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questionsonislam · 1 month ago

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What are personal rights and freedoms (rights of immunity / human rights) in Islam? Will you give information regarding the issue?

According to Islamic belief, man is a being equipped with perfect mental, bodily, ethical and spiritual faculties and abilities. Man is born sinless and clean, in a way that is suitable for all kinds of material and spiritual elevation. He is the most beautiful creature in terms of his outward appearance and inner world. The following is stated in the Quran:

“We have indeed created man in the best of molds.”

Therefore, respect to man and service to individuals need to be accepted as basic philosophy and will. For, man is an official and vicegerent of Allah on earth. This specialty of him is stated as follows:

"Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: ‘I will create a vicegerent on earth.’"

According to Islam, every human being is a slave of Allah. All human beings without exception have natural rights. However, those rights are his inborn rights due to becoming a human being. All human beings are like the members of one family. Nobility does not originate from birth but from ethical virtues and devotion to rights and duties. All human beings have equal rights no matter what race, class, profession or rank they have. Thus, every individual will regard others as members of the same family and treat them accordingly. No individual can be deprived of his natural rights due to the class, profession, race or gender he belongs to.

According to Islam, all people are equal in the face of law. A Muslim is no different from a non-Muslim as long as he fulfills his duties toward the state.

Consequently, man is a slave of Allah and a nice trust of Him whether he is a believer or not. Therefore, man has honor and he deserves respect. It is the basic philosophy of Islam not to see any differences among people in terms of being human and to regard them as beings that have equal rights, duties and values.

Farewell Sermon is regarded as one of the most important sources of Islam in terms of human rights. As it is known, Farewell Sermon is the name given to the sermons the Prophet (pbuh) delivered during Farewell Hajj in Makkah, where he went for hajj, in the 10th year of the Migration. Farewell Sermon is not only the sermon delivered in Arafat on the day of Arafah (Dhul-Hijjah 10) but also the one delivered in Mina on the second day of eid. The famous one among them is the one delivered in Arafat, addressing a congregation consisting of more than 140.000 people, men and women. This sermon summarizes man’s rights and duties as a basic law. Since the Prophet (pbuh) passed away three months after this sermon, it is his real will.

Before the Prophet (pbuh) started his sermon before such a crowded congregation, he ensured silence through Jarir b. Abdillah and Rabia b. Umayya, one of the Companions, appointed criers who repeated the speech of the Prophet sentence by sentence, enabling the sentences to reach everybody; which technically means using loudspeakers.

Now, we will quote some of the sentences from this important and universal speech, which is recorded as “Farewell Sermon” in the history of Islam and will try to explain the issues it contains:

”Praise and thanks be to Allah! We praise him, ask for His help, want from Him and turn to Him. We take refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and our bad deeds. If Allah misguides a person, nobody can guide him. I witness that there is no god but Allah, that He is one and that He has no partners. I also witness that Muhammad is His slave and messenger."

"O slaves of Allah! I advise you to fear Allah and encourage you to obey Him. Thus, I want to start my words with the best thing:"

"O People! Listen to what I explain to you. For I do not know whether, after this year, I shall ever be amongst you again."

" O People! Your blood (lives), wealth, honor and dignity are sacred up to the day when you meet your Lord, as this place (Makkah), this month (Dhul-Hijjah) and today are sacred. Be careful! Have I conveyed it to you? O Allah! Be my witness!"

" Return the goods entrusted to you to their rightful owners."

"The usury of the Era of Ignorance has been laid aside forever; your capital, however, is yours to keep. Thus, you will neither inflict nor suffer inequity. The first usury I abolish is the one that is due to my father’s brother, Abbas ibn Abdulmuttalib."

"Every right arising out of homicide (blood feud) in pre-Islamic days is henceforth waived, and the first such right I waive is that arising from the murder of my nephew, Amir Ibn Rabiah Ibn al-Harith."

"The customs of Era of Ignorance related the city of Makkah have been abolished except the duty of guarding the Kaaba and providing water to hajjis."

"O people! Satan has lost all hope that he will ever be able to lead you astray in big things, so beware of following him in small things."

"O people! I advise you to show respect to the rights of your women and fear Allah about them. You have certain rights with regard to your women, but they also have rights over you. Treat your women well and be kind to them, for they are under your protection. Fear Allah about women."

"O people! Every believer is the brother of another believer. Nothing shall be legitimate to a believer that belongs to a fellow believer unless it is given freely and willingly. Allah gave everybody their due (in the Quran)."

"Do not go astray after me and do not try to kill one another. I leave behind me two things, the Quran and my example, the Sunnah, and if you follow these you will never go astray."

"O people, your Lord is One, and your father is one: all of you are from Adam, and Adam was created from soil. The noblest of you in Allah’s sight is the most god-fearing. An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab except taqwa."

After the sermon ended, the Prophet (pbuh) asked that tremendous congregation,

”O people! They will ask you about me tomorrow. What will you say?" The Companions said,

"We witness that you have conveyed the prophethood of Allah; you have fulfilled the duty of prophethood and that you have given us advice." The Prophet raised his index finger toward the sky and lowered it toward the congregation three times and said,

"O Lord! Be my witness! O Lord! Be my witness! Let those who are here convey my words to those who are not here.”

As it is seen, the Prophet (pbuh) started his sermon with the exclamation "Ayyuhannas (O people)!" after praising Allah. First, he attracted the attention of listeners and addressed the whole world.

This sermon is very important in that it mentions basic issues of Islam, and legal issues like the abolition of customs of Ignorance, equality, freedom, blood feuds, interest (usury), human rights, rights of wives and husbands in family law, will, lineage, fornication, debt and guarantee.

This sermon of the Prophet (pbuh) is not an ordinary sermon addressing only Muslims; it is a historical sermon involving humanity and a universal declaration of human rights.

The phrase "O people!" mentioned in 7-8 places and forming the paragraph openings in the sermon indicates the universal aspect of this sermon or declaration, that is, its inclusion of all people. For, this phrase aims to address not only the Muslims there but also non-Muslims, unbelievers, atheists, etc. who were not there. For, the word "nas (people)" is a general word containing all sane people whether a believer or unbeliever, Muslim or non-Muslim, who were present or absent. Therefore, that message was not specific to the people who were there that day; on the contrary, it was an open invitation to be conveyed to the whole world. The Prophet (pbuh) obtained a promise from the people there that they would accept the principles he declared and that they would convey them to others. He passed away three months later.

Hz. Prophet (pbuh) suggested some social reforms in this sermon. The exploitation of the poor by the rich was forbidden and the interest added to the loan was abolished. Husbands were ordered to treat their wives well since they are their partners and helpers; the differences of race and country were abolished completely.

An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab because all humanity belongs to a single race actually. Besides, it is declared that lives, wealth, honor and dignity are sacred.

Hz. Prophet virtually summarized the religion of Islam in Farewell Sermon. Every issue took place in the triangle of Allah, man and other beings. People are regarded equal like the teeth of a comb. Immunity is provided for everything of man, his soul, life, wealth and thought. To sum up, this sermon introduced the rights of the people that they had lost.

Along with other issues, the following issues, which are of great importance in the life of individual and community, are emphasized in farewell Sermon:

1. Everybody’s life, wealth and honor are protected from transgression.

2. Nobody has the right to harm others.

3. All Muslims are brothers.

4. All debts will be paid but no extra amount (interest) will be paid in addition to the amount that has been borrowed.

5. Blood feuds and realizing justice personally are prohibited.

6. Women are life partners of men; therefore, they are ordered to be treated well; it is stated that women have the right to own wealth and property like men.

7. It is stated that people are equal irrespective of their race and color.

8. Deeds that harm family life like fornication are forbidden.

9. It is stated that the Quran was left as a trust to people and they are advised to adhere to it.

10. The calculation of days, months and years, which was a controversial issue among Arabs in the Era of Ignorance, were made clear; regarding some months halal and some months haram based on material interest and changing their places were prohibited; a year was determined to have twelve months. Besides, the sacredness of Makkah and places around it were pointed out.

11. It was emphasized that the entrusted things had to be returned to their owners.

The values Farewell Sermon added to human rights in terms of law are clear. It introduced certain religious, scientific, social, administrative, political and familial rights and duties. The importance of this sermon in terms of sociological history cannot be denied. The Prophet (pbuh) eliminated all of the customs and traditions of the Era of Ignorance in this sermon and declared his decrees about rights and duties, each of which was revolutionary.

On the day when this sermon was delivered, Islam addressed the world with its power and magnificence and stated that the Era of Ignorance ended with all of its dark sides and aberrations.

Thus, Farewell Sermon declared human rights to the whole world in 632; today, Westerners date human rights back to 1215, when the British accepted Magna Charta Libertatum (Great Freedom Contract). However, this contract includes certain rights between the king and Lords, who represented citizens, not between the king and citizens directly. Afterwards, human rights came to the fore with French Revolution in 1789 and the declaration of human rights was issued. Finally, Universal Declaration of Human Rights was issued by the United Nations in 1948. Even if the issue of human rights can be dated back to 1215, Farewell Sermon brought it forward in 632. Therefore, Farewell Sermon has a historical value.

Farewell Sermon is a document that affected the world of law, politics and administration of the future in many ways. Since Muslims regard the Prophet (pbuh) as a model in their lives, his traces are seen in every field. It is possible to see the examples of the sermon in legal, economic and political fields. If it is examined carefully, it will be seen that the political protocol / ordinance that Hz. Ali wrote and sent to Malik b. al-Harith al-Ashtar, the governor of Egypt, when he was the caliph, was inspired by Farewell Sermon of the Prophet (pbuh).

We wish to live in a world in which people respect the rights of one another and which is full of love.

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an-alexa-k · 5 months ago

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On Yellbot Dot Online

Over on @lazardotsocial I’ve gotten into the habit of writing essays about each generation, discussing generally thoughts on the project. I've been enjoying it, so now I’m going to do that for Yellbot.

Yellbot obviously was inspired by the classic Endless Screaming bot, but also because I had an ActivityPub idea and the yelling was an easy way to try it out. A neat technical detail of Yellbot is that there aren't any accounts or users. I have database tables for posts and follows but nothing for each individual bot. When someone looks at an account, all the information is created on the fly. When I’m making new posts, I look at all the letters people have followed and make posts for them. Until someone looks at or follows a letter, it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t need to exist.

This enables behaviors that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. You couldn’t make Yellbot on twitter - you’d have to create over a billion accounts or get permission to create as many accounts as you wanted, whenever you wanted. Neither option is realistic. But by having my own server and connecting to the larger ActivityPub network, it’s easy. A centralized service could never.

Now, yelling isn’t very valuable but I think this basic structure here could be applied elsewhere. You need two things:

1. Something that can be reference just through a username, like a name, definition of behavior, a start state, etc.

2. A behavior that happens occasionally – those are the posts.

So, you could have

Each account is a zipcode that posts whenever there’s a dangerous weather alert.

Each account is a wikipedia page that posts whenever the page is edited.

An account for every book on Project Gutenberg. When someone follows one it starts posting the book, sentence by sentence (in the style of Bedtime Story Bot). When it finishes, everyone gets unfollowed and the account is deleted, until someone follows again and it restarts.

Something like Sam Lavigne and Tega Brain’s project The Good Life – an account for each e-mail address and it posts each e-mail in real time.

Each account's username defines the rules for a cellular automata and each post is a generation.

Thinking up examples and possible applications lead me to thinking about what kinds of information ActivityPub is suited for. For example, here in Chicago every bus station has a 5 digit code on the sign. You can text to a number to receive schedule updates. So you could make a server with an account for each bus station.

Like this. Image from the Chicago Transit Authority

But what would it post? Nobody wants to know every time a bus arrives at a station. That’s too many posts cluttering up your timeline and all but the most recent one are irrelevant. Similarly, you wouldn’t want to receive the temperature through ActivityPub, because you only care about the current temperature, not all the past temperatures.

When you make a post on Mastodon, your server sends the messages to all the servers of accounts who follow you and they’re responsible for storing and displaying them. That’s the “publish” in ActivityPub. This makes it suited for activities where having the entire history is desirable - you don’t want to know just what your friends said most recently, you want to know everything they said. For cases where only the most recent version counts (like temperatures or buses), you’re better of letting the client request the data when they want it.

(I have loose thoughts here about Robin Sloan’s Spring ‘83 protocol, which is a person-to-person social communication system that doesn’t maintain any kind of history and (if I’m understanding the protocol correctly) doesn’t guarantee that you see every board from the people you follow. You couldn’t build Yellbot (or something equivalent) in Spring ‘83 due to key limitations, but the board format would be well suited for a dashboard type application.)

If your behavior doesn’t happen too often, you could still use ActivityPub and it wouldn’t be too annoying even if you don’t care about history. And it would have the benefit of putting the information someplace you’re already checking. If you’re already checking your the timeline daily, if a piece of info is added in there, you’re guaranteed to see it. That’s a big advantage and in many cases it'll be worth the clutter. I think daily is infrequent enough but exact amount of time would vary by person.

This project was an extension of the ActivityPub implementation I did for Lazar gen 7 and it takes the implementation a couple steps closer to totality. I have another project, which I put on hold to make Yellbot, which requires a complete implementation and it seems a lot more manageable now. So there may be more ActivityPub in the future, although no guarantees about how far in the future.

#ActivityPub #yellbot #essays #social media

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gaybd1 · 11 months ago

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So i imagine you're comfortable with spoken Mandarin by now? But how about written?

Here’s the funny thing with my Mandarin! First of all important to know is that I’ve never actually taken a class or anything for it.

Listening: Day to day I understand what people are saying. Some vocabulary is stronger for me than others. Like when a Chinese teacher is talking to a student at school I can understand all of that. But at the doctor I need English still. And I’m far less comfortable having a social conversation in Mandarin. So basically my ability/comfort level here comes down to what I’ve been exposed to.

Speaking: I hit a block here for a while. Funny enough, I was very good at speaking Mandarin when I lived in China and nobody around me knew any English, and it got worse when I got to Taiwan. Also, and this happened for the first several years with Spanish for me too, I have like… irrational anxiety about speaking? Like I’m SO nonverbal as much as I can be but then when I do speak people say it sounds practically native. What still stops me a lot is because of my lack of formal education, I’m still missing a lot of sentence structures. When I finish my masters I’m gonna do an intensive course to just get all that down and I bet I can get to a good level of fluency in a few months. Like all the words are there, I just gotta put them together

Reading: Also enough to get around. I first learned pinyin, but I have an okay enough understanding of zhuyin/bopomofo that just reading kids books helps me learn a lot. So like I can follow signs and read a menu, and if I’m looking at like a random shop sign I probably know 25-30% of the characters, though not always their meanings haha

Writing: It’s bad lmao but not a priority right now. My stroke order is kind of bad and anything I write looks like a kid did it but I really only ever have to write my name and address which I can do okay. Everything else is typing which is much easier. I still type with pinyin on my phone so when I’m at a computer and need to use Zhuyin I’m kind of screwed but eh

So yeah basically I’m a lot worse than I should be and my Chinese has probably gotten worse since moving to Taiwan actually because my work is all in English here and I’ve been so busy with school and personal issues to really focus on studying but I do learn more every day and plan to keep at it.

tl;dr I speak like a kindergartener and read like a second grader

#good question! sorry for the long winded autistic response #quesTian #tian talks

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doctorguilty · 1 year ago

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Nightmares

I feel asleep when i got home because I was tired and also started having an awful headache, but I slept so weirdly having weird and bad dreams and waking up a lot and falling back asleep, at one point I woke myself up because I was sleep talking (rare for me but when it does happen I tend to wake up from my own noise) and I vaguely remember I was having a dream where I was talking to someone random, but irl I whispered "you don't have to tell me if you don't want to" and it's weird getting woken up by my own sleep talking cause it's like there's an overlap where I'm still asleep saying it but I'm also waking up and aware mid sentence. Anyway idk it's usually a bad sign when that happens like it means I'm having weird stress dreams

I fell back asleep shortly after and I proceeded to have an awful nightmare, I dreamed I got dropped off at a store and I waited to get picked up but nobody came because they all fell asleep. It was 10 pm when I finally called someone because the store closed and I was just standing outside in the dark. My grandma picked up, I'd woken her up and I felt bad but she came to get me. For whatever reason everyone was staying at my mom's house, so that's where she was driving me home to.

My mom's house is kinda in the sticks irl, not horribly so, but the roads do get scary at night because they're windy and dark which is what I was dreaming about. We had driven SO long we should have gotten there by now but somehow we got lost. After turning around multiple times and seeing nothing we recognized I took out my phone to use Google maps but every time I typed in the address, it would route me to a completely different address. Like it didn't recognize the address and just "autofilled" what it thought I meant but it was unhelpful because I didn't recognize any of its suggestions. In the meantime my grandma kept driving, somehow unfazed and just saying things like "hm. Must've taken a wrong turn. It's okay I'll find it". I tried zooming in on the map and just manually looking but my service was poor and it was difficult getting street names and such to load. Sometimes I just had no service whatsoever and I just had to wait until it came back

In the meantime the road was so dark I was scared of crashing, a few times there was stuff that quickly crossed the road like deer though sometimes it looked like a small child or something and would just disappear into the darkness. Sometimes there was most definitely like adult people jogging alongside the road even though it in the middle of the night and I was scared we'd hit someone.

Any time I could get any coherent glimpse of the map it seemed like we'd gone 40 mins in the wrong direction, I suggested maybe we stop driving and wait until I could finally route us to the address but my grandma just calmly said it's okay don't worry she's just gonna keep looking

We were driving through like, tunnels and shit that don't exist in that area, sometimes we wouldn't see the road and accidently drive off it and like slide down a hill to a lower road. And she'd just keep driving.

It felt like hours and there'd be times where the sun was rising and we could see the roads a little better, but then suddenly it would become pitch dark again. (I don't recall seeing any kind of clock in the dream or even thinking about checking one.) My grandma never seemed distressed by any of this, which made it worse. She just kept calmly driving. Eventually in the dream I began to think I? We? Were dead and this was purgatory. Driving in the dark forever looking for my mom's house and never getting there.

Irl, I'd woken up SEVERAL TIMES, thought "oh thank God that dream is over" like very coherently, rolled over or whatever, fall back asleep, and the dream just continued where it left off in the car. It must have been 4 or 5 times this repeated before, finally, here I am now being like, I don't want to go back to sleep I'm awake I'm not getting back in the car

My head still hurts anyway so I should take some of my prescription medicine. And eat. Fuck

#seth speaks

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nothingenoughao3 · 3 months ago

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Big lore drop, but here we go.

I was raised a Mormon, and even after I moved in with my parent who was an atheist, I continued to attend throughout my teenage years. I stopped at the age of 17, when, after a service, I was talking to some other teenagers and said the phrase "I don't know what the hell THAT was about".

Everyone looked SICK. I was only about five feet from the nearest door to the outside. So I walked backwards out of the ward building and never returned.

Every time I thought about going back, I would encounter a massive revelation about my sexual orientation or my belief system overall, until 2008 or so, when the LDS church came out as being massively homophobic to the public. I then applied to have my baptism revoked, a sentence which still makes most of the Christians I say it to look at me as though I'm the crazy one.

Now, in that time, if the church found out I was gay, they could have me excommunicated, which is not what I wanted. They could then use that fact as proof that I was an evil person and not to be listened to. Much harder to do when you apply and get your baptism revoked. So I sweated over the legalese of this letter in which I explained how I didn't believe any church doctrine and understood the eternal consequences of my actions. Not one mention of my orientation the entire time.

And then they sent me a bunch of letters and stuff begging me to not do it, and they gave my address to the local church, who sent people to tuck letters into my doorframe asking me not to leave. They misspelled my name on half these letters. They never saw me in person and, thankfully, also never saw my spouse. After a couple of months, I received a letter confirming my baptism was revoked.

I still have it somewhere and I plan on framing it. Nobody I know who was in the church can believe I actually acquired this document. Nobody outside the church can believe I needed to get one.

it's so weird to me that everyone on this website is a human person outside of their weird internet niche so rb this with a random bit of your lore

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1kook · 5 years ago

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netflix & chill

summary If you planned things right, you could rain down your raging displeasure on Jeon Jungkook right after the meal but before this proposed ‘Netflix and chilling,’ maybe dramatically throw your glass of wine at him, before storming out of his place and reporting him to the authorities (Namjoon) for his douchebag personality. warnings grinding, 2 seconds of sub kook, oral (f), cum eating, vanilla but [ passionate ], unprotected sex, dirty talk tags use of the oldest trick in the book (“your hands are sooo big”), shy oblivious AND gentleman jk? pick a struggle, brief ment of app developer kook, evil and conniving oc wc 10.2k !! wow!!

will I ever write a serious jk fic? NO. this entire thing was based off this pic of jungkook which i’ve said before that i would print out in sepia filter and crumple and stuff in a drawer n then tell my kids 35 years from now was a long lost lover i met on a cruise to the bahamas and never saw again ty to mia more @daechwlta for being there during my brief crisis over this fic 🥺

When Namjoon had first not so subtly mentioned the idea of setting you up on a date, it was with a faux air of disinterest that you had masterfully pried the details out of him. Namjoon has a friend, he said, a friend who was kinda sorta attached to his hip. And while Namjoon loved the kid, he also thought this friend could use some social interaction outside of Namjoon.

Now you and Namjoon weren’t exactly the most conventional of friends for him to be proposing blind dates to you at whim. He was your senior at school, your mentor in your scholarship program, an educated man studying for his masters. So when he’d first uttered the words you were immediately on the fence. Sure, the two of you knew each other well and probably got along better than most mentor-mentee pairings among your year, but you doubt Namjoon knew enough of your tastes to offer you up for a blind date.

According to Namjoon, his friend was a kid in the same year as you, making him not so much as a kid as he was your classmate. You brushed it off at first, spewing some bullshit excuse that you’d rather focus on your studies, and how dating was a distraction to your education, as if you hadn’t spent the weekend prior binge watching some Spanish novella while you dutifully ignored your essay.

The second time Namjoon mentions it you agree on the spot. Life on campus could only be interesting for so long, so you might as well make the best of it and go on as many stupid dates as possible.

Namjoon is over the moon.

He tells you he’ll pass your phone number on over to that friend of his—“Jeon Jungkook”—and promises you you won’t regret this because his friend was amazing, really. And for Namjoon to sing his praises for just any underclassmen was unheard of. In fact, besides you, you don’t think Namjoon knows many other students younger than him, and if he did, you hardly doubt he would regard them so highly.

So he gives his friend your number, and so ends your weekly meeting with your mentor. You only realize on the walk back to your dorm that you forgot to ask him about some club at school, the whole goal of this week’s meeting, but by then you don’t really care, the whole conversation fading into the background.

In fact, you forget about the whole ordeal until Friday night rolls around and you’re once again, binge watching another novella on your laptop, when your phone suddenly vibrates.

You were by no means a loser at school, a friendless nobody, but you were also not the outgoing, school-spirited student on the front page of your school’s website, and thus had nearly every app that could produce a notification on your phone muted, every text thread silenced. The only notifications and messages you allowed were from your email and from your roommate, and considering the fact Doyeon was face down in a puddle of her own mid-semester tears right across from you, it was probably your email.

Much to your surprises, it isn’t that “Monday’s Class is CANCELLED” email you were hoping for, but instead some unknown number in a text notification. You roll your eyes, click it open thinking it’s a reminder from some store or from some guy claiming to be from your bank, only to pause at the words written inside the little grey bubble.

hey its jungkook!!! joon gave me your number to I guess ask you on a date soo are you free tmrw night??

The excessive punctuation reminds you a little bit of your kid sister back home and the dorky emails she’ll send you from time to time. It’s with that memory and a smile on your face, that you’re suddenly reminded of what exactly this message is saying. “Oh shit,” you mumble, moving to sit up and reread the text. Doyeon complaining loudly in the background has you reading it twice more before you understand it, and by then there’s a fluttery feeling in your chest.

You were by no means easily swayed by people, but this guy had received praise from Kim Namjoon of all people, so he definitely had some prestige to his name. He doesn’t seem overbearing from this one text he’d sent, but he also didn’t seem completely disinterested.

You try to match his nonchalant energy, letting him know you were in fact free and down to meet him, just to let you know more details.

You won’t lie, there’s a giddy feeling bubbling within you at the prospect of getting all dolled up, hitting the town, pawning a free meal off some unsuspecting college soul, and maybe even hitting it off. It’s been a while since you’ve dated, sue you.

Jeon Jungkook’s response crushes those dreams as well as hurdles you straight into a nightmare.

cool!! was thinking i could cook for us at my place, drink a little wine, maybe Netflix and chill a little bit??

You are blown away by the absolute gall of this man, to butter you up by painting a pretty picture only to reduce you to a mere booty call. The fact he had felt confident enough to say all that within the same sentence blows your mind.

Did this Jeon Jungkook, who you had no idea of what he looked like, who had no idea of what you looked like, seriously just invite you over for some quote unquote Netflix and chill?

Who, in the ever living hell, was this guy who so sleazily invited women over to fuck with no qualms about who they were?

You’re offended that Namjoon would set you up like this, pawn you off to such a greasy friend. But then again, you guess not everyone knows their friends thoroughly, because this Jeon Jungkook flirtatiously inviting your over for some sex sounds nothing like the golden boy Kim Namjoon had raved about earlier this week. You click your phone off, tapping the device against your lips as you ponder how to best rip this jerk to shreds via text.

It’s amidst Doyeon cursing out her statistics teacher that an idea hits you.

Tomorrow was Saturday night, and as far as you knew, you really didn’t have anything else going on for you anyway. You’d take Jeon Jungkook’s offer, let him cook you a free meal and drink some of his wine. He mentioned having his own place, and vaguely you remember Namjoon saying he lived alone, hence his introverted tendencies, so you could slip in and out without doing that walk of shame through a boy’s dorm hall.

Not that there would be anything to feel shameful about. In fact, if you planned things right, you could rain down your raging displeasure on Jeon Jungkook right after the meal but before this proposed ‘Netflix and chilling,’ maybe dramatically throw your glass of wine at him, before storming out of his place and reporting him to the authorities (Namjoon) for his douchebag personality.

Ha! That would certainly teach the asshole not to use his poor, unsuspecting friends to reel in nice girls like you into one night stands.

You could practically feel the devil horns begging to poke out of your skull, the forked tail wiggling behind you, as you click your phone back on and text Jeon Jungkook a great!! what’s your address :)

——

Saturday morning and afternoon are as boring as they usually are. You do a little homework, and spend thirty minutes filling Doyeon in on your master plan, which she eats up and even gives you some pointers—“and then you can be like, ‘you sick freak, as if I’d let you near this 5-star, Michelin reviewed, Gordon Ramsey approved coochie’ and throw the whole plate at his head!”—before getting ready for your little date at Jeon Jungkook’s.

You try hard to look good, harder than you would have if he hadn’t offended you by reducing you to a booty call, and Doyeon helps. She does your eyebrows all nice and natural, dusts the thinnest shin of liquid highlighter across the high points of your face, the whole shebang until you’re looking like a sexy, glowing goddess. You shimmy into a pretty dress, nothing too fancy nor too casual, and even pull on those strappy sandals you’d bought on sale last winter before blowing a kiss to Doyeon and meeting your Uber downstairs.

You don’t quite remember what the reason behind Jeon Jungkook living in such a swanky neighborhood a few minutes from campus was, if it was from a job you vaguely recall Namjoon mentioning, or if it was just purely hereditary, but his place is nice. It’s a connected townhouse, something you’d expect a newly wed couple to live in and not some douchebag third year.

Worse comes to worse, you get banned from this rich neighborhood after humiliating one of its residents in his own home, not that you’d ever make it big enough to live here anyway.

You’d texted Namjoon sometime that morning to let him know you were meeting his friend, an ominous text with an even more ominous smiley face attached to it. But it seems Namjoon is easily blinded by underclassmen he trusts, if Jeon Jungkook’s assholish feats and your own suspicious behavior is anything to go by, because he texts you back a polite have fun! he’s a little shy, so it might take a while for the ball to start rolling hahahaha.

Shy my ass, you think closing the door of your Uber behind you. You double check the address that had been texted to you, walking up to the neat townhouse and knocking against the polished door.

It’s a little chilly, and you hope finding an Uber is easier later tonight when you make your grand escape. It’s between these thoughts that the door swings open, revealing the most handsome man you’ve ever met.

He’s attractive, disgustingly so, with dark hair and light brown tips to contrast, tickling his cheekbones. His dark eyes are round and imploring as they meet yours, gaze almost innocent and doe like as he takes you in. He’s got this soft, blue turtleneck on, and it looks like it should be a seasonal sweater reserved for the holidays but he pulls it off nicely on this premature spring night. His pretty pink lips move, and it takes you a second to realize he’s talking.

“___?” He says, and his voice is deep, yet soft in its own unique way. You nod, like a stupid bobble head, because your throat constricted the moment this beautiful angel opened the door. “It’s cold outside, come in!” He urges you, out stretching his palm to make sure you don’t trip over the slight step up the door as he brings you into his home.

“Hi,” he exhales when you’re finally inside, standing a little too close to you in his small entryway.

“Hi,” you finally choke out, a little dazed by how handsome he is, and the sudden realization that you’re supposed to throw your glass of wine at him tonight because he’s a douchebag dawns on you. You blink yourself out of your stupor, taking a step back and gesturing towards your sandal clad feet.

“Oh!” Jeon Jungkook exclaims at the sudden realization. “I forgot to set out a pair of slippers for you,” he sheepishly admits, before he excuses himself to go get some. There’s a tiny ottoman pushed against the wall, beneath a long mirror, that you take a seat on it, carefully unstrapping your sandals.

All the while, you’re deep in thought.

It makes sense that someone like Jeon Jungkook was so forward in inviting you over for sex during your first interaction. Realistically speaking, the guy had it all. He lived alone in a swanky townhouse in a wealthy neighborhood (you finally remember Namjoon saying he did some app developing for major companies—yeah, still in college but already making it big because he was that good), and looked like the blueprint for the perfect man, someone who’d impress your parents. On top of that, the man was was a 21st century Adonis. You hadn’t missed the flash of ink on his knuckles, or the way his jeans had hugged his legs.

He’s making his way back now, inspecting the slippers in his hands, and you don’t miss the way the jeans are pulled taut around his thighs in particular.

Yeah, he definitely knew his way around a woman’s body, there was no way he couldn’t have.

You slip your feet into the slippers he places before you, wiggling your toes around, before glancing back at Jungkook. He smiles warmly, a little beauty mark beneath his lip making itself known. He takes your hand, pulls you up onto your feet, and begins guiding you down the hall and to what you assume is the kitchen.

“I didn’t know what you liked, and I figured asking you three hours before you came over would be too awkward,” he laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. He glances at you again, and upon seeing your inquisitive stare, quickly turns away with flushed cheeks.

Oh this man knew the game, and he knew it well.

Jeon Jungkook still thinks he can play that cute campus boy being set up by his senior card now, after he’d shown you his true colors last night via text. But he has a big storm coming. As much as you could admit he was good to look at, you would not be fooled by some pretty face and tasty food. No, you came here with one goal and one goal only, and that was to give Jeon Jungkook a piece of his own two-faced medicine before running off to tattle to Namjoon.

You reach the kitchen and the heavenly smell of Alfredo sauce swarms your nostrils. “I… I’m still new to cooking, so I hope you don’t mind some Alfredo pasta,” he admits, shy smile adorning his features as he avoids your gaze once again to toy with the dish towel by the sink.

You creep closer to the counter, where two meticulously presented ceramic plates sit beside a wine bottle, and the glands in your mouth suddenly go into overdrive in their rush to make you salivate, and you choke out an overly eager, “it looks amazing!” before you know it.

Okay, you came here with two goals.

——

Jungkook carries the two bowls in his big hands to the dining room beside the kitchen, and you follow behind with the bottle of wine and two glasses as you set the table together. The utensils are already there, but Jungkook runs back into the kitchen anyway to return with some fancy cloth napkins for the two of you.

Just as you're tugging a chair out to sit, Jungkook beats you to it. “Ah, let me,” he smiles, and your heart thunders nervously in your chest as you return the expression, brushing your hands beneath you before sitting down and letting him push you in. Jungkook takes his own seat in front of you, and before you can dig in he calls out to seemingly nobody, “Alexa, dim the dining room lights.”

The overhead lights dim, and with their overbearing glow gone, you can finally appreciate the battery powered candles snuggled neatly into a little bowl on the table between you two. You ooh appreciatively, and Jungkook looks proud of himself.

Then, he says, “Alexa, play…Date Night Playlist.”

You blink, and a soft piano tune begins filtering through a speaker he’s hidden somewhere in the room. Even with the fake candles being your main source of light, the flush on Jungkook’s cheeks is evident as he gestures towards you to eat.

You won’t lie. Jeon Jungkook was extremely endearing.

This much becomes evident the further you get into the meal. As small talk devolves into full fledged conversations and story telling, his shy demeanor slipping away but still sticking to the edges of his personality, you begin to have a more difficult time connecting this Jungkook to the one who had less than 24 hours ago asked you to come over and “Netflix and chill” with him.

But the more you speak, the more distant that image begins to feel. For one, Jungkook does put on a fairly reserved aura for you, telling you about his job but refusing to brag about it even when you egg him on. He has no qualms gassing up his friends, Namjoon in particular, who Jungkook claims is his role model for some unknown reason, given the fact they are neither in the same major nor in any of the same clubs. They’re friends, point blank period, but Namjoon is very obviously a star in Jungkook’s eyes.

Additionally, he’s quite embarrassed to admit why Namjoon had been so set on getting Jungkook to date, but eventually tells you it’s because Jungkook’s last girlfriend had been during your freshman year—two whole years ago! It makes you wonder what he’d been doing since then, if he’d used the time to fully invest in his work or if he’d been mingling around, unbeknownst to his friends, which would explain the flirtatious offer that landed you here.

Still, a part of you refuses to believe last night’s Jungkook and tonight’s Jungkook were one in the same, and if they were, what had made this shy man so unabashedly invite you over for some sex. Was this act all a ploy? Or maybe, was he purposefully trying to ward you away by coming off as a gentleman now that he’d seen your face and wasn’t interested in you anymore?

Apparently it’s neither of the two, and you don’t realize this until you finish your meal and make your way into his living room to finally get down to the long awaited Netflix and chilling. It’s only when you sit down on the couch, smack dab in the middle, because at this point, you’re not gonna throw your wine at Jeon Jungkook like you planned, he was too nice. And if this niceness was an act to get in your panties, you didn’t care at this point. He was hot, achingly so, and at least you’d get a good fuck out of it.

But as you said, apparently not. Because Jeon Jungkook sees you purposefully take up the entire middle of the couch, sultry eyes staring him down, and decides to sit flush against the armrest, somehow leaving a good foot between the two of you, despite the fact you’re sitting next to each other.

Your brain can’t work fast enough to comprehend the situation, before he’s asking you what you want to watch. “Um,” you say, pointedly staring at him and not the screen. “Tr-Transformers?”

The way Jungkook’s eyes light up is insane, already round eyes nearly popping out of their sockets as he eagerly rushes to select it from whatever streaming service he has, probably not even Netflix, all the while chattering on about how much he loves that series, and is so glad you do too.

The whole time, you’re struck by the oddness of his casual tone, the way he’s overly invested in the 20th Century Fox opening, and how he’s very carefully avoiding intruding in on your personal space.

The last point in particular has you wanting to pull your hair out, because you want Jeon Jungkook intruding in on your personal space. You want him pressed so tightly against you you can’t breathe, you can’t move, until you’re drowning in him as he finally lives up to his promise of some Netflix and chill, because you want him, and you want him so. very. bad.

“Oh, I forgot the popcorn!” Jungkook exclaims, and you jump at the sudden volume of his voice, because he’d been pretty silent as he avidly watched the first few minutes of the movie. “Sorry,” he chuckles, and his leg brushes against yours as he shuffles between you and the coffee table on his way out. You vaguely hear the popping of the popcorn in the kitchen, but you’re too distracted by your suddenly overwhelming thoughts.

Okay, one thing was for sure, and that was that Jeon Jungkook definitely had no fucking idea what the phrase Netflix and chill meant, because the way he’d zeroed in on the movie and the popcorn, and not you, was unheard of on such invitations. You deduce he probably heard it somewhere, and, now understanding the true nature of Jungkook’s sweet and shy personality, made no such perverted connection to the phrase.

Which meant he most definitely did not demean you to a mere booty call, like you’d deluded yourself into believing, someone he could hump and dump with no regrets, before calling Namjoon up to thank him. Which meant he’d had no ulterior motives in meeting you tonight, just planning to get to know you at the suggestion of his friend, and had—unbeknownst to him—successfully wooed you thus far.

Which was great! If you turned a blind eye to the evil, conniving plans you’d made without even meeting the guy, and the subsequent flood of self-inflicted disapproval when you realized Jeon Jungkook was a sweetheart who definitely did not deserve having a glass of wine thrown at his face after making you a home cooked meal and giving you the full Olive Garden experience, with his dimmed lights and candlelit dinner and piano music on the background.

Yeah. Perfectly fine.

The only problem now was that you had become so dangerously smitten with the man that you wanted to sleep with him. You wanted that Netflix and chill, needed it like it was the last slot in a daycare class and you were a soccer mom of five wanting to get at least one kid out of the house for the summer for the sake of her own sanity. You were desperate.

No, you scold yourself. This was fine, this was good, this was perfectly okay. If anything, this just further made you enamored with Jungkook, because it proved how gentlemanly he was by not trying to sleep with you on the first date.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to, the devil on your shoulder crooned.

The microwave in the kitchen stops, and you hear the sound of cabinets opening as Jungkook pours the popcorn into a bowl. On screen, the main character is meeting a bunch of giant cars-turned-robots, you don’t fucking know.

But the devil was right.

Jungkook hadn’t offered to sleep with you, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to. Furthermore, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be seduced into wanting to, your evil brain suggested, and the hope that had slithered it’s way into your chest from the very moment Jungkook had opened the door, took that fact and ran with it.

“What’d I miss?” Jungkook says when he returns, popcorn bowl in hand.

“Oh, um, he was with the car,” you offer, trying to stop the nefarious smirk from slipping onto your features. Jungkook laughs, cute and airy as he shuffles past you.

He’s too absorbed in the screen, not looking as he sits down, closer than last time until his thigh brushes yours and he jerks back in embarrassment. “Oh, sorry,” he flounders, goes to move away but you act fast.

You grab onto his upper arm with both of yours like an octopus, keeping him flush to you as you gaze up at him with wide eyes. “No, it’s okay,” you rush to assure him, loosening your hold as he tentatively relaxes beside you. You glance down at the popcorn bowl in his hand, swiping a piece to pop between your lips. “It’s easier for us this way,” you say, and you’re pulling that straight out of your ass, because you hate popcorn and have literally zero desire for it and wouldn’t have reached for it anyway if you weren’t trying to convince him this was all for popcorn sharing purposes.

Jungkook’s eyes briefly flicker down to where you’re munching on that popcorn, your lips, before he’s quickly averting his gaze. “Ah, y-yeah,” he agrees, and though he tries to relax back into the couch, you can still feel the tension of his muscles as he settles beside you.

With his eyes no longer trained on you, you snuggle closer into his side resting your cheek against the soft material covering his shoulder, finally letting that devious smirk slip onto your face. You keep yourself close to Jungkook, loving the way his warmth permeates the thick sweater he’s wearing, even if he’s still overly into the movie. You know he’s seen it before, because he keeps telling you random tidbits like, “they use this in the next movie!” Or “he ends up becoming really important in the sixth movie,” and you want to listen to this endearing nerd’s commentary, you really do, but once your brain is stuck on horny, it is stuck on horny.

He doesn’t even eat a lot of popcorn, setting it down not ten minutes later onto the coffee table. You release him as he moves forward, but quickly latch onto him again when he sits back down.

Much to your surprise, Jungkook is way more relaxed then, shrugging you off to rest his hand on the couch behind you, and you inwardly squeal at the prospect of getting to cuddle up to his body, and not just his arm. You cuddle in close to him, leaving your slippers on the ground as you tuck your legs up onto the couch cushions.

Jungkook is so warm and firm, and you know it’s your horny brain speaking, but you swear you feel a tight set of abs underneath the palm you rest on his stomach, and you give an experimental brush over the area. His heart picks up, you hear it by where your head is leaning against his chest, and you tilt your head up to give him a curious glance. His cheeks are red, and he doesn’t look at you even though you know he sees you, so you decide to kick things up a notch.

You sigh loudly, peeling yourself away from him to properly level him with a pout. “Jungkook, aren’t you hot in this?” You ask, pinching the wooly material between two fingers and pulling it from his skin. Jungkook finally looks away from the screen, nibbling his lower lip as he takes in your quizzical expression.

“Um, only a little… but it’s fine!” He rushes to say, and you recall from your conversations over dinner that Jungkook doesn’t much like people fussing over him, so you quickly change gears.

You press a hand against your cheek, the same one that had been resting against his shoulder earlier. “Oh, well… it’s really itchy,” you announce, and his eyes widen, one hand absentmindedly reaching to clutch the material at his chest. “It’s making me really itchy,” you emphasize, and part of you feels bad for taking advantage of his caring nature, but this is all for the greater good, you convince yourself. “Do you mind taking it off?”

“I, uh, yeah,” he agrees, reaching for the hem of his sweater before carefully peeling it off. When he pulls it over his head, you can’t help the triumphant grin that overtakes your face, though you quickly mask it when he finally frees himself from the material. “Better?” He says once he’s clad in only a plain black shirt.

“Mm, much,” you sigh, and nearly soak your panties then and there when a tattooed sleeve comes into view. “Woah!” You exclaim, snatching his wrists up to examine his skin. “What’s this?” You marvel, tracing every inch of delicious skin with your predatory gaze. Jungkook huffs out a laugh, and you glance up to watch as he rubs the back of his neck in that same embarrassed way he’d done multiple times throughout your night together.

“My tattoos,” he says, and then seems to realize the simplicity of his statement and rushes to add to it, “I hope you don’t mind?”

You hum, shifting onto your knees to face him as you continue tracing over a huge tiger lily by his forearm. “Why would I? It’s your body,” you say, and watch the nervous glance melt off his face as he regards you with something new. Something akin to wonder as he lets you trace over more of his ink, nodding along to your words.

“Yeah… yeah!” He agrees, and you grin at his sudden zeal. He chuckles, physically relaxing beneath your touch, and it’s probably the most relaxed he’s been all night as you continue rubbing your hands over every tattoo on his skin, and then purposefully focusing on the ones near his bicep. “Sorry, ‘m just used to people pushing off their own opinions about them onto me,” he explains, and for a moment, the horniness that had been fueling you all night fades away, and you let your hands trail down, past his wrist, until you’re sandwiching his hand between yours.

“Fuck what anyone else thinks,” you tell him, eyes hard as you imagine anyone imposing their stupid thoughts on Jungkook, who was too good for this world. “If you think they’re cool, then they're the coolest thing in the world.”

He smiles at you, and you’ve seen this smile about a million times tonight—when you first came in, when you talked about yourself at dinner, when you mentioned this stupid movie—but it has something swelling in your chest. Something too intimate for a first date, so you quickly move to repress it.

Glancing down at his hand in yours, littered with smaller tattoos across his knuckles, your brain whirls into action. Bringing it up between the two of you, you turn his hand over to line your palms up. “Wow, your hands are so big,” you sigh, slowly reverting back to dirty thoughts as you twist yours and Jungkook’s hands this way and that. He snorts, bends the tips of his fingers over yours just to hear you ooooh again.

“Yeah, they’re pretty big,” he agrees, completely ignoring the film playing on the screen, which is a huge win in your eyes considering how deeply he’d been watching it earlier.

Finally, you see an opening and pounce.

“Well, that means something else is pretty big too,” you murmur, chancing a glance up at his face. His face is the perfect definition of composed, and you can tell when exactly he processes your words because those little pink lips part in surprise, red slowly filling the apples of his cheeks. You let go of his palm, letting it slide between your fingers until it falls limp beside him.

Jungkook watches you with wide eyes, as you raise yourself up onto your knees. “Jungkook?” You mumble, giving him no warning before you’re throwing a leg across his lap, knees pressed into the couch on either side of his thighs.

“Y-Yes?” He stutters, brown hair falling away from his face as he stares up at you. You flash him a sweet smile, and you can tell it relaxes him because his fists unclench beside him.

“You’re a really nice boy,” you sigh, and when you’ve scooted your knees a little closer to his ridiculously thin waist, you finally let yourself sit. You find yourself right before his crotch, which he desperately tries to hide as he shifts around, but can’t with you on top of him. You let your hands flutter to rest at his shoulders, and he gulps. “You’re so sweet and cute,” you add, relish in the flush that climbs up to his ears. “But I’m a little sad you invited me over to Netflix and chill, but won’t do just that,” you pout, a finger tangling itself in a soft strand at the back of his head.

“Huh?” He stutters, eyes nearly bulging out when you wiggle around again. “I-I’m sorry?” He huffs, and when you move too close to his crotch, where his jeans are slowly growing more and more strained, he panics and reaches a hand out to steady your waist.

You feign confusion, flashing him another pout as you duck closer until your noses bump against each other. “You know what it means, don’t you, Jungkook?” You inquire, eyes falling dangerously lidded as you swallow up every inch of his appearances.

He stutters, hands moving up and down as if he doesn’t know where to put them anymore. But you know exactly where Jungkook can put those hands, and you waste no time catching his wrists in your hands to guide him towards your hips. “No?” He breathes, fingers flexing against you, and you smile sweetly at him.

“It means,” you purr, shifting forward until you’re flush against where you need him most. You can barely contain the whimper that climbs out of your throat when you finally feel the rough material of his jeans against your panties. “It means you wanna fuck, Jungkook,” you exhale, tossing your head back as your body basks in the slight reprieve, the way Jungkook squirms beneath you aiding greatly in providing that sensation you craved.

“It’s nothing more than an excuse,” you huff, placing a hand on the back of his neck to steady yourself. At your touch, Jungkook jolts, thighs jumping beneath you and you stifle another groan when the zipper of his jeans prods against your core. “For you to fuck my brains out while some s-stupid movie plays in the background.”

You’re not sure when, but sometime during that last explanation your hands had fully delved into the thick tresses of Jungkook’s hair. You give an experimental tug, and poor Jungkook, so lost in all that you’re telling him, lolls his head back for you easily until the long expanse of his neck is available, soft creamy skin yours for the taking.

You pounce, kissing the skin gently at first, before sprinkling in a handful of nibbles. He’s sensitive, devastatingly so, as he gasps at a particular suck. You suction your lips on the spot below his ear, carefully biting down on the skin as he unravels beneath you. “Will you do it, Jungkookie?” You murmur against the shell of his ear,

He nods eagerly, and his fingers hurt where he’s pressed them deep into your waist, like he’s trying to brand you as his with his mere strength alone. “Y-Yes,” he exhales, hips jerking when you swipe your tongue over the pretty mark you’d left on his perfect skin.

You smother your smirk against his neck, grinding down on him once again. “Yes what?” You tease, and let his strong hands roll you against him afterwards.

“Yes, I-I’ll…” he stumbles, eyes dazed as he watches you through hooded lids. You raise a brow at him, shifting in his lap. It’s enough to kickstart him back up, and he’s biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. “I’ll fuck you, I’ll fuck you just like you want,” he rambles. He surprises you when he begins rutting up against you, so animalistic and uncontrolled, nothing like the sweet Jungkook that had indulged you over dinner. “I’ll make you come, p-promise,” he rasps.

You smirk down at him, hoping he doesn’t see the metaphorical horns sticking out of your head the further he falls into your trap. Before he can say anything else, you surge forward, slotting your mouths together for the first time that night.

It’s no surprise that Jungkook kisses just like he speaks, carefully like he’s afraid one hard press of his lips will ward you off. His lips are smooth, a fact you’d hyper-fixated on all night as he spoke, but before you can ponder on that any further, something hot and wet is prodding at your lower lip.

The gasp you barely manage to contain ends up escaping anyway when Jungkook’s hand comes up to cup the side of your face, tilting your head to the side as his tongue slithers into your mouth. You become obsessed with the way he touches you, every bit the gentlemen he’d been all night, fingers just barely pressing into your cheek like he doesn’t want to mess up your makeup. His other hand, snuggly wrapped around your waist, pulls you tighter against him until your chests are pressed together.

And that tongue. That tongue of his that leaves no room for argument, quickly shutting down any attempts of yours to overtake him. He’s graceful about it too, one nudge enough to convince you he’s got this, he’ll take care of you. You whimper, a sound Jungkook swallows before he’s biting down on your lower lip.

When he pulls away, his lips are red and glossy, and you wonder if yours are too. “Fuck, you’re so pretty,” he sighs, gazing at you like he can’t believe you’re there in front of him.

Before you can say anything else, he’s burying his face in the crook of your neck to brush kisses over your skin. “Let me eat you out,” he begs, but his voice is so silky and smooth that it doesn’t sound so much as a plea as much as it does a suggestion. He licks a stripe up your neck, and you jump in his hold.

It’s at this moment where the sudden realization hits you, the feeling of having the reins yanked out of your hands. You so vividly controlled every aspect of Jungkook just a few moments ago, when you’d had your own mouth on his neck, and carefully coaxed him into some sex.

But it seems Jeon Jungkook isn’t as soft or as pliable as you had dubbed him to be, and if the way he’s begun subtly rolling your hips into his crotch is any sign, he certainly wasn’t the submissive type either. Which leaves you wondering, exactly what type of person was Jungkook in bed?

Well, you had all night to figure that out.

“Hey,” he whines suddenly, ripping you out of your thoughts. You glance down at him, registering the bored set of his eyes and the unimpressed quirk of his lips. “Pay attention to me.”

You blink, lips twitching. You can barely muffle the giggle that tears itself from your throat, leaning your forehead on his shoulder as your body shakes at his suddenly childish words. Jungkook chuckles too, as if suddenly realizing how out of place his own statement was. “Sorry,” he smiles, cheeks pleasantly rosy and you can’t even stop yourself from kissing him silly.

Jungkook, bless his heart, let’s you rain down a good three kisses on him before he’s pushing you down on the couch beside him. There’s still a slight gleam in his eyes, but the rest of his face schools itself into a hungry expression as he drinks in your body laid out before him. “Let me eat you out?” He asks again, voice but a soft whisper.

You nod, heart beating loudly in your chest as he shuffles down until he can press a kiss to the tops of your thighs. He hasn’t even done anything that intense yet, but you already feel the muscles in your leg ready to spasm just from his proximity.

He’s mouthing at your skin, nudging your legs apart, and you, usually so confident in your sexuality, can’t find the courage to look at him as he so lovingly carries out his ministrations.

As if sensing your sudden bout of shyness (you! shy! Doyeon was gonna tease you about this for the rest of your life once you recapped this for her), he places a soft kiss just below where the hem of your dress begins, before pulling back and uttering, “this okay?”

You hum in response, face warm from just imagining how good he must look down there, peppering your skin with kisses. Your heart nearly rips itself out of your chest when a strong set of fingers wraps around your wrist suddenly, sliding over and around your hand until he’s tangled them with yours.

At this, you nearly break your neck trying to look at him, only to be met with an amused smile. Jungkook gives your hand a squeeze, and you barely get to appreciate the schoolgirl flood of emotions in your chest, when suddenly his free hand comes out of left field, cupping the back of your knee to push your legs further apart, before gliding across the expanse of your thigh to push your dress up.

If Jungkook holding your hand was enough to make your heart skip a beat, Jungkook pressing a chaste kiss to your panty-clad mound was enough to send you into cardiac arrest. Your leg twitches at the sudden touch, a gasp catching in your throat at the delicate path he kisses over your panties, until he’s flicking his tongue over your clit. “Oh,” you moan, and against your better judgment, your free hand is tangling itself in his silky strands.

Jungkook smirks, what sounds like a tiny chuckle muffled as he continues mouthing along your sex, until your panties are soaked both from your arousal and his saliva. Your little thong stares him in the face, and he groans at the sight, glancing up at you with those wide eyes of his like you’re his entire world. “Can I?”

Jungkook gives your clit one final kiss, before he lets go of your hand, and you can’t help the whine that leaves you upon the lost contact. Jungkook eats it up, pressing a kiss turned smile against your knee as he tugs your underwear down. It coils up as it goes, until he’s pulling a tightly twisted maroon thong off your ankles, and tossing it off somewhere behind him.

If his mouth felt good through your panties, it feels even better without. You mewl when he brushes his lips over your clit, plush lips working your sensitive bundle of nerves, sly tongue occasionally creeping out to toy with you further. “Jungkook,” you cry out, back arching. He licks and slurps likes he’s a starved man, and you're the first meal he’s ever had. You want to sob from how good it feels, his tongue flicking over your bud like he just can’t get enough.

He pulls away to catch your gaze, doesn’t let it go as he runs a lone finger over your slit, coating the digit in your own arousal, before carefully plunging it into your warm, wet heat. “Is this good?” He rasps out, watching your facial expressions carefully as he wiggles his finger deeper into your core, his other hand wrapped around your thigh to keep you still. You moan, feeling like a boneless heap of organs beneath this insanely handsome man who can’t keep his hands off your quivering pussy.

His fingers don’t let up, slowly pulling out before plunging back in. The room fills with disgustingly wet sounds, but that fact drifts to the back of your head the faster his fingers go. Your eyes roll into your head, your body twitching with each press of his fingers.

“Is it good, pretty?” He repeats, and since you’re not looking at him anymore, the sudden lick against your clit has your back arching and your thighs quivering with surprise. “Tell me it’s good, ___,” Jungkook croons, and you nod in a hurry.

“It’s good!” You cry, moaning loudly when he slips another finger into you, scissoring the two inside of you. “It’s so good, Jungkook—y-you’re so good,” you moan, and nearly cry actual tears when he curls his fingers inside of you, pressing down against the most sensitive spot within you.

Jungkook doesn’t let up, continues licking and slurping against your sensitive bud, even when your orgasm hits and you’re begging him to stop. He doesn’t let you go until he feels the warmth coat his fingers, feels the wetness begging to seep out of your plugged pussy. He lets you go then, only to move closer to your hole and replace his fingers with his mouth. There, he carefully catches and collects the cum that trickles out, mouth warm against your trembling body.

Your body quivers with each long drag of his tongue over your sensitive cunt, and you’re about to ask him to stop, when he finally pulls away and pushes himself over you, arms caging you in as he stares down at your withered form. “Kiss,” you manage to gasp out, and Jungkook raises an eyebrow in question. “Kiss me,” you repeat, and then, thoughtfully, “please.”

Jungkook complies, leans down to connect your mouths in a sweet kiss. You’re blinded by the delicacy of it all, that you in no way see coming the sudden substance that slides down your throat from his own. You choke at the sudden intrusion, belatedly realizing it’s your cum he’s pushing down your throat, the cum he didn’t swallow.

“That’s it, pretty,” Jungkook croons, licking up the residual come that hadn’t made it into your mouth. “See how you taste for me. Isn’t it sweet?” He murmurs, pushing his tongue into your mouth as if he regretted not saving any for himself. It’s the first time you’ve had your own pleasure in your mouth, so you’re not exactly sure how to feel. What you do feel is the overwhelming surge of arousal at seeing Jungkook rave about it and lap it up inside your own mouth.

He kisses you for a few moments, mouth moving languidly along yours. One hand reaches down to rub soothingly at your inner thigh, like he’s coaxing the feeling back into your body after lulling you into one of the most heavenly orgasms of your entire life. You whimper when he bites down on your lower lip, like you’re still too sensitive to reciprocate, but Jungkook doesn’t mind. He lets you go, licks over where he’d bitten like an apology.

After a few minutes of just this, of feeling like the most cherished girl in the entire world, Jungkook finally pulls away and levels you with a dashing smile. “All good?” He asks, hands still trailing up your waist until they’re framing the swell of your breasts, where he gently circles your nipple.

You nod, dazedly staring up at him and it’s at this exact moment that you realize there’s something stiff poking at your hip. You glance down, and Jungkook glances down with you, until you’re both staring at the hard on he’s hiding beneath his jeans. Jungkook chuckles, low and dark by your ear as he experimentally presses it against you.

Before you can stop yourself, your hand is untangling itself from around his shoulders and slithering down his front. You cup his erection, his shaky exhale giving you the courage to toy with his belt buckle until it’s undone and you're battling with the button on his jeans instead. You put up a good fight, but in the end the angle is too tight for you to properly undo it, and Jungkook brushes your hands away with a soft kiss to your lips.

He pushes himself off you, and you’re immediately craving the warm press of his body against yours the second he’s gone. “Get that dress off for me, pretty girl,” he says, pulling his shirt over his head, rendering you completely speechless as you gawk at his body. Jungkook glances down at you as he goes to undo his pants, a shapely brow raising in your direction and a soft quirk of his lips gesturing for you to do as you’re told.

You spur into action, wiggling the dress up and over your breasts until you’re pulling it over your head and letting it drop beside you on the floor. You’re just in time to see Jungkook push his jeans down his hips, a classic black Calvin Klein underwear band glaring back at you.

The chance to marvel at Jungkook’s thin waist framed by that tight underwear is gone as quickly as it came, and you’re greeted with an even more mouthwatering sight when he pushes the elastic band down, and that big cock you had alluded to springs out of its confines. You groan, subconsciously rolling your hips into the air as you take in the sight of his cock, mushroom tip swollen and flushed. There’s a thick vein that runs along the underside of it, one you only see when Jungkook grasps his dick in his hand and tugs upward like this isn’t his true form, and he can get bigger.

“Ready?” He asks, biting down on his lip as he continues to stroke himself. You nod, wiggling closer to him until the backs of your thighs rest on top of his, knees knocking against his waist. He grants you one more of those kind smiles, before he’s leaning down to press a hand beside your head, the other lining himself up with your soaked entrance.

Running his cock over your folds one last time, collecting as much of your cum as he can, he brushes a kiss against your cheekbone before he’s pushing in. You moan, throwing your hands around his neck as he pierces through the initial ring of muscle surrounding your warm heat. “Holy shit,” you choke, mouth dropped open as you pant like a dog against his shoulder. “J-Jungkook,” you cry, legs tightening around his waist the closer his body presses against yours.

Once he’s at the hilt, pelvis flush against you, you can’t help the series of whines and mewls that escape your lips from being so comfortably filled to the brim.

To your surprise, Jungkook is the first to speak. “Fuck,” he groans, breath hot against your ear. He sounds fucked out, once silky voice raspy with need as he grinds his hips against you tentatively. “This is what you wanted, isn't it?” He huffs, both hands coming down to wrap around your waist, your back arching under the wonderful hands that find themselves squeezing every inch of your back in an effort to pull you closer.

His mouth brushes against yours from this new position, and Jungkook puckers his lips, tongue coming out to lick at your bottom lip. You nearly cry when he finally pulls his hips away, relieves his cock from your tight heat before surging back in. “Wanted this from the moment you walked in, didn’t you, sweetheart?” Jungkook grunts, repeats the same motion until he’s picked up a steady pace of pushing and pulling, each roll of his hips sending a shock of ecstasy crawling up your spine.

You nod, eyes screwed shut as pleasure warms every inch of your body. It’s even worse to not see, because every sound and every touch is magnified tenfold, until you’re drowning in sensations. Jungkook’s choked groans, the slide of his hips, they all become too much too quickly and you’re choking back a sob.

“Fuck,” he groans, glancing down at your withered form like an animal as he picks up his pace. His hold on you tightens, never letting your body move away from him and he begins jack hammering in his thrusts, swallowing your cries with his lips. “Had me thinking you were a nice girl,” he huffs, and you wonder if he knows how tightly he’s holding you, how this grip will most likely leave you with fingerprint bruises tomorrow morning. But then again, you don’t care. All you care about is Jungkook’s voice and his body, guiding you toward completion. “But all you wanted was a quick fuck.”

You steel yourself to look at him again, and when your eyes finally open and focus, you’re wishing you hadn’t because Jungkook looks so hot over you. His pretty eyes, the ones that had led you into a false sense of comfort throughout the night and tricked you into believing he would be easy to bend to your every whim, are hard now. “Isn’t that right, doll?” He spits, and you whine when he punctuates this question with a particularly brutal thrust of his hips. His balls slap against your ass, and you squirm beneath him as you begin to feel the beginnings of an orgasm build in your core.

“I-I thought—“ you stammer, tone pitched from the way he jostles you with every thrust he gives. “Y-You wanted that,” you weekly defend, canting your hips down in a feeble attempt to progress this along.

He snorts, captures your lips in a rushed kiss where he wastes no time snaking his tongue inside your mouth. His saliva trickles into your mouth, and you whine as he purposefully lets it happen, pulls away just the slightest to pucker his lips and let a thick trail of spit fall straight into your open mouth. Satisfied with his little stunt, he rams his cock against you once more.

“If you wanted a quick fuck,” he says, nearly loses himself in your pussy, “you came to the wrong guy, sweetheart.”

You’re too caught up in the nice drag of his cock against your pussy, the tip of his cock stopping him from ever pulling out completely, that it takes you a second to process his words. “H-Huh?” You choke, teary eyes flickering across his face wildly as if the answer will be right in plain sight.

But all you’re met with is the soft pull of his lips as he flashes you a smirk, pearly white teeth tugging at the pink flesh, as he levels you with a glare of his own. Before you can question him further, he’s letting go of your waist to hike your knees into the crook of his elbows, his pouty lips growing further away as he leans back.

This shift has his cock nudging up, rubbing against the hood of your clit where a bundle of nerves he’d only briefly brushed before sits. You shriek in pleasure, writhing beneath him as the sudden sensation hits you full force. “Jungkook!” You sob, his hips slowing to a grind as he watches your face crumble beneath him.

“You like that?” He murmurs, rutting his hips against you shallowly. The change of pace, the rabid piston of his hips slowing to this, has your body melting into his touch. You barely manage a nod, eyes fluttering open and shut as his hips move sensually against you.

His cock brushes against that sensitive spot with each roll of his hips, and you’re a mewling, puddle of emotion by the third thrust. “Pretty girl,” he hums, letting go of one leg to place a hand above your mound, thumb circling your clit until you’re trembling beneath him. “Did you think I would fuck you and kick you out?” He husks, watching your body like he’s a lion and you’re his prey.

Your brain is far from comprehending anything at this point, reduced to a mere mass of nothingness as he continues moving against you, fingers rubbing your clit in all the right ways.

“Well, you were wrong about that, doll,” he huffs, and you’re blessed with the sight of his head lolling back as he loses himself in the tight grip of your pussy, skin glistening with sweat, trailing from behind his ear and over his neck, until you’re watching a pearl roll over his collarbones. “I don’t do that,” he informs you, and he pinches your clit between two fingers, hard enough that you almost miss his next words as you moan. “No, baby, I’ll fuck you and keep you forever,” he spits, and you whimper at his words. Finally, he lets go of your knees, right as you’re teetering on the edge of an orgasm and you moan out in protest as he ducks down to cage you between his arms again.

“Please,” you beg, voice hoarse as his hips slowly return to their pace from before. He’s still not pulling out as much, keeping his thrusts shallow as he kisses a trail up your neck and over your jaw.

“Gonna fuck you so good, you don’t ever want to leave, pretty,” he says, kisses the corner of your mouth as his hips pick up pace. You wanna cry, feeling so warm and cherished in his arms, his voice telling you how good you’re doing as the coil in your stomach tightens and tightens until you’re begging him for more. “Do you want that?”

“Yes! Yes!” You sob, rolling your hips against his like a madman as you chase your high.

Jungkook hums, smile smushed against your lips as he watches you desperately writhing beneath him. “Yeah? You want that?” You nod, mewls swallowed by his kisses. “Then cum for me, pretty girl.”

You whimper, just as he bucks into you once more, and suddenly you’re falling apart. It starts in your lower back, the ecstasy climbing it’s way through your body until you’re quivering and sobbing in his embrace, muffling your sounds against his shoulder. The muscles in your entire body tighten painfully, until suddenly a wave of contentment washes over you, and you’re too weak to even hold onto him anymore, arms flopping back onto the couch cushions beneath you.

The whole time, Jungkook mutters encouragement against your jaw, keeps his thrusts short but quick, guiding you through your orgasm. When you’re done, he presses an open mouthed kiss beneath your ear, pulling away to look at your boneless frame beneath him.

A few pistons of his hips later, and Jungkook is coming inside of you, cum coating your walls as he hammers his way through his orgasm. He pulls out when he’s done, and you instantly feel your mixed arousal drip out between your thighs.

Woozy from the wine and the two orgasms, you fall asleep soon after.

——

“Good morning,” you murmur, standing at the doorway leading into the kitchen, an area you’d only been able to find after stumbling around the upstairs of the house in confusion.

Jungkook whirls around, wide eyes taking in your appearance. You clutch at the hem of the big t-shirt you’d pulled on, the only article of clothing you saw that was thrown over a chair in a bedroom you didn’t dare snoop around. “Morning,” he exhales, calculating gaze never leaving you as you tiptoe over to him by the counter.

He doesn’t say more, spluttering into action when you peek over his shoulder to see what he’s up to. “What’re you making?” You inquire, and his hands begin fidgeting with the knife.

“Oh, um,” he stutters, and perhaps he’s overly aware of your presence so close beside him, because he suddenly doesn’t remember how he’s supposed to cut an avocado. Cute, you think. “Just, um, toast with avocado spread…”

You hum. After a moment, it seems Jungkook is able to quell his nerves, and he carefully slices the avocado open, spreading its innards across the toast. He hands you the first piece, which you take after masking your own surprise, and soon after he’s turning away from the counter as the two of you eat in silence.

After a few thoughtful munches of bread, you speak. “Thanks for carrying me to bed,” you say, refusing to look at him.

“You’re welcome,” he replies, almost a little too fast and you barely bite down a grin as he rambles on. “Wasn’t gonna leave you on the couch, especially not when you were so tired after… ah, yeah.”

It’s the reserved way he carries himself that gives you the balls to look at him. His ears are flushed adorably red, like when you were at dinner last night talking about his job, and all you wanna do is pinch his cheeks. “Yeah,” you agree, and then add with an air of faux shyness, “you were really cool last night.”

It’s the little devil in you begging to jump out, curious to see how far you can push Jungkook before he shifts into that suave version of himself from last night, and you would feel bad had the corner of his lips not tilted up in amusement.

He chokes out a laugh, mutters a “yeah?” and you don’t stop yourself when you jump into his arms and kiss that avocado spread right off his lips.

——

On Tuesday afternoon, Kim Namjoon is in the midst of delivering another sermon-like speech on the importance of utilizing your student ID when visiting any of the Starbucks within a two mile radius of your school, when you spot a chestnut head of hair from the corner of your eye.

“Sorry, Joon! My ride's here!” You yelp, shoving your notebook into your bag as you stumble over yourself in your haste to leave.

Namjoon blinks. “Huh? I thought you lived on campus?”

You nod, that giddy feeling starting up in your chest as he comes closer to where you and Namjoon have taken up residence on a table in the commons for your weekly meeting, and by the time he reaches the table Namjoon is still in the midst of questioning you.

“Jungkook,” You say, all dreamily and dazed, and you know this because Doyeon caught you with this same exact look on your face after he dropped you off at the dorms Sunday afternoon.

Namjoon startles. “What the f—“

“Hi,” Jungkook beams, leans down to brush a kiss against your cheek, which only serves to make you even more ditzy and dumb in the face of this handsome man. “Oh, hey, hyung.”

“What’re you doi—“

“All set?” Jungkook asks you, completely ignoring whatever his beloved senior was saying in favor of taking your bag off your shoulders. You nod, have to swallow a giggle down when he takes your hand in his. “Bye, hyung.”

“Bye, Joon!” You barely remember to throw over your shoulder, too busy wrapping yourself around Jungkook’s arm to hear Namjoon blabber in shock.

“Kids these days,” he huffs.

[ part 2 ; hulu & woohoo ]

#jungkook smut #jeon jungkook smut #goldenclosetnet #ksmutclub #jjk smut #bts smut #mine

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jewish-microwave-laser · 7 months ago

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[id: reply by @isabeau276 reading "When exactly did the last movie about the Holocaust, which is for historical purposes as well as to inform people, including idiot people, about what happened—The stories are endless and need to be told. How bizarre and offensive to label it a fetish—come out and what was its/their name/names. Please help clear my memory; the last I remember is Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both were extremely important productions. I guess *you* "forget." Thanks. 🙅🏻‍♀️💜🌷🩷🌷" /end id]

hi! thank you for your reply. in my response, i'm going to be pretending i didn't notice the smug, sanctimonious, and sarcastic tone in this reply, and will instead be addressing these points as though they were being presented in good faith:

When exactly did the last movie about the Holocaust

well one recent example was the zone of interest from 2023, which won an oscar. [x] if you need more examples, might i recommend this wikipedia page: [x]

which is for historical purposes as well as to inform people, including idiot people, about what happened

i have some bad news for you about the movies you mention later. i want to bring up an important book that i think will be very enlightening in this conversation: people love dead jews by dana horn. i've already taken the liberty of transcribing and posting some of my favorite quotes, which i will be linking: on the sanitization of holocaust narratives and which narratives end up successful [x, x (oh hey look this one mentions one of your examples), x], on what current holocaust media and education is actually teaching [x, x]

The stories are endless and need to be told

nobody is denying the importance of the preservation and education of these stories. however, it's important that we discuss what narratives are most popular and why (hint: some answers include antisemitism and capitalism)

How bizarre and offensive to label it a fetish

i'm assuming this is referring to @baroque-hashem's reblog containing the phrase "i want goyim to stop fetishizing our trauma." fetishization as a term refers to the act of ascribing value to an object (in this example, a group of people) not because of the object itself, but rather because of what it represents. in this instance, the meaning of this phrase is found in the second half of the sentence: "i want goyim to stop fetishizing our trauma as if we exist solely as a moral allegory for goyim"—meaning, goyim don't actually care about jews or jewish trauma, they only care about their ability to use it as a metaphor for their moral education. refer to people love dead jews to learn more. (also, the sexual meaning of the word "fetish" came after the original meaning [x], which has a very anti-indigenous slant to it but that's for another post. either way, baroque-hashem's usage of the term was correct)

Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both were extremely important productions

important, maybe, but anything but representative of the holocaust, and they're honestly piss poor education tools. the latter is especially criticized for the literal harm it has done to holocaust education [x, x, x], however that certainly doesn't mean that the former was without rebuke [x (this one lists more films for your list), x, x]

i made the original post while searching for good jewish films to watch that weren't about the holocaust and just treated the jews as normal people. every list of iconic jewish films i encountered had holocaust films on it, every streaming service i searched "jewish" or "judaism" on gave me almost exclusively holocaust films. it's impossible to try to find jewish stories about jews being jews without being inundated by a mountain of media about one example of jewish suffering. (which is another thing—we have a LOT of examples of jewish suffering that aren't the holocaust, why is it that the holocaust is the only event goyim care about, and why is it that holocaust narratives are the only stories about jewish pain that sell?) does it have to be so hard to just find some jewish stories??? it doesn't even have to be about jewish joy—i think i ended up watching the 2009 movie "a serious man"—i just want to watch something that isn't about the fucking holocaust for once! and why are so many movies about the holocaust made by fucking goyim!!! (read people love dead jews to find out)

do you think if we all asked really nicely they would stop making movies about the holocaust

#jumblr #antisemitism #people love dead jews #holocaust media #holocaust education #the boy in the striped pajamas #schindler's list #movies #reading list #philosemitism #jewish media

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catboy-jaebeom · 3 years ago

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not to be a nerd on main about this, but we should stop transcribing 형 / 누나 and 오빠* / 언니 as bro / sis. linguistically they have very different connotations and it's kinda driving me up a wall as someone who's very invested and interested in languages, like, I do realize that especially casual watchers of like kdramas, who just started getting into them after Netflix or whomever added a bunch of them to their library, don't really care and that's totally fine with me! it's a considerably small thing, and if you just wanna watch something without diving into the language or culture or anything, then you're totally free to, that's valid, honestly

just. that's not what those words mean, connotation-wise and every time I read "bro!" or "sis!" in Netflix's or even YT's subtitles I die a bit inside.

obviously I'm not Korean and if anyone who speaks the language well / lives in Korea and is well familiar with when those are used, wants to weigh in, feel absolutely free to!

but to break it down briefly, those are honorifics attached to a person's name if they're older than you, but not, like, significantly. older students, older colleagues at work if you're a bit more friendly with them, friends, and ( your actual ) siblings. they are normal and do not immediately imply you view the other person as a sort of sibling from another parent.

yes, they do basically translate to "older brother" / "older sister", but transcribing it with "bro" and "sis" respectively has an entirely different impact than what they are actually supposed to infer. it's a polite suffix, that can in certain situations also imply trust or a more intimate relationship, because otherwise ( especially outside of a school context ) you'd use 씨 ( shee ) after their name. just that nobody especially in a school context does that because they use 형 ( hyeong / hyung ) / 누나 ( noona ) and 오빠* ( oppa ) / 언니 ( eonnie / unnie ) — former is used by males and latter by females, both times to address an older 'brother' / an older 'sister' respectively — either alone or after their name.

the companion piece is adding 아 or 야 (-a for names with a consonant at the end or -ya for those with a vowel ) to the names of people younger than you ( or those you're close with ) — and for example in All Of Us Are Dead they do that all the time and it's not transcribed by cutesy-fying their names is it now. they just put their names into the subtitles and move on.

I personally think it'd be much better to simply use you in any other sentence and if some character yells 형! across the room in distress, to transcribe it with the other character's name for emphasis. that's for me personally the closest, connotation-wise.

or, you know, have hyeong / noona / eunnie / oppa* in the transcript / subtitles in italics and explain it with some translator annotation the first time it appears alone. but that's generally an issue with subtitles on such platforms I feel. they remove words when creating the subtitles and leave out such nuances because gods forbid they'd force casual viewers to pause the show to read the annotations akskdkf. either way,

tl;dr they don't use teen slang in kdramas all the time even if the subtitles would have you believe otherwise and it's probably a problem that stems from companies thinking they can't "bother" their customers with having to pause to read, but I think that's simply taking away important context to a depicted story and I'd really like it to stop, thank you.

*oppa is a bit special because it is also used as a sort of term of endearment by women towards their boyfriends, or like, when they flirt with them pre-relationship, so it can also imply a romantic interest, be mindful of that. but I'd assume then it'd be transcribed with some sort of babe or honey or something.

#bro!#hyeong!#languages #k-dramas #langblr #korean #kdramas #leafmiilk does stuff #like sorry but Jinyoung yelling at that spaceship captain in distress creates such a harsh dissonance to the actual mood #because he actually yells implying that despite titles and their different ranks #in this situation they're family and he wants him to snap out of his panic #no in the world can ever convey that wkekrkfk #it also bothers me in all of us are dead #community translations ( like on rakuten viki ) are simply superior because of this reason specifically #they assume you're familiar with such words and work with annotations otherwise #all of us are dead

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sockablock · 5 years ago

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I’ve had a small idea for a little while now, so I’m testing the waters with a first chapter! It’s a bit long, so excuse me there, but hopefully y’all enjoy reading! :3

—

It began with a letter that arrived one morning as Essek sat alone in the kitchen.

The courier himself had seemed just as surprised to be delivering a message to the reclusive Shadowhand, but a cursory glance at the carefully-folded envelope and a less-cursory casting of Detect Magic had signaled no foul play. So Essek took the letter, settled back beside the dining table, and floated over a glass of chilled juice for the reading.

His eyes flicked over the return address, and though it did seem familiar, it did not immediately spark recognition. His first real impression of the message was simply that of crisp, neatly-printed handwriting and the faintest whiff of…hmm. Lavender.

The letter began with a standard greeting.

To Shadowhand Essek Thelyss—

I hope you have been keeping well since we spoke. It has been some time, and I admit it is strange for me also as I realize this is likely the first letter I have sent you since our meeting.

He sipped the juice.

You are a busy man, and I would not intrude on your time if my request is unwelcome or unfeasible. But you see, in the time since we have ended the war and sealed away the Chained Oblivion—

Essek nearly spat out his drink.

He managed, in the proceeding moments, to weakly swallow, and shakily set his glass back onto the table. He cleared his throat once or twice. He gently coughed.

He picked up the envelope he had discarded earlier and quickly, the pieces fit together.

The Firmaments. Eastern district. The neighborhood where once, Den Thelyss had provided a house for a ragtag group of outsiders…

He snatched the letter back into the air.

—and semi-accidentally, though certainly also purposefully toppled the Cerberus Assembly.

Essek had to pause and re-read that sentence. It still didn’t sink in until nearly a minute later. He rubbed his temples, and resumed.

As such, it has befallen on I, and by extension the rest of the Mighty Nein to rebuild some of the arcane infrastructure of the Empire. To be more specific, in our meeting with King Dwendal’s court, a lord accused us of trying to cripple the nation by eliminating a powerful institution of magic and Beauregard volunteered that I would be the best candidate to replace it. One comment led to another, and perhaps it was our past efforts in politicking, or our recent defeat of the Maw of Eternal Darkness—

Essek wondered if he had any alcohol.

—but the court ultimately, shockingly, decided that I should be put in charge of creating and overseeing a new arcane academy for the Dwendalian Empire. And so, at the time in which I am writing you this letter, I have been appointed the Headmaster of a new Soltryce Academy, though I certainly will not be keeping that name.

It is with this in mind that I am writing to you now, my friend. For you see, despite the apparent confidence of my friends and my “superiors,” I do not believe I am capable of running a school on my own. Certainly not implementing the necessary infrastructure to have a school of any repute by the next century as well. And though I have my friends, and some resources, and an idea of where to start, the destruction of the Assembly and the Cobalt Soul’s anti-corruption efforts have left our nation in a sorry state regarding reputable mages. So, my dear friend, as we have worked together in the past, I have quite a large favor to ask.

And as Essek’s eyes continued scanning further down the page, the sinking sensation gripping his stomach was not helped by the decanter of plum wine that floated over to his table.

—

Meanwhile, beneath a shining sun on what seemed like the opposite side of the world, Caleb Widogast, the appointed head of a yet-to-be-named-academy was being berated by one of his closest friends.

Beau at least had possessed the decency to shut the tent flap so the army of woodworkers outside would not hear this.

“—suspicious! Caleb, there’s no way it’ll work. And not just because he’s the Shadowhand of the Bright Queen, also because…because…well…everything!”

“I think if he carried an umbrella during the day—”

“Not what I’m talking about,” Beau said. “I’m talking about literally every other problem that asking Essek to teach will cause, good gods.”

Caleb leaned back on the small wooden crate that was currently serving as his favorite chair. The slightly-larger crate he was using for a desk said “Honigblumen Brewery” on it.

“Well, nobody will be teaching for quite some time yet,” he said, “so we will have plenty of chances to work out the kinks.”

Beau shook her head at him, then took a seat. “I’m so far down disbelief city that I’m not even going to talk about the fact that you just said kinks.”

“I meant—”

She waved a dismissive hand. “I know what you meant, and here’s what I mean. Caleb, as much as I know you like Essek, there’s no way any of this is gonna work. First of all, he’s already got a job as the Shadowhand, and I doubt he’d wanna give up a cushy position like that to come work for a nothing-at-all school in the middle of the Empire.”

“Ja, I know, I know, I’ve thought about that—”

“And did you think about the part where he’s the fucking Shadowhand and you’ve asked him to come to the middle of the Dwendalian Empire to teach a goddamn gen-ed course?!”

Caleb was quiet for a moment. And then he said:

“Actually, I was thinking of asking him to take the more advanced levels—”

Beau reached across the ale crate to flick Caleb in the head. “And you don’t see a problem with that, at all? Caleb, for the gods’ sake, use your stupidly big head to consider the fuckin’ political ramifications of that. If the Empire catches wind of this, they’re gonna hate it, war over or not over. And I don’t even mean that in a ‘there’s gonna be shitty racism’ way, which is something else you’ll probably have to deal with later, I meant that in a ‘think about his last job description way.” And speaking of that, I mean, on Essek’s side, really, are you really expecting him to really settle down and help teach after he’s spent a lifetime—a human lifetime—being a military spymaster? Not to mention the fact that he’s a power-hungry war criminal who betrayed his own nation to get ‘arcane secrets’ or whatever. Seriously, dude, there’s no scenario where this goes well for you or him.”

At Caleb’s expression, Beau’s tone eased just slightly and she added, as a peace offering, “Really, dude.”

Caleb sighed. He scratched at his head.

“I…look. I…I think you’re right, but…there are also good possibilities of having him around. He is knowledgeable, he is skilled, I know his magic firsthand, and he has always been trustworthy—”

“Ha!”

“—for us, Beauregard. I think he is one of our best potential candidates, especially as he is only one of three so far. Just…trust me on this one, alright?”

She studied his face intently. The sheerness of the tent walls let in quite a bit of light, giving both of their eyes a faint, sunny sparkle.

With these two, though, it was more of a manic glint.

“What’s this really about?”

“Was?”

Beau leaned closer. “I said, what’s this really about? I don’t think that’s your only motivation. And if I’m gonna trust you, you’ve gotta be straight with me. I know you’re not an idiot, so I believe you when you say you’ve thought about the risks. What’s made them all worth it? What do you really think, and don’t give me that crap about him being a good teacher. You’ve got good teachers. Two advanced ones anyway, and you said yourself yesterday that the rest can be trained. So what’s up? What’s your real game here?”

Caleb floundered only slightly under the intensity of her stare.

“How long have we known each other now? No, fuck that, I pulled you out of the mouth of a forsaken god. Tell me, dickwad. Come on, it’s me.”

And after a moment, Caleb pinched his nose.

“It’s…it’s… it’s partially selfish. And…”

This, Beau understood. She nodded. “And…?”

“And…well, I…was thinking last night, after dinner, about who I want on this project. Aside from you all. And I realized…thinking about everything we have been through, that…for the most part, especially after our…revelations at sea, Essek is one of the people I want around. Largely because, well…”

He gave another sigh.

“Because I want to see what has become of our Xhorhastian friend. More importantly, I want to see if he has…or…could, ah, change.”

“Change,” she said flatly.

“Ja. I…I think I need to seem him change.”

“Because?”

“Because...” Caleb exhaled. “After everything we have been through, what we have seen, after fighting against the Assembly and watching so many mages crumble, I find myself searching for…assurance. Assurance that not every wizard is bad. Assurance that we even deserve this second change. And…if at all possible, what I most would like is to know that anyone, even the most driven and ambitious, the most ruthless, cutthroat, power—as you said, power-hungry—wizard can be shown that there is another way. That…ultimately, all of us can be redeemed.”

He looked back up, and raised an eyebrow. “I want to make this school a force for change. And I want to make it a place where we change, too. I said once before, and I still believe it is so, that Essek and I have a lot of things in common. It is time to see how much we can be changed.”

Beau did not answer for a drawn-out moment, but neither did she look away.

“I think you’re pretty changed, Caleb. That should be a point in your corner already.”

“That’s true,” and this time his smile was a little brighter, “but that is largely due to our group. I think Essek has gotten some of the Mighty Nein treatment, but probably not enough.”

“So…so is he your pet project now, or something?”

“Ach, no, nothing so…no. It is more of a…the thing is, Beauregard, I do consider him a friend. And we got so caught up with the Angel in Irons cult and then the Assembly that, well…it is just, before all that happened, I did like spending time with him.”

“Me too,” she waved a hand, “he had good wine, and when we got him in the hot-tub, he wasn’t that bad. Still don’t know if he’s worth all this. He’s a war criminal—yeah, I know what you and Jester think, but that’s what I think, and Veth agrees. Seriously, you never know, he could be too far gone, and I don’t want him near this school and project if it’ll put you in danger or risk anything.”

“We are no strangers to danger,” Caleb murmured. “And I…would like to think that with enough effort, nobody could be so far gone.”

Beau sighed. She leaned across the crate again, but this time it was to put an arm on Caleb’s shoulder.

“You’re really fucking stubborn, you know that?”

“Ja, so I have been told.”

“Essek has betrayed people before. His people, before.”

“Yes, but…” Caleb shrugged. “He also will probably be betraying his own nation to join this school.”

“Oh, good,” Beau grunted. “So at least he’s had some practice.”

—

By the time Essek had managed to re-arrange his thoughts into something even mildly resembling order, the letter in his hands was so thoroughly crumpled that all its corners were bent.

He attempted to smooth them back out. When this failed to be satisfactory, he put it back on the kitchen table.

A…teaching position at Caleb’s school. Well not Caleb’s school, but a new Empire Academy that Caleb would oversee. And they needed instructors, as well as mages to help build it, and he thought Essek would be a good fit…

Idly, he wondered if Caleb wanted a teleportation network, as many of the finest institutions had. He wondered if this was something he would have to organize.

Apparently, the Mighty Nein had defeated the Chained Oblivion in some obscure corner of the world, without most of civilization even noticing. But Essek remembered the readings that morning, remembered the clamor and panic in the Cathedral, remembered the theurgists in the Conservatory practically tearing themselves apart to understand what was happening. If their claims were true, and this wasn’t an elaborate prank on the Mighty Nein’s end, a large part of Essek vowed he would draw chalk circles for them forever, if they asked.

But a small part of Essek had the needling thought: why didn’t they tell me it was happening? I could have helped them.

He glanced back at the note.

Well, they were asking for help now, weren’t they? And if nothing else had changed, it was the simple fact that Essek would still do his best to help his friends.

There were just some minor complications to be dealt with.

Namely, what to tell the Bright Queen. And his—

He made a face.

—and his mother.

—

A few days later, Essek stood in front of his bathroom mirror.

It was a beautiful piece, made from polished volcanic glass and set into an ornately-twisted frame of dark metal. It was the perfect gift for someone who regularly floated around Rosohna being called the Shadowhand, but as far as mirrors actually went it left some details lacking.

Still, it served Essek well enough, and he’d never really gotten around to replacing it.

He stared into his dim reflection and slid a hand over his chin.

—

Elsewhere, another wizard stared too, but not into any reflective surface.

Veth’s eyes hadn’t refracted light like that for nearly two years, now. But Caleb could still feel the weight of her gaze boring into his skull as she searched for answers.

Eventually, she sat back.

“Alright. How?”

“Yes, I know it’s—was?”

“How?” she repeated, and steepled her fingers. “How are we gonna do it? He’ll need a disguise, right?”

There was a long pause as Caleb processed this. He managed, “You are…not mad?”

“Well, it’s not like I’m happy, but I trust you, Caleb. You have a reason?”

“Er…yes. I quite do.”

“So…alright, then.” There was a pause, then she added, “I am kind of annoyed you already sent the letter without asking, though.”

“Sorry.”

“I feel like I should ground you.”

“That, er…you can, if that makes you feel better.”

Veth genuinely seemed to consider this. Behind them, through the thin tent-walls of the office, they could hear a delighted child running circles around adults. They were, respectively, Luc Brenatto, having the time of his life shooting the Mighty Nein with wooden darts.

They were rounded off, of course. Yeza had seen to that with great care.

“No,” Veth sighed eventually. “No, that probably sets a bad example. I don’t think a professor can ground the Headmaster.”

“Head Professor, do not forget. I trust you the most out of everyone on this project. Not just because you are my friend, but you are qualified. And you really understand our mission.”

His tone of voice suggested that this was a conversation they had had many times. The way Veth’s face colored just slightly suggested she was still having trouble with the ‘qualified’ part.

Nevertheless, years of trained suspicion broke through the treacle-sweet flattery.

“But you didn’t trust me enough to tell me you were planning to ask Essek to come earlier,” she pointed out. “What did you think I was going to do?”

Caleb winced. “No, Veth, I…scheisse. That was…I was being impulsive that night. I…the idea occurred to me and I did not even hesitate to contact him. I…in retrospect, I should have.”

At least, to his relief, Veth nodded in response. “I get that,” she shrugged. “And like I said before, I am on board. You’re lucky I like you so much, Caleb. I don’t…care for Essek, but if this is what you want, I’ll…deal with having him around.”

“I am sorry again,” he said. “And, er…if it helps, you will also be his boss.”

Veth hadn’t been a goblin for years, but her eyes gleamed.

“Please be nice to him,” Caleb added.

“Nice?” Veth scoffed. “He’s not exactly nice.”

“He was nice to us—”

“Not Yeza.”

At the tortured grimace that passed across Caleb’s face, Veth sighed.

“Look, don’t worry, seriously. I was mostly kidding—I’m kidding! I just…you know that I have complicated feelings about Essek. In a…in a sort of way, I understand what he did. And I know where he’s coming from, I do. Lots of us are...well, we were pretty sketchy too. He really reminds me of the things we’ve done. But…he hasn’t shown nearly as much remorse as I’d like. And some of the things he’s done are—” She risked a glance up into Caleb’s impassive expression, “—I don’t like that he still doesn’t seem to care. But…he is a wizard, and I guess he’s our friend. So…if you can keep him from doing anything, I don’t know, very sketchy, then I’m on board. I trust you.”

Caleb’s expression went soft. He nodded.

“Thank you, Veth. I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And I do hope that…well, I hope we can stop him from ‘sketchy’ things. In fact, ah…a small part of me is hoping that eventually, he will want to stop doing sketchy things all by himself.”

“Really?” Veth sounded more than skeptical. “How?”

Caleb shrugged. “The same way you and I did, no?”

—

Now Essek stood before the iron wrought gates that led into the expansive manor grounds of his family home. He could see, high above and a bit back, the five towers that made up the domain of the Umavi of Den Thelyss, long empty after all her children had moved on.

And, Essek recalled with a grimace, after his father had most probably, definitely, died.

It was a lonely castle. A feeling he could commiserate with, even in his smaller manor.

He straightened his collar. He knocked twice.

—

“By getting rich as adventurers.”

“By getting friends.”

—

“It is a surprise to see you here,” said Umavi Deirta Thelyss, Denmother of Den Thelyss and also Essek’s actual mother. “You rarely visit outside formal events and holidays.”

She did not add that Essek had totally missed the last two get-togethers, and thus must have been in a charitable mood. The rare—albeit leftover—tea blend that Essek had brought might have tipped the scale.

“I know, Mother.”

“I worry about you, of course.”

“I know, Mother.”

“And I’m certainly proud of what you’ve accomplished thus far.” At this, she took a sip of the Blooming Grove’s best. “I trust you are finding ways to keep yourself busy even during these times of peace?”

“Of course, Mother. Er…actually, it is partially that subject which I wish to address with you.”

His mother lowered her cup.

“Ah. So this is not purely a social call.”

“Er…no.”

She dabbed at the corner of her mouth, but Essek could have sworn she’d just smiled. Or, he backpedaled, at least tactfully smirked.

“Is this about access to the Beacons again, dear? As I always say, I can try to put in a word, but we have never been the den as involved in religious matters.” She paused, and tilted her head at him. “Is this about Consecution?”

“Er…no.”

“Oh. Well, then? Speak your mind.”

Under the table, Essek twisted at the hem of his sleeve.

“I, ah…well, that is…I’ve received a letter, Mother. An offer of…professorship. From…an Academy.”

This seemed to genuinely surprise the Umavi.

“Professorship? But…why?”

“Someone out there believes in my arcane prowess, apparently.” With the first sentence out of the way, Essek managed to sip his tea. Only a true observer would have noticed it falter slightly in its trajectory.

“Well,” said his Mother, trying to meet his gaze, “what a strange request to make of one already so gainfully employed. As the Bright Queen’s master of…let us call them the more obscure matters of state.”

When Essek did not match her eyes, she continued, “What sort of Academy is this, dear? Surely none in the Marble Tomes would write you in this way, and I find difficulty imagining you taking up permanent residence in Asarius. Which must mean…”

Essek sighed. His mother certainly was a true observer.

“Yes, Mother. It is outside the Dynasty.”

“Worse than that, I am sure.”

“Er…”

There was a sweeping of long robes as his mother leaned. She wasn’t wearing her headdress, but could loom without height, her sheer imposing presence doing the work just fine.

“Essek?”

He sighed again.

“Inside the Empire, Mother.” And because they had gotten this far, and he didn’t have much else to lose, he added, “Run by Widogast. Caleb Widogast, if you remember him, as well as a number of his friends, I gather. It is the…replacement institution currently being built to fill the void—”

“That the Assembly left, yes, I assumed.” She settled back, and a shifting of fabric indicated that she had crossed her arms. “And our dearly departed hero Widogast wants you to teach there?”

“And to assist him in establishing some of its curriculum and facilities, yes.” He tactfully ignored the ‘dearly departed’ bit.

“That would certainly be an odd career move for you, Essek. And surely, foreigner or no, he has spent enough time in our country to be aware of the implications of what he is asking.”

“Surely, Mother.”

“And as we all know, he has had training in Dunamancy these last years. I do hope his teacher had impressed upon him how vitally important it is to keep such training and knowledge a secret.”

For the first time since reading the letter, Essek paused.

In all his…well, excitement was not a word ever ascribed to the Shadowhand, but certainly in his anticipation to consider his offer, it had never actually crossed his mind that he might be asked to teach Dunamancy.

A small but very significant part of him riled.

Across the table, his mother drank some more tea. She was watching her son, who to his credit, had mastered the art of freezing his micro-expressions so swiftly that they could not be read. But without his mantle on, sitting in his mother’s tearoom, his hands were fidgeting up a storm across the table.

He probably hadn’t even noticed. She took another sip.

In a matter of seconds, Essek was back. He shook his head, and reached for a dry cookie.

“I think he is aware of the gravity of the situation. And I trust him to have already, ah…weighed the pros and cons.”

“And have you?” asked Deirta Thelyss, knowing the answer.

Essek bit down.

“I believe I have.”

—

“So…that’s it? We just wait for an answer, now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he’ll say yes?”

“Well, I certainly hope so.”

“How’s he supposed to tell you?” This one was Jester, leaning across a stack of milk crates. “He doesn’t have Sending, I’m pretty sure.”

There was a pause in the air as the Mighty Nein watched Caleb consider, and realize this.

“Oh,” he said eventually. “I, er…I had assumed he did.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Beau said. “How did you think he was going to answer back? You didn’t think Xhorhas had a postal service to Felderwin, did you?”

“I, ah, admit that—”

“Maybe you should check our mailbox in Rosohna,” said Fjord kindly. “He probably just sent it to the Xhorhouse, or something.”

Caleb faltered, and scratched the back of his head. “…scheisse. You don’t think he has been waiting all this time to answer already, has he? I had not even considered—”

“I would not worry about that.”

All of them turned as a voice outside the door drifted in through the thin walls of the tent.

Then the voice added:

“How do I…oh, there is a latch—”

But he did not manage to finish the assessment before Jester ran over, threw the flap open, and tackled Essek bodily in a hug.

—

“In that case, there is only one last thing to say.” The Umavi of Den Thelyss sat back in her seat. A thin trail of steam curled up from her cup.

“I forbid you from going.”

“Thank—you what?”

She steepled her fingers. “I say ‘no,’ Essek. I will not let you chase this Empire wizard across the continent to teach at his school.”

“I…but…that is not…Mother, why?”

The swiftness of his outburst answered the question for both of them.

She studied his gaze.

“Essek, you have a purpose here. You have a bright future, and a reputation, and glowing prospects and I will not let you squander that to go off spilling our nation’s secrets.”

Essek managed to bite his tongue just in time. His mother would not have liked his instinctual answer.

Instead, he choked out the words, “I’ll quit, then. I’ll defect. I want to do this. More than I have ever wanted anything else in my life.”

Later, he would wonder why he said that. Even later, later, he would wonder if that were true.

The oldest and nearly-youngest souls of Den Thelyss stared at each other across the tea table. Their drinks cooled, and somewhere high above, the sun began to rise over the city of Rosohna.

But down here, beneath the blanket of perpetual stars, the only light was from the low, flickering lamps along the wall.

“I would do anything,” one said.

“…is that so?” said the other.

—

He was released after the impact knocked his parasol aside and his skin very quickly, visibly, began to redden. They immediately ushered him into the tent, shouting and laughing and clapping him on the back all the way, though he noticed that despite the friendly reception from Jester, Caduceus, Fjord, and even Yasha, Veth seemed somewhat frozen in her smile, and Beau even less warm.

That was…probably to be expected, actually. He wondered if this might present an issue and was about to open his mouth, say something, until he noticed a figure striding across the tent floor, side-stepping a stack of crates, and taking him by the hand.

Essek met his eyes. It had been some time, since he saw those eyes. Then he blinked.

“By the light, Caleb, you have grown a beard.”

There was a pause, and then Caleb laughed, and that was new too. Essek always forgot how quickly humans could change.

“I had meant to shave it before you arrived,” Caleb admitted. “It is, ah, a product of sleepless nights overseeing the construction of a new school.”

“It’s terrible,” Jester said. “It makes you look old.”

“I can fix this now if needed,” said a voice, followed by the sound of an unsheathing sword.

“Er…maybe…later, bitte?”

And Essek couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “I nearly forgot how boisterous all of you are, all the time. I have…” He turned, faced the Mighty Nein. “My life has not been nearly as interesting without you in it.”

“Well then, welcome back,” Caduceus gave a smile.

And even Veth, despite their…history, stepped forward.

“I said it once before, didn’t I? Welcome to the Mighty Nein, Essek.”

She even stuck out a hand for him to shake.

—

“I want you to report back everything to me. And when the time comes, when your Headmaster is summoned to the castle, I want you to go with him.”

“But…Mother, why?”

Her voice was nothing but gentle as she addressed her son.

“It is well-known that King Bertrand Dwendal has no heirs. And rules over quite a…combative court, with an iron fist.”

She leaned in even closer.

“What would happen to the Empire, do you think, if he was removed from that picture?”

—

And somewhere else, on what felt like the opposite side of the world, Caleb put an arm around Essek’s shoulder, and grinned.

“It is good to see you again, my friend.”

Essek’s lip twitched into what could approximately be called a smile.

“Good to see you as well,” he said.

#to be continued...?#critical role #critfic #shadowgast #critrole #cr2 #the mighty nein #fanfiction #fanfic #jay writes #long post #LONG ASS POST #SUCH A LONG POST IM SO SORRY #for later #i dont have a tag for this yet so let's call it #time to build a magic school #text #fic

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misterghostfrog · 4 years ago

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So I was reading someones post about what if Jon went back in time to save everyone, and he managed it. He kept Martin away from Prentiss, he Kept Sasha alive, Tim never even know the unknowing existed and he never had Jons paranioa to ruin him. But They never knew, there was never those moments of bonding between the terror. Martin never had that moment when he realized Jon wasn’t just his shitty boss. And sure the assistants were close, but there was no room for Jon. And it gave me thoughts.

Under the cut bc I started to Ramble and it got Long, warning; its Big Sad Hours down there. No happy endings here.

Jon solves all these problems before they start, he fixes it without anyone ever knowing. The assistants are blissfully unaware, maybe he stops sending them on ‘real’ statement followup. The archives are a normal, safe job for all of them. Sometimes it gets too much, pretending he doesn’t know them. So he’ll record, mostly for himself. Sometimes for them, though he’ll never share. He sticks them all in Gertrude's old storage locker, where he knows they’ll never be found.

And then something goes wrong. He knows the unknowing can’t work, of course it can’t. But Nikola doesn’t, none of the avatars know. And Nikola still wants her skin. She still wants his skin, actually. And she’s not afraid to play dirty to get it, she’s hands-on like that. Because why stop at the archivist when he’s got so many lovely ignorant assistants?

So he fixes the problem before she can make good on her threats, she can’t be killed that easily. He knows. But she died during the unknowing, and there are some pretty simple steps to follow to replicate that result. He knows the easiest way to make sure it works is also a death sentence for him. But that’s a simple choice to make. Alright no, it’s not. He’s terrified of death, of dying. He doesn’t want to die, but he can lie to himself. He can delude and say maybe he’ll get another chance. And just in case, he makes sure the assistants know they can quit now.

Tim, Sasha, and Martin don’t know what to make of the news that their boss died mysteriously in an explosion. They know even less what to make of the notes he left them.

Clearly the ramblings of a very unstable man. They all knew Jon was a bit off but this... Well, they all know there’s something weird about the job. But the apocalypse? Really?

Sasha believes some of it, she’s worked in artifact storage. She’s seen what this stuff can do. But, well. Jon’s never come off as the most stable person, and with no proper proof to back up any of this there’s no reason for them to follow suit. After all she’s known lots of people to quit the institute, she even knows for a fact that Eric Delano did it when she was rooting through employee records for perfectly rational legal reasons.

Then Martin gets called up to Elias’s office, and gets the news he’s the new head archivist.

He tries to turn it down, but he’s offered a pay-raise and a promise that he can step down anytime if he doesn’t feel suited to the position. Elias just sees so much potential in him.

Martin tries to feel flattered and not thoroughly terrified by the way Elias says potential. He takes the promotion, after all, he can always step down if it’s too much.

He offers as much when he finds out Sasha probably should have been given the position, but she turns him down. It’s not his fault their boss is a sexist old bastard, and at this rate he’d probably just turn around and give it to Tim.

Things are normal for a few months. Until slowly a strange noise starts to be heard around the archives, a weird sort-of squishing sound with no source. Along with a metallic scent of meat.

An infestation, of course. They’re getting the problem worked on, or so Elias says. But aside from the occasional exterminator coming in to ‘take a look’ nothing ever seems to change. Weird statements start showing up on Martins desk, surrounding meat and twisted up things, eaten alive and wrong. Suddenly he understands how Jon went off his rocker so easily.

It’s hard to believe all this supernatural stuff as it’s suddenly getting crammed down his throat, after so long of the archives being normal in almost every sense of the word it’s like missing a step on the staircase. The more awful statements he finds- that Tim and Sasha confirm -the more he realizes how much his boss was hiding from them.

He wants to quit, he thinks about it, he tries to think about it. But he just, can’t.

It’s another or two month before it happens. Meat and bone and gristle erupt from the floor, taking on horrible mangled shapes of almost-humans reaching out with hands full of teeth and hungry.

They all survive, though Tim gets eaten up a bit more than the rest of them. And they’ll all have nightmares for the rest of their lives. They’re alive.

And they find Gertrude’s body, though none of them know how to feel about it. They’ve realized by now there’s something to Jon’s nonsensical ramblings. And they’re long past regretting not quitting before this all happened.

There’s a section of document storage that got uncovered during the cleaning,an old cot that was shoved behind some of the shelves, and a box that had a few sets of clothes, an old teacup, and a key. The cleaners say they burned the clothes, but the cup and the Key are given to Martin for him to keep to return to whoever left their things in the archive.

Neither of those items belong to Tim or Sasha, so they all assume they belonged to Jon.

They start following Jons footsteps, they find out he was a suspect in an arson case surrounding Carlos Vittery’s old apartment. Nobody was there except one unidentified body. He was arrested for trespassing on a dock, though no charges were filed. There was an incident that ended in the near arrest of one Jude Perry, though no charges were filed and she soon fell off the grid. And then he exploded using C4 he had no way of getting, Nothing concrete, no proper genuine evidence except a series of weird encounters their dead boss had.

Martin Decides to try and hunt down Jude Perry, it takes some time. He has a very nice cup of tea with one Micheal Crew. Who points him in a general direction and is just a bit weird about tall buildings.

Martin finds Jude, and asks her about Jon. She laughs at him, of course. But she tells him anyway. Jon was trying to have her arrested- no, not arrested. Killed. Officer Tonner would have seen to that, he knew one of the Hunt could do her in, well. At least of Officer Tonner’s sort anyway. Jude resisted, naturally. He escaped her clutches only barely, by running. Like a coward. And she escaped the policewoman by playing innocent. She’s still on her tail though, damn dog. It’ll be a long time before she’d rid of her, but she knows better than to run. Oh, he doesn’t know what any of that means, does he? Oh he really doesn’t, how sweet. Just a little baby archivist- she was going to kill him after this. But watching him stumble into his own ruin will be so much more fun.

She sends him on his way with a burn.

Martin is terrified, he genuinely tries to quit. Almost manages it before his computer shuts off. The others try too, and then they all have a lovely freak-out together.

They decide to try and talk to Detective Tonner, which proves easy. She’s the partner of the one who’s been interviewing them. She comes to the institute, and they ask her about Jon. She tells them they believed he was responsible for killing Gertrude, seeing as he was next in line. Martin accidentally Compels her into a statement, and then into admitting she's mostly just saying he killed her because dead men don’t put up fights.

She threatens him right then and there, though Basira comes in and intervenes before anything happens. He files a dispute with the station, and avoids the police after that.

Basira brings him some of the tapes, she says it’s an apology. He’s pretty sure she’s just trying to get him to drop the dispute in the weirdest way possible. He does learn some about Gertrude though, and through her what he’s dealing with. And something about an ‘unknowing’

A man named peter Lukas visits the institute, one of the doners. Elias says he wants to see how the archive runs, Lukas says a few choice words about it. And Martin tells him in the most polite of terms to shove off. Lukas threatens him, and very briefly makes him forget everyone he’s ever loved. And then tells him he got off lucky, and that Elias should have picked a better archivist. You can hardly trust someone so childish to run something as important as this now can you.

Daisy visits him in his home, and threatens him in much more physical terms now. She tells him if he tries to do what he did to her again he’ll get more than a scar.

After that it’s a bit unclear how he gets marked by the next two (Curruption, Stranger.) but he does.

There’s a delivery, a few weeks after the stranger mark. It’s not supernatural in any sense, just a young woman dropping off a small box in the archivists office. She says her name is Georgie, and no, she doesn’t know what’s in the box. She just had an old friend tell her to deliver it if he didn’t check in after a bit. Then she found out he died on the news, and then she hadn’t wanted to deliver them- clearly whatever was in the box was going to get someone killed. And she wasn’t scared of it, she wasn’t one for fear, but the thought of putting anyone in danger made her skin crawl. But she didn’t want it in her house, and she refused to be haunted be this box forever. And there was no reason to defy the poor guys apparent final wishes- wait, why was she saying all this again?

In the box was tapes, a dozen or so of them. All addressed to ‘the next head archivist’

It’s Jon’s voice, on the tapes. Talking to who he apparently assumes to be an entire stranger, explaining the fears. And how Smirkes 14 wasn’t wrong, but wasn’t right either. It tells the next archivist to avoid eyes, paintings, doodles, abstract representations, and to keep playing dumb. There’s a lot out there, and the more you know the worse it gets. There’s no fighting, don’t struggle the nets already around you. There’s a way out, but you’re not going to like it.

It gives an odd image of Jon, the man who awkwardly tried to make small-talk int he break room, only to shuffle away after it fell flat. Carrying this world-ending secret on his shoulders. Stiff, awkward Jon. Grim, sad Jon. not so far apart but still so far outside of what Martin had known about him.

What had Martin known about him?

Tim decides to quit, Sasha stays. Elias hires Melanie. Who turns out to be another connection to Jon.

Melanie says he was kind of a prick, he belived her about her Sarah incident, but refused to give her library access. Probably because he was sexist, or maybe just a dickhead. She’d been trying to learn more about her encounter for ages. And this was finally her chance. They try to explain the way out but she won’t listen.

Martin starts following Gertrudes tapes, things about the unknowing have been popping up on his desk lately, and it sounds like Jon was right about an apocalypse. He goes to america, gets a bit kidnapped, and meets Gerry. He offers to help, and then asks about the unknowing. Gerry points him towards the storage locker. And when he gets back He and Sasha and Melanie check it out.

It’s mostly empty, apparently somewhat recently cleared out. Though in the corner there’s a large box of Tapes. There has to be dozens of them, and when they pres play it’s Jon. Talking to them. Except it’s not them, it’s another version of them, and something this version.

And there’s another Jon to add to the mystery of a man he was. The jon on these tapes isn’t stiffly awkward or forcedly professional. He’s open, sad. He cries, he laughs at memories they don’t have. He apologizes, a lot. Too much really. He talks about time travel, about forgetting faces and losing friends.

“Sometimes I-I think- I can’t help but be a bit... upset. At how unfair it all is. You’re all happy and laughing and together and i’m-

i’m alone.

I suppose it must be some sort of- cosmic Karma, I doomed the world so in this new one bright an new I pay my penance in isolation.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. I doom the world- suffer its horrors, and get a little bit of time to taste what humanity would be like.

Or maybe i’m just not that likable without an apocalypse.

Probably says a lot about me either way.

Is it bad that I- I sometimes consider letting things play their course? W-without any of you dying of course I just... I suppose it is bad, to want to end the world because you’re lonely. Just because i’m a bit sad doesn’t mean the planet should suffer, no... maybe i’ll try and reconnect with Georgie, it’s been... well. No. Perhaps best not.”

Sasha says that if she knew she would have at least brought him out for drinks or something.

But they did sort-of know didn’t they? Not about the apocalypse, but about the loneliness. After all, nobody chats so awkwardly in the break room because they have a thriving social life.

“I’m going to kill Nikola tonight- i’m not going to die. I’m not. I didn’t die last time, a-and there’s no reason for that to change. T-there isn’t. I’m going to try and be a safe distance from the blast this time, too. But... Well, it’s not like I have anyone to miss me if I do go.

I suppose... Martin, if you’re listening to this- I... I miss you. You always did say I should be more open with my feelings, and it’s weird. To miss someone who’s right there. T-to look at a face and see a friend and a stranger. To love someone you’ve known for years who doesn’t even really know who you are.

It’s all very stranger, ironic really. Considering what i’m about to do.

I love you, and I miss you. I know you’re not listening, even if I did die you’ve probably long since quit. I hope you’re happy, whatever you’re doing. Happy and safe. All of you.

And maybe you are listening, maybe... maybe we do become friends, maybe you actually choose to talk to me someday. Maybe I tell you about all of this and... And you don’t think i’m mad. Maybe you let me take you out to dinner and we’d be together again. We’d never be like before- not that that’s a bad thing what with the eldritch horrors. There’d be bits missing, memories we don’t share- but, it would still be you... It’s always been you, I think. And maybe I've decided to give this to you as some sort of silly romantic gesture.

A-and in that case. I love you, Martin Blackwood. More than you’ll ever know.

[HE SIGHS]

When I come back, i’m recording over this.”

[CLICK]

But he didn’t come back. He died that night. He died loving Martin, who never even really knew him beyond passing awkward conversation. Martin doesn’t know how to feel about it, besides guilty that is.

The tapes point them towards Georgie Barker, the woman who delivered the other set to the archives.

Georgie doesn’t really want anything to do with them, she knows whatever they’re stewing in got Jon killed. But she tells them about her encounter with The End, though she’s tetchy afterwards. Martins finally starting to understand this whole compelling business and is feeling pretty sorry about it. He redirects, he starts to ask about Jon. Who he was, really. What she knew he was like.

They talk, Martins curiosity is part Eye and part knowing that someone loved him, really, really loved him. And feeling like he missed out, like he skipped a train he hadn’t known was there. And wanting to know what kind of person would- could love him the way Jon did. And why that kind of person could end the world.

They talk, Georgie explains why they broke up (clashing ideals, he didn’t believe in the supernatural and her trauma was so inherently tied to it. He was a sleep-clinger and she kicked when she dreamed) And why it took so long for them to break up (Jon was funny once you learned to get his jokes, the Admiral loved him, he had a weird way of caring that was really sweet) they talk about things, Georgie lets him hang out with her as long as he promises to keep the supernatural out of their conversations. And how is Melanie doing by the way?

Sasha has a hard time splitting her time in the archive and helping Tim. He can manage himself of course but it’s hard knowing he’s sitting in her flat alone, he’s getting back into publishing though. Sleeping easier now he knows that not only is he free of the eye, but Jon very much killed the thing that killed Danny. He only wishes he could have been the one to pull the trigger. Sasha is getting more involved though, the eye has it’s own grip on her.

They finally confront Elias. They know it won’t do any good, Jons tapes explained what he was, who he was. But they’re frustrated. Low on options. Jon never really explained what the apocalypse was- if Martins learned anything from the other tapes it’s probably because he forgot, thought he did somewhere and didn’t.

Elias isn’t entirely surprised that they’ve figured it out, he knew something was going on. Though he wasn’t quite sure what. He claims he knows what oncoming apocalypse Jon was talking about, and that he was likely underestimating the amount.

He sends them to Ny-Ålesund. And Martin views the black sun. Gets briefly taken hostage by Manuela. And gets “saved” by a man who pops out of a door to stab her.

He says his name is Micheal, and he’s not there to help. He does his whole distortion bit, confuses them. Stabs Martin when he tries to take his statement. Says he was going to kill him, but what happens next might be much better than death. And leaves after stating that he’s very excited to watch how the rest of this plays out.

They go back to the institute, and Elias says he must have been wrong. Oopsie. Anyway the web is planning a ritual you should go check out the spooky house from all these statements.

They meet Annabelle in person, Martin gets marked by the web.

This continues on for the end the slaughter and the buried. They finally confront Elias again about these wild goose chases, he claims innocence but he’s done it enough times they don’t believe him. They stop trusting Elias. Not that they ever really did, but they stop listening to him.

Melanie isn’t as angry as she was. Though she is still angry. She didn’t go to india so no ghost bullet, but she’s still trapped. Though she knows how to quit, it’s been a scary idea. But the longer she stays the more she realizes how low she is on options. So she quits.

Martin is angry, he’s exhausted, he’s confused. Nothing makes sense. And another one of Elias’s goddamn doners is visiting. A weird old man who, when he shakes his hand, makes him feel like he just dropped off a rollercoaster at a million miles into empty nothingness. He laughs when Martins regained himself, and says that that tricks better than a buzzer every time.

He visits Georgie again, he’s thinking about quitting. But he can’t figure out what the apocalypse he’s supposed to stop is, because according to Jon it’s pretty bad. And he’s the one who can stop, or maybe start, it. But he doesn’t know what it is.

He talks to Georgie about Jon some more, it’s funny, to grieve a man you already knew. Except four years too late. There’s a sort-of helpless frustration to it, every time he talks about Jon he wishes he could be learning this first-hand. Not from someone who hadn’t spoken to him in years before this.

He also finds himself glued to the tapes, he can relate, in a way. To Jons loneliness. To have a person so, so close but so far away. He wishes he could meet the Jon on the tapes now. Then neither of them would have to be lonely. But Jon is dead. And Martin... Martin might love Jon. Jon, who died years ago. A dead man who apparently loved him enough to consider ending the world for the chance to have a real conversation with him.

He goes back to work, frustrated and so, so lost. A million questions that genuinely can’t be answered. There’s a fresh statement on his desk. It’s a statement of Jonah Magnus, regarding stopping the apocalypse.

Certainly a goddamn roundabout way of giving Martin information, but he’ll take it.

He reads the statement.

The world ends.

Sasha, Tim, Melanie, and Georgie all get their own domains. And wander free in the hills of suffering. Martin is alone, well and truly alone. He ended the world, because he was too stupid and sad to read a few extra paragraphs before starting the tape.

But Jon went back, didn’t he? He went back in time and stopped this once. Maybe Martin can too. Maybe he can stop the flesh from attacking, maybe he can stop Melanie from joining the institute. Maybe he can meet the real Jon.

He goes back, he does it. Nobody remembers but him.

Nobody remembers but him.

And things keep happening he can’t have predicted.

Worms, Sasha is gone, Gertrude. It’s all wrong. And Jon isn’t the Jon he knew, he doesn’t know Martin, he doesn’t even like Martin. Nobody is the person he knew before.

He is alone. And things keep happening he can’t have predicted, worms tables and paranoia. He starts recording. Trying to follow in Jon’s footsteps and leave information behind, easier to access this time of course. In his flat, and he’ll have the key sent to the archives if something goes wrong. He’ll record until Jon trusts him enough to believe him, Maybe he’ll even stop him before it’s too late and he’ll never need to find out what happened at all. Maybe he can't get close as he was to everyone, but he can keep them safe.

He doesn’t get to finish his recordings, he wasn’t careful enough. Jonah catches wind and half the tapes are destroyed when he dies in a mysterious housefire. But what’s left does get delivered to the archives.

And the cycle continues.

#jonmartin #the magnus archives #tma #angst #writing #ghostly scribbles #Tma is a tragedy and so is this #not a proper fic more like a really weird outline

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david-akintunde · 3 years ago

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10 Tips To Boost Your Email Open Rates

Here is a simple talisman for success if you’re an email marketer — higher email open rates mean more conversions. Sounds obvious? Even then, many organizations don’t end up writing emails that subscribers want to open. A study by MailChimp found that email open rates are just at 21.33% across all industries.

In a quick glance, this figure looks ok. But is it really? Suppose you have an email list comprising a whopping 15,000 subscribers. With a 21.33% conversion rate, only a mere 3199 leads are ever going to see your emails, and fewer will take any action.

Remember, there comes a point, when it doesn’t matter how extensive your email list is, but how many prospects within that list open your emails. If within the same list of 15,000 subscribers, your open rates go up to 50%, you end up with 7500 leads engaging with your pitch.

So, how do you get here? By following these 10 hacks that are sure to improve your email open rates:

1. Don’t Forget to Segment your Email List

Without email list segmentation, you cannot personalize your emails. While you can categorize your email list under parameters most relevant to you, try these three segments for starters.

Segment based on:

Demography

Challenges and pain points

Like and dislikes

2. Get your Subject Line Right

Your subject line alone is what encourages prospects to open your email. It also helps form your brand’s first impression. So, craft it well! How?

Personalize it for your target audience. Write more than one subject sentence for, say, different age groups, even if the product you’re pitching is the same.

Hold back on using too many punctuations like exclamation marks. You’d be surprised how commonly marketers use more than one exclamation point in subject lines for emphasis. Choose to emphasize with your words instead.

Keep it concise and avoid vagueness.

Draft it in the form of a question, if you can.

Use powerful words and phrases. These stir emotion and arouse curiosity. For example, the image below uses a power word like “sanity-saving.”

Source: Smart Blogger

3. Get your Email Timing Right

Remember, leads will read your emails at different times in different parts of the world. Some will read them late at night, while others will do so in the morning. Leverage whichever email automation tool you use to track the time most of your prospects read your emails.

Once you have an optimal time, send emails accordingly to boost open as well as click-through rates. Also, as a general rule of thumb, avoid sending marketing emails over weekends. Several studies have now revealed that weekends are the most inopportune time to send promotional communication.

4. Get your Email Frequency Right

Nobody, and that even includes you wants their inbox to be bombarded with too many promotional emails from one brand. Not only does this single-handedly bring down your open rates, but the prospect can blacklist you or mark you as spam.

Simply put, strike the right balance with your audience. Generally, sending emails twice or thrice and no more makes for a healthy frequency that doesn’t annoy prospects.

5. Re-engage with the Dormant Prospects

All email lists have prospects who haven’t opened promotional emails from certain brands in months. Your list is likely no different. Weed them out! And scout for new prospects.

But, before identifying and deleting them from your email list, make sure to draft and deploy a re-engagement campaign. Maybe, this campaign contains time-limited offers or personalized deals to re-engage passive leads.

6. Send Emails using an Official Email ID

No matter how small your business is at this point, don’t use your Gmail or Hotmail ids to send out marketing communication. Such a practice will likely land you in the prospect’s junk pile. Use a domain email address that carries your brand name to stay out of spam filters and boost your open rates.

7. Ensure a High Deliverability Rate

Unfortunately, over 20% of marketing emails don’t land up in your prospects’ inboxes. These emails bounce because of:

Temporary server issues on both ends

Sending emails to abandoned or obsolete email ids

Prospects who accidentally blacklist you

Upping your deliverability rate will automatically boost open rates. You can do this by:

Sending reminder emails requesting your subscribers to whitelist you.

Confirm if a prospect has willingly subscribed to your list by asking them to click on a link sent to their inbox.

8. Avoid using Certain Words in Email Subject Line and Body

Stay away from phrases and words that make your email seem less authentic. For instance, “Urgent,” “free stuff for you,” “you have won,” and several others. Think of these phrases similar to swear words in email marketing.

9. Send the Same Email Once More

Sometimes your prospects want to open your email, but they simply forget or get distracted. And, once they do, they won’t revisit your email. To avoid this situation, resend the same email to subscribers who didn’t open your first email.

Don’t worry about being too intrusive here. You’d be happy to know that this is not an uncommon practice used by marketers to boost their open rates.

10. Don’t only Send Promotional Content

Sure, the ultimate goal for your brand is to sell its wares, but this doesn’t mean all your emails must carry a sales pitch. Share informational or educational content to make your email campaigns more engaging. Help them gain light on their challenges through blogs, case studies, etc. When you send a mixed bag of email content, you are more likely to increase your open rates.

Conclusion

With these 10 tips, you can undoubtedly experience higher open rates, eventually translating into more conversions. As for subscribers who, even after all the attempts, don’t open your emails, it’s best to let them go! After all, not all subscribers turn into qualified leads, and that’s ok.

Three Tips For Writing Marketing Email Subject Lines People Actually Want To Open

Sales, marketing and branding expert. CEO of GoPromotional, distributor of promotional products with a focus on online business development.

When was the last time you sent an email? Did you know that, according to Statista, roughly 306 billion emails were estimated to have been sent and received every single day in 2020? There are only about 7.7 billion people on Earth. Let that sink in. Now, ask yourself this: How many of the emails you receive every day do you actually read? More specifically, how many of the promotional emails you receive do you open at all?

With all the benefits of the information age, it’s important to remember that we’re utterly swamped with information to an extent we’ve never experienced before. So if you want to get through to people — if you’re an e-marketer whose goal is to reach as many targets as possible via mass emails — you’ll have to put in some thought and get creative. This is a game of subject lines, and your job is to master it by crafting engaging, inviting, tempting and even daring email subject lines that will grab attention — even if it’s just long enough for a click.

The fear of missing out is your ally.

FOMO is real, and it’s powerful. For the uninitiated, “FOMO” stands for “fear of missing out,” and while it may be a behavioral trend brought about by our rapidly developing internet infrastructure, it is a valuable marketing tool. No matter what you’re missing — a new blow dryer, a different kind of juice or a wedding — the point is that you’re missing something. Maybe you just don’t know about it yet.

FOMO will be of great use to you as you draft up effective subject lines. Don’t just stop with basic additions such as “act fast,” “for a limited time” or “while supplies last.” Go all the way and use numbers. What makes you want to move faster: “while supplies last” or “three hours left?” The fewer details, the better. This is all about getting your target to open the email. Don’t worry about telling them what ends in three hours. Let them find out for themselves.

Less is sometimes more.

We’re all busy. Nobody has time to read your spiel. Yes, that even includes your 10-word subject line. How many of the hundred emails you received today had 10 words in their subject lines? It adds up, and, at some point, it just looks like alphabet soup. Crafting an email subject line is all about visuals. In my experience, a short, quippy subject line can catch the eye of someone looking at their email inbox because it helps break up the sea of text.

Consider shortening a subject line such as “New jeans from Lucky Brand, Calvin Klein, Collection by Michael Strahan and more” to something more like, “Lucky. Calvin. Strahan.” You can call it a laconic method if you want, but when you treat every word like it’s a scarce commodity, they instantly appear more important.

Laugh it up.

I think we can all agree that email is no longer the stuffy, daunting, formal affair it may have once been. Email is something we do without even thinking. It’s on our phones. It’s how we confirm toothpaste orders. It’s like socks: totally ubiquitous. And consider this: More and more, your target audience is made up of people who weren’t even born before email was invented. These consumers grew up in the beginnings of a post-advertising era, when I believe traditional advertising began to lose its grip. They know a promotional email when they see one.

The solution? Laugh it up. Be a little self-aware. I’ve found that millennials and Generation Z pick up on self-awareness, and they appreciate it. Make fun of yourself a little; it can’t hurt. Switch out your stock enthusiasm for deadpan humor. Be honest. Instead of, “This week’s top picks just for you,” for example, you could try, “We want your money.” The content matters, but what matters more is getting your target interested.

Remember, the meat and potatoes are in the body of your email, but the subject is your alluring dessert. You can have dessert before dinner — as long as you eat.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?

Your Email Marketing Is Destined To Fail Without These 3 Essentials

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Think email marketing is all spam? Think again! In a world where marketing pitches come at us from all angles and on every device, email marketing has held steady as the favored channel for consumers. When used well, this platform can help you attract, convert, close and delight your buyers. Don’t underestimate it — your company’s email strategy can make or break you.

When it comes to building a successful email-marketing strategy, there are three specific elements that will help you achieve your business goals or move you further away from them, depending on how well you use them.

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

1. Frequency

Nobody wants to get ten emails a day from a subscription. It doesn’t matter if the content is brilliant, useful or undeniably accurate. Your leads will get annoyed if you send them too much information. Even though they might read it (with some luck), at some point, they’ll feel bothered and eventually click the unsubscribe button.

Avoid losing contacts by not only asking their desired frequency to get your emails, but also by relying on your metrics. Don’t pay too much attention to your open rate alone — look closely at your click-through rate too. This will indicate how interested your leads are and how often they take action to prove it.

While every industry and situation is different, a good place to start with email-marketing cadence is about once per week. This establishes a relationship with your subscribers that can turn into a habit-forming routine. Being too timid about frequency can lead to a sporadic cadence that will end up irritating recipients. If you wait too long between emails, even opt-in subscribers may report you for spam — simply because you’ve let them forget all about you!

2. Relevance

While subscribers may certainly become frustrated by the frequency of your emails, they are more likely to become annoyed if your content is not relevant to their interests and needs.

Relevance is a tricky concept because it depends on many factors like the consumer’s knowledge level, his or her stage in the buyer’s journey and good timing. You must know your audience in order to understand what type of content they want.

Specifically, you need to know what they want from you, which is often dictated by where they are in the buyer’s journey. Are they ready to buy? Are they trying to get valuable information? Are they looking to solve a problem? Are you able to solve that problem?

In every industry, there are two types of buyers: “now” buyers, who are progressing down the purchase funnel, and future buyers, who have no interest in or need for your product currently, but may down the road. For future buyers, the relevance of your content is what’s most important to them; it’s what builds the brand trust that will bring them back to you when they are ready to buy.

Finally, timing is everything. Relevance is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time.

3. Action

We receive emails basically everywhere — at home, work and while on the go. When receiving an email, we may take a look at it immediately, but sometimes it requires further action like submitting a form, watching a video or visiting a website. Try to reduce or streamline required actions in order to make it easy for contacts to follow through at any time of day.

First and foremost, make your offers simple. Your buyers don’t like to be given too many choices; when they are, they often won’t buy anything at all. Even in the physical world, this is the case. In the famous “jam study” by Columbia Business School Professor Sheena Iyengar, for example, she set out two tasting booths for a brand of jam. One table offered six flavors to choose from; the other offered 24.

While the tasting booth with 24 flavors attracted more people, the booth with six flavors sold much more jam — 30% of those who stopped at the booth bought a jar, compared to just 3% of those who stopped at the table with 24 varieties. These visitors were too confused and overwhelmed to make a purchase decision.

The difference between stopping at a booth and buying from a booth is similar to the difference between opening an email and clicking through to an offer. Your email campaigns must be able to achieve both to be successful. The more personalized and concise you can be in your offers, the simpler the choice will be for your email subscribers.

BONUS To enjoy the best email marketing software, click here

#email campaign #email marketing #mailchimp #email marketing tips #email marketing tutorial #email marketing trends #email marketing automation #email marketing strategy #email marketing plan

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cheri-translates · 4 years ago

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[CN] Victor’s R&S - Six out of Seventeen (Eng Translation)

🍒This R&S (“十七分之六”) will not be released in EN or any server as it’s one of the cancelled R&S which came with the Dream Heart Lake gacha event!🍒

This is a full translation, so you can follow along with the narrator if you want to!

Summary: Victor has been persistent in one thing for seventeen years. The part he lets other people know about is simply six out of seventeen.

Other cancelled Victor R&S:

> flashback

> paradise on earth

> so-called disparity

[ Chapter 1 ]

The first time he recognised his powerlessness was during that failed escape.

The second time was the sense of loss when his mother passed away.

The third time was when he faced the boundless sea of faces, at his wit’s end.

Victor will not say that he searched unceasingly for the girl for seventeen years.

It’s akin to how people talk about being secretly in love: Although they might say “I’ve harboured a crush on him/her for so many years”, “I’ve continued following him/her on social media all these years”, ultimately, they will not delay the things they have to do.

To Victor, “finding the girl” had a similar concept.

He will not enumerate how many hours and minutes he spent on this matter of “finding the girl”. One, there was no point in doing so. Two, he was slightly worried - what if he discovered that the problem which had been entrenched in his heart for such a long time was actually very trivial... what would he do then?

However--

It’s akin to how people talk about being secretly in love: Although he had no idea how the other party looked like now, the palpitations from back then, and the blurred face in his dreams always motivated him to press onward. Exactly because he couldn’t set it down, it turned into a permanent, clear moonlight in his heart.

To Victor, “finding the girl” remained the same as always - this matter was on track, even after he established his business.

After all, Victor was only eleven years old when the incident happened. As a young student, his abilities were limited. At the time, all he could do after school was check in on places the girl would often visit, but his investigations didn’t go smoothly. On one hand, his understanding of the girl was already extremely limited. On other other hand, the inside story of what happened during the orphanage incident was undisclosed.

He could have received some measure of support from his parents if he asked. But after going through the kidnapping, Victor understood that it would be better if fewer people knew about his superpower.

He wasn’t afraid his parents wouldn’t believe him. It was just that he was afraid his parents may get “implicated” in his personal secret. What if they ended up like the girl...

This was the reason why teenage Victor chose to delay the matter of “finding the girl” - not give up, but delay it.

At that age, Victor already understood the importance of preparation. In the years ahead, he was a good student in the eyes of teachers, a good student who looked as though he was perpetually in a bad mood, taciturn, and a bit heavy-hearted.

Even till he graduated from high school, none of his schoolmates knew about the kidnapping Victor experienced in childhood, and nobody knew that he had been continuously collecting materials related to back then. However, his roommates all knew that a girl’s name would occasionally surface when he talked in his sleep.

It’s thanks to this that nobody ever spread rumours about the girl. At an age where everybody loved to joke at another’s expense, nobody ever used Victor as a joke.

[ Chapter 2 ]

The first year Victor entered university was also the time social networking gained traction.

The reason why his business could develop at such a rapid pace was to a large extent attributed to social networking, which gave rise to the theory of Six Degrees of Separation.

Unfortunately, the social networking which helped Victor establish his business was unable to provide much assistance in “that matter”.

It wasn’t that Victor didn’t search for posts pertaining to the orphanage incident, but the content was mostly meant to attract attention.

Some who were steeped in fantasy said that the orphanage incident back then was the result of vampires causing trouble, and the orphans discovered in it were actually sustenance reserves for the vampires. Some who were more realistic made an analysis and claimed that it was a relatively large-scale child trafficking situation. Some who were inclined towards sci-fi asserted that it was an attack launched by aliens who had plans to take the children back to their planet to conduct experiments...

While Victor felt disappointed by such results, they were within his expectations. After all, the official materials which were disclosed back then were already limited to begin with, and the other children who were involved were too young, and lacked as clear a memory as he did - after being rescued, they had high fevers and may have even thought everything was simply a dream.

To Victor, all these arguments confirmed his deductions: He couldn’t use layman methods to find her.

As such, Victor hired a private investigator in the year he graduated from university.

Contrary to popular belief, private investigators existed among the people in the city.

It’s just that they generally had a different identity, and it was difficult to find them without a recommendation from someone else. Victor managed to locate this private investigator from a recommendation by one of his men. At that point, LFG had already established itself to a certain level. When the detective, whose surname is Bao, heard from the middleman that LFG’s Victor was looking for him, his first reaction was -

“CEO Victor, we have to make something clear. If this has to do with a company-related scheme, I don’t wade in such muddy waters.”

“Teacher Bao.” Addressing him as “teacher” was part of his upbringing and etiquette. However, the sentence which followed after was far from polite. “Do you know about the kidnapping incident which occurred in the orphanage eleven years ago?

He asked the other party to investigate the truth of what happened back then, along with an open reason - as a victim of the incident, he had the right to know.

“CEO Victor, telling me about this right after we just met... does this count as you having trust in me?”

“CEO Liang recommended you, and I trust him.”

Without saying anything else, Victor and Detective Bao agreed on a quarterly report, and then sent him out politely.

On the night of the conversation, the old detective received a payment much higher than the agreed remuneration. Only then did he believe that the guy he saw in the afternoon was truly what CEO Liang called an “awe-inspiring business elite”.

And he experienced the shrewdness of this “business elite” when he presented his first report three months later.

[ Chapter 3 ]

That day, Old Bao gave a voluminous speech spanning a full hour, thinking Victor would give one or two phrases of praise. Even a nod would have sufficed. However, he didn’t expect that after listening to the report, all Victor did was to move his fingers.

Victor’s slender fingers curled inwards, and he pointed towards a box in the corner.

“CEO Victor, this is?”

Ever since he withdrew from the media, Old Bao had not experienced many great storms. But he would never forget the answer Victor gave him. He said it lightly, but it could cause the listener to vomit three litres of blood.

“You’ve passed the test.”

It turns out that the box contained all the materials Victor collected over the years - some official and some not. 90% of the content was mentioned in Old Bao’s report - and that was what Victor based his “you’ve passed the test” on.

Because most of his clients were introduced by friends, goodwill was a guarantee provided by the middleman, which was why most of the transactions could be settled during the first meeting. But for someone like Victor...

It was the first time Old Bao met such a person.

So, he had been busying himself for nothing over the past three months? This report was basically just a test for him set up by Victor?

There was a particular moment when Old Bao really wanted to walk straight out the door. But for some inexplicable reason, this idea was throttled to death at the cradle.

Perhaps it was curiously. Perhaps it was the gut instinct of a detective--

He wanted to know what exactly Victor wanted to search for - to the extent that he didn’t hesitate to waste three months’ worth of time.

Thus, on such a foundation, their partnership commenced.

If it was because of curiosity at the beginning, a moment of impulse was what prevented Old Bao from rejecting this business. If he were to persevere, he had to find a motivation to tide him through long-term. After all, Old Bao would sometimes ask himself:

Why did he make the “humiliating” decision to provide his services to Victor? Purely out of curiosity? That was enough to cause him to throw his pride away? Isn’t his time also time?

Fortunately, every time Old Bao questioned his life, remuneration would be funnelled into his bank account, helping him find a new direction in his lost state.

Apart from this, having a new understanding of Victor was also another reason why Old Bai eventually made steady progress.

If he were to label Victor at the very beginning, it would be “taciturn”, “stern”, “proud and formidable”. After the first report, a few more labels would be added - “shrewd”, “meticulous” and “deserving to be called an elite”. However, as they interacted for a longer time...

Most of these were torn down by Old Bao himself.

After working with him for a year, he deduced that Victor’s patience and temper were actually much better than what he expressed on his face. Even though there was little progress in his investigation most of the time, he didn’t receive the severe criticism he expected, and the agreed-upon remuneration didn’t diminish because of it.

Faced with one after another of disappointing reports, Victor’s response would just be a few words, in keeping with his style -

Definite and decisive, resolute and persistent.

[ Chapter 4 ]

Sometimes, an inner struggle would surface in Old Bao’s mind: Could Victor have known that the girl was actually no longer on this earth, and his way of searching for a needle in a haystack was a form of coping? If that was the case, he’d just have to cooperate with Victor in acting out this charade, and he’d be able to earn a lot of money.

No, no, you can’t lack a conscience, especially as a detective. Since I’ve already accepted his money, I should carry out his work properly.

After three years of working with him, Old Bao felt as though he had waded into far muddier and complicated waters than a company-related scheme - clues to finding the girl were cut a few times. But as he dived further into the orphanage incident, a few questions started to be brought to the surface:

If the girl simply died in the accident, why was it that apart from her death certificate, most of her information had gone missing? If the kidnapping at the orphanage was just a simple incident, why did most of the people related to it vanish?

The overly conscious effort to cover up the matter could instead prove a few truths. For instance, there were huge stakes behind the orphanage kidnapping. For instance... that girl could still be alive, just that she had gone incognito and has had a change in identity.

After six years of working together, Old Bao finally fiound a key piece of information.

At the same time, he also understood the necessity of the test back then. When Victor told Old Bao his true objective, it was essentially entrusting his biggest secret into the hands of a stranger.

Old Bao examined himself. If he were in Victor’s position, he wouldn’t have been able to do it better than Victor did.

Old Bao suddenly understood why CEO Liang, who had only worked with Victor a few times, was so full of praise for Victor back then.

Since he had found important information, following the clues would be a quick task. Old Bao knew that their employer-employee relationship would not continue for much longer. With regards to this, he had mixed feelings.

One one hand, he felt as though a huge weight was lifted off his shoulders. After being troubled by this issue for so long, there was finally a clue. On the other hand... he was reluctant to let go - after all, it had been a full six years.

He didn’t know whether he’d be able to meet someone as remarkable and talented as Victor in the future.

Such an appreciation transcended gender and age. It was a natural inclination humans have towards good things.

At the same time, he also hoped that Victor’s future could be smooth-sailing, and that he wouldn’t need to look for people like him to resolve troublesome matters.

This was a sincere blessing from a member of the older generation to a member of the younger generation.

As Old Bao tackled with this secret inner struggle, it was truly “speaking of the devil”. His phone screen lit up, and he received a new message, the contents containing only eight words:

“Investigate HBS. We will talk in detail tomorrow.”

“This person, he’s really...”

Without even looking at the sender, Old Bao already knew who this message was from. He felt an uncontrollable smile inch up his lips. Old Bao shook his head resignedly, and he didn’t know if he was mocking himself or feeling rueful. He continued.

“Really... very contradictory.”

Other cancelled R&S: here

Lucien’s cancelled R&S (by other user): here

#mlqc #mlqc cn #mlqc victor #cncancelled #after translating three r&s consecutively I came to the conclusion that #it doesn't matter how young or old you are #male or female #nobody can resist Victor's charm

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boop-le-snoot · 4 years ago

Text

PARTY FAVOURS | A MYSTERIOUS INTERLUDE

first time reader click here

This is a scrapped chapter. Originally, I was planning to 1) give Reader a longer, more intense destructive streak before her ending up with Tony. I planned three or so chapters that involved an abusive Quentin Beck, but, ultimately decided that to be too cliché. 2) I had planned to write at least 30% of the fanfic in Tony's/third person POV. This chapter would have been number 11/12 - Tony would have rejected her advances in the lab & she would have got hooked on Beck's charming facade.

Why am I publishing this? It seems like a waste if effort to shelf it, plus, it's Tony's POV. You can skip it since it has no relation/bearing on the current story. Just a tiny "what might have been" tidbit.

It was a moment's notice. One second, they're standing in a group, laughing, soaking in the warmth from the fireplace, chattering amongst themselves, telling tall tales and sipping their liquor. It all goes black briefly, and then they are surrounded by darkness - it's nearly impenetrable, so thick that their voices echo in it.

Tony's body was encompassed by the nanotech suit immediately after his eyes and his brain adjusted to the rapid change of surroundings. His teammates, too, had their skills honed on an instinctive level - the faint thump of Mjölnir in Thor's hands, the golden-green glow of his brother's magic, whirring of Barnes' prosthetic arm. Steve's shield stayed tucked behind the living room couch but his enhanced physique and readiness to fight 24/7 has him covering the unenhanced Clint and Natasha in mere seconds.

Tony was mostly angry rather than afraid. The team was having a good time at his party and the chance encounters of weird shit like this had been reduced to nearly zero percent possibility thanks to Friday's screening process: supervillains, Hydra agents and the likes strictly prohibited on Stark-owned premises.

It was a strange coincidence Banner had to take a break to check up on one of his experiments not even five minutes before the rest of the team was experiencing the strange change in scenery. Speaking of Strange, the sorcerer also was nowhere to be seen - Tony distinctively remembered seeing Stephen ten feet away from the bar, engaged in a hearty debate with the lead of SI's Medical Engineering department.

"This is not magic," Wanda piped up from behind him, confused. "I don't feel anything on the usual frequency. It sounds more like Friday humming in the walls, like electricity."

Good to know, Tony thought. It was nice having someone who was familiar with the undiscovered side of science - after all, Tony had always considered anything 'magical' to be science he had not personally understood yet. Wanda's most redeeming quality in Tony's eyes was the fact that more often than not she seemed to be as clueless as everyone else when it came to her powers and didn't act so high and mighty as some other people. Cloaked people, and horned people, for example.

"The fuck, man? I was hoping, just one evening, one normal evening with my beer and wings," Clint whined. Tony could hear Natasha huffing in annoyed agreement.

"Mr. Stark, what are we going to do?" His very own spider-child, on the other hand, sounded distraught. Peter's voice has this funny thing it does when the boy is upset but tries to hide it: it quivers on the vowels, wobbles slightly.

Tony had to blindly grope the air for a moment before his arm found Peter's shoulder. The boy was shivering and took the offered comfort eagerly, folding into the older man.

"Okay, whoever is pulling this stunt, my advice is: don't," Tony sighed, 12 000% Done With This Shit™, exclaiming loudly. "If that's a prank, stop it or speak up. If you got beef, then you got some nerve doing this in my tower. Show yourself."

He could feel the fine hairs on his neck stand up as the team tensed next to him, readily gearing up to pounce. Peter was vibrating in Tony's arms and the billionaire suddenly remembered the curious side-effects of Peter's powers, the spidey-sense. It must have been going absolutely haywire - the kid nearly hyperventilated himself into a heart attack.

"Stark, I must apologise for the uncomfortable circumstances. Believe me, it was a necessity - you always demand attention, whereas I need people to pay attention to me for a moment. Don't worry, you'll get yours when the time is due."

The voice was vaguely familiar. Male, slightly nasal but quiet and creeping. Insinuating. It lacked the usual boisterous bravado of a mid-grade bad guy, Tony had to take an educated guess that the owner of the mysterious voice was well-off, white. Privileged. No hint of desperation in it, as if the man was pitying everybody.

"The fuck? Q, is that you?"

Oh shit, Tony realized in muted horror. She must've been hanging around somewhere in their vicinity - which wasn't unusual, the girl usually orbited around Barnes, Wanda, Peter or Bruce. All of whom were present at the party. Tony had forgotten about her, to his shame, somehow having had automatically assumed she trotted out of the room on Bruce's heels. His science bro and her acted like conjoined twins when it came to their scientific ventures.

"Stop talking," The man growled, the voice suddenly coming from a very different direction. Tony heard a distinctively feminine yelp, albeit muffled. Peter violently jerked in Tony's arms. The engineer put the superstrength of his suit to use, holding the teenager down.

"Aw, hell no!" She yelled, the indignant shrieking followed by the sound of a moist palm slapping something glass...y? "What the fuck? I am asking you again. Are you... Oh my God, are you wearing a fishbowl on your head? Ow, motherfu-" The rest of the sentence is muffled, garbled. Whoever this "Q" was, she obviously knew him and he had silenced her. And, apparently, Q had an uncanny choice of headwear.

Tony was sure the rest of the team had followed his lead on doing a spit-take. They've fought enough supervillains with more than questionable fashion sense but a fishbowl? That was new.

"Be quiet, baby. It's for your own good. I don't want to hurt you if I can help it," The Fishbowl chastised her.

Tony's confusion once again returned to irritation at the frivolous way the villain addressed his science buddy. Peter's friend would have been more accurate but Tony had put her into the 'science bro' category not too long ago. They were close, as much as they could be, with the age gap and totally different interests and... The immense amount of guilt Tony felt for his attraction towards the girl. He was a dirty old man and she was barely an adult.

Every damn day Tony did his best to avoid making a shiny, big, new problem. Yet her brains and her wit and the uncanny ability to pull anybody into a conversation had a firm hold on his attention.

"Leave her alone," Stark angrily declared, powering up a repulsor. "What do you want? Party crashing isn't allowed in my tower anymore."

"What I want, Stark, is for you to give credit where it's due," The man answered simply, giving Tony just enough time to shove Peter behind him towards Natasha and take a tentative step forward.

The soft glow emanating from the repulsor illuminated barely two inches around his hand. The darkness surrounding it seemed to swallow the light. Tony moved on quiet feet towards the voice, easily avoiding furniture. His memory was good and he knew his tower, his home, better than anyone else.

"Did I hear that correctly, you're accusing me of plagiarism?" Tony tried for indignant, hoping to provoke the man into an inevitable, drawn-out speech where he lists all the wrongs Tony ever did him, giving the team precious time to regroup and form some semblance of a plan.

"Yes," Q simply answered, pausing for a second. "I hope you enjoy your next adventure. It certainly will show you the potential of my creation."

Tony shared a muted sound of confusion with the rest of the team.

"Q, I am very disappointed," To Tony's horror, th girl stared talking again. She sounded somewhat breathless, and closer to him than before. "Stop it with the dick measuring contest, you're a grown ass man. Go work for OsCorp, or Hammer, drink your sorrows away." She sounded so tired. And even closer to him.

"This is not a dick measuring contest!" Q roared suddenly and wow, that man was unstable. "This was my life's work, my creation, he insulted, berated and threw away!"

"I get it, I really get the whole 'being discarded and thrown away' thing," She replied, somewhat sarcastically. "But you know what? I'll be damned and I'll be fucked if I give some piece of shit any more of my undivided attention. They don't want me? Fine, they can fuck off and take their complaints with them." Her speech was periodically interrupted by shuffling noises.

Tony didn't dare to interrupt, seeing now the possibility of Q being actually calmed down by a teenager (probably) quoting some teen drama TV show.

"But going full Joker? You're a brilliant man, Quen, I wouldn't even look at you twice if not for your brains and your baby blues, however I don't fuck with the bad guys. That shit kills," The hand that rested on the wrist cuff of Tony's suit unmistakably belonged to her. She had the remnants of some sort of wire around it, sleek and quicksilver-shiny, irritating the tender skin under it. "And I want to live. You've gone and pissed off an entire crew of supers and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to think, Quen," There was genuine sadness in her voice.

Tony stood silent in confusion.

Whoever this Quen was, they obviously shared a close relationship. Tony's brain ran through the list of her friends, her relatives - there was nobody named Q, Quen or even remotely similar. Natasha had mentioned a possible boyfriend at some point but the man sounded too old for that, he was at least thirty. Or maybe? Tony wouldn't put it completely past the girl, if judging by the blatant way she flirted with Bruce. With himself.

"Baby, this is not about you. I don't want to hurt you," Quen replied, a hysterical edge to his voice. Something began flickering in the distance, attracting Tony's attention to the shape of a man with a round sort of helmet and a red, billowing cape (hello, 2012-Thor!).

"Too late, Quen. You've tied me up and you went on to attack my friends. I've already told you that if you yell at me one more time, I will leave you. So I guess this is it," Her voice broke at the end, pitiful sniffles following the statement.

Tony watched the exchange, mildly uncomfortable and very concerned. The man yelled at her? That was absolutely unacceptable, however, what else could one expect from a maniac with a flair for the dramatic?

The girl bodily placed herself in front of Tony, standing, doing nothing but rubbing her wrists. It was then that the engineer noticed Q nearing them, the shape becoming distinctively closer. And - yep, there it was - the fishbowl on his head. It completely obscured him, making his face invisible, unrecognisable.

The man seemed rather fixated on the girl standing in front of Tony. He floated in front of her, ignoring Tony, taking her bound hands in his own. A brief click and a hiss later, her wrists were released and the contraption fell freely to the floor where it landed with an oddly heavy thud. Tony hoped there was no lead in that thing - supervillains were dangerous but lead poisoning was cancerous and fatal.

"Baby..." Quen timidly touched her face with a leather-bound glove. "I didn't mean to yell at you. I'm sorry." Tony took the chance to examine the man's costume. If anything, it looked somewhat steampunk-y? There was a lot of bronze, and the chest brace had some sort of glowing lines on it. Power storage units?

She stared up, towards the man's hidden face. "M'sorry, Quen," She mumbled, going in for a hug. Or that's what Tony thought. The majestic cape that billowed behind Quen was unceremoniously yanked from his body as the girl ducked, covering herself with it, yelling: "TONY, NOW, SHOOT, SHOOT!"

Tony did just that, shot Quen flat in the chest and the man stumbled backwards, tripping on the cape - such a stupid, unexpected thing. But Tony knew, his girl was clever and resourceful. Pride swelled in his chest as he shot the man again, Rogers running out from behind him blindly, body-slamming Quen into the ground for good measure. Two hundred pounds of supersoldier later, the battle was over before it even started.

"No!" The villain shouted as Steve pressed and popped the hilarious glass contraption on his head. The accessory was no match for the Captain's super strength. Tony immediately recognised the man as his former employee, Quentin Beck, and it clicked for him. It was totally a personal vendetta.

"This stuff is tough, plexiglass, maybe," The Captain remarked, pointing at the scattered shards around Beck's head. "It appears to be augmented too, some kind of tech, I don't know. You're good at this, Tony," Steve chuckled humorlessly, roughly turning Beck around and securing his hands with a pair of vibranium-reinforced handcuffs. God only knew where he'd gotten those from.

"Good at what? Making enemies?" Stark couldn't resist the self-depricating joke.

"Stop it, Tony," Natasha's gently admonishing voice interrupted Steve's incoming lecture. Tony, for once, was thankful that the Widow interrupted. He was in no mood to listen to another one of Steve's speeches.

"Who do you work for?" That deadly gleam in Natasha's eyes was terrifying and Beck was only a man.

"I don't work for anyone but myself, thanks to Stark," He spat venomously.

Natasha cocked an eyebrow in Tony's direction.

"Fired him years ago, this guy was going nuts. Brilliant but crazier than a bag of cats," Tony replied, feigning nonchalance. He could feel a mild headache begin to gnaw at his skull. "We worked on a project together, he got upset that I refused to weaponize it. We had a falling out. End of story." With that, Tony stood up, retracing his suit to only leave the gauntlets on his hands, gathered the various pieces of tech the good captain had removed from Beck's persona and made way towards the nearest table.

Or where he thought it was. All of them were still surrounded by the uncanny darkness. The anxiety that Tony forcefully shut down reared it's ugly head as soon as he lost physical touch with his teammates. He stumbled, his foot catching onto something on the ground.

"Ow, motherfucker!"

"Buttercup, I haven't fucked your mother nor I plan to," He snarked back automatically, flooded with relief at the sound of the familiar voice.

"Hope so. She'd probably bite your dick off if you try," A hand was groping his calf and then she stood up in front of him, still clutching the ridiculous cape. It appeared to be a source of light, which was very strange. The girl looked positively demonic, illuminated by red light, face scrunched up, eyes puffy, and clothing in disarray.

"You good?" Tony managed to choke out, confusion and worry and anxiety making his chest tight.

"Balmy. My boyfriend is a homicidal maniac with an inferiority complex," She sassed, an edge of panic to her voice. "Oh, and he tried to kill one of my best friends. I am fine and dandy."

"Your boyfriend?" That was the only thing Tony heard. Bat-shit crazy Beck, his babygirl's boyfriend? There was no way in Hell he'd allow such a thing...

"My ex-boyfriend, I guess," She sighed, removing the cape from her persona. Refusing to meet his eyes, fiddling with the hem of her top. "Here," The girl abruptly thrust the cape at him. "This is a funny thing, it's like a hologram but you can actually touch it. You should, uh, probably disinfect it, or something. I've been on-uh, around it many times," It was so unlike her, the fumbling, the embarrassment, Tony wanted to wheel her straight to medical to check if she's gotten concussed again.

Then his brain caught up and all he saw was red. Figuratively and literally - the cape was still in his face, loosely hanging from her outstretched hand. She must've seen the look on his face.

The step she took back was quick and worrying. "Forget I said that, I don't know why I said that. Oh, god."

"What were you thinking?" Tony inhaled a solid lungful, prepared to make his opinion very clear. "Getting involved with a lunatic! For a second I actually thought you were smart, there isn't a chance you missed that the guy is short of a few marbles," His voice was quiet, the one of a calm fury. His words cut deeply and he could see the hurt, the shame in her eyes, on her face. Tony knew he'd regret it later however his brain insisted it was a necessary evil. He continued ranting until he ran out of breath. "Not to mention he's, what, twice your age? And he yells at you and tells you to shut up? It didn't ring any alarm bells in that pretty little head of yours?"

"Tony, stop," Steve's hand landed on the engineer's shoulder and he simply shrugged it off, staring at the quivering girl in front of him.

She was crying, silently, few tears pooling in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, leaving ugly streaks in her make-up. Tony expected her to sass him, to argue back, to yell obscenities like she usually did when something or someone upset her but he was met with hurt, stunned silence. His worst fear came true when she looked away, shrugging.

He'd seen this sort of dejected shrug the time her father drugged her and... She just took it. She expected it, even, his outrage, his disappointment. Being hurt and mistreated was the norm for her, Tony realized belatedly. There were too many parallels between them both that made him uncomfortable deep inside. His chest felt tight, regret washing over him like a tsunami wave.

"I'm turning on the lights, close your eyes for maximum comfort," Strange's voice announced suddenly, causing everybody to jump and shudder. Tony complied begrudgingly. The sudden influx of light was painful even from behind closed eyelids. His headache became a full-on dull throb.

"What happened?" "Are you okay?" "Is everybody alive?" Resonated across the room. Tony spied several small drones smoking and crackling next to the exit door, Stephen Strange closing a portal he must've used to evacuate the civilians.

The puddle of red holographic cape on the floor. And her hastily retreating back. Damn.

THE TAG LIST IS NOW OPEN! @another-stark-sub @mostly-marvel-musings @vozit @littlegasps @pilloclock @shereadsinquiet @downeyreads @hermione-grangers-wife @individualistfem @sleep-i-ness @capbrie @lillsxd @agustdowney @dee-vn @justanotherblonde23 @fanngirl19 @persephonehemingway @softie-socks @schemefrenzy @letsby @cutenessloading @romeo-the-cactus @jelly-fishy-babie

#party favours #bun writes #Quentin Beck #tony stark fanfiction

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ennui-gt · 3 years ago

Text

Here it is. A Piece Of Borrower Content Written Entirely In Stream Of Consciousness:

AN: so this is incomplete and very…needs revisions to the timeline to incorporate some things I added later! It’s the original universe that Mira’s from! I edited it like Slightly to just change Ross’s name to Ross (if u see Max anywhere that’s his old one I just felt like changing it so that’s just him but different. Anyway) Everything's under the readmore tab, cheers!

The Library Fairy:

Basic Plot (Chrono, comic starts from human perspective abt the ‘legend of the library fairy’ ig maybe. Nothing here is permanent cept the characterization)

Part A

1- Mira is borrower currently chillin in a college library

2- She lives off of the cafe on the second floor nd reads lots and lots of stuff about everything when the upper floors close (lower floor open 24/7 but upper floors r vacant p much after 12:00 AM)

3- she starts getting increasingly curious about human stuff cos she’s literate nd books r pry neat

4- it starts one night when she spots an unattended notebook and a half eaten blueberry muffin, nd it’s 12:30 so nobody’s coming back in atm (it’s the 80s so no laptops for the plebians quite yet)

5- so she goes ‘welp’ nd takes part of the muffin, then sees the work on the page and goes ‘hmmmm this is incorrect’ so she helps our and leaves notes here n there to point the kid in the right direction and puts down some book refs for further study bcos at this point she’s been there for 2 years and she knows where most things are

6- she stays behind to see if the human comes back for it, hidden in a hidey hole near the desk

7- human comes in, sees notebook, practically melts w relief nd stuffs it in his bag

8- next day human comes back nd leaves nother notebook and a cookie, along w a hidden camera

9- Mira goes ‘o boy, this a trap, innit’

10- Mira then decides ‘eh whatever I haven’t had contact w anyone in years now so I might as well’

11- she steals the camera film nd leaves a lil scrap of paper saying ‘nice try ;)’ on it

12- student comes back, sees paper, goes ‘dammit’, then leaves note addressed to the ‘library fairy’ and another cookie, as well as more of their work for her to help with

13- bout a decade goes by and now the “Library Fairy” is an urban myth, it’s currently 2003 so she’s also wound up on the school’s unofficial Wikipedia page under ‘local cryptids’

14- most library employees know of her but they don’t go looking out of fear stemming from superstitions bout her, somehow the legend grew from ‘can’t be photographed’ to ‘a student once saw her and died that day’

15- there’s now a small shrine devoted to her where ppl bring offerings hoping to get good grades in return, sometimes they will leave papers for her to proofread nd stuff

16- new prof (named Alexei) finds online article thinks he Knows What’s Up bcos he had a borrower friend as a kid, but they left when borrower’s fam found out about them knowing each other

17- he leaves note wedged in one of her secret entrances behind outlet, asking if she can meet w him at some point

18- Mira, already In it, goes ‘Okay. Alright. This has gone on for long enough. Time to go and never return’ but ofc she’s curious as all hell and like she decides she will at least honor the guy’s request for a convo b4 she goes, but on her terms and w/o speaking face 2 face

19- they Talk in the library after hours, bcos he paid off the janitor to let him stay after hours nd most of the student employees recognize him as a prof nd leave him alone

20- they talk again for every subsequent night

21- she uhhhh finally decides to reveal herself nd prays that her hunch was right nd he won’t try to grab her or anything

22- he doesn’t but she’s nervous so she winds up gettin caught in her own climbing rope like idiot, is now dangling from ceiling in tangled mess

23- he stifles chuckle nd she says smthn sarcastic

24- he moves closer and offers to untangle her

25- she’s like ‘please’

26- so he do, but her grip on the rope slips nd he has to catch her

26- so now she’s in his hand and he just sets her down and now he’s a bumbling embarrassed mess bcos he said he wasn’t going to hold her and he just did and o dear pls forgib him

28- nd she’s like ‘dude u just saved my life it’s fine ur fine chill’

29- internally she’s going HOLY FUCK AAAAAAA but externally, her human’s already worked up enough as it is so she’s gotta b the level headed one

29.5- after a while they both kinda get used to each other more, he gets tenure, they celebrate, some more stuff happens, Aleksei got married (not to Mira, Mira hasn’t actually rly thought about being in a relationship w anyone cos she’s laser focused on gaining as much knowledge as possible)

30- eventually Alexei’s like ‘hey so I’m dean of faculty for the biotech branch now uhhhh would u like actual job teaching students? Cos, uh, you can do it remotely thru online lectures n stuff, no in person interaction, and I uh was just kinda wondering—‘

31- she’s like ‘yes. Yes!!! LET ME HELP PEOPLE OFFICIALLY KINDA’

32- so now she’s a professor, and has revealed her Secret a few times here n there to a number of the faculty, nd she has recorded her own findings in a personal journal

33- ‘humans will treat u like a human if they think ur human first. The kids call it ‘catfishing’’

34- enter Ross, an mall goth who accidentally tripped headfirst into a premed program

35- Mira’s favorite field of study is bio so naturally she’s his prof for a majority of his classes

36- being the good boy that he is, he now knows Mira’s secret. There is an Entire Chapter on him finding out and legit just continuing their conversation as if everything was normal bcos he thought that was how he was supposed to handle the situation

37- then she says ‘u can ask questions, u know’ he’s like OH THANK FUCK CAUSE I HAVE SEVEN HUNDRED OF THOSE

38- and now he kinda knows what to look for in terms of ‘do borrowers live here check yes or no’

39-in his apartment, the answer is yes and he mistakenly kinda stumbles upon the mom one night when he wakes up in the middle of the night for Snack and opts to pretend like its not happening. Unfortunately the thing she was trying 2 borrow (piece of crumb cake for Son Boy’s birthday) is the thing he wants 2 eat so he’s like “uh. ‘Scuse me, ma’am.” and he peels back the saran wrap on the other side of the plate, takes piece, nd then leaves some there for her

40-so now the woman is like ‘welp guess it time 2 Leave’

.1- she and husband Talk

.2-they decide it best 2 go

.3-theyre Packing

.4-lil bab Ellie confused

.5-hawk attacke

.6-cut to Ross

41- Ross also happens to work at a bar and he goes outside for a break

43- he finds smal child—smol smal—on the sidewalk and said child is missing an arm, nd has lost a lot of blood, so he’s uhhhhh Losing It highkey

43.5-parents r nowhere 2 b seen, but the hawk is nearby and circling. Ross gets an idea of what just happened

44- he up and leaves work, thankfully his apartment is above the shop so he jumps up the fire escape w the child and

45- he make tourniquet

46- he calls Mira nd asks her 2 come over to ASAP. he’s A Mess at this point

47- it is Very touch and go, kid needs blood, Mira is the only viable donor so she’s just gotta pray that the blood type is fine and won’t kill him

48- and then eventually they manage 2 stave infection thru antibiotics properly dosed to his size, Mira does Math and Prays basically

49- ‘bout a month in, kid wakes up

50- kid doesn’t rember much since he’s only 3

51- hes v scared of Ross at first but over time he gets used 2 the human

52- kid (elliot) starts 2 call Ross ‘dad’ after a while

53- Ross: *internal screaming but in a good way*

54- the end kinda for now

Part 2

A- New Borrowers In The Building

—three of em. paranoid dad, mom, nd daughter that’s Elliot’s age so he’s pumped

B- Elliot offers them a place 2 stay briefly

C- he knows by now bout like, how borrowers don’t typically interact w humans and Auntie Mira’s a bit of a weird case so he just doesn’t tell em bout his dad being the human

D- the kid finds out first nd doesn’t tell the parents, but they figure it out later kinda and think that it’s a ‘o god he’s being kept as a pet’ sitch so they’re >:| abt it

E- they move out and try to take Elliot w them (by force bcos they think he’s brainwashed) but he escapes and makes it to Ross, who’s like “uhhhhhh”

F- and the mom come out the hole near the counter n starts yelling at Ross, who is…kinda used to it since Mira brings in ppl who need help from time 2 time and they typically don’t react well when they’re lucid enough to understand what’s going on. He’s just not used to being questioned about his own kid

G- so they’re like “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING WITH HIM”

H- and he’s like “r…raising him???”

I- and Ellie steps up and he’s like “this is my dad. I decided he was my dad when I was three. He’s being a good parent”

J- and Ross is like “yeah what he said. I’m a good parent.”

K- Ross is riding that high til the end of fucking time but like back to the story at hand

L- this is when the husband comes out nd is like “lissen. wifey. ily but that is a very big human and he hasn’t grabbed us yet so let’s count our blessings and gtfo”

M- but she’s like “uh no we stay until I’m sure Elliot is Safe and fucking Sound”

N- so they stay for dinner nd stick around a little longer.

O- Val (the kid) gets closer 2 Elliot and also Ross a bit

P- Mira shows once or twice, first time she shows up they’re like “oh god it’s the crazy doctor lady this all makes sense now” (bcos Mira does check up on as many borrower families as possible in her free time so word has got around by now Of her, and the number by which to contact her in case her services r needed)

Q- After a month or so, then they decide to leave bcos they’re like “look we get that ur son is ur son and he only has one arm and in our profession that is kind of a death sentence but we can’t have our kid getting used to dealing w humans who know about our existence” so they go and leave on a kind of sour note bcos Ellie can do anything he wants to do just as well as any other borrower Thank You Very Much and Ross is ready to fite anyone who thinks otherwise

R- Elliot starts trying 2 b more independent, basically from now on he’s like ‘I can do everything my Damn Self Thanks’

S- but uh he does it to a point where he’s going out of the way to endanger himself

T- so they get into a fite about it and ross Yells and Elliot is like ‘kthxbye’

U- and the boi just. Fuckin bolts. Runs Away. Ross is a Mess, he starts smoking again (he quit cold turkey the day he took Elliot in) to curb the depression, he’s jus. Not doin good, worried that his son is dead and the last time they talked it’d ended badly

V- FREEDOM!!!1! Except Ellie doesn’t kno how to take care of himself so it’s a rough month or so and then he runs into some other borrowers livin in their own town in the wild ig, chillin, being hella independent, and he’s like “uh yes ofc I will join u, I was w my dad for a while but.........” he neither confirms nor denies that his dad’s dead but everyone kinda just assumes.

Part 3

W-anyway a year goes by and then the borrower group gets hit hard w some kind of sickness ig. Elliot gets it too he’s basically incapacitated n drifting in and out of lucidity. So. They contact the weird crazy doctor lady who hangs around humans, a.k.a. Mira, and she’s like “oh. fuck. I know this kid.” bcos she does, u kno, and she jus treats em all for their ailment and shows them how to make antibiotic poultice thing in case smthn like it happens again. Mold. Penicillin is basically what it is

X-she and Elliot hav a Chat (Mira basically yells at him a lot) once he’s fixed up and he decides he’s gonna visit his dad but he makes it very clear that he is a Grown Up (he’s not, he’s literally sixteen), and he is living on his own now

Y- he agrees to stay for a week tho since he misses his home a lot tbh and Ross is just. Over the fucking moon to know he’s ALIVE, he’s not gonna fuck up their relationship by insisting that he stay. Or like, by keeping him ofc he would never

Z- unfortunately the borrower community put two and two together and figured out his dad’s human so they have his stuff packed up when he gets back w mira, who’s ready to go the fuck off on them

End 1:

-Ellie is living at Ross’s place atm and hopeful about the future basically. He eventually will go off on his own but he’ll keep in contact w his dad and stuff

Part C.5

55- few yrs later

56- elliot is Adult now he does adult borrower stuff

57- he moves out

58- finds nice borrower gf (her name’s Tess)

59- doesn’t tell her about his dad being human but talks about his dad a LOT

60- so when she asks to meet said father he’s just like “uh. Maybe we don’t do that actually”

61- and she’s like “y tho”

62- and he’s like “bcos”

63- anyway she decides to look into it cos she knows he goes to see his dad nd keep in touch but his dad is allegedly “a recluse who lives in the big scary human’s walls to avoid other ppl”

64- which is. Not true in the slightest tbqh he’s def not an introvert he’s just a workaholic and he Is the big scary human

65- anywho they run into Val and her wife and she’s like “how’s Ross been?” And Elliot is acting Very Suspish so she, being Smart, calls it immediately and is like “oh shit u haven’t told her yet have u”

66- Tess: “told me what”

67- Val: “El’s dad is a human, bro.”

68- Tess: “I’m sorry?”

69- this results in a Big Fight and they separate for like, a month. Elliot blames Val bcos he’s being irrational and doesn’t wanna admit to the fact that lying to his girlfriend for over a year was Real Bad Actually, but over time he’s like ‘yeah it’s my fault sry for snapping at u’ cos he works thru his emotions n stuff

70- Eventually gf comes back cos she’s like “ok so. I understand why you lied to me about your dad. It was a dick move but I do get it and I still care about you a lot. I would like. To meet him.”

80- this is a lie she does not want to meet him she is doing this bcos she does not want to lose Elliot and that outweighs the fear of his dad

81- so they go to meet him but she’s just kinda. Behind the wall at first like “that’s a crazy big human this is crazy ur crazy it’s time to gO”

82- Val is also there bcos she hasn’t seen Ross in a while

83- they eventually coax her out of hiding

84- and by that I mean Val picks her up and drags her out into the open by force bcos she basically freezes up the second she catches sight of Ross and Val’s like “u didn’t come all this way for nothing, bich”

85- they have a Painfully Awkward First Meeting, Tess is trying her best but oh god he’s just too fucking. Larg. Ellie ur dad too big

86- tbh tho the ice kinda breaks after Ellie and Ross get into a fight over smthn stupid (im thinking Elliot grumbles bout Ross’s hair being unruly and he’s worried that mira’s using it like a personal storage system again and Ross is like “I’ve been keeping better track of that actually” and then like a little line of paper clips and a few hand-bound notebooks tied together w some string fall out of his fucking mane and he’s like “I can explain”

87- “dad you can’t keep letting her use your hair like a fucking NEST”

88- Tess is laughing now cos god damn this was not what she was expecting

89- that’s it the end it ends w Tess laughing at them being idiots good times r had by all

Uhhhh that’s it so far. I have More but it’s kinda jumbled rn and I need to fit stuff in places. Anyway.

#was gonna make this into a comic lawl #if I like actually manage to get off my ass over the coming weeks I probably will be able to do that! but yeah #also this was once posted b4 and I deleted it but it’s back now say hellow #Library Fairy #oc: Mira #oc: Ross #oc: Elliot #oc: Tess #oc: Val #oc: Alexei #anyway yeah here it is behold #the uhhhhh most slice of life thing I have ever created

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