#and also not even mentioning people constantly trying to politely explain to them shit in their game that's like lowkey homophobic

[thenixkat]

again its ok for the Justice League to stop dictatorships on other planets or third world countries but not to stop any other countries doing wrong again Dr. Soos fixed Booster's shredded suit b4. The robo suit that Ted made is of lesser quality that Dr. Soos' work and was unnecessary

unless folks just wanted to change Booster's hero costume

so people do tours of the Justice League headquarters given they're public government back figures and people want to know more about them. But like… superheroes get attacked all the time why bring kids to the Justice League head quarters? Fire is clearly bitter about shit, which having emotions about things is fine but if she can't be professional around these kids she shouldnt be part of the tour

and Booster is casually sexist about her having feelings and expressing them in the wrong time and place where these impressionable kids can hear him

and Bea calls him out on his fucking sexism which she should, but Booster brushes it off and changes the subject

and then he apologizes but like that's annoying that he brushed her off in the first place

also again, Booster could have just gone back to Dr. Soos to get his costume fixed a lot better than Ted managed in this series. Like, Booster didnt mention something having happened to the man in this series so I have to assume the writer forgot Dr. Soos exists even tho it was the same writer from Booster's solo also good on Ted for not going with trying to recreate the accident that gave Bea her powers b/c that would be too fucking dangerous and might not even work. Nice to see the ooc version of Ted in this series has at least one ethic

meanwhile there's political strife and family drama happening with Ice in her homeland and interesting that her evil brother dresses like a slut

man said the only things his armor needs to protect in their ice kingdom is his groin and kneecaps also he's a dick

there being sexism in Tora's culture would explain her kind of slutshaming of Bea on a frequent basis

and Guy just constantly sexually harasses his female coworkers constantly regardless of whether or not he's still trying to be a couple with Ice/thinks of her as his girl

i dont think Booster actually tested out this new suit b4 deciding to take it into the field. He's been shown to be impatient about getting back into heroing

also these fishpeople space cops seem very professional. Too bad for them they look a lot less human than the alien criminals (at lest one of which is a rapist) they're chasing and we all know how superheroes just jump into shit without listening to people and assault the least human looking fuckers there

it bothers me that this is one of those situations that Superman tried to force Booster to understand with people claiming to be the victims actually being the bad guys.

eh like, more that shit with Superman and Booster annoys me than there being situations where fuckers just lie to superheroes at the very least yall should probably talk to someone who knows both intergalactic law and about the aliens yer dealing with

of course the Usono government coming in willing to use force to get the Justice League to turn folks over to be extradited doesnt help. Mostly just cause how fucking fight happy superheroes are instead of talking shit through. Just go along with folks and ask for proof of the space cops' claims

again yall could just go to the UN with folks, and ask for proof instead of getting yer feelings in a twist and fighting the soldiers of one of teh countries providing yer funding

superheroes really just like settling things with violence huh

wow Booster its almost like you should have tested that armor thoroughly before going out into the field with it where yer life would be in danger

Guy also sexually harasses female enemies constantly

just why cant we fire Guy? He's unprofessional, an asshole, and active danger to his teammates and the public

Captain Atom, not being interested in fighting for fightings sake, decides to call it quits and let his higher ups talk to the people in charge of the League

for people who live in an ice kingdom yall like exposed skin. I'm gonna have to assume being ice gods with ice powers the cold doesnt bother them.

you never know with DC, they just had Wonder Woman and Maxima in Alaska with no protective gear and I cant be certain that they'd be unaffected by the cold so Ice's brother killed their dad to stop him from appointing Ice as his heir

Booster just hasn't been able to move since his new costume got shorted out and that is a major safety concern

Booster just gets left there on the table

and the editor didnt catch the errors on Wonder Woman's speech bubble

i dont even know which president that is. But the League is being ordered to turn over the alien criminals

the government probably should rethink having the sanctioned Justice League full of people who are just fucking vigilantes with not really any loyalty to the governing bodies or the law

yall could just be making soldiers into metas and having them in the sanctioned superhero league if you want someone who'd actually follow orders and be less likely to cause international incidents as this bunch of loose canons Wonder Woman, where's yer proof that those two alien criminals are telling the truth? They respond to most things with violence and attempted lethal force thus far and were vague about what they're wanted for. They could have been lying or downplaying shit

and man I hate that thing with Superman going "you can't just be helping people" being in my mind while reading this cause Superman was on some conservative bs in a poorly written story and very blatantly just didn't like Booster Gold

why did you approach their ship while openly carrying very big guns

and are surprised that teh space cops fired a warming shot?

the warning shot accidentally was too close to one of the military guys approaching. But the superheroes are just raring to fight without talking to fuckers

not the space cops going 'this isnt worth their time, the earthers can deal with these fuckers'

huh, Fire's doing research on alien law

also damn this man couldn't even wait for the space cops to leave b4 trying to rape Fire

and also going after one of the ladies in the group currently sheltering you from teh cops, like at least leave to find a victim

at least they;ve got proof now that these guys are criminals

Bea is not helpless without her powers. Apparently she used to be a member of the Brazilian equivalent of the CIA

the man's partner knocks Bea out unfortunately after she started asking questions. Thankfully for her his partner stops him from assaulting her while she's out cause they have more pressing business

also apparently the fish people space cops are a lot more responsible than Earth cops, apparently they wouldnt just rough up civilians to get to the criminals they're after so Ice's people can be effected by the cold if its cold enough. Why the fuck are yall dresssing so sluttily in snow then?

Wonder Woman just hand the fucker over good lords

so folks are actually having a meeting and talking

Wonder Woman admits to part of teh reason she refused to hand the prisoners over was just her being speciesist towards the fish aliens for their looks. Also WW that's not how the law works, last I remember in teh USA if a criminal from another country who did their crimes in a different country tried to hide in teh USA the USA would turn the fuckers over to the country they did the crimes in for the law there to handle them?

Guy apparently flips his shit about people telling him to keep calm and let the rest of them talk shit through and kills one of the criminals and flies off.

[squaloropera]

Fucking. I keep getting comments like ‘How would you know his character better than the author?’ And ‘Just cause you don’t have the kink doesn’t make it heteronormative:/‘ and I don’t vibe with it. I realise y’all couldn’t utilise reading comprehension enough to get through the original post, so this might not help cause you’re still illiterate, but maybe it’ll send you in the right direction.

(Yeah it was only two people and three comments, but I’m nipping this in the bud because I would rather rip my own eyes out of my head and bury them in my garden than actually try and debate barely-literate heterosexuals.)

Firstly, I don’t claim to know MXTX’s characters better than they do. What I do claim to know, however, is how character writing works. I fucking hate the claim of ‘But how would you know it’s ooc better than the AUTHOR?’ like. An author is fully capable of writing their own characters in a way that doesn’t line up with their established personality traits. While Hua Cheng is MXTX’s character and I can’t tell them what to write, I am well within my rights to point out how little sense it makes with Hua Cheng’s established character to be some rough dom sex bully. He’s literally the most caring, devoted, protective person on the planet toward Xie Lian. Not to mention, MXTX didn’t even write him like that even in the uncensored version. There’s a way more concise explanation (with a screenshot) of this in the reblogs, but I’ll explain briefly. While there is one scene in the uncensored version where Hua Cheng is acting rough and handsy, it’s also a scene where he’s blatantly acting outside of his own control. With his normal personality, he would never even touch Xie Lian without assured consent, let along make out with him like that. Also, he was handsy. No mention of bullying, cruelty or weird dom vibes. I was misinformed when I made my original post, because of everyone’s immediate gushing about him being a borderline sexual batterer, and that’s my bad. Also see the screenshot in the aforementioned reblog, where Xie Lian recalls Hua Cheng’s voice as being gentle and without coercion. Rough dom bully top abuser Hua Cheng is not and was never confirmed- but back to the original point, yes. An audience has full rights to point out inconsistent character writing where it exist. What, do I need to flash my media literacy license. Let me on the crime scene, I work for the FBI (Fans of Book Investigation).

Secondly, what kinks I have is irrelevant to my interpretation of media. I’m actually pretty fucking kinky, and I’m super into the whole rough sex, dom top, bullying thing. I think it’s hot as shit. That being said, I was still uncomfortable with this characterisation. Why? Because the idea of the designated ‘guy’ of the relationship (to explain that, while MXTX didn’t write either of them as the ‘guy’ or ‘girl’ in the relationship -thank god- fandoms often latch onto the idea that one character, usually the one who’s taller and less meek or polite, is the guy in the relationship. That’s why the shorter and nicer one gets feminised so violently) being sexually violent and insatiable is neither new, nor a foreign idea in heteronormativity. It happens a lot; the designated ‘man’ in the relationship is constantly horny and super sexually brutish, because tHe bOyFrIeNd wAnTs sEx bUt tHe gIrLfRiEnD sAyS nO cAuSe gIrLs dOn’T gEt hOrNy oR kInKy. It’s bullshit, and y’all need to stop pretending not to notice so your faves can stay unproblematic UwU.

I don’t care what the new, uncensored versions say. Hua Cheng being a rough bully dom top in bed is too heteronormative for me to ignore how it makes no sense for his character, sorry.

[oumaheroes]

do you have any soft fruk headcanons to share with a starving anon?

*Sob* Yes, yes I do thank you for asking

Other fruk headcanons can be found here, here, here, here, and basically this entire fic.

When together and alone, they spend a lot of time in silence.

One, because as soon as one of them starts talking they’ll inevitably end up saying something that will piss the other person off, but mostly because it’s rare. For the both of them.

France is a chatty, sociable person who goes out often and with a wide group of people. People he works with, other nations he’s friendly with, humans he’s got to know in his day-to-day life- he’s constantly moving and talking and he loves this. He lives off that feedback and that veneer of public acceptance and validation and fights to remain above it. Not trying to be perfect, but to be someone to look up to, to admire, to want to get to know because everybody who’s anybody knows that Francis is it. Whatever ‘it’ is for the different centuries.

But this is also, for me, who France projects himself to be. And it's exhausting.

He’s so caught up in appearances, in being an integral part of the social web that, when he’s with England, it’s nice to just not give a shit and shut up. England doesn’t care about, and actively despises, keeping up with trends or acting in particular ways to fit in with or please others. England does what he damn well pleases and the core of him hasn’t really changed all that much throughout the years. When they’re together there’s no point in France trying to impress him, or to manipulate himself or his environment to achieve something- it won’t work. England has seen France messy and sobbing in dirt, has seen him topple out of trees and into horse shit, has ran alongside him as they’ve pinched bread from bakeries to eat outside in a field instead of being in church. England is who France can truly be his (self-perceived) ugly self around and it’s something he needs.

To be able to sit in silence with someone who has known every part of you, who has seen every terrible and beautiful thing you have done and still choses to stay- it’s what keeps them both coming back to each other, despite everything they’ve gone through. For the good or bad the other person has been there to say ‘I see you. I know.’ And then come back regardless.

It terrifying but it’s a gift creatures of their age and ilk rarely see.

This is the same for England too, of course, which I’ve already mentioned in my other headcanons. England also cares deeply about how other people think of him as a person, as a man, but his way of dealing with it is to pretend that he doesn’t care about it in the first place. People can’t mock him for failing at something if he never tries, so he doesn’t. Doesn’t try to keep up with fashions, doesn’t try to say the right thing to the right person to gain their friendship or favour. Arthur knows how to manipulate to achieve an aim- a tax or a bill or a political decision. But he doesn’t do this for his own benefit, i.e., to get someone to love him. To get someone to stay, to make someone want to be with him.

That’s why he enjoys, secretly, France. Despite how churlish Arthur can be, despite how cruel and angry and hard, France sees through all of that to whatever it is he’s hiding underneath and he stays anyway. Sees the softness Arthur pretends not to have, understands his reasons for behaviours even he can’t explain. Will hate him fiercely but still want him to be around to see his own highs and lows.

Time together, when they’re in a good, healthier moment in their lives, is often spent inhabiting a space together. France reading or England sewing, France cooking or England in the garden. He’ll come in and France will have made him lunch, which he’ll take and eat without thanks. France will find his shirt mended and folded away which will never be mentioned and England will sit up all night with insomnia whilst France sleeps on the sofa.

They’re big on physical touch.

England changes how he acts depending on who he’s with. With his children he’s older, he’s always acted, has had to or feels as though he has to act, with a certain air of authority that, even today when he has none legally, cannot be undone. With his brothers England can be petty, will be more expressive and moodier and quick to bite- he’s the youngest. He still, quietly, wants to prove himself, wants to be noticed and respected by those whose respect he craved first.

Then his friends, he can be a bit sillier. Will act more of his physical age without the burdens of nationhood or family to hold him back. Will sling an arm around Prussia’s shoulders when they’re drunk singing on the way out of a pub somewhere, will laugh until he cries into Portugal’s shoulder because of an impression he did.

With France he’s all of the above, but also soft.

Intimate and physically open in ways he cannot be otherwise.

When they’re alone he’ll happily lay fully to rest on France where ever he is laying or reclining and stubbornly refuse to move. Will let France cut his hair whenever the timing is right and he deems him in need of a trim- tips his head back as France runs long fingers through his hair and massages the back of his neck. Will sit with France with their legs all tangled together or press a kiss to his temple when they wake up in the same bed, France is still soft and heavy with sleep.

For a man who does not initiate physical affection or even physical contact at all with many people, it is strange to see him so easy with France and it IS strange, especially for the younger members of England's family. I explored this slightly in Reflections but England and France do not show this side of themselves to anyone. It is behind closed doors, in private, and if you are to catch them being so touchy it makes you feel as though you're intruding on something deeply personal.

But they are also, carefully, touchy in public. A brush of a hand on the arm when France comes up behind England to let him know that he’s there, England stretching out his leg to feel for France’s foot under the table. A shared glass of water, a brush of a hand as they stand shoulder to shoulder. Smoking outside in winter with their faces close, a single breath of smoke between them.

It's obvious if you look for it.

They often bathe together.

Neither are self-conscious around each other; what on earth do they have to hide after all these years? It's easily one of their favourite shared times: hot water, nowhere to be, and meaningless conversation. They'll talk about everything and nothing, from the very important that France will have to tease out of England slowly- massaging the meat of his calf, purposely not looking directly at him as he silently listens and waits- all the way to the utterly trivial. The weather. A politician who made a fool of themselves. What so-and-so said, and to who.

Topics that are too heavy and political are left out of it, these talks in the bath are only ones they can have when they're not at true odds with each other otherwise it won't work. France won't listen and England won't talk and it won't be the experience they want or help them at all.

Will often go out together

If France is in the UK or England is in France for whatever reason, they’ll usually meet up. England will stay with France, or France will stay with England and of an evening they’ll go out for dinner. Pick a restaurant that’s new for at least one of them if possible to show off but then go to a play afterwards, or even to the cinema. They really do enjoy a good gossip and moan and adore critiquing actors or plays. The more they bitch, the more they actually enjoyed themselves.

---

I’m going to stop now as this is getting long, but I hope you enjoyed! I love them deeply ;u;

[studiojeon]

use me | jjk

this is part of my troubled outsiders series. i think you can read this by itself though :)

| summary | -   Jungkook was not someone to establish relationships and bonds out of interest, you knew that. Or maybe not, truth be told, he was an authentic enigma, so open yet so closed and shielded from others to see through, and that didn’t exclude you.

warnings: language (?), mentions of hook ups and situationships. mentions of emotional trauma.

contents: a compilation of moments that contributed to the growth of their relationship, jungkook is hard to read, jungkook is hard to read, jungkook is hard to read and sus. oc is kinda whipped and scared af. chaeryeong knows who you are and where you live. jk and oc are scared to let each other in. friends to lovers, idol!jungkook x student!oc.

author’s note: i hate this, but i have to get it off my chest. (the narration is off af but if i keep it in my drafts for longer this will never see the light of the day). p.s. thank u so much for the support on the last drabble <3

playlist: rain by trey songz (feat. swae lee). 

words: 4.75k

“JK?” as his broad back faces you, you call out his name timidly, not missing the way he swiftly turns around as soon as he hears his name come from your lips. Hair wet and darker than usual, a very big sweat stain at the center of his hoodie. He had just gotten out of practice, you assumed. 

“___?” he replied with the initials of your name as well, one of his tired grins plastered on his face, he must have been exhausted. You had caught on to him just as he walked out of the practice room in front of the elevator on your way to your office, right when you needed him, but now you weren’t so sure if it was a good idea to pester him. Even so, you didn’t know anyone else you could ask for help, aside from Linh who was currently in her own office doing other tasks you had assigned to her.

“Are you busy right now?” your eyes stare at him shyly, in hopes that he was willing to help you out, because you wanted to be around him, so maybe he could share a bit of his positive energy with you, the past week had been hellish.  “Could use some help returning all those heavy stacks of paper in my office”.

“Of course! Why didn’t you give me a call earlier though? It’s pretty late” he walked by your side and you enter the elevator, beginning your adventure around the company.

Jungkook was fun. Always bubbly and reciprocative, constantly trying his best to make you laugh and make the absolute best of your situation, even if he could be a bit stubborn at times. You liked the spontaneity he provided though, the way he would switch from one topic to another and how he would make silly faces at you whenever you locked eyes. 

He didn’t know, but in pure ignorance, he had just made your day ten times better. 

In the past week, you had received a lot of counterarguments, one by one, on how useless your management tactics were. Granted, you hadn’t expected for your ideas to be welcomed with open arms, but at least you had hoped they would take them into consideration. You had also been assigned a team, in charge of social media management, who worked monotonously and with little to no insertion in the actual target audience… your logic was: how can you advertise products to an audience you don’t even have the mere interest to know? You had designed a strategy, presented it, and no one paid any mind to you. 

But for the most part, you felt lonely. Had no one to talk to, nor go to whenever you needed your spirits to be lifted up.

Chaeryeong was busy busy with group projects and work. To the extent where she would get up at seven in the morning and come back at 12 pm. It wasn’t always like that, so you didn’t worry too much, but the fear she would wear herself off like usual still crowded your mind.

You close your office door with a sigh. Tired from everything, but somehow, your heart a little fuller, knowing that maybe you could use Jungkook in the future to give you a lift. Both figuratively and literally because he had offered to drive you home, being the gentleman he was.

“Why do you look like a sad puppy?” he asked you once you were sitting by his side in his very expensive and luxurious mercedes. Tinted windows and jet black shiny paint covered the outside of his car, the smell of air refresher and pinecone filling the inside. Mans was getting hotter by the minute.

“It’s friday night after the longest week of work. How can I not?” you put on your seat belt and lean back against the leather cushions. He pouts in response to you, with a concerned look on his face. 

For a second you wonder if he did this with most coworkers… being nice to them and offering them drives after having met them just a few times before. Kinda risky behviour, considering his position and squeaky clean reputation. You figure this would only last a bit before he realized he had more important things to be focusing on.

“Do you ever get chased home?” you ask randomly. 

With one hand on the wheel and the other leaned against his door he meditated on his response. “It happened once… And then I moved out, got a new car and everything. Shit was wild” he chuckles and you think that was the first time you had heard him curse, like ever. Jungkook, friendly and everything, wasn’t too big of a talker, but with you he found himself spilling, without giving it much thought. It felt refreshing to hear his voice and listen to his stories and the way he expressed himself. He was more interesting than he seemed, apparently. “Aren’t you hungry, by the way? We can have something to eat before i drop you off”

Traffic was hellish in Seoul everyday at every hour, and choosing to drive through Itaewon on a friday night wasn’t the smartest decision on Jungkook’s behalf, but you didn’t have the heart to tell him that. Considering the demands of his job, he probably didn’t know his way around the city that well. You conclude taking a detour wouldn’t hurt. “I’m starving actually.”

He ends up taking you to a restaurant near your neighborhood you had mentioned being good and not crowded at all, the latter catching his attention immediately. It was a modest but nice place owned by a very funny and loud ahjussi. The man had lost count of how many times you had come down from your apartment at 11 pm and asked him to make you vegetarian tteokguk, but they were enough so that he could memorize your five orders by heart and the amount of saewoo mandu you could down by yourself in five minutes. You were making him rich at that point so the least he could do was comply when you gently asked him to shut the place down for you. Jungkook hadn’t asked you, but you knew how things could get awkward and dangerous quickly if too many people found out about him being there. “Ahjussi, you don’t have to” the boy protested as he noticed that the man had shut the blinds for him.

“It’s okay, boy. _____ has been single handedly paying the remnants of my mortgage for over a year now, I don't mind doing this for her.” he joked in his usual nature. already writing down your order and patiently waiting for Jungkook in front of you to voice out what he wanted for a meal. “And well, you and your friends are making our country proud, it’s the least i can do to thank you”

“Ah, thank you.” Jungkook bows to the older man. Your heart softened in your chest, seeing how considerate he was towards other people. He must be great with parents, you think. “Do you really not get that many people around here?” he asked worriedly once he sat back down on the wooden chair.

“We do! But she’s the one who comes the most often” he nods toward you and Jungkook smiles once he found your gaze, a glint of playfulness in his eyes. 

“Can you recommend me anything, miss?”

“Of course, sir. Yeol-ah, double up my order. Drinks are on me today.” You yell at the man’s son in the kitchen, who was still a bit older than you, but also close to enough to let you order him around shamelessly. You knew him quite well, actually. He was Chaeryeong’s boyfriend after all.

The tall boy pokes his head out of the kitchen door with a very confused expression plastered on his face. “Aren’t we supposed to close in like, an hour?” Chanyeol asks his dad in front of you.

“Just go cook, I'll explain later”.

The two men go back into the kitchen and Jungkook looks at you with an amused expression on his face. “What was that?” he laughs.

“I’m very popular, you know?” it probably wasn’t a good idea to go there, but you felt a little drunk on his voice that night, and you also knew your friend didn’t mind. “In fact, Chaereyong from ITZY is my best friend, who would have guessed?”

“Yeah and my son is her boyfriend, who cares?” Byung-ho yells back at you from the cashier, pulling a hiss from your lips. 

Jungkook still continued to stare at the both of you with confusion and intrigue, you guess he thought you were both joking.

“Wait, really?” he utters after a few seconds with big doe eyes and a pout on his lips, a combination that appeared when he was either confused or lying, which wasn’t the case then.

“Yes, my guy.” you laugh. “That juicy legged shortie is indeed my wife”

Jungkook loved the food, to say the least. It was all vegetarian and korean as fuck, a combination he never throught was possible, but downed like thristy camel. He was a loud eater, which was fitting of him and his politeness, something else you had noticed that night. You were the opposite, and actually despised the sounds of other people eating, yet, looking at him enjoying his meal so much made you feel full yourself. He made you feel like a kid in some ways too, brought back the times when being around others wasn’t so hard, and you still could have a sense of security around you. Talking to him was rather easy, maybe because of his welcoming nature, or because in fact he actually was interested in whatever stupid shit you were saying, something most people around you didn’t do. He also, amongst other things, seemed very interested in your job and the likes, always asking questions and absorbing information like a five year old. You had explained to him the five key steps of process design and the psychological effects on marketing in society to which he always responded with wide gentle eyes and attentive nods, not once looking bored or… annoyed in any way. 

Was he like that, with every girl? Because you weren’t anything special, there were many other girls who worked with him everyday and even if you hadn’t seen him in his work space, you could guess by the way most women in your company look at him whenever he passes by that either they were just as captivated as you by his beauty or that he had fucked them. You wouldn’t be surprised if he was just trying to get into your pants either, it wouldn’t be the first time it happened to you nonetheless.

“I can walk from here, JK” you mention once you found yourselves walking towards the parking lot. A bit sad about the expense you had just made on food, it was your fault for trying to seem cool and rich, neither of which you were. 

“Oh no, I’m not letting you do that, girlie” he unlocks the door and gets in, not even letting you finish or allowing you to fight back.

“My apartment is literally a block away” you protest in the car anyways. You fear you had been too much of a bother, and deep down, didn’t want him to feel like you were seeking his presence unnecessarily.

“Well, good for you. But, you paid for the food, which was a lot, and i don’t want my sugar mommy walking by herself at 12 pm on a friday night” you first freeze, and then burst a very loud giggle.

“Whatever” you slap his bicep and roll your eyes. “ Next time you can pay if it bothers you so much.”

“So there will be a next time?” wide eyes stare back at you. “Count me in. I´ll pick where we will be going, just lemme know when so i can plan ahead” he rambles, a little too excited about your suggestion. 

He drops you off with a smile on his face and hopefulness in his eyes, promising to see you around the company. You, on the other hand, feel a tad confused as you enter your apartment building. What was going on? 

You had overthought things so much your entire life that it suddenly became too tiring to do. During the past few years you had to learn how to detach yourself and just ride the wave sometimes. Once you had turned eighteen, everything started moving at a very fast pace, the pressure of adulthood fell upon you like a brick and everything was so overwhelming that you started to simply let the course of your existence take you wherever it needed to.

That’s how you ended up going out with Jungkook at least once a week for dinner or a drive around the city for more than two months. Without even noticing, he became so engraved in your everyday life that whenever he’d cancel plans because of work, you’d find yourself with a void in your heart and a rush of boredom filling your senses. Even if you found yourself in your living room with the company of your best friend whom you had seen at most four times in the past two months, you were still wishing you could share that intimate space with him instead, willing to let him a bit more into your life, in hopes that maybe he would do the same. Sue you, you were curious over the most intricate details about his personality, how his personal sanctuary looked and if the smell of his room is just as good as his car’s. You could bet a thousand dollars (maybe a little less, considering the unconventionalism that characterizes him) that he also had a few plants that only remembered to water three out of seven days of the week. 

Hopefully life would draw you closer to more people like him.

"How's your boyfriend doing?" Chaeryeong asks you from the kitchen counter, sweet popcorn cooking in you popcorn-maker. 

You sigh. "What boyfriend?"

She was a lot of things but oblivious, and you weren't either, just when you chose to be. "Cut the bullshit, you know who i'm talking about". The fake red head waits for your response as she pours the snack into a big bowl, and you on the other hand take this as an advange to search around the room for answers.

"He's just a friend" you say. "And he's fine, i guess… He doesn't really talk much about himself" you mention, matter of factly.

Chaeryeong nods beside you, understanding what you meant. Then, proceeds to tell a tale about her experience meeting the dark haired boy. "He's literally so quiet, but like, so incredibly kind. Once he tripped over and fucked up some of the decoration at an award show" she grabs a popcorn and continues her story. "He looked so panicked I thought his eyes were about to jump out their sockets — His eyes are huge, by the way." 

"I know" you smile.

"My point is, he started to help the staff put everything back in order again. I think he's the only idol I've ever seen do something like that… i decided i liked him then" her beautiful features light up with mischief. "I bet he fucks great too."

You slap her leg. Hard.

"I'm only telling you this now so you don't get caught of guard when he actually manages to fuck you," her soft hands run through your messy hair, motherly touches easing the fluster in your body. "You know he's a big whore, right?" She adds after a while. 

You didn't. According to Chaeryeong, who seemed to keep tabs on every single colleague of hers, Jungkook had quite the body count, not that you didn't have your suspicions before. Frankly, she only knew of two girls inside her company who had had some sort of situationship with him, but for the same reason, she also knew he had some history with other girls from different groups. "Yikes" you laugh nervously, in admiration of their ability to remain calm and collected without giving anything away to the public.

Thanks to your friend, you had heard lots of tea about other singers in the korean industry before, most of which were not as sweet or kind as they portrayed themselves to be, some even using their social status to get their way with girls. But for some reason, Jungkook had never made his way to your gossipping sessions, nor any other of his band mates (except for Jimin, who, if you remember correctly, used to have some sort of beef with one of Chaeryeong's company members). You guess it was because of his unproblematic nature that people chose to give him a pass for his sexual endeavors, not that they were of anyone's concern either. 

A knock is heard against your office door. "Miss _____?" A girl with a brown bob cut pokes her head through it, the dim lights of your office shining upon her incredibly healthy locks. "Jungkook asked me to deliver this to you" sliding completely into the room, she places a box with a note on it on your desk.

"Thank you so much" you wave her off as she walks right out. 

The package had a strawberry flavored canned tea and a bento box inside. 

"I remember you telling me you'd never tried tofu pancakes before, so I made some for you last night. Hope you enjoy! - JK

P.S. Text me when you're done, maybe we can hang out tonight."

You felt like crying, in all honesty. The pancakes were heavenly, and he even added some slices of avocado and a few scoops of rice for you, despite not being the biggest fan of the fruit himself. With a warm heart and relief washing over your body because you wouldn't have to waste money on lunch that day, you had had half of your meal before said boy gave you a call.

"Did you like them?" He said almost immediately. "My assistant told me she already delivered them to you" he adds in a rush.

"Jesus boy, calm down." You giggle at his excitement. "Let me eat in peace".

"No, tell me right now." he demands with a fake angry voice. Cutie.

"They're alright".

"Figured… you have no sense of taste anyways" the hangs up. A giggle escapes your lips. Boy was something else.

Later that day, the weekend started it's course. Jungkook had offered to drive you to the Han River, careful to mention the fact he prepared a bunch of snacks for you two just about five times during your call. The place was almost empty, given that the rest of the city was doing something else more fun than staring at the night sky while sitting on itchy grass. Yet, you wouldn't change the setting for anything else. Usually, when you and Jungkook were out, he'd be in silent wary of your surroundings and the people who could be watching you. It broke your heart, knowing that most of the time he couldn't frequent places most regular people had the pleasure of enjoying, like the movies, for example, or a food stand in the middle of the street. Still, in that moment, the handsome man in front of you seemed as relaxed as ever, munching on grapes and strawberries as he sat in silence beside you. 

"This blanket is so soft, isn't it?" he commented all of a sudden, caressing the fabric with his hand. The thing was made out of polar fleece, no shit. You just nodded and grabbed a piece of fruit from his container. "One of my friends gifted it to me on my birthday" he adds.

"I know. It was me".

"Well, maybe you do have a sense of taste after all" he complies as he lays down on the surface, eyes facing the night sky above you.

"Says the one who uses toe socks" you say back, poking his weak spot.

Instead of going back and forth with you as he usually would, he just winks and closes his eyes. He looked so peaceful and serene beneath you, features carefully carved on his face and slightly blushed cheeks from the cold wind. Jungkook was like that, randomly over confident and flirty with you, but just as quickly would refrain from even disagreeing with you in the first place, scared that you would snap at him. He hadn't told you this, but the way you saw thoughts hidden in his eyes whenever you made a statement let you know his true intentions, leaving you to wonder where that came from.

"Are you tired?" You ask after a few minutes. Still with his eyes closed, Jungkook denies.

"I just don't want to look at you right now," he turns to the side, back facing you as an offended expression finds its way to your face.

"Yah" you slap his back playfully, not letting him finish.

"Because you look too pretty." he mumbles the remnants of  his statement.

Your breath catches in your throat as a shiver climbs its way down your spine. Why was he like that? He had no right tugging on your heart strings like that (if he was being serious in the first place because you never knew with him). You sigh, the blush his words provoked stinging your cheeks.

"You're supposed to say I'm pretty too" he turns around with a playful smile, expectant.

"You just go around giving compliments so you can get them back?" you hiss. "Why so insecure?"

"I'm not insecure, at all." He sits up again, ready to fight you and anyone who dares question the grandiosity of the confidence he had worked so hard for. "You can ask Linh about that".

To say you looked horrified was an understatement, hopeful that what you thought he meant was not it. "You fucked Linh?"

"Well, that's not for you to know". 

What a gentleman, you think. And at the same time, ouch. He had just slammed a door on your face.

"That would explain the way she looks at you whenever you come by the office" you realize. Frankly, the girl looked a bit too panicked whenever Jungkook decided to barge into your space, usually bored out of his mind during his english lessons, laptop and notebook in hand, or struggling to get the questions right. 

"Well good afternoon to you too" you ironically greeted once he sat in front of you, frustration written on his face. Linh, who stood by your side, suddenly fidgeting with the papers in her hand.

"Not the time, _____" he slammed both hands on your desk, startling you and your friend beside you. "Why the fuck did you make me enroll into this in the first place?" 

"I did not make you do anything, dude. I just gave you an idea" you excused yourself, eyes back on your computer. You didn't miss the way Jungkook's eyes briefly followed Linh out the room, though. 

His eyes looked back at you, leg bouncing impatiently on the floor as he leaned back with a pissed off expression on his face. You'd never seen him this way, so you took that as a cue to enter under paid therapist mode. "What's wrong?" You questioned gently.

"I feel incredibly incompetent right now." His hands roamed across his face with frustration. A sigh escaped his lips as he held tears back. "School's always been this way for me, always trying my best and constantly underachieving" he explained.

He was obsessed with winning, you’d even go as far to say more than he was with his job (which was a lot). It didn’t root from narcissistic behaviour though, but rather out of external pressure to constantly overachieve and exceed expectations. He was mostly good at doing that, but everyone had an achilles heel, yours was reading for example, his was studying and school.

"Jungkook, you passed most of your classes with more than 90%, what are you talking about?" a fact he had brought up to you randomly when you mentioned absolutely nearly failing most of your literature classes.

"Yeah, except for English." he shook his head in the way he would when he'd feel conflicted or insecure. "I don't know what i'm doing wrong".

"Did you fail something?" you tried to get some more insight into the situation, still unsure of where all his worries came from.

"No, there's just this sentence I can't properly put together" he turned his notebook towards you. "Ah, just look"

There were some words he had to conjugate and properly place in order to form a grammatically correct sentence, more than five attempts written in neat penmanship on the page evidenced the boy's battle with the assignment. He missed one very important aspect of it, though. "There's a fucking word that's missing, dude" you explain, grabbing the pen from his hand and showing him where the mistake was. "It's not your fault, it's the teacher's".

Jungkook's serious expression didn't go away though. "Well, damn".

You had some sort of emotional trauma with having people ask you for help, it made you think that they didn’t actually care for you as a person but rather just your skills. That was the way you’d grown up and what your position in society seemed to be as well, the one you could butter up and taste when you got bored. Heart had been broken many times too, whenever you’d realize what you thought to be a genuine connection was merely pure interest. Those thoughts clouded your head when Jungkook would randomly enter your office with a frustrated expression on his face, yet, that occurred less often than it didn’t. 

Jungkook was not someone to establish relationships and bonds out of interest, you knew that. Or maybe not, truth be told, he was an authentic enigma, so open yet so closed and shielded from others to see through, and that didn’t exclude you most of the time, hence your wish for him to let you in a bit more before you could allow yourself to free fall into whatever was going on between you both.

You reach for the fabric of his hoodie, tugging his sleeve with your fingers just because you really liked the color of it, and maybe because you wanted to feel closer to him. He doesn’t react to your touch, just looks at your hands briefly as they play with the edges of his clothing. “Where did you get this from?”

“An online store, I think.” he replies softly, reaching for your hand on his arm, caressing the surface of your nails. “It’s a unisex brand, i can send you their link afterwards.”

“Is it too expensive?” you inquire, not only to keep the moment afloat, but because you genuinely liked most of his pieces of clothing, especially his hoodies and shoes. Jungkook laughs at your question and looks at you with a smile.

“I don’t think i would know, ____. I’m rich.” he says, playfully. And he was right, what was expensive for you might just be cheap as fuck for him, you wonder if when a lot of money is in your hands you start to become very tuned out from what’s affordable or not anymore.

“True.”

“I can buy you one, though. I don’t mind.” he adds. Soft look in his eyes, a pure and genuine offer that you had to deny.

“I didn’t say i wanted one” you lie, only partially, because although you’d not mentioned it, you did actually want it. “I just think it’s pretty” you finally let go of him.

“Or do you think I look pretty in it?” he pushes, a sucker for compliments.

“Yeah, that might be it.” you admit, because there was no point in denying your irrefutable attraction to the man, as much as you hated to be vulnerable, especially in front of him.

“I think it would look prettier on you”.

Don´t copy or repost please. by studiojeon on tumblr.

[misscarolineshelby]

Spanked

Part Two: First Day

Pairing: Modern Tommy Shelby x Reader Words: 1,345 Warning: None…This is only the beginning!

Original Blog: @queenshelby (this is just my backup account as I have been having Tumblr issues)

When you told your friends and roommates about what had happened to you that morning, they couldn’t believe it.

Whilst you were excited to be working for one of the largest enterprises in the UK, they were more intrigued by the fact that you were going to work directly for Thomas Shelby who was a well-known business man and who was quite popular with the ladies across the country.

The 39-year-old had quite a reputation which is what attracted these women. But you decided that you wouldn’t be one of them.

According to your friend, he was the perfect mix between an elegant business owner and a working a class man. He was different to many others out there and, unlike the other men in charge of other big corporations in the UK, he had built his wealth by himself.

Of course, when you read his name on the business card, you remembered reading the rumours in the papers. According to the London Telegraph, he was said to be involved in some illegal businesses as well and it was believed that he had built his empire through drug trafficking and illegal race fixing. But these were just rumours. Thomas Shelby hadn’t served any prison time and was never convicted of any crimes. It was only his brother, Arthur Shelby, who was charged with two murders but never convicted.

He was also involved in politics, having acted as an MP until it became too boring for him. Luckily for him, he maintained connections to other politicians and judges and, miraculously, he had no problems getting licences for any and all of his business operations.

But none of this bothered you much. You saw this job as an opportunity and stepping stone of some sort.

***

Despite your lack of interest in the man himself though, you listened to your friend’s advice when it came to appropriate office attire.

‘You cannot possibly wear this’ your roommate said as she watched you put on a grey coloured suit and a black blouse.

‘That’s what you wear to an office though’ you said somewhat confused while looking into the mirror.

‘Men like something to look at. At least wear a dress and show some legs. You never know, you might even find your prince charming’ your roommate then said with a cheeky smile before disappearing into her room and returning with three dresses for you to choose from.

Of course, she had a point. You had been single for two years and, before that, you had one boyfriend who was just as nerdy as you were. He was your first and your last.

After trying on all three dresses, you chose an elegant knee length black dress but, when you put on some stockings and shoes, your roommate shook her head again.

‘Oh god no. Please let me style you’ your roommate insisted.

‘No, I don’t have time’ you huffed out, looking at your watch.

‘I will style you up for your first day and then I will call you a taxi. I will use my father’s credit card. He won’t even notice’ your roommate said and, after some convincing, you reluctantly agreed.

Your roommate quickly found some suspenders and stockings in her draws and made you put them on. Then, she looked for some shoes, but none of the ones she owned would fit you.

Eventually, she found a pair of black high heels in your other roommate’s wardrobe who, luckily, had the same shoe size as you.

Finally, she applied your make up and straightened your hair. It looked perfect and she was certainly impressed with her own work.

‘Holy shit, I am fucking awesome’ your roommate then said and you couldn’t help but laugh.

‘I look good’ you said somewhat surprised as you looked into the large mirror in your bedroom.

‘You fucking do. Go and get yourself a suitor’ she teased you and you shook your head.

‘No, I am there to work, not to flirt. Despite, I don’t even know how to flirt’ you admitted and your roommate couldn’t help but giggle.

***

When you arrived at the offices of Shelby Company Limited, you were greeted by a tall dark-haired woman who showed you to your new office.

It was near the reception area and you were surprised by the layout of the building. Everything was made of glass and the floors looked like marble. It was incredible.

Lizzie explained to you how things worked around the office and told you that you would be reporting to a man by the name of Michael Grey.

‘I thought I will be reporting to Mr Shelby’ you said somewhat surprised, causing her to laugh.

‘Sweetheart, please don’t flatter yourself. You are here on your merit but no one new reports directly to Mr Shelby apart from me and Michael Grey. He only likes to deal with people he knows and trusts’ Lizzie said before handing you your office swipe card and a stack of files for you to look at it.

Just as you sat down and Lizzie took a seat right next to you, talking you through the accounting software the company uses, you saw Tommy enter the reception area.

He was accompanied by a tall blonde woman who was wearing expensive clothes and was carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag.

‘Who is this?’ you asked curiously, causing Lizzie to look up from the computer.

‘Elaine Sutton. Apparently, she is the flavour of the month. He likes attractive women who don’t talk much, which makes her perfect’ Lizzie chuckled, seemingly annoyed by the woman.

‘How did you become Mr Shelby’s personal assistant?’ you then asked and Lizzie chuckled again.

‘I’ve known Thomas since he was eighteen. I used to be married to his brother, John Shelby, before he passed away’ Lizzie said and you were surprised by her directness and openness about it.

‘Any more questions or can we get back to work now?’ she then said and you apologised to her immediately.

***

Throughout the day, you developed an investment scheme to lower the tax rates the company was otherwise required to pay in the next financial year. This was what you had mentioned to Tommy at the café and you assumed that it was what he wanted you to do when Lizzie handed you the relevant files.

As you were working through them one by one, you also became to notice that Tommy himself was quite the talking point between the women in the office.

His blue eyes, his expensive suits and what tie he was wearing was on today’s agenda in the lunchroom and you couldn’t help but be amused.

Then, all of a sudden, there was dead silence. The room went quiet and no one said a word as the man himself entered the lunch room.

‘Can I get you anything Mr Shelby?’ one of the service employees asked nervously.

‘Can you tell me where the cable ties are kept, please?’ he said in his low gruffy voice and, just when the employee nodded and told him that she would fetch some for him, he approached you.

‘Office attire suits you much better than coffee-stained clothes Y/N’ he observed, causing you to swallow harshly, smile and nod.

‘Thank you for the opportunity, Mr Shelby’ you stammered out in response just as the service clerk returned with some cable ties for Tommy and he walked off.

‘He knows your name’ a short brunette woman observed. ‘I’ve been working here for a year and he hasn’t even noticed me’ she then said before offering you a cup of tea which you gladly accepted.

‘Well, I spilled hot coffee onto him yesterday at the Coffee Bean Café across the road which probably made stick’ you said somewhat embarrassed, causing the woman to laugh before introducing herself to you.

Her name was Emily and she was also working in the business advisory department. Just like you, she was smart and nerdy and you knew that you would be getting along well.

Tag List:

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@peaky-cillian  @queenyshelby ​

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[preemshots]

the definitive post of WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JOHNNY SILVERHAND’S BODY?

AKA the post of HERE’S WHY I WANT TO BELIEVE WE ARE GONNA GET JOHNNY’S BODY BACK IN DLC. 

buckle up, gamers. it's time for some lore. this is a very long post. 

warning: this will contain a million spoilers. both for details of multiple game endings, a wee bit of the “where’s johnny” comic, and the cyberpunk RED book. if you want a sparknotes version this is the post for you. my main source here is the cyberpunk RED book as well as as some references to the cyberpunk 2077 world book to cross examine the lore. 

i have no idea if someone has made this post before or what anybody else has been finding in their own lore diving. this is just me documenting my own findings from the sources i’ve been using.

it would be disingenuous not to preface this with the ways in which cyberpunk 2077's telling of the arasaka assault differ from the version told in the TTRPG books. the books =/= the game. pondsmith acknowledges in the intro of RED that this is a bridge between the old cyberpunk world and the new world of cyberpunk 2077. 

we also know that johnny's an unreliable narrator and his memories presented to V are often different than real events. but on top of that we don't know if the reason why many elements are changed is simply CDPR editing/adjusting/condensing the storyline for their own canon, or if it's due to johnny's construct being manipulated by outside influences such as arasaka.

some of the main differences you need to know from cyberpunk RED canon:

in 2023 johnny doesn't bring the nukes to arasaka tower. he's solely there to free alt.

johnny and rogue and their team from the atlantis/the aldecaldos are actually hired by morgan blackhand. 

morgan blackhand is the one who plants the nuke, unbeknownst to many members of the team. 

morgan blackhand promptly disappears after this event and no one knows if he's alive or dead. (claire confirms this fact to jackie and v before the heist in 2077 canon)

johnny's silver cybernetic arm is its own character, separate from himself. it seems to have a mind of its own and johnny interacts with it and/or is influenced by it.

when he, spider murphy, rogue, thompson, shaitan, and a team of los lobos from the aldecaldos (who are there in place of santiago, as he’s busy as the leader of the aldecaldos at this point) are attacked by adam smasher, johnny and his arm actively choose to draw smasher's fire in a deliberately suicidal move. smasher downs him instantly, but the distraction is enough to also save his friends.

spider murphy shoves a mysterious chip in johnny's dying head as they escape that alt had downloaded to her a long time ago.

johnny's body is later "rumoured" to have been retrieved from the rubble by a full-body borg groupie that was a first responder to the ground zero of AHQ and then hidden away in a nearby garage.

here comes the political lore that makes my eyes cross, so hopefully this accurately summarizes it: the 4th corporate war begins to end. arasaka is ultimately blamed by the NUSA government to have nuked themselves in a political move to protect their secrets and promptly banished from the USA. arasaka denies this all the way back to japan, then eventually returns to “liberate” night city in the unification wars.

but what the public doesn't know is that kei, saburo's oldest son, had actually hidden an EVEN BIGGER MORE DEVASTATING NUKE at the bottom of the tower to, well, do exactly what they were being accused of doing, even though blackhand was the one who actually dropped the smaller nuke on them. and luckily the bigger one didn’t go off.

arasaka tries to find their nuke in the rubble so they don't get in even bigger trouble, only to discover that it was moved and hidden away to... surprise! a nearby garage.

to compare with 2077:

in RED: we have no johnny loading the nukes into the elevator. no johnny being carried off the premises. no meeting saburo. no johnny getting soulkilled.

in 2077: there's a parallel moment to RED's version of events right after johnny uploads "liberator" from alt's old cyberdeck with spider's help into the arasaka mainframe in saburo's office. adam smasher comes for him as he's trying to escape, knocking him off the second floor of the atrium into the rock garden below.

visually this is the same atrium we always meet alt in in cyberspace and also where V meets johnny for the first time. hmmm. meaningful, perhaps.

not unlike what happens in RED, johnny unloads a clip into smasher at that point, but from there the scene instantly cuts to him running to the roof attempting to board the AV with rogue, where smasher shoots him down again. it’s possible johnny actually died to smasher in the atrium and we have some fabricated memories going on. 

either way, in 2077, we lose the character beat of johnny dying for his friends, and the current-day general consensus from rogue and others is that he’s perpetually a selfish asshole with ulterior motives. 

and, just to wrap up the politics of it all: morgan blackhand is rumoured to have been secretly hired by the militech-backed NUSA government to help end the 4th corporate war by... you guessed it! nuking arasaka.

HERE'S WHERE JOHNNY'S BODY ENDS UP IN CYBERPUNK RED (SPARKNOTES VERSION):

RED ends with a story called "black dog" set in 2045. black dog is the last song johnny recorded right before the assault on arasaka tower, but the final copy is a bootleg copy of the song and only a fraction.

we're introduced to a fun group of cybernetic-enhanced characters that represent the classes in the TTRPG and based on/designed by real people in collaboration with CDPR.

this group includes trace santiago, santiago's son, who is a media that is curious about the mystery surrounding the circumstances around his father and the arasaka bombing. 

just connecting lore here: if you talk to saul at the aldecaldo camp in 2077, he confirms that santiago was killed for his involvement with johnny and the bombing, something that rogue and johnny reference when they talk about their now-dead crew from the afterlife, and in chippin in, santiago is a friend that johnny lists as someone he had disappointed.

the group sets off to find any info about black dog, and meet up with a full conversion chrome woman named samantha in a garage who is blatantly a johnny silverhand fangirl. trace discovers she has a history with johnny, having rescued him from a studio fire at some point in 2015 and speculates she could have been a groupie also.

she mysteriously has a more complete recording of black dog, though not perfect, and offers to trade it for a service: she wants the group to transport a large crate to a facility in new mexico, asking them not to open it.

shit goes down. evidently everyone in night city wants to kill them for this package once it starts moving. eventually they open it. it's the arasaka nuke that had been hidden and never went off, emblazoned with warnings.

trace inquires about the circumstances surrounding the arasaka assault with an older member of the lobos who had been present with rogue and johnny. the man mentions that it was weird, because morgan blackhand organized the whole thing and then ran off immediately with a mysterious bag that we now know contained the nuke. 

michiko arasaka intercepts the gang, explaining the situation around the bigger nuke, that other factions in arasaka want to utilize it for their own goals (presumably hanako and yorinobu) and her father's legacy, that she feels responsible for. she escorts them to new mexico so that the nuke can be dismantled once and for all.

they meet up with a woman named angel in new mexico that takes the crate from them, at a facility that specializes in nuclear material. she gives the group the full recording of "black dog". the group leaves successful.

this woman is also a johnny silverhand stan. once alone, she calls up samantha, who says, "i promised i would get him to you in the end" and reveals that she had already gutted/dismantled the original nuke and discarded the material into the bay.

angel opens the "nuke" to reveal a hidden cryochamber, and greets the face of the person inside with, "hello, my love."

i mean, holy shit. okay! so that’s DEFINITELY johnny’s body. cool!

now let’s go into all the references to this story in the actual game of cyberpunk 2077 that SUGGEST we are going to pursue this story AND johnny's body since it’s such a HOT FUCKING TOPIC. 

and i know many of the following can just be considered easter eggs. but my personal interpretation of this game is that it has a really delightful way of intentionally glossing over important story details—and not by ONLY putting them in shards (which people tend to dislike because lol reading) but by also hiding them in plain sight, constantly deferring to V's own ignorance, distracting us with shallower, shinier things, encouraging us to actually play as the fool hero of this story. 

so here's the fun list of “””evidence”””:

this one’s a reach, but fun. in the initial arasaka assault flashback in 2023: we can interact with the groupies at kerry's show as johnny. samantha doesn't appear to be present, but the first person and groupie you can encounter in the flashback has a passing resemblance to angel in that she has a cybernetic arm.

in chippin' in, where we go to johnny's "grave" in the oil fields: if we are to take the 2077 retelling of events as truth, the story could instead be pretty easily be changed that samantha procured his body from there.

mike pondsmith, who wrote these stories and created the TTRPG can be heard on the radio narrating various conspiracy theories. and sure, these can just be easter eggs, intended to reference the differences between the TTRPG lore and the game, so take it with a grain of salt:

johnny. bro. tell him it was morgan blackhand

to top it all off, mike also directly references the actual WORSE nuke arasaka had hid in another arasaka conspiracy: 

SPOILERS FOR GAME ENDINGS AHEAD.

in the rogue ending of the game we discover rogue has a son. it's possible her son is trace (edit: nvm NOT LIKELY, since in RED’s black dog story rogue is listed separately from santiago’s mom in conversation) OR possibly one of the other characters. she tells her son to "pull over and look at the stars" or something along those lines. maybe just details, so that screams nomad to me.

rogue also has a photo of herself and johnny with mike pondsmith in her apartment/office in the afterlife. i initially read this as a delightful cameo but it also can mean mike the CHARACTER knew johnny and rogue, and rogue therefore has some kind of relationship to him and these conspiracies on the radio. and why the fuck not make him a full on character? we have a smattering of streamers and personalities already integrated into quests in the game. the creator of all this should be no exception. fuck it! 

rogue and johnny constantly dance around this accusation of her “selling out”. it’s repeated over and over that she and adam smasher worked for "the same people". i'm beginning to wonder if this wasn't meant to imply only arasaka since smasher mysteriously disappeared after the AHQ assault in 2023 and returned to SOMETIMES take jobs from arasaka... but possibly morgan blackhand and/or by extension, the NUSA or any other greater influences. (like nightcorp? we still don’t know where all this shit with nightcorp/the peralezes/sandra dorsett’s discovery about their research into mind control is gonna go) this also doesn’t account for the multiple factions inside arasaka with VERY different motives. 

morgan blackhand and adam smasher are rivals in the TTRPG, a role that appears to be at least partially filled by johnny instead in 2077. in relation to the arasaka factions, it’s worth nothing that smasher specifically works for yorinobu as his bodyguard at the beginning of the game, in part i assume because yorinobu is avoiding working with arasaka security details as he stole the relic and is plotting against his father. he is then promoted to head of security by yorinobu when yorinobu assumes power. 

in the ending as you work your way through arasaka tower with rogue and shaitan and johnny, rogue remarks:

michiko at this point in 2077 is the leader of the more “liberal” faction within arasaka, so it’s possible we’re seeing that while rogue and smasher work for the same people/family, they couldn’t be more different. 

you can also encounter rogue more than once on the phone fighting with wakako, who has apparently crossed her. wakako also seems to have her own ulterior motives and works mainly with the arasaka-backed tyger claws. she notably gives v/takemura the parade security info for “play it safe” without asking for anything in return, enabling hanako’s kidnapping. my theory is that yorinobu intentionally leaked the parade info to her to give away to put hanako in danger or at least continue to destabilize arasaka. 

in the takemura/devil ending of the game, there is a point where violence breaks out at the arasaka board room meeting when yorinobu-allied security open fire on them. one of the only people that survives along with hanako is michiko arasaka, who was at odds with hanako’s decisions, but  very involved in the preceding discussion.

and now for is my favorite detail! in the afterlife AT ALL POINTS IN THE GAME (but it can only really be inspected in the rogue ending when we are allowed behind the bar), we can find a photo of the squad that transported johnny's body from samantha to angel on the shelf below johnny's tequila, of them hanging out in front of the afterlife sign:  

this implies rogue has some relationship with them, and sentimentality, if we're to judge by the placement. she maybe even took the picture. i don't know, it's charming, it could be all easter eggs. who fucking knows.

either way, rogue and these kids both have in common that they worked with or at least interacted with michiko arasaka. 

and you know what my final evidence is? more wishful thinking! black dog plays on the radio in game. we got a full recorded version of it by refused. if not an oversight, i go ahead and take it to mean the final version was finally released to the public by those kids that were looking for it. 

i haven’t the slightest idea how this is gonna wrap up in future DLC. who has johnny’s body now in 2077, decades after it was dropped off in mexico? what is the truth?? where the fuck is morgan blackhand?? from the devil ending, we know that arasaka stole jackie’s body and put his soul into mikoshi, so the idea that they would just toss johnny’s corpse has always been laughable. the “where’s johnny?” promotional comic was even about thompson unsuccessfully trying to find johnny’s body. i know i am biased here but i cannot fathom all this talk about johnny’s body ending off with us NOT finding it, whether it’s just to bury it, shove johnny’s engram back in it, make out with it, or WHATEVER.

if you made it through this slog, congrats. thanks for reading! 

[jonnnysuh]

Dating Jinyoung would include:

A/N:Just based off my observations/perception of him. This is more fun than romantic !! This one was so easy to write bc I feel like me and Jinyoung are similar. Anyways hope u enjoy !

Series Masterlist

Having the most unpopular opinion in the world but he agrees with it 

Backing each other up during stupid group debates 

Being each other’s biggest clowns 

King of “waeeee” like shut the fuck up you know the answer

Bruh the judging faces go OFF

Not being affectionate bc that shit’s gross 

But his love language is in his actions, what he’ll do for you 

It takes a lot to provoke an “I love you” but when he says it he means it. You just kinda have to work for it 

Your parents will like him immediately 

“He’s so polite” but little do your parents know that u are constantly fighting for your life with the roasting

“Can you help me” ”no learn by yourself”

Both hating the same people 

The way his hatred is explained makes it soooo funny and easy to hate the other person too

Dramatic ass stories 

Trying to understand people even when they hurt you 

Big bitch with big heart energy 

“Who hurt you? Imma beat them up”

He acts grossed out when you fawn over him but secretly likes it

will not ask for help even when he’s literally dying

wanting to make a good impression on everyone but also not caring at all

He’ll pull out the chair for you and wait for you to say thank you before settling down in his own chair

fanning you when it’s hot

Just a gentleman,, will always hold the door for you, offer his coat when it’s cold, hold his hand out when you leave a car, etc

text reminders like: Don’t forget to take your medicine before bed! OR Drink water !!

He always knows the right thing to say

pinching his butt and running away

before y'all even get together he is the KING of teasing

he’s a goodass listener

He will always mention how much he believes in you when you doubt yourself

Shaking his head when he catches you doing something you’re not supposed to 

sometimes replying “I know” when you say “You’re so cute”

covering your laughs omfg

Knowing the most embarrassing shit about each other and using it against each other

He always thinks ahead so he’ll buy something for you that you didn’t know you needed but you do

Hates procrastination

Will rant to Jaebeom/Jackson about how annoying you are but will talk about your accomplishments too

“Why are you watching that Kdrama? Watch mine”

Disgusted face contests

Do y’all even like each other???

He’s such a good liar it’s scary

going out for errands and being domestic is so much fun,,, he’ll push around the cart while you fill it up weeeee

cooking home cooked meals together

comfortable silence,,, like you can be sitting in the same room doing two different tasks 

y’all just need one shared look to confirm whether you fuck with something 

 a lot of disagreements 

pinches your cheeks when you’re being cute 

secretly fixes things for you 

king of building ikea furniture and staring at it for a while like “yes I really made that chair i am amazing” 

sometimes unsure whether he’s being sarcastic or actually joking 

Will intimidate anyone who gives u a bad time

Gentle kisses. He likes to lead

He sprinkles surprise gifts here and there…. SURPRISE DINNERS

if you facetime him at night he will pick up but he won’t be happy about it. You’ll just see his face in the dark like 😠 “this better be good”

will not admit when you’re being funny but he will do the cute little thing where he hides his laugh behind his hand 

when you’re not looking he looks at you like you’re the best thing in the world

he is SOOOOO proud of you whenever you achieve something like he’ll remind you all the time “remember when you did __?” 

backrubs when you’ve had a long day 

he will offer the last bite of his meal, his last bit of anything to you because he thinks of you first

when you do something embarrassing he’ll look away and pretend he doesn’t know you

Your biggest hypeman now and forever

[transmalewife]

Alright, let's talk about attachment

I can’t find clear information on when exactly the non-attachment rule was added to the code. It was either soon before or soon after the great sith war. Either way, for the VAST majority of the existence of the Jedi, it wasn’t a thing. Jedi got married and had families for over 20000 years, then added the non-attachment rule, which ultimately led to their destruction. And before anyone tries to tell me I believe they deserved to be genocided, I don’t. I have never actually seen anyone say that, but I see people argue against it constantly, and imply anyone who doesn’t think the Jedi were perfect and blameless thinks that. I don’t think they deserved to die, I think they needed to change. And Yoda says that himself, many times. The Jedi weren’t prepared for the return of the sith, or the war. They had separated from the military 1000 years before, and the galaxy was in relative peace all this time, so the order’s role changed to one that worked very well with their rules. Detachment meant they could be impartial when overseeing political disagreements, lack of possessions meant they would be focused on the mission at hand and not prone to taking bribes, and distancing themselves from the general population meant they were more or less uniform, and could be trusted not to side with someone for personal reasons.

All of this falls apart once they become an army again. Impartiality is a flaw when they have to defend one side at all cost and not even allow themselves to consider compromise. Lack of possessions and attachment to people means they are prone to taking unnecessary risks, because they have nothing to lose, and do things like send 14 year olds into battle, thinking of the “greater good” over the safety of children. And the order being a monolith, with set rules and philosophy distinct from the rest of the population meant the Jedi trusted Dooku long after they should have stopped, because he used to be a Jedi after all, surely he still follows the code.

Now, I am not saying non-attachment is always bad, I think it served a very specific purpose in the order, and to some extent worked for many years. However.

Humans are a social species. Human babies NEED physical contact and affection to develop physically. Children need a stable, strong, and supportive relationship to their caregiver to properly develop psychologically. And after last year I don’t think anyone will argue that adults don't need connection with other people just as much. And not just shallow interactions, but open affection and love. Love of any kind, because claiming that the Jedi only forbid romantic love is just untrue. I think people tend to forget that "Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi's life. So you might say, that we are encouraged to love." isn’t the actual doctrine, it’s a literal pick up line that Anakin uses on Padme.

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan both get criticized by other Jedi for their entirely platonic attachment to Anakin, and vice versa. Now, humans are the most common species in the galaxy, and in the Jedi order. Many other species are near-human, so it’s safe to assume at least some, if not most of them also need that companionship and affection to develop and live happy and stable lives. I do believe that non-attachment is a valid philosophy and chosen path in life if done carefully and within reason, I just don’t think we have a single major character that actually applies to. And chosen is an important word here. Jedi don’t get much of a choice. I’m not trying to start the baby-stealing debate here. I hear the argument of ‘force sensitives are dangerous if left untrained, and said training should start as early as possible’. I think finding a way to deal with that problem was an insanely complicated decision, and taking children into the temple as young as possible is not a bad solution. I don’t entirely agree with not letting them see their families later, (especially since in legends Obi-Wan was allowed to visit his family, which implies Anakin couldn’t go free his mother specifically because he was already too attached), but the idea is sound. I do also understand that no one is forcing Jedi to stay in the order and they can leave for whatever reason at any time. But that isn’t exactly a free choice either. Leaving the order means leaving the only home you remember, the only people you know to make your own way in the galaxy, and staying with those people means you can never fully love them. It’s a difficult solution to a complicated question, and for the most part, it worked (not always, and not exactly as intended, but I’ll come back to that.) Children grew up in the order, were trained to control themselves and the force, and became Jedi who were impartial, patient, and balanced. But everything falls apart when you introduce someone who wasn’t raised in the temple.

In The Rising Force, 13 year old Obi-Wan had barely been off Coruscant in his life. He describes himself as sheltered and unaware of all the pain in the galaxy, and says it was done on purpose, so younglings wouldn’t have to face the dark side before they were ready for it. But Anakin had seen nothing but darkness, pain and injustice before he joined the order. He was severely traumatized, and while the temple might have had some ways of dealing with trauma and PTSD in adults, they had no experience in treating the same in a child, because their children were kept safe and protected. The idea of letting go of your pain and fear only works if you know you have a safe place to come back to, if you’ve spent the first decade or so of your life in the most protected place in the galaxy. Anakin spent the first decade of his life as a slave. He couldn’t let go of his fear, because fear was what kept him alive. Fear is not irrational if you are constantly in danger, it’s what protects you, keeps you aware of the limits you can push before you get punished. And that mindset doesn’t fade just because you’re out of that situation, especially if your only family, the closest person to you, is still facing that danger every day.

I’ve seen people use every excuse possible to explain why Anakin didn’t see his mother again to avoid blaming the council, including, and I shit you not, “He just didn’t have her comm number”. But to me that seems disingenuous, when we see in his first meeting with the council that they already consider him too attached. It's one of the main reasons they don’t want him to be trained, so it seems logical that they wouldn’t allow him to see her once he became a padawan. I also want to mention that what Yoda says, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Is just… blatant catastrophizing. Right? Like we can all see that the escalation is not rational there at all. Maybe it could apply to something else, but not to a child who just left his mother for the first time in his life and went from a tiny dustball in the middle of nowhere to the most populated planet in the galaxy, and is now being tested by a bunch of old people with the power to decide his future. Obviously he’s afraid, and obviously he’s not dealing with it the way Jedi younglings do. That, in and of itself doesn't doom him to fall. Also what Yoda misses there is that suffering leads to fear. This is a closed loop, and one that has defined Anakin’s entire childhood.

Let’s come back to how the system doesn’t always work. The way I see it, most of the characters we see are attached. Obi-Wan is considered one of the greatest Jedi of his time. Windu describes him as “our most cunning and insightful Master—and our most tenacious”. And yet, he was not insightful enough to look past his love for Anakin, his attachment, and see how close to falling he was. Ahsoka was so attached to Anakin she refused to listen to Maul on Mandalore, refused to even consider the posibility he could fall. She was arguably the person with the best shot at preventing the empire forming at that point, and she loved anakin so much she doomed him and the entire galaxy. Aayla admitted to thinking of Quinlan as her father, and also, apparently in legends had a long relationship with Kit. Even Mace didn’t follow the code when he decided to kill Palpatine, which directly led to his death and the empire. He also indirectly caused the war to start. According to wookiepedia “Windu viewed Dooku as the shatterpoint of the entire Separatist movement, which meant striking Dooku down would theoretically end the imminent clone war before it even began. However, Windu's prior attachments to Dooku clouded his judgment.” I’m not even going to mention Kanan and Ezra, who are obviously family.

So basically everyone is attached and lying about it. How has no one thought that maybe this isn’t the healthiest way to live and tried to change the code? Well, I have a theory, and it’s Yoda. He was 900 years old when he died, and was on the council for the vast majority of his life. I can’t find when exactly he became grand master, but it’s safe to assume he held some degree of power over the entire order for most of a millennium. At the end of TPM he tells Obi-Wan “Confer on you the level of Jedi knight, the council does. But agree with your taking this boy as your padawan learner, I do not.” Then he reverses that decision by himself. So either he has the power to veto the council’s word, or who gets trained is entirely up to him. Either way, not great, considering his lifespan is so much longer than most Jedi, and therefore his approach to life is vastly different. Humans need love and closeness to live. However, while we don’t know much about Yoda’s species, it probably isn’t a social one. You could count all the characters of this species on two (human) hands, and Yoda lived in complete isolation for 20 years on Dagobah, and only went a little bit insane. They are naturally rare, and therefore probably lead solitary lives in nature. Moreover, Yoda outlived every master who trained him, and almost every padawan he trained himself, (there’s a great post about that here) so even if he wasn’t naturally predisposed to non-attachment, he would have had to learn it to deal with all the loss he had to live through over the years.

A lot of people think that Anakin fell because he had attachments, which is not true. He fell because of how his attachments played out and/or ended. The most obvious example being Palpatine, who used Anakin’s trust and friendship to groom him for over a decade and actively undermine Anakin’s trust towards anyone else, especially the order. (more on that here). Obi-Wan refused to take on the role of a father figure that Anakin tried to shove him into, so he turned to someone who did accept it. It’s not Anakin’s fault that it turned out to be the worst person alive, nor can we expect him to notice when he’s known Palpatine since he was a child. Another failure of jedi non-attachment, because a loving parent or guardian would not let their child be used as a bargaining chip when the most powerful politician in the galaxy blackmailed the order into allowing him to meet Anakin regularly, but a distant teacher and detached knight thinking of the greater good might. The other attachments Anakin had were taken from him (Shmi and Ahsoka, the last orchestrated by Palpatine who was fully ready to give her the death penalty to make Anakin more unstable), or he was forced to lie and hide them, compromising his vows as a Jedi (Padme) or refused to choose Anakin over the order/their principles (Obi-Wan, and again Ahsoka, and to some extent Padme, but he’d already fallen then). All these people had every right to make the choices they made, but it wasn’t the act of loving them that made Anakin turn to the dark side, it was how those attachments played out.

I think everyone agrees that Yoda is as detached as a Jedi should, if not can, be, and that didn’t prevent Dooku from falling. We see that explored in more detail with Barriss and Luminara. Luminara is detached and distant, she’s fond of Barriss, but their relationship is not familial in the slightest, and she repeatedly shows her willingness to put the greater good and the mission before Barriss’ safety and even life. And yet Barriss still falls. A complex combination of events and choices caused each of those characters to fall, not the simple presence or absence of attachment.

And lastly, just as attachment can make you unstable if your relationship with that person is unstable, it can also make you stronger. There is a reason Anakin and Obi-Wan were the face of the army. Not only did their obvious attachment (the strongest between two jedi we are shown) make them more relatable to the public, but they, when working as a team, are shown repeatedly to be more or less undefeatable. They spend half of aotc flinging themselves off great heights because they know the other will be there to catch them. They know from years of experience that they have backup and they know each other well enough (or force bond communicate) that they can trust the other will be where he needs to be to help/save them. Contrast that to how Windu and Palpatine fight in rots once the window breaks- very carefully, clearly holding back to keep themselves safe. Neither of them has backup until Anakin arrives, but until the last second they can't be sure which one he will choose. Anakin and Obi-Wan fight the same way on Mustafar, especially when balancing on that thin bridge. No acrobatics, swinging arms to keep balance, keeping their distance, being almost uncharacteristically careful compared to how they treated heights in aotc, in tcw, and on the invisible hand in rots, because they both know the other won't catch them if they fall this time.

[olderthannetfic]

on a totally unrelated discourse note: i've been coming across more of these on ao3 at a worrying rate. ppl are posting works with nothing but a request to help the poster find a specific fic. disclaimer: even tho i was a tag wrangler for a while, that doesn't mean i speak for all tag wranglers. That said, those 'fics' drive me up the wall. i'll sometimes politely comment to kindly remind the poster that ao3 is an archive for transformative works and if they would like to engage with the fandom, they have plenty of other avenues-like tumblr-to make the same request. posting this sort request as a fic, unnecessarily adds to tag wranglers workloads who are already struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of work being posted. i'm not smart enough to explain why this is problematic beyond saying it's work and time and volunteers have enough on their plate. so even if it is only one fic with a few tags, more and more ppl doing it: they build up. basically, i think it's inconsiderate behaviour-to other readers searching the tags and to the wranglers who have to sort them. if you're looking for a fic and want to ask people: please do not post a work on ao3 tagging all your relevant ships, characters etc, to try and find it. please try to search through the extensive, functional and innovative tagging system and search function. there's tutorials on how to do it. try googling. try researching. and if you absolutely cannot find it: please go on fandom socials like tumblr etc to ask the community. ao3 is not built for this kind of interaction yet. i might be wrong and i trust you to correct me if i am.

-

RAGESCREAM

Yeah, I see more of them these days too... though they do get reported pretty fast. I don't think the rate is so high that it really endangers most people's AO3 browsing experience, and ficsearches often use already-wrangled tags, but I do want to finish my personal 2021 AO3 Guide with some power user stuff but also more pointed tips for n00bs from Wattpad.

Some people when confronted are like "Oh shit. I knew it wasn't preferred, but I didn't know it was directly against the rules" and I think they're operating in the paradigm of sites with shitty search still. Like... on Wattpad, there's no index of everything, so you're not as in people's faces with your off topic spam crap. It's also more common to post "discussion books" and to take shit down quickly after it has served its purpose.

I guess what I'm saying is that I would not assume malice. Some people may just need some pointers and context. And while official FAQs and the ToS exist, I don't think that's the format most people absorb the info from best--not to mention the fact that official rules do ban fic searches as works (in that they are not fanworks), but official policy is "tag how you want" without many tips for what your options are.

As for why fic searches are rude to post, AO3 is not a big corporate site with a bajillion paid staff. It has a narrow and specific mission and is paid for by your fellow fandom members out of their own pockets. Posting cruft that is not the target content of fanworks potentially drains resources from your fellow fans due to limited staff time for tag wrangling, for looking at abuse reports on rule-breaking works, etc. It's also rude because AO3's 'show everything in this tag by date' format means your non-fanwork is shoved under everyone's eyeballs constantly. You're being way more intrusive than on sites where things are harder to find and already more ephemeral.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 11 first part

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Goodness)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Okay! This episode is a real slice of healthy family dynamics, not triggering in any way. [Uh if this is your first Restless Rewatch: that is sarcasm, dear readers]

Goodbye to You, Goodbye to Everything We Knew

Nie Huaisang asks why Meng Yao has to leave and Meng Yao says "I killed a guy without permission, so your brother fired me." 

Ha ha ha ha no he doesn't. But he does give Nie Huaisang a sweet, sad smile; he seems touched by NHS's distress. 

Meng Yao carefully removes Nie Huaisang's hands from his shoulders and bows to him, wordlessly signaling the change in their relationship from intimate friends to formal strangers, while Nie Huaisang looks crushed. 

They will return to intimate friendship in the future, but falsely. Meng Yao believes that truly loving a person can include destroying their family and using them as an instrument in your murder plots as long as you don't directly harm them.  Nie Huaisang eventually learns to use people just as brutally, but he doesn't lie to himself about what he's doing. This farewell may be the last harmless moment between these friends. 

Jiang Cheng is distressed by what's going on, while Wei Wuxian crosses his arms and watches, fully in Sherlock Holmes mode, instead of his more usual concerned-for-my-friend mode. This may signal mistrust of Meng Yao, who refused his initial attempt at friendship, and not in a sexy, slice-your-face-off way.  Or it may mean that he's reserving judgement on a complicated family situation. He maintains his uncharacteristic reserve through the entire encounter. 

(more behind the cut!)

Nie Huaisang runs in and asks his brother WTF happened. Nie Mingjue says "he killed my subordinate without permission, when he knows perfectly well power must flow from the ruler; it's like he didn't even read that Foucault book I gave him."

Ha ha ha actually he just yells at his brother, as if NHS doesn’t have his own relationship with Meng Yao after being wonder twink powers with him for probably a couple of years now. NHS has to sit and process his loss and confusion in silence.

As a younger sibling who would make friends with my older siblings' girlfriends and then lose those friends if they broke up, for reasons having nothing to do with why I liked their girlfriends, I super feel Nie Huaisang's pain here.

OTOH, older siblings are entitled to have break ups and not explain themselves to anyone besides their lover because that's the nature of intimacy. The moral is, uhh...don't have a family curse that makes you unreasonably angry. 

Jiang Cheng steps up to advocate for Meng Yao, because Meng Yao is injured, and because Jiang Cheng is actually a born leader who knows better than to throw away a useful subordinate. For example, even when Wei Wuxian is at his drunkest and most defiant, Jiang Cheng tries to reform him, not kick him out, only drawing the line at having unpopular zombie friends.

Wei Wuxian continues to keep his mouth shut, waiting for Nie Mingjue to calm down, and speaking only about the tactical situation. He clearly knows there's more to this story but he's pretty good at keeping his head down in a family ruckus, and we're about to learn why.

Yunmeng Town

The Yunmeng bros go home to Lotus Pier, where they are greeted in town with bows, smiles, and free stuff.

We've mostly been seeing them in their roles within the cultivation community, where Jiang Cheng is grumpy and anxious, and Wei Wuxian is sassy and iconoclastic. Here among common people, they are both charming, friendly, and polite, like the imaginary good kind of gentry.

They hear the news from a local lotus seller that the small clans are coming to the Jiang Clan for shelter, but that otherwise everything's ok, which doesn't sound like everything is ok at all. He gives Wei Wuxian a giant bag of lotuses for his sister to make soup from.

Home to Lotus Pier

All the disciples practicing in the courtyard at Lotus Pier are excited to see them, and one girl goes running to tell Jiang Yanli. Thanks to the admittedly beautiful design of Lotus Pier, she is running for a long time.

A long, long time. Getting around on all these insane walkways must be a real drag if you're not the flying sort of cultivator.

Discipline and Punish

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian immediately go and kneel while they wait for their official punishment. Jiang Cheng is kinda worried about the punishment and Wei Wuxian is like, I'm good at being punished, just let me do it. 

Much later, and for a really long fucking time

He also tries to get Jiang Cheng to stop being mad, even giving him skritches while he says they should be brothers after they die.

Which they will, as it happens, although Jiang Cheng after the Wen torture is only mostly golden-core dead, while WWX dies for real.

When Jiang Fengmian shows up Jiang Cheng starts to explain that they were with Lan Wangji, but Wei Wuxian hushes him; he is still keeping the secret of the Yin Iron. Although he's keeping it in exactly the manner that a teenager keeps their weed stash secret: immediately tell literally every teen friend about it, but keep it extra secret from everybody's parents. 

Happy Families Are All Alike

Now we get to meet Yu Ziyuan, who is generally styled Madame Yu but who I'm going to call by her name just as if she was a male character. More on that concept in a minute. She rolls up looking, smelling, feeling like a million yuan, with her two murder bitches in tow.

Her marriage is an unhappy one, and her husband does his best to avoid her and avoid conflict, lying to the kids that she's tired and then sending her away later with the same line about being tired, which is a particularly gendered kind of gaslighting. She is obviously not tired, other than being tired of Jiang Fengmian's shit.

I'm not going to say she's the worst mother ever, because parenthood in a feudal society entails a wide range of skills, many of which she has in abundance. She starts off with a relatively tender greeting to Jiang Cheng, tuning up his always-amazing sartorial style, which is exactly like her own. They are all ready for the mommy & me fashion show.

That said, she dishes out hellacious verbal abuse to everyone in her family. She targets each one in turn, making Wei Wuxian the focus of most of her ire, but without ever directly speaking to him. He is not, in her view, part of her family. 

The Stages of Family Dinner

1. Try to fix it and defuse the situation

2. Yeah no

3. Just keep your head down and be glad it’s not your turn in the hot seat

This family meal hammers home how much Wei Wuxian is not, actually, part of the family. Jiang Fengmian adopted him into the clan, and told A-Cheng and A-Yi to treat him as a sibling, but he didn't give him the Jiang name, and he didn't get his wife's approval. He also doesn’t expect him to dress like any other clan member, apparently. 

Compare this to how Lan Wangji, actual good parent, fully integrates his own adopted son into his clan and family, starting with giving him the Lan surname.  

The hits just keep coming as she goes after Jiang Cheng for being less gifted than Wei Wuxian, Yanli for performing labor for Wei Wuxian, and Jiang Fengmian for possibly begetting Wei Wuxian.

On first watching this scene I took her question "Is this how you raise someone else's son?" to mean that she thought Jiang Fengmian was being too nice to a kid who was actually an outsider, taking resources away from the real kids. But on rewatching, it's pretty clear that she's saying his favoring Wei Wuxian is evidence that Wei Wuxian is NOT someone else's son; that he's Jiang Fengmian's bastard. 

Jiang Fengmian doesn't say a thing to this, or to her mentioning WWX’s mother. This shit is why WWX is running around in the world desperate for any crumb of info he can get about his Mom; he hears about her all the goddamn time at home, but only as insults to her character.  

A Bitch is Not Wrong

Here's the thing, though; a lot of what Yu Ziyuan says is correct. 

Jiang Fengmian should be a lot more concerned about the danger to the children, and should not leave it up to the kids to decide who's going to bear that danger.

Yanli does a lot of food=love, which is ok in the right doses, but causes her to pretty extremely lose face during the whole "soup for Jin Zixuan" debacle. And her doting on Wei Wuxian is...kinda excessive. I mean, yeah, she’s more like a mom than a sister to him, but still. Running out onto an active battlefield to look for him, frex, will be a skosh too much. 

I have a dictionary too, mom

Jiang Cheng, as the future clan leader, shouldn't let his attachments affect his decision making, and should let Wei Wuxian, who's the superior cultivator, fend for himself more often. We love Jiang Cheng for those moments where he puts himself in harm's way to protect his loved ones, but it's not a good strategy. He constantly yells at Wei Wuxian for the exact same thing he does all the time himself; he just limits who he does it for.

After she roasts the shit out of everyone for these failings, she leaves, and everyone sits around being miserable and not talking about what just happened. 

Not to be gender studies-y on main but: the awful things she says to her children are really not very different from the things that Jiang Cheng says to Jin Ling, although her targeting is more adept. JC also says a lot of mean things to WWX when he’s angry. When a man says cruel or insulting things, it's often presented as real love hidden under a rough exterior. When a woman does it, she's a monster.

If you enjoy this sort of interaction you should definitely have a look at Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the plays of Eugene O'Neill.

Road Runner

Oh thank god, moving on

Lan Wangji is headed back to Cloud Recesses, and gets ambushed by the roadside with the most ridiculous trap this side of Wile E. Coyote.

Wen Chao thinks the "rug over a hole" trap is a good idea for someone who can literally fly.

Lan Wangji doesn't faff about with sword riding, he just fucking goes up in the air and stays there until he is good goddamn ready to come down. A hole in the sidewalk is really not going to be a problem for him. 

Wen Zhuliu does get in one kick before Lan Wanji yeets backwards away from him, in a moment that's scarier on rewatching, now that I know what Wen Zhuliu is capable of.

Wen Chao talks some smack to Lan Wangji, hilariously complaining about "your patronizing tone" to a man who has literally never spoken a word to him, IIRC, and certainly isn't speaking now. Maybe it's a mistranslation and should be "attitude," or maybe Wen Chao is just that dumb.

Apparently Wei Wuxian made a stack of talismans for Lan Wangji to take on the road with him. This talisman is a twin to the one Lan Wangji brings out way, way later in Yunping, when Wei Wuxian says "you even have kept it until now." Missing scene alert! What else did he make for him?

In Yunping this talisman is used to distract some random harmless street bullies. Here it is used against a seven-man murder squad.

This works.

Assault on Cloud Recesses

Forgettable disciple #1, Su She, comes rushing in to tell Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen that Cloud Recesses is under attack.

I'm pretty sure these dudes already know it, because they are meditating extra hard with a buttload of incense, and Lan Qiren is about to cough up some blood. So I think they're trying to hold the ward, rather than just, like, chilling while their disciples get stabbed.

Cloud Recesses is super on fire, you guys; it's going to totally burn to the ground; look at that conflagration, oh the humanity, etc.

Lan Qiren Rises to the Occasion

Ok, I like to rag on Failmaster Qiren and he is definitely an authoritarian dick a whole lot of the time, but in this scene he is fucking amazing.

He starts off worrying about Lan Wangji, not just out of affection but out of strategic planning, probably in equal parts. All three of these Lans take their clan responsibilities extremely seriously.

Then he calmly assesses the situation while imperturbable Lan Xichen freaks the fuck out. 

Lan Xichen is right to be alarmed, because he knows his uncle, he knows one of them is likely to die, and he knows that Lan Qiren will choose to take the hit.

I love, love, love Lan Qiren's physicality here; how centered and assured he is, as he holds his nephew steady and explains what is required of both of them.

Lan Xichen knows Lan Qiren is right. He is utterly fucking devastated, and all he can do to show his love...

...is to obey. 

This whole scene just. kills me.

Su She and forgettable disciple #2 are in the room for this whole conversation, and they join Lan Xichen in this deep bow. Note: I will be reminding everyone of this fact in Part 2.

Whew. This episode is a LOT. Part 2 Coming Soon!

Writing Prompt: What other goodies did Wei Wuxian put in Lan Wangji's care package before Lan Wangji hit the road without saying goodbye?

Soundtrack: 1. Michelle Branch, Goodbye to You 2. Ludacris, Stand Up

[ghost0loxer]

Imagine, a gender fluid teenager like myself has a favourite/feel-good film and that film is “Just One of the Guys,”from the mid 80s.

Picture this: theatre class, we watch “She’s The Man”, a dreamworks film from the 2000s. And yet, the social justice issues within the film are glaringly obvious to today’s society. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a funny film in a group setting - but then there are scenes that are just uncomfortable. Now, we discussed these themes in class, but I just can’t help but think about the film that came before it. Yes, StM (she’s the mans) is a modern day adaption of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” but I was thinking about the modern day adaption before StM, “Just One of the Guys” from the mid 80s.

I love this film. For multiple reasons, which I hope to discuss.

Number one, our main character. Terry Griffith is stubborn. If she thinks something is right, she won’t let anyone say no or get in her way. Now in some cases, this is great. It’s definitely a shift in the usual romantic comedy female lead (especially for the 80s). But it’s one of her biggest flaws. In the beginning, Terry doesn’t win a contest for a part-time job at the Sun Tribune. She believes her article was amazing, but she speaks with her English teacher and he gives it to her straight. “You don’t have what it takes to be a reporter.” Her article is boring; it’s about the nutritional value of the lunch menu in the school cafeteria, of course it’s boring. But the words her teacher tells her has her convinced it’s because she’s a woman. Thus, she leaves school for two weeks and transfers as a buy to another school who are holding the same competition. Once she gives her article, she is told almost the same thing, but this time, she’s given proper feedback to improve it. Of course, there was some irony with this scene between Terry and the teacher. “Just because you’re guy, doesn’t mean you can’t be sensitive or light.” Thing is, she doesn’t give up, she strives to fix it and finds a new angle. I love her determination, I love the way she doesn’t let others push her around. Furthermore, her transition to a man. In StM, Viola as a guy is made to be cringey and comedic, you watch and think, there’s no way a guy would do that. But Terry, having grown up with a younger brother and is actually smart, manages to nail the role. Sure, she has slip-ups, but she stays afloat and she’s not being over the top. She’s chill and convincing, yet you as the audience can tell she’s trying to appear masculine. Her lines are witty and she’s sharp. Someone has something to say, she’ll be able to backtrack and answer with a joke or sarcasm quickly. I like smart characters.

Another point, the way women are written in this film. A lot of women in this film are treated like shit, but it’s probably a realistic depiction of the 80s. Everyone is talking about dating and sex, it seems to be the only topic the women in this film speak about, unless they are Terry. Terry seems to be the only character in this film whose main goal is not romance or sex. She strives to be a reporter, she wants to prove herself, and she rejects the advances upon her frequently. Whether it’s the boys asking her on dates in halls, or her own boyfriend attempting to seduce her when her parents aren’t home, she doesn’t put them above herself, yet she still lets them down easily, unless they become more pushy (case in point, her boyfriend, Kevin, in the beginning). She can stand up for herself, but she’s not the only one. Her best friend, Denise is one of the many women looking for love, nevertheless, she holds standards. I will admit, I didn’t like Denise’s acting in the beginning; she’s not a great character, but even she manages to reject men’s advances constantly. She’s not afraid to say it bluntly and she expresses her true emotions when certain guys try to ask her out. She tells it to them straight, and I respect her for that (despite her lack of empathy for some). Terry’s brother is constantly hitting on Denise, but she stands her ground. She doesn’t hit him or curse him out, she spins words around him and always lead back to the key word “no.”

This is my third, and maybe final point, (because I’m not great at writing but I’m starting to get tired) the way they handle sexual orientation. It seems if you’re going to make a film about a cross-dressing woman who falls in love with a man, you have to discuss sexuality and this film is not afraid to. That was my biggest beef with StM, when Viola confessed her love to Duke, the made it blatantly clear that it was “weird” and “unusual”; the editing and music cuts. It was done for comedic purposes, but in that moment, it just made me cringe. Even when the principal marched onto the field during the big match to expose Sebastian as “the woman he was all along,” he used a big megaphone and said to the whole crowd this man is in fact a girl. If it were to happen in the real world, and this character was a trans male, that would be traumatizing and so so insensitive. I couldn’t help thinking the way they handled the reveal in StM was poor and shitty.

But with JOotG (just one of the guys)? It’s done respectfully. Throughout the film, Buddy, Terry’s younger, sex-obsessed brother (I have thoughts on this character), often refers to Terry as a transvestite or sexually confused. They make references about her dating other women and jokes. It’s not treated like taboo, but just something people normally talk about, and as a questioning kid when I first watched the film, I really needed that. Although it was used for jokes, the fact that it wasn’t treated like a silent topic made me think more of it and discover who I was; it was media like this that made me accept myself.

Even with the reveal. Kevin, Terry’s boyfriend (or ex boyfriend by the end), stomps up to Terry after she’s wrestled with the school bully and was dumped into the waves at prom. Rick, who’s been Terry’s friend (and is the male lead) throughout her time at his high school, immediately questions who Kevin is and he responds with a harsh and sure “Terry’s boyfriend.” Of course, that doesn’t expose Terry as female, but makes Rick assume she’s a homosexual. But instead of calling her weird or replying negatively, he answers Kevin’s question calmly and says he’s just a friend. There is no prejudice, no disgust, Rick is shocked, but that’s expected. Furthermore, this reveal not only does not alienate homosexuality, it puts the center of focus on the main characters rather than have the whole audience/prom witness this exchange. Sure, the rest of the school is watching but the camera never pans over to them, and even then, Terry drags Rick away from the crowds to a secluded area to explain more.

Even once they’re secluded, Rick doesn’t yell at her or is homophobic. He just says “I understand, you’re gay.” As we know, Terry is not in fact gay and she reveals this to him in a similar fashion as StM, at least it’s not flashing a whole crowd. But the thing that hits me, is the fact that it’s not used as a joke or for comedy. Throughout the film, they’ve mentioned homosexuality and being transgender, but it was used as a light-hearted joke (nothing insulting or derogatory). In this moment, it’s not a joke, and it’s the bare minimum for a emotional scene like this, but it always hits me.

Of course, Rick gets justifiably mad that he’s been deceived and he storms off. Terry’s flaw catches up to her here, as she kisses him in front of the prom guests, stubborn to make him realize how much she cares. ( I didn’t agree with this action to be frank, I cringed ). The crowd gasps and it’s the usual reaction to a homosexual kiss and Rick just pulls back, says “It’s alright everyone, he’s got tits,” and leaves with Deborah.

In true romantic comedy fashion, life moves on. Terry gets the job at the Sun-Tribune after writing her article about posing as a guy and everyone who was longing for love in the beginning has found it, except Terry. The ending, however, is Rick coming back for her after a couple (days? Weeks? Idk all I know is it’s summer by the time he comes back, how much space between prom and summer?) and they kiss, go on a date and all is good.

Now after writing this long ass post, I’ve come to realize the main reason I like this film. Sure, Terry is a good character (not morally sometimes, but she’s interesting to watch), the way women are presented also is good, but my main source of affection for this film (in comparison to StM) is the way they handle the switching of genders. I’m gender fluid, I don’t always like being a woman or a man, I switch almost daily and half the time can’t decide if I want to grow out my hair or cut it. Seeing Terry, originally a woman, manage to convince people she was a guy made me wish I could do it too. It made me realize, I don’t always like being a woman. I want to be a guy sometimes, and I want that to be accepted. It was media like this, like Ouran High School Host Club, like Bare: A Pop Opera, that made me understand my gender and sexuality. (Even media that didn’t have any relation to LGBTQ+ helped).

When I first heard of “She’s the Man”, I had hoped it would be like these pieces of media. And it wasn’t. It was an alright film, but made me feel disappointed and somewhat let down. And that’s why I just prefer Just One of the Guys. Maybe it wouldn’t float in today’s political climate, maybe I’m wrong for seeing these points as reasons it’s one of my favorites, but its still better than StM and is one of my favourite films.

[bookofmirth]

I haven't read ACOSF yet, and tbh I'm rather rusty with the characters but it was really interesting to read your opinion on Elain! I feel there's a lot of complexity to her. And how she presents herself as well because as you said we literally have no chapters from hers or Lucien's POV and I think that's the important point to note because right now we're all just guessing and assuming her to be like Feyre, but she's not. People deal/show their traumas in different way and l think people expect Elain to deal with it as Feyre did. But, Feyres trauma and Elains are very different!

I don't really know what I'm saying. But I read your answer and it made me go 'oh... Huh!' in a good way, it sparked my curiosity! So thank you! But I think Elain perhaps is the most complex person with their trauma. I know people say 'oh Nesta is so different' but (I specialised in drama therapy so I love psycho analysis) and what Nesta did is self destructive to prevent relationships to avoid hurt or more emotions that she doesn't want to acknowledge (in my opinion!)

Elain just shuts down. She doesn't drink, she doesn't screw, she just remains in her garden which in itself says a lot! That's a very grounding way to handle trauma and not a lot of people are aware of that side!

So yeah I don't know what I'm saying but I think it's a really interesting discussion!

I have so many thoughts about Elain! This took me a few days to get to because i knew I had a crapton of thoughts. So this is basically me using this ask to explain the way I see Elain post-acosf!

There are three important scenes in acosf off the top of my head: when Elain talks with Nesta and they fight, and then with Nesta and Feyre and she gets mad and leaves, and then Feyre and Rhys talk about her in their chapter. We’re getting a lot more information about her, and for me, it wasn’t so much about who she is, but why we don’t know who she is.

So far, what we’ve had is Feyre’s and Nesta’s POV. Even when Feyre and Lucien tried to help her in acowar, they were unable. So we’ve never had anything about Elain from someone who didn’t grow up with her and experience the same trauma (such as becoming destitute, their mother’s death, their father being beaten, the Cauldron, etc.)

The sisters do handle it very, very differently. And I think that at this point the fandom consensus is that Elain runs away from her problems, but I actually disagree, and partly because of what you mentioned - that she isn’t using those self-harming, destructive coping mechanisms. Nesta was avoiding her problems, hardcore. It’s absolutely possible that Elain avoids things, but I don’t think that she just runs from all of her problems because:

Elain grieves her father. Openly. She tries to accept the fact that it wasn’t her fault and that she couldn’t do anything about it. (See: her going to his grave in acofas, her first talk with Nesta in acosf.) Elain does not run from her grief, she doesn’t pretend it doesn’t exist, and she doesn’t hide it from others. As one of the most defining events we’ve seen her go through in the series, that’s a pretty big deal.

Elain does not cling to unhealthy coping mechanisms. There could be ways that she does this that we are unaware of. She does seem like the type who would be really, really good at making people think she’s okay, all while she’s silently imploding. But we don’t know that yet?

Elain does not isolate herself. 

However, Elain definitely needs to deal with some stuff! She definitely needs to deal with Lucien, and she needs to have an actual talk with Nesta because I don’t remember a single satisfying resolution between those two in acosf. Not like Nesta had with Feyre. 

I have this idea that is purely based on Elain’s line in acosf:

“I went into the Cauldron, too, you know. And it captured me. And yet somehow, all you think of is what my trauma did to you.” (pg. 233)

And then Feyre tells Nesta that yes, Elain was right. 

This is so so so sossosososos important. I cannot emphasize it enough. Elain is used to putting on a fake, smiling face because she doesn’t want the weight of her sisters’ concern. She has been pretending to cope for so long - and tbf, she seems to have been doing better than Nesta - that people not only forget that she has suffered, but she doesn’t feel like she can even express that suffering.

Emotional labor often means negating one’s own feelings in order to acknowledge or tend to someone else’s. And that is Elain’s major role, in the series. Feyre has been caring for everyone’s physical wellbeing (hunting), while Elain’s role has been to care for everyone’s emotional wellbeing. But, like with most emotional labor, it has gone unnoticed.

I’ve made posts about emotional labor in the past (four years ago!!!!) but I’m gonna spare you the link because a lot of it was about a ship that’s no longer a ship, so here is the relevant content:

What I am talking about is the regulation of emotion - any time that you give comfort, are especially attentive to someone’s needs, stop thinking about how you feel in order to focus on how someone else feels, try to cheer someone up, make sure that they are taking care of themselves, try to allay their insecurities, etc. Basically, helping them with any sort of emotional distress.

You know those posts you’ve seen, about women protecting men’s egos constantly? Or about making time for self-care? Or about recognizing toxic relationships? That tell you “if X is being demanded of you in a relationship, get out”? Those are ALL about emotional labor, broadly speaking. They are warning you not to do more than you can handle, more than you need to do, because it can be harmful to you.

If you have ever been expected to make a person or people feel better any time you are around each other (including when they are angry, upset, anxious, ill, frustrated, insecure, etc.), you have performed emotional labor. Pretty much everyone has done this at some point, unless you are a completely insensitive jerk.

Notice, though, that I said expected to and any time you are around them – this is where the problem comes in for YOU. This is not about just being there for a friend.

Making loved ones feel better is fantastic. Seeing people be polite and kind to one another makes my heart shine. That is not a problem in and of itself. That can be seen as emotional labor, but there are no requirements on you in those circumstances. This is something you are doing of your own free will.

The problem, again, is when this is expected, constantly, over time. Now, in my experience, the expectation is not necessarily coming from the other person. One of the problems with this type of labor is that not only do others expect women to perform these tasks, but women expect it of themselves.

It’s super easy to see this – who is expected to take care of a child when they fall? Who is expected to baby-sit? Who did you want when you were sick as a child, mom or dad? Who is expected to be sensitive and pay attention to others’ emotions?

For more info on this idea specifically, read Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich. As a woman, I realized how much work I had been performing and how much it was harming me and I just… got real upset. She comes at this mostly from what a woman’s role is expected to be within the family, and might actually be a bit outdated in that respect because I feel like family structures and dynamics are shifting (that is a totally un-academic evaluation of the situation, don’t quote me on that), but still, it’s really informative.

While I was doing some research for this post I came across a peer-reviewed article about nursing and basically, high amounts of emotional labor led to anxiety and burn-out in those performing it. It literally will cost your mental health – not to mention your time, energy, attention, and it often requires you to ignore your own needs (this last part came from me, not the article). On the other hand, high levels of emotional intelligence (being able to recognize your own and others’ emotional states) meant less emotional labor (and therefore less anxiety & burn-out). One of the most important things to realize is that while you are taking care of someone else’s emotional needs, your own are frequently unmet. That is why it’s important to recognize this in yourself, not just in these characters.

So where does Elain fit in? Elain is the #1 emotional labor provider of the family, and she is about to freaking SNAP. I know, because once I realized how my trauma was hidden in order to spare someone else its consequences, I fucking SNAPPEd. I’ll also spare you the personal details, but Elain hasn’t been “okay”. She hasn’t been “boring”, or “nice”, or “chosen” Feyre over Nesta. She has literally been unable to express herself because (and I am NOT blaming Nesta or Feyre or her father one bit) her family’s emotional state has been so fragile, there hasn’t been room for Elain to feel or express her emotions in years. 

In the feysand short, Rhys says:

I wonder if everyone has spent so long assuming Elain is sweet and innocent that she felt she had to be that way or else she’d disappoint you all.

And that completely tracks. Everyone has gotten used to Elain being not just “nice”, but being the emotionally predictable one. The one they know they can go to for a smile. The one they can count on for never, ever making them realize that she has been through Some Shit Too. And being that person is exhausting.

When Feyre thinks about Elain not using Lucien’s gloves, 1) she still has them, otherwise she couldn’t think about Elain not using them, and 2) I like to see the gloves as something that she will come to use, once she realizes that she can feel and express those emotions without it causing a breakdown in the family. Right now, she just wants to feel. And she can’t do that emotionally, so she’s doing it physically. Once she heals and finds a better balance, she won’t need to resort to physical pain. (Which, lowkey has me thinking some other thoughts, but.... maybe later.) But anyway, once Elain does go through her very own special journey, I fully expect her to welcome those gloves. She won’t need physical pain to feel anymore.

Not to mention my completely unacademic and non-professional opinion that people will judge a nice women harshly for being rude once, but accept a woman with a history of rudeness for just “being that way”. It’s another way that Elain may feel trapped in her “nice girl” persona. I think she started out that way - kindness and light and generosity is 100% in Elain’s character in the first place. It’s not as if she went into the Court of Nightmares and suddenly Cassian thought, “wait, she fits right in to this shithole of depravity”. No, he still thought the literal opposite. It’s just that once people get used to you doing all their emotional labor, they will continue to take advantage of it, even if they don’t realize its cost.

[vanserraseris]

END OF PART VII - I’m not going to lie, this chapter and the next one are probably a little more on the boring side. It’s just sort of Eris spending some time with Lucien. Shit’s gonna hit the fan soon, but Eris is just going to spend some time at the beach, for no reason really. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!!!

no im SO excited for eris and lucien brotherly boring. BEACH EP BEACH EP BEACH EP BEACH EP

Prince of Ashes. Part VII.

masterlist.

“Give me your shirt.” 

“I don’t obey the orders of anyone below my station,” Eris tilted his head back, his fingers digging into the sand of the beach. He was leaning on his forearms, his eyes shut, the afternoon sun warming his face. Eris liked making snobbish remarks like that around his friends just as much as they liked reminding him that his status as heir amounted to absolutely nothing in their presence.

Micah repeated himself, “Give me your shirt.” 

With an exaggerated sigh, Eris undid the laces of his thin, light brown shirt, throwing it at his friend. “Shit, Micah, you should have asked sooner.” Micah’s nose and cheeks were a frightening red colour, the gold of his tattoos bright against the burned skin of his neck, all because he was too proud to admit that he burned when he stayed out in the sun for too long.

“I hate you all,” Micah declared, lifting Eris’s shirt and putting it over his head like a cloak, shielding himself from the rays of the sun. 

Eris knew Lagos was pouting, mocking, “Poor little Micah, can’t stay out in the sun.” 

“Poor little Micah is going to throw sand at you,” Micah muttered.

Widge smiled, lifting the brim of the sun hat he’d borrowed from his mother. While he looked ridiculous, Widge didn't seem to care. “Not all of us have exceptional magical abilities,” he huffed a laugh as Enya jumped up, licking at his face. Eris swore that hound loved Widge more than him. Lagos was sprawled on his back, pants thrown off to the side, using his own shirt as a pillow as he laid by Eris in his undershorts. He was faintly glowing.

Eris kept expecting Lucien to do the same thing, eyes following Lucien as he played near the water’s edge. Lucien hadn’t shown signs of any other Day Court magic since Lady Morai had suppressed it, but Eris still found himself worrying over it. Rufus was also by the water’s edge, boots off, pants rolled up, and shirt left unbuttoned as he watched over Lucien. Every so often, he would kick water at their youngest brother, laughing every time Lucien told him to stop.

“Your brother is perhaps an even greater menace than you were upon your arrival at my camp,” Micah declared. He awkwardly moved towards Eris, dragging his ass along the sand while still trying to keep the shirt over his head.

“He belongs in a circus,” Lagos added. 

“I like having him there,” Widge managed to get out as Enya continued to lick his cheeks.

“He’s doing alright?” Their father had recently sent Rufus to one of Autumn’s largest war camps. It was located in the South, near the Spring Court border; Eris had been sent there at two decades old with nothing but a sword, brown leathers, and a title he was pretty sure he’d never be able to live up to. Eris was proud to admit that over two centuries later, he could claim being a half-decent commander of his father’s armies - not fantastic at combat, but damn-good at military strategy.

Eris had heard that Rufus, despite his more care-free attitude, was doing quite well, but it was always Eris’s first instinct to assume that Rufus was going to get himself killed or cause some sort of international catastrophe. Especially with political tensions in Prythian so high lately, Eris found that he’d become quite the mother hen, constantly asking his friends how Rufus was holding up. “He’s absolutely mad,” Micah laughed, “I could throttle him sometimes.”

“Cauldron, does he write his reports backwards?” Eris smiled just thinking about it, “Rufus used to do shit like that to his tutors, you can read them in front of a mirror.” 

“He walks around the camp with a near-empty cognac bottle filled with apple juice, and makes bets on whether or not he can hit moving targets with his bow and arrows,” Lagos said. “He won 50 gold marks from me before I found out what he’d been doing.” 

“Serves you right,” Eris grinned.

“He also tells us the most interesting things,” Micah hummed. He nudged at Eris with his knee. “Things that you neglect to mention.” 

Lagos didn't sound too amused as he said, “Told us he was afraid for your life.”

Eris knew exactly what Rufus had told them. “If this is about Lizaveta—” 

“Of course it’s about Lady Lizaveta,” Lagos leaned up on an elbow. “Your choice in lovers is abysmal, truly.” 

“Don’t offend me,” Micah mumbled.

Lagos ignored him, “It’s like you dive headfirst into relationships that are bound to get you killed.” Eris sneered, mostly because Lagos was right. If his father ever learned of the countless male lovers Eris had been with over the centuries, Eris was almost certain that Beron would kill him. Or if he found out about the lesser faeries, or the females of common birth. Eris had been very good at ignoring his father’s rants about degeneracy when he’d been much younger.

But Lizaveta was a full-blooded noble, and Eris didn’t really see the problem. “How might this relationship kill me?” 

“You’re sneaking around with a female who’s rumoured to have killed her own husband in his sleep less than a decade ago. Does that seem like a good idea?” 

“I’m sure he deserved it,” Widge muttered absently, “Lots of lords in Autumn deserve it.” Everyone turned to face him, but he was looking off into the distance, no longer paying any attention to them.

Micah placed a gentle hand on Eris’s knee, “We’re just messing with you.” Eris knew they meant well, but his friends had a horrible habit of sticking their noses into Eris’s business, all hidden behind the guise that they “cared for his well-being,” as they so often reminded him. 

“Just make sure you’re not her next victim,” Lagos added, “And do try and keep your father from finding out.”

Eris scowled, “Your faith in me is astounding.” He’d had centuries worth of practice in keeping his lovers a secret from the rest of his family and ensuring that rumours didn’t make their way to the always-listening ears of Autumn Court aristocrats. It was exhausting. He looked away from his friends to make sure Lucien and Rufus hadn’t drowned while he’d been distracted.

Lucien seemed to have convinced Rufus to play some sort of aggressive game with him, spinning Lucien around in his arms before throwing him deeper into the ocean. Lucien landed in the water with a big splash, Rufus roaring with laughter. Eris would have scolded them both had Lucien not jumped up from the water with a huge grin on his face, looking very foolish as he struggled to run at Rufus.

“Just be careful, we quite enjoy your company.” Micah squeezed his knee once before moving his hand, his fingers now dragging through the sand. 

Eris finally looked away from his brothers after deciding that they would be fine, turning to face Micah again. “Let’s talk about what happened in Spring.” 

“Yes, let’s talk about how we’re on the verge of another war, Eris would rather talk about our impending doom than his lover.” Eris glared at Lagos.

Micah scoffed, “There’s not going to be a fucking war, both of them are too young - untried. They aren’t going to do something so stupid.” 

Eris considered this. Rhysand and Tamlin had just become new High Lords, perhaps they would start a war just to prove that they could. “If somebody killed my mother, I might start a war.” 

“You might start a war just for fun.” Eris kicked sand at Lagos, a crooked smile on his face that was becoming more and more rare. Eris knew Lagos simply meant well.

Lagos returned the smile, dimples showing. Lagos was perhaps the only one of his friends that constantly bothered Eris for being a cruel prince of the Autumn Court.  

“Cauldron, you wouldn’t do that either,” Micah seemed so sure. Eris sometimes wished he had that amount of confidence in his ability to make good choices. 

Widge furrowed his brows, looking up from what he was in the process of writing in messy, scrawled script in the sand. “Wait, what happened in Spring?”

Somebody would explain it to him later, Eris thought. “I wonder if Rhysand will be a better High Lord than his father.” It was no secret that the Hewn City was more horrible than any part of Beron’s territory. Eris had despised the place since the first moment he’d stepped foot in it. He’d take his own two-faced city of Calchas over that wretched city any day. 

“Probably not,” Micah adjusted the shirt over his head, “But at least he’s better looking.”

Eris would have to agree. With the dark hair and those star-lit, violet eyes, Rhysand was one of the better looking faeries Eris had ever seen. Not that he’d ever admit it out loud, “I like his general better.” 

Micah grinned, “What about the shadowsinger?” Eris grinned back, “Fancy the shadowsinger, do you?” 

“Who doesn’t?” 

“Those people are from the Night Court.” Widge looked confused, much like he usually did. 

“Very observant,” Lagos muttered.

“We’re talking about Tamlin and Rhysand,” Eris explained. “The new High Lords.” 

“Heard about that,” Widge said with a nod. “Sounds like a mess.” With a shake of his head, almost like he was clearing his thoughts, Widge went back to whatever he was writing in the sand without so much as a second glance in their direction. Eris shifted slightly so that he could more clearly see what Widge was doing. He’d drawn three interconnected circles in the sand, numbers and formulas surrounding them.

Eris had always enjoyed watching Widge work, liked trying to figure out what he was doing, and he wasn’t paying attention to anything as he tried to understand where Widge was going with this. Definitely not smart on his part, he hadn’t been expecting so much water to crash onto his head, leaving him completely soaked. Widge yelped as some of the water fell on him as well. 

“What the fuck,” Eris growled.

“My circles,” Widge whined, the water having ruined whatever he was writing. Eris hoped he remembered what it was, it had seemed interesting. He heard everyone’s laugh. From the deep rumble of Micah, to the obnoxious cackle of Lagos, to the loud howl of Rufus. It should have come as no shock that Rufus would try and pull a prank on Eris, no doubt with Lucien’s help. He was rather disappointed in himself for not keeping an eye on the two biggest troublemakers in all of Prythian.

Eris looked up at Rufus with a glare, he could see the steam in the air around him as he used some of his magic to dry off. “Honestly, Rufus,” Eris sneered, teeth bared. 

“My mistake, didn’t see you sitting there.” He’d filled his fucking boot with water and thrown it at him. 

Eris ran a hand through his still damp hair, “You’ve disappointed me.” Rufus just smiled, tugging once on Lucien’s braid.

“Lucien told me to do it,” Rufus was very good at playing the part of innocent victim. His auburn brows were raised, his russett eyes wide. “No I didn’t,” Lucien instantly stopped cackling, defending his honour. “Eris, he’s the disappointment, I’d never.” 

“Little assholes,” Eris mumbled, shoving Lucien playfully. Lucien laughed again, dropping into the sand right beside him. Rufus sat by Lagos, winking at Eris before he sprawled on his back, Enya trotting over to lie down by his head.

Eris was glad for moments like this - when his father wasn’t in Autumn and he had the time to spend with the people he cared about. He knew it was a weakness, the fact that he cared about them, but he'd missed them all. Rufus was stuck at the war camp with his friends, Lucien was stuck in the Forest House, and Eris was stuck in his territory far away from them both.

Eris had been staying away from Lucien anyway, visiting less and less. It’d been months since he’d last seen the little runt, but Eris knew it was for the best. 

“This was really nice, Eris,” Lucien said with a small smile, his face turned towards the sun. He looked happy. 

Eris nodded once, closing his eyes and turning his own face towards the sun, “I thought it was really nice, too.”

Perhaps it was very foolish of Eris to be spending his valuable time frolicking on beaches, but all he wanted to do right now was pretend everything would be alright. Pushing all his worries aside, the sound of waves crashing along the shore, his toes curling into the white sand of the beach, Eris could almost forget he was the heir of the Autumn Court.

[whump-town]

The Safe Side

No pairings

No warnings (surprising, I know)

Hotch is getting older and that scares the shit out of Reid

I probably wouldn't have finished this if not for @genevievedarcygranger

----------------

His only symptom is memory loss.

Reid sees it, he knows it. The symptoms he’s committed to his memory for better or worse dispelled so easily, so regularly before him but he can’t help but entertain his irrational fears. He’s not sure why. It would not be more comforting for Hotch’s occasional forgetfulness to be Alzheimer’s and not age and yet he waits for the moment that proves him wrong. For the phone call that Hotch is dressed for work and trying to get up to the bullpen. That they’ll lose him to anxiety and aggression, he’ll lose his temperament and comforting nature bit-by-bit until he’s broken down. And Reid will lose him too.

The good things become tainted by his fear.

At Christmas, they go to Rossi’s like they always do, and while the others dance to the music softly humming through the room Reid finds himself watching Hotch. Inspecting the grey hairs growing ever more along his temples, spread now through the rest of his hair. They age him appropriately but Reid can’t help but feel betrayed by their presence like he’s being taunted. No different from the reading glasses perched at the very edge of Hotch’s nose, the ones Hank lightly reaches up for. Old enough not to grab at them but still curiously taking a finger to trail their frames. Reid neglects his desire to be closer to them, to be drawn in by Hotch’s deep voice and the crackling fire soothing Hank to sleep. He stays where he is, hearing the ghosting bits of “Where The Wild Things Are” for the third time.

All he hears is science. Proof in the voice’s Hotch uses for each character -- “Oh, please don't go — I'll eat you up — I love you so!” -- that his language center had no inhibitions. The way Hank looks at Hotch when he bellows that line the first time, giggling and writing about when Hotch tickles him and squeezes him up tight so Hank can’t get away is lost to Reid for what it really is. That the spontaneous tickling and the reading mean other things. The love between them and Hank’s adoration for Hotch boiled down to symptoms Reid can prove Hotch doesn’t have.

Reid is terrified and it won’t let it up.

He finds himself panicking in Rossi’s backyard, surrounded by laughing people. Happy people who have no idea what his problem is. But he sweeps his over the clusters of chatting people and realizes that in all the groups he can’t find Hotch. Amidst them, he’s fairly easy to spot. Sticks to what he knows and who he’s most comfortable with. Diplomatic in that he makes sure he talks to everyone once but if he’s going to be someplace he’s not where he should be.

This is it, he tells himself. He’ll find Hotch confused, ambling about alone and where he shouldn’t be. Not sure where he is or why he’s here.

And then Reid turns around and finds Emily sitting with him on the porch swing. One of Hotch’s legs stretched out over the expanse of the porch, dark jeans a contrast to the concrete as he rocks them back and forth. Emily’s head on his shoulder and his arm around her back, a glass of wine passed between them. Neither saying a word as they watch the teams they built interacting with one another, families mixing together.

Reid can’t enjoy their smiles, the way they look out over everyone like proud parents.

Even his own birthday with books in a variety of languages sitting around him wrapped in an array of papers that so brilliantly display who their giver was. With his fingers tracing the one covered in newspaper, the one he knows is from Hotch, Reid is lost to this rot in the pit of his stomach. The sludge that fills his veins with tension. It leaves him the only person not smiling, with no idea what’s happening, when Garcia and Hotch stand over his cake fussing about which direction to light the candles. He misses the finger Hotch swipes through the icing and dollops right on Garcia’s nose. Looks up to watch Garcia retaliate with the same treatment but can’t enjoy it, can’t feel love or ease when the room erupts in laughter and Garcia and Hotch stand there with their icing-covered noses smiling at one another.

He finally finds the courage to mention it to someone, tells Morgan one afternoon when they both end up at Hotch’s house. Morgan is there fixing some wooden stakes in Hotch’s garden and Reid dropping off groceries. Hotch is sleeping off surgery medication, unaware of the hushed conversation being had outside.

“Kid,” Morgan can see it. The terror eating Reid alive. “They just hacked him apart and put him back together, all right? He’s on some strong shit right now. He’ll be fine in a day or two. You’ll see.” Morgan tells him not to worry about it, Hotch has been knocked around his entire life. Nearly sixty years of severe blows to the head and if he manages to walk out of this life with just a sketchy memory then he’s getting off lucky.

But when Hotch stands for too long in a room trying to remember what he was doing or when he can’t provide an answer for how much coffee he’s had or if he needs eggs or if he had the last bowl of oatmeal this morning it scares the shit out of Reid.

Really, Hotch is fine.

Hotch had to write his doctor’s appointments down and he’s constantly needing some sort of surgery to fix whatever old injury is coming back to remind him of his previous offense but he’s his normal actively grouchy self. He never forgets to stop by Reid’s apartment Thursday around noon or his promise to get Henry and Hank from school when no one else can.

That doesn’t mean no one worries about him.

He would hate to know the collapse wasn’t when they started taking note of his fragile health.

Two weeks after his forty-fifth birthday he pulled a muscle in his chest (moving the couch so Jack could get a Hotwheels out from underneath) and JJ had watched him pause during his coffee run to press his palm into the strain. Her mind had filtered through a hundred scenarios to explain the behavior and they’d all ended with his death. Hotch is the kind of person with a puzzle piece life, whose pieces are spread out over the course of years, meant to be collected and put together by only the most detail-oriented. She knew his father had died of a heart attack and Reid only served to reiterate that fact. It was only a pulled muscle but, not for the first time, she felt utterly terrified of how much losing him would hurt.

There’s a string of these awful moments when his humanity, his mortality, is right there for them to witness. And, as strong as they’d like to believe themselves to be, they look away.

He’s fine now, all things considered.

The janky memory thing isn’t all that bad. He has milked it on more than one occasion. It’s how he keeps missing his physical therapy. Although, that has come around to bite him in the ass. He’s supposed to be using this cane they gave him and now someone shows up every week to take him to the appointment so he can’t even play it off like he’s forgotten. Typically it’s Emily or Derek but Garcia’s shown up and Reid even took him once. It’s very annoying. Doesn’t help that there are roughly thirteen people who he might run into in public who know he’s supposed to be using the cane and who will inquire about it or bring it up to someone else.

He hadn’t realized just how many people could get on his case until he’d run into Matt’s wife in the store and after having their brief, polite conversation where he mentioned Reid had called him not that long ago asking for advice on the BAUs current case, she asked about his knee. She said Garcia had been fretting over this last surgery he had and told her about it, she hadn’t thought that much time had passed. Was surprised he was back on his feet. It had taken six hours for him to get the phone call from Garcia and then Emily came over an hour later begging him to just “for the sake of my fucking sanity, Hotch, take it easy”. That’s when Garcia sat down and made him a calendar and he lost his say in matters of his grocery shopping and responsibility to take himself to doctor’s appointments.

He’s since won back grocery shopping. His doctor wrote him a note and Garcia conceded. She’s not stupid enough to toss their schedule for his doctor’s appointments though.

So, though he loathes it, he takes the cane with him when he leaves the house.

He’s learned his lesson. Penelope Garcia is one scary-ass lady who has far more control over him and everyone else than he’d care to realize.

Hotch hears the doorbell, muffled though it is, from outside. He’d known getting down on the ground was a bad idea with the way his knees have been hurting but he’s got zucchini and cucumbers laying out in the sun and while he ignored them yesterday, he knows he need to get them out today. Reid had expressed interest in them and Rossi’s likely to want the zucchini. He also knows Derek offered to take care of this sort of stuff but it’s a too warm Sunday morning and Derek’s likely chasing around a happy toddler.

Besides, he doesn’t have enough tomatoes to compensate for Derek’s work. That being said Derek would come over and do it regardless, he doesn’t mind.

“It’s about to rain,” Reid informs him the second he gets to the door. Hotch watches Reid’s eyes flick to his empty left hand, to the curve of his limp palm where his cane is supposed to be. Unlike the others, Hotch knows Reid will not say anything directly to him. Emily might ask where the cane is and Garcia would insist on going to get it but Reid will just anxiously flicker back and forth between Hotch’s face and his hand. Twisting and worrying until Hotch gets it himself. Which is surprisingly effective.

Hotch hums his agreeance, he could smell it in the air. Can tell it’s going to be a good storm with the shift and strength of the wind coming in. It’ll cool things off for a few hours then bring back the humidity and the mosquitoes with a vengeance.

“Do you think” Reid follows Hotch into the kitchen. He’s careful to keep a distance, not to push Hotch’s pace. He mills about in odd places to compensate their gates, looks at the book sitting on Hotch’s coffee table. “Do you think it’s going to rain a lot?” He’s a genius with the means to figure that out on his own and likely he already knows what he thinks the answer is. Hotch’s opinion is still important.

Hotch is in the fridge, rustling bags around as he finds the bag of vegetables he’s got set aside for Reid. He’s weird about fruits and vegetables, worries about bacteria and things but will eat a Poptart for every meal if given the chance. The logic is irrational but after twenty years of worrying about Reid’s diet, Hotch has finally found a solution to this particular problem.

“No tomatoes,” Hotch promises as he hands the bag over to Reid.

Reid nods, “I don’t like tomatoes.”

“I know.”

Reid takes his bag, smiles as he thinks about what things he can make with what he’s been given. “How much do you think it’ll rain?” he asks again.

Hotch hums, having heard Reid the first time. “It’ll be a good storm,” he figures, “might take out the electricity.” He only adds the last bit as a warning. Reid’s scared of the dark, a fact exacerbated by big storms that knock out the electricity. A common occurrence but no less startling.

“Oh.” Reid worries his lip, looks to the ground and everywhere but where Hotch is.

It’s likely to start soon, the winds really picking up and the sun’s drowned out by thick, rolling clouds. The storm of the century it’s likely not. Hotch doubts it’s even the sort people pull over on the side of the road to wait out but he decides to think it might anyway. Decides to tap Reid’s elbow and motion for him to follow, “come on.” He’s not even really sure where he’s going but it’ll lend a distraction. “Wait out the storm,” Hotch tells him, glancing back to make sure Reid’s following. “I wanna show you something.”

They spend the storm in his office, leaning over an old law school textbook. Reid has an affinity for them. No matter how many times Hotch uses them for a distraction, pulling them down from their dusty shelves, Reid still takes to them like it’s the very first time. He’ll sit for hours reading over the information but, his favorite parts, are how Hotch they are.

The notes he’s scribbled in the margins. Flashes of yellow highlighter. A coffee stain or smudge where his palm moves against not yet dried ink. Notes for cases or classes. Pages he’s dog-eared. They’re lived in, nearly perfect condition biographies. Of course, Reid gravitates to them.

By the time the storm rolls over Reid realizes he’s been alone in the office for hours. Sheepishly, he gets up and looks around. Makes his way through Hotch’s house until Reid finds him on the couch. As soon as Hotch sees him he takes off his reading glasses, placing a bookmark in his book and raising his eyebrow to inquire if Reid needs something.

“I should probably get going.”

Hotch doesn’t miss how suddenly bashful Reid gets, the way he looks down at the floor. “If you’d like,” Hotch won’t encourage him to leave. He spends a lot of time alone. He doesn’t mind have someone floating around. But Reid’s decided he’s overstayed his welcome so he moves cautiously towards the door. Taking his time because he knows Hotch will see him out.

“Be careful,” Hotch tells him as he opens himself up for a hug and Reid flushes a little under the attention but still steps into Hotch’s arms. Hotch gives him the bag of vegetables and frowns at the state of Reid’s hair. “Stop worrying so much,” Hotch fusses and they’re both aware of how parental his tone has gotten as frowns. He can see grey hairs here and there. Maybe not as present as his but there. “Do you want to talk about it? Whatever’s worrying you so much?”

Reid freezes, confused. Ordinarily, he’d give in, Hotch always fixes things but not this time. “I’m okay,” Reid promises.

Hotch doesn’t believe him but Reid’s an adult and Hotch knows when he’s needed Reid will know where to find him. All he can hope is that Reid comes to him if he really needs help. “Alright.”

They nod once more and Reid steps out but he’s not halfway down the driveway when Hotch shouts “I meant it, be careful driving home!”

Reid stops where he is, struck by the oddness of this situation. He made it his entire childhood without this sort of thing. His mother cared that he got home but he didn’t have friends to be out with. Never needed to stop and figure out how to call home and tell her he’d be home late. Now he’s lost his mother and he’s lost Gideon.

And he’s terrified he’ll lose Hotch next.

“I’ll text you when I get home,” he offers, feels silly the second it comes out of his mouth. Like Hotch would care enough for that. Like Hotch won’t be bothered with him texting him. Like Hotch is going to sit there and wait for the text.

Hotch narrows his eyes, “you’d better.”

Because Hotch will sit there and wait for the text.

“Yes, sir.”

Hotch is fine but Reid will keep watching just to be on the safe side.

[babymetaldoll]

Danger days - Chapter four: "She doesn't help me"

Word count: 8,5K

Pairing: Matthew Gray Gubler x OC + My Chemical Romance

Summary: Joey starts touring, and soon things start getting awkward with Gerard. Also, Frank is somehow jealous 'cos he wants to get all of her attention. Mikey spends most of the time drunk in this chapter and Ray is the father figure all these kids need.

Warnings: Alcohol, drunk talk, dirty thoughts, mentions of a boner someone is trying to hide, bad jokes, and a lot of cursing.

A/N: Ok Matthew fans, there's a lot of My Chemical Romance in this chapter, but we all need context and Joey has to be locked with them for A LONG WHILE. Also, all the "Text in italic" are thoughts and arguments our heroes are having with themselves.

All of this is fiction. And the gif ain't mine.

Masterlist

Chapter one | Chapter two | Chapter three | Chapter four | Chapter five | Chapter six | Chapter seven | Chapter eight | Chapter nine | Chapter ten | Chapter eleven | Chapter twelve | Chapter thirteen | Chapter fourteen | Chapter fifteen | Chapter sixteen | Chapter seventeen | Chapter eighteen | Chapter nineteen | Chapter twenty | Chapter twenty one | Chapter twenty-two | Chapter twenty-three | Chapter twenty-four |

--

::: LAX, October 21st 2011 :::

Joey's eyes were still watered up as she stared at her boarding pass, making her best to stop crying. She had just hugged Matthew goodbye, and her heart felt like it was breaking as every second passed. She missed him already, and she felt like a sick cliché. She could still feel his arms around her, holding her tight, and his lips kissing her between tears, both of them crying as neither wanted to say goodbye. Joey knew she would keep on crying as they waited for their flight, so she walked away from their gate and tried to disappear among the people.

- "I miss you"- she read the text Matthew just sent her and wiped off the tears from her cheeks.

- "Me too"- she quickly wrote and held her cell phone close.

- "Hey!"- Mikey almost yelled next to her, making her jump.

- "Where the fuck did you come from?!"

- "The dutty free, I had to get some more chocolate for the flight"- Joey looked at him, still surprised, and making her best not to show how sad she was.

- "Why are you crying?"- it was clear she had failed.

- "I'm miserable 'cos I'm not gonna see Matthew in two weeks."

- "It's just two weeks, calm down"- Mikey tried to cheer her up and gave her a chocolate bar.

- "Well, I'll miss him too much."

- "I promise you, we are gonna have so much fun, you won't be sad the whole trip,"- Mikey wrapped an arm around her and messed with her hair.

- "Thanks"- she whispered just to be polite. She was too sad to believe him.

After a week and a half working with the band, Mikey was the closest band member Joey could call a friend among the guys. He and Ray were the nicest and always made her feel comfortable. They would joke around in rehearsals and have lunch together. It was nice. It felt good, like high school friends.

Frank and Gerard were a completely different story because though Joey felt they were very nice, things could become very uncomfortable very quickly with them. Frank would always start a conversation and share a nice laugh, but each time they stayed quiet, his eyes turned into a magnet she couldn't stop staring at. And it felt too intense, like Frank was even flirting a little bit. Sure, she thought he was cute, but he was married, and she knew things were never going to take a weird turn.

And about Gerard, well, that was even weirder. Completely odd. A case of study. He would make his best not to be alone with her, and she could feel it. She knew he always paid attention to what she was saying in a conversation. Still, he constantly made an effort not to talk to her directly. But when they were playing, she could feel her knees go weak each time he looked at her. That man sweated sensuality, and it took all she had in her to stop looking at him each time he moved closer to her. She couldn't concentrate, and she had to keep her eyes closed most of the time to avoid staring into his red hair, his fine ass, and pretty much anything related to him.

Joey knew she would never cheat on Matthew with Gerard. She just thought the singer was too hot for his own good. And for hers. It was a good thing he kept his distance. Well, except for the next ten and a half hours, ‘cos they had seats together.

- "Hey"- she cut him a shy, nervous smile and took a deep breath as soon as he appeared next to her. She had to stuff her hands in his pocket for a minute, ‘cos she was afraid they were going to start shaking. Yes, that's how uneasy she got around him. It wasn't something that happened right away. It developed over the week, and she tried to make lights off the deal most of the time.

- "Bitch, you are working with him. You can't act like a teenager around him just because he is hot. You don't even wanna date him or whatever, you love Matthew… you just wanna stare at this guy from a safe distance 'cos he is so fucking sexy!"- Joey thought.

- "Hey"- Gerard stood still and looked at the empty seat next to Joey. The rest of the band was spread on the plane, and neither seemed to be close for switching seats.

- "Ok, you can do this. She is your coworker. Just keep it casual,"- he thought and moved over to sit next to her.

Neither of them said a word for a while. Joey opened her backpack and grabbed the book she was reading, and Gerard kept scrolling down his phone. He looked out of the corner of his eyes and tried to catch the name of the book, but he couldn't. So he tried again, this time pretending to be uncomfortable in his seat, and he succeeded. He found out Joey was reading a book he didn't know.

- "Are you ok?"- the girl asked and turned to the man that looked blushed, almost caught in something.

- "Yeah, I just… wanted to take off my jacket"- he did so and stuffed it under the seat. Joey looked at him and nodded. The fact that he moved made his perfume reach her, and it was delicious.

- "So, what are you reading?"- his curiosity won.

- "Bestiario, it's a Julio Cortazar book I loved back in school. Mom sent me a box of my old stuff the other day, and I found it."

- "Never heard of him"

- "It's an Argentinian writer. He is awesome. His short stories and how he successfully created surrealist worlds are poetical."

Joey explained but made her best not to look into Gerard's eyes, so she kept staring at his hands playing on his lap.

- "Besides, he was a rebel. He used language his own way, creating words and neologism… I just love him."

By the end of her speech, she failed and turned her gaze at Gerard's, making her hold her breath.

- "Sounds impressive"- he whispered and cleared his throat.

- "You can read it if you want,"- Joey said and looked away quickly, feeling her cheeks blush- "It's a long trip."

- "Thanks"- and after that, the two of them fell silent again.

How had Joey ended up so affected by Gerard? She had a wet dream about him. One amazing wet dream that she couldn't shake off her head. And after that, she wouldn't stop looking at him differently. He was sexy. He was definitely fuckable. He was hot, and he was smart. He was trouble. She had to keep a cold head around him. A complete challenge for that long trip.

Why was it so hard for Gerard? ‘Cos since he first saw her, he got a boner in his pants, and that shit hadn't changed. If anything, it had gotten worse. That didn't mean they were going to fuck or be together or fall in love. Whatever the thing that caused him to be affected by her had to be shut down. And the sooner, the better.

- "Are you ok?"- Ray asked Frank, who kept moving and trying to catch what Gerard and Joey were doing.

- "Yeah, why?"

- "Because you are fucking driving me insane! You are too restless, and you haven't let me sleep in the last hour!"

- "Wanna switch places? Ask Gerard if he wants to sit with you."- Iero said and smiled- "Very smooth Frank, that way Ray will find out in a minute you wanna sit with Joey"- he nearly slapped himself.

- "No, I just want you to stop moving!"- Ray argued, with a tone of voice that sounded (again) more like a father than like a band member.

- "Fine"- Frank whispered, frustrated, and crossed his arms on his chest.

- "What's wrong with you?"- Toro turned to his friend, truly concerned something was tormenting him- "Is it about leaving the babies?"

- "Yeah"- Iero answered and looked outside the window.

It was the truth, but it wasn't just all of it. The actual fact was that he wanted to know if Joey and Gerard were talking. He knew his friend had a crush on her. It was too obvious for him, though the rest of the band nearly noticed it.

But Frank did. He knew each time Gerard stared at Joey more than he had to while she was playing drums. He also recognized the perfume Gerard rarely wore, only when he tried to catch someone's attention. And damn it! He didn't want Joey to notice his friend. He knew Gerard wasn't going to do anything, but if she was going to have a crush on someone in the band, that should be him, not Gee.

Each time Gerard's knee touched Joey, it felt like an electric shock against Joey's skin. That didn't let her concentrate on her book. Gerard didn't seem to notice, though, which was good. She didn't want him to know how much he could affect her. Not even she wanted to know how much he affected her. She knew she loved Matthew, and she would never cheat, but feeling so attracted to someone else made her very uneasy.

She opened her backpack and grabbed her iPod. The smartest thing to do was to listen to some music, read and forget about the fact the hottest guy she had ever met- except for Matthew, of course- was sitting next to her, reading a Stephen King novel, unaffected by her presence.

Gerard had managed to concentrate on his book for a few minutes, but each time Joey's leg softly brushed his, he shivered, so he ended up pretending to be cold. And covered his lap with his jacket. That was also very helpful in case he'd get an involuntary and inappropriately timed boner.

Suddenly, the soft touch of Joey's head reached his shoulder. She was asleep and casually cuddled against him. Was she faking it? It didn't seem so, she still had her headphones on, but the book had left her hands and fallen on her lap. She was asleep, resting her head softly against him.

- "Ok, Gerard, years of practice have come to this moment. Think about math, equations, science test, dissecting a frog, anatomy class, your drummer's body on that Misfits tank top she wore the other day… no! no, again, math, physics, avocado, coconut oil… Her hair smells like coconut oil… I wonder if she would let me spread coconut oil on her… Gerard!! You have a wife you love! Stop this!"

Gerard jumped on his seat, and Joey quickly woke up.

- "Wha…"- she turned to him confused, and he cut her a sweet soft smile- "Shit! I'm so sorry!"- the girl started apologizing right away, completely blushed.

- "No, don't be, you just fell asleep."

- "I'm so sorry."

- "Hey, it's ok"- Gerard said and acted all cool- "My shoulder is your shoulder… we still have eight more hours to reach London, and I am guessing you are a sleeper."

Joey's cheeks were burning as she sat correctly, her heart racing in her chest. Ok, that wasn't what was supposed to happen. And the tour hadn't actually started yet. Great.

The girl looked in her phone for old pictures with Matthew. Honestly, she already missed him, and she wanted to look at his face, remembering what was waiting for her back home.

- "You guys are a cute couple,"- Gerard said and regretted his words as soon as they left his lips- "Cute couple?! What the fuck was that? What am I? A fucking asshole, that's for sure."

- "Thank you"- Joey blushed and kept her eyes on Matthew's picture on her phone- He has been a real support for me ever since we met.

- "How long have you been dating?"

- "Six months and two weeks"- she answered proudly- "We met at the studio one day, he asked me out for coffee... and we've been drinking coffee together ever since."

The two of them smiled at each other and stayed quiet.

- "Your wife is amazing"- Joey added ‘cos it felt like the polite thing to do.

- "Thanks. Yeah, she is incredible."

- "How did you meet her?"

- "Touring, we were at the Project Revolution one year, and by the end of the tour, we got married."

- "Wow, that was fast"- Joey said, thinking out loud- "Shit! Less than three months and he got married?! How can you be sure to do such a thing? Well, maybe when you know you know… but I don't know… seems a little rushed to me."

- "We knew it was the right thing to do,"- he explained calmly-" We knew we didn't want to be apart from each other when the tour ended."

- "That's so sweet"- and after that, the conversation was dead- "So, I'm gonna try to sleep some more. If I fall on your shoulder, don't doubt to wake me up, please."- the girl said and fixed the little travel pillow behind her neck.

- "Don't worry, it's ok, I'm gonna catch a movie"- Gerard answered and smiled one more time, their eyes locked at each other- "Ok Gerard, just look away"- he thought and made his best to follow his own command, but he couldn't.

- "Come on, Joey!! Breath and fall asleep, and stop drooling for him all over! You are pathetic"- the girl wanted to hit herself as she cleared her throat and turned to grab her headphones.

- "Do you want to check out my book?"- she asked and handed him over the one she was reading before- "Stupid! He said he wanted to watch a movie."

- "Yeah! It sounded pretty good. I'll take a look at it while you snore"- he joked, and she blushed. Their hands brushed when she brought closer the book to him, and a little electric shock hit the two of them.

- "Ok, I'll sleep now"- Joey whispered and turned to look over the window- "Just try to sleep for the next eight hours, and you'll be peachy."

Mikey Way asked for another scotch and turned to the window. He wanted to get drunk and sleep. Being drunk was his new nature. Whatever could numb the pain away. He didn't even get to see his wife before he left for the tour. She called and wished him luck. That was it. And still, he wasn't brave enough to be the one to put out on the table the divorcing reality that came ahead. He didn't want to be the one to put an end to it all.

- "Hey"- Frank appeared and sat next to him- "What are you doing?"

- "Drinking, what does it seem like I'm doing?"

- "Being a jerk, that's what it looks like."

- "If you don't like it, you can leave"- but Frank didn't. Basically, because Ray had kicked him out of their seat for being too irritating. And James was snoring. Instead, he took a sip of Mikey's whiskey and nodded.

- "Good shit."

- "Get one for yourself and let me sleep"

- "Damn it! Why is everybody so obsessed with sleeping?"

- "Get out!"- Mikey Way mouthed with his eyes closed, and Frank had no other way but to stand up. He looked around the place until he found the red hair he wanted to spy on. Iero walked slowly, pretending to go to the bathroom, acting casual, which was completely stupid. No one was actually looking at him.

- "Oh hey!"- he said when she stood next to Gerard and Joey's row. He looked at him, raising his eyes from the book, and smiled. Joey was asleep and didn't even move. Her head rested on the seat, and she didn't seem to hear what was going on around her.

- "Hey Frank, what are you doing?"

- "Nothing, I just wanted to see what you were doing. Apparently, Ray doesn't want to sit with me, and Mikey doesn't want to sit with anyone."

- "Why?"- Gerard frowned, confused.

- "No idea, I think he is drunk,"- Frank made a pause and smiled at his friend- "So do you wanna go sit with me somewhere and talk for a while?"

Iero asked casually, though he basically just wanted to move Gerard away from Joey.

- "Not really"- Way simply answered- "Joey just lend me this fantastic book, and I want to read it while she sleeps"

- "Oh"- Frank didn't see that answer coming- "That's ok"- and didn't know what to say- "I'll just… go see a movie or something."

- "Ok"- Gerard directly answered and went back to the book. Frank had no other choice but to look away.

- "Ok fucker, what's the big deal? She is there, they are not even talking, she is asleep, you don't wanna be with her or anything, you are not jealous… you just don't want her to be with Gerard. Wait, is that shit being actually jealous? Nah, no, it's not. No. No way. I just… Nah, it's nothing, just shut up".

Frank plopped himself on this seat and covered his face with both hands. Decided to stop thinking shit, he put on his headphones and pushed play on his iPod. It was better to sleep than to do any other stupid thing for the rest of the trip.

Gerard woke up slowly. He never noticed falling asleep. His head rested comfortably to his right against someone else, who soon he realized was Joey.

He tried not to move and came conscious of the moment. She was still asleep, and her perfume filled the air between them. Gerard didn't move an inch. He didn't want to wake her up. He was enjoying this proximity. He felt their legs side by side, brushing against each other as his heart raced. Her body felt warm next to him, and that soft touch made him hungry for some more. A lot more. He couldn't stop wishing he could move her and kiss her whole body, right there, in the middle of the plane.

- "Shit! No!"- he felt his blood pumping down his belly and knew what was happening- "Melted plastic, NSync, funerals, Joey dressed like Morticia, laid on my bed… no!! Stop this!"

But it was too late to stop the boner. It was now time to hide it before Joey- or anyone else- could see it.

The girl sighed and opened her eyes, still half asleep. She had cuddled at Gerard's neck again, and she was afraid to move. No, she didn't want to move, and she was scared of that. She liked being close to him like this. But she shouldn't. She had to be professional. This was the lead singer of the band she was playing with. This was by far the most important job she had ever have, and she wasn't going to ruin it. She couldn't feel attracted to him or any other member of that band. Besides, they were all married! She even knew this guy's wife, and she was adorable.

- "No, Maria Josefina! This shit stops now!".

Joey moved slowly from Gerard's side and made her best to pretend she had just woken up, and not like she had been debating with herself for the last ten minutes or so.

- "Hey"- she whispered at Gerard, who calmly opened his eyes and scratched his head, looking half asleep and adorable at the same time- "Sorry I woke you up."

- "Don't worry, sorry I was leaning on you"

- "Sorry, I was leaning on you too"- she murmured and took a deep breath- "Do you mind? I need to go to the bathroom."

Gerard stared at her in a blank. If he moved, she was gonna see his boner.

- "Yeah, sure."

He slowly stood up (as well as the other unknown guy by the aisle) and did his best to cover himself with the jacket without being too obvious. It was a little worst when he felt Joey brushing her body next to him as he passed by her side. That added some friction that made him bite his lips.

- "Sorry"- she whispered softly, that didn't help either. Lucky for Gerard, she didn't notice a thing and walked away.

- "Dude put the gun down"- the guy in the aisle said, making fun of him. Way couldn't answer; he just sat down and tried to cool himself down.

- "What the fuck is your problem? What are you, fifteen? Put your shit together, you've been alone with him for like four hours, and already you are having a hormonal breakdown? Really?!"

Joey kept arguing with herself in the bathroom and looked at her reflex on the mirror.

-"And besides, you look like the shit!"- she tried to fix her makeup. She made a messy bun to keep her hair from falling on his face.

- "Ok, you are gonna go out there, and you are gonna be a professional grownup. You are gonna sit down and ignore that guy for the rest of the trip, did you hear me? Ok! Just do it!".

But no, it was impossible, she saw him from a distance, reading her book, and her stomach jumped. So she did what seemed to be the right thing to do: she sat next to Mikey and cut him a smile.

- "Hi stranger."

- "Hey gorgeous"- the girl frowned right away and sniffed him.

- "You are drunk"

- "You are smart"

- "Everything ok?"

- "Nop"

- "And you don't want to talk about it"

- "Nop"

- "Good…"

- "And why are you here?"

- "I've got the window seat over there, and I just went to the bathroom… and I didn't want to bother Gerard and the other guy in my way over."

Mikey turned to her, drunk as a skunk, and smiled.

- "Stop being so nice."

- "I can't turn it off…"- she made a pause and grabbed Mikey's plastic cup of whiskey- "Besides, I can be mean."

- "Bullshit"- he argued, laughing, and Joey drank what was left of the plastic glass in one shot, not moving a single facial muscle- "Wow, I'm scared. You drank my booze, rad!"- he answered sarcastically.

- "Oh, shut up, you are drunk."

- "Hey kids! What are you doing?"- Frank showed up and sat next to Joey, all happy and hyper.

- "Mikey is asking me not to be nice"- Joey answered and cut him a huge grin- "How is your flight?"

- "Bored. I saw a shitty movie, napped, and now I am hungry… wanna eat something?"

Joey thought about it for a moment and realized she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. And smiled lodged on her lips as she remembered Matthew had made her favorite breakfast.

- "Definitely"- and Frank's eyes lit up as he buzzed the air host button.

- "Great!"

- "And no more booze for you"- Joey warned Mikey, knowing he wanted to get more whiskey.

- "You are not my mom."

- "You are not my kid."

- "Stop it."

- "I am not nice."

- "Yes, you are, you are taking care of me,"- she took a deep breath and watched him smiling please, knowing he was right.

- "Fuck you! I'm not nice. I just don't want to carry you around covered in puke when we land."

- "You won't have to,"- he simply answered, slurred actually- "Frank will have to do it."

- "I won't"- he refuted shortly- "Ask Gerard, he is taller."

- "Right, you are tiny like a thirteen years old kid"- Joey chuckled, and Frank blushed, embarrassed that Mikey brought that up in front of her. Like she hadn't noticed.

- "Shut up!"- Iero was gonna punch Mikey's arm when the air host arrived, and he refocused on asking for food for the three of them. And booze for the three of them.

Gerard looked around and frowned. Joey was taking too long in the bathroom. Not that he cared, but maybe she didn't feel so good. Perhaps she was locked in there. Perhaps he didn't get the signs, and she was waiting for him to fuck in there and join the high mile club.

- "Stop that shit!! You are gonna have to spend months with this woman, and you are going to learn how to turn your dick off! If possible…".

After a few more minutes, Gerard convinced himself he wanted to go to the bathroom too and stood up. No, Joey didn't seem to be locked in any toilet. But where was she? It only took him a minute or two to hear her laughing along with Frank and Mikey. What the fuck?

- "Hey, what are you doing?"- Gerard asked as he stood next to Frank by the aisle and smiled. Joey's eyes were watering up as she kept laughing, trying to keep it down.

- "We are playing Who wants to be a millionaire,"- she explained and pointed at the screen in front of her seat.

- "Ok…"- he was going to ask what was so funny when he realized they were all drunk. Well, Mikey was wasted. Frank looked kind of drunk, and Joey… it was hard to say.

- "Well, keep it down, you don't want to disturb the rest of the passengers."

- "Sorry, dad"- Mikey answered, chuckling, and Joey bit her lips not to laugh so loud.

- "And stop drinking!"- Gerard commanded.

- "Yes, dad"- Mikey repeated, and Joey's face turned red from holding the laughter.

- "Stop it!"

- "Come on, man, relax. We are not doing anything,"- Frank tried to explain, but it was useless. He had been so into getting Joey's attention, and the girl knew they had been too loud.

- "No, dude, he is right. It's time to wrap up things here"- she grabbed her drink and stood up- "Come on, make room, let me pass."

- "Oh, come on! You don't have to go!"- Frank hated Gerard at that moment.

- "Mikey has to sleep, and we should notch down the noise for a while. Come on, let me pass"- Frank stood up, frowning.

- "Wanna go watch a movie with me?"- he asked Joey and pointed at his seat.

- "I don't think it's a good idea"- Gerard answered before Joey could actually say a word. And that was a huge turn-off for her. She hated when people took decisions for her, even the smallest, like that one.

- "You are gonna keep laughing and making noise."

- "Sorry, can't we have fun?"- Iero was taking shit too seriously all of a sudden, but lucky him, he was the only one who noticed it, and the air host saved his ass.

- "I'm gonna need you all to go back to your designated seats, please."

And that was it. Joey returned to her seat next to Gerard, and Frank grumbled all the way to his seat next to Ray, who was snoring.

- "Fuck you, Frank!! Stop being jealous! Seriously! This is not healthy!!"

- "Do you wanna watch a movie?"- Gerard asked a few minutes after they sat down and got comfortable on their chairs, stealing Frank's idea.

- "Sure"- Joey answered and regretted right away- "Wait, what had we agreed earlier today? Can you fucking listen to yourself for a second? Don't fuck up this job!"- she scratched her arm, nervous, feeling her whole body tense.

- "Great! What do you wanna watch?"

- "Horror"- she quickly answered- "Good, anything that can keep me occupied from thinking."

- "Cool, anything in particular."

- "Zombies"- Gerard turned to her and smiled so excited you could tell she had said all the correct answers.

- "Great, let's see what we've got."

The jetlag hit Joey hard when they reached London. It was eight hours ahead of Los Angeles time, and after that long, eternal, and challenging trip, having to deal with Gerard next to her, she needed to get some good rest. Besides, the first show was Saturday. She only had Friday to recover and get ready for the debut. And shit, she was freaking out.

- "God, kill me"- Mikey whispered as the van passed outside the hotel and had to turn around the corner. There were so many fans waiting for them out there, going out was suicidal. Joey wide opened her eyes and made her best not to show how shocked she was by the scene.

- "Hey"- Ray elbowed her and smiled- "Excited?"

- "Very"- she grinned and yawned- "And also exhausted."

- "Frank and I were thinking about asking for some room service and playing video games if you want to join us."

- "Sounds good. I just need to shower first."

- "Good, you shower! Can you teach Gerard how to do that, please?"- Frank joked, overhearing the conversation from the back seat- "Thank you for inviting her, Ray! Thank you, that you!!"- and god, he was excited, like a little kid.

- "Oh, come on! I shower now! Stop telling people I'm gross!"- Gerard argued and smacked Frank's head, joking.

- "You traumatized the band, and you have a stigma for being dirty and smelly, teen spirit,"- Mikey added with a deep, weary, hungover voice.

- "Shit! I need to catch up with a lot of info."

- "You are not really missing a lot"- James said next to her and yawned- "Gerard and Mikey didn't shower when they started touring; that's why they called Gee "Teen spirit." Frank used to hang shower camps at one side of the bus to shower after the show. Ray waited until the bus stopped by gas stations to use the shower there when it was available. He usually was left behind ‘cos everybody forgot about him. And that's the short version of touring with these guys. "

James explained as Joey chuckled.

- "Thank you, James. You are the best."

- "Oh, cut it"- Gerard threw his friend a scarf, and Joey laughed.

- "Ok, kids, and how are you planning to avoid all those fans waiting for you out there?"- Joey wondered as she kept looking outside the window as the group of teenagers reached the other side of the street.

- "The MCArmy is pretty cool"- Gerard explained as the girl turned around and raised an eyebrow, looking into his eyes, completely unconvinced.

- "I bet it can still get pretty scary to be out there with all those girls"

- "I mean it, they are not."

- "Yeah, sure. Then just get out this van and walk out there alone, without Worm"- Joey dared and their bodyguard, Worm, turned to him and shook his head no.

- "She is right, face it. You are never gonna make it"- the whole band made a pause after Worm delivered the line and chuckled. Joey didn't get the joke, but she said no word.

- "I really need to know more about this band, fuck!"

- "Don't worry, dude. We are gonna get through the back"- Worm announced, which seemed to be a good idea until they saw the back of the hotel and the way to the underground parking.

- "Oh shit!"- the words left Joey's lips- "Those are more girls that there were at the front… what the fuck?"

The drummer was clearly confused. She knew the band was big, but she hadn't evaluated precisely how big it was.

- "You are not a boy band when you are at a live show, right?"- she asked and turned to Ray smiling.

- "Yeah, we dance a lot. I'll teach you the choreography after dinner."

The van made its way through all the fans, and ten minutes later, each of the band and crew members was at their rooms. Frank lay on his bed and dialed his wife's number.

- "Hey baby"- he whispered with his eyes closed.

- "Hi honey, how was the flight?"

- "Long, eternal, I need to sleep a lifetime."

- "Me too, your daughters have been too spoiled, and neither of them is sleeping if I'm not holding them."

- "Shit."

- "I blame you for that."

- "Please don't…"

Frank chuckled and remembered all the afternoons he had spent holding both his daughters at the same time before he left for California to rehearsal for the tour.

- "I miss you so much"- and he wasn't lying at all. He loved his wife more than anyone.

- "We miss you too"

- "Is your mom still there with you?"

- "Yeah, I wouldn't have done any of this without her."

- "And Evan?"

- "He had a gig tonight, but he is coming to spend the weekend with us."

- "Awesome"

- "So, excited about this leg of the tour?"

- "To be honest, I'm kind of nervous."

- "Why?"

- "About the drummer and shit, we have press tomorrow, and I'm sure they are gonna start asking about it."

- "So?"

- "So I don't want to."

- "Don't make a fuzz out of something that hasn't happened yet"- Jamia made a pause as her husband stayed in silence staring at the ceiling too- "Besides, be honest, Gerard is going to answer all the questions"- Frank chuckled and sighed.

- "You are probably right"

- "I know I am, you know I am, deal with it."

Meanwhile, at the very same time, in his room, Gerard was talking with his wife too, and for some weird twist reason, he was having the exact same conversation.

- "I just don't want the whole tour to turn into "My chemical romance has a girl drummer" shit."

- "But it's an amazing thing to talk about!"- Lynz answered, frustrated her husband was still rambling about the same subject. It had been at least twenty minutes. It was probably his way to talk about her not being obvious. And pretending he hated the whole deal was his way to cope with the face he loved having Joey around.

- "I know it's gonna be fresh and exciting."

- "And inspirational to a bunch of girls out there"- that was probably the only thing that kept Lynz excited about Joey in the band. She didn't see her as a threat per se, but it was still a little weird for her.

- "Yeah, that's true… fans are gonna go nuts."

- "And media is gonna make up a lot of shit."

- "I hate that."

- "You do it for the music. That's what counts."

- "Yeah, I gotta love this shit to bear being apart from you so often,"- Lynz giggled at Gerard's words and sighed.

- "I know you love music more than you love me.2

- "That's not true."

- "I know… you love comics more than you love me,"- Gerard laughed and walked to the door, ‘cos someone was knocking.

- "You see through me"- Mikey walked in as soon as his brother opened and laid on the bed in silence- "Mikey just got here, I think we are gonna eat something and then sleep."

- "Go, I'm going to go out with Alicia today."

- "Really? that's cool, hey Mikey, the wives are going out together tonight,"- and Mikey frowned, surprised.

- "Cool"- that was all the excitement he could express.

- "Love you, babe, gotta go"- Gerard said goodbye to his wife and sighed as soon as he hung up the phone.

- "Everything ok?"- Mikey asked and kept changing the channels on the tv, not really watching anything.

- "Yeah, you?"

- "I'm hungry. Ray said he was asking for room service. Wanna go?"

- "Yeah, in a minute"- Gerard walked to the bathroom, and Mikey sighed, eyes glued to the television. That was the best way not to think. That and getting hammered, but he could do that later.

- "Hello"- Joey walked into Ray's room after she called her boyfriend, took a long, long shower, and put on clean clothes. Well, clean sweatpants and an old oversized Megadeth t-shirt. Basically, her pajamas.

- "Hey!!"- Ray's hair was dripping water as he opened the door and invited Joey in- "Sorry, I just stepped out of the shower."

- "Me too… and if we are gonna tour together, I figured you are gonna have to get used to seeing me in sweatpants"- Ray laughed and took a look at Joey up and down- "Sorry, not sorry."

- "Don't be. You look cute, in a nonsexual way"- he quickly explained and blushed.

- "Thank you… so? what are we eating?"

- "I don't know… what do you wanna eat?"

- "I'm so fucking hungry I need a double bacon burger with all the fries on this island… sorry, all the chips on this island."

- "Sounds good, make two of those,"- Joey sat on Ray's bed and watch him open his backpack.

- "What do you have there?"

- "Only the most important thing I carry around when we tour."

- "Guessing something related to… oh no, it's a PlayStation,"- Joey frowned and then chuckled as she saw Ray unpack his favorite console and plug into the television.

- "Since we are touring together, you should know this is something we can't live without."

- "Really?"

- "This is our life on the road."

- "Playing video games?"

- "Yeah… sorry if we are not that exciting."

- "Don't be sorry in front of a girl in sweatpants. Which games are you carrying?"- she moved closer and grabbed a few- "Call of Duty!! Cool!"

- "Do you play?"- Ray was excited, and you could tell.

- "It's Call of Duty. Who doesn't?"

- "Gerard"- Ray answered in less than a second.

- "Lame!"- the knocks on the door finished the conversation, and Joey walked over to answer. Frank held his breath, surprised to see there- "Hey! Do you play Black Ops?"

- "Ahh… yeah"- he doubted as he looked at her up and down- "You look…"

- "Like a mess? Yeah, get used to it"- he was gonna say cute, but she interrupted him at the right moment and walked back to Ray- "What else do you have there?"

Frank sat on the bed and stared at the scene. Ray kept showing Joey his video games, and she was really into it.

- "So do you play a lot?"- Frank ended up asking, and the girl grinned guiltily.

- "Maybe more than I should admit. When you live alone, and you don't have a job, there are too many hours to kill.

- "Been there"- Ray answered and chuckled

- "Then this tour is gonna be fun!"- Frank smiled and laid back on the bed as Joey sat next to him and tapped on his leg.

- "I am going to kick your Jersey ass."

- "Oh really? You better don't go all Icelandic on me when I make you eat the ground"- he made his best not to shiver at her touch and instead tickled her a little, which made her giggle, like a little girl.

- "I don't go all Icelandic, that's too cold and drunk"- she corrected him and tickled him as well- "I go all Latina, like mom."

Frank knew this was his chance to get a little closer to the girl, friendly closer, by the way. Well, that's what he kept telling himself.

- "Fine, then don't go all Latina on me when I kick your ass!"- he said and fully tickled her, hearing her laugh.

- "Fuck!! No!!"- she yelled, laughing- "You weren't supposed to find out about this weakness until way deep into the tour!!!"

Ray looked at them, frowning as he stood up and opened the door for Mikey and Gerard. He didn't say really a thing, just opened the door and walked back into the room.

- "Kids! Calm down! Or you won't have dinner"- Toro said and kneeled next to his suitcase, looking through his games for one he wanted to play. But neither Frank nor Joey paid attention and continued fighting over who could tickle the other. Gerard looked at them, deeply jealous, as Mikey nodded his head.

- "So… what are you doing?"- the youngest Way asked, staring at the obvious

- "We are…"- Joey made a pause and gave it a little thinking while Frank kept tickling her, enjoying a little too much the fact he could just touch her… in a friendly way- "Frank, what were we doing?"

- "You went all Latina all of a sudden."

- "Oh yeah, and you were all Jersey"- Frank had to stop ‘cos Joey stopped, but they kept pushing each other, and Ray continued telling them to stop like they were his kids.

- "And I told you I was going to kick your ass playing Call of Duty."

- "Right! That was why!"- Joey sort of shouted, and Frank burst out laughing- "Hey"- she smiled at Gerard and tried to look away.

- "Wanna play?"- Ray asked her, and she couldn't control her smile.

- "Always!!"

Gerard looked at her after she delivered that line. She sat with Ray on his bed holding a joystick, not paying half attention to him. Was that what made him act all jealous? The fact she paid attention to everyone else but him?

- "Just forget it, Gerard, eat your dinner and go to bed."

It was midnight, and Joey and Ray were still playing. Mikey was drunk and half-asleep on the bed, holding his phone tight. Frank was waiting for his turn to play, staring at the screen and laughing each time anyone would take a gunshot.

- "Ok, I'm going to bed"- Gerard said and stood up.

- "Ok, see you tomorrow!"- Ray said and never stopped playing, and neither did Joey.

- "Fuck you!!"- she yelled, and Toro laughed as the girl kept pushing him and making her best to force him to lose.

- "Don't be a bad loser!"

- "I am not a bad loser!!"- she argued right away and stood up to hand over Frankie the joystick, defeated again- "And you are a shitty winner, by the way!"

- "I'm leaving!"- Gerard repeated, and again, no one seemed to care.

- "Night night!"- Joey waved and turn around to look at the youngest Way- "Hey Mikey, are you ok?"

No, Mikey wasn't ok. He was laid on his back, tears slowly falling down his eyes, drunk as fuck.

- "Hey, Mikey, let's get you to bed, ok?"- he sighed and half-opened his eyes looking at Joey.

- "I don't want to."

- "Come on, you have an exciting day tomorrow. I got the schedule earlier, and you get to work for hours, and I am not doing shit!"- she joked, but Mikey didn't move- "Oh, come on… please, buddy?"

- "Is he ok?"- Gerard asked and walked over.

- "Drunk as fuck is the new ok,"- she answered as Gee shook Mikey's arm.

- "I'm alive"- he babbled and slowly sat down- "I'm ok, leave me alone."

- "You don't really look like you are ok"- Joey whispered and smiled at him- "Want me to show you my tits to cheer you up?"- Frank paused the game and turned to her.

- "Fuck yeah!! We could ask for that?"- Joey frowned and looked at him, annoyed.

- "I was joking"- she pronounced every letter in those words very slowly- "Just trying to make Mikey laugh."

- "Oh yeah"- Frank blushed and unpaused the game, turning to the screen- "I knew you were, I was just following the joke."

Joey nodded and turned to Mikey again. Meanwhile. Frank wanted to slap himself.

- "What the fuck is your problem!! That was so stupid! It was obvious she was joking, and now you made an ass of yourself! She is gonna think you are a pervert!!"

- "So, are you coming?"- Joey smiled at her friend, and he nodded- "Good, ‘cos I don't wanna smack you."

- "Do you need help?"- Frank paused the game again, and Ray almost growled.

- "No, I'm ok"- Mikey answered and stood up.

- "Come on, let's have a slumber party. We can do each other's nails"- Joey smiled, and Mikey smirked.

- "Braid my hair, sister"

- "And I'll curl your eyelashes"

Gerard watched in awe how his brother just followed Joey's commands like a little boy. He just went to bed when she asked him to. He laughed when she made the jokes. Was he crushed on her too?

- "Good night, kiddos"- Joey smiled and waved at Ray and Frank- "I had a blast with you tonight."

- "Goodnight, loser!!"- Ray teased her, and the girl stuck out her tongue at him.

- "Tomorrow, I want my revenge!"

- "Whenever you want to lose, I am here,"- he chuckled, and she pretended to be mad. The truth was, she had a great time with Ray, and she was glad he was so warm and friendly with her from day one.

- "Hey, Iceland"- Frank stood up and walked quickly over her- "That shit about your tits, I was joking."

- "I know, Jersey. Calm down"- she beamed and pushed his arm- "You are a good kid."

- "Thanks, goodnight"- he whispered and walked back to Ray's bed- "If only you knew…".

Gerard opened the bedroom door and waited for Joey and his brother to walk out to close it behind his back.

- "Where to?"- she asked, and Mikey pointed to the elevator. The three of them walked in silence, the door closed, and the youngest Way slowly raised his hand and pushed "15".

- "Please don't puke in the elevator"- Gerard teased him, and Mikey whispered

- "Like you never did that kind of shit back in your days,"- the silence hung amongst them until the door opened, and they strolled out.

- "Good neighbor, you are just four rooms down from my cave"- Joey joked as Mikey slowly and clumsily tried to open his door, but Gerard ended up grabbing his card and doing it for him when it was apparent he wasn't in the condition of doing it by himself.

- "Ok, Mikey. There you go"- Gerard helped his brother to bed as Joey took out his shoes and moved the pillows for him.

- "I don't want your help"- the drunk Way said, but Joey messed with his hair and smiled, trying to cheer him up.

- "I am not helping you. You asked me to stop being nice,"- Gerard frowned, not getting the conversation, but apparently, there were so many things Ray and Mikey could talk about with her he had no idea about. He should give up trying to catch up.

- "This is me making sure you owe me big time, and I am going to call in a huge favor as soon as I get drunk, and you are gonna have to take care of me,"- Mikey smiled and closed his eyes.

- "Ok, Bug"- the drunk boy closed his eyes and sighed- "I'm gonna start calling you "Bug" now because you can be fucking annoying!"

- "Oh really?"- Joey giggled and stood next to Mikey's bed with Gerard- "I'm gonna have to find a nickname for you then."

- "Your job for tomorrow"- the drunk guy whispered and sighed.

- "Goodnight, Mikey"- Gerard said and watched how his brother fell asleep in less than a minute. He and Joey walked slowly to the door and left Mikey alone.

- "Thank you for taking care of him,"- Gerard whispered as they walked down the hall to Joey's door.

- "Don't thank me for that. I consider him my friend already, and friends take care of each other."

The girl kept looking down at her shoes as they walked, decided not to land her eyes on his, not even for a second. God knows what could happen.

- "He seems to be going through a rough patch lately"

- "He hasn't told you anything about it?"- Joey asked surprised.

- "No"- Gerard shook his head and thought very carefully before he asked- "Has he told you… anything about what's going on with him?"

Joey didn't hesitate for a second and answered no.

- "It just seems he trusts you with his problems. That's all."- Gerard added.

- "We talk about random shit"- she quickly explained- "Maybe he just needs to ease his mind from whatever it is that is happening to him, at least for a bit."

The two of them stayed quiet, standing right in front of each other. Gerard was dying to hold her face with both hands and kiss her. They were alone for the first time ever. Ever. He has made his best for this not to occur before; the plane trip at least was shared with a hundred other people at the same place. Now it was just the two of them all alone standing in the hall.

- "What are your plans for tomorrow?"- Gerard whispered and raised his eyes to look at her.

- "Gym in the morning, practice in the afternoon"- Joey said and kept looking at her hands.

- "Where are you gonna practice?"

- "Here, in my room. I brought my electric drum ‘cos Brian said I could install it somewhere around the bus."

Gerard kept his eyes locked on her, and she could feel it as she continued talking.

- "I hope it's not an inconvenience, I'm just nervous. I feel like I need to practice another 100 hours to play the show you deserve."

- "No, of course, it's no problem"- he answered and slowly reached out his hand to clumsily place it on her shoulder- "And stop doubting yourself. You are an amazing drummer."

Joey couldn't help it and shivered as she felt Gerard's touch, raising her eyes to meet his.

- "Thank you"- she whispered, and time stopped as they stared at each other. It felt so natural to lean over. It was like their bodies were longing for proximity. But both of them knew they couldn't do anything like so.

- "Ok Joey, breath, act like a normal person and walk away from this temptation"- she sighed and smiled- "That would be a killer nickname" Well, see you tomorrow Gerard, have fun doing a million interviews.

- "Have fun at the gym- he smiled and watched her opening the door and walking into her room."

- "Good night"- she whispered and slowly closed the door.

- "Ok, that was good. You controlled yourself, Gerard. I'm proud… now walk away and get into your room."

Joey laid on her bed and closed the laptop, after a long video call with Matthew. Tears fell from her eyes slowly. She was nervous, excited, and most of all, she was sad her boyfriend wouldn't be there with her at her first show.

- "You have no idea how proud I am, Yami"- he had said, as the two of them cried.

- "I wish you were here with me, Akumu."

She had never been away from him in six months. Once for a weekend, but not a whole month. She missed him already. Watching his face on the screen didn't make it easy. If anything, it felt like it made it worse. She was in love with him, honestly in love. She had a couple of shitty experiences with her previous boyfriends, and Matthew was the first man who treated her with respect. It was sad for her to be so moved about something that could be the base of a relationship.

Besides, she wasn't just nervous about being away from her boyfriend. She also had second thoughts about her abilities. Maybe she really wasn't going to be able to do it right. She could be petrified in front of the audience. It would be easier if Matthew were there with her. But he wasn't, and she had to start dealing with this fear on her own.

She could still feel Gerard's hand on her shoulder, telling her she was going to do great. It burned her skin like the remainder of his warm touch.

- "Fucking temptation"- she whispered and rolled in bed to turn out the lights- "Gerard is so hot I could do something very foolish if I were single... and if he was single too, of course."

**

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[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Hi! Anon form HP's classmates ask. After reading the Lavender, Parvati, Dean, and Seamus, I forgot to ask you these: Cedric (I don't think you did him), Cho (pretty sure you didn't do her), and Marietta (even though we barely see anything of her). Oh and also Colin if you can. If it's too long just do the first two. Thanks, and have a good and safe day! =)

Well, I have to confess, these will probably be a lot more boring than you’re expecting. I do tend to have opinions on arbitrary Harry Potter characters, but there’s also a lot of NPCs that, well, I really don’t think about them much. They’re kids, they go to school, seem nice enough, the end. 

Not all my opinions are made of spice.

But, with that, let’s begin.

Cedric Diggory

Really not much to say on him.

Seems like a nice enough guy, I appreciated that he was a Hufflepuff so we got to see at least someone from that house that was a really cool dude, the house division also helped explain why we’d seen and heard so little about him (I think he gets a brief mention as being Seeker for Hufflepuff in Prisoner of Azkaban).

For me, what stands out about him is mostly the tragedy. Here was this young man, in the prime of his life, with his whole future ahead of him who senselessly dies.

Had he not accompanied Harry, he would have lived, and it was pure unfortunate luck that he did. And then it’s over so quickly, just a demand of “kill the spare” and he’s dead. That’s it, it’s all over.

And then his death is made a mockery of, overwritten, then willfully forgotten by society.

He’s used as evidence by Harry and Dumbledore for Voldemort’s return, his murder is pinned on Harry by the government, and by the time the government admits to what happened they’ve moved on to bigger problems.

We only really see the mourning of Cedric from his father and later Cho. Harry’s messed up about it, but it was more from witnessing the event, he didn’t really know Cedric that well as a person. In fact, he feels very awkward and put out when it becomes clear that, a few months later, Cho is not handling her boyfriend having been murdered by a dead man very well.

And that’s what strikes me about him, just how easily he’s forgotten, and how sad it all is.

Cedric might be the reddest of red shirts in Harry Potter.

Cho Chang

I wish more had been done with Cho.

I know, I know, we get a lot of Cho.

But we get Cho in the context of Harry’s first romance, his crush that later sets him up for Harry/Ginny (JKR is fond of using other pairings to set up her main pairing, we see this also with Ron/Lavender). They give it a whirl, Harry finally gets what he wants, and it turns out to not really be his thing.

Cho is too girly, enjoys things like Madame Puddifoots, and is clearly still hung up on Cedric. The whole thing ends very awkwardly and we get a Harry who’s ready to move on to Ginny by book six.

That said, that’s what I like about Cho. She has this great boyfriend who she really liked, he dies horrifically and tragically, and she’s left trying to sort through the aftermath. She ends up clinging to Harry as he is a) Harry Potter and essentially Jesus b) the only witness to what happened to Cedric. To her, I imagine, she and Harry share this unbreakable bond after fourth year. She was closest to Cedric in the school, the only one who truly seems to want to mourn him, and Harry watched Cedric die. 

Cho lives in this world where Cedric’s death has been made a political issue. That his dying seems not to have mattered, indeed, is barely discussed so much as the manner in which he died. People are constantly fighting whether a deranged Harry did it, Voldemort came back, and Cedric gets forgotten somewhere in the middle.

And Cho tries to move on, she tries to embrace the fight against Voldemort, prepare herself to defend her nation and help fight against the man who murdered Cedric, but it just doesn’t work out. Because ultimately, they’re a bunch of kids in a room practicing the patronus. And even in the DA, despite acknowledging that Voldemort’s back, it’s still never about Cedric. It’s all about Voldemort and what’s coming, Cedric, oh yeah, poor guy, what a tragedy, the first casualty of war.

So, mostly I just feel very bad for Cho, and wish we could have seen more of her to see what the effect death has on people. We have Harry’s reaction to Sirius’ death but... in a weird way he actually gets over that kind of quickly. This isn’t the post for it, but to me Harry was always more upset by the loss of what Sirius represented than Sirius himself.

Marietta Edgecombe

Marietta does not deserve the hate she gets. Sure, she decided to leave the DA and snitched. But you know what, they’re fifteen year olds in a boarding school, and the DA while stupid was also kind of terrifying.

I mean, you suddenly find yourself in a group called “Dumbledore’s Army”, which is actively preparing itself for “fighting against the dark lord” and possibly “against those who deny his return”. The club has all these rules about secrecy, which at first seem reasonable as it’s against the rules, but then start sounding pretty scary. It sounds like you just signed up to launch a coup against the ministry on Albus Dumbledore’s behest. Had I been in DA,I like to imagine at some point I’d start thinking “what the actual fuck?”

More than that, Marietta’s family is on the line. Her mother works for the ministry. Her mother could be fired or perhaps even persecuted if this got out. Shit starts getting very real for Marietta.

So, Marietta leaves and snitches, and then she gets stitches.

Hermione gleefully scars and deforms her, something Marietta will carry with her for the rest of her life. I mean, can you imagine if Hermione had said, “Oh, by the way, if you rat us out I will personally murder you. Just kidding, but I will cut up your face, snitch” that anyone would react well? Which is probably why Hermione just stuck to an ominous vague warning instead. The true noble members, after all, would never think of leaving.

So yeah, given Hermione, actually given all of it (including Harry’s complete lack of sympathy for Marietta being branded when Cho tries to bring up her situation) the DA absolutely should have been shut down. My god, it was spiraling out of control, and given Harry and Hermione could have honestly gotten to the point where they took out hits on, oh I don’t know, Draco Malfoy. 

You laugh, but I’m serious, they would totally do that.

Colin Creevy

It’s very bold of JKR to assume I care at all about Colin.

Colin’s one of the typical HP NPCs, quirky enough to be memorable, gives us a nice muggleborn student, weird kid but around enough that we remember him.

Then he dies in the Battle of Hogwarts, where many of our main characters survive, and I’m supposed to be absolutely devastated. COLIN IS DEAD, FRED IS DEAD, THE WORLD IS SO SAD.

We barely know Colin, his dying is just there to wrack up the red shirt numbers and make the last book of Harry Potter feel more like an actual war with actual consequences.

Sad that he died, but certainly not a tear jerking moment for me.