

What do you enjoy most about writing fic?

a lot of things! I really enjoy building words and crafting plots and stories.  I love creating characters!  I love stringing sentences together!  it’s hard to pinpoint what, exactly, I like best right now, but I just really love creating stories!

Describe the vibe of your songfic in three words:

apocalyptic, anxiety, endings

Special Promo:

my masterlist

[ky-yk]

eve, psyche, and… (hyj x f!reader)

a sequel to “delicate (hyj x f!reader)”

genre: fluff || word count: 2.4k

author’s note: you asked, i delivered. hope u enjoy this one, fruit baskets 🫶🫨

you weren’t a k-pop stan. not by a long shot.

yet here you were, in seoul, seated as close to the stage as you could be for le sserafim’s flame rises concert.

you sat patiently waiting for the show to start with your bucket hat resting low on your head and your banner on your lap. to pass the time, you started mindlessly using your phone.

soon enough, you ended up looking through your conversations with jen and reminiscing on how far you two had come.

after sending jen that dm, you pocketed your phone and continued your journey back to your hotel. as soon as you arrived, your phone connected to the wifi and came alive with notifications from friends and family asking about how the concert went. you put your phone down and instead decided to get on with your evening routine before replying to them.

as you settled in bed, you skimmed through your friends' and family's messages.

however, one notification caught your eye.

jenaissante: well well well

you smiled to yourself as you finally read the message. the girl was online as well and must’ve seen you read her message because you then saw a text bubble pop up beside her profile picture, the three dots bouncing around in anticipation.

jenaissante: wait wait not here 😭

suddenly, you receive another notification: a follow request from what appeared to be her private account.

jenaissante: let’s talk there instead

itsyn: alright then 😭

after accepting her follow request and following her back, you dm’d her again.

itsyn: so

itsyn: a k-pop idol, huh?

you barely slept a wink that night because you spent the whole time talking to jen—yunjin. laying on your stomach while hugging the pillow beneath you, you and her talked about anything and everything until the post-concert exhaustion caught up with you.

the other girl must’ve noticed you’d passed out, because as she sat at the airport and waited to board, she chuckled to herself before typing one last message for the night.

pas.un.ange: good night, y/n.

you shook your head and chuckled to yourself as you pocketed your phone, paying attention to your surroundings instead and taking it all in: people settling into their seats, the excited chatter of fans (fearnots? is that what they’re called?), and just the sheer scale of the production. you had a vague idea of just how huge jen was, but seeing it in person was surreal.

quite the superstar you are, huh, jen?

before the show began, you picked your lightstick up from your bag, as well as your battery pack, and put them together just in time for the lights to dim as everyone else raised their lightsticks and cheered in excitement. you looked around at the scene, a sense of pride washing over you as you happily hollered with the crowd.

an intro video played on screen, signaling the start of the show. as each member appeared on screen for the first time, the crowd went wild, making you chuckle at first before joining the ruckus.

soon enough, though, yunjin appeared on screen.

and any scream that was due to come out of your throat died in its wake, instead leaving you slack-jawed at the sight of your seatmate in all her idol glory -- dressed to the nines and her once bright and wide eyes now glaring into your soul.

this wasn't jen. this was huh yunjin.

before you knew it, the vcr had ended, and the screens were splitting to make way for the five-piece to take the stage -- much to the excitement of the whole crowd. as soon as their silhouettes were clear, the crowd only hollered more (and further justified the $35 you spent on earplugs).

soon enough, both the spotlight and the cameras were on them for all to see. you looked on in awe at your seatmate now taking the stage for herself. not long after, the girls got in formation, and you could hear the buildup to their latest single blasting over the speakers.

"unforgiven, i'm a villain, i'm a."

the show was on.

you'd lost count of how many times your jaw dropped at just how impressed you were. before the concert, you were only vaguely familiar with the group. you'd think that as jen's friend, you'd be up to date on all their latest releases and shenanigans, but you made it clear to her that you wanted to get to know her outside of her idol life and career.

that lead to you basically receiving a crash course in all things le sserafim as the concert went on. you'd gotten familiar with the members and their idol personas, their insane discography, their overflowing talent, and their undeniable charm.

some members more so than others.

what's that called again? a bias?

you knew jen was talented. you knew she sang and played the guitar, you knew she had a few original songs under her belt (even sneaking you peeks at some unreleased ones), and you knew she'd spent a large chunk of her life training to become an idol.

but seeing her here right now? guitar in hand and performing an unreleased song under the harsh spotlight for her solo stage after singing and dancing with unrivaled charm for multiple songs back to back? you knew she was born to perform.

soon enough, it was time for the encore.

and it was your time to shine.

seeing the girls come back out and stylishly wearing their tour merch, you perked up and readied your sign. after a few words from the members, the telltale synths of flash forward came on the speakers as yunjin opened the song and started walking around the stage to interact with fans.

as you saw her come closer, you raised your sign even higher to try and grab her attention. she was smiling and waving at the fans beside you, but soon enough, she looked in your direction and took notice of your sign.

and then you.

you peeked out from under your bucket hat and made eye contact with the girl. you laughed at her bewildered expression before she pointed at herself and mouthed, "my wife?"

you responded with a sheepish shrug as she chuckled at you and gave you an easy smile that she must've realized lingered a little too long because she then moved on to the other fans around you and finally left your side of the stage.

you stood with your sign as the other members stopped by your side of the stage. when you locked eyes with them, they all looked some semblance of surprise -- as if they recognized you. jen must've told them about me, huh? you hope none of the fans around you saw their reactions to you. this is not how i want to get famous...

soon enough, though, the confetti popped as the girls took their final bows, not before shedding a few (a lot) tears, though.

that you took way too many pictures of.

for a rainy day, you know?

you sat back down and waited for the rest of the crowd to leave. when you noticed your own seatmates getting up to go, you followed their lead. with their chatter as your background noise, you turned your phone on and connected to your pocket wifi as your notifications came pouring in.

from a certain k-pop idol.

pas.un.ange: i didnt imagine that right

pas.un.ange: you were here??

pas.un.ange: where are u staying btw

pas.un.ange: also

pas.un.ange: my wife? 😳

you shook your head and chuckled to yourself at her shenanigans as you made your way out of the arena and towards the subway station. you replied to each of her messages just before your train arrived. you pocketed your phone and settled in, letting the exhaustion just barely take over you before you could reach your stop.

as you stepped out into the cool seoul evening, you absent-mindedly walked back to your hotel and were just about to go inside, but not before a voice stopped you in your tracks.

"damn, not even a hug from my wife?"

you looked up in surprise at jen, wrapped up in her huge coat with her hands in her pockets as she laughed at how your droopy eyes suddenly went wide. she walked closer, but not before you could crash into her, wrap your arms around her waist, and hug her tight. taken by surprise at the sudden contact, she returned the hug and let out a breath she didn't even know she was holding.

"you've got time for a snack run?" you heard her ask. you nodded against her chest, feeling it rumble as she chuckled.

"ja, let's go," she said before letting you go and walking into the convenience store located right beside the hotel entrance with you trailing right behind her.

you both scoured the aisles and picked up some ramyeon for you both to share. after taking your pick, though, you both kept exploring the store for more items either of you might want to pick up.

soon enough, you made it to the back of the store where they kept their drinks in rows of refrigerators. you opened a fridge, being greeted by an assault of cold air, and picked up a bottle of coke zero, before hearing her call out to you.

"yah, y/n, come here!" she said, looking up at the mirror on the corner ceiling, her phone ready to take pictures. you shook your head in playful disbelief as you saddled up beside her and had your mini photoshoot.

you sat patiently by the window as she paid and cooked your food (at her insistence). you broke out of your reverie when the smell of your ramyeon attacked your senses.

"something on your mind?" she asked as she took the seat beside you, put your drinks down, and offered you a pair of chopsticks that you then took.

"do your managers know you're here?"

"what they don't know won't kill them," she shrugged before you smacked her shoulder.

"hey! i'm kidding, of course they know I'm here. how else do you think i got here before you did?"

"and you're not worried about getting caught?"

"i'd say i'm conspicuous enough. it helps that i'm speaking english."

you thought about it for a second before resigning, breaking your chopsticks apart, and mixing the ramyeon.

"i still can't quite believe you're here."

"you did amazing, by the way. all of you. send my regards to the girls later, they were lovely."

"what was your favorite part?" she asked nonchalantly.

"oh, probably when kazuha--"

"yah!"

"i'm kidding! hm..." you hummed, as if deep in thought.

"probably when my bias noticed my sign."

"yeah?"

"oh yeah, kazuha is so much prettier up close,"

"if you want i cou--"

"she's nothing compared to you, though." it was your turn to cut her off with a hand to her bicep. the words die in her throat as she visibly flusters. she clears her throat and changes the subject.

seconds turn into minutes, minutes turn into an hour, and soon enough, jen's phone starts buzzing.

"yeoboseyo? ne... ah ne." with the way her face falls, you can only imagine what the conversation was about. she puts her phone down and lets out a deep sigh.

"i think i have to go, manager-nim's been waiting up on me for a while now."

you hum in understanding. "send my regards to your manager, too, i feel bad for keeping him this long."

you both start arranging your trash into a pile. jen moves to stand, and you're just about to do the same, but not before you feel a weight slumped behind you, burying its face in your neck.

"i dont wanna go," you can barely make out, causing you to chuckle.

jen gets up from the awkward position and stands behind you, wrapping her arms around your waist and pressing her front to your back. your eyes widen at the contact and you hope that if she catches your face burning, she assumes it's just because of the ramyeon you both had. she rests her chin on your shoulder and sighs.

you feel her right arm leave its spot on your waist and disappointment bubble up for a second before she hands you her phone. "come on, let's take a few pictures."

"you love your pictures, huh?"

"i don't know when i can see you again."

you hummed as you opened her camera and she wrapped her arms around your waist again, cuddling in closer than you thought was even possible for the picture. you kept spamming the shutter as she kept nuzzling closer to you, even feeling her nosing your neck at some point.

after saying your goodbyes to the lovely register, you both walked out into the cold night, the blast of air waking you both up better than any cup of coffee could. in front of your hotel, a lone black van was parked.

you walked side by side, bumping into each other as you walked to the front of your hotel. jen stopped in her tracks, and you took that as a sign to walk in front of her.

"well, i guess this is me."

"i think i've seen this film before, haven't you?" she jokes, trying to lighten the mood. you chuckled.

"you're right, it does feel familiar," you say as you take a step closer to her.

it was your turn to hold her by the biceps and tiptoe to whisper in her ear.

"only this time, i wonder if i'll like the ending."

before you could pull away, jen throws all caution into the cold wind and cups your cheeks to take your breath away in a searing kiss. frozen at first, you soon relax into the kiss and place your hands on her waist to return the kiss. eventually, you both barely pulled away, leaving tiny pecks before completely separating.

jen's eyes open a little bit, looking a little dazed before seemingly snapping out of it. she drops her arms and takes a step back, suddenly looking super flustered and awkward -- scratching her neck and finding the post behind you so fascinating with how hard she was staring at it. you chuckled and stepped closer to give her a peck on the cheek.

"see you around, jen. get home safe," you tell her before disappearing into your hotel lobby.

"bye y/n," she whispers into the night before finally making her way into her van.

[sterekyrround]

STEREK AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT!: Renmackree

Hi! I've noticed that you sometimes rec Sterek Fics and was wondering if you'd be willing to rec these by my favorite author, Renmackree?

Small Town Logic

Rated E_36,118 words

Derek Hale is the new Deputy of Beacon Hills, hoping to have a fresh start for himself and his son Eli. What he didn't expect was the owner of the coffee shop to turn his existence upside down.

Or

The one where Derek's new to town and thinks that Stiles is in a relationship with Jackson and pines for him.

A Book By It's Cover (Model)

Rated E_43,787 words, ongoing

Derek Hale has been a cover model for ten years exclusively for his favorite romance author, the mysterious M. S. Gajos. With the series about to end, Derek takes his last chance to meet them for the first time, only to find out that Gajos (AKA Stiles Stilinski) is a whisky-eyed cynic who doesn’t believe in the love he writes.Sparks fly, both bad and good, and it just so happens that Stiles is looking for a muse—but will Derek be able to keep from falling for him?Or will Stiles’ heart finally melt?

In Love's Labyrinth

Rated E_23,732 words

When Stiles realizes Derek has been kidnapped and forced to join an underground fighting ring, to the death, he stops at nothing to save his boyfriend - but will he be able to rescue him intact?

The Moonlight Saga series

Rated E_185,655 words

A Retelling of Twilight using the Characters from Teen Wolf.

Stiles is Bella, and Derek is Edward. Need I say more?

My Mother Told Me

Rated E_60,556 words

Stiles joined the Emissary program to help Alpha wolves settle into their new roles and to follow in his mother’s footsteps. She had always told him he was destined to run with the wolves, but he thought she meant Scott and his pack.

Instead, Stiles finds himself sent to Thingvallavatn, Iceland, with Alpha Derek Hale. It's clear the Alpha is hiding a part of him that Stiles can’t reach, but when a monster comes to threaten the pack, it’s always great to have someone in your corner with a little mischief up their sleeve.

Yes Omg!!!!! Moon Light Saga was one for the books. Love Ren So fucking much!

My favorite story rec for her is:

The Kid's Alright

Rated M_39,779 words

“All good?” asked his Dad, a backpack slung over his shoulder like he was about to run off into the woods and go camping rather than drive his son to college. Then again, Derek had always looked like he’d rather be in the woods than in long car rides. Eli couldn’t imagine why.

“In the hood,” Eli responded without a second thought. He shot his Dad a grin and two thumbs up. Eli could smell the older wolf was anxious – after all, his only son was going to college, leaving him alone with his crazy husband. Anyone would be nervous about that.

---

Legit my comfort fic for the rest of my life.

[dementian]

I think I realized why that scene hurt so badly.

To his very last breath, the whole focus was on making Ed feel better.

Izzy is laying in this man's arms, dying. He's tired, he's in pain, he's losing blood quickly. He's going to be dizzy, confused, maybe even frightened. He knows he's dying. He asks Ed just to sit with him. To just be with him in his last moments.

This is the time when Ed should comfort Izzy, not the other way around. This is the moment where Ed should be able to tell him how loved he is by his crew. Izzy put his life on the line for Frenchie, Fang, Archie, and Jim. Twice the camera cuts over Ed's shoulder and focuses directly on Jim's face. Why couldn't Jim have been able to approach, and kneel with Izzy. To whisper that everyone's going to be alright? That all is well, and that he's loved?

On February 17th, 2018, I was put in the very difficult situation of having to console a stranger while they died. A seven year old named Armani, who wore a pink tracksuit. She'd been traveling with her family to go get her mother's glasses perscription refilled when her father's minivan had struck a car crossing the interstate. She'd been ejected from the car, and shattered upon impact.

I type all this to say that I have held a dying person in my arms, so I speak with some small authority (Though not much) when I say that, if someone is dying, that's really not the time to focus on yourself. That's the moment to focus on them, comfort them, and love them as they go on to the next life. Izzy deserved to have the spotlight. To be told he was loved. Instead, his death (much like his life) was all about Ed.

Even his burial was about Ed. No thought for how he might have wanted to be buried (with his ring no doubt). Every day of his life, he wore that ring. Now, it hangs out in the open for easy pickings from grave robbers and animals alike. The crew gifted him that leg. It was his second chance. Can't he have one small thing that's his? Can't he be allowed to die with some modicum of self, detatched from Ed as a persona?

If Ed doesn't want to love him that's fine, but why can't he let him be?

[onceuponaoneshotfanfic]

At The Movies

Part of my 900 Followers Celebration! Request: Hi!!! This is so exciting, congratulations on 900 followers!! Can I request “everything will be alright if you keep me next to you” with Roy? I’m obsessed with the way you write him (and all the Taylor prompts - I’m in love

Roy Kent x Actress!Reader 0.8k words Warnings: Language, fluffy fluffy fluff

Author's Note: Premise inspired by gentle hands, ankle clasps by the super talented @benedictscanvas 💖

You gripped Roy’s hand tightly as the car turned the corner. He eyed you gently, amusement on his face.

“Alright there?”

All you could do was nod and give his hand another little squeeze. It wasn’t like this was your first ever film role or first premiere; this was, however, the biggest one you’d ever attended, not to mention your first starring role, and it was for the highly anticipated adaptation of a best-selling book series. Definitely a “make it or break it” moment for your career.

Roy leaned over and kissed your temple, careful not to muss your hair. “It’s going to be great,” he promised, using that reassuring voice you’d heard so much over the last three years, especially during those months you were away shooting the film and spent all your free time facetiming your footballer boyfriend.

“What if it flops?” You wondered if your pout was ruining the pretty pink lipstick your makeup artist had painstakingly applied. “What if they hate it?” Your voice was impossibly small. “What if they hate me?”

“Fucking impossible.” He brought your white-knuckled hand to his lips and kissed it. “No one could ever hate you.”

You felt convinced for all of two seconds, until the car pulled up to the red carpet. Your eyes were wide again as you turned to Roy, panic settling on your face.

Used to pressure and lots of eyes on him, Roy shook his head at you. “You’ve got this. I’m right here.” He pressed his forehead to yours. “Everything will be alright if you keep me next to you.”

That was your plan.

Roy stepped out of the car first, giving an awkward wave before turning to offer you his hand and helping you out of the car. The shouts and screams were deafening, and you swore you’d be seeing spots the rest of the night thanks to the flashing cameras. But Roy’s hand was firmly in yours, fingers intertwined, giving you the confidence you needed to put one foot in front of the other and not teeter in the horribly high heels your stylist insisted were perfect.

Your name was called from far too many directions, but you plastered on a smile and did your best to look happy instead of terrified, wondering if your grip on Roy’s hand was cutting off circulation.

If it was, he wasn’t saying a word. Instead, he brought his lips to your ear to hum, “You’re a fucking goddess.”

His words must have spurred something in your heart, because you turned and kissed him full on the mouth, ignoring the accelerating click click click of dozens of cameras and shouts of yours and Roy’s names. All you wanted was to disappear into Roy’s arms- but he wasn’t about to let you do that. Instead, he urged you to walk on, only letting go of your hand so you could pose on your own, murmuring, “They’re here for you, you gorgeous thing.”

Once you’d had enough time in the spotlight, you gripped Roy’s hand again, now more out of affection than fear. The two of you paused so you could chat with a couple of reporters, who, thankfully, were very kind to you- probably because they knew Roy Kent’s legendary disdain for the media.

One reporter- a lovely young lady- was bold enough to aim a question at your boyfriend. “How proud are you of this woman here?” she asked, observing the way Roy’s eyes never left your face.

“Very,” was his monosyllabic response. Realizing both you and the reporter were waiting for more, he went on. “She’s a fucking force to be reckoned with, this one. Worked her arse off for this film, and I’m beyond excited to finally see the finished product.” He pushed a stray hair out of your face. “My only complaint is that she’s going to be working more than ever and I’ll have to deal with her being away from me all the fucking time.”

“You’ll just have to come visit me on set,” you teased, straightening his tie, the one you’d insisted on tying yourself back at your hotel room.

His response was a small peck to your lips, before offering a small wave of thanks to the journalist and moving you along.

After that, you found yourself enjoying yourself. You felt charming as you chatted with journalists, you hugged costars tightly, and you held back tears as your director told you how proud she was of you. All the while, Roy never left your side, watching you with a mix of love and admiration.

When you finally found your way inside the theatre and settled in your seats, you turned to face him, your heart swelling when you saw him already watching you.

“Was that so bad?” His eyes sparkled playfully.

You shook your head. “Not with you by my side.” You kissed the tip of his nose.

He brought his hand up to hold your chin gently, offering you one of those rare full smiles, the kind he usually saved just for you. “Any fucking time.”

[kenobster]

Alas, 'tis an excerpt from a fic written by an author who is too queer for small boxes, a fic that shall never see the light of day, at least not between November 5 and November 11~

As Rex turns the corner, he sees a trembling, huddled shadow, heels to thighs, knees to forehead. He aims his flashlight toward it, and the spotlight drags a youthful face up from the shadow’s chest, its eyelashes fluttering and its eyes cringing away from the bright fluorescent beams. Two hands, one gloved and one pale, are clawing at every coughed sob spilling from its mouth. Frozen, Rex can only stare as he recognizes the face beneath the brittle fingers. It’s quite possibly the last face he ever expected to see here, up to and possibly even including the cybernetic dome of General Grievous. It’s the face of a Jedi General, it’s the face of his Jedi General, it’s the face of Jedi General Anakin Skywalker, the Hero Without Fear. Skywalker’s teeth click around a breathy, ragged whimper. The sound dislodges something heavy from Rex's chest, and something else trickles like ice down his ribs at the sight of his invincible General struggling to keep himself together—and failing. “Sir?” Rex calls out. Skywalker’s hands loosen around his mouth, and an incoherent string of apologies streams out. It's those broken, panicked syllables that finally kick Rex back into his battered armor and banged-up boots. He scans their surroundings for any obvious dangers—aside from the durasteel dust, frayed and dangling electrical wires and abandoned sharp objects. Then he sets the flashlight on the floor to give the shadows a good wash-out. "You seem to be under some stress,” Rex says in the trained and personal script he can now recite in his sleep. "I’m going to check your vitals and try to help you out. That okay?" Skywalker's body rattles. “Not—not h-hurt—m'not—” “You’re not hurt,” Rex repeats. “Got it. I’d still like to check, if that's alright by you. Just to be safe." Though Skywalker frowns like he wants to argue, complete words continue to elude him. His head makes a choppy nod, and Rex takes that as permission to crouch down, remove his gloves, and press a stern grip against the pulse point in Skywalker’s wrist. After counting beats and checking for circulation—and doing his best to gauge the timing of breaths between hitched and ugly sobs—Rex deduces that this is exactly what he thought when the comm came at two in the morning: a panic attack.

[weministertomonsters]

Sin - 1

➤ Wordcount - 1.8k

There was a hush in the air when Lily came back from the market in the next village over. Jericho was the biggest village in the valley of Sarhain, and it was unusual for it to be this quiet. All the adults seemed to have disappeared. When she passed a group of children playing ball on the main street she paused.

"Where is everyone?" She asked.

The motley group was begrudging of adults, but Lily was kind and sometimes passed out sweets, so she was a favorite even among the youngsters.

"They're up in the church," a boy with hair like a pile of thatch said, tossing the ball from one hand to another. "Called a meeting, they did."

"What for?" Lily glanced up at the church, a simple board-wood building perched on a small hill that overlooked the rest of the town.

"Farmer Johnson caught a monster!" One girl exclaimed. "A scary thing with teeth longer than my arm!"

She wasn't much older than six. Her tangled hair was up in pigtails, and she was wearing a dress that had been patched many times over. Her knees were nothing but muddy spots. She had a pair of shoes, but it was rare to see her wearing them.

"Margie, I've told you to keep out of the dirt, haven't I? And look at your hair," Lily sighed. "If you come around my cabin later, I'll brush it for you, alright?"

Margie nodded complacently. Lily had stopped along the way to pick the last of the autumn berries to make pies, so she gave them a small basket of the fruit to share and dropped her things off at her cabin before she hurried to the church to see what was going on. She slipped inside to find the place in turmoil.

Farmer Johnson and the handyman Hendrik Sully were shouting at each other by the communion table, and everyone else was engaging in smaller arguments, with each person picking a side.

"What was I s'posed to do? That thing has been just tearin' up my sheep for weeks! I can't afford to lose an entire flock!" Johnson said, hands on his hips.

With skin the rich color of cocoa beans, and a physique built from physical work, Johnson was quite a sight. He wore his black hair shorn close to the scalp to hide the gray that was peppered throughout, but Lily thought the gray only made him more attractive. He had enough stubbornness in him to rival the unrelenting tide of the sea and wasn't an easy man to argue with. Lily had never seen him raise a hand, though the idea seemed to be brewing as his brown eyes grew darker.

"Well now, you should know better 'n me than to bring a foul creature into the house o' the Lord! I thought you were a god-fearin' man," Hendrik snapped back with his beefy arms folded obstinately, spots of color rising in his pale cheeks.

The whole matter might have been calmed if the town of Jericho had a figure of authority to command the moment. Like the good Reverend, perhaps, but he was visiting his sick mother two towns away. He would not be back for at least two more days. Hendrik and Johnson looked about ready to scrap, so Lily put her fingers in her mouth and whistled the way her father had taught her. The piercing sound was painful to even her ears, but it settled the chaos as heads turned in her direction.

"What's happened?" She asked.

Lily had studied to become a nurse before she had married and settled in Jericho. Mothers came to her for treatments for their coughing children and men often came in with broken bones or cuts. She had even treated a prize cow once. Her skill meant that she held a measure of respect. Excited for a new ear to relay the story to, the villager overlapped each other with their version of the event as they vied for the spotlight. Gradually, Lily understood the story.

Something had been eating Farmer Johnson's sheep, and he had managed to catch it. Shocked that it was not some common predator like a wolf or cougar, he had tied it up in the church cellar for the lack of a better place. Now nobody knew what to do with it because the thing would not die.

"Tis no animal that walks god's green earth, Mrs. Lily," Johnson said, removing his hat. "Tis the devil's work."

As far as Lily was concerned, everything died at some point, so she was intrigued by the claim that two arrows and a cut to the neck had not felled the creature.

"I will take a look at it," she said. "Farmer Johnson, you come with me. Everyone else, wait here. The cellar is too small for all of us."

The crowd remained behind, while she and Johnson walked out to the cellar. The place was used as a refuge in case of heavy storms, but it had been a long time since it was used. Lily winced as Johnson threw open the door and an unpleasant coppery scent met her nose.

"Goodness," she coughed, holding her sleeve over her nose.

Johnson paused on the steps. "Maybe you shouldn't see this, Mrs. Lily," he said.

"I'll be fine. Lead the way."

By the light of the lantern he had brought, they descended the stairs. The cellar was bigger than Lily remembered, and the stone floor sounded dull under her feet. Each step brought up a puff of dust. Johnson hefted the lantern above his head, flooding the room with the weak golden light.

Lily gasped as the thing lifted its head and growled. While the sheer size and look of it alone was intimidating, the growl sounded weak, like a dog beaten into submission.

Humanoid, wolfish, beast. Those words sufficed as a description. Standing on two legs like a human, its body was twisted and hairy, a brown so dark it might as well have been black. It had a tail, hanging like a dead weight against its leg, and it looked to be almost twice her height, pointed ears nearly touching the ceiling.

The yellow eyes were the most remarkable feature. As they met hers, Lily felt the most uncomfortable sensation prickling over her body. This was no animal, though it looked quite like one.

She stepped closer, entranced.

"Never have I seen such a thing," she murmured, awed.

Johnson touched her shoulder. "Don't get too close, now. He's bound up good, but you never know."

"He?" She queried, and only then did she notice the cloth knotted around the lean, tapered waist.

"Caught him like that. Roaming with no clothes on, real improper-like," Johnson said and coughed. "He isn't normal down there either, forgive me for saying."

"Of course," Lily said matter-of-factly. In her line of work, she had seen people in little or no clothes at all.

She took in the creature again. His arms were tied back against one of the wooden pillars, and Lily wondered whether the wood was strong enough to hold him there. The position bared his chest, and she could see the working of his ribcage with each rattling breath.

The two arrows that had been mentioned were lodged in his body, one under the arm and another through the belly. Vital spots. Blood leaked sluggishly from the wounds and soaked into the cloth.

Lily stepped forward again, gently shaking Johnson's warning touch off.

"I want to remove the arrows to see what happens."

Johnson grunted and grabbed the pitchfork resting in the corner, coated with dried blood.

"If he tries anything, I'll stick him, don't you worry."

The declaration did little to calm Lily's nerves, and her hands trembled so badly that it took two tries to grab one of the arrows. The creature moaned as she twisted and wiggled it.

"I'm going to have to pull it out," she mumbled to herself.

Johnson let out a gasp when she planted her hand square on the chest of the creature where the hairs grew into a thick mane. The beast lurched and snapped his teeth, but the ropes held. Flinching from the sight of those fangs- indeed, they were almost as large as a child's arm- she yanked with all her might, and out the arrow came with a sucking sound of parting meat.

"Hand me the lantern," she commanded, her hand already outstretched to receive it.

Johnson gave it to her and inched closer as well. Together they watched the dark hole seam shut, healing into a scar before their eyes.

"Witchcraft," Johnson uttered, but Lily barely heard it.

She removed the next arrow in the same manner, except this time she poked her index finger into the wound afterward. She could feel the flesh squirming against her skin, trying to put itself back together.

"I say, Mrs. Lily!" Johnson said, consternated and looking sick. "You shouldn't-"

"This is fascinating," Lily said. "Get me a knife, will you?"

"Whatever for?" Johnson said uneasily.

Lily turned to him, her eyes flashing in light of this new discovery. "Perhaps I can find a way to kill it," she said evenly.

Johnson brightened. "Yes indeed," he said and took the stairs so quickly he almost tripped.

Lily held the lantern up to the creature's face, wincing at the tangled visage of animal and human as she kept herself well out of the way of his short reach. With no one to witness her curiosity, she felt almost fearless as she poked here and there.

His hairy skin was hot to the touch, the heat branding against her fingers. Her hands mapped out what parts of his body she dared touch, matching this and that to a human body. Other parts, like the legs, could not be resolved. They twisted somewhat like haunches but had enough mobility to let him stand upright. Lily guessed that he could run on all fours, and it would probably be efficient and quick. She shuddered at the thought of this beast lurking in the woods.

She glanced up into those eyes again and felt a touch of sympathy for this strange creature. It was enough for her to murmur,

"You should have stayed hidden."

The creature pushed his head back and let out a howl so ghostly that she fell over, nearly dropping the heavy lantern on herself. Her ears rang long after he had finished, and she sat there on the dusty ground and watched as he snuffled and wheezed and struggled in place.

──────────────

✋😔 How long have I been out? I got hit with a bout of depression and then writer's block and have spent days fighting for every scrap of energy to do anything at all. I am still working on Part 2 of Harcourt btw. It was lingering in the back of my head like an ominous shadow, so much so that yesterday I literally dreamt that I had written it. The stress! 😭

This lycan story has been in my head for a couple of days, and I'm glad I started to write it. I have plans- no promises though, at this point we all know I'm BAD at keeping them. Anyway, I hope someone missed me at least a little bit! ❤

[amyreads]

I had some questions if that's alright with you.

1. What inspires your characters appearance and sense of fashion? All of your characters have such great character designs.

2. Would you say there's a difference in genre between what you like to read and what you like to write or is it the same?

3. And last but not least, what are your favorite genre of IFs to play? Is there a specific genre or type of ro/trope you enjoy?

Of course! I love these kinds of questions! Long post warning!

1. What inspires your characters appearance and sense of fashion? All of your characters have such great character designs.

Thank you so much! I worked really hard to get them to fit a vibe that felt perfect for me. I really wanted them to be fashion-forward since a lot of being fame and being visible is being on top of trends. Characters like G have stylists so G is very trendy. The characters are also very expressive not only with their music but their clothes. None of the characters are very shy when it comes to their sense of fashion was is exciting because I love describing outfits. I know some authors find it tedious and 'amateur' which I kinda see why since it's a bit juvenile but I love love love it.

For G, I was inspired by 80s rockstars with long curly hair as well as Cher in the 70s haha I knew I wanted G to have a very prominent detail and it's their long (straight, in their case) black hair. G's tattoos are sort of a mark of their growth as an artist. When they first started, they were essentially 'pure' in the sense that they had no tats and were very young. As they grew older, the tats also grew in number. Touched by fame. SO poetic /j G is very flamboyant and they are very experimental/adventurous with their clothes.

This goes for Victoria. As a model and actress, she's very fashion forward. She prefers dresses over pants and that's kind of her brand haha ! Her red hair and the fact that her stage name ends in Valentine made red her brand, and she takes advantage of that. Branding is very important for her and G, so it helps when you have that *thing* that reminds people of you.

For Seven, the infamous (lol) bandana was something that just came to me. I also wanted Seven to have a "staple" look and I just think it looks cool! Again, it's very reminiscent of the old age rock stars. If Seven were a cartoon character, the outfit they wore at the party (industrial shirt/red and black striped undershirt) would be their "everyday outfit" I think. It really shows their personality; Seven's oversized, messy look reflects them in a way. The fact that it looks deliberately disheveled but Seven worked hours to look good is very telling of who they are. Seven likes to pretend they don't care but we all know that's not the truth!

August has a very calming quality to them. Very grounding. In a story where the ROs are all messes, August's penchant for silence and calm shines. Their colors are a nice brown, green, beige. Very neutral and low-key. They wear a lot of sweaters and cardigans and linen pants because it's comfortable and cozy. Their clothes reflect their personality the most. Kinda reminds me of pajamas in a way!

Orion is pretty self explanatory. While everyone else considers BOTB and everything an outlet for their creativity, Orion sees it for what it is: a job. He dresses professionally to set him apart from the band and everyone else. He's there to work. He's very clean-cut, and very neat so it shines in his clothes.

Seb is well, I wanted Seb to be very unassuming and just normal hahaha. Everyone else dresses really stylishly and I wanted Seb to be really low-key. It's obvious he has no desire to be in the spotlight and that shows with his plain, basic clothing.

2. Would you say there's a difference in genre between what you like to read and what you like to write or is it the same?

Hm, up until recently I used to only read fantasy. I think one of my first if games was Choice of Rebels, among a few others. Writing fantasy is what helped build up my skill. All I've ever wanted to be was a fantasy author until one day...I just started hating it. I hated writing fantasy. I LOVE LOVE reading it, but I hate writing fantasy. I don't know why. I think it's because I fail to convince myself. My suspension of disbelief is very strict when it comes to my own writing, while another writer can convince me of anything in fiction so as long as it makes a lick of sense. It's weird!

I still love fantasy as a reader but I don't think I could ever write it. I do want to try one day though!

I'm more strictly slice-of-life nowadays, aside from Body Double. I think it's easier for me. I love romcoms. I love romance, which hasn't changed. I find it funny that I'm not very romantic in real life but romance is like a baseline requirement for me in stories.

One thing that stays the same is that I love angst. Reading and writing it. I don't like fluff, it makes me cringe. (There will be fluff in Infamous aha). I don't like power fantasies or any of that. Ah, I don't know!

3. And last but not least, what are your favorite genre of IFs to play? Is there a specific genre or type of ro/trope you enjoy?

I'll read anything! I don't have a favorite, I don't think, but I do love urban/modern fantasy. A mixture of slice-of-life and fantasy is the sweet spot for me.

Specific type of RO I like are the emotionally unavailable/closed off ones or the mean ones haha. I do not like easy romances. I like working for it and I think when an RO doesn't want my character it makes it so much more fun and the payoff is so much more satisfying. I need yearning...longing. I need slow burn!

I know there are readers who like playing games where the MC is important loved but I'm not a fan. I like my MC being a regular person that's treated accordingly depending on the character and the story. I don't want my MC to get special treatment or to be powerful just because they're the MC. It has to make sense to me. For me, the ROs should have a greater purpose that goes beyond just romancing the MC.

I get a lot of flak for making the MC an underdog in infamous, but MC is not meant to be the most important person in the room at the start of the story. They need to earn it, which I think feels better.

My favorite RO from any IF game is Nash so <3 I guess that says it all hahah

I hope you liked my answers! This was really fun for me lolol

[wildflowerteas]

hella got through chapter 6 everyone cheer!

i don't know how to respond to this coherently so i'm just going to scroll down and let the word vomit happen:

the choice of emoji reacts to some of these . . . i'm surprised hella hasn't killed you guys. keeping gin away from this mess is the last thing on my mind, unfortunately *stares at the BEAST tag*

ARRGHHHFGHHH IM SO GLAD YOU GUYS LIKE SSKK. they're such a breath of fresh air, and writing them comes so easily to me. while i like writing skk ( fucked up as they are--even at this point in the story ) and the fast-paced nature of their relationship, this is romance writing work coming from the guy whose only other fic had a first kiss at uhhh...160k words.

yesenina did serve too hard. i imagine her as similair to the others, but with a Rita Hayworth-like air of ambition about her, and that's a serve. and it's what gets her killed.

Chuuya Yuan history coming in SOON. actually. Next chapter. seeing hella lose it over Chuuya's internal monologue here has been absolutely hilarious and kind of rewarding. I Knew All That because I'm the author ( duh ) so i never really grasped how strange the shift to Chuuya's thoughts about the relationship would be. I mean there's snippets of it, like the diner scene, but you're right, it's fanfic and so that is a lot easier to sweep under the rug.

ACAB. I considered putting a line from Doc Riedenschneider in The Asphalt Jungle ( 1950 ) "Experience has taught me to never trust a policeman. Just when you think one's alright, he turns legit." in a divider chapter between part I and part II, but I thought was too on the nose following 7 ( and a bit pretentious considering this is just ao3 fanfic and not a published work or anything ) so i grabbed myself by the metaphorical monkey backpack and didn't. Mafia Nepo Baby 😭 I love Hella HUGE WIN FOR ME. I was so nervous because i needed to balance Chuuya being observant but also quite literally *out of the loop.* He's not from the same world as Dazai--he's not involved with the murders or the politics or the mess going on yet. He comes across as oblivious at times because Dazai's POV is purposefully designed to make you see him that way. Dazai's so sure he's in control of what Chuuya knows that he doesn't realize he might have met his match.

ZSKK are uhm. yeah. all im gonna say there.

the "PARDON." IM CACKLING

argh. the switch up with this chapter...why the hell am i getting nostalgic for something i wrote less than two months ago ( ican't believe i've been grinding through this fic so fast jesus ).

i love unhealthy dynamics, truly. this fic was really a test to see if i could write soukoku making each other worse. which is a pretty stark contrast to my other stuff.

HELLA. OH MY GOD. that bit about their careers . . . i can't believe she noticed that. Chuuya started the fic genuinely ambitious, wanting the spotlight, wanting to defy expectations set upon him by his looks, his race, and his past. Dazai's a cop, sworn to uphold the law, but he doesn't feel like a good person. He can't ( interlude chapter . . . stares out the window ), but he can use everything about who he is to give Chuuya the life he wants. like a guardian ange--*gets taken out by a sniper chapter 8 style* Their original goals aren't gone, per se, they've simply been reoriented.

can't wait for chapter 7

i know it'll make Hella want to hunt me down for sport, so i'll sleep with both eyes open for the forseeable future.

[kandisheek]

FIC REC WEEK 6 - SMUT

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: blue_jack

blue_jack is so fricking good at writing smut, it should be illegal. I found them through their A/B/O medkink series and have since read their entire fic catalogue multiple times. I love absolutely everything they've ever written, but I'm going to restrain myself and only rec six fics.

Here's some of their work that I think you should check out:

Chapter 19

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: E Words: 5,098 Tags: Sex Pollen, Dubious Morality, Mistaken Identity

Summary: Anyone who was anyone knew about Captain America.

Reasons why I love it: This whole fic absolutely feels like something that Tony would do in canon if given the chance, little Cap fanboy that he is. Don't let the dubious morality turn you off – Tony mostly just isn't forthcoming about who he is exactly. But it all works out in the end. Definitely give this one a read if you haven't already!

Some Kind of Madness

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: E Words: 6,630 Tags: Descriptions of Titfucking, Drunkenness, Bottom Steve

Summary: “Mmm, Steve, I love your tits.”

Reasons why I love it: Steve discovering a new kink he never knew he had and getting all embarrassed about it? Sign me the fuck up. Steve's crush on Tony is really sweet in juxtaposition to how hot he is for him at the same time. I love everything about this fic, and I bet you will too!

Just a Whisper

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: E Words: 2,264 Tags: Sex Toys, Voyeurism, Bottom Steve

Summary: Tony’s always had a little voyeuristic streak in him.

Reasons why I love it: Their dynamic in this is so great. Tony enjoying the visual buffet that is Steve Rogers, always a huge win in my book. And the last sentence never fails to put a smile on my face. I love this fic so much, definitely go and check it out for yourself!

Leave Your Marks Written Upon My Skin

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: E Words: 2,942 Tags: Rough Sex, Dirty Talk, Dom/Sub Elements

Summary: “I want you to keep your hands right here, alright?”

Reasons why I love it: This one is just really fucking hot. Mirror sex and Tony playing with Steve like his own personal toy? Hell yes. Check it out, you won't regret it!

Take Care, I'm Easily Broken

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: E Words: 6,151 Tags: Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Time

Summary: Tony isn't the type of person to pine quietly.

Reasons why I love it: This fic, Jesus Christ. It'll break your heart and then mend it with smutty superglue. The characterization is so on point, and both Steve and Tony deserve a good long hug after that ordeal. But they get there in the end. Please go and read this one, it's so good!

Touch Me, I Wanna Be Dirty

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: E Words: 4,001 Tags: First Time, No Refractory Period, Switching

Summary: Tony’s not going to deny that he’s ridiculously excited. Steve. In his bed. Naked. Everything is rainbows and nothing hurts.

Reasons why I love it: The banter in this is so funny, and I love how Tony just rolls with the punches when it comes to Steve's hairpin trigger. Also, Tony's way of comforting Steve when he gets embarrassed is so sweet, it makes me want to grab them and squish them together. This fic is so good, you definitely have to read it!

[twilightmalachite]

Raison d’être - A Premature Burial 7

Author: Akira

Characters: Shu, Mika

Translator: Mika Enstars

"No, if anything, I, Itsuki Shu, am the most suitable successor to Grandfather."

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Season: Winter

Location: Itsuki Family Mansion Guest Room

Mika: Even if yer told to give it everything you’ve got… What’s there t’do? Do we give him an extravagant funeral?

Shu: Grandfather’s request is clear and simple.

First, every member of the family will submit a “Supreme Funeral Plan”.

Grandfather will then choose the best funeral among them at his own discretion and prejudice. Then, we will carry out the living funeral of his choice.

That’s all that was said, so to speak.

Although very unscrupulous, it is similar to the work we often do, where we design outfits suitable for a project and have them selected.

Mika: Uh-huh, hence the Funeral Contest…?

Shu: Mhm. It’s a tournament to figure out a funeral about Grandfather, by Grandfather, for Grandfather.

It is very much like him to make everything into a festivity…

But I never thought he would turn his own funeral, meant to be carried out solemnly, into a fun event.

By the way, the one who proposes the funeral chosen by Grandfather, that is, the contest winner, will be handsomely rewarded.

According to him, it will be the largest sum yet.

I suppose since it will be his last bout of fun, he’s putting up a lavish feast for the remaining fortune.

Mika: Is it really alright t’be deciding who gets an inheritance through somethin’ so playful?

Shu: That’s exactly what exhibits Grandfather’s keen insight. Most of the inheritance has already been properly distributed among family members through the games in the past.

It’s hard to complain about it when it’s the result of a game.

Under the guise of foolery, Grandfather has distributed his vast fortune during the time he was still alive.

Fairly, evenly, and adequately.

Mika: Uh-huh… I can’t find the right expression to describe it, but what a great man.

Shu: He is a great man that even I respect, tentatively.

Anyways, I say that it’s a lavish feast this time around, but it is only a small amount when compared to the entire picture—It’s like a bonus.

Besides, it’s not like I’ll be bothered if I don’t get it, but… I’d like to get my hands on it for the sake of it.

I would be proud to say that I, considered to be the odd one out of my family, was the one who best understood Grandfather, who was also a non-conformist.

No, if anything, I, Itsuki Shu, am the most suitable successor to Grandfather.

I absolutely would love to receive Grandfather’s final gift.

Mika: I see. In that case, we’ll have to go all out. ‘Course, I’ll be doin’ the best I can do help. That bein’ said, it goes without sayin’, but I’ve never planned a funeral by myself before…

What should I be doin’? This isn’t the same as when we usually plan a performance, right?

Shu: No, I think it’ll be about the same way of thinking. Think of it this way; we are designing a performance for Grandfather’s funeral.

The performance’s leading role would be the deceased—Our Grandfather. The audience will be made up of those involved who wish to have a final moment with the leading role, in other words, the mourners.

The circumstances are quite very private, but… It resembles the composition of idols and the fans who flock to them, doesn’t it?

Mika: I see… ‘Course, since it’s a funeral, ya probably don’t wanna put off flashy smoke and bright spotlights, though.

Shu: I wonder. Grandfather does like to be flashy… The choice is ultimately his, so we must analyze his preferences.

Mika: I don’t know much ‘bout your Grandfather, though…

Shu: You’re right. We must begin by researching the organizer’s preferences.

I am not so used to doing this. I’ve always imposed my own tastes and world onto anyone else.

But you’ve done quite a lot of superficial work, so I assume you’re well-accustomed to this sort of thing.

At best, if you may, you can teach me what is the “typical way” of doing things.

Mika: Ah, okay, gotcha! So that’s why ya asked me fer my help, Oshi-san.

Shu: Of course, it’s also because I trust your technique and perception. Do not misunderstand, you are no longer a marionette—You are an artist, equal to me.

And as always we always do, the two of us will collaborate together to create the most supreme funeral.

Mika: Right. A funeral really does feel like an impossible task of sorts—There’s a limit to an art’s innovation, right?

Shu: That’s true. And there is a troubling circumstance involved this time as well.

Our family discussion turned into a dispute. That’s why it took so long for me to return back to you.

Mika: A troublin’ circumstance?

???: —Allow me to explain from here.

Mika: Nnaaah!? Huh, wha? Mado-nee—I mean, no, the Made-nee look-alike spoke!?

Shu: Allow me to introduce them. Although I myself still have yet to comprehend this.

The one speaking through this adorable doll here is—Some mysterious person who claims to be an illegitimate son of Grandfather.

Mika: Illegitimate son!?

Shu: I suppose from my viewpoint, that would make him my uncle… I do not know if it is his real name or not, but he calls himself “Raffaello”.

Raffaello: “Fufu. Nice to meet you, I’m Shu-kun’s uncle, Raffaello.”

Mika: Whaaaa…!?

[ ☆ ]

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[coldnstinkyjinky]

My headcanon for my Yansim AU: Osano Najimi plays the electric guitar & used to play in the Light Music Club until he got kicked out: I never got to add it into the book so here's the story and the song:

(I edited BimyH's Guitar Solo into TV Girl's full song, please go and support TV Girl and BimyH on Youtube)

The stage lights cast a warm glow over Saikou's Preparatory Institute auditorium, illuminating Osano as he stood confidently in the spotlight. The anticipation in the air was almost tangible as students began to gather, their chatter and excitement filling the space.

Osano’s gaze scanned the crowd, his eyes catching on familiar faces. His best friend, Rai was near the front, his usual grin on full display as he cheered Osano on with palpable enthusiasm. Next to him stood his childhood friend, Ayano, her expression inscrutable. She was calm and composed, her eyes locked onto Osano with a steady, unwavering support that contrasted sharply with Rai's exuberant energy.

As the members of the light music club busied themselves with last-minute preparations, Miyuji, the club leader, approached Osano. Her face was a mix of authority and excitement. “Alright, everyone, get into position. Remember, this is our debut performance, so let’s make it count,” she said, her voice carrying the weight of the months of hard work they’d put in. “And Najimi, don’t go messing this up. We’ve worked too hard for you to ruin it.”

Osano shot Miyuji a look, one part annoyance, one part amusement. He rolled his eyes, a small smirk tugging at his lips. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve got it covered,” he muttered under his breath, though the playful edge in his tone belied his irritation.

As the final adjustments were made, Osano’s fingers twitched on the guitar’s neck, a silent promise to himself and to Ayano. This performance was more than just a showcase; it was a chance to show her, and everyone, that he was more than the reckless, hot-headed image he often projected. The dimming of the house lights signaled the beginning, and with one last glance at Ayano, he steeled himself.

Tonight, he was determined to give it everything he had. The house lights dimmed to a deep, velvet darkness, leaving only the stage illuminated.

The room fell into an expectant hush as the house lights dimmed further, leaving only the stage illuminated in a warm, golden glow. Miyuji, standing at the edge of the stage with a confident smile, raised her microphone to her lips.

“Good evening, Saikou’s Prep!” she called out, her voice carrying effortlessly over the crowd’s excited murmurs. “Are you ready?”

A roar of cheers and applause erupted from the audience, a wave of energy crashing over the stage. Miyuji's eyes sparkled with satisfaction as she gestured grandly toward the crowd, her enthusiasm infectious. The audience's energy swelled, a living, breathing entity of excitement and anticipation.

Osano took a deep breath, letting the sound of the crowd fuel his focus. He adjusted his grip on the guitar, his heart pounding in sync with the rhythmic thrum of the audience’s anticipation. He stole a quick glance at Ayano. Her eyes were fixed on him, a faint smile playing at her lips that was both serene and encouraging. It was a look that told him she believed in him, even if she didn’t say a word.

The tension on stage was electric, palpable in the way his fingers trembled slightly as they hovered above the strings. He locked eyes with his bandmates, each of them ready and poised. Miyuji's commanding presence was the only thing left between them and the start of their debut performance.

Miyuji nodded once, a signal that the moment was upon them. “Let’s show them what we’ve got!” As the first notes of the song burst forth from Osano’s guitar, the sound sliced through the air, sharp and powerful.

“Are you sick of me?” Miyuji sang, her tone both questioning and pleading. “Would you like to be? I’m trying to tell you something,"

"Something that I've already said.” Osano sang softly, though inaudibly as his eyes locked onto Ayano as he began to play his part. The strings of his guitar vibrated under his fingers, each note deliberate and rich. The melody flowed effortlessly, almost as if it was crafted for this very moment. His focus was singular, intensely drawn to Ayano’s unmoving figure.

Miyuji commanded the stage with an effortless grace, her voice cutting through the throng of students who had gathered. She sang with a captivating mix of seduction and melancholy.

Ayano’s eyes remained locked on Osano, her expression a mixture of admiration and something more complex. She watched him with a rapt attention, noting the way he seemed to lose himself in the music. Every so often, his gaze would flicker toward her, a brief moment of connection that sent a jolt through her heart.

"You like the pretty boy, with the pretty voice," She pointed playfully at various members of the audience, her gestures drawing them in, making each listener feel like a part of the performance.

Osano’s focus was sharp, his fingers deftly navigating the guitar’s strings, his movements synchronized with the rhythm of the song. He stole glances at Ayano, his eyes conveying an intensity that the loud music couldn’t drown out.

"Who's trying to sell you something," As Miyuji sang, her voice flowed through the microphone with a rhythmic seduction that captivated the crowd. Her lyrics echoed in the packed auditorium "Something that you already have."

Rai was in his element, singing along with the crowd, his voice rising above the noise with infectious enthusiasm. He was a whirlwind of energy, his presence a stark contrast to the more subdued connection between Osano and Ayano. The crowd around him bounced and swayed, caught up in the infectious rhythm of the performance.

"But if you're too drunk to drive, and the music is right," Miyuji's voice soared above the music, her tone both haunting and captivating as she sang the next lines, drawing the crowd deeper into the emotional landscape of the song. "She might let you stay, but just for the night."

Ayano watched Osano intently, her expression softening with each glance he cast her way. She could feel the intensity of his feelings in every chord, every look, and it stirred something deep within her. The music, the lyrics, and Osano's silent serenade created a potent mix that made her heart race.

"And if she grabs for your hand, and drags you along," The crowd sang along, their voices blending with Miyuji's, creating a chorus of shared emotion. She stepped closer to the edge of the stage, reaching out to the students who reached back, their hands upraised in eager response. "She might wanna kiss, before the end of the song."

"Because love can burn like a cigarette, and leave you alone with nothing," Rai, caught up in the excitement of the moment, sang along with the crowd, his voice blending seamlessly with the others. "And leave you alone with nothing." Rai was a stark contrast to Ayano, his exuberance and energy adding to the vibrant atmosphere.

The crowd was caught in the reverie of the music, swaying gently as Miyuji's voice painted vivid images of private moments and secret emotions. The atmosphere was thick with anticipation, the lyrics evoking a sense of nostalgia and longing.

"While the others talk, we were listening to lovers rock" As Miyuji transitioned into the next verse, her voice carrying the lyrics with an almost intimate quality, Osano's fingers glided effortlessly over the guitar strings. "In her bedroom, in her bedroom." The music shifted seamlessly, the melody flowing with a natural grace that matched the mood of the song.

Osano's guitar playing was both steady and fluid, his movements so practiced that they seemed almost effortless. Each strum and chord added depth to the performance, underscoring the mood of the song. His focus remained on Ayano, his eyes occasionally meeting hers in brief but intense exchanges. The music was his medium of communication, each note a part of the message he was sending her.

"And if you start to kiss, and the record skips," Miyuji's voice picked up the next verse, her tone softening as she sang, creating an intimate atmosphere that enveloped the crowd. "Flip it over, and sit a little closer."

The crowd's energy ebbed slightly, their attention drawn deeper into the personal story woven by the lyrics. Miyuji's performance was mesmerizing, her ability to draw the audience into the song's narrative unparalleled. She moved with grace, her voice a thread that tied everyone together in the shared experience of the music.

"But if you're too drunk to drive, and the music is right," Miyuji’s voice soared once more into the chorus, the crowd's energy surged with renewed fervor, their collective voices blending harmoniously with the music. "She might let you stay, but just for the night,"

The chorus was a magnetic force, pulling everyone into its rhythmic embrace. "And if she grabs for your hand, and drags you along," Miyuji’s presence on stage was commanding, her movements fluid and expressive as she engaged with the audience. "She might want a kiss before the end of this song." She raised her arms, drawing the crowd into the song’s embrace, her voice a beacon of connection amidst the sea of faces.

Rai, caught up in the infectious energy of the moment, sang loudly along with the crowd. His enthusiasm was a stark contrast to the quiet intensity of Osano and Ayano’s exchange, but it added a vibrant layer to the scene. Rai’s exuberance highlighted the contrast between the public spectacle and the private, unspoken dialogue unfolding between Osano and Ayano

Miyuji's voice rang out clear and resonant as she transitioned into the next verse, drawing the crowd deeper into the emotional core of the song. "Because love can burn like a cigarette," The crowd sang along, their collective voices creating a powerful chorus that echoed through the space. "And leave you alone with nothing," Miyuji's performance was electric, her presence commanding as she led the audience through the poignant lyrics. "And leave you alone with nothing,"

Miyuji paused as a performance between two members of the band unfolded on stage, their dialogue creating a moment of theatrical interlude

"Now, how many men have you kissed?" a voice asked, tinged with curiosity.

"Very few," came the quiet, almost shy response.

"But you offered me a kiss... why?"

"Such a foolish reason I'm afraid, I just... wanted to kiss you."

The crowd fell silent, hanging on to every word of the exchange. The intimacy of the moment was palpable, the vulnerability of the characters drawing everyone in. Osano watched in awe, the raw emotion of the scene resonating deeply within him. He glanced at Ayano, feeling a powerful urge to bridge the gap between them, to express the depth of his feelings for her.

As the scene played out, Osano felt a surge of emotion that he could no longer contain. His heart screamed at him to just tell her, to let her know how much he loved her. The intensity of the moment drove him to action.

Before Miyuji could sing the final parts of the song, Osano's fingers moved almost instinctively, launching into a guitar solo. The sudden shift in the music caught the audience by surprise, but the crowd quickly fell under the spell of Osano's passionate playing. Each note was a declaration, a heartfelt confession expressed through the language of his music.

The solo was raw and emotional, each strum of the guitar conveying the depth of Osano's feelings. His eyes remained fixed on Ayano, his gaze burning with the intensity of his love. The music flowed from his heart, bypassing words to communicate directly with her soul.

Ayano's breath caught as she watched Osano. The powerful emotions in his playing resonated deeply within her, the unspoken words filling the space between them. She could feel the strength of his love, the urgency of his confession, and it left her breathless.

Miyuji, noticing the deviation from their planned performance, stepped back and shot a frustrated look at Osano. She quickly turned to Beshi, one of their band members, her voice sharp with irritation. “What is he doing? He’s ruining our performance!”

Beshi, thinking quickly, leaned in and whispered, “Just go with it."

Miyuji hesitated for a moment, then nodded, regaining her composure. She turned back to the mic, her voice melding with the raw intensity of Osano’s guitar solo as she picked up the final lines of the song. "Do-do, do-do-do-do-do,"

Her voice was a perfect complement to Osano's passionate playing, the two sounds weaving together into a powerful crescendo. "Because love can burn like a cigarette," "And leave you alone with nothing," "And leave you alone with nothing." The crowd, initially caught off guard by the solo, was now fully immersed in the performance, their attention fixed on the stage.

Osano’s eyes never left Ayano, each note he played resonating with the depth of his feelings. As Miyuji’s voice blended with his guitar, the music created a bridge between them, a conduit for the emotions that words alone could not express.

The crowd was spellbound, their attention wholly focused on the stage. Rai, caught up in the powerful performance, cheered loudly, his voice blending with the enthusiastic responses of the other students. The unexpected turn of events had only heightened their appreciation, the energy in the room reaching a fever pitch.

As Miyuji and Osano brought the song to its conclusion, the final notes hung in the air, a testament to the raw emotion and unspoken confessions that had fueled the performance. The crowd erupted into applause, their cheers a mix of admiration and awe for the powerful display of talent and emotion.

The host, a charismatic figure with a wide smile, stepped onto the stage, holding a microphone. He waited for the applause to die down slightly before speaking. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, his voice booming with excitement, "let's give another huge round of applause for the incredible talent you've just witnessed-- Strawberry Thieves!"

The crowd's applause intensified, filling the room with an electric energy. Miyuji, Beshi, and the rest of the band stepped forward, taking a bow. Osano, still reeling from the intensity of his performance, glanced at Ayano one last time before joining his bandmates at the front of the stage.

Ayano, her heart pounding in her chest, clapped along with the crowd. Her gaze remained fixed on Osano, the raw emotion of his guitar solo still echoing in her mind. Rai, beside her, whooped and hollered, his enthusiasm adding to the celebratory atmosphere.

Backstage, the celebratory mood was quickly overshadowed by tension. Miyuji stormed through the narrow corridor, her frustration palpable. She found Osano leaning against a wall, still catching his breath from the performance. Her eyes blazed with anger as she shoved him roughly.

"Do you have any idea what the fuck you just did, Najimi?" Miyuji snapped, her voice harsh and edged with irritation. "You just had to steal the spotlight, didn't you? All because you were goo-goo eyes over that girl who doesn't even like you back."

Osano stumbled slightly from the shove, his eyes narrowing in anger. "Are you fucking kidding me? I poured my heart into that solo-- It wasn’t about stealing the spotlight—it was about expressing something real!"

Beshi, witnessing the escalating conflict, stepped between them, his face a mixture of concern and frustration. "Hey, cool it, Miyuji. He made the song better. People loved it. Just let it go."

Miyuji, her face flushed with anger, glared at Osano. "Better? You think so? He made it all about him. It was supposed to be a band performance, not his personal love letter to some girl who doesn’t even care."

Osano's anger flared. He took a step toward Miyuji, his voice low and dangerous. "You have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. Maybe if you weren't so caught up in your own shit, you’d see that I was just trying to make something meaningful."

Beshi quickly intervened, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. "Alright, that's enough. This isn’t going to solve anything. Miyuji, you need to calm down."

Miyuji pushed Beshi’s hand away, her voice rising in frustration. "No, if Najimi's just going to do his own bullshit and ignore the rest of the band, then he can get the fuck out. I’m not putting up with this crap."

Osano's fists clenched at his sides. "Fine, if you can’t handle someone actually trying to put their heart into something, then maybe I don't want to be here anyway."

The backstage area grew tense, the noise from the crowd outside dimming in contrast to the fiery confrontation within. Miyuji's face was a storm of anger, her punk rock persona on full display, while Osano’s frustration matched hers.

Beshi, caught in the middle, tried to defuse the situation. "Come on, guys, we’re a band. We need to stick together. Let’s sort this out later. Right now, let’s just focus on cooling down."

Miyuji shot one last scathing look at Osano before turning on her heel, her anger simmering. "Do whatever the hell you want, Najimi. Just get the fuck out of my band and never return to my damn club."

Osano stood there for a moment, his breath coming in heavy gasps, his mind racing. The intensity of the confrontation left him feeling conflicted. The performance had been a breakthrough for him, but it had also ignited tensions that were now threatening to tear the band apart. He clenched his fists, his knuckles white with the effort to contain his anger.

Beshi's hand on his shoulder was a small comfort, but it wasn't enough to calm the storm raging inside him. He looked around the room, the faces of his bandmates a mix of concern and uncertainty. His eyes landed on his guitar, the instrument that had allowed him to pour out his heart on stage. It was more than just an object; it was his voice, his soul.

"Fuck this," he muttered under his breath. The words were barely audible, but they carried the weight of his frustration and hurt.

He strode over to where his guitar was resting, his movements tense and deliberate. He grabbed it, slinging the strap over his shoulder with a sense of finality. The familiar weight of the instrument was a small comfort, grounding him in the midst of the chaos.

Turning back to face his bandmates, he locked eyes with Beshi for a moment. There was a silent understanding there, a recognition of the bond they shared despite the turmoil.

"Fuck you," Osano said, his voice low and venomous. The words were directed at Miyuji, but they carried a broader meaning, encapsulating all the frustration and resentment that had built up over time.

Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel and walked out, the echo of his words hanging in the air. The backstage area felt stifling, the tension almost palpable as he pushed through the door and out into the cool night air.

As he stepped outside, Osano felt a strange mix of relief and loneliness. The night air was cool against his skin, a stark contrast to the heated confrontation he had just left behind. He walked a few steps away from the building, his thoughts a tangled mess of frustration and sadness. He had always felt alone, even within the band that was supposed to be his family. No matter how much he poured into his music, it never seemed to be enough to bridge the gaps between him and the others.

But then, in the dim light of the streetlamp, he saw two familiar figures waiting for him. Rai was animated, still riding the high from the performance, his excitement palpable. Ayano stood beside him, her expression softer, more concerned. The sight of her made Osano’s heart ache in a way that was both comforting and painful.

"Osano!" Rai called out, his voice full of enthusiasm. "That was amazing, man! You totally killed it out there!"

Osano managed a small smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. As he approached them, Ayano's gaze locked onto his, and she immediately noticed the sadness lurking behind his bravado.

"What happened?" Rai asked, his excitement dimming slightly as he sensed the tension.

Osano hesitated, the weight of the night's events pressing down on him. “I’m quitting,” he said finally, his voice flat. He couldn’t bring himself to tell them that Miyuji had kicked him out. Admitting that felt like another blow to his already bruised pride.

Rai’s face fell, his excitement dimming. “Quitting? Why? You were amazing out there!”

Osano shrugged, trying to keep his emotions in check. “It’s just… not working out. Too much drama.”

Rai looked disappointed, but it was Ayano who seemed to understand there was more to the story. She didn’t press him, though. Instead, she stepped closer, her eyes searching his.

“You okay?” she asked softly, her voice barely audible over the distant sounds of the concert.

Osano met her gaze, the sadness and frustration in his eyes speaking volumes. He nodded, though it felt like a lie. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, forcing a smile.

Ayano didn’t believe him, but she respected his need to keep things to himself. She simply nodded, accepting his answer for now.

Rai, still trying to wrap his head around the sudden change, sighed. “Man, that sucks. But if it’s what you need to do, I get it. We’re here for you, dude.”

Osano felt a small measure of comfort in Rai’s words. Despite everything, he knew he wasn’t completely alone. He glanced at Ayano, her presence a silent reassurance. The night felt less cold with them there, and for a moment, the weight on his shoulders lightened.

“Thanks,” he said quietly, appreciating their support more than he could express.

As they started to walk home. Rai continued talking animatedly about the concert. He walked ahead of them, his excitement palpable as he relived every moment of the performance.

“Did you see how the crowd went wild during the solo? Man, that was something else!” Rai exclaimed, his voice carrying through the night.

Ayano and Osano walked close together, their footsteps synchronized. The silence between them was comfortable, filled with unspoken understanding. Osano could feel Ayano's presence beside him, a steadying force amid the turmoil of his thoughts.

As they passed by Akatsuka Park, the soft rustling of leaves in the breeze and the distant hum of the city created a serene backdrop. The park's lamps cast a gentle glow, illuminating their path with a warm, golden light.

Rai finally paused at the park's entrance, turning to face them. “Alright, I’m heading this way. Goodnight, you two,” he said with a grin, his energy finally starting to wane.

“Goodnight, Rai,” Ayano replied softly, her eyes following him as he disappeared down a side street.

With Rai gone, the silence deepened, leaving Ayano and Osano alone. They resumed walking, their footsteps echoing softly in the night. The path to Akatsuka Station was quiet, the streetlights casting long shadows that danced with their movements.

As they walked, Ayano couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. She glanced at Osano, his face partially obscured by the dim light, but the sadness in his eyes was unmistakable.

“Osano,” she began softly, her voice breaking the silence. “Tell me the truth. What really happened back there?”

Osano kept his gaze forward, his jaw set. “I already told you the truth,” he replied, his voice flat.

Ayano wasn’t convinced. She knew Osano well enough to sense when he was holding something back. “I know something is off,” she pressed gently. “Please, just tell me.”

Osano’s steps faltered slightly, but he kept walking. “Ayano, I’m fine. I just… needed to leave, that’s all.”

She wasn’t going to let it go that easily. “Osano, please. I can tell you’re upset. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

He sighed, his shoulders sagging with the weight of her words. They walked a few more steps in silence before he finally stopped, turning to face her. His eyes met hers, and she saw the turmoil within them.

“Shibakoya-senpai kicked me out,” he admitted, the words heavy with resignation. “She said I ruined the performance, that I was just doing it for myself,"

Ayano’s heart ached at his confession. She stepped closer, her gaze unwavering. “I’m so sorry, Osano. That’s not true. You didn’t ruin anything. The solo was incredible, and you were amazing out there.”

Osano looked away, his expression conflicted. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m out of the band.”

“It does matter,” Ayano insisted, her voice firm. “You have so much talent, Osano. Don’t let her words get to you."

Osano shook his head, frustration evident in his expression. “It’s hopeless, Ayano. My parents… they’ve always hated that I love playing the guitar. They think it’s a waste of time, that I should focus on something more ‘respectable.’ And now, here I am, in a band that’s supposed to be about music, and even there, it feels like people hate me for it. No matter what I do, it’s never enough.”

Before Ayano could respond, Osano reached into his bag and pulled out his guitar. He handed it to her with a sudden, almost desperate gesture. “Here,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You keep it.”

Without waiting for her reaction, he turned and began to walk ahead, his steps heavy with the weight of his words. The guitar hung awkwardly in Ayano’s arms, a tangible representation of his turmoil and his trust in her.

Ayano stood frozen for a moment, the guitar feeling like a lifeline to the fragile connection they shared. Then, determined not to let him walk away, she hurried after him. Reaching out, she grasped his arm, her touch both firm and gentle.

“Osano,” she said softly, her voice trembling slightly with the depth of her feelings.

He stopped, his shoulders stiffening, but he didn’t turn around. For a few moments, they stood there in silence, the weight of his despair hanging heavily between them.

Ayano stayed by his side, her hand still on his arm. She didn’t need to say anything; the gesture was enough to convey her support and understanding. Together, they walked in silence, the night around them filled with the soft sounds of their footsteps.

As they approached Akatsuka Station, the lights from the station illuminated their faces, casting a gentle glow over them. The night air was cool and quiet, a stark contrast to the turmoil they had faced earlier.

They continued walking, side by side, the silence between them a testament to their unspoken bond. The path ahead was uncertain, but with Ayano’s presence beside him, Osano felt a sense of reassurance, a small but significant promise that he wasn’t entirely alone.

_____

Osano has another guitar solo that isn't in the book, so lemme know if ya'll want that hihi

[chiaraswritings]

Anxiety

Disclaimer: I do not own DC or their characters, or their settings. This is certainly not canon.

Warnings & Topics: Social anxiety disorder. 18+, if you please.

Word Count: 1.7K words

Summary: fem!Reader is struggling with social anxiety while attending Bruce Wayne's birthday party, but then she meets a woman named Barbara who helps her escape. Very happy ending. Just fluff & stuff.

Author's note: Thank you all so much for reading. I hope you enjoy.

How the hell did I end up here, I asked myself. 

I pressed my back to the mahogany wall as colors and watched the pastel colors swirl past me. I should have never come to this event, this celebration. I'm not even sure how I got invited to this. I had barely ever crossed paths with Bruce Wayne. Sure, I'd edited news stories covering his spotlight before sending them off to be published on the internet, but I could never bring myself to meet with him face to face. I'd talked with him over the phone, fact checking a wild take that a journalist had submitted, but in the two minutes and five seconds that we had chatted, he had obviously decided I was suitable to be invited to his birthday reception. 

That's what I absolutely love about my job. I can sit in a dark office all day, I don't have to see anyone face to face, all submissions and communications are sent via email. I'm trying to make arrangements to work from home, so the stress of being so close to the other offices won't be on my mind. My job only requires a computer and phone, after all. 

My boss was overjoyed when he heard I had been invited to the big event. Any more excitement, and he would have started a fire with how fast words were spilling out of his mouth. His thrill, however, did not match my own by a long shot. I thought back to when I was sitting in my comfy, swiveling office chair, staring up at the balding, sprightly man who was positively demanding I accept the invitation and attend the event. I don't think I even verbally responded to him at the time. My plagued mind overtook my body, and still had ahold of it even then as I tried to blend into Bruce Wayne's wall.

Social anxiety disorder, my constant companion. My nemesis, my excuse, my greatest hurdle. The only reason I stood there in my old prom dress is because my boss has been on such edge lately, and like my coworkers, I wasn't ready to risk the consequences of saying no to him right then. My anxiety was to blame for that too, coincidentally enough. 

As the sea of long dresses and black suits moved past, I tried my hardest to remember my therapist's favorite phrases. Be aware of your body. Be aware of your surroundings. How is your body reacting to this situation? I could answer the last question easily enough. My heart was beating out of my chest, my stomach was churning, sweat was appearing on my trembling hands. Fear was wrapped around my throat, my breathing labored. An older gentleman in a very nice suit gave me a concerned look before his glamorous college-student wife pulled him towards the dance floor. Yes, please go, stop looking at me. I wonder how many people are looking at me right now. 

Be aware of your surroundings. I tried, I really tried. I tried to take in the luxury of the room. The velvet curtains, the gold trim, the expensive art, the... was that a tapestry? Be aware of your body. I attempted to become aware of my physical senses. Deep breaths, eyes closed, trying to relax my tense muscles. 

"Ma'am, are you alright?" 

My eyes flew open. A young waiter with a tray was quizzically observing me from a couple feet away.

I can't do this anymore. "Yes! Yes, yes, I'm alright." Fight or flight mode had been activated. Not bothering to thank him, I slipped past the waiter and made a not-so-graceful getaway to the hall. Lush ivy and large chairs decorated the long room, along with a huge mirror that I planted myself in front of, my entire brain trying to retake control. But no, the sickening, uninvited fear had ahold of my entire body.

Looking up into the mirror, I was not exactly pleased by what I saw. My eyes were full of adrenaline and my mascara was running slightly. My dress was wrinkled by where I clutched it at the hip. My hair was the only thing that didn't look frazzled (thanks to an hour of straightening before I had left for the party). Using the tip of my finger, I tried to clean up the mascara around my eyes.

"Did you get bored too?" 

My finger nearly went into my eye, startled by the unexpected and unwelcome voice. I wanted to run like a deer being threatened by a panther. I turned nervously to the owner of the voice, and my fear alleviated if only for a moment by the spectacularism of the person I saw. A red haired young woman in a black velvet dress had approached me, a single party-goer from the roar of festivities behind her. I could see the door swinging closed from when she had entered. My anxiety lurched and I could feel liquid coming up in my throat. A hard swallow later, and I assumed my most casual pose. "You could say that."

The redhaired woman turned, pulled her lipstick from her clutch, and repainted her red lips in the mirror. "I'm not even sure why I'm here, my father is the one who actually knows Mr. Wayne."

"I don't know him at all. Bruce, I mean. Not your father." Oh, that sounded so rude. "Sorry... about that." 

She turned back around and gave me a shiny smile. "Are you okay?" 

Hell no, I'm not okay. "Yes, of course." My hands were still trembling and my cheeks were flushed. Breathing hurt. The radiant woman in front of me could obviously see through the lie. Her head cocked, her beautiful, wavy red hair swayed. 

"You don't seem okay," her concern was evident, but I wasn't in the mood for people being concerned and trying to make me talk about it.

"I'm okay, I just haven't eaten today. So... I should probably go do that," that wasn't even a lie. I had only had coffee today so I wouldn't throw up from nervousness tonight. 

"What's your name?" asked the woman who was freshening her eyeliner in the mirror. 

"(Y/N) (L/N)."

"I'm Barbara Gordon. It's good to meet you. And funny enough, I'm hungry too," the stranger straightened and shook my still shaking hand. "Want to go get something? I can't fill up on shrimp and caviar." 

"Neither can I, seafood isn't my favorite." I was shocked at my own boldness. My fear had released its painful grip slightly, but it was far from gone.

"Me neither. I could go for Chinese," Barbara smiled at me. "Want to join? My treat." 

Now this was an unexpected decision. She seems nice enough... I want to so badly. It'd definitely be a way out of here, and with a nice person. But what if she's not nice? What if she's not who she seems? What if I mess up in front of her? What if she invites more people? "I'm not sure..."

"Hey, it's okay. I'm chill, I need a way out of this place too. I mostly came for my dad, he loves Bruce. I'm just... not in the right place to party like this." 

How about this, my brain bargained with itself. If it turns out bad, we never have to see her again. If it goes good, then we... still never have to see her again. "What the heck. Got a place in mind?"

"Of course, come on! I can't think of a better time than two well dressed girls getting the best Chinese in town. We can take my dad's car." 

My hands had slowly stopped trembling. I think it's going to be okay.

...

My escape with Barbara was a needed lifesaver. She made the car ride pleasant, complimenting my dress, asking me about my job, commenting on my hair. I think she sensed that I wasn't as comfortable talking about myself, so she told me about her own life. She was a college student, she was multilingual, she lived with her dad at the moment, but was looking into getting her own place. Listening to her talk was relaxing, knowing I didn't have to talk about myself, no risks of stumbling over my words like I did earlier. 

We arrived at what looked to be a family-owned place, it wasn't a chain restaurant, which I sort of admired Barbara for. The best Chinese food came from small restaurants, and she seemed to acknowledge that. The woman assured me she knew exactly what I would like, telling me she'd order then come join me. 

I slid into one of the empty booths. Actually, all of them were empty. Too late at night for most people to get takeout, but Barbara and I were evidently not the same as those people. She joined me at the table with trays that smelled much tastier than the takeout Chinese that my boss had delivered at the office every day for lunch. "This looks amazing, thank you so much."

"No, thank you for coming with. It's nice that I found a friend to do this with." Barbara smiled before picking up one of the cartons.

Friend. The word felt so new. "It's been a really long time since I've had a friend." Anxiety brewed and steamed in my throat, but I forgot all about it when she slid her phone across the table to me, a new contact form ready to fill out on the screen.

"Well, now you have one," the redhaired woman said with a smile, before taking another bite of the food. 

...

That was four years ago to this day. It's Bruce Wayne's birthday again, but neither of us are on the guest list. That's perfectly okay, we have our own party going on for us. Empty Chinese takeout cartons lay on the coffee table, an actress on the television screen dramatically screams in fear, and I am laying on Barbara's chest, my finger becoming accustomed to the new diamond ring.

I look up at her, admiring how her fiery hair glows in the pale light of the television screen. Anxiety? Hah, not around Barbara, not anymore. Finally finding a person I can experience only joy around... that feels good. Her hand rests on my head, holding me close. Her eyes are focused on the television, but by her smile, I know her mind is somewhere else. She notices I'm no longer interested in the film, turns off the TV, and smiles down at me. Butterflies, not anxiety, fill my stomach. 

"Did you get bored too?"

"You could say that."

[wild-grinders]

Wild Grinders: The Fan Analysis (Pt.3)

First Previous

if anyone has finals, consider this as a gift for making it through

Alright, it’s time for the third part of the analysis. It took awhile to actually begin writing this because I don’t want to dive into my self-indulgent yuri-beam reboot. And we shouldn’t nitpick to make the series ‘better.’ However, there’s a lot for Wild Grinders to improve on that that leaves you thinking, ‘Actually, we should rework it entirely.’ And that’s what this is. The best way was to organize it into 3 categories: Theme, Plot, and Characters. Most of this analysis is going to focus on the writing because animation is not always in our control. (And we kinda covered animation in the last part and said it needed a whole renovation).

That being said, this part of the analysis is primarily focused on keeping the structure of the TV series and the original vision that Rob Dyrdek has. (To the best of my ability).

[Part A]

Let’s assume that the script is taken seriously. Wild Grinders need to have a better overall theme because the wacky skate tricks didn’t do enough to draw in attention.

The current theme of Wild Grinders doesn’t exactly work. As mentioned in the second of my analysis, the writers were trying their best to appeal to the Gen Z audience. Usually by means of implementing modern pop culture references and putting social media in the spotlight in the latest episodes. While the writers aren’t wrong about the technology/socmed obsession amongst children, they missed out on an extremely alarming picture. They didn’t notice why children were becoming gravitated to this era of internet.

Recently, I have been learning about the way that society treats children and teenagers. (Awkward sentence, sorry). But I find myself learning more and more about the ways that society puts control on what kids can and cannot do. Many adults make the decisions to remove places to hang out such as parks and even skate parks (reason: to prevent drug dealers). In the age of our digital era, theaters and physical media are diminishing in favor of online subscriptions. Basically, kids are losing public spaces where they can hang out safely.

And it does NOT stop there. Cops are constantly being funded to ‘handle’ teens who are loitering (Why? Because they don’t have places to hang out). I don’t want to go on an off-topic rant in this analysis, but this post sums up what I’m trying to talk about. It really makes your brain think about the ways that society fails to let kids… be kids. Society uses harmful tactics to remove teenagers for ‘the greater safety’ of property. And I doubt that adults will listen to younger people who speak up about it. Instead, society would rather complain about raising a generation of phone-addicted youths. Older children and teenagers will be threatened and put into dangerous just by being outside because cops have control on where they can be. And by having ‘suspicion’ on teenagers is absolutely allowed in their rulebook to put a kid in a police station.

This is what Wild Grinders should have focused on as the whole theme if you consider the setting it takes place in (2010ish). If the writers wanted to talk about the phone-addicted kids, then they should have questioned why it was happening in the first place. Not only that, but it’s just a perfect theme for Wild Grinders. Reason one, it’s completely different from Rocket Power (their main theme was the history and safety of extreme sports). Reason two, it fits for the main cast. Lil’ Rob is literally the embodiment of ‘screw your authority!’ Jay Jay and Spitball are literally POC characters that the police often go after and the series could have delved into this. In Ketterville-canon, Jack Knife is homeless and lives under a highway, he’s 100% anti-cop. Emo Crys could have went to Linkin Park territory and his archetype was meant to be an intensely rebellious soul. And Goggles? He has the camera to capture video evidence of everything they go through.

Is it possible to air an anti-cop TV series? Nope. But it’s very possible to write and utilize it for what Wild Grinders is. A group of preteens who want to just hang out and skate. In fact, a few of the episodes featured the Wild Grinders being turn away by security and cops when they wanted to find a place to skate. However, they just obeyed in favor of ‘sending a good message to kids about obeying the rules.’ And the script writers didn’t think to push it further than this. But man, they could have done something else entirely if they went to the territory of police brutality used on adolescents. The Monster High Movie, Ghouls Rule! actually did something like this! The movie managed to present a family-friendly version of what ‘police brutality on teenagers’ feels like. To be specific, it wasn’t until 2020 when MH fans became aware of this hidden message and began openly talking about it on Tumblr and TikTok. But to keep it brief, Monster High movies were able to explain police brutality and racism incredibly well. And it’s possible for Wild Grinders to use this a whole theme for a series about kids who want to skateboard in an anti-children and anti-loitering system.

But anti-cops won’t be the only theme in Wild Grinders, there’s another theme that I would love to see; a coalition of diverse skaters. Rob Dyrdek’s vision when creating the Wild Grinders’ characters was to have a diverse cast who were brought together by their love of skating. The idea of diversity has always been intentional for Wild Grinders, but the writers did NOT utilize it enough! They attempted to make the cast be diverse in personality, but they made all of their backgrounds vague and look like they were all normal American kids by hiding their families. Not only that, but they missed out on multiple opportunities to create other skaters outside of the Wild Grinders skate crew. (We’ll talk about this later). In the second season, they were close to introducing the ‘Street Rats’, the crew that Squeaks was apart of. But 2015 happened and Rob Dyrdek packed up his TV series because he didn’t have the motivation to continue Wild Grinders. But we can’t really blame Dyrdek, he was going through a rough patch at the time and the studio screwed Wild Grinders over (in animation and the writing). And that’s why I’m here to talk about what should have been done. And most of it is to improve the writing! The writers were adults who didn’t bother to understand what kids wanted more of at the time and began to parody off of other kids’ TV series.

But yeah. If the writers weren’t bent to the idea of kids-being-incapable-of-thought-processing, then we could see more effort being put into the theme. And not just that, but some of the writers just weren’t here to write for kids and wanted to write Adult Swim jokes. Do I have a passive-aggressive voice about these adult writers? Definitely. Children deserve to consume media that has good writing about meaningful messages in the world.

[Part B]

Next step, Wild Grinders needs to use these two main themes for the plot.

We know for a fact that Rob Dyrdek never planned for a real plot in Wild Grinders. If we were to take his route, Wild Grinders will eventually become boring because a good plot draws people more than the quirkiness. In order to draw people through quirkiness, the visuals need to exceed expectations (clearly something that Wild Grinders failed to do in animation). Therefore, we need to think about a plot for Wild Grinders because it does NOT have the budget for a Kyoto Animation or BONES Studio anime. The plot is compensation here!! It needs to be worked on well!!

Let’s diverge from Rob Dyrdek’s ideas. He wants to make an amazing, cool, and crazy series. But in order to do something like this, you do need some sort of plot. Conflict in writing can lead to all sorts of situations that causes to the characters to be cool, crazy, and amazing.

There is some plot in the writing of Wild Grinders, each episode being 13 minutes long and trying its best to implement one. Most of the episodes have decent plots, but these plots didn’t grab the audiences’ attention, unless you actually liked Wild Grinders as a whole. I don’t know the most professional way to explain this, but Wild Grinders needs a build-up to a greater plot, it needs an actual ‘Big Bad’. Or it just needs a longer run time to build it up better. Some of my favorite small, plot-driven episodes were ‘Midas Touch’ and ‘Skater Who Cried Wolf’ because it didn’t rely on wacky quips to make it entertaining. ‘Skater Who Cried Wolf’ made the animation put extra effort in enhancing the setting, by having Lil’ Rob and his friends watch a horror movie on a school night and then making a ghost-hunting green-filtered screen chase around in the woods. It was just a cool episode compared to the rest. But ‘Midas Touch’? That episode will always be my weakness in Wild Grinders. It focused on a character other than Lil’ Rob, but the plot would be rushed because of the runtime. I wanted to see deeper into Goggles’s character when he decided to become popular. Hell, I wanted to see him be mean to his friends and let the popularity get into his head. (Well, we did see this in ‘Going Hollyweird’, but even that was short). But the resolution to ‘Midas Touch’ was simplified where Goggles’s just cries about not being able to nerd out. No. I want more inner conflict on his side and his to feel deeper regrets other than rejecting a movie screening. While these episodes are both quick and easy plots, ‘Midas Touch’ contributed to the greater idea that is known as character development. Something that is essential for a greater plot. Can I elaborate why this is? Not really, but you just have trust me that it does work.

Anyways, let’s get into the real idea here. Using the themes of diversity and cops abusing their authority on the youth. The main plot will have to involve a large-scale conflict against the police force that bans skateboarding. That’s it. That’s the plot. But it will need to developed throughout the series, carefully placed in different episodes until it becomes a more blatant problem. Think about it for a moment. The first episode makes an off-hand reference to the way that police ‘warn’ skateboarding kids to stay away from the mall. Then it leads to episodes where characters are being arrested for ‘loitering’ in an outdoor public space. Finally, there’s an entire ban on skateboarding in the whole city and you’ve got a group of kids who are willing to challenge it. This is what the writers completely missed out on because they didn’t put themselves in the same shoes of Gen Z youth.

And we can add more to this mix. We need to add in a diversity of skateboarders, they all come from different backgrounds and have different experiences, but they share their love of skateboarding and do their best to protect each other in a world where adults rule over them. Wild Grinders needs LGBTQ kids, teens who want justice for their POC friends, and young adults who are willing to listen to them. They all love skateboarding and they’re sick of adults who want to take their skating spaces away from them.

Wild Grinders was able to make this a plot, but they didn’t.

[Part C]

We need to talk about the characters. We’ve got a lot and we’ve got nothing going on for the cast. As stated before, Rob Dyrdek wanted to create a diverse cast of skateboarders. But he didn’t do the best job at balancing them as characters. Obviously, Lil’ Rob was the main character and got all the attention, but it got to the point that he was considered a Gary Stu because of it. There’s such an imbalance between him and his friends. The TV series didn’t do ALL of the Wild Grinders any justice. They were all watered down to adore Lil’ Rob and when they never got any real development. There was an attempt to balance the characters, but they were lacking. They were always reduced to their conventional personalities and felt static and sterile. Lil’ Rob clearly has the majority of episodes that focus on him.

It’s shocking that Emo Crys has the least amount of episodes considering his popularity and the fact that Rob Dyrdek always hyped him during the first wave of toys. But it’s important to note that the rest of the cast often got their spotlight stolen by Lil’ Rob when they were meant to have an episode dedicated to them. ‘Wild BFFs’ is an oddball on here because it didn’t really contribute to Jack Knife’s characters, but it was an episode where Lil’ Rob didn’t take it away from him. Either way, these were the episodes where the writers tried to put some spotlight on the rest of the main cast, but these episodes fell short. Jay Jay and Emo Crys had the most lukewarm episodes where Lil’ Rob usually has to solve the problem. ‘Wild Grinder with Two Heads’ was the only episode where Lil’ Rob was actually cut off, but both Jay Jay and Emo Crys had to share this episode. Honestly, it wasn’t exactly the best episode because it was one of the ‘wacky’ ones and it’s just brings secondhand embarrassment to watch it. It’s great to see 2 different characters (one of them not being Lil’ Rob) have to work out their problem together, but I would rather have it be a handcuffs situation where they were forced to work out their differences. Spitball is clearly the quiet character and that makes some excuse for his lack of episodes. To keep him mysterious. Goggles had the best development out of everyone in most of his episodes, but it still feels underwhelming until ‘Midas Touch’. While it looks like Jack Knife has a lot of episodes, there’s something that pisses me off about them all. It’s his Sprawl City-canon personality. He was reduced to being the dumb, uneducated American with a southern accent. This funny persona basically demolishes him from having a meaningful character arc. I want the Ketterville-canon Jack Knife for a lot of reasons, but mostly because the whole point of his character was being the kindest out of all the Wild Grinders despite the fact that he was poor and made to always be the joke. Before the production of the TV series, all the Grinders had expression sheets drawn by Tracey, only Emo Crys’s sheet being released. However, there was a tweet that revealed a glimpse of Jack Knife’s sheet where he was like full-on, pissed-the-hell-off.

The only reason why they could never let Jack Knife be angry in the series was to probably avoid him from looking like an angry redneck due to his strong southern accent being permanent later on. If they stuck to the Ketterville-canon and original voice actor for Jack Knife, we could have had an episode where he finally snaps after being docile for long enough. My boy was meant to slash tires and defend his friends when they are mistreated!!

Speaking of Ketterville-canon, it was very fleshed-out and made the characters unique and interesting. You want to know why Spitball got his nickname? He used his spit on people because he thought it would heal wounds from a story he heard. The writers should have made Emo Crys way more moodier and Jay Jay deserves more screen time of his hobbies. The rest of the cast needs to have conflicts (both internal and outside) of their lives and be able to resolve them. The writers avoided anything that would truly challenge the characters in favor of keeping a conventional typecast. And we aren’t done yet. Another improvement on characters we need is: less antagonists and adults that appear for an episode. There’s too many one-time villains in the TV series than like, actual kids who are the same age the Wild Grinders. No, this doesn’t mean we need a girl skate crew to play as girlfriends. Absolutely not. We need different kids who love to skateboard. We need gay and trans kids. We need to see black and brown skateboarding kids. We need to see new designs for characters and skate crews who can make challenges and befriend the Wild Grinders. If kids are going to watch the TV series, they deserve to feel seen because Wild Grinders make more celebrities and adults in the cast where they don’t do a lot. (Unless it’s Lil’ Rob’s mom. She contributes more to the story than the actual antagonists).

Anyways, we need better development for the main and reoccurring cast. But we need to see a diversity of skateboarders as well to create unique plots and encourage character development by having them interact with the Wild Grinders. I’m tired from writing all of this in one shot, but it’s sincerely tiring that the script writers wrote everything the way it is in the TV series.

Apologies if any part of this analysis feels rushed or incomplete, it’s the week of finals and my brain isn’t working (and threw off everything I was supposed to write about the analysis). To the few people reading this, thank you and hope that this enhances the brainrot. Feedback is very appreciated on my end.

[radashes]

Book review: 'Dreamland Billionaires' series by Lauren Asher

Step into the lavish world of the Dreamland Billionaire series, where dreams are as big as bank accounts, and the drama is richer than a double espresso on a Monday morning.

#1. The Fine Print: 4/5 stars

I ended up giving this book a 4-star rating. Was it amazing? Nah, not really. Did it keep me hooked and make me finish it in one sitting? Yeah, it did.

So, the story is all about Rowan, who's supposed to inherit his grandpa's fortune and is running Dreamland amusement park, and Zahra, who works there. Rowan's got to find the park's weak spots to get his inheritance, and Zahra's dream is to be a creator, so she gets roped into helping out.

Now, let's talk characters:

Rowan: Your typical grumpy guy with some daddy issues. He gets oddly excited when Zahra touches his leg. Weird, right? Oh, and he's into art, which adds a bit of depth to him, but it's resolved too quickly.

Zahra: She's all sunshine and rainbows, forgiving Rowan way too easily and laughing way too much.

Cringeworthy moments:

These characters act more like teens than adults, which is kinda cringe.

Zahra describing Rowan's butt as a "firm bubble butt" was just... no.

That first kiss in the office? Totally out of place.

Rowan crawling to Zahra on the floor? Ugh, just why?

But hey, there were some good things, like the inclusion of Zahra's sister Ami, who has Down Syndrome. It's awesome to see that kind of representation in popular books.

Despite its flaws, I'll probably keep reading the trilogy because, let's be real, they're pretty addictive.

#2. Terms and Conditions: 4.5/5 stars

"Terms and Conditions" felt like "The Fine Print" with a slightly better font, and I'll be real, those last 80 pages? Nah, fam, we could've done without 'em.

From the get-go, Iris and Declan steal the spotlight. Their dynamic was entertaining, but I could've done without the whole "Is Iris setting this up because she likes me?! Eww" vibe.

Now, onto the characters:

Declan: Dude's got serious daddy issues, but his introverted, grumpy demeanor was oddly endearing. His subtle affection for Iris and efforts to help her with dyslexia were highlights.

Iris: Queen Iris, y'all! Loved her as the strong, determined female lead. Though I felt her third act drama was a tad over-the-top, she taught Declan some valuable life lessons.

In short, Declan's complexity outshone Rowan's, and Iris was a force to be reckoned with.

Favorite moments:

Their banter: “We both know you actually like my brain.” “I like your heart more.”

Declan's little gestures of affection: “I did some research on how people with learning differences like yours do better with verbal and written instructions.”

And that tear-jerker quote? Hits you right in the feels.

Overall, despite the familiar feel, "Terms and Conditions" delivers a solid slow burn romance with relatable characters and some heartwarming moments.

#3. Final Offer: 3.5/5 stars

"Final Offer" was a bit of a letdown, honestly. It felt like it dragged on forever without much excitement. The plot was a mix of clichés, and it just didn't bring anything fresh to the table. Plus, it moved at a snail's pace, which made it a bit of a chore to get through.

Characters:

Alana: Unfortunately, she fell flat for me. Her lack of empathy and manipulative tendencies made it hard to connect with her. Plus, her behavior towards Cal bordered on emotional abuse, which was a major turn-off.

Cal: He had his struggles, but he still had some charm left in him. His journey through addiction and personal demons was touching, but it didn't fully shine through in this installment.

Favorite Moments:

Latin Representation: Kudos to the author for portraying Latin culture well. It was a nice touch and added depth to the story.

Revisiting Previous Characters: Seeing familiar faces from earlier books was a highlight. It added a layer of continuity and nostalgia to the story.

Cal himself was alright, but even his charm couldn't save this sinking ship of a romance plot. The whole thing just felt flat and uninspired.

So yeah, "Final Offer" ended up being a bit of a dud for me.

Overall, the Dreamland Billionaire is a good series with its diverse tropes and well-developed characters. Each book brought something unique to the table, from the grumpy/sunshine dynamic to the fake marriage trope and the second chance friends-to-lovers storyline. And you're spot on about Final Print—it tackled the complexities of "functional" alcoholism with sensitivity and depth. Overall, it's been a fantastic journey with lovable heroes and heroines, plenty of HEAs, and enough feels to last a lifetime!

[venusstadt]

Are the kids alright?

According to recent news reports, they seem to be anything but, especially the girls. Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study that found that in 2021, almost three in five girls in high school considered suicide (Ghorayshi and Rabin), a number that has increased by 60% in ten years (Twenge).

Overall, the mental health of teenagers in the U.S.—already burdened by concerns about climate change and school shootings—only worsened thanks to pandemic-induced anxiety and isolation (Webster). This, of course, is on top of things such as figuring out their own individual identities (Webster).

If there’s anything that last week’s discourse surrounding Sydney Sweeney has proven, is that tween and teen girls have always had a rather tough time navigating that weird space between childhood and adulthood, that space where puberty feels like a mortal sin and any legitimate questions and concerns one might have about themselves or the world around them are blithely dismissed or treated as heresy.

But there was once a host of places where tween and teen girls could find some relief from the world at large and commune with their peers away from the gazes of those that sought to mock them. And, believe it or not, one of these spaces was online.

Hi, and welcome to Venusstadt. I’m Jiana. Today, I’m filming with my webcam in true early internet fashion to discuss Rookie, the feminist-leaning magazine founded by a teen for teens and tweens to give them a place to share their thoughts and creativity amid a society in which girls and girlhood were treated as nuisances.

TAVI GEVINSON

First, let’s discuss Tavi Gevinson.

Tavi, the youngest of three, was born in 1996 in Chicago. Her father was an English teacher, while her mother taught Hebrew and weaved (Knight).

Usually in a biography you would hear details like early childhood or adolescent experiences that led to the subject’s choice of career. However, Tavi is unique in that her career started when she was a child, and that that career was one that she chose herself.

Tavi became interested in fashion when she started to make collages in fourth grade out of pictures she cut out of magazines (Widdicombe). She first discovered blogging at a slumber party, when she was shown the personal site of her friend’s older sister, who also enjoyed fashion (Widdicombe). Tavi then used Blogspot to start her own site in 2008, calling it “Style Rookie” to fit in with the trending fashion blogs of the time (Vogue, YouTube, 1:10).

Through her posts, she documented her personal style, her thoughts on runway shows, and random anecdotes from her tween life. She was eventually propelled into the spotlight of the wider fashion industry when New York Magazine wrote a short article about her and her blog, appropriately titled “Meet Tavi, the 12-Year-Old Fashion Blogger” (Kwan).

Tavi’s initial rise to fame came at a time where people were really beginning to pay attention to the potential of the internet. Along with social media sites like MySpace and Facebook, which were already rather popular, people also began to read and start blogs (cite). These bloggers, who were in every niche from politics to mommy blogging to art, were basically proto-influencers. With Tavi also came Bryanboy, Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist, and Tommy Ton of Jak + Jil, all apart of the fashion blogosphere that was viewed as “democratizing” the industry, since it shifted some of the authority away from traditional sources like journalist and established critics to people who more closely resembled the average consumer (Widdicombe).

However, Tavi was unique due to the fact that she was like, 12 (Widdicombe). This, combined with her pretty impressive knowledge of fashion and culture and the mature, conversational tone with which she reportedly wrote, made her a spectacle to the adults of the fashion press (Widdicombe). Her youth also gave her the gusto to wear what she wanted as opposed to adhering to traditional fashion rules.

By 13, Tavi was sitting front row at various fashion shows (“Japan Goes Mad for 13-year-old,” The Cut). She attended John Galliano’s Spring 2010 Dior couture, where she met Karl Lagerfeld and Rei Kawakubo (Widdicombe). Later, she would also be the guest of honor at a holiday party for the latter’s brand Commes des Garcon (“Japan Goes Mad for 13-year-old,” The Cut).

While there were many who liked Tavi, she also had her fair share of detractors. Take, for instance, Sarah Mower of the Telegraph, who wrote of recognizing Tavi at the Dior show with a “sick lurch” and fantasized about yelling at Tavi’s father (Widdicombe). Ann Slowey, then fashion news director for Elle, questioned Tavi’s age and the likelihood that Style Rookie was actually written by her, while FIT’s Valerie Steele asserted that no one would care about Tavi if not for her age (Widdicombe). Tavi admitted that the attention got to be too much occasionally; when New York Magazine first brought attention to her blog, she even took a brief break from the internet (Widdicombe). According to Tavi:

“A lot of people on the internet have a problem with a young person doing well. I felt like, there were a lot of people who were there [in fashion spaces] because of their name, their money, or their family, and I didn’t have any of those things” (Kane).

Outside of her blog and media appearances, Tavi was still pretty much a normal tween, making collages and DIYs, attending public school with her peers, and shopping around at various thrift and vintage stories (Widdicombe). At the same time, she was speaking at conferences and guest writing for publications, using the money she earned from that to buy herself an occasional designer item (Widdicombe).

As with most young people, Tavi’s interests eventually changed, and she began to take less interest in fashion than she did with subjects such as “outsider art, feminism, gender identity, and media” (Knight).

ROOKIE MAGAZINE

As I mentioned in depth in my previous video essay on Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, children are seen as unsophisticated blank slates that can be trained to uphold pre-existing standards, and therefore must be rigorously surveilled and molded for the interest of wider society (O’Connor 4). “Children” here includes teenagers, who, since the category was invented by marketers in the 1950s, have been sites of anxiety and have represented social decline with their necking mobiles and rebellious attitudes (Thompson).

The concept of the “tween,” which denotes young people between eight and fourteen, was also invented by marketers in the early 90s (Guthrie 1). Newsweek in the late 90s described tweens as a “generation in fast forward, in a fearsome hurry to grow up” (Guthrie 1). Guthrie notes that “tween” was a label typically restricted to girls, who apparently felt more pressure to act older than their ages than boys were. Quoting Judith Halberstrom, Guthrie writes that:

“Female adolescence represents the crisis of coming of age as a girl in a male-dominated society. If adolescence for boys represents a rite of passage […] and an ascension to some version (however attenuated) of social power, for girls, adolescence is a lesson in restraint, punishment, and repression” (Guthrie 2).

I don’t believe I have to go into great depth explaining how media can be used to enforce social norms, but there are numerous examples involving media censorship (such as the Hays Code or the current Florida Book Bans) that demonstrate how industries or governments can use the media to maintain a certain status quo.

In their article “Narrative Analysis of [...] Etiquette in Teenage Magazines,” Ana C. Garner, Helen M. Stark, and Shawn Adams highlight a plethora of studies that demonstrated how teens put a lot of weight onto teen-oriented magazines as arbiters of taste and social etiquette (3). These magazines were often the go-to source as opposed to their parents due to their accessibility and ability to be read in private (Garner 3).

Magazines for teen girls largely included content that, you guessed it, promoted the standard gendered social norms expected of young women, such as how to dress, how to use makeup, and how to get the attention of boys (Garner 2). These articles and advertisements played an important role in the acculturation process of the young women who read them, in that they provided a specific set of cultural expectations that the girls figured they were expected to meet in order to be proper women. As stated by Garner, Stark, and Adams:

“…women’s magazines play a socializing function through the stories they tell in columns, features, and advertising. Readers encounter and then may initiate cultural myths of identity. According to Kellner, ‘Media stories provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture.’ Magazines constitute part of the media stories that shape both society’s sense of culture and our sense of self in culture” (Garner 2).

Though such advice on makeup and boys might be helpful on an individual basis, such dictates could serve to be confusing at a time where a young girl is attempting to figure out her own identity, and did not really answer any of the questions a lot of girls would have about adolescence and adulthood (Guthrie 6). This is where Rookie magazine came in, but before we discuss Rookie, we ought to discuss Sassy.

Sassy was a teen magazine that was published from 1988 to 1996. It was notable for being a feminist teen magazine that spoke about serious subjects like suicide and STDs at a time where, again, most teen girl magazines were instructed girls on how to maximize their appearances in order to get dates (Talk of the Nation). Sassy drew a lot of ire from evangelical groups who boycotted it when it first started, which made advertisers not really want to touch it after a while (Talk of the Nation). It eventually stopped publishing and was absorbed into ‘TEEN magazine…which just talked about boys and dating again.

In spring 2010, Tavi mentioned on Style Rookie that she wanted to create a magazine inspired by Sassy and the riot grrrl zines of the 1990s, which were key parts of the third-wave feminist movement (Knight; Feliciano). Founding editor of Sassy Jane Pratt then reached out to make that happen (Knight).

At first Gevinson was in talks to sign on with Say Media to make this idea come to life, but she ultimately decided to pursue her idea independently so that “the man” wasn’t involved (Knight). According to Tavi’s father Steve, Rookie was independently financed “on family borrowing” (Knight).

Rookie first launched in September 2011 as Tavi entered her sophomore year of high school, filling the void that Sassy left in the teen publication industry when it shut down in 1996. In her first Editor’s letter, Tavi asserted that unlike other magazines like Teen Vogue or Seventeen, Rookie:

“…is not your guide to Being a Teen. It is not a pamphlet on How to Be a Young Woman. It is, quite simply, a bunch of writing and art we like and believe in. While there’s always danger in generalizing a whole group of people, I do think some experiences are somewhat universal to being a teenager, specifically a female one. Rookie is the place to make the best of the beautiful pain and cringeworthy awkwardness of being an adolescent girl” (Gevinson).

If you look at Rookie’s visual aesthetic throughout the years, you can definitely see how the riot grrrl zines also influenced it. The whole site had a whole DIY/collage aesthetic. As stated previously, riot grrrl was a major part of the third-wave feminist movement (Feliciano); Huse states that its zines were so important and impactful because they gave girls “an outlet for their own stories, a means to reclaim culture and language through their writing, and the ability to critique mainstream media with their own publication” (Huse 12).

That pretty much also describes Rookie’s primary draw. Like Sassy and its riot grrrl foremothers, Rookie magazine served as a way for teens to read about and discuss serious topics like birth control, mental health, and coming out in a safe space where they would not be shamed or ridiculed (Wilson). It was also feminist-leaning without the terminology that might be found in a Gender and Women's Studies textbook or journal. This meant that the language used was simple and more accessible, allowing progressive concepts to be shared with a younger audience (Kane).

Rookie also featured a pretty wide range of content, from interviews with artists, authors, and celebrities; to short fiction and poetry, film and literature reviews, DIY and personal style guides, cool playlists and illustrations—basically anything a teen might want. Much of this content was submitted by its tween and teen readers (Wilson), and submitting to Rookie was much like submitting to any other magazine. Each month there was a specific theme, and Rookie gave potential contributors ideas of what they could send in. There was also a poetry roundup, where Rookie would publish a bunch of submitted poetry each month. Of course, all submissions had to be unpublished, and Rookie rigorously fact-checked any non-fiction pieces. What was most impressive to me was that they took their young contributors seriously by compensating them for their work and creativity, though it was never officially disclosed how much they paid. The first three themes of Rookie were Beginnings, Secrets, and Girl Gang in September, October, and November of 2011; the last three were Rebirth, Spirit, and Evolution in the same months of 2018.

Advice questions could be sent in at any time. These questions could be answered in columns like “Ask a Grown Man” and “Ask a Grown Woman,” which allowed teens to ask various celebrities for advice (Kane). Celebrities who participated in this included Cyndi Lauper, Paul Rudd, Terry Crews, and even Hillary Clinton during her 2016 election campaign.

The website updated only three times a day, all in the afternoon when teens would be most apt to actually read the content: “after school, at dinner time, and when it’s really late and you should be writing a paper but are Facebook stalking instead” (Wilson).

The Rookie staff consisted of Tavi, a few grown people who handled the business and some of the editing, and other teen staff like Petra Collins, Hazel Cills, Arabelle Sicardi, and more. Staff members largely interacted with each other online via email and social media, but they occasionally met up for events like Rookie Road Trip, which was a four-week long tour in which teen staff members and Anaheed Alani packed into a van and drove across country from New York to Los Angeles to promote Rookie Yearbook One. The staff met up with the Rookie audience in venues like ice cream parlors, record stores, arcades, and theaters, where they did zine/collage-making events, poetry readings, and live performances (Gevinson).

The Rookie Yearbooks were printed yearly roundups of the online magazine content, edited and art-directed by Tavi, along with exclusive interviews and notes from celebrities (Peiser). There were a total of four to cover the magazine’s first four years. In addition to the yearbooks, Rookie also sold t-shirts, stickers, and posters.

END OF AN ERA

But, as I implied at the beginning, this website described by Healy as a “glistening, empowered world of girlhood” did not last. So, what happened?

The simplest answer is social media. But, truthfully, the newspaper industry has been unstable long before then. As Tavi pointed out in her final Editor’s Letter for Rookie, between January 2001 and September 2016, half of all newspaper jobs were cut from the industry (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018”). It’s also worth remembering that from 2015 to 2018, publications were laying off writers left and right in order to “pivot to video” content, mostly so they could cater to Facebook’s algorithms (Weissman).

According to that same letter, Rookie started running into financial issues as early as 2016, as social media engagement began to make up the bulk of the magazine’s online engagement as opposed to, say, people actually clicking on article links or leaving comments (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018”). While this technically be a good thing for, say, a zine that was firmly embedded within the social media with no central website, this was bad for Rookie because it rendered their ad-based revenue ineffective (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018”).

Tavi had no desire to ask her young readers to subscribe or donate to the site (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018”). She doesn’t explicitly explain why this was not an option, but my best guess is that she wanted the site to remain accessible to those young people who might not have had the money for a potential subscription or donation.

Tavi had previously been advised to work out some sort of marketing and engagement strategy before things took the turn that they did, but she said she never really listened because…well, she was a teenager (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018”). Who can blame her.

Anyways, in fall 2017, the Rookie team began searching for investors and/or partnerships they could do to keep the magazine running and strategize to figure out how to expand Rookie’s content offerings (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018”). However, most potential business partners wanted Tavi to promote herself as the brand’s face to get Rookie back on its feet before passing it off to a new, fresh figurehead that could lead the magazine into the next era (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018;” “Instagram''). By this time, Tavi was wanting to grow beyond Rookie magazine and pursue other ventures like acting, so she was on board with this concept (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018;” “Instagram'').

This didn’t pan out too well. Tavi did more sponsored social media content in order to market herself as an “it girl,” but even though these sponsorships let her avoid taking an income from struggling Rookie, she didn’t really enjoy the “hustle” of doing this, and neither did Rookie’s more progressive-minded audience, who knew when consumerism was being thrown in their faces (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018;” “Instagram”). This particularly came to a head when Tavi was criticized for contributing to gentrification while living in a sponsored luxury apartment in Brooklyn (Gevinson, “Instagram”). She was getting criticized for her personal finances as well since she was so present within the media, but Tavi wrote in Cut magazine that this was largely rooted in a misunderstand of how the media industry works, and that she was never really earning enough to live from such media appearances or photoshoots (Gevinson, “Instagram”). So the plan of Tavi promoting herself as a public figure in order to re-popularize the Rookie website fell apart.

Again, most media companies were already not doing well, so absorbing Rookie without such personality content from Tavi to help it up again was out of the question (Gevinson, “Editor’s Letter 2018”). Tavi explains it all very clearly, again, in the final Editor’s Letter:

“I have spent the fall learning what it would mean to sell Rookie to a new owner who could fund it, build it, or hire more people. I have learned that I can’t take on the responsibility that would come with remaining as its editor, or even transitioning it to a point where I could leave completely.

“…most media companies are also struggling. They can’t afford to buy other publications that are struggling, and/or they are understandably not interested in spending the money to get Rookie to sustainable profitability without the founder/editor/owner since day one—in other words, me. I can’t make that commitment, and at this moment, Rookie can’t exist without it” (Gevinson, “Editor's Letter 2018”).

Thus, on December 1, 2018, Rookie magazine officially ceased operations (Wilson), joining or preceding other sites by women such as the Hairpin, the Awl, the Toast, and Lenny Letter (Blum).

After Rookie folded, the staff at Man Repeller got together to discuss the changing nature of online media. Haley Nahman stated that:

“The part that makes me sad is understanding/learning that content that drives the most traffic (i.e., what keeps media brands in business) is not necessarily the highest quality, and that has become increasingly true as publications that put out good work flail, and those that put out, say, celebrity gossip or SEO-clickbait thrive” (Team Repeller).

Tavi’s goal from the Sassy- and riot grrrl-inspired beginnings of Rookie was always to make great content rather than simple filler articles (Knight). Ultimately, the internet took websites such as these for granted, opting instead to bury them under forgettable filler and clickbait content—something that has clearly continued into the current era. And, though there will always be people searching for good content online, sometimes that minority is not enough to sustain such a time-consuming publication like Rookie and many others.

Fortunately, Rookie remains up as an archival site. So at least we’ll always have the memories.

IMPACT

All in all, Rookie gave young people not only the confidence to share their ideas and express themselves through writing, photography, and DIYs, but also gave them the early experience to pursue such creative ventures at a professional level.

One of the most impressive things about Rookie is the number of names I recognized during my research from today and from my days as an impressionable young teenager on Tumblr. One such name is that of photographer Petra Collins, who was one of the original staff members for Rookie and participated in the Rookie Road Trip that first year in (Kane). Petra published a lot of photography on Rookie that then made the rounds on sites like Tumblr and Pinterest and formed the basis for a good many moodboards of the mid-2010s. She has since moved on to doing photography direction for fashion brands, as well as music videos for artists like Carly Rae Jepsen, Cardi B, and 2021 teen queen Olivia Rodrigo. Other Rookie alumni include NPR Music editor Hazel Cills, another founding Rookie Road Tripper, and Ashley Reese, who once wrote for Jezebel and Netflix’s Tudum, who you’ve probably seen on Twitter. There was also a lot of cross-pollination between Rookie and the Art Hoe movement’s founders and curators. While I don’t believe Ione Gamble ever wrote for Rookie, she was present at meetups for Rookie in London and cites Rookie as the influence for her zine Polyester, as well as Gal-Dem, and One of My Kind (OOMK) (Gamble).

Seeing the sheer number of people who either wrote for or read Rookie during their formative years is honestly amazing. And when you look at Tumblr or Pinterest’s mid-2010 years, it’s obvious that a lot of the “alternative teen girl aesthetic” that Tumblr came to be known for does sort of owe itself to Rookie as well, since so many girls on that site also happened to read Rookie and share images from Rookie to Tumblr or Pinterest. These images ended up on moodboards and continue to inspire online visual content to this day in one way or another. So when former Rookie staff member Arabelle Sicardi declared in 2021 that “pop culture is Rookie” to Teen Vogue—whose progressive content today likely owes a lot to Rookie as well—she isn’t kidding (Wilson). Without Rookie, media for young people, specifically women, girls, and non-binary people, would be a whole lot less endearing.

SEMI-CONCLUSION

That would’ve been a neat place to end this video, but I am going to get on my soapbox and say that it would be really beneficial if we had some sort of online space for tween and teen girls (and non-binary folks) today. Again, Teen Vogue has filled the younger, progressive void, but that’s not really a site where readers can submit things and be published without a pre-existing resume of some sort.

There’s also traditional social media giants like IG, Twitter, Tiktok, etc., but honestly even though they led to the demise of publishers like Rookie, they aren’t really a good replacement. Though anyone can share their thoughts now, these websites have arguably led to the shrinking of both our attention spans and the internet (Holderness). Also, algorithms are weird and perfectly good content is buried under the noise of search-engine optimization or content that simply isn’t good but very popular (example – subway surfer south park nonsense).

These also frankly aren’t safe spaces for young girls and women. In fact, social media was also linked to the teen girls’ mental decline, thanks to things like cyberbullying and the threat of sexual exploitation (Twenge). This is only going to get worse now that we have this wave of misogynistic backlash online, and teen girls who try to use social media can be at any point met with manosphere podcasters, tradwives, or straight-up violent incels who are typically their own male peers (Ewens). And now we also have the issue of AI-generators and deep fake adult materials; girls who post their faces online are likely going to have their faces stolen at one point or another.

At this point, any type of curated, online space for girls to get away from would be beneficial, but we’re so used to the convenience of social media now as a culture that it’s uncertain what form that online space will come in if ever. Hopefully, in one way or another, a new Rookie more suited to our times will pop up somewhere.

ACTUAL OUTRO

So that was depressing! But if you liked the non-depressing parts, and would like to be notified for more videos like this, be sure to click the subscribe button below. I also provide updates via the social media links listed below. This is obviously still a newer channel and I’m still kind of testing certain things out, so feel free to leave any feedback you have in the comments. For short-form biographies on women in the arts or other fun facts about culture, follow my TikTok or Instagram. Thanks for watching!

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