#also he was talking about the thesis and was like 'you're writing this in very little time so i think we both know it's not gonna be a 1'

[highvern]

Between the Titles

Pairing: Min Yoongi x fem!reader

Genre: fluff, smut (mature/18+)

warnings: egregious caffeine consumption, yoongi smokes cigarettes, reader is about the same height as yoongi (its me hello im almost the same height as him), gay taehyung, volunteer jungkook, silver fox yoongi (he just has some gray hair bc hot) smut warnings: making out, grinding, fingering, oral (f. receiving), semi-public sexual acts, bathroom sex, protected sex, praise kink

Length: ~9.5k

Note: no thoughts, just big brain yoongi in a sweater smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. btw almost all the books in this are real but i haven't read them so if you have lmk if they're worth the read lmao. thank u to my dearest @gyuswhore and @idyllic-ghost for beta-ing this

Summary: Five days a week in the library means you're very familiar with the senior research librarian. It also means he has no qualms about making his own book recommendations either.

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The sweet aroma of old books and strong coffee infiltrates your nose as the heavy doors into the library swing open, offering reprieve from the storm raging on outside. It’s far too early for anyone to be here beyond staff and a few other morning birds. You glide right to the circulation desk as if fatigue doesn’t pulse through your veins, barely quelled by the second cup of coffee you sip from.

As always, the same familiar head of dark hair with sparse silver streaks waits at the circulation desk. He’s the only person working this early despite being the senior research librarian but you never hear any complaints louder than muttered annoyance under his breath when he thinks no one is around to hear. Bent over his laptop, Yoongi doesn’t even bother to look up as he slides a heavy stack of books to the edge of the counter. 

Eleven total, ten heavy volumes on ancient fertility cults across the globe, and one book you know he’s mixed in for his own amusement. 

It’s become something of a game between you two. At first you thought he was mixing your materials with someone else’s, but every time you brought the additional copy back to his desk, Yoongi insisted he had no idea what you were talking about and questioned your reading choices. Each time the titles got more ridiculous: Castration: The Advantages and the Disadvantages, How to Enjoy Your Weeds, Amish Vampires in Space, the list goes on and on. But after he slipped Why Fish Don’t Exist into your stack a few weeks ago, you decided to start responding. 

You left the stack at his desk like usual, ears perked for his reaction to Fishes I Have Known. An amused snort rang out just as you opened the doors to leave for the afternoon. The sound was so unlike the stoic man you’d become accustomed to over months working on your thesis; not that you heard him talk much to begin with.

Since then you’ve made a point to match every book he leaves for you. Yesterday, Yoongi chose I Could Pee on This: and Other Poems by Cats. At the end of the day, you spent thirty minutes searching shelf after shelf for an appropriate response, every book failing to meet your expectations. It wasn’t fair he knew the expansive collection like the back of his hand but nevertheless you found something up to par.

Yoongi rolled his eyes when you passed your books over the counter, a copy of Staying Dry: A Practical Guide to Bladder Control, like a shining star on top. A brief pink of his tongue flashed across his lips, a feeble attempt to muffle an amused smile. It was the most obvious reaction since the first time you responded.

Smiling like the cat who ate the canary, you left on clouds last night.

But this morning you have notes to write.

Snagging the collection, you make your way deeper into the building. Your unassigned-assigned desk tucked away on the fifth floor, far enough away from any noise so you can fully immerse in work without the threat of distraction. An uninterrupted view of the courtyard below is an added bonus.

The wooden table top is covered in a neat collection of pens and sticky notes in minutes; your laptop and the foot tall collection of references you devour over the next eight hours taking up the other half.

A few titles you request over and over sit on top, too valuable to be checked out for long term use so you settle for keeping them in constant rotation since no one else bothers to read the dusty yellowing tombs. For now, you focus on the new pieces you hope hold the information you need.

Earth rites: fertility practices in pre-industrial Britain, Archaeology and Fertility Cults in the Ancient Mediterranean, Metamorphosis of Baubo: myths of woman's sexual energy— 

I’m in Love with Mothman…

Well there it is.

You thumb across the glossy cartoon cover, failing to bite back a smile. Yoongi has a penchant for tossing in the most outlandish romance books he can find. Maybe because he knows you spend just as much if not more time than he does between the stacks. The suggestion box at the desk was full of cards stained with your penmanship asking for longer hours; several of which you’ve seen Yoongi rip in half as he pointedly met your gaze.

Tossing it aside, you pull forward one of the more musty books and start reading.

When you finally manage to resurface from laborious tales on several cults of Aphrodite, the rain is long gone. Even the darkest corners of the old building seem to glow gold in the evening sunset filtering through the glass doors. They're the only thing standing between you and freedom in the form curling up on your couch with a glass of wine and a new episode of your favorite reality dating show. But first, Yoongi needs his books back. 

His desk chair is abandoned and the return cart is gone as well which means he could be anywhere in the building. Disappointment leaches into your spine at the fact you won’t be able to witness his reaction to the twelfth book in your pile; the one you spent an extra fifteen minutes looking for in the corner of the third floor. 

A thick piece of library paper lists the materials you’ll need for the next day lays atop the neon green cover of Pest Management Solutions: How to Manage Your Moth Problem. They decorate the corner of the desk until Yoongi returns to find them. Hopefully he appreciates your humor.

Yoongi isn’t at his desk the next morning when you come in either. Instead, a doe eyed man with a lip piercing occupies the chair, clearly playing some game on his laptop. 

Approaching the counter, you begin to ask, “Where’s Yoon–”

“Staff meeting,” he interjects like he’s already answered the question a million times despite the library opening only five minutes ago. The white of his teeth threaten to blind you. “But I can help you!”

His name tag isn’t the same engraved golden metal Yoongi’s is, it’s a plastic sleeve with a paper insert with barely legible handwriting you decipher as  “Jungkook” and below “Volunteer.” You’ve seen him before from a distance. Usually trudging through the shelves with the book return cart in tow, occasionally taking a quick read inside before putting them in their rightful place. 

“I need to pick up some books. I gave Yoongi the list yesterday.”

“Sure.” Jungkook jumps up, approaching the shelf lined with piles for other patrons. “What’s your last name?”

He combs through the list after you answer, finding your stack easily enough. 

“Alright so Yoongi left a note that the encyclopedias you wanted are on the usual desk you have upstairs. But other than that I’ve got: Historical Studies of Changing Fertility, Sacred Mushroom and The Cross, Archaeology and Fertility Cults in The Ancient Mediterranean…” Jungkook lists off the titles, checking to make sure they're all in order. “And, um, this one isn’t on the list.”

It must be Yoongi’s choice for the day.

“What is it?”

Jungkook looks like he’s trying to hide his own amusement as he slides it over for you to read.

If I Were a Bird, You'd be The First Person I'd Shit On.

“Huh,” you blush. “Wonder how that got in there.”

“He must have left it by mistake. I can put it ba–”

“No, I’ll take it.” You toss it on top of the other, less embarrassing books in your stack and gather it into your arms before Jungkook can get in another word. “Thanks for your help!”

Scurrying towards the hallway housing the elevators, you attempt to juggle the pile of books, your stuffed bag, and coffee without taking a spill. It’s one thing to have your silent battle with Yoongi, but having someone else witness it makes you feel downright silly. And for the first one witnessed by others to be such an absurd and downright passive aggressive selection sends embarrassment through your veins.

As promised, three encyclopedias sit neatly on your desk; the volumes so thick they protrude from the table top like a small mountain. No wonder he left them there instead of making you carry them up in individual trips. But Yoongi’s goodwill clearly ended there. A sticky note on top of the stack pens his discontent at your selection.

I had to spend 3 hours in the basement to find these. If you need them again, don’t.

Even though he hadn’t signed it, you know it’s from him. The tight script fits his personality; thin lines of annoyance bleeding through the ink, not just his words. A waft of musty old paper and dust breezes through your nose as you open the first copy. They must have been housed in a forgotten storage area. At least his bird book makes more sense now. 

You don’t dig into the heap until after the sun is halfway through the sky but when you do it only proves to unravel your wits. Reading on, the wrinkle in your eyebrows deepens further. Page after page of conflicting knowledge passes by, each sentence more confusing than the last; minutes negating months of research. The thick pages hardly provide a soft landing for your head as you allow it to thump forward in exasperation.

The scrap of chair legs alerts to a new presence watching your meltdown in real time.

“Something wrong?” Yoongi asks.

With a heavy sigh, you respond.“I want to die.”

“Get in line.”

Shifting in your seat, you peer in his direction. A different day but the same wardrobe: dark button up, glasses, same unapproachable facade. But what Yoongi is doing sitting next to you is new.

Yoongi makes himself comfortable, picking at his nails as he waits patiently for an explanation. 

“Everything in my thesis is either wrong or the world authority on fertility in Europe is full of it.”

“Bummer.”

“Your sincerity is overwhelming.” You snap.

Yoongi rolls his eyes. Boredom seeps across his face but he doesn’t move to leave, just sinks deeper into the chair. “You’ve read almost half the collection since you started coming here, why are some old dusty books such a big deal?”

“Because all of those books cite these books which means those books are wrong and all my work is in the toilet.”

“Those books are from the seventies, the information is probably out of date.”

Slamming the copy serving as a pillow shut, you take a second glance at the title: Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion, Volume 7.

“Yoongi,” you sing.

Yoongi’s gaze flashes to yours, a trickle of confusion flashing across his eyes.“What?”

You stack up the books and push them across the desk with some effort. Just to savor the satisfaction of besting Yoongi, you indulge a long sip of now cold coffee before speaking again. No one else is around to witness your victory but that won’t dampen the high.

“Looks like you’ll be back in the basement because you brought me the wrong editions.”

He opens his mouth to argue, snatching one of the books to investigate but you beat him to the punch.

“I asked for the twenty-fifth edition, not the seventh.” You smirk. “I think you're losing your touch.”

He watches you over the rim of the cover. A fleeting glance in your direction but it makes your heart squeeze with need.

“Well, I guess you’re right,” Yoongi sighs, standing. “Do you still need them for anything or can I go ahead and take them?”

With your approval, he heaves the heavy tombs on to his cart. The strain of his forearms, bare from rolled up sleeves, catches your attention. Veins raised under creamy skin, lean muscles leading down to hands you’ve noticed since the first day you started visiting the library.

If you keep staring, you’re likely to start drooling. So you dive back into one of the useful books littering your desk and pretend to read until he’s disappearing down the hall.

On your way out, leaving much earlier than a typical day due to Yoongi’s mistake, you drop the remaining books off at the circulation desk. Along with a copy of Avian Hunting Techniques. He’s absent again but it doesn't matter.

You continue out the doors and down the sidewalk only to spot him leaning against the brick exterior further down the street. Even from a distance you can make out the natural scowl he’s constantly sporting. Except this time his lips pout around a cigarette. 

Of course he smokes.

The quasi-mysterious librarian who flirts with you through book titles, smokes cigarettes and looks hot doing it. 

“You know those things will kill you, right?” 

“That’s what the box says but they aren’t holding up their end of the deal,” Yoongi responds, flicking the ash before looking at his watch. “Wow, out before six. I’ll alert the press.”

“Well, if someone gave me the right books then maybe I’d stay longer. But I’m not about to wait around while you get the ones I need.”

Yoongi takes another drag of his cigarette before responding, “Are you trying to say I forced you to take a break?”

The realization dawns on you. Yoongi is the senior research librarian. He’s never given you the wrong books, even when you request the rare copies needed to be loaned from a different part of the country. The few times you’ve offered understanding if he couldn’t get them were met with a challenge in his gaze and smug satisfaction when handing them over a week later.

“You brought me the wrong copies on purpose!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He’s lying. You know it. Yoongi definitely knows you know by the way he smirks. But he’s already crushing the filter under his shoe and moving back towards the library by the time your brain catches up to your mouth.  “Have a good night, Y/N.”

With a scoff of indignation, you stalk towards your car.

The next morning, you march straight through the class doors to where Yoongi sits, fueled by snowballed annoyance from the previous day. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed is an understatement. If there are any gods, Yoongi should pick one and pray.

Your free afternoon of yesterday was spent dealing with the chaos your apartment has become over the past few weeks. Unfolded laundry, stacks of random papers, out of place books, and errant dust bunnies all became new victims to energy usually reserved for a full day of research. Taehyung practically shit himself when he woke up before dinner and found you scrubbing the bathroom sink.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, hand to his chest like a flustered old woman.

Bleach curled in your nostrils. “I live here.” 

“Not between the hours of eight and seven.”

But after the mess was dealt with, aggravation set in. How dare Yoongi purposefully meddle in your work. Well meaning or not you were an adult and could decide when enough was enough. The purposeful mishap hadn’t set you back far, one afternoon but a drop in the bucket in comparison to the months you’ve already spent chasing new leads. But the principle of the matter is that it’s none of his business what you do and when you do it.

Yoongi slides a slimmer stack over when you stop in front of him.

“Encyclopedias are on your desk,” he announces through a sip of coffee. He continues to type away, feigning disinterest as you sort through your stack with measured annoyance.

“Are they the right copies this time?”

“Double checked them myself.”

You open your mouth to verbalize your doubts but Yoongi’s pick of the day catches your eye.

Surviving Your Stupid Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School.

Scoffing, you flip the book around and shoot daggers into his face with your eyes. “Do you think you’re funny?”

The corner of his mouth twitches then becomes a full blown smile. Leaning over the desk, he drops his voice, “I think I’m hilarious.”

Remembering you are, in fact, in a library, you manage to muffle a frustrated groan. You dump the supplementary reading back on the counter for Yoongi to deal with and head upstairs. 

Unlike the usual days where you put off finding a response to Yoongi’s extra copy until the waning hours of the afternoon, you drop your bags and head straight for the shelves. The fifth floor houses a collection of textbooks and other reference material. It’s why it's always deserted unless some poor fool stumbles on it by accident; the perfect place to work uninterrupted for hours.

You head down stairs, circling the fourth and then third floor like a shark in a feeding frenzy. A few covers spark interest but nothing captures what bubbles in your veins: annoyance, anger, confusion. A brief flutter of interest as to why Yoongi decided to mess with you but those feelings are more dangerous than the acidic ones.

Row after proves unfruitful in your quest for passive aggressive revenge. None have the same bite as his book, or seem to curb the homicidal thoughts raging in your head.

Until a little white book peeps back at you from the end of the aisle.

Yoongi jumps when you slam Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass in front of him. A feat in and of itself to sneak up on him given the loan desk has a perfect view of the entire first floor but whatever he’d been clicking away at on the computer was distraction enough.

“What's this?”

“Thought you might like some new reading.” You flash your teeth.

His chin jerks towards the glossy cover. “I already gave this two stars on Goodreads.”

Of course he has.

Face prickling in embarrassment, you turn back the way you came without a word.

Hours later, when half the day has ticked by and the ache for more caffeine burns your eyes, Yoongi stops by your desk. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t try and gain the attention you pointedly withhold. He sets a paper coffee cup on the corner of the tabletop and leaves.

You snatch up the cup after he rounds the corner out of sight. The lack of sugar leaves much to be desired but free coffee is free coffee, especially to a PhD student with limited means. 

It isn’t much of an apology but guilt blooms down your spine anyway. He meant well. You aren’t known for giving yourself breaks; unable to quit while you’re ahead. A voluntary day off is less likely than winning the lottery. You’re a busy body and the constant work keeps you from dissolving into chaos.

You don’t see Yoongi again until every book at your desk is exhausted, begging for a break from your manhandling. Double and triple checking notes and citations are the poor excuse you implement to delay the inevitable. At some point you’ll have to go downstairs to face the music. 

He’s waiting like always, scanning the mountain of returns littering the counter from a long day. Each step closer withers something in your stomach. 

The copies in your hand shift onto the wooden surface, joining the stack for him to work through. Yoongi flashes a polite grimace when you catch his eye before immediately diving back into his work. Hopefully he understands why you chose Thank You for Smoking. And why you covered the second half of the title with a sticky note.

Jungkook’s smiling face greets you bright and early. His name tag has been upgraded from flimsy paper to a plastic one and a printed label with his name. 

Handing over your library card, he quickly scans it and grabs the books meant for today’s dissection. 

“Yoongi wanted me to tell you that if you want more coffee while you’re working, you can go to the staff lounge on the second floor.”

“Oh.”

Jungkook continues sifting through your requests, making sure each is correct.  “Between you and me, the coffee down the street is better. But don’t tell him I said that.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a coffee snob and thinks his shit—sorry—stuff is the best.”

“Okay,” you say, grabbing your pile. “Thanks.”

You set up your station like always, sorting through each book and devising a mental to do list. The desk resembles a feast but instead of food it’s encyclopedias, printed articles, and dusty manuscripts Yoongi wrangled from who knows where. On the outer board of your work station rests the feature of the day: How to Beg for Cigarettes.

A few hours pass between the pages. Your previous research is confirmed by the significantly less dusty encyclopedias this time, corroborating the basis of your thesis. A new work you haven’t seen is cited in the back, piquing your interest for more evidence. 

Instead of bothering one of the staff, you use the library website and find it in their catalog. It’s somewhere on the second floor where Yoongi offers free coffee. Two birds, one stone; a new book and a new cup of coffee.

The layout resembles all the other floors. A collection of study tables in the center crowded by bookshelves on all sides. One person, an undergrad by the look of pure dread on their features, occupies a table but that's it. Glancing at the note with the call number, you start towards the stacks on the left.

You find the correct area, eyes scanning up and down the different shelves to no avail. Hundreds of books, different sizes in an array of colors, flash by but none are the one you need. You’re about to call it quits when you spot it on the top shelf, just out of reach.

Call it a moment of stupidity, a brief blight of recklessness, but the book sits only a few inches beyond your fingers. You look around to make sure no one is around to witness the brilliantly flawed idea crest in your brain. With the coast clear, you hoist yourself up the shelf.

A deadpan voice nearly makes you fall.

“Looking for something?” 

Yoongi stands a few feet away, head cocked to the side. Of course he’d find you in such a ridiculous position. Even through the blur of your peripheral vision, the harsh lines of his usual uniform clashes against the back drop of books. Dark jeans fitted over his thighs, dark button down rolled up his arms, and a pair of glasses that make him look hot. But you’re in no position to dwell when the risk of falling on your ass is so high.

“Nope, just getting in some exercise” you grunt, moving your foot to the shallow hold of the next shelf.

Yoongi moseys up behind you before continuing. “And climbing a decades old bookshelf is how you stretch your legs?”

“You smoke cigarettes, I climb old furniture. We all have our vices.”

Your foot slips from its perch, making you squeak before catching your balance. 

“Alright spider-monkey, that's enough.” His hands slide across your hip, fingers curved around the softest part of your waist as he helps you down. 

Distracted by the weight of him still on your hip, the heat of his chest a scorching across your back, you don’t even think to disparage him for the cheap Twilight reference. The few inches Yoongi has on you allows him to reach overhead to snag the copy you need with ease. But as you watch his hands close around the spine everything beyond fades to black; like the universe pinholes where you two stand.

“This one?” You feel the vibration of his words up and down your spine, warm breath tracing across the shell of your ear.

Body on autopilot, you turn to face Yoongi. His mouth moves, eyes scanning the book cover but every word deafens in a muddy haze. He doesn’t seem to realize his hand is still on your waist, or how he crowds you into the shelves; chest to chest, stomachs barely an inch apart.

“Huh?” you ask, tearing your eyes away from his mouth.

“I said, if you asked for this book earlier I could have gotten it for you.”

“Oh.”

“You okay?” he asks, stepping further into you. “You look a little flushed.”

The bastard smiles. A God’s honest smile like his thigh isn’t between your own, or he isn’t waiting for a reply while his fingers dig in beneath your ribs.

Just when you open your mouth to say something, Yoongi silences you with a firm squeeze of his hand. His head lowers until his breath ghosts along your chin. 

Then you’re kissing; lips sliding together easily like he anticipated it. The world shatters all around from just a few passes of his mouth across your own, the weight of his body flattening you against the bookshelf. 

The first hint of his tongue against the seam of your lips makes you gasp and Yoongi takes the opportunity to taste you. You melt under his attention. Head tipping back, shoulders bowing to take more, your senses flood with the remnants of coffee and something else; something so quintessential Yoongi your head spins. It lights a new flame in your veins, one burning with pure want.

A handful of his shirt pulls him closer. Yoongi follows easily but gets more than asked for when one of your hands tangles in the back of his hair, tugging until he’s tilting his chin the way you want. It’s a bad habit other dates have subtly complained about but a noise bubbles in his throat at the dig of your nails; responding with his own palm squeezing roughly across your ass until your hips meet his. 

The crash of the book near your feet is like a bucket of ice water.

“Oh my god,” you gasp. Jumping back proves futile as the shelf digs further into your spine. “I–”

Puffy lips and lowered eyes stare back at you, clear evidence that you haven’t hallucinated what just happened. Yoongi dips down to kiss you again but you slither out of his grip.

Forgetting the book on the tiled floor, you mumble an apology and flee back upstairs, beelining to the vacant restroom.

To your own mortification, your features mirror Yoongi’s; lips swollen, eyes glazed. Your sweater twisted around your torso clearly betraying your rendezvous in the stacks. Beads of sweat cling to your forehead and neck.

A few splashes of cold water help clear the fog in your brain but as it dissipates embarrassment sets in. Making out with a handsome man is one thing. Making out with the librarian assisting in the most important work of your life is an entirely different ordeal; one that can only spell trouble.

Pacing back and forth, the cool paper towel on the back of your neck helps calm your racing heart enough to leave the safety of the ladies room.

Try as you might to drown under piles of books, it’s useless. You pretend to read the same passages over and over but none of the words register. The kiss replays over and over and over again. You kissed Yoongi. Yoongi kissed you back. He tried to kiss you again when you pulled away.

The end of the day inevitably comes which means you have to face him whether you want to or not. But you won’t allow a single lapse of judgment to affect your work; a moment of weakness propelled by months of abstinence that just so happened to coincide with a surly librarian’s entrance into your life. You just needed to get it out of your system. If it hadn’t been Yoongi it would have been someone else. 

At least that’s what you tell yourself.

A glance at your watch informs you that today is the second day you’ll leave the library early. Rather than give into the stubborn instinct to stay, you decide putting as much distance between yourself and Yoongi is far better for your mental health. With squared shoulders and a raised chin, you head downstairs. 

Yoongi’s waiting behind the counter. He isn’t typing on his computer or scanning books. He watches every step you take, arms crossed in front as he leans forward like he’s eager for a confrontation. 

“Yoongi,” you say.

“Y/N.”

You use every fiber of will to maintain eye contact as you pass your stack over the counter. “I’ll need these same ones tomorrow.”

“Okay.” He nods. “And the kiss?”

“What kiss?” you croak.

Yoongi’s eyes blaze like you’re a new puzzle to be solved, like he wants to take you apart and find exactly what makes you tick. You feel naked. “The one where you—”

“Must have been someone else. Sorry. Have a good night!” You rush for the door before he can say another word.

Another morning is another day in the library, but this time your roommate begs to tag along. 

“Look, I’m not getting anything done on my thesis so maybe you’ll rub off on me,” Taehyung says.

Rolling your eyes, you step through the door he holds open. “I think you’ve had plenty of people rub off on you.”

Gasping with fake indignation, he catches up easily. “Are you calling me a slut?” 

“Yes.”

“Good, I wanted to make sure we were on the same page. Is that him?”

Yoongi and Jungkook are talking behind the counter. Jungkook’s hands wave wildly as he recounts whatever information to his boss while Yoongi listens with fake interest. Or that's what someone else might think. The subtle signs he cares are hidden in the details; the miniscule lift of shoulders, a cock of his head, and when Jungkook pouts in a way too ridiculous for a man his size, Yoongi hides a smile in the shake of his head.

“Yes.”

“And I’m the slut?” Taehyung scowls as you pinch his shoulder. “What? He’s a nerd’s walking wet dream.” 

“And he can hear you, so shut up.”

“Morning!” Jungkook calls on his way past with a cart full of books. 

He grins like he knows exactly what happened on the second floor yesterday but that can’t be true. Yoongi doesn’t seem like the type to kiss and tell. Only the type to kiss and tease you relentlessly for it when no one else is around to hear.

Taehyung’s attention immediately locks on him. You love your roommate, always have and, unfortunately, always will; but he is a slut and Jungkook is definitely his type. However, he’s on your turf and knows better than to fuck where you have to eat for the next few months. 

“Y/N, Y/N’s friend,” Yoongi says when you approach his desk. 

“Taehyung.” 

“Right,” Yoongi drawls, blinking lazily before sliding your books over and turning around to sort something on the opposite counter.

Taehyung, ever the gentleman, grabs the pile for you and follows upstairs. 

“Well he seems like a cup of sunshine,” Taehyung whispers. 

“Just because he isn’t fawning over you doesn’t mean he’s an asshole.”

“I’m very fawn-able, ask anyone,” your roommate argues as you approach the fifth floor. “Wait, what's this… How to Defeat Your Own Clone and Other Tips for Surviving the Biotech Revolution. This is the type of shit he’s giving you? You’re easier than I am.”

“Give me that.” You snatch the paperback out of his grip. “Stop being nosy.”

Taehyung lets you work in peace after that, disappearing to gather more of his own materials. Even in undergrad he’d never been one to sit still for long. But he still managed to get a spot doing an engineering thesis despite the constant changes in his attention.

After several hours of mind numbing typing you need a break, and another cup of coffee on someone else’s dime sounds perfect.

“I’m getting coffee.”

“Bring me some,” Taehyung says without looking up from his screen.

The staff lounge is nothing fancy. A couple small tables with plastic chairs tucked around, a cork board covered with fliers, and a white board stuck to the fridge scrawled upon with black dry erase marker. The coffee pot sits full in the machine, still hot to the touch. 

You pour two cups. Taehyung’s gets loaded with creamer cups until it’s closer to white than black while yours is sweetened to sickening perfection. When you try to take a sip, the liquid immediately burns your tongue. Too hot coffee is better than cold coffee but an ice cube would help make it more palatable.

Moving back to the fridge, you go to open the freeze but stop when the white board catches your attention again.

Most notes are chores or friendly reminders about time cards but almost half the board is dedicated to a back and forth.

‘Unofficial Employee of the Month: Jungkook’ 

A note in Yoongi’s tight script: ‘You don’t work here.’

‘That’s why it's unofficial!’ in what must be Jungkook’s messy handwriting.

‘You’re my official employee of the month. - Namjoon’

At the bottom is a crude drawing of stick figures, two tall smiling ones holding hands under a rainbow labeled ‘JK’ and ‘Joon’ and a comically shorter one with evil eyebrows surrounded by storm clouds and ‘yoongi :(’ overhead.

“Snooping for secrets?”

“Jesus Christ,” you jump, turning to face Yoongi. “Has anyone ever told you it’s rude to sneak up on people?”

“You’re in the staff lounge, there’s gonna be staff here.” Yoongi crosses to the coffee pot on the counter and pours himself a cup. He doesn’t add cream or sugar or anything else to lessen the bitterness. Cliche. “So, was bringing your boyfriend here your subtle way of letting me down?”

“You think Taehyung is my boyfriend?” You whirl around in shock. Yoongi raises a brow, prompting you to continue. “Jungkook is more his type than I am.”

Yoongi releases a pleased hum, eyes shining. “So no boyfriend then?”

“Nope.”

You’re shaking but don’t look away from his hungry gaze. Yoongi takes a step closer, and another and one more until you're pinned to the countertop and his mouth is on yours. 

This time, you're more aware of everything. The smell of his cologne, the tickle of his bangs along your forehead, all the tiny details that were muffled before. Yoongi’s lips are firm against your own, a little chapped but it only makes you hotter with each pass.

His mouth is everywhere; your chin, your jaw, peppering down your throat until he pushes aside the hem of your shirt and sets to work on the jut of your collarbone like he’ll never get a chance again. 

“Yoongi,” you hum on the first rake of teeth. 

He takes it as an invitation to dig in harder, sucking the skin until your spine threatens to break and you say his name again. Desperate for some kind of anchor, you knot your fingers back in his hair and pull. 

A throaty noise responds and the need to hear more rears its head. Yoongi who always watches with measured fascination undone by some light petting. The power is addictive. 

Legs spread, he presses in flat. The heat of his cock, rigid beneath the fabric of his jeans, teases across the seam of your own. You're technically still in public but the consequences concern you less than the knowledge that you’ll go mad if you don’t feel him. His arms circle your back, pulling you firmer against him, right to the edge of the linoleum counter.

Wedging a hand between your bodies, you manage to get his zipper undone while your tongue traces along his jaw. Yoongi angles his hips to help, curling into your palm when you cup him over the fabric of his boxers. Every press has him swelling harder. 

His hands reach under your shirt. Skin on skin, the rough calluses of his fingers trace your ribs, thumbs following the cup of your bra in a tease. It’s a simple touch but your own hands falter when he brushes a nipple. You melt into each other.

“Hey, Yoongi, do you know where—HOLY SHIT!”

Jungkook stops at the door, eyes wide, mouth wider. 

“Get out!” Yoongi barks. He’s trying his best to keep your body covered from the younger man’s view but even if Jungkook isn’t getting a full frontal he isn’t dumb enough not to realize what’s going on.

Yoongi shudders a few breaths. Head hung low, he tucks himself back into his pants without moving away. You’re already slipping down from your perch when he looks back up.

“I’m just gonna…go,” you mumble, scurrying out the door.

Jungkook waits outside, eyes still bugging out of his head but at least has the decency to pretend he didn’t catch you in the act.

Tugging your shirt down, you avoid his gaze. How far would you have let Yoongi go if Jungkook hadn’t interrupted? 

“Coffee?” Taehyung asks as you approach the table.

You know what you look like without a mirror. The same as yesterday with glassy eyes and bruised lips, clothes wrinkled. Thankfully, Taehyung is more interested in his modeling software than where you’ve been. 

“They were out.” 

With a sigh like he is personally victimized by the lack of caffeine, Taehyung collapses on the table and plays dead. But he perks up at the sound of footsteps approaching behind you.

“You left this in the break room,” Yoongi says, dropping a cup of coffee by your side before disappearing. 

You turn to follow his retreating for until he’s hidden back between the shelves. The back of his hair is still messy despite his attempt to fix it, same with the wrinkles in his shirt from your hands.

“I thought they were out?” Taehyung eyes you suspiciously when you look back at him.

Cradling the still hot cup in your hands, you avoid his gaze. “Shut up.”

“So you do have to sleep with someone to get a cup of coffee.” 

“I’m not sleeping with him,” you spit in a harsh whisper.

“Why not?”

“Because…”

Because what exactly? There isn’t a good reason other than the fact Jungkook was the king of cockblocks. You would have let Yoongi do just about anything he wanted and he seemed to be in agreement. But you’d rather die than admit that out loud.

“You are so smart and so incredibly stupid.” Taehyung rolls his eyes, rising to pack his things. “I need to pee.”

You point him in the direction of the bathrooms and get back to work.

When Taehyung returns minutes later he starts shoving his things in his bag. “I’m leaving.”

“Why?”

“This is like the epicenter of hot smart men and I refuse to suffer any longer.”

“You got Jungkook’s number,” you deadpan.

Taehyung can’t hide his own shit eating grin. “Yoongi gave it to me.”

“If you’re leaving, so am I.”

“Why?” your roommate whines. 

“Because I got you a hot date and that means you owe me dinner.”

“Technically it was Yoongi but I’ll concede.” Taehyung heaves his bag up. “Come now my dearest, we can still get happy hour if we hurry.” 

You reach in your own bag and toss him your keys. “Go wait in the car. I’ve gotta go grab another book real quick.”

“Whatever,” Taehyung says, mumbling something like ‘nerds’ under his breath as he heads downstairs.

You find Yoongi while on your way to his desk, already toting around the cart piled high with returns from the day. Several of the covers are Taehyung’s picks and somehow the knowledge they’ve spoken almost knocks you off kilter. Taehyung is a good wingman and that’s what worries you most.

“Hi,” he says, kneeling to put a book on a low shelf.

It shouldn’t have the effect it does but something about the way Yoongi looks up at you, on his knees, head tipped back, has your mind running wild with the image of him in the same position with both of you wearing far less clothing. Maybe if you weren’t interrupted in the staff lounge you’d have seen it in real life.

“Hi. Mind if I add these to the pile?” 

“Go ahead.”

The Stocking was Hung sits on top. You don’t wait around to see his reaction.

The temperature had steadily been increasing over the past weeks but this morning is the worst of all. That inescapable warmth fully seeded overnight and promised the comforting days of sweaters and pants are long gone.

Heat makes you lazy and fitful. In the early hours, long before you actually need to be awake, you stare up at the ceiling of your room. Not even a frigid shower helped the stickiness of your skin or laying still in your bed in nothing but one of Taehyung’s shirts and ratty shorts. It followed you everywhere until you left for the same brick building you spend more time at than at home.

Without thought, you throw on the first seasonally appropriate outfit in your closet; a thin dress that covers enough for the public but promises to keep you cool.

Yoongi seems to be taking the change in weather as well as you are. His usual attire is absent, nothing but a white shirt clinging to his torso. The pale skin of his forearms briefly catches your attention but you focus anywhere else to stop from rounding the desk and finishing what started upstairs.

You steel yourself and approach the desk, determined to act normal.

Familiar dark eyes flash up to greet you but Yoongi’s mouth doesn’t form any words. He just stares at you. You can feel the weight of his gaze on your shoulders, your neck, and then he pointedly keeps them trained on your eyes. Like he's willing to pretend yesterday didn’t happen. 

He doesn’t speak when he passes over the same pile of books as yesterday but you can feel him burn a hole in your back. Even after you climb up the stairs and out of sight, the prickling sensation you’re being watched follows.

You don’t get anything done. The words on the page might as well be another language as your mind races.

Yoongi didn’t give you an extra book today.

An endless list of potential explanations race through your mind. Maybe you’d been too forward with your choice. Maybe he’s gotten it out of his system, a quick tryst in the employee lounge enough to satiate his curiosity. Maybe because it’s the second time you’ve brushed him off. Even if it wasn’t your fault Jungkook stumbled in before anything worthwhile could happen. 

But he isn’t speaking to you and he isn’t giving you the random book you’ve come to look forward to every morning. 

Channeling the restless energy of overthinking, you take a lap around the floor. You pause to flip through random books as you zigzag through the stacks. Anything to take your mind off the unshakable tension sticking in the air like syrup.

Your laptop is in sleep mode by the time you reluctantly come back. Everything is as you left except a book you’ve never seen before sits on top of the open one you’d been reading.

There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom. 

A sticky note sticks up from the inside of the cover. A bolt of excitement shoots down your spine. When you flip it open a familiar handwriting stares back: ‘on the seventh floor’.

You hadn’t been gone too long but the fear of making him wait has you rushing up the stairs. Each step brings you closer to where he waits until you’re opening the bathroom door.

“Yoongi?” 

A hand wraps around your upper arm, yanking you in. Another hand silences a surprised shout before you realize it’s Yoongi and not a murderer pinning you to the interior of the door you just came through.

“Jesus, you scared me.” 

“Sorry,” he breathes. “It’s just not a good look for me to be up here.”

“Oh, really?” You smile. “And why is that?”

“This is my job.”

“Didn’t seem to stop you before.”

“Who says it’s stopping me now?”

He thumbs the strap of your dress, hooking under the thin material and dragging it down your arm. The heat and weight of Yoongi against you, touching you so simply, makes you vibrate. Yoongi moves into your neck, panting with a grind against your thigh. “I swear I don’t usually do this.”

You want to argue that you have two accounts that he does do this often, at least with you. But for someone who says they don’t, Yoongi is surprisingly natural. The tease prickling the end of your tongue fizzles out under his teeth across the curve of your shoulder, goosebumps blossoming along your back. 

A whimper unbecoming of an adult woman breaks the lullaby of summer air conditioner singing through the vents. You’re sweating under the cling of your dress, skin hot to the touch thanks to Yoongi’s attention; long fingers curved around your waist, thumbs skimming just under your breast.

“Could have fooled me.”

“This is a very nice dress.” His mouth bites down your neck, taking advantage of the new strips of skin the neckline unveils.

“That’s all it takes?” you pant from the wet of his tongue. “A pretty dress?”

“If you think,” he whispers into your ear. “I’m doing this because of your dress then you really haven’t been paying attention.”

The dark locks of his hair are too alluring to resist, tempting one of your own hands to scratch against the tip of his spine when Yoongi rolls against you again. A firm tug brings him to your mouth, lips molding to one another in a searing kiss. You can taste the coffee from the lounge and the faintest hint of cigarette smoke, like he thought to hide it before asking you to follow him.

“How long? How long have you wanted this?”

Yoongi hooks one of your thighs higher, savoring the heat of your core against the crotch of his pants with a slow thrust. “Since you came in and busted my balls over not having that archived manuscript when the website said we did.”

You remember that day. Patience thin from Taehyung’s loud overnight guest, you stormed into the library looking to take it out on a photocopy of the manuscript only for the only copy to be AWOL. Yoongi became the surrogate for your rage, his eyes burning into your skull as questioned how he could let it happen.

The next day was when he started adding books to your stack.

“That was months ago.”

“I’m a patient guy.”

You want him naked; ache to catalog what he’s hidden underneath bulky sweaters and loose button ups over the past few months. But that idea has to wait for somewhere less risky. You settle for dipping your hand under his shirt, tracing your fingers over the elastic of his boxers peeking from the waistband of his pants.

Attempting to hide the effect he has, you loop your fingers in his belt loops and pull him even closer so your face is hidden in the crook of his neck. “There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom? A little on the nose, don’t you think?”

“Like The Stocking was Hung is any better?” Yoongi sighs as your mouth ghosts over the rising vein webbing the side of his throat.

“Hey!” you object, rising to face him. “I thought you’d appreciate it after that mothman book.”

“I appreciate you complimenting my dick plenty.”

Yoongi doesn’t let you go, hands palming at the swell of your ass the entire way from the door to the counter. He’s got one hand curved along your jaw, thumb hooked around your chin and his teeth bruising your lower lip. The edge of granite digs in your spine but not for long as he lifts you and settles on his knees to dive under your skirt. 

He kisses up your calf, tongue snaking across the knob of your knee then the plush of your thigh. Just when you feel a puff of breath against the damp crotch of your panties, Yoongi falls to repeat the same path against your other leg. 

You don’t suffer for long. Pooling the excess fabric around your waist, Yoongi blinks up from between your thighs. The pink of his tongue follows the edge of your panties, wetting the fabric more until it clings obscenely. 

He pushes his glasses up to rest on the top of his head, keeping the mess of gray and black hair out of his eyes before diving back down.

His tongue lathers over your covered slit with a groan. “Taste better than I imagined.”

“You thought about this?”

“Couldn’t stop thinking about it. On my desk, yours, against that fucking bookshelf.” Yoongi punctures each word with more wet kisses against your core. “In my car, my bed. Everywhere.”

A cool breath has your thighs squeezing around his head thanks to the erotic combination of his spit and your own fluids drenching your panties. “Is this all you think about?”

“I had to come up here and jerk off yesterday because I couldn’t stop thinking about your hands.”

Your panties are pulled to the side before you can indulge in the new visual blooming on the edge of consciousness. “Yoongi.”

Eyes closed, his mouth circles your clit, tongue gently stroking you to life. Every pass against the sensitive bundle of nerves has your thighs squeezing around his head. 

The first prod of fingers makes Yoongi’s hold on the crook of your knee tighten. He stretches you back open, eyes following the way you suck him inside; coating his spindly digits with more arousal each time.

“A-ah,” you shake. “Please.”

Yoongi chances a glance up at your face, the needy sheen in your eyes, the way your mouth gapes, and decides to take mercy. 

He latches back onto your clit. Yoongi groans as you tug his hair, knocking his glasses to the ground. The pace he works your remains lethargic, savoring the kick of your hips until you grind against his mouth. 

Throaty groans vibrate against your cunt, tightening the muscles along the inside of your thighs. Neither of you are doing a good job muffling yourselves but if it’s between getting caught and having him stop then you’ll deal with the consequences when they come.

“Oh, Yoongi.” Your chest pulls tight; spurred on by the sounds of Yoongi bullying your insides, his mouth smacking against your folds. “I’m— oh, oh, oh!”

The rough crook of his fingers sends you flying. Only the pressure of his shoulders keep you from slipping off the counter as you explode against his mouth. Euphoria rushes your veins, licks of pleasure overwhelming. Every muscle quivers as Yoongi works you through until you use his hair to pull him away.

He’s quick on his feet. You’re still recovering as Yoongi pushes your bra down and draws one of your nipples into his mouth, licking and sucking until you pull his hair again. Eyes cinched tight, face wet, you force his pants open then his underwear until Yoongi is almost as exposed as you are; pretty in your palm, sticky and hot to the touch.

But it’s not enough to feel him in your hand, you need to feel him inside. To fill you up where you sit hollow and aching without his fingers to provide a sliver of relief. “Fuck me.”

Yoongi doesn’t tease, has no quip about how needy you are. He keeps his mouth on your chest and uses his hands to grab something out of his pocket. It happens so fast you don’t even realize the condom is on until he nudges between your legs.

Your nails dig into his back, breathing through the initial stretch is the only way you stay quiet. Yoongi hides himself back in your neck, strained noises clawing out of his throat.

Yoongi isn’t gentle. Not caution or waiting. Months of push and pull destroy any desire for him to treat you as something fragile. He rushes into desperately, forcing your palm flat against the mirror behind you for some semblance of stability.

“God,” he grunts. “You’re incredible.”

You whimper a quiet acknowledgement, too fucked out to blush under his praise; pulling Yoongi closer until he’s scooping his hands underneath your ass, thrusting into you over and over. His mouth finds yours. Greedy. Hungry. 

It’s Yoongi who struggles to stay quiet. Even through the kiss he moans loud enough you feel it in your throat. You listen to them all, twisting the hand knotted in his hair to hear the whine you’ve quickly become obsessed with.

“Should have done this sooner,” your back arches and Yoongi’s mouth slips back down. 

“I tried. But you kept ignoring me.”

“I wasn’t—fuck—ignoring you.” Yoongi is everywhere. His taste on your mouth, cologne burned in your nose. The feel of him all over your body. “Shit.”

He fucks you harder to prove a point, hand slipping down to rub your clit. Your second orgasm glows on the edges. If Yoongi keeps playing with you, stretching you in half on his cock and biting a mark into your breast, you know you’ll come.

You focus on breathing. Letting it come to you instead of chasing it, overthinking it to the point it evades you. It’s easier than usual. Yoongi doesn't leave room for anything else beyond feeling good. 

“Oh my god,” you whisper as the cord tightens. 

Everything turns white hot, pleasure tearing through your muscles and ripping them to shreds. You convulse in Yoongi’s hold, only pinned down by his hips fucking you brutally. Nerves shot, Yoongi babbles praise in your ear but it's indecipherable from the headrush.

Yoongi follows you over the edge a few strokes later, twitching inside you until he stills. His hips give a few arrhythmic bucks as he fills the condom with his load. 

There's something nastier about clothed sex. The way sweat makes your clothes cling tighter, the rush of needing each other so badly you can’t be bothered to do more than pull things to the side. 

You feel dirty but in a good way. Yoongi kisses across the apples of your cheeks, your chin, your forehead, even your brows, but never returns to your lips. Each leaves you more frustrated than the last, muscles twitching beneath and head turning at the last second to try and meet his mouth. 

Tricking you with a brief connection, he laughs when you chase his lips as he dodgers back. But a pout and whine bring him back into your orbit.

He cleans you up with paper towels, wiping away the mess between your thighs with something akin to disappointment. But he doesn’t complain as he fixes your clothes and then his own. Muscles like jelly, you fall into his side when he helps you down from the counter. 

With a kiss to your temple, “Let's get out of here.”

“Morning, Yoongi.” You smile as you walk up to his desk.

A set of dark eyes rise to greet you, taking the cup of coffee you so graciously offer before smiling as well. “Good morning.”

Jungkook gawks like he’s never seen you two speak before. Round eyes bounce between you and Yoongi as if it’s a tennis match instead of a normal conversation. Probably because Yoongi was less than subtle when he pulled you out of the building yesterday, telling him to call Namjoon if anything came up.

Or maybe because you’re wearing one of Yoongi’s shirts.

You discovered much about the mysterious librarian overnight. He’d taken you back to his apartment; a perfect extension of himself decorated with dark furniture and more books than anyone could possibly read. Yoongi owned a collection of vinyl records that rivaled his book collection, he was a great cook, and he was studying to take the entrance exam for law school. 

After you were wined and dined, Yoongi dedicated hours between your legs. On his couch, against the massive bookcase in his living room, between the sheets of his bed. 

He also had a kink for eating you out while you explained your thesis in precise detail.

You’d only been allowed to leave when Yoongi was getting ready for work, not that you'd put up much argument. 

You make a scene of sorting through the stack he slides over. It’s not that you don’t trust Yoongi. But now that you’ve had a taste, you’re addicted to his presence. But he unfortunately can’t follow you upstairs so you savor the time now. 

“One of my books is missing,” you say.

“Oh, right.”

Yoongi passes over an unfamiliar copy.

Maybe He Just Likes You

And the blue sticky note attached, with his handwriting. ‘Dinner when you're done?’

Taglist: @tomodachiii @cvpidyunho @miniseokminnies @ddaengpotate @arycutie @gaebestie @primoppang @gyuguys @mine-gyu @doremifasire @missminhoe @toplinehyunjin @crvs4vldtn @prettygyuuu @sliceofwoozi @dokyeomkyeom @yoonguurt

© highvern. copying/reuploading/translating my work anywhere is strictly prohibited.

[hareofhrair]

I wanted to put this one the previous post but it was long and this is a tangent but- In regards to the hypothetical "If House was my doctor I'd just tell him everything. Rip to all his other patients but I'm different."

The whole point of the show is that you wouldn't. Like a major theme of the show is about how the various shames and stigmas and habitual dishonesties that plague our societies both metaphorically and literally kill us. "Everybody lies" isn't just a cynical catchphrase, it's the shows thesis. Because of how we operate as a society, everyone feels compelled to suppress and hide things and that inevitably leads to suffering.

And there are plenty of episodes where this is obvious, ie "I cheated on my partner and gave them an STD." But there's also much more of "This little girl went through early puberty and because of the way our society stigmatizes women's bodies her single father never discussed puberty with her and she was so afraid and ashamed of her new pubic hair that she tried to shave it without telling anyone and mutilated herself, leading everyone to think she'd been abused and throwing off the whole case until House figured out her hormones were going crazy because she'd been exposed to her father's low T medicine, which he hid because of how our society regards masculinity, which he started taking because he began dating a younger woman (because of shame stemming from our society's unrealistic expectations wrt sex in relationships) which he was hiding from his kids, because of shame regarding our societies toxic views on monogamy."

A particular episode stands out as a really good example. S06E15 "Private Lives," which aired in 2010 but was fairly prescient about where social media was heading. The patient was a blogger who documented literally every moment of every day for her followers. She made it very clear she left *nothing* out, from her and her boyfriend's sex life to, eventually, asking for feedback from her followers on whether to get her heart valve replaced with one from a pig or a "vegan" plastic one. She handed the whole blog over to House as soon as he took the case and the team poured through the whole thing. Surely this is proof you're wrong about everybody lying, the team says to House. She's give us her whole life and you still can't find out what's wrong! Spoiler, it turned out the crucial symptom that allowed House to put it all together? Was the one thing she *didn't* include in the blog- Her bowel movements. Shame and stigma around talking about *poop* nearly killed this woman. It was also a detail that should have been picked up immediately by a normal doctor, who would have asked about her bowel movements as part of the standard checklist of diagnostic questions. But this woman was so confident that she'd laid out every relevant detail of her life in her blog, she wouldn't answer those questions, obfuscating what she was actually ashamed of underneath a pile of curated, rationalized, narritivized junk she could pretend was proof of a lack of shame and not simply a skill at creative writing.

When I say "I'd just tell House everything" is ridiculous, I don't just mean "well, because of the way the show works, you HAVE to be hiding SOMETHING." I mean literally, you- because you are a human being- are ashamed of *something.* And because you are a human being, the more info you try to give House the more deeply you will bury whatever it is you're actually ashamed of. And, because of the way the show works, that *will* end up being the key to what's making you sick.

[acciojaeyun]

under the web | p.sh.

PAIRING. officemate!sunghoon x fem!reader

SUMMARY. there's something about the way people seemed to scurry about whenever park sunghoon from the IT department would be coming to whichever area of the office. that's something that would be all because of you, his lovely officemate. your constant teasing and mockery of that one thing you know about park sunghoon made it seem to reach the headlines, and park sunghoon was determined to let you know that you're not the boss here.

CONTENTS. smut, some angst, some fluff. smut with plot. not beta-read. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT.

SMUT WARNINGS. making out, humiliation, implied dom vs. dom dynamics, dirty talk, slight exhibition, curses, virginity, unprotected sex (please practice safe s), reader is a jealous menace (a bit stalker-ish), mentions of manga, mentions of other members, if i forgot some, lmk!

WORD COUNT. 4.1k

AUTHOR'S NOTE. this will be my first ever sunghoon fic after a long while! i did take a hugeee slump after writing ( and had never been so inspired to write oneshots until now. and i'm such a sucker for glasses hoon and this is the product of it. thank you so much for reading! <3

MY LIBRARY. REQUESTS ARE OPEN!

It was an annoying morning.

Or well, for you, it was annoying. For you had to witness a group of interns gushing over the "guy with rolled sleeves and glasses making his coffee," and you scoffed when they mentioned that he looked like an Americano drinker, which, in their words, made him more attractive.

You rolled your eyes, the guy that they were talking about never liked Americano. In fact, his black instant coffee had the same amount, if not more, of cream added to his stainless steel coffee tumbler.

How did you know about that, though?

One thing about you was that you knew Park Sunghoon very well. He was the Class Salutatorian of Batch 2023, bachelor's in Information Technology. It was pretty impressive, if you were to ask everyone else. Park Sunghoon was immediately hired by the company that you are working in, and while you can say that Sunghoon did deserve both the position and the benefits, you couldn't help but feel like he didn't deserve the attention men and women alike were pouring him.

Of course, if anything, it should be you showering him attention. But, you wouldn't do that. Not when you're Y/N Y/L/N. You're the darling of the company, the sweetheart, so to speak. Because even though you cannot be of the same level as that of talent, knowledge, and skill which Sunghoon possess along with his looks, you were a pretty hardworking person.

Being in the Marketing Department also had its hardships, and while you still pray for the day commoners stop shunning down your bachelors, you are able to supply yourself with your needs and wants just by exerting everything you've learned in business and people-speaking.

But there was something about Park Sunghoon that makes him your own thesis.

Your own skill in building relationships didn't seem to work on him as much as you had hoped. Okay, let's admit it, you had taken a liking into Park Sunghoon. The quiet IT Specialist that exuded looks that were enough to make women fall to their knees.

A little bit of chit-chat here and there, some subtle glances and light touches, you were still far from the starting line. Park Sunghoon still hadn't reciprocated at least a fraction of your advancement towards him.

And by now, you're almost as helpless as it could be as you're munching on your own lunch, eyes over the cubicle of the IT department, watching how Sunghoon eats his sandwich, gaze never leaving his computer as he typed in codes with his other hand.

"How's the thing with Mr. Cold guy doing?" Sunoo would nudge your side as he caught you staring at Sunghoon for the nth time today.

You rolled your eyes for the nth time today as well, "He's so annoying."

"Now, he's annoying? Please, Y/N, cut yourself some slack. You need to get humbled, too, you know?" The blonde boy laughed as he sipped on his coffee.

"I just don't know how he hasn't caught up on it yet," you groaned, stabbing your fork on the penne pasta that you had on your lunchbox, "I've been doing a lot! How come he's still oblivious!"

"That, or he knows and just doesn't want to do anything."

You furrowed your eyebrows at Sunoo, "What do you mean?"

"Please, you're practically throwing yourself at him, it's a miracle how he hasn't caught up on yet."

"Or, he's a virgin."

Sunoo laughed, "Maybe,"

A loud thud on your desk was heard throughout the department as you placed your lunchbox down, "I'll talk to him."

"Again?" Sunoo looked at you, bewildered. "And, while he's working?"

"What, can't he handle a little distraction?"

"With you almost pushing your boobs towards his face? I think not."

"You know what? Fuck you." You flipped your best friend off, making him laugh as he ate his tteokbokki happily, ready to see you in your downfall yet again.

You, on the other hand, were determined. Straightening your slacks and blouse, grabbing your laptop, you made your way over to the IT Department, greeting everyone along the way while making a beeline straight to Sunghoon.

"Hi," you greeted.

Sunghoon hummed, his eyes still not leaving his screen.

"I mean to come to you to help me with a feature on the application that we're using?"

The boy glanced at you, his chewing coming to a slow halt.

"What about it?"

"Oh, I was hoping that I can access the Network's files? I've forgotten my flash drive at home and I only have access to some of the files but it would be in Sunoo's disk."

Sunghoon flashed you an impressed look at your terms, at the bare minimum.

"It'd be against company policy to allow you to access other people's disks without their consent, Ms," Sunghoon cleared his throat, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, "and besides, aren't you friends with Mr Kim, anyway? Why wouldn't you ask him directly?"

"Uh, well..." you trailed off, "well, Sunoo also has the copy of this file on his flash drive, and coincidentally, he has also forgotten it at home!"

The boy raised an eyebrow at you. He was not buying it, you thought.

But your thoughts were proven wrong as Sunghoon swivelled in his chair, clicking on the multiple tabs open until he had manipulated the system for the time-being upon your request.

Your hands glanced on his hands, so dainty, long, and pretty. You wondered how it would feel around your neck, or in your pussy.

"It'll be open only for your access, Ms," Sunghoon said, looking up at you, "I'll be resetting it to company's default after forty-five minutes. Would that be enough time for you to get your files?"

You nodded, "Yes, thank you,"

"Do you have anything else for me to help with?" Sunghoon looked at you with a raised brow, making you blush.

"N-No, not that I know of, thank you, Sunghoon," you smiled at him.

He merely nodded before opening his coding software, clearly blocking you out from all his senses as he returned to eating his sandwich and work.

You pursed your lips, inhaling a large breath as you excused yourself from his cubicle, greeting yet another group of people acknowledging your presence as you made your way out of their department.

You were not expecting what you are seeing.

Not at all.

Whatever it was, there seems to be a glitch in the system as you also had an access to Sunghoon's drive.

You see, it was not your fault you were a bit nosy over your crush. You had taken a liking in him, and maybe, you think, there may be some stuff about him in his drive that could let you know a little more about him.

If not him, then, maybe, technology, his trusted friend, could help you.

You've seen his curriculum vitae, all the data he's working with, his clients, as well as a folder of his personal stuff which included torrented movies.

You laughed, his degree really has his perks.

You were so close to clicking off the movie folder named "O", but as you clicked on the next folder, named "P," you gasped at the number of porn videos were downloaded into the folder.

And all of them had the same theme: office sex.

It maybe too much, but in your mind, it made sense, when you were noticing how each of the female partners had the same features as you. Smirking to yourself, you glanced a look at the IT Specialist, bingo.

Surprised would be an understatement when Sunghoon entered the pantry as he went through his usual routine: leave his things at his desk, make his creamy coffee, work, leave to buy Subway for lunch, work, leave at 5:30 PM sharp.

He was surprised when the first people in the pantry left as he entered the room, furrowing his eyebrows when he heard faint words such as, "porn," "boundaries," and "couldn't he have had downloaded it in his own laptop?"

Now, Sunghoon may have been overthinking. His quiet life at work was already enough for him. But there was something bugging him for the first time in his life as he placed water in his stainless cup, especially when after making his coffee, no one would even dare look at him as he made his way to his cubicle, men and women, alike, swivelling their chairs to move farther from him, as if he were a plague.

Sunghoon rolled his eyes, it was getting to his nerves.

And if it weren't for Jake, his only friend in the department, who initially swivelled his chair away form Sunghoon, but then decided to swivel back as Sunghoon didn't even stand up for lunch, who told him about the rumours that spread about him, he wouldn't have known, and there was only one person who would have accessed his files.

You.

He snickered at the story Jake was telling him, and left Jake to his imagination whether the story was true or not, only giving him a shrug when the older did try to confirm to him.

"Believe what you want," Sunghoon responded, typing aggressively on his keyboard, "besides, I think you have, since you initially scooted away from me."

"Look, man," Jake scooted closer, whispering, "if it's not true, I could tell it to them, you know? I don't want them to think of you as some horny teenager who doesn't know about work boundaries."

"As if they're going to believe you," Sunghoon curtly responded before pressing a key harshly before looking at his friend, "if it came from Y/N, no one would even bat an eye at you."

"Y/N? Why her?"

"Only she had access to my files yesterday. Wouldn't it be too much of a coincidence if the story only spread now?" He chuckled, amused.

"So, it's true?"

Sunghoon shrugged again.

"Are you going to do something to address it?"

"Address it? What for? They already think I'm some horny dude, anyway."

"Well," Jake licked his lips, "just send me the stashes next time, too, okay?"

Sunghoon laughed.

Your plan was working.

A lot of people had taken their distances from Park Sunghoon. Making you think you're progressing at your plan to keep people away from him.

You can't help it. As long as there were hindrances in your way towards Sunghoon, you think there would be little chances to make your advances to him. You had yet to tell Sunoo, but you know that he was already aware of the rumour, and he would ask you about it after his client events.

So, while everyone had left Sunghoon alone in the pantry, that was your cue to enter the pantry. Making your way as calmly as possible to the counter as possible, you placed your food on the microwave, heating your breakfast as Sunghoon was stirring his drink in his cup.

"I never took you as the guy," you sighed, faking sympathy, getting more annoyed as you never got any reaction from the boy.

"I was expecting more from you, Mr. Salutatorian, I'm sure you know about policy since you were so high and mighty about it when I tried to get into Sunoo's files," you continued, watching his every reaction.

But he remained stoic. And that irked you.

You were about to open your mouth when the microwave had beeped, making you jump and take your food, frustrated over the fact that Sunghoon was ignoring you. Forgetting that it was still hot and you didn't retrieve the mittens beside it, you burned your fingers, finally getting Sunghoon's attention.

He discarded his coffee and immediately went his way over to you, grabbing a hold of your hand before examining your fingers, his eyes never leaving it as he tried to suck on it in attempts of both soothing the wound and seducing you.

Your breath hitched, making you look at him. What the hell was he doing?

"S-Sunghoon?"

He smirked at you as he pushed your fingers to his mouth, wetting your pointer finger with his warm tongue, only for him to retract it and swirl it on the tip of it.

"There's one menace between the two of us," Sunghoon whispered as he pulled away, leaning in to you, "and it's not gonna be you."

You let out a breath you didn't know you held as he pulled away and made his way out of the pantry.

Weeks later, you found yourself mad at Park Sunghoon.

Because after the incident at the pantry, he seemed to be hovering in your space more times than you would like. And while it did seem the best thing for you, it wasn't. For Sunghoon was not only hovering, but he made sure his presence was made known whenever he was around.

Holding on your waist, rubbing his crotch against your bum, rolling his sleeves whenever he knew you looked at him – while keeping his unbothered expression at his face.

Other than that, you were thinking he was losing his game as another person had suddenly took a liking into you. Food in carton boxes at your table by the morning you come in to work, and while you had hoped that it were him, your hopes were shut down as fifteen minutes after you had arrived from work, only had then Sunghoon, too.

Flowers were also hard to miss every week. There was a different flower every week, the whole department gushing whenever you grab a stem on your desk. And while you had hoped it was Sunghoon, again, you looked at his desk and see him in his natural habitat: working and face straight to the computer.

By this time, you had grown infuriated. Because you felt like he was toying with you. Especially when he was not paying you any attention at the Thanksgiving Party your office had held after reaching more than the targeted quarterly sales, and it was because of you! Why wasn't he giving you any attention?

Blame it on the alcohol in your system, and your innate drive to prove something to Sunghoon, a trait of yours that you have acquired overtime, you made your way towards the guy who was alone at the bar, nursing his on the rocks with his finger dancing around the rim of the glass.

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?" you spat, annoyed.

Sunghoon turned on his seat, smirking at you, "For being the best employee?"

"What else!"

He chuckled, taking a sip on his drink, "Congratulations, princess,"

You scoffed, "That's it?"

He grinned, "What, you'd want me to kneel for you?"

You were stunned. "You know what? Whatever, Sunghoon, I feel like I'm just a game to you, anyway."

And maybe that's what did it for Sunghoon, because the moment you uttered those words, you found yourself being pulled by your wrist outside of the ballroom you were in by none other than Park Sunghoon himself.

"Let go of me, Sunghoon!" you said as you tried to escape from his grasp.

But Sunghoon did not budge, he was determined on making you regret what you say. He pushed the fourteenth floor button, the floor where he was staying, and even though it took quite a while to get to the floor, Sunghoon didn't even try to lay his hands on you, it was better for him to do it on his bed, anyway.

Because you deserved it.

The moment the elevator doors opened, you found yourself being pulled to his room, with heavy breaths as he discarded his suit jacket on the couch, he turned around and met you in a passionate kiss, surprising both you and Sunghoon.

Ah, if there was one thing you didn't know about Sunghoon? Was the fact that he was a virgin. He never had any relationships in the past, and it had only been you whom he was very attracted by. So, it was bound to happen, perhaps. Sunghoon giving you his virginity in the hopes of you reciprocating his feelings.

But Sunghoon was a realistic man, of course, he knew that he was just your own entertainment. Having a lot of suitors here and there, he knew he had to step up his game.

That meant, letting you see through his drive because he was scared of doing the first move of asking you out on a proper date, because everyone was always first in doing so.

A few occurrences later, Sunghoon had decided on levelling his courtship up by bringing you food to your table the moment he gets to work. His bag still on his hand as he ordered your favourite meal as he sped placing it on your table before making his coffee.

Sunghoon had started realising that you liked flowers, so he had brought it upon himself to at least give you flowers every week, keeping it anonymous before he finally musters enough confidence to tell you that it was him who was giving you the gifts.

Not Jake, not Jay, and most certainly not Heeseung.

So, he hopes he had translated all of his misunderstood feelings into the kiss, cupping your jaw as he pushes his tongue in your mouth, swallowing the moan that you had blessed him.

"You drive me so fucking crazy, Y/N," he groans into the kiss, "accusing me of playing with you when you were the one who started this in the first place." He trails off, his lips pressing onto your mouth up and down before stopping by the skin near your collarbones for him to suck.

You let out a whimper, too lost in the feeling of his lips on your skin, "You drive me so fucking crazy, too," you start, letting your head fall back to have the boy kiss more of your skin, "I don't know what's on your mind most of the time." Sunghoon had found your sweet spot below your ear, making you gasp.

The boy hummed, wrapping his hands around your waist, pulling your body flush against his, slowly rolling his hips forward so you could feel his hard cock pressed against you, "Well, it's about time you know that you take over the expanse of my mind, princess."

You were already soaking wet at this point, basking in how Sunghoon looked today, you swear you could feel yourself salivating over how he presents himself. You pull his face away from your neck, locking your lips in an uncoordinated kiss. "I need you, Sunghoon."

Sunghoon groaned, kissing you for a moment longer before abiding to his girl's needs. His cock was aching, and you needed him. It was time to cut the chase.

"My needy little slut," Sunghoon growls as he teased you by rubbing your clit over your panties, and when he slid his hands through her folds, he was met by pleasing wetness, making him chuckle, "You've been trying to fool everyone with how much of a sweetheart you are, angel," he hummed, rubbing his nose on the crook of your neck, "but you really are a menace. Wanting her Sunghoon to give all of his attention to her,"

"Y-Yes," You moaned, grinding your hips on his fingers, "M-My Sunghoon,"

And when he motions to remove his glasses, you tap his wrist and shook your head, making him realise you never want his glasses off, making him chuckle.

"You liked hearing it, don't you?" Sunghoon inquires as he pushes you to the bed, pulling you over the edge of it as he bites on your panties, pulling it down to pool on your ankles, "You love the idea of me being yours, don't you, Y/N?" He smiles as he sinks his finger in you, curling as you clench around you.

"Yes, I do - shit, Sunghoon!" You managed to say, "I did everything because I only want you! Only you!"

Sunghoon docks his head in between your thighs to hide the blush creeping to his cheeks before pressing hot kisses into the expanse of your inner thighs, fluttering light kisses as his lips made its way to your folds, kissing it before he gives kitten licks to your bud.

Your back arches, satisfying Sunghoon with his little experimentation. He, then, soon, pushes another finger in as he started swirling his tongue on your clit, alternating between licking his tongue flat from your hole up to your clit, making you thrash your legs everywhere.

He moaned when you clamped your legs around his face, urging him to continue his movements, "M' close, Hoon," you whispered, one of your hands leaving the sheets to tangle in his newly-cut hair, and with one more curl of Sunghoon's fingers, you were already tumbling over the edge, your cries of his name falling from your mouth.

"God, you're so beautiful, Y/N," Sunghoon whispers as he cleans you off with his tongue, and when he was done, he pushes himself up as he unbuckles his belt and removes his trousers, discarding the article at some part of the room.

"I wanna ride you," You confess, making Sunghoon blush again, "oh, are you... is this your first time?" You asked, your eyes widening slightly as Sunghoon replied with a nod.

Your heart almost burst at his confession, making you sit up and pull him into a slow kiss, "I want to see how you'd look so damn sexy sitting on my cock, Y/N," Sunghoon breathes, "but I want- I need-"

"Take your time with me, Hoon."

A breath escapes you when Sunghoon finally gets you out of your dress, his hands immediately pinching at your nipple. And without another word, Sunghoon lifts your leg and lines himself to your entrance. And with a heavy breath in, he pushes in slowly, the roll of his hips feeling delicious until he's fully buried inside you, low moans heard throughout the room.

"I, fuck, Y/N," Sunghoon starts, groaning instead as you clench around him. Sunghoon hovers over you, his arms on either side of your head before resting his forehead against yours so he could look into your eyes, "God, I love you so much, Y/N."

Before Sunghoon ever regrets he had confessed out of nowhere, you had already pushed your lips on his hungrily, meeting his thrusts, you let out a whine as Sunghoon placed your legs over his shoulders, reaching deeper of you, the same time he rubs slow circles on your clit in time with his harsh thrusts.

"God, you feel so fucking amazing, Y/N," he breathes, earning a chuckle from you as you say, "You're fucking me so good, Hoon,"

Sunghoon smiles at your continuous use of his nickname, before his eyebrows furrow as he lets out a breathless moan as he hit your g-spot, making you squeal, "Jesus, I'm not gonna last much longer!" you say, and you were quick to wrap your legs around his waist, aiming to feel him closer.

"Me either, darling," he whispers, "come with me, please?"

And with a few more thrusts, you feel yourself coming on him, your toes curling, back arching, eyes almost rolling at the back of your head, as your nails rake down Sunghoon's back from his nape. Your walls clench around his cock, making him also reach his climax. He cuts your moans as Sunghoon pulls you to him for a hungry kiss as he empties himself in you.

He slows his thrusts down as he helps you come down from your highs, his lips attached again to your jaw down to your neck, peppering light kisses. And sooner, Sunghoon pulls out and rolls onto his back, his arms around your waist to make you roll on top of him.

A silence was heard in the room as you mindlessly traced irregular shapes on the expanse of Sunghoon's pale skin. He feels like his heart is about to explode from mixed emotions, having the girl of his dreams on top of him, his virginity in your hands – but, at the end of the day, he's unsure about your feelings for him.

However, one thing's for sure: you were all Sunghoon had ever wanted and needed, no matter how much the world can prevent him from doing so.

"I mean every word I said," Sunghoon whispers, kissing your hair, a silent affirmation to the thousand words running in your head.

You giggled, "I feel like I'd look good bouncing on your cock, too, Sunghoon."

"N-Not that.." Sunghoon blushed, "I am really crazy for you, Y/N, but you know, we could just pretend it never happened and think this is a one time thing."

"That's so unfair of you," you say, looking up and leaning your chin on his chest, "because I'd rather have you bringing over lunch and flowers every time if that meant having you every day."

Sunghoon visibly relaxed, smiling at you warmly, "So, it's forever."

"It is."

© acciojaeyun, 2024.

[tardis--dreams]

"Borderline plagiarism" is the scariest thing anyone's ever said about one of my papers but turns out you can still get a B for something like that so idek anymore

[jukednuked]

ROOMMATE! WANDERER having to put up with you after Nahida made him share his peaceful home, said it'll help him live in the human world

ROOMMATE! WANDERER reconsidering his life choices whenever you talk to him about the most irrelevant things. he could've been a god by now... and here he is, unwillingly listening to why sunsettias are 'goated'

ROOMMATE! WANDERER coming home to find you making him a cup of tea, it would've been a nice gesture if you didn't accidentally pour salt into it, thinking that it was sugar to piss him off because he doesn't like sweet things. how do you fail a job twice?

ROOMMATE! WANDERER getting soothed by you after he had a nightmare involving his past. it felt kind of nice, just sitting in silence and having you softly stroking his knuckles with your thumb. he'll never admit that to anyone though

ROOMMATE! WANDERER 'inconveniently' finding more reasons to see you. oh, his hat is lost? you're the first suspect. he needs some extra pages for his thesis? won't you be nice and share? you feel sick? he can stay at home today and tend to you, it's just that he doesn't trust you with a fever (fake, liar liar pants on fire)

ROOMMATE! WANDERER going out with you more frequently, whether you have errands to run or just some grocery shopping. he says he just has free time and knows how clumsy you get so he'll help. (he got a scolding from Nahida for skipping classes but you dont have to know that)

ROOMMATE! WANDERER having a hard time to fall asleep after letting his thoughts wander for too long. not knowing what to do, he silently carried you to his bed and held onto your sleeping figure tightly for some reassurance. he'll just tell you in the morning that you were scared and crept into his bed in the middle of the night but you just forgot

ROOMMATE! WANDERER becoming your best friend. it was not difficult to see that the both of you were inseparable, many could find you both in the Akademiya laughing at scholars who were too late to turn in their theses, or in Lambad's tavern eating lunch and bullying eachother affectionately

ROOMMATE! WANDERER getting asked by Nahida how it is to live with another person. his answer was very vague, just a 'its okay' and 'tolerable' thrown here and there. no way he'll admit to anyone that agreeing to this might have been the best decision in his life

A/N: WHY IS IT SO LONG😧 i blame wanderer fixation also had this cute idea for a fic of wanderer BUT IM SO BAD AT WRITING FICS. ONLY HEADCANONS

[blakbonnet]

HAPPY FOX DAY TO ALL THOSE WHO CELEBRATE! Today's a special special AOTW because our featured author this week is best beloved @asneakyfox 🦊

Fox, I genuinely think you're one of the greatest fandom philosophers of our times, and what you write is so much more than regular old meta. Because we're all playing in the sandbox here and while a lot of us lose sight of canon sometimes, you have all four feet firmly planted in the lovely source material we've been provided with. And you don't stop there, you try to actively engage with the community, especially making sure you are keeping an eye on all the differing opinions. I feel like this is why your thesis resonates so thoroughly with different people--it's not trying to prove a point, it's very 'holmes saw a dead body and ejaculated'. You are just so smart that you make the rest of us smarter, but it's never intimidating to talk to you, and I love love love that I get to read your stories and your thoughts because of this show and this fandom.

Fox, brilliant as ever, agreed to answer a few questions for me:

What's your meta writing process like? Do you think in disparate strings about scenes and then write them down as they come to you OR is it usually a conversation or a thought that eats at you until you sit down and untangle it?

generally i'll be thinking about something, usually because i saw another post (or had a conversation about the show on discord; special shoutout to the crew on @figmentof and @scarrletmoon's servers, and especially to @glamaphonic, anything i've ever said you thought was really insightful probably came out of a dm conversation with glam) and some part of a post about it will start writing itself in my head, and unfortunately once that process starts the only way to stop it is to write it down.

even more unfortunately i never know whether it's all going to flow out easily into a coherent essay right away, or if it'll be one of those things where i write two really good paragraphs that ought to go in the middle section of a post that takes a while to figure out how to structure; i just have to start and see where it goes. some meta i've written that got lots of notes was written all at once the moment the thought struck me and posted as soon as it was done, but there's also a few that have been sitting in drafts for months as i keep rewriting the same section without being sure where it goes next.

Favourite themes or characterisations you like to explore while meta writing? (things like Ed's fisherman era and what led to it, etc)

i guess if there's a big theme i keep coming back to it's ed's character arc over the course of the show, his relationship with violence and how it affects his perception of himself and how he has to grow through that to be ready to commit to his relationship with stede. one of the very first things i ever said about the show on tumblr, way back in summer 2022, was that ed's absolute deepest fear was that he is fundamentally unlovable, so it was really a delight to see s2 dive so hard into addressing the exact issues i'd been looking at so explicitly. and of course there's also a lot of fandom racism that plays into some takes that go around about ed, and i think it's really important to call that out and push back against those takes.

i feel like it would be kind of silly to not call out izzy here too. izzy plays an absolutely crucial role in highlighting those exact issues in ed's arc, and i honestly just think the way their whole relationship develops in canon is deliciously meaty and a lot of fandom takes seem determined to flatten it out into something much more boring. so it's important to me to try to highlight the ways you don't have to pretend izzy was a secret good guy all along to appreciate the role he plays in the story.

finally i guess this has only developed over the last several months but i guess one of my trademarks now is speculation about what got deleted from s2. i've always been good at the game of watching a movie and guessing at scenes that were cut or changed, and my spider-sense for that was going off like crazy as i watched s2, and i didn't want to get too speculative at first, but as information has actually come out from samba and vico and other sources, a lot of it's lined up with what i thought. and i'm really interested in how the ofmd writers' room approached storybreaking, so it's worth it to me to try to understand this.

Whose head is it easier to get into - Ed or Stede? Why?

i guess i already answered this! i love them both a lot, and i'd been writing meta for a good while before i consciously realized i'd written a LOT more about ed than about stede, and the ed posts tend to be individually longer than the stede ones too. i think some of this is because ed's arc reads super clearly to me while stede, despite being the main character, gets an arc that's a lot more subtle and internal in some ways (and also i do think suffered significantly from the cuts to the second half of s2). and some of it's because people can be Wrong On The Internet about ed in ways i feel the need to push back against more than about stede. but some of it's just, you know, vibe.

it's always interesting to me that nearly all prolific fic authors in this fandom have a clear very strong preference for which POV they prefer - i don't think all fandoms are like that - but i guess my own alignment is obvious.

Your personal favourite thing you've written that you'd like more people to read

the obvious answer here is the one actual fic i have written for this fandom, "Nothing Could Touch It" which came out of thinking about how there's some post-s2 fic about ed reckoning with this relationship with izzy that i really like but none of it quite got at how i feel like canon's framing it. (don't worry it's not all about izzy! stede's there and there's a bunch of cuddling!)

as far as meta goes though i would call out this as the one i'm probably proudest of, this is the one where i most completely tried to lay out how i saw the show framing ed's relationship with violence during the s1 hiatus, and i think after s2 it holds up pretty well. but also since i was just talking about how i don't say enough about stede, this is the post where i tried to lay out the stuff i really admire in stede as a character.

What is the one word that you think you use a lot?

i've got a bunch of verbal tics i overuse but the one i'm self-conscious about in meta lately is "reading against the text," which sounds so pretentious and lit-crit i really wish there were another good phrase for it. but i think it's really useful as a way to clarify that sometimes i'm saying a particular take is clearly not how the narrative of ofmd is framing something but that doesn't mean you need to stop interpreting it that way. reading against the text is really fun and i recommend it sometimes! but you'll have more fun if you're aware that's what you're doing!

If you were writing his arc, keeping in mind that he stays largely antagonistic in line with the show, how would you have resolved the Izzy problem: would you have made the same decisions the writers made and written a redemption by death OR do you think that the spirit of the show specifically demands Izzy get a good guy (or not as bad a guy) ending where we see his muppetification

one of the predictions i was most confident of before s2 was that if izzy were redeemed, he wouldn't be able to remain in the cast as a good-guy crew muppet afterward. (for this reason i thought the likeliest possibility was a slower redemption arc that wouldn't fully complete till the end of s3.) several times i tried to game out what role a fully redeemed izzy could possibly continue to play within this story, or what personality traits that he showed in s1 he could even hang onto after a full redemption, and i couldn't come up with anything that felt plausible. not "loyalty to your captain," because his devotion to blackbeard was clearly toxic at the root and would need to be purged entirely before it could be replaced by anything healthier; not yelling at people to stop having so much fun and work harder, because that could work in a different story but would run directly counter to the core themes of ofmd - so what's left? i went looking at popular izzy redemption fic that tried to address that question, and some of it came up with answers that worked in the context of a fic focused mostly on izzy, but it was never anything that could possibly work in a tv show that already had established themes and would continue to focus primarily on other characters. and izzy wouldn't be able to just fade into the background with the other muppets after all the focus on him a believable redemption arc would require. so i knew once he was redeemed he'd be done as a character one way or another.

and s2 i think bore that out, honestly in a much more obvious way than i expected - over the course of izzy's s2 arc he's basically divested of all his s1 personality traits until all that's really left by the end is saying twat all the time, and Guy Who Says Twat is not a role the story's going to particularly need going forward. to keep him around after that you'd need to give him enough new traits that he'd be for all practical purposes a new character anyway.

i do sometimes wonder about a world where izzy's s2 arc saw him be offered a clear chance at redemption and choose to reject it and get worse instead. i kind of missed antagonist izzy by the end, and i wonder if a lot of people who'd originally wanted a redemption for him wouldn't have been happier with that even if they didn't realize it - a descent into full villainy would have kept izzy and his relationships with both ed and stede more central to the plot right up till the end, and in particular the sexual aspect of his feelings for ed could have stayed very directly relevant, where the redemption arc necessitated resolving that very firmly to clear it out of the way as early as possible in s2. i never agreed that ofmd's themes necessarily meant redemption for izzy was inevitable - ted lasso was much more overtly a show about redemption than ofmd right from the start, and even ted lasso let at least one of its antagonists make it all the way to the end as an unrepentant scumbag. if there's anything that meant izzy really had to be redeemed imo it wasn't the overall spirit of the show so much as izzy's role in ed's arc - before anything else izzy's narrative role was always to be a walking symbol of the part of ed that fears vulnerability and holds him back from committing himself to love, and for ed and stede to be happily together by the end of s2, ed had to get to a place where he could see that part of himself as something he no longer needs in his life but also doesn't hate anymore. nothing could have symbolized that like having ed embrace izzy as he dies granting ed permission to just be himself.

Why OFMD 🥹

you know, i could say a lot here about how i think ofmd is genuinely incredibly well-written in some ways that are really unusual on american tv. season 1 in particular is just incredibly tight and elegantly plotted, and s2 is messier but that just makes it all the more interesting to look at the constraints they were under that led to that. my day job's in narrative and i really do professionally admire ofmd a lot, which is one of the reasons i tend to think about creator intent more than some people do when i'm writing meta - death of the author is a super valid perspective but personally i'm really interested in trying to figure out why the writers made the choices they made and what i can learn from that for when i'm in their position.

so all of that's true. but also we all know it's kind of beside the point here, this is a hyperfixation, it's not rational. i can tell you i watched the first nine episodes of our flag means death and liked it a lot but in what i would describe as a basically normal kind of way, and then i watched the tenth and at some point during that episode a rat inside my brain hit the dopamine spigot with a wrench and now it won't turn off so here we are.

aaaand if you've made it to this point, please join us in evil ganging up on fox with love by sending a lovely letter to them over on @ofmdlovelyletters who was also kind enough to make this header <3

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

I read your fake smart-girl coded Taylor Swift post. Ended up on my feed because it was tagged philosophy. It was long enough that I caught a few words and actually read it. Honestly thought it was satire until I read your answers to other people.

I do not care about TS. But I do care about philosophy. You have a degree in it ? Funny, I have one too. You've read Aristotle ? I did too. But did you read though ? Did you really get into philosophy, and heard what the people you, I'm sure, can quote really well, actually said ? Because what it looks like, is that you got a degree in philosophy, but did not get philosophy at all. What makes me say that ? Your attitude, and that paragraph :

"Also, for the record, I don't think Taylor Swift knows anything of substance about Aristotle. I, on the other hand, took a three-hour long oral exam over Aristotle's life work while out-of-my-mind-high on Dayquil and pain meds after a surgery. I got an "A", and, somehow, I lived through that, I doubt the validity of Swift's claims to know anything at all about philosophy. Especially, considering how all her songs are about as deep as a puddle. "

Sounds like you're here to show off, and to make yourself look like something, without having a clue what it means to have the inclination of a philosopher. Or you know what it means, and you've lost it somewhere along the way.

If you've studied philosophy, and actually took time to read and understand the words of philosophers, you know not one of them would condone your attitude, the way you use their names, the way you're making your arguments. Having an A for an exam on Aristotle does not guarantee that you'll be able to make good arguments for the rest of your life. Nor does it guarantee that you understand his work, or are good at philosophy. It just means that, at one point, on a very specific part of Aristotle's work, you had enough knowledge to be rewarded with a good mark. It stops there. It does not mean anything else. Even if it was for your master's thesis. Sure, you know more than TS about philosophy and she fakes knowledge in her songd, but is showing off your grade and putting yourself as the center point of your argumentation the best way to convey that message ? No. You're trying to put her down by putting yourself above others. To anyone with a sense of philosophy, it just looks like you're a student who never understood the works he/she read, and focused on grades and others' approbation instead.

You care about your degree ? Re-read the books and make use of your ability to understand them. Not as a way to show off, but as a way to lean into the attitude a philosopher might have.

You write posts using philosophy ? Make it palatable to others, and show its uses. Be humble. Same thing for literature. The people whose books you read, they want knowledge to be spread. Studying philosophy should have, at the very least, helped you see that. The degree you got is here to push you to continue doing what all previous philosophers and writers did before you got to read them. Otherwise, your degree serves no purpose, other than satisfying your ego. At least, that's how it looks in that post.

Anyway, it'd just be nicer if you used your degree to show the benefits of philosophy, rather than to stroke your ego. Think about Socrates for a while. He asks questions, he makes simple arguments, he rarely talks about himself, he wants others to learn. That's the idea. Not showing off. Not being an ass to a girl you've never met. But being open for discussion, and make sound arguments, for others as well as yourself. What was the point of you fixating on the misuse of 'soliloquy' ? What did it bring to others ? And your anger towards TS, why ? Why write a whole post about it, shove it in her fans' face, what's the point ? Did anyone get anything positive from that ? And why bring your degrees and grades into the mix ? Anyone can make an informed and sound argument, even without a degree. What did it give you to say all those things ?

Fyi, I was taught philosophy in France. I know people in America and the likes get taught philosophy differently than how its done here. Wouldn't be surprised if there was a cultural difference in the way we understand the discipline. I've got a master's degree in the subject, and six years of study under my belt, if that matters to you. Was top of my class also. And I've lived with a philosophy teacher for eight years, too. In case you try saying I have no place speaking about philosophy the way I do.

There is barely anyone who gives a damn about philosophy. You're one of the few who cared about it enoigh to study it. Make good use of your degree, and don't be an ass to others.

Let me give you a piece of my mind, because, honestly, my dear friend, what are you doing? 

Is this some kind of moral flex in which you prove to be the better person because you’ve never implied that there’s no way a certain person knows anything about Aristotle? You want to seem like the better person, because I took one single cheap-shot at Taylor Swift’s intelligence amid a full literary explanation as to why she is using a specific term wrong? Are you joking? You want to call into question my entire education? Because I said Taylor Swift is not as “deep-thinking” as she claims? Okay, yeah... you’re right I guess that makes my entire education invalid. My bad. I’ll go rip up my degrees.  

First of all, let’s address your arrogance. You write, “Sounds like you are trying to show off, and to make yourself look like something, without having a clue what to means to have an inclination as a philosopher” (para.4) in response to me saying Taylor Swift probably doesn’t know anything about Aristotle. Yeah, obviously that line is a quick jab at Taylor Swift. So, what? Am I writing an essay? No. Am I writing a journal article? No. Am I writing to a conference committee with a submission of my finest work? NOpe. I’m saying that I would bet money that I know more about Aristotle while suffering the effects of surgery-induced delirium. It’s not that deep. It’s not meant to be a deep, philosophical take on the nature of Taylor Swift’s work. I’m throwing a metaphorical tomato at her, while yelling “boooo.” So, what? You say, “Play nice.” No. Taylor Swift is not my student, nor my friend. I, thus, have no obligation to try to teach, guide, or help Taylor Swift understand anything. I’m not her philosophy teacher, and, you know what, I don’t think she cares about philosophy at all. You know why she name-dropped Aristotle? It rhymes with “full-throttle” and “Grand Theft Auto” (Swift “So High School”). I’m laughing at her so-called poetical lyricism. In the same breath, I’m judging her for relegating Aristotle to a cheap throw-away line in a dumb pop-song in which she sings about how her football boyfriend makes her feel like she’s 16 again. It’s so mind-numbing.

I’m sad. It’s not anger that compels me, but sadness and disappointment. I’ve been a fan for nearly 15 years and my original post came from lamentations about outgrowing an artist I once respected.  Granted, I might have been angry while writing that post (sue me about it).  

 I do respect Taylor Swift’s work enough to criticize it, however, do not twist my words to mean that as an attack on her personally. I do not wish harm to other human beings, yet it is worth noting that I talk in many other posts about my disgust towards her immoral actions. Even still, most of my posts about Taylor Swift are linguistic or literary criticisms meant to help me process this absolute let-down of an album. I’m also just practicing my literary criticism abilities (I start Grad School in like 2 months, so I’m trying to keep my skills sharp). It’s all low-stakes.  And, you’re mad at me? You think I’m being mean? Why? You think that I’m “being an ass to a girl [I’ve] never met”? (para. 8). Taylor Swift is not a girl, first of all, she is older than me and I’m a grown woman. She is way richer, and way more powerful too. What is your point? 

Let’s talk about the next line in question: “What is the point of you fixating on the misuse of ‘soliloquy’? What did it bring to others?” I’m fixating on the term soliloquy because Taylor Swift has been using this faux literary/ dark academia aesthetic to sell her records for years now. She’s wears “my coat” (if you catch my meaning). She’s using my real-life study as a way to sell shoddy, sloppy records. I’m going to call that out. Despite her using all the aesthetics of academia, she’s not intelligent enough to even just use the term soliloquy correctly. I noticed it right away, and so did many others. If she can’t even get small details correct about literature, why should I believe that she even knows anything about literature at all? It destroys her creditability. I’ve taught students the term ‘soliloquy” as high school kids. It’s not too much to ask for the biggest pop star in the world, and someone who claims the title of “good” writer, to teach herself what a soliloquy actually is before using it in a song just because it sounds similar to “sanctimonious.” If it’s wrong, she’s just wrong. She could have hired an editor. Now, I won’t go into the context of the line here, too much, but the whole line is her calling her audience a bunch of sanctimonious morons who are talking to themselves. (Is Taylor Swift playing nice enough for you? I wonder....)  

Let’s move on. 

Now, let’s talk about your concept of “inclination of a philosopher.” 

You are correct in saying that often teaching Philosophy varies remarkably from country to country. I was weaned on the analytic philosophy, whereas I believe the French are more continental. (Correct me if I am wrong.) So, the effect of this is that I am obviously quite blunt and fond of Aristotelian logic. Who doesn’t love a good syllogism? A funky little linguistic proof? Yes? Still, I must remind you that I wasn’t really making an argumentative point about actual philosophy in relation to Taylor Swift.  

To the crux of the issue, however, I must say that I was actually showing the inclination of philosophy by correcting the intrinsic flaws of the songs I disliked so much. What is philosophy if not the spirit of seeking truth and wisdom? Critique and analyzing poetical works often tie directly into the philosophical field of aesthetics wherein the goal is true, fruitful, understanding on how literary devices and aesthetic representation actually function. If anything is also in effort of seeking truth, surely, you see that critique and correction is? And asking for better workmanship? I was only mad, because mining Taylor Swift work for aesthetic meaning is like searching for Gold in a parking lot. : (  

Next point: “to anyone with a sense of philosophy, it just looks like you’re a student who never understood the works they read, and focused on grades and others’ approbation instead.” 

First of all, this is rude. You don’t know me. You read my honest, brief anger, that I managed to condense into a couple lines in one single tumblr post, and that gives you the audacity to say I’m a bad student who sought grades above all else? Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh................. Okay, tell me why I spent hours in study rooms and sent countless emails begging for guidance through things I didn’t understand. Tell me why, I’ve stood in front of people and blatantly admitted that I did not understand the readings. Learning takes time, and there is no shame in taking your time. Grades are just letters. What matters is how the strength of what you learn impacts how you act in life. I’ve learned my lessons with all the ferocity of a child falling down a hill and running back up it again. I know my own intentions, and you don’t. I mentioned my "A" in the post really just to lend credibility, through professorial authority (lol), to the fact that I think Taylor Swift is fake smart.

Next: SocRaTeS? You're Joking! What is he doing here?

In an eternal quest for my own understanding, I often returned to Socrates. Did you not see my profile picture? Socrates is my homeboy. If ever I get to choose how to die, I will die like Socrates. Willingly, and with a full-bodied credulity of my own philosophical stances.  

You say, “Think about Socrates for a while. He asks questions, he makes simple arguments.” First, he does not make simple arguments. Is it not a syllogism? He writes full dialectical structures. This is some of the most complex stuff I have ever read. Let’s talk about why: Over the centuries, we’ve come to call it the Socratic method. This method includes discursive questions meant to make people question not only others on their reality but to question the most internal mechanisms of the mind. It asks them to think about why we believe or hold the beliefs that we do. He, famously, likens it to a child's development in the womb. The questions are meant as an external way to engage with mechanistic development of thought itself- thus we untangle the dangerous thread of rhetoric internal to our own rational minds. It’s a type of meta-analysis of the self-more than it a simple game of question and answer. Like children from the womb, according to Socrates, we must develop our rational minds too. And, above all else, the Socratic method seeks truth.  

Socrates would approve of my literary criticism of Taylor Swift, because I am using it to seek a higher truth. And, in some way, I am inversely questioning my own reasons for seeking what I do. I enjoy poems for a reason. I like to ask myself why I like what I do, and what meaning it brings through my unique perspective. (Applied to others as well, I love to hear from others). I critique Taylor Swift not because I hate her, but because I want to engage with the aesthetic qualities of the material world that elevate my ability to empathize, to think, to engage, to feel the world around me. I love art. I love reading, I want people to write with intelligence. You know then, the soul-crushing feeling of realizing an artist is actually bad. She rhymed Aristotle with Grand Thef Auto... Socrates himself would shudder. Socrates would also recognize that aesthetic quality ought to undergo critique and beauty interrelates to moral value. He was of the belief, and I dare say I believe it too, that beauty, aesthetic beauty, can be likened to moral value through the identification of ways in which it reveals the truth of our very souls. To him engaging with aesthetics is one way in which to reach out and connect the metaphysical to the material, in such awe-inspiring ways.

Ever been moved to tears by a painting? I have, but the question is WHY? That is why I critique literature, poetry, art... music. Whatever I can get my hands on really. I really want to find out, WHY? why was I crying in the Art Gallery, right next to the ice cream shop and everything.

 You are perhaps right that I could make more of an effort to explain my points, and also the "moral of the story" or what I hope other people will take away from what I wrote. I’m only ever critical of something if I care enough to either love it or wish it was better so that I could love it. To be honest, I didn't think anyone would read my silly vent post about Taylor Swift, but here we are. I could do better. I usually save my real efforts for my published work, though.

And you, my dearest colleague, are apparently spineless. If your conviction on philosophy is that we must all be kind and precious to each other for fear of causing offense, then I think your career will sink like a rock. Socrates was mean as hell, though not spiteful or malicious. He was mean in the sense of asking people to take a good, long hard look in the mirror. I would ask Taylor Swift to look in the mirror too, but she has a whole song about how she’s not going to do that (Anti-Hero). As you see, I hope that I am not spiteful either. But I do want people to be better and make better art. Socrates would say the same. I say what I say and I mean it. Because I am desperate for something true and beautiful and real. There is no one on earth above reproach. There is no school of philosophy which suggests passivity is tantamount to intelligence. I will not be passive.  

You say: “Make it palatable to others. Be humble” 

How’s this for palatable: No <3. Why diminish myself? Why should I obfuscate and dance around my own hard-won intellectual skill? Why should I dumb it down? It is not egotistical of me to use my own skillset. Does a doctor not save lives? Do they apologize for using their skills? Does a mechanic not do the same? Does the poet not also do the same? What of the critic?  

I can be humble, though. Humility is being self-aware enough to recognize that some might have a skillset more advanced than your own. I seek guidance and consistently challenge myself in academic endeavors. I can recognize the authority others have just as well as I can recognize my own authority. I will not, however, shrink down because you think I’m being too know-it-all-y.  

Humility does not require that I speak only when choking back apologies for the audacity I have to speak. I am not sorry. I spent the last 6 years of my life working on two degrees while working 3 jobs. It was hard. I’m proud of myself. If someone feels upset that I speak about the field of study I have fought to participate in, well, I genuinely don’t know what to tell them. Intellect is not a threat (to most). I would say, “if you have a question, ask it.” I actually am very friendly despite my sharp tongue. I am a teacher to my bones <3 and I love my job.  

Anyway, if I missed any of your points, misrepresented them, or offended you greatly- my inbox is always open. And I love a good, well-structured argument. However, next time can we talk about actual philosophy instead of you just attacking my character, thanks. <3 Obviously, I took offense. I think you meant to offend me though, for whatever reason. Really, I did go back and crack open a few books to write this, double check some things, so thank you.

Did you get your graduate degree in America? Would love to know. I am planning on getting another Master’s after I am done with this first one. I want to study aesthetics ( LOL).  

Ps. Why can’t people show off? I love when people have a talent that they aren’t afraid to share.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

I want to write a meta on Stede Bonnet of Our Flag Means Death and internalized homophobia. A lot of this is going to be a rehash of something I said to an anon back in october of 2022 but I feel like it deserves to be put out without rancid anon takes attached.

Our Flag Means Death as a show is trying to do a deconstruction of toxic masculinity. I feel very comfortable in saying that seeing as David Jenkins had "A lot of what we're taught about what it means to be a man is wrong" and a show about gay men with a thesis like that is necessarily also deconstructing homophobia, even if it doesn't center homophobia, which ofmd does not, it keeps it in just out of frame at all times, because it prefers to center queer joy. However that doesn't mean it's not there and I want to talk about the one place where it exists that I feel like people don't really touch on.

Stede is a character that comes from a background of wealth, of rigid adherence to social norms that he was never able to fully fit into. There are rules for what men do and what women do and those rules must be obeyed and Stede learns this the hard way, by getting tied in a boat and having things thrown at him for picking flowers. By being bullied relentlessly for being soft and weak. Under such conditions you can’t not internalize those rules.

Stede also is very insecure, in episode 2 it's established that he struggles with feelings of inadequacy. A lot of Stede’s guilt comes from his inability to preform the roles of husband and father, roles which were thrust upon him without his consent and stand in opposition to his identity as a gay man, at least in the 1700s. Stede considers himself a coward for his inability to preform these rolls. Stede is unable to forgive himself for being unable to fit into the heterosexual expectations that society as placed on him.

Blackbeard is also a hypermasculine figure. A role that Ed finds himself unable to fit into. That’s why Ed and Stede seem to be in the same place when they first meet. They’re both trying to break out of these rigid boxes that have been forced upon them. Blackbeard is less heterosexual, more specific, but it’s still a distinctly male expectation which is tied up in cultural ideals about masculinity, especially non-white masculinity. And the whole show Izzy, a gender conforming character who seems to go out of his way to talk down to any man he perceives as even a little bit soft, is trying to force Ed into it, and when he tries to imply that Ed isn’t Blackbeard enough he does it by emasculating him

Ed is open, at least when he's made to feel like he's in a safe environment, about not wanting to be blackbeard anymore. Stede suggests retirement and provides him space to experiment with reinventing himself, but at the end of the day Stede doesn't believe him because Stede venerates Blackbeard as one of the most fearsome pirates of all time (something I expect to be a large point of contention between them in the next season). When Ed finally shakes off his captaincy and tries to leave Blackbeard behind for good Stede ends up blaming himself for it, because he perceives Ed's desire to leave a role that is hurting him behind as him being ruined, the same way Stede perceives his own failure as a husband and father as an inherently corrosive thing.

Unpacking Chauncey's speech in season 1 episode 10 and why Stede agrees with it is fundamental here. Gay people have been for centuries been portrayed as corrupting influences trying to convert people to our lifestyle. We've been portrayed as horror villains. Our sex is portrayed as defilement. We're accused of being groomers who want to corrupt others to our way of life, we're accused of recruiting. This is one of the more classic homophobic tropes. So when Chauncy says you're a monster who defiles beautiful things there is venom and oppression behind it. And Stede agrees to it because he does believe himself to have corrupted Ed away from being Blackbeard into being kind of a pansy like Stede. And that he defiled his family by leaving despite it being what he needed to do.

And so his reaction to this is to shove himself back into the closet and try to be Mary's husband again.

I'm not passing moral judgement on Stede, it's just difficult to interpret the show without seeing the subtextual journey of overcoming internalized homophobia that Stede goes on.

[mymanyfandomramblings]

For TOH:

Which is your fav character?

What do you think of Belos as a villain?

How does TOH compare to Amphibia and Gravity Falls in how it handles it themes and character arcs?

What are some things TOH could have done better?

Which is your fav character?

Gus! Closely followed by Willow and then Hunter. Honestly, there's very few characters I don't like in this show.

What do you think of Belos as a villain?

He was a great villain, A+ villain design--he was powerful enough to prove a threat, intimidating in design, he had a sense-making motive, but not one that absolves his actions in any way. His defeat could have been done better (couldn't Hunter have been there, instead of Raine--as lovable as Raine is, they had zero thematic reason to be one of the very few characters at the final defeat scene), but Belos is a great villain for the themes.

How does TOH compare to Amphibia and Gravity Falls in how it handles it themes and character arcs?

TOH is a good show, but it is nowhere near as good as the other two shows with handling its characters. It's written as though Dana Terrace was afraid of ambiguity or giving good characters flaws/bad characters strengths. This isn't to say that all the good characters have no flaws, but the show seems scared of actually acknowledging those flaws.

Luz does have an external arc of going from 'naive girl who wants to learn magic' to 'less starry-eyed girl who is very good at magic', but her internal arc doesn't make as much sense--the show seems like it's deconstructing escapist fantasy at the beginning and Luz needing to have an arc about seperating reality for fantasy, but that kind of gets lost along the way, in favour of a 'you're perfect just the way you are and people just need to understand you' arc, and giving her quirks, instead of flaws. Similarly, Odalia is made into a cartoonishly evil character, so that Amity is absolved of all blame for the way she treated Willow, which I think does all three characters--Amity, Willow and Odalia--a disservice. Compare this to Amphibia, which pulls absolutely no punches when it comes to the main characters being horribly flawed and accountable for their actions, or Gravity Falls where the characters flaws very much drive the action, in a way that they don't in TOH.

The other way I think that GF and Amphibia write their characters and themes better than TOH is by making key character moments tie in with their themes. The best example to talk about this through is by comparing Anne's fake death to Luz's. Anne's entire arc has been about one main thing--learning to do the right thing instead of what is easiest--and her main character flaw from the beginning is that she prioritises her own comfort over doing the right thing for herself and for others. Anne sacrifices herself for Amphibia--doing something incredibly hard, but for other people, which is the perfect culmination of everything she's been learning. Luz's fake death results in her becoming the Titan's Chosen One, which contradicts the arc shaping up in S1 where Luz had to learn that there are no Chosen Ones and that the Boiling Isles aren't a fantasy world. To be totally clear, this does make sense as part of her arc--harnessing the power of the Titan is the final piece in Luz truly becoming a witch, but her entire arc is external. Her internal character doesn't significantly change over the course of the show, because it can't because her flaws are all written off as 'quirks' and the show's big thesis is that weird people should be able to be weird. (This is coming across as really complainy, I'm sorry. I promise that I genuinely really enjoyed the show.)

What are some things TOH could have done better?

Write the Blights better. Escaping Expulsion was the best episode for the Blight family dynamic, with Odalia being awful, but not cartoonishly evil; Alador having a conscience but also being a pretty checked-out and neglectful parent, and Amity seeming actually influenced by her mother's influence

On that note--let Amity take at least some accountability for the way she treated Willow

Put finding Phillip Wittebane's diary, Amity's hair-dyeing, and the first Lumity kiss in any episode other than one of the only Gus-centric episodes in the whole show

Allow characters to be more morally grey and let redemption arcs take some time

Reduce King's-ego-trip subplots by AT LEAST 50%. I didn't actually enjoy him all that much until Echoes From The Past because I found his whole trying-to-take-over-the-world shtick a little annoying

I think that's all

Once more, I actually really, really enjoyed the show and had a great time watching it, I just have lots of feedback

[thatscarletflycatcher]

can you tell me what your thesis is about if you're willing to share??

Hi!!! Yes, of course! I need to go over and over the description of this thing in order to turn in a precise and compelling project for the board (attempt #3 at finishing this cursed degree, here we go! *sobs*).

My area of interest has always been Medieval Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Virtue Ethics and Aristotelian Ethics-Politics. My very first attempt was writing something on Metaphysics (transcendentals) then Ethics Metaphysics (the role of intellectual intuition in moral reasoning in Aristotelian Ethics, Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics)... Neither worked mainly because a problem when talking metaphysics is... well, there's few words to use and little to say and I have always been a very succinct academic writer (yeah, I know, but it is true).

When I reached acceptance about that XD I moved on to trying something about Aristotelian Ethics-politics. Alasdair MacIntyre is a key author in that area, and he's a favorite of mine because in agreement or disagreement he's thought provoking, he has a sense of humor, and he's a hater of the fun kind. I know it isn't proper to call or pick academic authors because they are fun, but hey, he is. He is a curmudgeonly old man (present tense: he's 95), who kind of manages to disagree with everyone because he hates being put in boxes, but he's also always been very willing and open to listen to other voices and change his opinions on things.

For example, the refinement and reformulation of many ideas between his After Virtue (1981) and his Dependent Rational Animals (1999) came (declaredly) through a reading of certain feminist theory, which brought to the foreground to him how little academic Ethics had focused until that point on disability and caretaking.

He's also always been a versatile author in the sense of breaching the barriers between disciplines for the purposes of philosophical inquiry -After Virtue has a great deal to say about Sociology, and Dependent Rational Animals talks a lot about dolphins XD.

I decided I wanted to write something about this guy, but I got stuck because if you are writing on an author specifically, alone, how do you manage to write something that isn't like, textbook regurgitation? Theoretically I know it is possible, but it was very paralyzing to me all the same.

Enter Elizabeth Gaskell with a steel chair.

I love Gaskell dearly for many different reasons. I love the way in which she writes nuanced, believable, textured characters. I love the treatment of grief in her work, I love the compassion she has for her characters, I love how she makes interesting, central, and natural relationships between parents and children. I love that she's versatile too, and that she saw writing as a vocation, and how she manages to talk about so many different things in a novel without making it come across as didactic or preachy. But one very special thing that has called my attention is her specific interest in communities, and community building through friendship.

Very often her "proposals" of "solutions" to social problems, specifically in her industrial novels, have been dismissed as the utopian sugary pap of learning to share and be nice of someone completely out of touch with reality, but I think those readings are fundamentally missing the framework that makes her ideas make sense and be solid.

As an aside, I feel like that ungenerous reading is kinda rich when Hard Times and its "imagination to power!" concept or Shirley and its marriage solution keep getting praise to this day. You know. It comes across as a bit double standard-y, if you ask me.

But back to topic, guess who did consider friendship, understood as the ties that unite virtuous people in the pursuit of the good for themselves and their fellow men, the very foundation of society, and mankind as essentially social, and therefore for ethics and politics to be a continuum? That's right, my boy Aristotle!

And to that, between other things, when talking about the Aristotelian tradition of Ethics Politics, MacIntyre adds teleological narrative as the element that frames and anchors virtue ethics in this scheme. What is more, he dedicates A CHUNK of chapter 16 of After Virtue to Jane Austen, and why he thinks she's "the last key representative" of this tradition (which has sprung a non negligible amount of scholarship on Austen and virtue ethics).

And I'm persuaded that Gaskell is a significant successor to Austen in this way too, and that the certain sympathy people often perceive between them comes from this aspect (because, in all honestly, it's clearly not about tone or style).

So that's the aim/core of my thesis: to present/analyze/contextualize Gaskell's work within the framework of the Aristotelian Ethics-Politics tradition as understood by MacIntyre.

Of course because I am, in Nelly Dean's description of Edgar Linton, a venturesome fool, this is clearly very ambitious, and I am making it worse for myself by doing things like harvesting circa 350 titles for a thesis that won't require more than 50 and that cannot be more than 80 pages long. The clown shoes can be heard from the other side of the world no this has nothing to do with the fact that I don't think I'll ever get a masters or a PhD where I might be able to develop this concept beyond a very summary overview of N&S and maybe Cranford and My Lady Ludlow if I'm lucky.

And that's how I should have sent something to my advisor three weeks ago (I haven't yet) and how I'm half agony half hope about the whole thing, because I'm scared and anxious and full on rowing through Nutella executive function wise. Maybe I should get a rubber duck.

[ganondoodle]

Not gonna lie, the "It looks like a Divine Circle but is actually just hundreds of years of superstition & propaganda"-Concept is the coolest fucking thing I didn't know I needed until ten minutes ago. It's a super cool inversion of the classic trope, opens up a million possibilities for stories and arcs and on top of that, in game, you would obviously not know about it form the beginning but slowly have to collect clues and hints that things are not quite as everyone tells you.

So yeah, very cool concept!

Not directly related, but it's probably no surprise that my favorite Ganondorf line is the "I coveted that Wind"-line from the finale of Wind Waker. He doesn't even go into detail, cause he doesn't have to, this line alone instantly humanizes him. Like, its the end of the game, we are about to fight him, there is no way this will not end in a fight, and yet, at that point, that line, just goes so fucking hard. Because you instantly know what he's talking about, that he simply wanted a future for his people, which, you know, is a very human thing to do. It wont stop us from fighting him here and now, way too much has happened for that, but it reminds us, the audience, that he has motives and reasons and thoughts and is an actual character.

So yeah, in case it's not obvious yet, I too despise the extremely flat "I'm evil because evil, waaaaaaaaagh!" Ganondorf from TOTK. Why even include him if you cant be arsed to actually write him?

Anyways, last thing, I'll have to somewhat disagree on the Gameplay vs Story thing, at least partially because I work in the field and have had experiences with this problem myself. Not saying its impossible to have both, but its a lot more difficult than one would expect.

Towards your point, yes a good story can pull people through a game, but so can strong gameplay. Take the Doom games, I dont really care about their story, but the gameplay is great. On the other hand, the gameplay of the average Telltale game would be incredibly boring without the story behind it. There are hybrids, but even they tend to lean one way or the other: The Assassins Creed or Uncharted Series have solid and fun gameplay, but would probably get repetitive or boring if we didn't have strong characters and stories that keep us interested. And all of that is before you consider that there are different player types that gravitate to one or the other and it gets even more complicated. (There's more to this but I my thoughts on the topic could easily be a full bachelors Thesis, so I'll stop here.)

I should add that I dont think that the gameplay over story (or vice versa) argument can or should be used to defend games or design choices. Yes, Nintendo does prefer to focus on Gameplay over Story. Does that mean we shouldn't expect a good story, or are not allowed to criticize a bad one in their games? Hell no! (And if my previous ask sounded like I was doing that, I apologize, that was NOT what I meant to say! I'll happily critique all of TOTKs flaws, both in gameplay & story, otherwise how can we learn from it?)

This argument can be used to understand and analyze or interpret design decisions but it shouldn't ever be used to defend them. Just like the "just for kids" argument, by using such arguments, the person in question basically admits that they are aware of the weaknesses and faults in their story/game/whatever but didn't fix or improve them. So yeah, I do agree with you on that front 100%, hiding behind such arguments is a problem.

Anyway, sorry for leaving another wall of text in your inbox, hope you're having a nice day!

thank you! that 'cycle' concept is also what destiny (zelda comic) is based on, since it takes place before skyward sword you get to see the set up for it, and, in this story, the gods have been trying to achieve it countless times, throughout the story of it its supposed to slowly be revealed- like demise already knowing some parts since hes yet another 'failed' version of that plan (im reusing that concept for the totk rewrite as well bc i am very original wahoo)

oh you work in that field! thats cool!! yeah my opinion on this sort of thing is very much a thing i formed bc i play games, though i still dream of gamedev, i guess i understood your mention of it a little too much into the dismissive argument way (though not as an attack) and its been repeated so so many times i cant help but get a little >_> at it; the point i was trying to make was more like ... they need to find a balance with it, like you can make it all about gameplay, but then dont pretend you have the most epicest story that ever storied, maybe even do it less or more subtle, like the fromsoft game i feel like are very well balanced in that regard, bc their lore and story is very neat and intertwined, but you have to look and think to get it, and the gameplay is strong on its own so much so that it kinda ends up being both soemthing for people that dont care about lore and those that do, more than about the gameplay

zelda feels like it doesnt quite know what to do (even moreso modern zelda), bc they prioritize the gameplay but then still put in a story that they want understood .. so its like, babiefied? like there is a "simple" story and its few points are repeated into your face over and over and over so the people that dont care to read into soemthing GET IT but also annoy them, bc they dont care anyway, and the people who care about lore/story above gameplay are bored bc the narrative isnt engaging enough and they dont care as much about the gameplay

especially so with totk i think, its so weird, botw wasnt like that imo, it wasnt overly complicated either but at least it left you wondering, and let you think, the more you thought about the more interesting it was (at least to me) totk feels like the opposite, it doesnt want you to think, bc the more you think about it the more it falls apart and makes less sense

like theres types of games that focus HARD on one or the other (like slay the princess for example, its like an interactive audio book, there isnt much gameplay but it goes hard on narrative), so obviously the balance of gameplay and story isnt applicable to every game, but for zelda in particular they say they are one but then still want the other part just as much? like the lore in skyward sword isnt great, the characters are strong though, the gameplay isnt that engaging (to me, since that needs to be said) i got through it mostly just bc i wanted to see what comes next and liked the characters, in botw the freedom and world and gameplay were like nothign i ever experienced, exploring was addictive and the story took a bit of a backseat, but it was fitting for the game and lend itself so well to theorize, in totk they .. idk what the focus was, the .. glue? the toys to glue together? nothing fits together there and each part works against another instead of together, somehow, its so weird to me

the thing is, if you do gameplay over story, you need to roll with it? if thats what it is then let the story take a backseat, make it subtle and in the background or vague, dont stuff the game full of unskippable cutscenes where a character you dont care about explains you a thing you already figured out through the gameplay; like the zelda dragon point, let the design of the dragon and its music, what its carrying speak for itself, the way the deku tree is weirded out by the sword moving, maybe a quick subtle voice line once you get the sword fading away like the last parts of her soul being whispered away- but dont mention it in one of the first cutscenes, fail to bury it in 'thats illegal though and irreversible so nono dont you do it' (why mention it then huh) allude to it multiple times, and then just straight up show it (i get people like the scene but man, it would have been way cooler to figure it out yourself)

same goes for the fake zelda thing, the weird way she said the bloodmoon text already alluded to it, have her show up here and there but vanish before you (no "omg thats zelda omg what is she dooooing") , or go even harder and make her an NPC standing around the world interacting with you all nromally but animals react weirldy to her- make the midfight against her (maybe even that she isnt talking so you are unsure if its actually her but controlled by sth else, or talk all normally while literally going for your throat) and then have her dissolve into goop and woa the bloodmoon thing is without her now the zelda you have been talking to has been fake the whole time, its creepy!! leave out the stupid cutscenes of showing it multiple times!! stop monologing at me!!

ppl that dont care about it can go and do a fight and i can think about it! everyone wins yahoo!

(actually ... if you leave out all the cutscenes in totk i feel like it improves the game by alot ...)

(what my point in the previous thing was in the end that you can repeat the same old trope only so many times without changing anything before it gets boring as hell, like what you said here, and the series seems to really be setting itself on fire bc it just wants to do the trope of old so badly and at some point its gonna drag down even the best of gameplays like gameplay over story means (to me) gameplay is prioritized so whatever narrative there is is in the background, subtle and not overtly in your face with big cutscenes etc- but what i feel like its often supposed to mean is "its fine if theres a shitty story that makes no sense pasted on top bc they prioritize gameplay so stop complaining" like to me what it should mean is more gameplay, less story, a measure of quantity not of quality, but what i feel like it often means is better gameplay, bad story, a measure of quality, not quantity )

maybe my problem lies elsewhere and im just projecting it on gameplay > story, that could very much be the case, i could have a fundamental missunderstanding about this here, im still just a guy with opinions in the end and got no knowledge about anything other than i play games sometimes and these are the things i like and dislike and would do differently *puts my head in my hands*

idk if im making sense, im usually not very good at explaining how i feel or think :/ (or i THINK im bad at it, autism be damned)

(sorry this got so long again ......................)

[screechingfromthevoid]

Orym told derrig he didn't know why he didn't come see him last time he was home. That is a fucking lie. He knows exactly why.

He couldn't bring Dorian to his father and husband's graves.

Which. Is fine I guess. Grief is a bitch and not linear. But I'm going to write a fucking thesis on Orym and his inability to face the truly fucking hard stuff in his life.

Because sure. Being a widower and mourning your husband is super fucking hard. Especially when it came at the same time as the only home you've ever known no longer feeling safe. FINE. That is incredibly hard.

BUT. Orym will barely let himself admit that he has feelings for Dorian let alone navigate what it means to love again.

Orym feels such immense guilt about Will's death that he considers moving on to be the biggest betrayal. That survivors guilt combined with him swearing to put an end to the people that took Will from him truly stops Orym from actually feeling his feelings about even the idea of loving again. He can't process loving again because he feels like it's unfinished business. That he hasn't earned love again.

Which is bullshit you dumb little halfling man.

Then, holding love in your heart for your first love and spouse while finding yourself developing feelings for another is a hard thing to juggle. So he doesn't. Which only leads to feeling worse when he remembers Will.

If Orym really sat down and thought about how Will would feel about him moving on, he would probably come to the conclusion that Will would not want Orym to live his life alone for his sake. I feel like Will is the type to say "it is very sweet that you want to only love me. But you're not proving anything by not loving someone else"

Because Orym might want to be that guy? He always thought he would be? He was a widower. He loved Will with everything he had. He was not going to stray. He wasn't going to betray him like that.

But falling in love is messy. He couldn't help himself falling in love the first time. And he shouldn't punish himself for falling in love the second time. Because he couldn't help it. Suddenly he was just. In love.

And Dorian knows about Will. Dorian knows how much Will meant to Orym. He'd never make Orym get a cover up tattoo or stop seeing Will or tell him to never talk about him. Dorian understands that Orym will always love Will. He just hopes Orym might love him also.

If Orym was better at his feelings, if he was better at facing the hard shit in his life, he would have taken Dorian to see his father and Will. They would have mourned together. Dorian would have said hello like Fearne did. He might have left a stone or praised Orym. And Orym would have been able to see his two worlds together. He would be able to reconcile his past and future and anything in between.

[vaperarmand]

this is such a fucking stupid question but. do you have any advice for developing a good understanding of characters? like i wish i could put those guys into situations but it's like there's a mental block and my mind goes blank as if they're Unfathomable Real People Who I Cannot Possibly Hope To Ever Understand.

no not a stupid question! actually a really good question. it's such a good question in fact that i don't have a simple answer so i'm going to. word vomit onto the page and hope something sticks. i ramble like crazy so have a read more :)

precursor: i have to note that i feel like armand and daniel are the two characters i've like. Understood. more than any other characters in my life. i think that's because i relate to them both in very distinct but separate ways (we'll discuss that later) but i think it's also because. part of anne rice's writing and the show's adaptation is so determined to break these characters down to their fundamental parts. that's kind of the thesis statement of the books, even, that when you live forever you're no longer a "product of your time" but rather just you, yourself, and you kind of have to spend the rest of your eternal life figuring out who that is. so that to me gives both a flexibility and a set of basic building blocks for each character that you can play with.

that being said, here are a couple of ways i maybe go about building understanding:

option 1: the projectorrrrr (this is me most of the time)

if you like looking at your character and going "ha ha i do that" then that's awesome. do that! figure out what parts you relate to and think, okay, if the vampire armand was me, how would he react to my coworker saying this. alternatively, if i was the vampire armand, would would i do if i'd just broken a 500 year vow to myself?

this is where, like, critical thinking comes into play of course, because you are not the vampire armand and the vampire armand is not you. but 1) you're allowed to play around in the sandbox and have fun without constantly going "He Would Not Fucking Say That" because uhhh. this is fandom and we are doing this for fun and 2) once you to get to the point where you're kindly going "He Would Not Fucking Say That" you can then be like oh! well what would he say? because the contrasts are often as fun to explore as the comparisons

option 2: that's my friend

i also think you genuinely can view characters as Real People — but you can hope to understand them!!! or at least you can understand Your view of them, which doesn't have to perfectly match mine or anyone else's view.

this is going to sound crazy and part of the reason why i feel like i don't have a good answer to your question, but genuinely my best writing happens when i uhhh. hear them speaking. in my mind. this is literally a developed skill because like 4-5 years ago i was terrible at writing dialogue and it frustrated me + i never had good ideas for fics because i just wanted to write meta posts. so i was like. i'm going to get good at writing dialogue if it kills me. imagine you're talking to them or they're talking to someone else. look up writing prompt sentences (like on roleplay blogs if nothing else) and think about how they'd respond. i'm at the point where i'll decide on a situation and will sit in silence for a minute, imagine them like dolls in my head, and go "SPEAK!" and wait to hear what they'll say.

my final tip is to please please remember if nothing else that this is supposed to be fun and that at the end of the day it is just playing with dolls online with your friends. you're allowed to be wrong. in fact you probably will be. but that's okay! you can start small and be wrong and as long as you're having fun and enjoying putting your characters in scenarios it's all worth it

[multifandombullshitbabes]

Random Merlin Rewatch: Where a random number generator gives me a season and an episode from BBC Merlin; and then I comment on it as I go.

Today's episode: Season 4 Episode 7 - The Secret Sharer

Before I start, let me just say and I have done my uni exam and that's why I haven't been posting these even though I really wanted to. Not joking, I had to let my fingers rest 'cause I wrote all my notes and shit. It was a lot. Anyways, let's fucking do this.

LET'S GO INTRO!!!! YOUNG MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOH

EWWWWW WHY IS AGRAVAINE TOUCHING MORGANA LIKE THAT I'M GONNA PUKE BRO

Damn, Morgana's eyes are so GREEN, that makeup really does it for her. Kinda funny she's wearing it to bed though. Girl.

GOOD LORD MAMA, HELLO

Agravaine needs to chill the fuck out. Every time he's on screen he gives me the ick. Ugh. Also Morgana looked so damn paranoid talking about Emrys. "He knows everything. All our plans, all our secrets." Girl.... RIP Morgana you would've loved therapy (or not).

Ohhh... interesting Morgana's reaction to Agravaine's accusation of Gaius, saying that he's the ones working with Emrys. She almost looks... hurt? Like. She really doesn't want to face the reality that Gaius exists, in the sense that she's just so hurt by everything these people that "loved" her have done. She just feels so betrayed by everyone, so hurt, so ANGRY. It's so tragic.

Oh my GOD. I NEED PEOPLE TO STOP MANIPULATING MORGANA!!! I'M SICK OF IT!!!! The way she hesitates!!! When she knows that it means that they're going to use Gaius or maybe even kill him!!! The way that she moves away from Agravaine, processing this, the way he INTERRUPTS THIS and insists, again, that it has to be Gaius, they have to do something. And for a second she almost looks so fucking scared, like!!

LOOK AT HER!!! ANOTHER PERSON THAT'S BETRAYED HER!!! SHE'S SO HURT AND SCARED!!! OH GOD HER AND ARTHUR ARE SO SIMILAR.

She even blinks her eyes after that line from Agravaine, like blinking away tears, her eyes are so shiny bro, I'm gonna cry :((. And after blinking she turns all smirky and "evil" and shit. Jesus Christ. I could write a whole thesis about Morgana and her character progression holy shit.

LET'S GO MUSICCCCCCC

AHHHHHH the iconic breakfast in bed scene!!! Yay!!!

I don't blame Arthur for spitting that out, shit looked dry as FUCK. Also there's a bunch of crumbs on the bed, Merlin, YOU'LL have to clean that up!!! Don't give yourself more work!!

"I don't know anything about Polishing." We really need more appreciation about how Bradley delivers his lines, this one is just too funny, only hearing it, bro. Also. Merlin writes Arthur's speeches. One of the best pieces of canon in my opinion. It's just so comical, for some reason. And they must be good too, 'cause no one's questioning them. It's just such a subtle way to show that Merlin IS smart. Sometimes. A little bit.

Merlin, babe, you cannot be serious. You writing the new bible or something, what the fuck is this.

"You don't have hours." Most threatening and terrifying Merlin's ever sounded. Arthur's better than me, I would've have an anxiety attack so bad it'd send me straight to hell.

THIS INTRO IS EVERYTHING!!! WHY ARE THEY SAYING THINGS SO PERFECTLY SILLY!! I LOVE IT!!! Also, damn, Arthur's BUSY. I guess we do forget that kings had to, y'know. Do basically everything, like be a judge sometimes. Hello??

Ah yes, what I've been waiting for: the wrestling Arthur out of the bed scene. Love it. No notes, really.

"You're doing very well, Arthur." WHAT IF I CRY???

"I don't think so."???? ARTHUR WHAT IF I SMACK SOME SENSE INTO YOU, SHUT UP!!! YOU'RE DOING PRETTY GREAT IN MY OPINION, LISTEN TO YOUR MANSERVANT FOR ONCE.

A tiny bit of appreciation for Arthur's chest hair.

Thank you.

Love that Agravaine just. Ignores that it's Merlin writing Arthur's shit. He must have gotten such a shock right at the start and now nothing's surprising anymore.

The fact that Morgana, all in black, has a white horse is so fucking cool to me. Work that shit, queen.

OK GORGEOUS?????

Hate the way Agravaine speaks. Shut the FUCK UP.

Arthur. Arthur, honey. Yeah, you've got to stop being so easy to manipulate. I know it's hard, but your uncle is so fucking obvious doing it, please, please, just. Please. Holy shit.

Morgana's dress (cloak?? hood?? idk) is so pretty.

Morgana being the last of her kind, High Priestess of the Triple Goddess. Merlin being the last Dragonlord. Something something...

Also. Some obvious orientalism is this episode. Kinda icky, but unsurprising giving it's BBC and also like. 2011 or whatever. But still. Ugh.

Welp. Welp, welp. Can't really say much about that, can I??

I can't remember, but I'm assuming that bracelet she gives to the Catha is from Morgause, simply by the look of pain in her face when it's out of her grasp. Literally, when will my wife's suffering end?

I wonder just how many different kinds of magic beings and users there are in JUST the five kingdoms. What about the rest of the world?? Like. that's just so cool!! I love world building, maybe one day I'll waste away some days just building up lore and lore, probably some made up, but mostly from all cultures and countries. That would be cool as fuck actually.

Agravaine's smile is so FAKE, FUCK OFFFFFFF

Ew, why does he just touch everybody. Weird uncle vibes, for sure.

Oh, I just don't like how Arthur's so quiet. I bet Agravaine's just gotten in his head so bad. He already looks ready to cry, like Gaius has already betrayed him. He's so used to that, what's one more?

Jesus, this hurts to watch. The fact that Gaius knows exactly what's happening, and he's trying to be as truthful as he can but Agravaine's just. making it all worse and horrible. This is so bad.

Ok, Gaius, I know you're better at lying than this. Fucking damnit.

EW. Agravaine's little smirk?? What the fuck is wrong with him? Jesus, I feel so sick watching this, knowing that he's just basically sentenced Gaius as a liar!! Fuck!!!

Well, at least Arthur noticed that Agravaine was being a fucking bitch. Not all is lost.

"... we might find some (proof)." Oh, ok, so you're just admitting that you're going to fabricated evidence against Gaius? Oh ok.

JESUS THESE MAN'S TITTIES ARE JIGGLING GOOD LORD

OH MY GOD, NOT THE PECS FLEXING??? I'm assuming normally you don't see that when you're on a horse adjusting yourself 'cause you got clothes on but this guy DOESN'T and you can SEE EVERYTHING.

The way that Merlin opens the door is so funny. He is NOT amused to be called upon by Agravaine. Mood.

Why is Agravaine's smile literally so disgusting, I cannot.

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW WHY DOES HE SMILE SO MUCH???? VERY MUCH WEIRD UNCLE VIBES. VERY MUCH "PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, YOUR UNCLE'S COMING." VIBES. EW. EW EW EWWWW

Love seeing Agravaine getting humbled, thank you big titty man.

Really? Really??? A book boldly proclaiming that it's about magic and sorcery, kinda hidden by one (1) sheet of paper as your proof? Really??? Are you for real right now?? Fuck off.

It is actually so upsetting seeing Agravaine in Merlin and Gaius's space. Like that's not for you, disgusting bitch.

Not Merlin finishing polishing the dagger and setting it on Arthur's nightstand JUST as the warning bells start to sound. Lol. Lmao even.

OH MY GOD THEY'RE DESTROYING GAIUS' SHIT??? WHAT THE FUCK

No no no. I hate this. The fact that Merlin now get's why Agravaine made him polish that dagger. He's fucking blaming himself right away, oh I can't do this.

Merlin literally looks like a baby in this shot, holy shit. My baby :(((.

Agravaine's acting (not the actor's, is the actor acting the character acting!! which is so fucking cool) is so fucking annoying. It's so obvious, dammit, Arthur, you're a king, how can you not see it!!! I know he's family, but you barely know him!!! I know he's from your mother's side and you want THAT side to be good unlike your father's side that's brought you so much pain, I know, but come ON!!!

Oh, Merlin's so mad, not at Arthur, at Agravaine and himself, but he's so hurt, so scared, so pained that it comes across as quietly, restrained angry, and it's fucking heart breaking.

Oh god. This is one of their most painful fights in my opinion. I think they get so fucking heart breaking when it's Merlin just. trying to show his side, trying to get Arthur to understand but Arthur just cannot because he's been given a certain information that WOULD make his actions sensible, but WE know they're lies!!! We do, Merlin does, but he can't just say that 'cause it might reveal HIS lie, and it's just UGH!!!!!!!!!! FUCK

MERLIN IS FUCKING TEARING UP I CAN'T. "He would not leave without saying goodbye to me." I AM GOING TO PUKE.

The way Merlin turns away when he's close to crying, ohhhhh. Oh BBC Merlin writers when I catch you. Colin Morgan when I catch you.

"I don't wanna lose another friend." I think these are the moments that really make me wanna chortle Arthur. I truly feel like he cannot understand the depth of the power that he has compared to Merlin. 'Cause what does that threat mean? Just them stop being friends but Merlin's still employed? Arthur sacking Merlin? Arthur treating Merlin how he's treating Gaius right now? Because, truthfully, with the power that Arthur has, any of these options is viable. I think this is what scares me, Arthur just cannot comprehend that he just cannot threaten his friends, his loved ones, like this just because he's king now. He simply cannot. The weight of it is different. Even if he would never hurt them, it doesn't matter, he has the POWER to. That's what's so scary. And then he wonders why Merlin doesn't tell him things. How can he?

The way things just. Change between the early seasons and now. The way Gaius talks to Morgana, knowing she wants to kill him, when he saw her grow up. I'm gonna be so fucking sick, y'all, what the fuck.

Does she braid some of her hair with leaves?? Or a green ribbon? What is that in her hair??

Not gonna lie, Morgana is so hot in this scene. Jesus. Love that voice, and that's all I'm gonna say.

HE LOOKS SO BABY!!!!!!!!!!1

I love that Gwen doesn't even question that Agravaine's behind it. She's like "I'll use my charms to get Arthur to see reason, don't worry bestie."

ICONICCCC GAIUS USING MAGIC!!!!!!!!

Oh, I love when Merlin doesn't even use words. Just golden eyes and BOOM. Magic.

MERLIN FOR FUCK'S SAKE BRO YOU CAN'T EVEN SNEAK OUT CORRECTLY WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!! That's so fucking funny though, I'm losing it-

GWAINE!!!! MY BABY!!! You look like a puppy :,).

Oop. Cock blocked.

Merlin is just in a fucking mood and honestly he deserves to be. But it is interesting how differently he acted with Gwaine and Gwen. I wonder if he's being shorter with Gwaine 'cause he's a knight now, and he knows that knights talk and are closer to the king's views than the servants. Classic class division and such, even if Gwaine is not like other knights. He just cannot be sure now. Also 'cause he almost got found out my Agravaine which does not good for your nerves I bet.

WOW. Gwaine, baby, STAND UP. Get some self-respect. Good god. At Merlin's back and call, it's really ridiculous bro.

Immediately on a secret mission, love these boys.

Not Agravaine seeing his plans fall apart, GET REKT LOSER.

I wonder if Morgana's a good cook. I think she isn't actually. Just never gets recipes right. Burns things, undercooks others.

Oh, poor Gaius... he really tried to fight it but...

It's really fun watching the series and recognizing common clips used in edits.

The way Gaius speaks about Merlin with such wonder and pride... crying rn.

LMAO NOT MERLIN JUST COMPLETELY TRIPPING BOTH OF THE GUY'S FEET. ALSO THE WAY THE CATH TURNED??? HELLO??? HE LOOKED LIKE A SQUIRREL.

"We should split up." "Yeah." two dumb bitches saying "exactlyyyy"

"If you find him, don't wait for me." Gwaine IMMEDIATELY disagreed with that, Merlin dearest, he's not gonna let that happen.

Oh my god, Morgana hasn't met Gwaine yet. All she knows, from Agravaine, is that he's a "hothead". Lmao. lol even.

I love how Agravaine, literal dagger to Gaius' neck, is disagreeing with Gwaine's very keen observation, that he's the kidnapper and traitor. Girl, shut the fuck up.

Gwaine is so handsome. Also, yes, not completely stupid because, if Agravaine didn't kidnap Gaius, how did he know where he was, hm?? Bitchass.

Jesus. Credit when credit's due, he can be a good liar. Also, I feel like Gwaine's acting like he believes Agravaine's innocent, mainly because he can sense something fishy about him. His question, "So you agree he was abducted then?" is so SMART. 'Cause what else can Agravaine do but agree and declare Gaius an innocent man? Yeah that's fucking right, bitch.

Morgana is literally so hot and tragic when evil, good lord.

UGH, Morgana using magic without words, YES!!! Love her being powerful.

Face card never declines for either one of them, good god. Y'know what, more and more I understand Mergana. Just. Look at them!!!

OH THE WAY MERLIN KNOWS THAT ALATOR KNOWS HE'S EMRYS. OH MY GOD?????

Oh jesus, the way Morgana's just RELIEVED to finally know who Emrys is, she's so scared of him she just doesn't want to be scared anymore. Her voice is so soft here :(.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT HE YEETED THE FUCK OUT OF MORGANA WHAT THE FUCK, WOAH!!!!!!!!1

Oh wow that scene just gave me chills, holy shit holy shit. The way Alator just kneels and allies himself to Merlin. Jesus Christ, that's my drug bro.

Gwaine and Arthur interacting. Gwaine being so soft about Gaius, so worried :(. Arthur too :(((.

I really do love how royals just think the servants can't fucking hear. Gwen is right there as they speak very sensitive matters. Like bitch?? They have ears I promise??

The way Gaius and Merlin communicate their fears and anxieties :((( I'm so emotional bro.

"My worry is Arthur." and THOSE are your loyalties, while Alator and other's loyalties are to YOU, Merlin, 'cause you're supposed to bring forth Albion, but you're too busy having a fucking CRUSH TO DO IT!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, the way Arthur walks into the room and Merlin cannot even BEAR to look at him. He's HURT. As is his right.

The way Merlin immediately lightens the mood, 'cause he wants things to be easy as possible, even if it gets hurts swept under the rug like this. UGH. AGHHHHHHHHH.

Boys. Stop eye fucking. You're supposed to at least be a little mad at him, Merlin, you kinda deserve that, y'know.

Love that Arthur believes without a doubt that Gaius withstood torture for him and Camelot and won. Like. He truly sees Gaius as this strong figure. Just always there since he was born, bro. Even before, while he was being made!! That's bonkers.

I love how Arthur understood Gaius' lied even though Agravaine talks in the "evil manipulative guy" voice all the time. Fuck off bro, I swear.

The Gaius is trying to teach Arthur to understand the complexities of magic, that it's all evil or all good, it's all different. I love this scene so much.

Pretty boy.

And that is it!!! God, what an episode!! I feel like this episode is a good starting point for a show rewrite, in which Arthur gets more and more curious about magic and tries to understand, and maybe we'd get a magic reveal and shit like. I like that a lot.

[dandelionsandderivatives]

I would love to hear about The Magician's Guinea Pig!

Oh, I'm SO glad someone asked about this one!

As you might have guessed from the title, it's a fic centered on the guinea pig that Uncle Andrew uses to test inter-dimensional travel in The Magician's Nephew.

The idea was to tell the book (quickly) from the guinea pig's point of view, and write a little bit at the end about where the guinea pig goes afterwards. Digory and Polly leave it in the Wood Between the Worlds since it seems happy (and, having had pet guinea pigs, I can confirm that a world of grass with no predators is probably a guinea pig's idea of heaven). But guinea pigs are also social creatures, and I had to wonder if Aslan took it somewhere else where it could have pig friends.

And THAT brought me to the idea of the weirdness of the incarnation as seen in Narnia. The idea of Christ as a Lion is quite biblical and proper, but I assume a small prey animal (such as a guinea pig) would feel differently about lions in general than a human would. Aslan is (we are repeatedly told) a Real Lion, and so He ought to smell like a predator animal, and the guinea pig ought to be instinctively fearful. We see bits of this with Bree in The Horse and His Boy, but Bree is also a Talking Animal with some grasp of Narnian theology. What does meeting your God in the form of a predator look like for a regular non-talking beast?

So the idea was to lean into the idea that the guinea pig has no real idea what's going on around it, other than the smells and the kind of instincts about magic that all the creatures in Narnia seem to have, and to lean into writing some of those "beautiful but also terrifying" scenes that Lewis loved so much (and, imo, wrote very well). It doesn't, however, have much plot, and I've had trouble getting the emotions I'm envisioning into the story. Also, I wasn't sure what people fed guinea pigs in the 1890s, which is how I found myself reading the phd thesis of a woman who did some behavioural studies on guinea pigs in that era.

I still really like the idea, but I don't know if I'll ever finish it. It's underused in fanfic, though; I could only find one thing on AO3 tagged for the guinea pig. The main difficulty for me, I think, is writing Aslan; as with much Christian literature, you're essentially writing rpf about God, and that's a daunting prospect.

[tobiasdrake]

With your tonal language I can’t tell if you are exaggerating or genuinely hating Yakou.

My relationship with Yakou is complicated, in large part because his creator and I have very different sets of values. Yakou is a character designed to be complicated, but to leave you with an ultimately positive feeling towards him. He's a man haunted by his past, but also one with strong enough values and convictions that he can serve as something of a role model nonetheless.

My issue with Yakou is that a lot of the things that are designated as his flaws - his heavy drinking and willingness to murder - are things I don't have a problem with. Meanwhile, the things that are designated as his virtues? Well....

Kazutaka Kodaka is a man with profoundly heteronormative views on gender that come out in his work. He has strong opinions about binary masculinity and femininity, which get expressed in his writing - and his record with trans and non-binary characters is spotty.

With Yakou, this comes out as a sort of inadvertent foot-in-mouth syndrome, where he can become incredibly obnoxious in the moments where he's meant to be likable simply as a consequence of what Kodaka thinks are good values.

Yakou and Desuhiko are the two characters through which Kodaka explores masculinity. Fubuki, Yuma, Kurumi, and Vivia all have genders, but their stories aren't about gender. Halara, meanwhile, has neither a binary gender nor a story about gender. But Yakou and Desuhiko have masculinity itself as a major topic of conversation.

Which. Means. Kodaka, a guy with spotty views on gender, uses these characters to talk about gender. That's. Okay.

Desuhiko is used as a negative portrayal of masculinity. His worst traits are derived from trying too hard to express his masculinity. He's a kid with low self-esteem chafing under the yoke of trying to live up to a cultural standard, to earn respect by Doing The Thing whether he even understands why he's doing it or not.

This leaves him drifting through life constantly exclaiming "HAVE I MENTIONED HOW STRAIGHT AND NORMAL I AM!? OH BOY I SURE DO LOVE WOMEN!" to everyone he meets. He's identified The Womenz as the cure for his insecurity, even though he doesn't actually seem that invested and is honestly surprisingly chaste. He's just performing masculinity, hoping he'll get an A+ grade in Manliness and that maybe that will finally give him value as a person.

For as much as I dunk on Desuhiko, this is a fairly good commentary on what a patriarchal and heteronormative society does to insecure boys.

But then we have Yakou. He offers the counterpoint, as a more positive portrayal of masculinity. But. Like. His central thesis isn't that different from Desuhiko's. He's a romantic at heart who's central thesis is that the true measure of a man is defined by his relationship to a woman.

He's the heteronormative ideal: A man who controls his emotions, loves with all his heart, objectifies women to demonstrate a healthy sexuality but is committed in his heart of hearts to this one woman, who he would give his life for without question. He would be happily married with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids if not for this one asshole who stole his woman from him.

The moments where you're meant to roll your eyes and chuckle at Desuhiko are when he's trying to express masculinity. And the moments where you're meant to like Yakou are, similarly, moments when he's successfully expressing masculinity.

But the values he expresses in those moments? The things that come out of his mouth that are meant to make you appreciate him more? They're things like "Men exist just for women" and "You'd be prettier if you smiled more", confidently asserted in what's supposed to be a touching moment of emotionally connecting with the player character and, by extension, the player.

Most of the time when I'm dunking on Yakou, it's just for fun. He's far from my favorite character but he's harmless, and there are things I do enjoy about him. But the moments Kodaka writes when he's trying to make Yakou look good are the times when I can't fucking stand him at all.