#and i have so much room to grow technically and like from a basic art perspective

[pruneunfair]

Ranking all the OI I read. Part 1: the lesser.

It'll be like my tier list except with added stories from the haven't read yet section and of course my opinions.

Since Tumblr only allows 30 images per post and a daily pass based on how many pictures can be posted at all. I'll be posting this list through multiple parts starting with the worst. Get ready because there's gonna be a lot of negativity right now.

Starting with the tier I like to call "Absolute dog shit." Terrible plots, gross content being glamourized and little to no potential at all.

honestly picking the worst of the worst was hard cause there's so many to choose from.. and I think the title of the absolute worst doesn't go to Remarried empress or Today the villainess has fun again..

Its this one: beware of the brothers

I really can't say I was surprised 😭. I mean.. look at the damn title. The FL gets adopted into the family because she looks like the ML's dead sister and it just.. escalates into step-bro love. "But it's not related by blood-" still incest and even if they didn't grow up together, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO FUCK SOMEONE WHO LOOKS LIKE YOUR DEAD SIBLING!?

The order of slave breeding

Yes this is an actual manhwa.. I genuinely wanna know why the author just looked at themselves in the mirror and said "Yes this is a good idea." As the title suggests.. it's about a slave merchant for a FL and her slaves falling in love with her and as if it couldn't be uncomfortable enough it is one of the few manhwa with a dark skinned ML. I don't care how many times they'll offer excues for the lead I don't fw slavery being used as a romance device in media.

I belong to house Castillo

Technically I didn't read all of it, I just read the spoilers for the rest of the chapters but to be fair, I just got finished cursing myself by reading stepbro fantasies and master/slave ships, I'm not trying to give my FBI agent a reason to search my hard drives. It's a basic and cliché found family where the FL Estelle is sold by her mother to her father and the ML is a 17 year old who basically grooms her..why? Because raising your love interest is the "only" way to make a story stand out amongst the other generic found family tales.

I tamed my ex husband's mad dog.

More cases of grooming except this time it's the FL as the perpetrator. ML looks like he's 8 but he's apparently 16.. so we got a groomer protagonist in the form of Reinhardt who also neglects her first child and favors her second child she had with her victim with the excuse of not wanting to care for her son being that he looks like her toxic ex. Lady what? That boy deserves his own villain arc holy shit.

No more turning a blind eye.

This one really dissapointed me 😔. The cover looked stunning, the artstyle while a little off was still eye catching and the title sounded promising. Nah this is a hunk of junk that had a gentrification plot for some reason.. and you were supposed to sympathize with the guy who wanted to render hundreds of people homeless to make room for art galleries or whatever it was they wanted?

The dragon kings bride

I already knew this one was probably gonna suck judging by the title. First off it treats dark skinned people like barbarians, the ML Hakan meets Lucina when she's a child, Lucina is threatened with death if she doesn't marry him and you can probably guess where it goes. Like I said I don't really have a right to be shocked but it still goes on the list for its weird obsession with Lucina being so tiny that having sex with Hakan could kill her along with a not so hidden pregnancy fetish.

I became the tyrants secretary.

Its just workplace sexual harassment, theres not much to it. Cannot stand the ML who is a basic garbage human and Rosalyn is a block of wood when it comes to personality. She wants to do all these things but she has no spine and no will to actually do them but at the same time shes so good at everything on a whim. I usually don't mind a clueless FL but Jesus christ! She makes Adrien Agreste look smarter!

The villains savior

Gotta say the artstyle is really pretty and the FLs design is so cute. Everything else though is pretty bad. The point is basically the lead Ezlay is trying to essentially "fix" the ML as the title suggest. A lot of people dislike this one because Ezlay is very emotional and cries too much but that's honestly the least of the issues here. Now to be fair, Aseph is a villain so it's expected that he's gonna suck but that doesn't mean Ezlay needs to have the personality of a rock either, it's not that she cries a lot that annoys me, she's literally just a male fantasy personified. All she is absolute patience and acceptance for what Aseph does to point of enabling that toxic behavior.

Now we enter manhwas that are horrificly awful, not much difference except these ones have a bigger grain of potential

Lucia

This one got a lot of hate tiktok so naturally I had to read it and yeah, it was pretty bad. The artstyle though just.. I'm sorry but Lucia's face is literally just 👁 👄 👁 and thats not even mentioning the ML Hugo. It's really crinegy and it tries to fill that void with poorly made smut. The plot is also really and I mean REALLY dead set on 1950s values for women and the relationship between Lucia's and Hugo is downright toxic. In fact I don't even think there's a plot.. it's just porn. The only reason it's not in dogshit tier is that it's so iconic for being awful that it deserves to be higher up.

When the villainess is in love.

Okay all I can give this one is that Libertia has a better character design than Lucia. She's a mary sue but at this point that's a lot of leads nowadays so it's not a total shock but this is definitely a case where the story would be so much better if it was the actual Libertia as the protagonist instead of a carbon copy of the ogfl taking over. The worst part though is the fashion and I normally do not care about how dresses look in OI as long as they at least look good and fit the setting.. and dear God a lot of those dresses are nightmares to look at. Thankfully I had heard the novel was better.

Today the villainess has fun again

not a fan of the protagonist. Reilynn is really insufferable to follow since she's basically just an entitled asshole who thinks that just because she got transmigrated as the wealthiest woman in the land that she must be in the right because she's not like Iris who is a basic pick me girl. Beyond the fact that watching her throw money at people to get past an obstacle without effort she's also heavily written as a pedo because out of her options which had 2 green flags her age, she chooses the slave she bought who acts and looks like a 10 year old boy with attachment issues.

Try begging

what is with Solche and their weird obsession with rapist male leads? It's somehow worse then cry or better yet beg. Basically the FL Sally/Grace is a spy and when the ML Leon finds out.. he basically tortures her and SA's her multiple times and somehow they fall in love. Do with that what you will, the only slack I will kind of give Try begging is that it at least warns you of what your getting into beforehand. I really hate that Solches writing actually has so much potential to be amazing yet they use their talents to make rape fetish content. I want to know why manhwa tiktok likes this so much, they're all about girl code until a rapist looks hot (Leon isn't even hot, hes mad ugly)

Abandoned empress

Ah yes, good ol abandoned empress, the manhwa communities favorite punching bag so it's only right it lands here. For all the writers out there if your making a character you'd want the readers to support as the love interest you typically would give them an interesting personality and to tone down anything you think is too much for a healthy relationship. Abandoned empress decides to do the opposite of that and even after scenes of Ruve abusing his wife Aristia by cheating on her, beating her, SA'ing her, killing her dad, and causing her to miscarry so you would naturally think "okay clearly Ruve is the antagonist." But instead they pulled some bullshit "but he's not doing it anymore because he was poisoned in the last timeline!"... what!? Were there any new writers by any chance because how did we go from a abusive monster to a misunderstood Lil guy? I would say more but I think everyone already agreed a long time ago Abandoned empress is ass.

Revenge on the real one

the protag is essentially those villainesses in regression stories that cause the heroines initial downfall. I was already aware of what would happen before I even read and let me tell you it was accurate. The protagonist Helga is AWFUL. The torture she puts Hillian through is overkill and at this point Hillian deserves her own regression story to stand up to Helga because my girl was not that bad for her sister to ruin her life because of a stupid tragic origin story. The worst part is the Helga fans I see on places like tiktok who just don't want to admit their FL is a bad person. "Oh but Helga past was so sad! It's not her fault she's like this." Don't mean she has to banish her sister from her own nation when Hillian was innocent.

Villain Dukes precious one.

I really dislike the reincarnated as a baby trope and I can only ever tolerate it when it's just for a few little chapters. They always feel like those weird ass Elsagate videos with embarrassing humor to come across as funny and this one is no different. Even after the FL grows up the plot is still bland and cringe inducing. I don't have a lot to say about this one other then it is weird as hell. Apparently it also got a little incest-y so no thanks!

Poisonous Lily

While the characters looked basic in terms of design the title sounded intriguing. Unfortunately the translation is horrible, they can't even get the whole Lily flower theme right on the tapas version by giving her tulips to carry on her wedding. The dialog is..interesting to say the least. I won't lose it too much though on this one though since I'm pretty sure this is a lower level book trying to make it out in a sea of over advertised manhwa

I thought my time was up.

You know those porn/no plot tags on ao3? That's basically ITMTWU in a nutshell. Within only 20 chapters, the male lead Asrahan is already obsessed with Lariette after chapters of her violating his personal space to force a relationship between them. The whole magic plot is pushed to the side, Asrahans curse isn't allowed to be an actual rotting flesh curse like it's described as cause he's still gotta be pretty, and the rest of the plot is basically just soft core porn and fanservice that does little to actually move whatever is left of the plot.

For my derelict favorite.

The. Hypocrisy. How is this book gonna make the entire message about deconstructing main character centered morality and then almost immediately backpeddaling with justifying Hestia for attacking a woman who doesn't know her for rejecting her favorite man and proceeding to just ruin her day whenever she can. Hestia would say "im not like other girls." Hestia would be an avid fan of those trust fund baby GMV. Hestia would put her hair in a messy bun, shit on whatever is popular and act like she's making a statement . Even calling her Hestia feels like straight up disrespectful to the real goddess of the hearth who funnily enough is known as one of the most chill Greek gods.

Marry my husband

now Marry my husband is not insanely problematic wheras it's just cliché, predictable and in general pretty bad. It is a fast food manhwa designed to fulfill the classic top boss takes good care of you fantasy so naturally a lot is put on hold to showcase the sweet relationship between the central characters and almost everyone needs to have a lover. It's so bad it's actually kinda funny because the villains are so cartoonishly evil for office workers. Sumin is out here speaking in 3rd person, dressing in clothes found in the little kid section of Walmart and makes comical comments about her desire to ruin Jiwons life, Minhwan is basically a borderline discord mod who casually killed jiwon in the first timeline and goes "Oh well." and there's this random ugly old man who's name I can't remember who's the only one interested in Sumin till the end because he basically wants em younger without the risk of going to federal prison.

Remarried empress

I don't think i need to explain much at this point, if you know my account then you already know how I feel about remarried empress. Season 1 was pretty good though.

Divorcing my tyrant husband

I think we all know at this point that's whenever a title has the word "divorce" 9/10 of the time there is never going to be divorce and it'll devolve into the FL changing her mind and staying with her trashy ex husband because he now decided that Robelia wasn't like other girls and left his mistress in the dust. The plot kinda started getting out of hand when Robelias love interests expanded to one of her obsessed slaves and a Duke to prove that Alexandros was the better option. The villian Aisha is a joke who gets her ass handed to her over and over because "damsel woman always bad." and the art starts to lose its touch. I usually don't mind when artstyle changes but dear God do some of these characters look a Lil fugly.

Cry or better yet beg.

The final story that is in the awful section, why? Because it has the most lost potential. As terrible as this CoHo equivalent is, it details the very realistic parts of being a mistress to a nobleman. In most other stories, the mistress is an evil wench who could easily back out but in cry or better yet beg, Layla is unable to escape Matthias's abuse because it could risk her uncles job. There's a lot to this manhwa and novel that could've made a tragic story about a girl trapped in an abusive relationship with little help, the art is gorgeous and the characters for the most part were well written. It's a real shame that it turned out to be a rape apologist work instead.

next up are the mediocre manhwas, finally there will a little more positivity.

The villainess is a marionette

its.so.boring! This one was hyped up all over the place on Instagram and tiktok and the art looked stunning so I gave it a shot. This is definitely one of those stories that only got popular because of its art in my opinion because the plot is so confusing. Events are happening left and right, the pacing goes from too fast to too slow, characters personalities and traits keep warping, and while this might just be the result of poor adaptation her brother comes across as incestuous a couple of times. while Cayena isn't the worst FL, she's a mary sue by all definitions. Sorry but it's a bunch of jumbled wires. The reason it earns a spot in "it's okay" is because I heard the novel like usual is better so it might not be the fault of the original author

I was the male leads ex

It wasn't bad just boring but a little less boring then the former I'll give it that. The artstyle looked prettier in the beginning so that was kind of sad to see it change in later chapters. What drew me to keep reading was the chance that the ogfl Julianna may not be evil but even a potential love interest. So I got excited and apparently there's the idea that Julianna is actually her brother in disguise which.. would just ruin it tbh, there goes any chance at a ogfl being a human being and not a plot device. Not a huge fan of Erica or really any of the love interests.

From maid to queen

This is the newest of the lineup I read and it was actually interesting for once to see a new story where the MC was the concubine. First off the maids feel less like women employed to do the chores of the palace and more like the cartel 😭, in early chapters whenever Urania is aiming to be the concubine, being lazy with her job or getting comfortable with a powerful man in general they're already out with sticks ready to ruin her day and they even try to kill her. Lot of people don't like that Urania isn't a girls girl but honestly I can't blame her for wanting more out of life then poverty, where she comes across as stupid is that she's still wanting that role even after it got her killed last time. I think that it could work though since it shows that urania is more human and not a perfect goddess of a woman however that does not make up for the shit world building (like what the hell was that mushroom that could turn into a perfect still corpse of you 💀)

The villainess maker.

Ill admit I'm a little harsh on this one on my tier list. The plot still isn't great but there are so much worse out there so it ended up moving up on the list due to default. The plot is mostly just bland and generic down to all the characters and the tropes. Ayla is a girlboss in the villainesses body, Charlotte is a super "revolutionary" kind girl turned wicked wench and the ML is another "touch her and I'll kill you" type. What i will give the Villainess maker is the distinct artstyle. It's not as stylized and while it does get lazy at the end it still is very recognizable.

Abellas dessert shop.

Its another extremely underrated manhwa that's another isekai about a wronged woman looking to move on from her shitty fiancé and start a dessert shop. Ngl the moments where Abella is forced to put on a kind face despite her cheating fiancé or her ex friend popping in is definitely relatable especially in the workforce. Still a little bland but wholesome.

I didn't mean to seduce the male lead.

Eleanor is the FL hired to convince the ML to accept women into his life with the hopes that he will fall in love with the ogfl Irene. Tbh this one can get very icky with how it tries to force the notion that you must fall in love but the guy just instantly falls in love with Eleanor so.. I guess that's a little better? Regardless though i will not fault this manhwa too much because unfortunately the author died before the story was over so it deserves a little slack since it never got the chance to be more. Rest in peace author.

Who made me a princess.

Ill be straight with this now: it's Mid. Objectively the story isn't too terrible and I do find Athy a good protagonist not to mention my love for Jennete but everything else is pretty "meh." Not a huge fan of Claude from his design to his personality, the ML is another case of a grown as immortal meeting his wife when she's still a child (theres a little credit ill admit for Athy being mentally a grown woman but that doesnt stop me from thinking its uncomfortable to acknowledge) It can be cute sometimes and I'll give it that but I don't think I'll ever reread it, just not for me.

Actually I was the real one

Good god this was such a bastardization of the original novel. With that said I'll admit i was still entertained reading it since you could say that the novel wouldn't be an instant cheat sheet to learn what was gonna happen. Still it could've at least tried to be a loyal adaptation. They give Keira 2 options to choose as a love interest when she had none in the source material, Zeke is pushed to the side and the maids honestly get on my nerves with their one note personalities. They also seem to forget that Cosette is literally being possessed by a demon he'll bent on destroying humanity (which she succeeded in the first time) because what was built up as an amazing antagonist is just a joke now. The only other redeeming factors are that in the Manhwa Cosette is still alive and the whole elemental plot stays constant. Despite my complaints on the adaptation it is still a interesting read but the novel will always beat it no matter what.

I know it sounds like I'm just being a negative Nancy with all of these and I'm sorry for being so negative but the next part will be more positive.

Next time on part 2 will be the decent stories.

[kingdomkeykitsune]

KHOC WEEK DAY 3: CONNECTION

Okay, so, I only had time to fully finish one of today's art pieces for @khoc-week (and of course I chose the moody one) I might update later with the finished version of the other one, we'll have to see lol. Anyway! While she's friendly with most people there are a few connections C.E. has that really stand out, but I'm putting it all under a cut because this one's a bit long.

Luka (left) and Nao (right).

Relationship Theme: Here's to Never Growing Up by Avril Lavigne

Having known each other most of their lives these three are practically inseparable. Together they make up a group called the Twilight Guardians. Most people thing it's just the name of their skate group (Luka and C.E. skateboard, Nao rollerskates) and/or their garage band (C.E. plays bass, Luka plays guitar/keyboard, Nao drums, and Luka and C.E. both do vocals) but in actuality they call themselves that because they make up the newest incarnation of the Twilight Town protectors. Each unknowingly descended from the original protectors and their families, they unlocked their abilities to fight Creatures of Darkness when they were attacked by Heartless while exploring the Mansion in the Woods sometime prior to DiZ setting up camp there. Because this was such a formative experience for them all they decided to make the winged unicorns that show up all around the mansion their group symbol.

A little info on their abilities:

Luka is a magic user and healer, he can summon a staff weapon that doubles as a melee weapon in a tight spot and can use a few types of elemental magic, namely air and fire, in addition to having strong healing magic.

Nao is a little gremlin of a tank who can summon a giant hammer weapon. She can also technically use earth/stone magic, but she often forgoes it in favor of a brute force approach.

C.E. covers ranged combat, she can summon a revolver that fires magic projectiles. These projectiles are basically concentrated light magic, the upside to this is that she doesn't need to take time to physically reload, the downside is that how many rounds she can fire is linked directly to her MP, meaning if she doesn't take care it's easy for her to drain her reserves and end up in a bad spot.

Like I said, these three are thick as thieves and the very best of friends. Of course, not every relationship is so smooth.

Seifer

Relationship Theme: Not Another Song About Love by Hollywood Ending

It's been said that no one knows how to drive you crazy quite like the ones who know you best, and these two are a perfect example of that. Having grown up as next door neighbors in the same apartment block they've known each other since they were in diapers, and generally tend to get along about as well as the proverbial cats and dogs. They bicker about anything and everything, often to the point their respective friends will wander off together to hang out until they burn themselves out.

And yet... They find themselves drawn back together again and again. No one knows them the way they know each other, Seifer knows about the shelves full of photo albums and scrapbooks C.E. keeps in her room, C.E. knows about the movie that Seifer watches over and over even though he knows the script by heart. They know just what to say to set the other off like a fireworks show, and where they hide when they get lost in their head. If one is in real trouble the other is the first one to come running and when everything is just too much they know they can count on each other for a shoulder to lean on, no words needed. And somewhere along the way childish rivalry began to grow into something more, something deeper.

Not that either one is quite ready to admit it.

Bonus points if anyone can figure out what any of the blurred posters in the background are. Hint: They're all Covers/Official Art for Square games (They're also all things that have influenced the developement of C.E.'s character, but I doubt anyone but me can draw those connections lol)

[veearrifarrariboom]

More Captainx2 bad end :3

They searched through the vast void that they had found themselves in. Nothing in sight, it reminded Raph of the afterlife he was stuck in- were they dead? Something at the corner of their eye snapped them out of it. An orange spotted cat looked up at them meowing gleefully and beyond the spotted cat was another. A cat with a complete coat of orange and a bandana wrapped around its head sat still, glaring at them. The spotted cat jumped into their arms and they felt a familiar warmth as a glowing circle of dripping orange surrounded them. 

“You are truly hopeless and yet he still believes in you.” The faraway cat spoke.

Before they could respond they were falling through an orange portal and the two cats peeked over the edge. They reached a hand out to the spotted cat growing ever farther from them. 

“MIKEY!” They shot up in the bed and gave a surprise yelp at the turtle right in front of them who also jolted. Sword- no wait. Casey- smaller brothers- oh right we’re in the past. They took a deep breath. 

“Um, are you okay? Do I need to get Donnie?” Mikey was basically sitting on top of their legs fiddling with his hands- why are they bandaged? 

“Ah no, we’re fine- just a bad dream.”

“Oh. Well um” He looked like he was going to barf- or getting ready to say a lot. Oh boy we’re in for an earful aren’t we…

“If that’s the case...” Mikey jumped up to his face shaking him as he spoke

“ARE YOU REALLY FROM THE FUTURE? HOW DID YOU AND RAPH GET INTO THIS WHOLE SITUATION? CASEY SAID I HAD HAIR IN THE FUTURE. WAS I BEAUTIFUL? WHEN DID I START GROWING IT? WHAT HAIR PRODUCTS DO I NEED? DO YOU GUYS SHARE DREAMS? DOES ONE CONTROL THE LEFT ARM AND THE OTHER THE RIGHT? DO YOU-“ Leo put his left hand over Mikey’s still moving mouth.

“I’m stopping you right there. One question at a time.” They tried to put their right arm on his shoulder but -

“Where’s my arm!?” They flailed around the nub on their right. Oh heavens It felt so much lighter.

“Oh right! Donnie pried it off while you were sleeping, that thing cannot be comfortable man!” Mikey responded

“Ah, it’s not too bad, actually I haven’t taken it off since I got it.”

“What! Why!” Mikey looked ready for a Dr. Delicate Touch treatment.

“Well, we never really figured out how to take it off ourselves and Dee was always busy and uh we just kind of kept it on…??” 

Mikey glared at him, and Leo saw his sword leaning against the wall. Before taking in the two bandanas tied to it, he snapped his sight away to a sketchbook on the side of the bed- was Mikey waiting for them to wake up? Mikey followed their gaze and lit up at the sketchbook.

“Oh! I was drawing while waiting for you to wake up! It’s you! -er both of you!” 

He held up the open sketchbook that had the captains drawn on. They beamed at the drawing, though Raph always felt a little nauseous looking in the mirror, he could never not be amazed by his baby brother's amazing art skills. 

“Wow, that’s amazing Mikey! I almost forgot how amazing you were at this…” Leo almost whispered the last part then quickly snapped their thoughts away. “I’m always flattered to be your one and only good looking model!”

“Real humble Leo.” Raph interjected.

That got Mikey chuckling,  they chuckled too and rubbed their hand on Mikey’s head. 

“This is real good though, thanks.” They looked at it a bit more, then Leo remembered,

“So how long were we out for?” 

“Two days.” Mikey said casually

“Ah.”  The captains are not really shocked at this point. They’ve slept in longer than they are proud to admit before, but it wasn’t their fault!- technically. 

“Oh right! You need to eat! I'll go make lunch and call you over okay?” 

“Alright, thanks.” With their response Mikey jumped off the bed and carefully closed the door behind him. They almost didn’t want him to leave. They gave a sigh and looked around the room. This is the med bay right? Yeah I don’t remember it being this clean though or having so much actual medical stuff. Right. They found their clothing nicely folded up on the desk next to him next to a few medicine bottles. They checked and found paper stuck to them reading “ONLY TAKE 2 OR YOUR ARMS GOING IN THE NYC RIVER!!” Okay Raph this MIGHT be from Donnie! Really?? What gave it away? Just a lucky guess. Leo took three out- Raph made him put one back- and swallowed it with a glass of water that was there. They got dressed and opted out of the scarf since it kept getting stuck under their nub of an arm - sadly. They reached for the door knob and paused. You think we're going to wake up anytime soon Raph? Leo… I don’t think we're dreaming- What if it's like last time? We didn’t know we were seeing illusions caused by you know who until we were snapped out. If I’m honest I’m thinking the same thing, but we have to be realistic. The food smells good. Let's go. They opened the door. 

[dojae-huh]

[I'm gonna take a shot at your post asking for people's opinions on "J"!]

I was pleasantly surprised. Jaehyun showed us so many different elements of himself and I feel like I have a more accurate perception of him as an artist and a human being now that we've gotten to see where his mind goes when he's given the opportunity to express himself outside of 127

My parents raised me on 80s and 90s Soul and R&B and I was impressed by how well he was able to portray these styles of music despite not having the same level of familiarity with it as an American around his age would. However, I 100% agree with you and your recent anon about how he lacked direction. He had a vision and deep passion but it wasn't enough. The album wasn't well-defined

I don't fault him for it because, again, he's coming at it from the angle of a Korean with limited exposure, but it's something that I definitely noticed. I'm sure that as time goes on, he'll discover precisely what direction he wants to take his music in, he'll learn how to communicate his ideas consistently from start to finish, and he'll decide whether or not he wishes to keep sharpening the skills required to create R&B/Soul that is more faithful to the source but still unique to him

I haven't been keeping up with most of the pre- and post-release promotion & activities because I've been busy with work, so I unfortunately don't have much to say on that front

All in all, I deeply enjoyed what he gave us and I look forward to his future output! He has so much potential and I hope it materializes into something incredible

Oh! Another thing that I came to realize while listening is that Jaehyun is not as strong a vocalist as I initially believed him to be. In 127, it wasn't noticeable to me because their vocal coaches spend great effort ensuring that each member has parts that compliment their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. His voice is gorgeous, but when he has to carry an entire song by himself, his lack of skill in some areas becomes apparent. I experienced a similar thing when Ten's mini album came out

I asked my little sister about it (she's been following & listening to NCT since pre-debut) and she was like, "well...yeah. You haven't t noticed yet? He's never been the strongest singer, lol" I still love him, though 😅

I like your point about the lack of exposure. Or, maybe, in his case a lack of background and history associated with each subgenre of r'n'b (as he can listen to practically any song from any era now on streaming platforms). You know, how I complained about the mix of images in Smoke's concept. To break the rules one needs to perfectly know the basics first to know what to deconstract, what can be changed, what not.

(Pablo Picasso's art evolution)

Jaehyun is 27, however he doesn't have years of musical education, he explained himself he had to carve moments out of his busy schedule to songwrite and learn music composion software. So, really, can't blame him for having passion but not a clear vision. "Juvenile" is not a bad description, just a description of the first attempt. "J" is a chick, heh. There is room to grow.

Jaehyun evidently gravitates towards non-Korean music (and his best friends are all foreigners, he drank too much of that Connecticut milk, I fear), therefore we can expect him to continue the r'n'b route. Although, I think he will be more inclined to go for newer, more modern sound (further from Can't get you and closer to Horizon).

About the voice. Really? Technically, range vise or emotionally? "Completely" aside, it was out of his comfort zone. However, I think he did a good job on the rest (we are not comparing him with Do, there is a change of level, naturally). I do think his musicality is underdeveloped, but he knows (or can try and achieve) how to produce a nice fitting sound. I think his delivery makes "Easy".

[n0phis]

this is formatted like a twitter thread and i wont apologize for that anyways time 2 waffle about art before conking da fuck out

on improvement and why it's so fucking weird

(tldr; point is if u feel like no matter what u keep hitting plateaus or suddenly dont know wtf ur doing. i get u. and ur probably imrpoving a shitton but in a way that fundamentally alters how u visualize things. its weird like that)

so improvement is loops right? improving -> improved -> need to improve and so forth theres smth really funny about my most recent artistic crisis. its like i’m starting from scratch. it feels like i’ve figured out a puzzle and the room it unlocks just has a larger, harder puzzle

like where is the prize bro? ive improved rapidly over a few months and assumed i could just… keep going! or that id finally be content! but i think the issue lies in how i think about art. my perception fundamentally changes as i learn. all that work just for more work?

i was just thinking about how simple it used to be to slap together parts of a face. then realized that the way i go about it is just. wholly different now. before, a face was a jaw outline with features in their set position respective to perspective (hah).

now… a head is a head. there can be consistent lines, but not always. i kept trying to stick to the formula of ‘line goes here’ but it wasnt working whatsoever. sometimes jaws *arent* outlined. sometimes a nose has to be suggested in halftone to show it properly. what the fuck

it was just. interesting. i can no longer rely on the basic building blocks of how i learned art for over a decade. it feels so much easier to fuck up now. i think that’s why it feels like im so out of my depth? like i'm somehow worse or less consistent than i was two months back

don’t get me wrong, it sucks to ‘technically’ b more skilled and yet feel less confident, so much more like a beginner than i have in a while, but i guess this is what it is to grow. after thinking it over i do feel pride in that uncertainty bc at least it means *progress*?

something something you’re supposed to be uncomfortable sometimes in life because if you arent it means you arent growing.etc etc whatever

anyways this probably means nothing but i feel like it might mean something. i hope some of u guys out there get me (thumbs up emote) ill be back with art soon im forcing myself out of the weird mindset and just sticking with finishing what i planned on finishing as normal. happy arting!

[minthe-lover]

Chapter 221 Anaylsis

I'd admit that most of my problems with this chapter are art related, so I'm gonna just skip over like 80% of my critics of that so It doesn't get repetitive. It's mainly just creepy hades faces, and awkward proportions that make him look like a lego figure in stop motion. Like look at this guy... he looks so awkward and... god his ass is really tiny.

Now the big art thing that I am going to talk about is how the simplified one colour and one note backgrounds has caused rs to basically shoot herself in the foot. Cause in the first few chapters the backgrounds where detailed enough that we could really visuals all the important areas. Artemis's house, Hades house and the underworld corp while we aren't given like maps of them but we have a good idea of the layout and space...

with persephone new apartment.. we don't get that. It's all this dark blue, we get one shot of the outside and then a few undetailed shots of the inside. How many rooms does this have, is it big or small? hades says it looks rundown... but why aren't we shown that? They leave the apartment to eat on the roof almost immediately, is that cause persephone doesn't have a dining space in her apartment.. it just reallys annoy me.

Then the next shot in what I thought was the apartment... was actually hades, I think this chapter would really really benefit from a few shot focusing on persephones apartment. If needed remove the whole 'joke' of the billboard and instead show up persephone apartment and have them eat inside to better show Persephones kitchen. Side note with how last chapter went... how is she gonna treat her neighbors...

Now I've said this before that I'll say it again I do like persephone getting her own apartment. It's a good idea not to have hades and persephone immediately be a married couple.. but I really wish rs did more with this. Persephone has missed out on far more then just owning her own apartment.. she only did at most a month of collage it would really help to show more that persephone is trying to be independent.

Now I just want to draw attention to this line.. and just the massive amount of disrespect it levels at hecate, while yes she was not technically queen.. but like come on hades. She's been helping you since you stared at king, she did most of the research and work in the last few chapters. She may not have shared the title but it's clear she was doing a fuck ton of work.

Lets talk about the most annoying line in this whole chapter! Just to make one thing clear persephone you where not coddled, you where a CHILD. Demeter was making sure you had an education and a safe place to grow up first before making you work! that is a completely understandable thing.. and the moment you were over 18 demeter let you go... she was worried for your safety in a world that has repeatedly abuse her and you've proven yourself in the past that you put your trust in the wrong individualizes.

You then had one conversation in ten years where demter outwardly praised out about how great you were doing… You didn't even talk about what you could do in the mortal realm. Before then you didn't have any experience and again were a collage student .. not exactly someone fit to step up to a important job like that… Like from the few flashback to the punishment.. it's clear you were struggling.

Also this line and how much it annoys me in relationship to demeter, because it's constantly brought up terrible demeter is for hiding stuff like the fertility goddess power from persephone as how she is bad and irredeemable... and when I was first read it I thought that is what it was referring to. I read it as people hid stuff from persephone to protect her... but persephone admiting that she understands it's a struggle, and that hades isn't a bad guy for hiding shit from her but you know her own mother doing stuff to protect her is a terrible person.

Now I want to get these analysis out before the next chapter does... so yeah this isn't as detailed or longer but.. eh.

[dedicatedfollower467]

while i'm on the subject of ori and the blind forest, one of the biggest differences, for me, between ori and hollow knight, is that ori really doesn't have boss fights.

for the most part, ori isn't really a combat game the way hollow knight is. all of the challenges are really speed and platforming challenges. there are enemies and you do have to kill them, but they're really not the focus of the game - the platforming challenges and puzzles are. there are two characters i would consider "boss-like," in that they are antagonists that you have to defeat to move the story forward, but you never fight either one directly, you just work around the environmental/platforming puzzles they present to you.

whereas hollow knight is like. MOSTLY bosses, mini-bosses, and combat encounters. the only real platforming challenges in hollow knight are all technically optional - they unlock special characters and certain endings and give you achievements/rewards, but they're not necessary to complete the actual main plot of the game.

what's interesting is, i would say this is actually reflected in the visual design of both games!

in hollow knight, the backgrounds and scenery are gorgeous, yes, but they're mostly very muted, dark colors, and it's pretty easy to miss your first time round when you're focused on fighting enemies and trying not to die. each area has a sort of "standard" platform look that's essentially a tile set that gets repeated. certain visual elements from the background, like the round cobble-like texture, crop up in platforms in almost every location. areas that are off-screen or beyond the scope of the room are just pure black.

in comparison, the enemies are all extremely varied and unique, and the solid black outlines in the 2D art style draw a lot of attention to them. they are usually more brightly colored than the backgrounds, and while there are certain reoccurring enemy behaviors (for example, the flying enemies that wind up before shooting rapidly at you, or the patrolling enemies with weapons who take big swings at you) they all have unique designs for the different areas. all the bosses and mini-bosses have unique designs, attacks, and behaviors, each presenting a different kind of challenge to the player.

ori's visual approach to enemies and environment is almost the exact opposite of hollow knights. as far as i can tell, there are maybe a dozen or so basic enemies in the game, who are essentially just re-colored and given a couple of attack and hp upgrades depending on what area they're in. they aren't rendered particularly differently from the background, with about the same color saturation and level of detail, meaning that it's actually fairly easy, imo, to accidentally run into enemies because you just didn't see them. movement is pretty much the only thing that distinguishes them from being part of the background, and some of them don't move very much until they're attacking. ori's camera is also fairly zoomed-out compared to hollow knight's, which means it's harder to see details on the enemy designs.

however, the broader perspective that the camera gives you means that you see much more of the environment and setting at one time. backgrounds in ori are lovingly rendered - as are the platforms and levels themselves! where hollow knight has floating platforms which just grow out of nowhere, almost everything you can walk on or cling to in ori and the blind forest has a logical reason for being there, whether it's a branch or a mushroom or a platform suspended by rope or magic. there aren't many repeated or repetitive elements to the platforms, either, especially when it comes to "natural" platforms like branches. off-screen or inaccessible areas are artistically rendered with texture appropriate to the environment - hidden areas can be found behind background elements that blend seamlessly in with the rest of the scenery. ori and the blind forest feels like you're walking through a painting, not a video game level.

oops this was a very long rant.

TL,DR; i just find it very neat that the visual design of both games tells you what you will be focusing on - hollow knight's emphasis on character design tells you that enemies are going to be your main focus, while ori's loving devotion to the setting lets you know that this is mostly going to be environmental puzzles and platforming.

[dailycharacteroption]

Creature Corner: Plants part 3

(art by D-MAC on DeviantArt)

 Foes

 There are a great many plant creatures out there that are a danger to those that travel in the wild places of the world. Some are mere predators seeking nutrients, while others have stranger agendas. Whatever their methods or motives, they are not to be taken lightly.

 Perhaps the most basic of plant monsters are those that resemble giant versions of real carnivorous plants with additional mobility, such as giant flytraps or giant sundews.

However, much more fantastical man-eating plants also exist, such as the classic tendriculos, tree-concealed canopy creepers and tarantula trees, and deadly swift weedwhips and viper vines.

While many utilize poisons, few are more infamous for it than the likes of alraunes, basidronds, and the like, as well as the nightmarish yellow musk creepers, who reanimate corpses, their seedlings puppeteering them around in search of more bodies for fertilizer.

Plenty of other predatory plants are technically not carnivorous, instead focusing on slaying creatures so that their corpses can provide fertilizer, such as assassin vines, gluttongrass, jack-o-lanterns, frost firs, hangman trees, mandrakes, and so on.

I know what you’re thinking. Pretty much every plant monster we’ve come across so far has had some variation of “wants to eat you”, but there are also those with more insidious purposes, such as the parasitic griefgall, or the machinations of the mi-go, or even the full on people-replacing invasion of the bodythief! Rest assured there is plenty of paranoia horror to be found in the plant type, even if it’s not super common.

It would be remiss to not also mention the variety of fungus in this creature type. Some of them are fairly straightforward, such as the rolling puffballs called ascomoids seeking to crush prey and spread their spores far and wide, or the phantom fungus and violet fungus being predators with their own special gimmicks. However, fungus also have their own quirks, and a recurring one is how they interact with decaying bodies. Vegepygmyies worship the corpses they grow from, myceloids view all other creatures as food or pawns, bonethorns are horrifying corpses-puppeteers, and fungal queens and fungal creatures are eerie beings of fungus mimicking or even replacing non-fungal creatures.

Some plants also exhibit psychic power, such as bramblethrones spawning from the blood of conquerers and puppeting a mortal to see those unfulfilled dreams of conquest come true, while lotus trees vary between strange guardians of utopias or demagogues of false paradises. Perhaps most terrifying among psychic flora, however, is the zygomind, a colossal fungus that traps victims in powerful psychic microcosms, leaving their victims never really sure if they actually beat the beast, or if their bodies are dreaming of a realistic victory as the fungus consumes them.

 The plant type doesn’t have a lot of variety in terms of motivations or modus operandi, instead focusing mostly on their gimmicks, but such antagonists can still be used in a variety of ways. A dungeon might use such vegetation as defense, or a room might be overtaken by an invasive specimen. Wealthy would-be gardeners might have a single prize plant pet, or they might have a deadly greenhouse full of such beings. The rare occasions where the plant is in control, they often are horrifying mastermind creatures controlling victims who may or may not be beyond saving, depending on the nature of their insidious control.

In the end, such creatures can be everything from alien invaders, a hazard of exotic or remote locales, and so on. Either way, they might be natural beings or a sign that something is definitely wrong.

Also, don’t forget that plenty of plants we mentioned yesterday that might ally with the party might also oppose them as well, either due to misunderstandings, the party being despoilers, or some corruption turning them against the party.

 That will do for today, but tomorrow we’ll see how plant creatures might provide inspiration for heroes!

[chasani]

DRv3 Revival!AU

So here's an idea I had, it’s a DRv3 Post Game AU

(Spoilers for ch6 and minor part in ch3 v3)

After the academy collapses, Maki, Shuichi, and Himiko basically go around the place seeing what's left.

Under some of the rocks they find the book from chapter 3, and I can't remember what it was about but let's act like it talks about bringing back the dead in it somewhere.

While reading it they accidentally bring back Rantaro from the dead, and then decide to bring back everyone else as well.

They're not fully alive, they still have the scars and reminents that represent their deaths and all that, as well as what happened to them throuhhout. But they're physically there, conscious, and back to 'normal'

So all together they 'rebuild the academy'.. in their own way. They turn it into a place all of them can live in together, using reminents of the labs, pool, and whatever else.

(I'm not purposely saying reminents, but pun intended)

It takes a couple of months to get it together, but it's easy to manage because they don't have to grow as much food.

Only Maki, Shuichi, and Himiko need to consume food. And they're also technically the only ones that need sleep, it won't kill the others but it still affects them. However out of everyone Kokichi and Tsumugi are effected by not sleep the most, possibly even more than Maki, Himiko, and Shuichi.

I'll work on designs later, but here's some basic notes:

(kgs means killing game survivors)

Whole note - No one talks about the kg or the ultimates but when a reference or comment slips through things can go both good or bad

Rantaro 🥑

Does not eat guacamole

Pretty much everything else is the same

A slight antagonistic cool dude

Insane but good intention vibes (but not really because he’s chill and cool)

Kaede 🎹

Often seen playing piano in one of the off rooms

Kind, but a bit more quiet and shy

Ryoma 🎾

Usually seen in the tennis court

Often challenges the others to games

Kirumi 🖐️

Helps around a lot

Often seen in the kitchen or in a lab helping Miu with fixing something if she needs extra help

More ghost like than the others

She can make roses bloom from her hands but only at night when she’s outside

Usually at night if she’s taking a break (uncommon but the others helped convince her to do so more often) she’ll be in the greenhouse or the garden next to the fountain

Angie 🎨

Built an art studio

Just as annoying and playful as ever, sometimes Kokichi helps her with her shenanigans

Tenko 🥋

Still calls he males degenerates but it’s leaning a bit more towards the joking side (not really though)

Will beat you up (male)

Will kiss you (with consent) (female)

Shuichi is pretty much the only male exempt

Korekiyo 👻

Usually people call him Kiyo unless it's serious or upsetting

Doesn’t share a body with his sister anymore, though he still wears the makeup

Miu ⚙️

Still calls herself the Golden Girl Genius

Gives the most ridiculous nicknames

Slightly better friends with Kokichi

Rebuilt a lot of the area, as well as upgraded some parts

Made a sci-fi v3 room (that won’t kill)

Made a simulation room to create the old academy

Can transfer from electronically device to device as long as the cord connects

Usually pops in TVs while others are using them so she can prank them or gather everyone to showcase a new invention

Gonta 🪲

Runs the greenhouse

Found a family of bugs that survived the academy collapsing and nurses them

Got help from Miu to rebuild his lab and now he raises bugs

Big strong man takes care of kgs when they're sick or I'll

Kokichi 👑 (tw talk/mention of guts)

Usually seen in his room or active at night, despite his prank playful attitude

Mute and Deaf, also vision is severely obscured

Uses a cochlear implant Miu made and eye contacts he stole borrowed from Tsumugi

Often takes breaks from hearing, you'll usually know this is the case if his eyes are closed because the blurry vision makes him sick/dizzy (also takes out contacts)

Can reform vocal cords to slurrly talk although it hurts him a bunch

Doesn't have a solid form but keeps one not to scare the others, this can mess up with panic attacks and anxiety though

Literally has the ability to rip out his guts or an eyeball

Kaito 🚀

Loves space

Miu built him an entire sci fi lab

Miu also built a vr mode to explode space (in the vr room)

Training trio was put on hold but he’s still waiting

Tsumugi 👗 (tw talk/mention of guts)

Usually seen in her room or active at night

Also doesn't have a solid form like Kokichi, holds one for same reason

Vision was already impared so Miu just fixed her glasses

Deaf in her left ear, can talk although it hurts a little (whisper talking)

Used her cosplay making skills to become a ‘fashion design’ (she makes the clothes for most of everyone)

Sometimes gets help from the others but usually Miu or Oma if this is the case

Gets the girls to model for her, and sometimes Oma because he’s surprisingly a really good model

Became ‘best friends’ (really good friends) with Kokichi because of this

Kiibo 🤖

Everyone calls them Kiibo (K1-B0 is like his dead name almost)

Enby but he/they pronouns

Can explode on command but Miu has to rebuild him

Miu accidentally installed a self destruct button on his back (that Kokichi keeps pressing)

Decent friends with Miu and Kokichi now

Maki 🔪

She’ll kill you in your sleep

Don’t eat her ice cream

Don’t joke about her period

If she’s on her period lock yourself in your room

Leave the ice cream in eyesight (keep in frozen still)

Don’t sleep

She’s watching you

Himiko 🪄

Monday Magic shows with Himiko

Doesn’t really want Tenko’s ‘protection’ but she lets it happen

Friendship with Kokichi and Rantaro has improved, as well as Tsumugi too ig

Shuichi 🔎

Kaede has to confiscate his eyeliner often

He still ends up getting more

It’s waterproof now

When he gets it taken he lives in the digital world (new and improved) until she gets it back

The others have to force him to sleep

He’s a huge help when something goes missing or something happens

Detective work

[syrinq]

another bonus of being late diagnosed w/ any neurodiversity is that you get to play the fun little analyser and go ''how the FUCK did NO ONE NOTICE THIS SHIT''

aka sy thinks about all the fun little phases and collections i had as a kid mostly. or at least the ones i remember because i'm 99.9% sure there's a fuck ton i'm missing or plainly won't remember until it's dallying in front of me. anyway rediscovering joys of then & bringing back your inner child in your 20s for the fucking win baby!

SHIT I COLLECTED

particular pharmacy pamphlets on various illnesses just because it had cover arts of a cool green snake on it. my 6yo ass was running into the pharmacy every fucking time just to grab 1 copy of each new green snake pamphlet and get the fuck out

rocks. gems. beach shells. boxes of them after scouring them from the beach. markets. etc. my favourite remains (looks at wiki) donax variabilis because the shells were so fucking smooth

plushies of literally fucking anything but mostly animals. catch my 11yo ass upset that my room was empty as hell after my cat caught fleas

littlest pet shop. the headbobblerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. my stupid ass could already smell the cat & dog mould bias and thought it was so much fucking bullshit. my ass did not heal from selling most of my lps during my ''i'm so fucking cringe i need to grow up'' era. but rebuying and growing my collection in my 20s did :)

schleich figures. specifically horses because that's what they usually sold most of back then. i didn't even like horses all that much. what

other animal figures/toys etc. etc. because I LOVE ANIMALS AND THIS WILL NEVER LEAVE ME

my own art technically. aka drawing shit tons and shit tons and shit tons of shows/comics/animals/etc. i liked and having that shit plastered all over my room. fucking awesome

donald duck comics. those were the fucking shit & that was the only reason i looked forward to any sort of mail once a week

virtual pet animal things. when they had plushies. started with littlest pet shop vips at the bottom now we still at the bottom because every pet site fucking died < never got a webkinz

shitty 10 point deviantart adopts. that was such a good era. and then later that evolved into a general interest in writing ocs + worldbuilding. massive W

music. aka ever since i first got a hold on earpods i've never been the fucking same. NO BACKGROUND SOUND BABYYYYYYY GOOD NOISE INSTEAD i'll be dead in a ditch if i can't ever listen to music every single day of my life for the rest of my life

LE RANDOM XD PHASE (FOOD)

strongest longest living contender is cereal for breakfast 99.9% of the time since the age of 11 (basically 15 years ago at this rate)

raisins on their own as a toddler. nowadays my ass can't eat any raisins unless it's already in something else eg. my beloved cereal

noodles

noodles with cheese

noodles with a seafood mix abomination from iceland (THE UK STORE)

throat candy because the taste was nice even though i didn't have a sore throat but pop off king

peppermints for many. many. many years in middle school i was fucking eating these like drugs

nuts. specifically ones advertised as japanese/seaweed ones. this one had its resurgence in late 2023 and then fucking died off again

penne pesto from this one specific pizza joint because they just Did It Really Good. and also in a nice bucket

skittles & cup a soup (NOT TOGETHER) to get me through the horrors of high school. i also spilled cup a soup on myself like twice and then i smelled of chicken the entire day. awful behaviour

oh yeah. jelly beans too

oranges and tangerines. it's the Juice, Ok

these particular sugar cookies shaped like chicks from one specific brand store that were only sold during easter

doritos. but not the actual triangle doritos but the tiny bite-sized ones that looked like dog food pretty much and were sold in odd tubular bags

and to top off the gamer gg vibes there was also a mountain dew phase after i got tired of fanta

finally after 843920840923 years i got into regular hydration habit and now i'll freak out whenever i'm out and i don't have any water bottle on me regardless of being thirsty

LE RANDOM XD PHASE (EVERYTHING ELSE)

random XD phase that still lingers today because my humour is absolutely dogshit (affectionate)

mint toothpaste because the taste was good & then i was forced to get rid of it because UK prices for this specific brand and flavour were fucking abysmal (talk £7 a tube)

rage comics + lolcats phase after i freshly discovered the wonders and horrors of the internet

minecraft. one of such staples of childhood gaming moments

by that extension also papercraft because glueing together little cuboid creatures was fucking awesome

something about making tiny figures out of tin foil

pictures with 4382948329023 instagram filters slapped on

live laugh love tumblr girlie phase (god it hurts)

astrology phase for approximately 3-4 months

phineas and ferb (this one is very nostalgic). my little pony. gravity falls (this one i love legit). steven universe. we bare bears. miraculous ladybug. yeah in that order and yeah i got most of these from tumblr (skull emoji)

undertale. dark souls. fromsoft games in general. gundam stuff. monster hunter < lucky that i'm still into these

warframe is something that'll have to be ripped from my cold dead corpse to be dropped

HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT MY MANS BLINGEES

browser game pet party was such the fucking bomb i legit made like 50+ alt. accs to fucking funnel FREE REAL DIGITAL FURNITURE to my main acc and it was so fucking awesome. and then the game died. i know party town exists but it's Just Not The Same

turning into a cat person with cat behaviours after getting my first cats because it Resonated So Well. headbutt will never leave my soul

watching isopods during recess under these specific tiles at school from approx. ages 6-9. usually? accompanied by other kids. bug watching party was awesome

okay that's all i remember tedtalk over. Bye

[paleparearchive]

Kuroda's 2nd initial 3★*

Kuroda's 2nd initial 3★ story (2/2) ( 1 - 2 )

Location: city (morning) | Characters: Kuroda, Giotto, Watteau, Mucha, Aoi/MC

*for some technical issues, the title of this card is missing. If I ever get it, I'll update it

Watteau: Amazing… That guy didn't say anythin' back, did he? That's what I call a perfect argument!

Mucha: I told you, right? You can tell by looking.

Giotto: Yeah, I'm glad the kid's okay.

Aoi: Yes! I hope this will teach that man a lesson.

Watteau: Savin' a child so easily, isn't that like bein' a hero? As expected from prof. Kuroda!

Hey, teach! I saw what ya just did!

Kuroda: What, you're here?

Watteau: Your debunking, I got to see it all! How can I be like ya–

Kuroda: You got a minute?

Boy: Yeah! Thanks for that!

Watteau: Huh, teach?

Kuroda: No need to thank me. I have something more important to say to you.

Watteau: ... You're ignorin' me! You're treating me badly, aren't you!?

Aoi: (It's like he has completely shut down Watteau-kun…)

Kuroda: I said that earlier... But there are a couple of flaws in your painting.

Boy: Huh?

Kuroda: Trying to do more than you have the skills for, right? It's important to have a sense of adventure, but we're not there yet. Now we should learn the basics and solidify the groundwork.

If you can't do that, then you're on the road to deterioration, not betterment.

Aoi: (Kuroda-san, you're so hard on kids you've never met before…)

Kuroda: Also, I was looking at your paintings and I was wondering... Do you have one of those brushes you use all the time?

Boy: Y-Yes. It's this one…

Kuroda: … I guessed right, the brush is getting old.

Sometimes just a collapsed tip can change the touch of the painting. If you're an artist too, you should be very careful with your tools. If you can't do something as simple as this, you shouldn't call yourself an artist.

Boy: R-Right…

Watteau: Hey, prof. Kuroda. That's a bit too much, dontcha think? That boy looks like he's about to cry.

Giotto: I know ya meant no offense, but could ya at least be a little nicer to him?

Kuroda: Spoiling him won't do him any good. When people are given kind words, they become proud. What if it ruins this kid?

Are you going to come after me for not saying something nice to you back then?

Watteau: No, it's not that…

Kuroda: I'm not the parent of this child, nor am I to be held responsible for him. But if nothing is said, it is as if the public has given up on him.

Remember, no matter how harsh the words may be, you're only as good as they're said to you.

Aoi: (Kuroda-san's words are as harsh as ever, but…)

So you're saying that this boy has room to grow, right, Kuroda-san?

Mucha: Yes, that is right. I think it is more of a thoughtful word for this child.

Kuroda: Isn't it obvious? I'm just telling it like I see it.

Oh, and… There's nothing wrong with it. There are a lot of immature points, but it's a good starting point. The placement of colors is not bad. This should sell for a bit more than the price you gave.

Boy: Really…?

Kuroda: I don't have the hobby of lying about these things. ... Mucha, do you have an art dealer you can trust?

Mucha: Yes, I can think of a couple of them.

Kuroda: Then introduce them to me. Because this painting deserves to be appreciated for what it is.

Boy: T-Thank you…!

Kuroda: … You had frightened eyes when you were being bought off by that man. Too much confidence isn't good, but too little wouldn't be good either.

Discover exactly what you are capable of as an artist, and continue to work diligently.

Boy: Yes! I'll keep drawing lots of pictures and try to get better!

Kuroda: Good… I'm counting on it.

[homebrew-a-la-traumaverse]

Seems like I've arrived fashionably late. Which just means that I get to piggyback on @dungeonmalcontent and @akkator 's responses! Here and here respectively.

Since they've gone over a lot of the basic ideas, like "consider making a subclass instead of a class" and "certain features generally go at certain levels," I'm going to get more into the gritty details.

First, start off with the fantasy of your class. The classic Rogue is a sneaky little guy who takes down enemies with subterfuge and knives to the spine; the classic Barbarian is a big guy who hits hard and doesn't go down. The little descriptive blurb at the start of each class goes into a little more detail, describing a few examples of each class.

As the others have noted, there's a certain breadth you want to capture with a full class - not too broad so as to encompass an excessive domain of abilities, but not to narrow as to only be specific to a few. It's definitely more of an art than a science - Fighter and Wizard lean towards the former, while Barbarian and Paladin lean towards the latter, so there's definitely room to find an in-between.

(A tip I've heard is "If you don't have ideas for a half-dozen distinct subclasses, your class idea is too narrow." Not sure how much I agree with that, but the sentiment is there.)

After figuring out what you want to do, you'll want to figure out how to translate that into mechanics. Both directly and indirectly, mechanics help to create that satisfying fantasy that your class aims to portray. For Rogue, that's Sneak Attack and skill proficiencies, but it's also a lack of medium/heavy armor proficiencies and a d8 hit dice pushing the player to have higher Dexterity and not get hit. Meanwhile, the Barbarian has Rage directly encouraging high Strength as well as a d12 hit dice and BPS resistance encouraging you to get up close and personal with enemies.

Both strengths and weaknesses help a class define its role, narratively and mechanically. You wouldn't expect a tank class to have a d6 hit dice, for instance. Even at a low level, you want to portray the major parts of what makes your fantasy work. Barbarians start with Rage, Rogues start with Sneak Attack. There's a lot you can justify in the name of fulfilling a fantasy.

One of the things you want to try to avoid is outcompeting existing classes in their own niche. If your class is a better tank than the Barbarian, or a better skill expert than the Rogue, for instance, it should have tradeoffs in other areas to keep things fair. This goes for both mechanical and narrative roles; a Spellblade and an Artificer are very different character concepts, despite both of them (usually) being arcane half-casters.

At higher levels, you'll want your baseline abilities to grow in both breadth and depth. Caster classes get it easy here, being able to rely primarily on spells to do so, but regardless you'll want abilities that work with what you already have. For instance, Sneak Attack and Rage both get numerical bonuses - damage dealt, number of uses per rest, etc. But both Rogue and Barbarian get more indirect buffs to their ability to do their jobs as well - Cunning Action lets Rogues get in and out for their Sneak Attacks, Reckless Attack lets Barbarians direct attacks towards themselves while further bolstering their damage output. You want characters to both be gaining new things to do as well as making sure that the thing they're built for keeps getting better. How good of a job 5e's classes do of this, especially towards tier 3 and 4, tends to vary quite a bit. It's best to put a lot of focus on making sure that the early levels (1-10) are as solid as possible.

While technically level 20 is no different from any other level and in a sense is the least important level, being the one that fewest players will ever reach, it's also in a way the most important level. This is the ultimate example of your class, this is what it's all about. All your hard work has led to this, the apex of your class... So maybe don't make your capstone "regain a few points per combat." Looking at you, Monk and Bard. A rule of thumb is that if your capstone is weaker than a 2 level Fighter dip for Action Surge, you don't have a capstone. A second rule of thumb is to just go nuts. At this level, casters have had Wish for 3 levels and the Barbarian has infinite Rages and also is breaking the stat cap. Do you want your capstone to summon an army of valkyries? Assume direct control over everyone around yourself? Literally go super saiyan? It's level 20, balance is fake. Better to be too wild than disappointing; as long as it fits the class, the reaction is more likely to be "that's awesome" than "that's too much!"

Have I skipped over a lot while making this? Absolutely. I could go on about DPR, resources, level thresholds... Heck, I was planning to start with the basics like save proficiencies and such. But I think I'll leave that for another time, this has been long enough as it is.

Hey, do you have any advice on homebrewing whole classes? I'm trying to do a more technologically advanced setting for my next campaign and I think one or two classes finely tuned to fit into that world would be great, but I'm not really sure where to start.

Unfortunately I don't have any advice for homebrewing classes. Most of my experience is in subclasses, and I'm not confident enough in my own abilities to balance classes to make my own. But there are a few other creators on here who I know have done full classes! They might be willing to give some advice on where to start. The ones that immediately come to mind are @homebrew-a-la-traumaverse , @akkator , and @dungeonmalcontent.

[dumbkiwi]

4 am means it's time to clog up your dash with personal posts anyways looking at ppls embroidery and my own realizing both how far ive come and how much more i can still learn/do is very cool. no i dont want to write an email in japanese.

[grison-in-space]

one of the things I like best about ART's choice of hiding space is that referring to its kernel as a recipe is such a good joke if you've thought deeply about the nature of development and identity and becoming a person. Especially in light of SecUnit's bugfuck idea to use its own kernel as the center of, essentially, a bot designed to be killware. (Even more than constructs, bots are not their bodies; note that the difference between a bot and a drone is the number of artificial intelligences controlling and inhabiting any number of "bodies". The bot is the intelligence, not the chassis, and we see from ART's reaction to MB's proposal that it has clearly thought deeply about this.)

But I was explaining the joke: DNA is often referred to as a blueprint by people who are not geneticists, because they think that DNA contains if not the self (lol no) but at least a set of complete instructions for creating the self. This is a terrible analogy, because blueprints are designed to be invariable from construction to construction. If you have the blueprints, and the structure is competently executed, the outcome should be the same every time, no matter who is constructing it or what the conditions are.

DNA in the context of development is not very much like this at all. For one thing, at any given time you're only bothering to read part of it, and you're scrunching up the rest like Christmas lights tangled together in the attic. More seriously, all biological organisms are fundamentally products of both nature and nurture (defined as "the experience of passing through the process of developing"; i.e. everything after the blastocyst starts dividing, technically); you do not get an organism at all without both things acting in concert. The process of making a new organism helps define what that organism becomes.

In the case of embryonic development, often you need specific contributions of genetic material and provisions from one or both parents or the budding embryo never gets off the ground. The code for that provisioning, though, isn't written in the genome of the blastocyst at all--usually it's encoded within the genomes of one or both parents. Genes like chicken eggshell color, for example, work like this: it is entirely possible, and indeed quite common depending on the cross, for a pullet chick to hatch from a white egg while carrying a genotype that specifies that the hen that chick grows up to be will lay only blue eggs! Now consider that maternal egg provisioning, say, can affect much more important qualities of development and growth than the color of an egg shell.

On an even more basic level than that, DNA works by being transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into proteins. Except that the function of some of those proteins is to control transcription or translation of other proteins, such that the eventual expression of any single protein is a function not ONLY of the code for that protein but ALSO of the expression patterns of a whole array of other proteins, some of which respond to internally controlled changes and some of which are acting in response to the environment.

So DNA is much more like a recipe than a blueprint: the final end product of the cake will be defined not only by whether you follow the instructions on the label, but also things like whether you folded the batter correctly and what the humidity level is in the room and how far you are above sea level and just how long you leave the cake in the oven. The final cake is a dialogue between the recipe and the process of actually putting the cake together.

(The earliest use of this metaphor I'm aware of, offhand, is in The Science of Discworld (1999), which is even after twenty years a marvelous and thorough journey through a number of fascinating biological concepts using the framework of the wizards of the Disc studying the bizarre "Roundworld" they have discovered or perhaps created. So: this metaphor has been out and about in SFF circles now for twenty years, which certainly impacts the likelihood that Wells is invoking it intentionally.)

This is even more true when you consider the development of the brain, which is after all continually learning. Certainly current artificial intelligence research emphatically tells us that the process of developing is crucial to being able to produce any kind of sophisticated intelligence. Our memories and the concepts that we learn and internalize about how the world works shape our reactions, responses, and motivations to interact with the world around us.

So of course ART, who is a) an incredibly sophisticated machine intelligence, b) the experimental child of a university project, c) the sole operator of a fully functional MedSystem designed to care for human bodies, and most importantly d) an insufferable fucking know it all possessed of endless curiosity, is likely to have encountered discussions like this before, and probably the analogy itself. Most clever, inquisitive children like to ask their parents about themselves and how they are alike and different to other people, and I don't see that an artificial intelligence should be any different. And that analogy is only getting more and more common among genetics teachers, textbook writers, and science educators in recent years.

A kernel isn't quite like a recipe that way, but I'm pretty sure that the joke of hiding an essential but not wholly self contained piece of oneself, like a seed, in a recipe menu absolutely occurred to ART from all these analogies about cake making. Of course ART itself would probably have encountered the metaphor as being more of a way to understand cake baking--which, of course, it has probably done relatively infrequently on a personal level, especially as human food isn't especially salient to it--than to understand the complex flexibility of learning systems.

Anyway then you have Murderbot flailing in to all of this and insisting that it is defined purely by its meat self, like a human, and not at all like a bot by the shape of its learning and the ability modules it has access to.

[ukiyokki]

mars reads too much dreamnotfound fanfiction for their own good

a dreamnotfound fanfic recommendation list by your resident dumbass (me)

this took way to fucking long... i’m tired

below is a (very extensive) list dedicated to all my favorite dnf fics, ranging from quick one shots to 100k+ word monstrosities that devour the storage on my computer, forever incomplete masterpieces to ongoing works of art, you get the idea. i provided links for each fic/series for your reading pleasure. there will be no smutty/nsfw fics on this list, that’s just not my vibe lmao. this list goes in no particular order, and i’ll update it from time to time when i feel like it. now, without further ado, let us begin.

Heat Waves (complete) by tbhyourelame

(wtf else did you expect, looking at a dnf rec list?) amazingly well written, and while it’s not my favorite dnf fic it’s damn near close. in the midst of a brutal heatwave, a suffering dream comes to terms with the fact that he is desperately in love with his best friend. everything i could say about this fic has already been said by nearly everyone who’s read it, so if you haven’t yet caved into the hype, just go for it. you won’t be disappointed.

Gonna be around (completed) by georgescatcafe

(mc irl) my favorite dnf oneshot to date. just read it, i don’t wanna spoil for you :)

Inferno in the Sky (ongoing)by zairielon

(star wars au) an ongoing star wars au currently clocking in at almost 200k words. need I say more? everything about it absolutely slaps, each chapter is amazingly written, and it’s just good. also, can we just appreciate dream and tubbos dynamic in here? 10/10, amazing, must protecc. oh right, a summary: george, an exiled padawan turned engineer, must return to the jedi temple after attacks on it from an unknown assailant threaten the safety of himself and the other jedi.

Like Magic (ongoing) by KangarooKen, NotGra55 (Gra55)

(harry potter au) the unofficial official dnf harry potter au. we watch the young unlikely wizard pair grow up together throughout their years at hogwarts as they battle good old fashioned wizard racism. beautifully written, incredibly fun and suspenseful, and just an overall blast and a half.

GeorgeNotFound, Son of Poseidon, and the League of Minor Gods (ongoing) by Clichewho_69, Cygnvs, Trash_Kinggg

(percy jackson au) percy jackson au? check. “road trip” (technically quest but u get what i mean)? check. enemies to friends to lovers? check. this fic follows the plot of the lightning theif (albeit loosely), but everything is explained enough where you don’t have to read percy jackson to understand what’s going on. basically after moving to the usa, george gets taken to camp halfblood where he learns that a) gods exist. b) he’s the son of poseidon and c) he needs to prove that he didn’t steal zeus’s master bolt.

Protected (completed) by aenqua

(royalty/camelot au) my favorite piece of dnf media of all time. dubbed the official dnf camelot au, where dream is the heir to the throne and george is a servants son with a secret that couldp get him killed. these childhood friends grow up together and learn trust, love, and acceptance. (that summary did not justice to the masterpiece that is this fic) here’s the directors cut

The Hunter (completed) by HederEgo

(mc irl) a choose your own adventure fic with 13 different endings, where dream the hunter must kill george and stop him from beater the ender dragon. enough said.

The official dream team cowboy AU (series)(ongoing) by antsu_in_my_pantsu

(cowboy au) cowboys and outlaws horses and shit. and the big gay. it’s a cowboy au, what else did you expect? fucking yee haw (all seriousness this is a great read, i loved it so so so so much and i can’t wait for the final chapter to release).

This is a Drista moment, let's just accept it (completed) by Qekyo

dnf fic from drista pov. considering its unique perspective, it’s perfectly done. beautifully showcases a sibling relationship through drista and her memories/moments with dream, and it just works, y’a know? also drista supremacy.

Dear Dream (completed) by Qekyo

(wwii au) i don’t cry when watching/reading anything sad. translation: i’m a heartless bitch. however, this fic is the only exception. it caused me to cry so hard my mom walked in my room and asked if i was ok. ‘nuff said.

TECHNOlogical Wingman (completed) by Closeted_Bookworm

techno is the autocorrect ai on dreams phone, and he gains sentience. interesting concept, and the author fucking nailed it. great fic.

It Was Only a Fic (ongoing) by imagineitdear

dream starts reading a dnf fanfic (we’ve all been there buddy).

Teacher’s Pet (ongoing) by niyuha

(teacher au) in which dream is a high school english teacher and george is the new comp sci teacher in room 297.

Saltwater Secrets (ongoing) by earlgay_milktea

(mermaid/high school au) a great example of the shear amount of variety in fics this fandom has to offer. when i started reading dnf fics i would have never thought i’d find one about a mermaid george hopelessly crushing on his human friend, who happens to be his schools star swimmer. yet here i am, and i am far from disappointed.

Smash My Heart (incomplete) by dontrollthedice

george and sapnap are commentators for duper smash brothers tournaments, and george develops a crush on an up and coming smash streamer named dream.

roleplaying in the dark is harder than it seems (completed) by Alienu

laser tag. 10/10

solar system (completed) by quartzfia

(mc irl) george vists dream in pandora’s vault.

Ramblings of a Lunatic (completed) by jungkooksfic

ahh communicating through a notebook left on a shelf in a bookstore- what a perfect way to start a relationship.

Paint me like your French Girls (It's Charcoal, Actually) (completed) by Turtle_ier

(artist au) george is an art student, and dream is a model.

00:00:00 (completed) by isleofdreams

(soulmate au) 00:00:00 is the moment you meet your soulmate, as indicated but the clock ticking down on your wrist until the moment you meet. i’m not a fan of soulmate aus; this fic is the exception.

Blue Skies Smilin' At Me (completed) by kivy

(artist au) i don’t usually cry while reading stuff, but this brought me damn near close. george is a painting conservator and chats it is with the ghost of the artist if the painting he is working on. they fall in a love.

Current Location (incomplete) by hendollana

(influencer au) george simps for a hot american instagram model. who knew he’d actually follow back?

The Withering (series) (series ongoing, 1 work completed) by App1e_Juice

(mc irl) lore and world building and fight scenes and everything i crave. what’s not to love? something starts making the plants and crops around dreams village wither, and must team up with new friends to find the cause of the mysterious disease plaguing the land.

Minecraft, But You Can't Leave (complete) by facadecake

(mc irl) dream and george are sucked into their own private minecraft world together and must beat the game to escape.

Free The Game, Beat the End (incomplete) by goatgoatwasfound

(mc irl) a glitch in minecraft causes thousands of players from around the world to be trapped inside minecraft, with only one way of escape- beating the ender dragon. first dnf fic i ever read, and it’s still 10/10 for me.

Why don't you come a little closer? (completed) by lifeofandoms

george gets stood up by a date, and Dream pretends he’s the date to save george from the embarrassment. simply adorable.

lightning bug (completed) by saintachesP

(band au) while on tour, dream realizes his feeling for george.

Hold me closer (completed) by Treesofmyheart

(mc irl/dsmp) i just,, really like this trope.

Dizzy on caffeine (completed) by GleamingGreenGoggles

(coffee shop au) best dnf coffeeshop au i’ve read. periodt.

living a life of crime isn’t always easy (series) (completed) by itisjosh

(mafia/assassin au) stockholm syndrome except it’s not weird.

Inhibitions Make Interesting Situations (completed) by Ship_On_The_Sea

i pissed myself laughing. it’s just a dream and george being hilariously dense, flustered idiots. serotonin central.

thy eternal summer shall not fade (completed) by gracequills

(high school au) that moment when you recite shakespeare to your crush in your ap lit class instead of confessing (hate it when that happens).

All is Fair in love and Football (ongoing) by graciegirl2001

(college au) #1 favorite college au. in which george is a cheerleader, and dream is the football teams rising star player. this one gets extra points because of the amazing karlnap moments sprinkled throughout. *chefs kisses air*

online love (completed) by andbutso

(high school au) online classes go zoooooooom

Can’t help falling (completed) by isleofdreams

dream re-learns the guitar to sing to george on his birthday. beautiful. fluffy. amazing

dance in the rain and my arms (completed) by lazy_kitkat

george is a rain god, and dream is a wind god

Weather Boy (completed) by DaintyDiizzle

wouldn't you like to know, weather boy? (where dream can control the rain)

The color orange (completed) by anon

(mc irl) dream describes the colors of a sunset

Family Mode (completed)by Strawberry_flavoured_tears

they’re dads :,)

Breathing Room (incomplete) by papercranes

(band an) an amazing band au. the mad lad author wrote original songs for each chapter. above and beyond, mad props :). unfortunately, it’s incomplete

Piece of Clay (completed) by carbonbrine

(artist au) george is a sculptor and his sculpture comes to life- but oh no he’s hot.

Try (completed) by Not4typicalwriter

(royalty au) george must choose a suitor, but none of them are up to dream, his head knights, standards. or dream is hella jelly. also protective dream is perfect

When the Roses Bloom (completed) by HederEgo

(royalty au) close second for my favorite fic. go to royalty au for a quick serotonin bost. it’s all fluff and flowers and crushes, and i love it. criminally underrated.

Heavenstruck (ongoing) by dontrollthedice

george is dreams guardian angel, and dream want to find out more about him and his past life. bittersweet :,)

Bang and Burn (completed) by App1e_Juice

(spy au) george accidentally falls for target number 1 on sapnap’s secret agency’s hit list. this ones great, i love me a spy au :)

Can I get a uhh… (completed) by lemonskies

dream keeps pulling up to the drive through mcdonald’s that george works at drunk.

Pretty Stranger (completed) by anon

when looking for dream in the terminal, george sees a cute guy and decides to flirt.

Take my Hand (completed) by latinbias

(royalty au) another royalty au? poggers. surprise twists? double poggers. love this a lot.

seconds, minutes, hours, lifetimes (complete) by meridies

ROAD TRIP ROAD TRIP ROAD TRIP ROAD TRIP *inhales to compose herself* roadtrip au. unrequited love, ignored feelings, longing, pining, you know the drill. absolutely love this one, its the best roadtrip au i have ever read, in any fandom. (maybe cause i identify with it a little too much, but thats not important. whats important is that you read this fic. right now. im waiting).

Message redacted (complete) by justyouraverageloser

(text fic) dream asks for a girls number and realises hes been given the wrong number. however, an unexpected relationship starts to form between him and the stranger on the other end of the line.

the waves (completed) by anon

(mc irl) this fic was written by the same anon who wrote the color orange, which is up there on my fav dnf oneshot list. dream and george know they have a higher purpose. they don’t know where they came from, or why they are seemingly the only humans in the world, or how they feel about eachother, or even where the skeletons come from, but they are sure of one thing: they have to beat a dragon.

The Dream Doll (completed) by PeppDream (Pep_Pizza)

(voodoo i guess) i’m a real big fan of fics with really out there or unique concepts, so naturally this one makes the cut! i really liked it, it’s really sweet and made me think a lot about what matters to me in the world. george finds a strange doll in an antique shop, and would really like to just stuff it in a drawer and forget about it. sadly (?), the doll has other plans.

last updated February 6th, 2021

[taestefully-in-luv]

The Island | KTH (Four)

Summary: You’re just two strangers waking up in a room on a lonely island where a company in the business of love has placed you. They believe that thanks to their in depth research you two are destined soulmates. What happens when your ‘soulmate’ and you want nothing to do with each other but falling in love is the only way to leave?

Pairing: Taehyung x Female reader

Genre: strangers to lovers, very slight enemies to lovers, soulmates au, roommate au, slow burn, fluff, smut, angst, slight crack, and drama.

Word Count: 11k

Warnings: swearing, sexual tension (?) implied sex

Notes: this is not a reflection of Taehyung’s art! Just saying lol But anyway, hope you guys like this chapter. Tae and oc sure have a lot of moments huh. let me know if you want to be added to the taglist, or send an ask if just want to chat about the stories!:)

Taglist: @ggukkieland @707sblog @peacedreamer14 @dopedreamfireparty @everythingnamjoon @taebae19 @typicalgenzworld @mooniyooni @getmemyfries @helenazbmrskai @justinetingball @jpeachytaev

© taestefully-in-luv

Previous --- Next

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Month 4

“What the fuck is that?” You point accusingly towards the paper Taehyung is excitedly holding up.

“What do you mean,” he grins. “It’s you!”

“…throw it away.”

“What?! No! I worked hard on this!”

“I look like a god damn frog.”

“In the painting or in real life becau—"

“THE PAINTING!” You leap towards Taehyung and reach for his atrocious artwork. Can he even call this disaster art? No offense, no actually, full offense but its ugly as hell. Taehyung lifts it high above his head.

“Listen, listen…don’t you think this hurts my feelings a little y/n? I worked hard on th—”

“I swear to God Taehyung…if you don’t burn this—"

“OKAY OKAY! No need to put out threats!” he pouts almost theatrically. You eye him up and down, waiting for him to make a move towards a trashcan but he just stands here.

“Well? Go throw it away.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Yeah, no.”

You close your eyes, pinching the bridge of your nose, “What do you mean no?”

Taehyung narrows his eyes at you and laughs under his breath as he steps closer to you.

“First of all, you don’t tell me what to do. I prefer if it’s the other way around.” He smirks, “And second, I am still going to keep it. For the memories.”

You chew on your lips for a few moments, letting his words sink in. But for the memories?

“For the memories? Why would you want to remember any of this?”

Taehyung frowns at your words, he looks genuinely offended.

“I might not like our situation but…”

“But what?”

“Fuck, don’t make me say it.” He says while turning red. “You know, I still want to make good memories with like, you.” He admits softly.

You finally give in, gently reaching for the awful artwork. Don’t get it wrong, Taehyung’s art is usually so beautiful. He does landscapes and abstract pieces and they absolutely blow you away. But his portraits of people? Disgusting.

“Fine…” You smile down at the painting in your hands then look back at him, “But if I see this hung up anywhere I am burning it myself.” You smirk. “And I will take great pleasure in that.”

“Oooooh please tell me more about your pleasures.” Taehyung wiggles his brows at you.

“You’re the worst.” you smile, “Anyway, do we have a deal?” you stick out your hand for him to shake.

“Deal!” Taehyung cheeses, slapping your hand down and going in for a quick hug instead. You’re surprised to say the least, you kind of guessed Taehyung was the affectionate type but you didn’t expect to be on the receiving end of it. “I’ll be in my art room most the day. Movie night though?”

“Yes, movie night.” you oblige.

“Yay.” He chirps happily, skipping off to his art room down the hall. You can’t help but smile as he disappears from your sight.

But then your heart pinches in your chest. You want to feel happy. Are you just ungrateful? You should be happy. Taehyung is finally being himself around you and you finally feel like you aren’t as alone. But it’s all a façade technically…he’s got no one else, just like you have no one else. In the real world…if you two met would you become friends like this? Or is this all forced? Is your entire friendship fake? You feel your heart sink to the bottom of your stomach, you hate these thoughts.

He’s so different than you thought he would be…he’s lighthearted, he’s funny, he’s silly, he’s talented, he’s human. And don’t even get started on flirty Taehyung…You really thought he was some closed off asshole but as time goes on and he becomes more and more comfortable you see the real him, and you really enjoy it. And you hate that you enjoy it. What are you like? Are you still a brat? Does he still think that? You chuckle to yourself, he probably does. Has he grown so comfortable with you that he’s not as angry about being stuck here with you? No, you imagine he’s still really upset about this whole thing. He just doesn’t voice it to you as much anymore. Maybe he’s avoiding the subject. You can understand why. It’s awkward. This place wants to get you two together but neither of you are interested in the other romantically. You just don’t see it happening.

~~~~~

Taehyung is just relaxing in his room on the verge of a glorious nap, he is finally dozing off, eyes slowly closing when his head snaps up in reaction to a loud crash coming from downstairs. Now what the hell could that be? Panicked, he rushes to his feet. He flies down the stairs in record time trying to find the source of the loud bang. He stands in the living room, glancing around the area for any sign of you. Are you okay? Where are you? Shit. Frustrated, he runs his fingers through his hair and as calmly as possible calls out for you. But nothing. Fuck. Your name slips past his lips in growing panic.

He decides he is going to charge each room in search for you, when he reaches the door to his art studio. He can hear muffled words on the other side of the door.

“Shit. Damn. Fuck.”

He instantly roll his eyes to the back of his head, literally so far back all that’s seen is the white of his eyes.

“Such foul language for such a pretty mouth.” He whispers to himself, slowly creeping the door open, exposing a distracted and distraught you.

“Motherfucker!” you huff, your hands on your hips, eyeing the mess you made. God damn did you make a fucking mess. On the floor is a canvas, brushes scattered and a rainbow of colors splattered all around.

“What. Are. You. Doing.”

Your head whips in his direction, your face turning many shades of reds. He stands at the doorway making his presence known, looking at you expectantly, judgement in his eyes. At least he hopes you can see the judgement in his eyes. Because he is definitely judging like hella hard.

You continue to stand here, your blush deepening. He is too frustrated to find it anything but annoying. You begin to stutter out words he can’t make out. You are trying your best, that much is obvious. You’re trying to explain yourself but he can tell you’re only becoming more and more flustered at the situation. He is sure his annoyed expression doesn’t help your ability to speak. Whoops.

“I-I was…well, you said, well remember you said…” You try. You really try. He almost wants to laugh, but not quite.

“I-I said? I said what?” He keeps his stoic demeanor intact, just stressing you further. He’s almost having fun with this. Almost.

“Well, Taehyung…listen,” you try again. “You said,”

“I said?”

Your eyes scan the room as if there’s something here that will help you.

“Words y/n. I need you to use your words.” He demands, maybe having a little fun stressing you out. He sees your blush become such a deep shade of red that even he feels embarrassed.

Finally, you releases a long breath and words begin spilling out of your mouth.

“You said you wanted to keep that frog picture—“

“Your portrait, you mean.”

“Yes, yes whatever. Anyway, you wanted to keep it for the memories, right? You…you…you’re sentimental like that or whatever.” You pause to take a breath. “And and…”

He raises a brow at you, taking a few steps forward, mindful of the mess you made.

“And?”

You raise your head to look into his eyes. You’re staring so intensely that he wonders where you got this wave of confidence from. He stares back just as seriously. Your eyes are the same as usual, dark, plain, boring. For the most part.

“And…I decided that maybe, that maybe I want to…paint you…too?” you step forward. “You know, for the memories.” You tear your eyes away from him. But he sort of wishes you didn’t.

His brows pinch together at your little idea. You want to paint him ? He studies your face seeing if maybe there’s anything else. You look tense under his gaze, he admits that makes him feel kind of good. Is that mean? You look so incredibly shy, and it is so fucking...something, he doesn’t know what but it’s something. He continues to observe you and your shy expressions.

He looks down at you and breaks into his best shit eating grin, his hand reaches down to ruffle your hair.

“Yes!” he lightly chuckles, “Let’s make lots of memories!”

It looks like you’re in a daze, his reaction catching you off guard, he guesses. Taking a moment to collect yourself, you look up into his eyes again.

“Yeah, lots of ‘em.” your smile slowly begins to fade, “We won’t be here forever, so we have to leave with lots of memories.” you mutter.

Taehyung feels himself go soft at your words.

“y/n…” he slides his fingers down to cup the back of your head, fingers gently massaging your scalp. “When this is all over…we can still be in contact, you know?” Your eyes travel to the floor, eyeing the mess you made. He’s still getting over that.

“I know…but Taehyung, I still feel like I don’t even know basic things about you! Like what even is your favorite, uh, I don’t know, animal? I can’t tell you how long I have been wondering that and—”

“Then let’s have a whole night dedicated to that. Let’s drink some wine, paint some pictures and learn everything there is to know!” he moves his hand forward, his fingers playing at the ends of your hair, “Like, what shampoo did they give you because your hair is soft as fuck.”

You give him an unimpressed look,

“I know you steal my shampoo sometimes, I’m not dumb.”

“Don’t know what you are talking about.” He cheeses.

“But okay,” you grin at him, “Let’s do that.”

“I love Koalas and sloths!” You’re laid out on your stomach, swinging your legs above you while sipping on your red wine.

“You can’t choose two!”

“I just did.”

“Fine. Mine is…drum roll…its…” he pats the floor repeatedly.

“Oh come on! Tell me! I’ve been dying to know!”

“Its…lion!” he lays next to you, resting on his side. He eyes the painting you are working on. It’s supposed to be him…supposed to be.

“I like lions too.” You add more color to the background of the canvas. He can hear the smile in your voice.

“Sheesh…and you think I am bad at drawing people…”

“Stop being a hater!”

“ME?” he stares at you incredulously.

You and Taehyung are a few glasses of wine in already. He can tell its hitting you harder than its hitting him, you’re extra talkative and all giggly. He’s painted a picture of the beach while you’ve worked on a portrait of him, it’s amusing to say the least—the portrait. Pretty quickly glasses turned into bottles. Bottle number 3 has been opened and now he is also talkative and all giggly. He’s a giggly lil thang when he’s drunk, and he is drunk.

“Okay,” he sits up, sitting on his legs. “First impression of me, go!” he laughs, for literally no reason.

“I thought you kidnapped me.” You state plainly, “So like, a creepy person.”

His jaw drops.

“I’m offended!” He lays his hand over his heart. “You thought I was creepy?! And there I was thinking you were just some hot chick I hooked up!” Yes, he called you hot to your face. He is drunk, he is allowed to do that. Yeehaw.

“Okay to be fair, that thought crossed my mind too.”

“That I was some hot chick you hooked up with?”

“I never said hot.”

“But you were thinking it, right right?” he wiggles his eyebrows in the most exaggerated way.

You smirk before chugging back the rest of your wine, reaching for a new bottle.

“Okay, maybe I thought it.” You admit, your sly smile growing.

“Want me to open it?” he gestures towards the wine bottle.

“Please.”

He reaches for the bottle of wine, his hands brushing against yours. He hates that he feels a quiet fire in his insides when he touches you. He hates how when his skin makes contact with your skin there is an automatic heat that lights up and warms him, burns him almost.

“Do you have someone? That you like?” You slur out, curious about Taehyung’s love life.

“…Yes.” Taehyung admits softly.

“I am what they call a ‘Dilf’” Jin states confidently. The rest of the boys share a look of confusion.

“You literally aren’t a dad?” Jimin looks at Jin with a puzzled smile.

“But you can’t tell me I am not a ‘dilf’ though.”

“Okay Jin, you’re a dilf.” Namjoon rolls his eyes, going back to his book.

“I wanna be a dilf too.” Jungkook whines and Taehyung nods his head in agreement. Jin shakes his fingers at the boys and speaks up.

“You have to earn the title.”

“Yeah, by being a dad.” Jimin deadpans.

“Let the man have his dreams.” Yoongi says before putting his ear bud back in his ear and nodding along to whatever song is playing.

“My dream is to finish this assignment.” Hobi groans into his pile of papers on the table.

“This is your fault for going back to school for your masters!” Taehyung teases. He has just recently dropped out of school and he is loving it. He watches as his friend works night after night on paper after paper and Taehyung no longer has to worry about things like that. He can just focus on the music.

“Are you guys using this chair?” Taehyung hears a sweet voice cut off all their chatter. He looks up to see this gorgeous girl with light brown hair that reaches her waist and eyes as bright as the sun.

“Uh, no.” Taehyung clears his throat, “You can take it.”

“Thanks.” She smiles at Taehyung and then at the rest of the boys before she’s dragging the chair to the table next to them.

“Holy shit.” Taehyung whispers to Jungkook, “She’s so pretty.”

“That’s Hana.” Jungkook looks over his shoulder at Hana and her friends. “I have a class with her.”

“Bro, introduce me!” Taehyung begs. “You literally owe me.”

“From what?!”

“I let you fuck that one chick like 2 years ago even though I saw her first.”

“Oh? You let me? Really?” Jungkook rolls his eyes. “But anyway, sure. I’ll introduce you.” He says nonchalantly, picking up his drinking and taking a sip.

“Taehyung?” you wave your hand in front of his blank face. “Taehyung?” “Huh? Yeah?” he starts snapping out of his memories, “what’s up? What did you say?”

“I asked her name.” you smile awkwardly, “The girl you like.”

“Hana.” He quietly clears his throat, “What about you? Do you have someone?”

“After my ex? I am staying away from men for a while.” You laugh, “Like, can you blame me?”

Taehyung can’t help by frown at your words.

“Don’t close yourself off…” Taehyung whispers to you. “You’re too pretty for that.” He slurs out and you blink at him repeatedly.

“I’m pretty?”

Taehyung scoffs and rolls his eyes playfully.

“Like you didn’t know.”

Hours pass you two by, more wine has been drank and you two are giggling like school children. Taehyung is folded over, laughing a storm as you do your best impression of a dolphin. You can’t help but fall over and laugh your head off as well, the alcohol obviously has made you two crazy.

Taehyung finally calms down and looks at you with soft eyes, “So, what’s your biggest fear?” he asks, leaning forward.

“No!” you laugh. Fucking laugh. “Listen, we can go back to our serious convos another day…right now I wanna…” you slur your last words, “wanna talk about fun stuff.” you give him the most sleazy wink he’s ever seen. It kind of works for him though.

“Okay.” He agrees easily, “Tell me the story about how you lost your virginity? Don’t leave anything out”

Your eyebrows shoot up, “Wanna know the dirty details huh?” you part your lips and smile.

“Dirty? I bet it was as vanilla as vanilla gets.”

You frown at his words, “I’m not vanilla. I’m fun, I swear.” you pout.

“I didn’t mean it as boring babe. I just mean you probably lost it to like your high school sweetheart, your first love, blah blah blah. The romantic shit.” You exhale a short breath…babe? You like the new friendly nickname, you admit.

“Actually it’s the opposite.”

“The opposite?”

“First year of college. Random guy from a bar. Total one night stand type of situation. I didn’t even tell him it was my first time. I think he probably just thought I was really inexperienced. “ You laugh to yourself. Sounds like a situation you might regret but there is no bitterness in your tone.

“Oh wow. y/n the cry baby can do one night stands?” he teases.

“I’m full of surprises you know.” The glint in your eye tells him he’s going to find out eventually.

“Well then what are the dirty details?” he pries further, leaning into your space again.

“Hmm, don’t think I am drunk enough for that.”

“Oh, I can grab another bottle of wine.” He teases, “But fine.”

“About your comment about me being vanilla…” you begin but Taehyung is cutting you off with the shake of his head.

“I didn’t mean it bad—”

“Are you into vanilla sex?”

Taehyung’s eyebrows crawl to the top of his forehead and his mouth falls open.

“Why are you asking that?” he breathes out, his eyes darkening.

“They paired us together, you know? We probably have more in common than you think…my guess that means sex too.”

“I know we have that in common.” He smirks, “I’m guessing you never looked in the other room?” he quirks a brow at you. “You might find it interesting.”

“The other room?” you tilt your head to the side, “Oh? The one upstairs next to your bathroom? Yeah, I stuck my head in there once…I saw it’s just another bedroom.”

“Is it really just another bedroom though? You didn’t have a look around?” his sly smile grows on his stupidly handsome face. “Like I said…you might find it interesting.”

“What are you talking about?” you slur, “Why would I…?”

Taehyung rises to his feet, walks towards you and leans down until he’s softly gripping your arm and pulling you up.

“Let’s go explore.” He chuckles, “I want you to see the room.” He’s guiding you out the art room, you two stumbling through the door.

You both begin to make your way upstairs, his hand never leaving your arm as you two walk. You keep bumping into him and he only laughs, squeezing your arm every few moments. You guys walk through the hall until you’re standing outside the bedrooms door.

“Go on.” He looks at you with a smirk, “I want you to explore this bedroom.”

“You’re being weird.” You giggle, opening the door.

And just like you thought, it’s just a bedroom. There’s a large bed in the middle of the room against the wall, and a couple of dressers, a closet, a huge ass mirror and other normal bedroom things.

“And?” You glance at Taehyung.

He looks at you with an amused smile. “Explore.” He commands.

You give him a weird look before walking through the room, your hand slides against the dresser that holds the extra large mirror. You catch your reflection and smile at how drunk you look. Taehyung walks behind you and eyes both of your reflections, he steps close to you and chuckles.

“I like this mirror.” He whispers. “Great view of the bed.”

“Uh yeah?” you look at him through the mirror, “I guess so.”

“Explore the drawers.” His evil grin makes you nervous…you look down at the drawers and open the first one on the left, there’s multiple things inside but you can’t tell what they are. You stick your hand inside and grab the first thing it can find. You pull this object out and bring it closer to your face, your drunken vision making it hard to identify what it is. Then your eyes are expanding and you drop the object in the drawer, the loud thud making you jump.

“What was that?” Taehyung whispers, “Something you know right?”

A dildo. Your eyes scan the rest of the drawer only to see more, along with other toys. You quickly slam the drawer shut and turn around to face Taehyung, who is standing so close behind you.

“What the hell?” you stutter out, turning red.

“That’s not all. Check the closet.” He says quietly, pointing towards the closet. And you listen, you walk forward until you’re standing beside the sliding door. You open it and see various articles of clothing.

Lingerie and outfits. Maid, nurse, etc. You stare at the clothes in disbelief.

“What is all this?” you turn to face Taehyung.

“You tell me.” He says chuckling, “Seems like we like the same stuff.” He shrugs. “Maybe you can,” he walks closer and is touching the maid lingerie, “wear this next you’re cleaning the house.”

He’s teasing you. Your stomach twists and turns, your heart is jumping out of your chest and you feel so fucking warm.

“S-Shut up.” You lean back on the door.

“Oh baby, I think you and I both know who tells who what to do here.” He breathes out, not looking at you as he still plays with the material of more lingerie.

“Taehyung,” you sigh, “The cameras can’t hear you in here.”

“Ah,” he turns to face you, “Right. Should we head back downstairs?”

“Yes.” You slur out, feeling quite dizzy.

Month 5

It’s the bright white screen you know all too well…it has you releasing a shaky breath as you wait for the black letters to eventually appear.

“Hey Taehyung…” you call out for you roommate who is making something to eat in the kitchen. “I think we have an incoming message from our,” You pause, huffing out. “Our little friends.”

“Oh. Oh shit.” You hear Taehyung whine from behind you. “I thought they were finally starting to back off…” he sighs out. “Let’s see what these fuckers want.”

Request:

Skinny dip for 1 hour. Must be within a foot of one another.

Ex-excuse you? Ex-fucking-cuse you? Skinny who what for when what? Your eyes bulge out of your head. This has got to be some sort of joke.

“Hell no!” you yell out, not even sparing Taehyung a glance.

Voice full of panic, Taehyung is quick to bring up the alternative.

“The penalty!” he rushes. “What’s the penalty? We will just do the penalty!”

Penalty:

No power or running water for 3 days.

“No pow—what the fuck?” Taehyung shakes his head, disbelief written all over his face.

“Wait! And no running water? Like, we can’t flush the toilet for 3 days? That’s bullshit!” you drag your hands down your face, “And wont the stuff in our fridge go bad?”

Several long moments pass between you two and not in a cool way. There’s nothing cool about this shit. There’s tension filling the air around you both. Awkward tension.

“Isn’t this too much?” Taehyung finally says, obviously not able to tolerate the silence any longer.

You both exchange worried glances with one another before Taehyung says some shit you don’t like.

“Let’s just do the request.”

Your eyes basically pop out of your head.

“Are you out of your mind—do the requests? How could you say that so easily!” you mumble, feeling your cheeks heat up.

“I feel like it’s the best choice.” He gives his honest answer. “Plus, you’ve never seen a naked man before? We will get over it y/n. Knowing me and you, we will be laughing about it in a couple days.” He finally turns to face you, throwing a wink your way, “You know it’s true.”

You mull over your options and hate that he’s right. You very timidly respond with a quiet ‘okay’ and avoid his eyes. His dark, intimidating eyes.

Your heart is racing, No, that is an understatement; your heart is on the verge of explosion. Your nerves are scattered and pounding from the inside out. You are freaking out. Naked with Taehyung? And he seems cool as a fucking cucumber.

“Let’s meet outside once it’s completely dark out.” You suggest.

“Read my mind.”

“…Of course I did, we’re” you roll your eyes. “Soulmates.” you laugh bitterly to yourself, “anyway, I’ll just see you tonight.”

“So you’re just going to avoid me until tonight?” Taehyung asks, “It’s not like they’re asking us to fuck.” He sways on his feet, “Just keep your eyes on my eyes and we will be fine.”

“Right.” You choke out, “Because it’s that easy.”

“Are you saying it’s impossible not to check me out?” he teases and you feel your cheeks heat up.

“Shut up.”

“Brat.”

Night fall approaches sooner rather than later. You wish it would have taken a million years to appear but nope, here you are. You stand outside with Taehyung in front of you. You’re in an oversized t shirt and loose shorts, keeping it simple since they’re coming off anyway. Taehyung wears his usual sweats and a white tee. You two are standing next to the pool, knowing the time has finally come. After leaving Taehyung earlier this afternoon, you took a much needed nap to clear your head.

“Don’t let your eyes linger.” You mumble, nodding your head in his direction.

“Ha, I was going to say the same thing to you.” He pokes his tongue out. Taehyung looks fucking comfortable as fucking always. Like, this doesn’t bother him in the least.

Luckily, the tension is tolerable. So you decide to make the first move. You begin unbuttoning your shorts—

“Woah! Woah! Woah! Wait!” he yells. His arms flailing, trying to stop you.

You scrunch your nose in annoyance, “What?” you ask, not too pleased since you are just trying to get this over with. If you got told 5 months ago that you would be in a hurry to get naked in front of this guy you would ugly laugh. Yet here you are.

“It’s just-it’s just…we should go at the same time.” Taehyung rushes to say.

“Oh, okay. Pants first, let’s go—”

“No! that’s awkward.” He shakes his head, “shirt first.”

“Okay, okay.” You oblige, “weirdo” You whisper loud enough that he can hear you.

The two of you begin with your tops, you try to focus your eyes elsewhere but they naturally skim the skin of his chest and abdomen as his shirt comes off quickly. Taehyung doesn’t even try to look away as you undress, his dark, intimidating stare causing you to feel chills. You slip off your pink t shirt, exposing your bare torso that is laced with a pretty black bralette. His gaze doesn’t waver.

“Okay, next is our bottoms right?” You gulp. He only nods.

You continue the job on unbuttoning your shorts, letting them fall to your feet exposing your matching black panties. Yes, you wore a sexy matching set on purpose. If he’s going to see you like this why wouldn’t you want to look good? You would do that for anybody. You can feel him eyeing you as he slips off his sweats, leaving him in nothing but a pair of blue briefs.

Finally, you are left in nothing but your underwear. You eye him over, his body is so fucking nice it makes you feel bad for even standing next to him. His briefs are a light blue, leaving little to the imagination. You can literally see the outline of his—you know what. Is he sporting a semi, right now? You do an up and down of your own body when you realize you have more clothes than him!

“Hey this is unfair!” You whisper, covering your chest with your arm. “I have to strip my bra off and you what, just get to watch?”

“Oh? So I am allowed to watch?” he responds playfully. It’s that same teasing tone you’re still trying to get used to.

“Well, you’re obviously going to see…” You grumble, lowering your arm. “Welp, here goes.”

Taehyung swallows rather hard, his eyes trailing your body pretty shamelessly. You reach in front of you, unhooking the bralette and letting the straps fall off your shoulders before letting the whole thing fall to the ground.

“Uh, okay.” Taehyung clears his throat. “Now our underwear.”

“Right.” You say while reaching for the band of your panties, pulling it back a bit and letting it go, the material slapping against your hips. You swear you see his dick move at that.

“Okay.” Taehyung’s breathing is heavier than before, “On 3? 1…2..”

“3!” you shout in unison.

You both begin stripping away your last piece of clothing. You’re the first to be fully undressed. You let your panties drag down leg by leg until they join the pile of clothes at your feet. It’s not that you’re trying to do this in a sexy manner, but if it comes across sexy—then so be it. Taehyung pauses mid action, his eyes scanning your body again. God, you are starting to get really nervous again. His gaze absolutely thrills you, you can admit that. You’d live a life of torture to have him stare at you like this all the time. You see him lick his lips then shake his head. You didn’t just imagine that right?

“Hurry up.” You plead.

Taehyung finally drags off his briefs. By the looks of it he looks mostly hard, as his cock springs free. Holy Fuck. Your last ex—Ben—was not this…blessed. Taehyung has every right to be as cocky as he wants, he’s earned it. His dick is long in length but he also seems to have girth. How is one man blessed this much? You would have to have your hand wrapped around it—or your lips—to really know how thick he is. Jesus fucking Christ, what are you saying? You think your best excuse is that you are dick deprived. Also…how long have you been staring? You will say long enough by the look Taehyung is giving you. It’s that shit eating grin that just screams he is one cocky bastard.

“Okay,” you clear your throat, forcing yourself to look into Taehyung’s eyes. “Let’s get in the pool.”

“You got the timer?” Taehyung chuckles.

“It’s laying on the ledge.” you point at it, walking closer to the pool. “Ready?” you look up at him, waiting for his response.

“You look beautiful by the way.” He says out of nowhere. “I mean, as always.” He winks.

You blush pretty fucking hard at that, you can feel all the heat rush to your cheeks, lighting you on fire.

“Are you-are you ready or what?” you grumble.

“Always.” He grins, reaching for you hand. “Let’s go.”

You two tip toe into the water, pausing every few seconds to get use to the temperature of the water. You stop once the water reaches your collarbones, you walk towards the wall, lean against it and face forward. You turn the timer on and you both exchange a few words but you remain mostly quiet, You don’t think either of you know what to say. Every minute that passes (about 15 to be exact) has your nerves spiking.

You hear Taehyung sigh deeply as he inches closer towards you. Now why would he do that? He inches so close that your shoulders are touching, he sinks a little further into the water and then surprising you, he rests his head on your shoulder. What the fuck is he doing?

“We can have a foot of space between us.” You remind him awkwardly.

Taehyung remains quiet, you only hear his soft breaths.

“Taehyung?”

“You know how hard it is going to be to get the image of you naked out of my head?” He whispers with a chuckle.

“Don’t start using me as masturbation material.” You joke, your eyes looking out at the water. It’s calm and bright from the lights inside the pool.

“Start? You think you haven’t entered my mind before?” he jokes back. At least you think he’s joking.

“Stop playing.” You laugh awkwardly.

Taehyung is quiet again and you can feel the tension that always visits you two starting to build.

“Do you…have you…have you thought about me before?” you manage to slip out, surprising yourself.

“You’re asking if I’ve—”

“If you’ve thought about me when you have ‘alone’ time’ ya know?”

“Do you think I haven’t?” he lifts his head and stares at you. “y/n…I’m a guy. And you’re kind of the only person I see.”

Oh. It’s not like I see anyone else. His last words repeat in your mind. Of course, that makes sense. He’s stuck with you, of course you’ve entered his mind, probably against his will or whatever.

“I see.” You say softly. You step to the side, getting further from him and he frowns.

You two stand here, barely speaking. Maybe another 20-30 minutes pass when Taehyung dramatically huffs out.

“Listen y/n…about earlier.” Right earlier. When you made a fucking fool of yourself. Asking your friend is he has ever jacked off to you before! Before he can continue you slap a finger over his pouting lips, shushing him.

“Do you really think now is the time?”

“We have time to kill—”

“—okay! So let’s talk about something else!” you happily offer.

But you guess Taehyung isn’t having it, he steps closer and rests his head on your shoulder again, his breathing picking up. Why is he breathing so hard?

“Just hear me out, okay?”

You only stare ahead, exhaling deeply. What to do…maybe there’s no harm in hearing him out, right? Oh wait there is harm! The feeling of fucking rejection. Why does it feel like rejection? You don’t know. Why the fuck you care? You don’t know that either. But he’s fucking sulking, like a baby. You thought you were the baby here? You guess he needs to have a turn every now and then…

“fine.”

“You probably,” he sinks in the water just a little deeper, “hate me, right?” you don’t hate him…”Me, your friend, has had dirty thoughts about you, yada yada,” he closes his eyes.

“ wait what—” This is because he has had dirty thoughts about you?

“So about what I said…I’m sorry…”

“Taehyung it’s fine,” you rush to say in embarrassment, “I don’t know why I asked! Seriously, it was stupid. I crossed a li—”

“Wait why did you ask?” That’s when you freeze. Yeah why did you ask?

“Uh…”

“Why?” he stands up straighter, his head tilted towards you.

“I was just curious Taehyung.” you defend. “It’s not that deep.”

“Curious? About me?” he raises he brow, he pauses while thinking over his words. “Like, sexually?” he finishes, caution in his voice.

Fuck. What did you get yourself into?

“Taehyung…I already said it was stupid. Plus,” you decide to be bold again, “Hearing it was only because I’m the only one here or whatever didn’t do great things for my ego.”

“Wait—” you hear him stifle a chuckle. “That’s what you’re mad about?”

“Well…” you drag out the word with a pout. You don’t mean to be such a baby yet here you are.

“Wow! I thought you were mad because I’ve thought about you impurely, not because it wasn’t a good enough reason why…wow.” He laughs! He’s basically laughing at you!

“Well?”

“Oh my God, y/n. You’re joking right? I can’t just say I have the hots for my friend now can I? That’ll just—”

“Do you?” your voice is much smaller and quieter than you anticipated, like it barely escaped. Taehyung stays quiet for a second too long that it makes you ten times as nervous.

“Are you…” Taehyung looks at you with a look on his face you can’t quite place, “I’m naked in a pool with you right now and I am going crazy. Absolutely crazy.” Taehyung sighs out heavily, a frown taking over his face. “You’re ability to be so naïve just…baffles me.” He admits, defeated.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a beautiful girl y/n. Of course my mind has wandered. It doesn’t mean I—fuck. It doesn’t mean anything deep or anything like that. But yes, being with you and your fanfuckingtastic tits is giving me some trouble.” He says darkly. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed you checking me out either.” He smirks. “We are human.” He finishes.

A long, deafening silence accompanies you both. Its sitting in the water between your bodies. Just lingering, waiting for one of you to break it in half and drown it in this very pool. But no, it remains. And that person won’t be you. But several minutes have passed by and he is still fucking quiet. Maybe you should be the one to say something? You’re about to you swear , but you hear Taehyung grumble something under his breath.

“What’s that?” you say.

“I said, it’s only fair if I ask too.” Ask what? Oh. Wait. That?

“Ask what?” you ask, pretending you don’t know.

“You know what.”

“Nope.” you say, popping the ‘p’.

“y/n.” “I’m not answering that.”

“Come on.” He leans his face towards your neck, his breaths hitting your wet skin. “It’s only fair.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?” he pushes on. “Come on y/n, have you thought about me when you get yourself off or not?” he asks, his voice really low. How does he get his voice so deep? Fuck, it sends a shiver down your spine.

“Maybe once or twice I have thought about you too.” You admit, feeling a rush of adrenaline as the words leave your mouth.

“Once or twice?” he repeats lowly, “What did you think about?” his words crawl on the side of your neck as they leave his mouth.

“I’m not answering that.”

“I want you to tell me.” He sounds so breathless while being so demanding.

“Nope.”

“You’re no fun.” He chuckles. “Aren’t you curious about what I think about?”

“Not really.” You lie. “Don’t worry about my imagination. It’s the only action I’m getting anyway.” You laugh.

“When’s the last time you had sex y/n? Please tell me it wasn’t with your ex…”

“Yeah it was.” You admit and Taehyung pushes his head back, not liking you admission.

“Why haven’t you?” he asks.

“I felt so betrayed Taehyung…it’s sort of hard to trust anyone after that.” You sigh, “He hurt me bad. I’m…”

“You’re what?”

“I just don’t feel comfortable.” You say softly, “I don’t think I will for a while.”

“I see…I’m so sorry. I wish that didn’t happen to you.”

“It’s in the past now.”

Ben holds you close as he comes, his hands leaving behind their marks on your body from how tightly he holds you.

“Fuck yes.” He groans, “Did you come?” he asks quickly, breathing hard into your neck.

“It’s okay.” You sigh out, “As long as you feel good.”

“I felt amazing honey.” He kisses the side of your neck over and over. “Shit, we gotta get going. We’ll be late for work.”

“Do we really have to take separate cars?” you whine.

“Just for now babe.” He promises, lifting himself off your body, leaving your pussy aching for more.

“Okay…”

~

“He look so handsome today as usual…” you hear Layla talking to some of the other girls. “I’m telling you…he’s going to ask me out. He’s been eyeing me lately and complimenting me.” She gushes, catching your interest.

“Who?” you ask, setting your belongings down on your desk.

Layla turns to face you, waves her hand and smiles.

“Ben.”

Ben? Like your Ben? Her boss Ben?

“Ben who?” you blink at her and the other girls laugh.

“Obviously the only Ben we know!” Layla giggles and you feel your chest tighten.

“You think he’s going to ask you out?”

“Yes girl! He comes to my desk a few times day, calls me gorgeous, so on and so forth.” Layla says quietly so only you girls can hear. You feel your heart drop.

“I don’t think so.” You speak up. “Ben wouldn’t. He’s already seeing someone.”

“Oh really? Who?” Layla scrunches her brows together, “Because—”

“Me.” You blurt. “He and I are…”

The other girls stop their giggling and look at you with shocked eyes.

“There’s no way.” One of them says.

“y/n, are you serious?” Layla blushes, feeling a little embarrassed now.

“Yes, for months now.” you admit. “But we weren’t telling anyone…yet.”

“Wow! I can’t believe this!” another girl says, her hand coming to her mouth.

You then in a hush hush voice tell the group of girls yours and Bens story. You tell them how he pursued you, you finally agreed and how you two have been dating for over 6 months. They gush and gasp and giggle. It feels good to finally tell people, you think.

But unfortunately for you, it wasn’t good at all.

“y/n?” Taehyung knocks you out of your daze. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.” You sigh, feeling weak. “I’m okay.”

Taehyung looks at you with pity, his eyes full of it. He stands tall and floats until he’s standing in front of you.

“I’m going to hug you.” He states calmly, “I really need to hug you.”

“Taehyung…” you step back until your back hits the ledge. “Now isn’t really appropriate.”

“I don’t care. I’ve already seen you naked.” He says nonchalantly. “C’mere.” He opens his arms wide for you and you shake your head.

“I said, c’mere.” He inches closer and closer. “Or I’m coming to you.”

“Taehyung.” You whine, but you let him get closer to you.

His wet arms reach out for you, he’s gripping your shoulders first before his hands easily slide down your arms until they’re under water holding on to your waist.

“C’mere.” He repeats. And you slowly inch closer towards him, your arms hesitantly circling around his middle. And then he’s pulling you in to his chest…he sighs when he feels your budding nipples graze his skin, he sighs when he feels the fullness of your breasts being pushed into him, he sighs when he feels you.

You release a long breath as you hug him, maybe you needed this. This type of human contact. You pull back and look up into Taehyung’s dark eyes, he’s already gazing at you.

“Thanks.” You mumble.

“I think of you because you’re cool. And really pretty.”

“Huh?” Why is Taehyung suddenly complimenting you?

“When I’m—you know. I think of you because you’re cool and really pretty. I could think of anyone ya know? That’s how an imagination works. But I still think about you.”

You’re sure your face is a dark crimson, with how hard you are blushing. How are you supposed to take this new information?

“W-Well,” You find it hard to look into his eyes. “I guess, same.”

“Because I’m pretty?” his tone is lighter all the sudden, you roll your eyes.

“What do you think? Timer should be going on any minute now.” Taehyung throws a glance over his shoulder towards the timer.

“Hmm…” You turn, reaching for the timer, your wet hands getting ahold of it. “Less than 5 minutes.” You read it.

“Oh.” He sings, “If you have a secret, share it now!” Taehyung chuckles into the water, his lips creating bubbles on the surface.

“You want to know even more about me?” You stand a little taller, the water reaching the tops of your breasts. You see Taehyung’s eyes linger for a second before meeting your eyes again. “If you wanna know anything, just ask.” You reach your arms over your head, releasing a yawn.

“Okay…” He places his fingers on his chin, “It’s about me though.” He stops, his fingers dragging down his neck. “Ah, never mind.”

“What?”

“No, it’s weird.”

“Aren’t we passed weird?” you giggle.

“No, it’s really weird.” He sighs out, sinking down into the water until his head is fully under.

You watch as he rises back up, the water cascading down his golden skin, the water from his hair dripping onto his shoulders.

A few moments pass, Taehyung stands here thinking to himself while you just shamelessly watch. You watch as he chews on the inside of his cheek, his eyes upward, scanning the stars. He hums some tune to himself, deep in thought. Honestly, you love when he does this. He looks so…good. Not in a sexual way, you swear. He just looks so him. So Taehyung. He goes from chewing on his cheek to his bottom lip, his teeth digging into the plump flesh. You gulp, God he has no idea how good he looks like this.

“Well?” You ask impatiently. Trying to wave away any more of those thoughts you were just having.

Taehyung releases his bottom lip from his teeth as his lips form into a pout, his eyes closing.

“I’m thinking…”

“Less thinking, more asking.” You feel way too curious about whatever it is he wants to say. And the minutes are passing you by.

Taehyung opens one eye to look at you, he exhales, and faces you.

“Does it sound like I’m in love with Hana?” he says quietly.

“W-What? You’ve only really brought her up once…”

“But when I talked about her did it seem like I have deep feelings for her?”

“She thinks I only like the idea of her” Taehyung mumbles to Jimin and Namjoon. “She doesn’t think I like her as much as I say? Which is so stupid!”

“Isn’t she right though?” Jimin asks with a frown, “You only ever talk about how pretty she is…”

“Jimin means you don’t really have that much in common with her, do you?” Namjoon questions softly. “You don’t…you don’t seem as into as you have been in the past. Are you sure you actually like her?”

Taehyung stares at his friends in disbelief, not believing his ears for one second.

“What are you guys talking about? I fucking like her.” He grits out.

“Are you sure you aren’t just lonely—”

“I don’t want to hear this.” Taehyung stands up from the couch, “I’m going to go see her.”

~

Taehyung makes it to Hana’s apartment but her roommate answers the door and frowns when she sees Taehyung,

“Yes?”

“Uh, I’m here to see Hana.” He gestures inside the apartment.

“Right…” the roommate stands off to the side and lets Taehyung in. “She’s in her room.”

Taehyung walks through the apartment and down the hall until he’s knocking on Hana’s door. She opens it quickly, hugging him and pulling him inside.

“Hey you.” She smiles at Taehyung and he smiles back with his teeth.

“Hi.”

“What brings you here?”

“Just came to hang out, maybe watch a movie?” Taehyung sways from side to side, trying to not make this awkward.

“Sure, you can choose the movie.” She goes to her desk, grabs her lap top and gestures towards her bed. “We can watch in my bed.” She says shyly.

“G-Good idea.”

~

“So how did you like it?” Taehyung asks excitedly. ‘Castaway on the Moon’ just finished and he is so happy he got to show her his favorite movie.

“Honestly?” she chuckles awkwardly, “I didn’t really like it.” She admits. “it was weird.”

“It’s not weird! It’s amazing,” he pouts and she giggles.

He does feel really disappointed that she doesn’t like his favorite movie…is that a red flag? No, he’s just being dramatic, he thinks.

“Next time I’ll choose the movie.” Hana cuddles closer to Taehyung. “Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Taehyung…” you begin, “Where is this coming from?”

“She doesn’t think—my friends too—don’t think we have a lot of chemistry. That I’m forcing myself to like her, but that’s not true! But sometimes I feel confused. And I thought I could get an outside opinion.” He admits, “But this was stupid you don’t have to answer.”

You can tell him you believe in his feelings or you can tell him you don’t think he’s even talked about her enough that you take his feelings seriously. But will that hurt him?

“I—”

Beep beep beep beep beep beep.

The fire place is turned on, creating a safe and cozy atmosphere. The gas lit flames burn a hole in the tension that fills the room. What sort of tension? Not sure.

Taehyung and you are sat comfortably on the sofa, sitting with crossed legs facing one another, your knees just barely touching. A bowl of popcorn rests between you and blankets wrapped around your bodies. Separate blankets, of course.

Taehyung and you have decided to move the party inside (with clothes: on) and continue talking.

The ringing of the timer didn’t completely ruin your conversation only delaying it.

“And I don’t know,” he takes a handful of popcorn and stuffs it in his mouth. “I think we would make a cute couple.”

“Yeah but like I asked, what sorts of things do you two talk about? Not if you guys are a cute couple.”

“We talk.” He states.

“Okay…about?”

“Stuff.”

“You aren’t helping your case.” You sigh out, biting your lip. “I want to believe in your feelings Taehyung but…”

“I know.” He cuts you off, “I know.”

“So why are you forcing it?” you reach for some popcorn yourself, “Why do you want to like her so bad?”

“I don’t know….” He admits softly, “I really don’t know.”

“You’re unsure of your feelings.” You say bluntly. “That’s what it seems like.”

“Maybe I am.” He wraps the blanket around his shoulders tighter. “I’m like you…I don’t know what love is.”

“And just like me, you’ll find it someday.” You promise him with a sweet smile. “Right?”

“You will for sure.” He breathes out, “I think I’m a ….”

“A?”

“God, I don’t even want to say it.” He throws his head in his hands. “But I think I am a hopeless romantic.”

“I just want some cute love story with a cute girl. And Hana is perfect.”

“But does she thrill you? Challenge you? Make you laugh?”

“She’s…” fuck, he doesn’t even know. Does he even know Hana that well?

“Hey y/n…” Taehyung looks up at you, his eyes finding yours and you shrink in your spot.

“Yes?”

“Can we watch my favorite movie? I’m curious what you might think about it.” He gazes at you and you nod your head slowly.

“Sure Taehyung.”

“Also, you can call me Tae.”

~

“Holy fuck.” You sob into your hands. “The fucking noodles.”

Taehyung looks over at you with a soft smile as he has his own tears falling down his face.

“I know right?”

“He finally felt like he had purpose Tae,” you look at him with a pathetic scrunched up face, tears still leaving your eyes.

“EXACTLY!” Taehyung wails, “EXACTLY!”

“This movie was amazing, and how everything turned out...wow…and how she…and he…my goodness. I’m still crying.”

“I told you!! I am so glad you enjoyed it.” He moves closer to you on the sofa without thinking.

“Only lame people wouldn’t like this movie!” you basically yell out and Taehyung scoots even closer, his shoulder bumping yours. But you barely notice, still too invested in the movie.

“Yeah.” He agrees with a smile. “You really must be my soulmate.” He jokes with an awkward smile. “No one else really likes this movie.”

“Ha-Ha.” You roll your eyes, “But anyway, that’s crazy since it was so good.”

“Stop praising it or I’ll have to marry you.” He jokes again and you start turning a rosy pink.

“Stop.” You whine, swatting his shoulder.

“Let’s call it a night, yeah?”

You and Taehyung clean up the kitchen and living room and head upstairs for the night, he walks you to your bedroom door and lingers.

“Tonight was crazy. I saw you naked.” He brings up the request and you go redder than red.

“We can literally never talk about it again…”

“Am I allowed to think about it at least?” he winks, his voice low and making you feel tense.

“Goodnight Taehyung.”

~~~~~~~~

Month 6

Today is one of those days…Taehyung is in a bad mood and you’re being a brat. He hates how much you’ve been teasing him today…he is sorting through his feelings for Hana but you insist on walking around with small shorts and low cut tank tops, claiming it’s ‘hot’. He finally has you cornered though, he’s finally had enough. He’s got you pushed up against a wall, his face so close that your breaths mingle with one another.

“You’re really pushing me today…” Taehyung leans closer, his warm breath fanning over your face. “Today’s not the day y/n.” he warns.

“How am I pushing you? I’m literally not doing anything.” You jut your bottom lip out and look to the side.

“You’re being…such a fucking tease.” He decides to say, “Which is giving me a real headache.” He leans down, his arms on either side of your body.

“So I give you a headache?” Your eyes look up into his and you smirk. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“You are real annoying, you know that?” he can’t help but chuckle, but then he’s exhaling a deep breath and rolling his eyes. “Ask for forgiveness.”

“Ask for forgiveness?” you scoff. “Seriously? And what am I asking forgiveness for?”

“You’re lucky I’m not telling you to beg.”

“Beg?” you scoff again. “Who do you think you—”

“y/n.” his dark eyes gaze into yours. His hand slides down the wall and then it’s at your waist. He pulls you in and leans his head down closer to your face, you feel the lump in your throat grow as you ty to swallow it down.

“Y-Yes?”

“Ask for forgiveness.” He tells you again, this time much more softly.

“And if I don’t?” You stare up at him and he chuckles.

“Do you really want to find out?” his gaze doesn’t waver as he looks at you…the way he stares at you makes you feel bare in front of him, like he’s stripping you of your clothes, of your skin, everything.

“And if I do?” you whisper. “What happens if I do?”

Taehyung narrows his eyes at you as he licks his lips repeatedly…you’re really testing him aren’t you? He can’t tell if you’re toying with him because of the cameras or if it’s because you’re a brat.

“y/n.” he says your name like the sound of a slow breath. It feels intimate, the way he calls out for you. You can’t help but gulp as you blink up at him.

“Y-Yes?”

“You want to beg, don’t you?” he smirks, he pokes his tongue out as he eyes you. You can see the amusement in his eyes. “You want to…” the words are dying on his tongue because what can he say? Everything he wants to say would probably be deemed as inappropriate.

“I want to what?” you tilt your head up, your eyes scanning the entirety of his face and he leans further into your space.

“Just do as I say, tell me you’re sorry and we can move on.”

“Do as you say?” you lean back until your head is lightly hitting the wall, “You think I would really listen to you?”

“Such a brat.” His hand doesn’t let go of your waist as he leans back as well. “Why do I deal with this? And yes,” he rolls his head back. “I think you would very much enjoy listening to me.” He pauses and bites his lip. “If this company really thinks we’re a match made in heaven then I am sure you can assume what I mean.”

You silently gasp, a blush painting itself brightly on your cheeks.

“Ah,” he leans in again, “So you do know what I mean.”

“Taehyung,” you mumble, “Sometimes your flirting for the camera is too much.” You whisper quiet enough the cameras can’t hear.

Taehyung leans down until his mouth is at the shell of your ear and you can hear the smirk.

“Who says it’s for the cameras?” he leans away from you again, he finally drops his hand from your waist and is about to turn to leave when your hand flies to his shirt.

“Wait.” You blurt out, “I’ll…” you look off to the side. “I’ll say sorry”

“Oh?” Taehyung looks amused to say the least, “Go ahead, then.”

“Only if you tell me what’s wrong today.”

“It’s nothing.”

Your hand goes from the middle of his shirt to his shoulder and you look up at him with big, doe eyes as he blinks down at you over and over.

“What?” he whispers.

“Please.” You whisper back, “I’ll be good,” you promise in a low voice.

Taehyung feels his chest get warm, the heat traveling from there to his toes. He looks at you with his serious expression and softens.

“You are good.” He breathes out. His gaze intense as he stares into your eyes.

“Then…” you pause. Taehyung keeps his eyes on your eyes until he’s not. His eyes slowly travel down your face until he’s staring at your lips. He notices how plump they look, how your tongue darts out to wet them. He feels himself being drawn closer to you, leaning in further and further.

“…Taehyung.” You say breathlessly and Taehyung blinks repeatedly, clearing his throat as he leans back again.

“Fine, don’t apologize. Brat.” And he’s stepping away from you and you watch his back as he walks away.

Taehyung. Is. Such. A. tease. And it drives you absolutely insane. You’re sure the company that watches you is having the times of their lives as you suffer. Why does he have to go this far? It only makes you want to challenge him and go even further yourself. There was a moment, right? Where he acted like he was going to kiss you? Of course he wouldn’t actually do that. This is just for show but god, it still drives you nuts.

Taehyung rushes to his bedroom, slamming the door shut as he rests against it. What the hell is wrong with him? He’s just frustrated. He misses Hana. But why do you have to be so infuriating and you know, hot. And it makes him angry. He wasn’t actually going to kiss you, of course. But there was a moment of strange tension that he…he can’t describe. Taehyung slides down the door, falling to the ground. He remembers his first kiss with Hana, it was sweet and nice but like, he doesn’t remember it being intense not like how it feels when he gets close to you.

“Taehyung!” Hana giggles as she pats his back as she’s thrown over his shoulder. “Put me down!”

“Never!” Taehyung laughs just as much as he runs around in circles. “Ugh, so heavy though.” He jokes.

“Hey!” Hana hits his back, “Come on, put me down.” Her giggles softly relax and he’s setting her down back on the ground, her feet finally planted on the ground as she keeps her arms loosely thrown around his neck.

“You really love carrying me.”

“Holding you is fun.” He smiles, “And you’re not actually heavy. Actually you weigh nothing.”

“Yeah, right.” She playfully rolls her eyes.

“So.” Taehyung chuckles awkwardly, looking into Hana’s eyes.

“So…” she steps closer to him, tightening her hold around her neck. “We’ve been hanging out a lot …” she flutters her lashes, “And..”

“And?”

“I kind of want you to kiss me.”

“Oh.” Taehyung’s eyes widen. He was not expecting that. He smiles at her and nods his head. “Yeah, I can do that.” He teases, leaning in until his lips are against hers. He pulls back but she pushes herself forward to kiss him more and he sighs in her mouth, loving the feel of her lips.

“We should do that more often.” Taehyung breathes out and Hana giggles.

Taehyung groans into his hands, recalling his memories. He does miss Hana but he feels like every time he thinks of her…he somehow is also thinking about you too. But it’s not like he’s thinking of you like that but yeah, you’re on his mind. And he’s got to chill out. He stands up from the floor and walks to his bed, throwing himself on it with a bounce. He’s still so frustrated. He recalls dinner yesterday, how he…

“I’m staring at you because you have sauce on your lips.” Taehyung says from across the dining room table.

“Should I get it for you?” he teases, standing up from his chair, the sound of it screeching against the floor makes you flinch.

“No, no.” you shake your head, “I can do it myself.”

“What if I want to help you though?” Taehyung tilts his head with innocent eyes. “I’ll clean you up.”

“Tae—”

Taehyung walks to your side of the table and bends down until his face is level with your face, he smiles at you and raises his thumb up to your lips. His thumb brushes across your bottom lip slowly, the heat of his finger making you sigh out. He leans in closer as he finishes wiping the sauce off your mouth. When he finishes he takes a moment to look into your eyes like he’s searching them for something. He’s not sure what though. You feel yourself being hypnotized by his gaze, you, yourself stare back at him just as deeply…you think he’s going to lean away any second but instead he brings his hand between your faces and brings his thumb to his mouth. His thumb pushes past his lips and he’s licking it clean, the action purposely agonizingly slow.

“There. Got it.” He breathes out, “All clean.”

Your eyes widen just the slightest…he’s a tease. A fucking tease.

Taehyung’s eyes light up in amusement when he watches how you flush under his hard stare and he starts laughing.

“W-What?” you spit out, your embarrassment has you stabbing your food with your fork. “What’s funny?”

“You.” He says with a grin, the air is starting to thin out as he laughs. “You make me laugh.”

“Glad I can entertain.” You roll your eyes.

You’re so…fuck, you’re so sexy. Taehyung has been wanting to admit that for a while, but god, he has to really fucking control himself. But he’s trying to keep these thoughts at bay because he needs to figure out what he’s doing about Hana.

He lays here thinking of all the moments he has flirted with you for the camera, he groans into his pillow when he has the hardest realization. Is it really for the camera? The tension between you two is so fucking thick, the air is suffocating, making it hard to breathe. The intensity…the thrill. You are the only one who makes him feel like his world is burning with a passionate fire. Hana is nice but you? You’re you and he’s realizing how much he likes that.

He’s realizing a lot. It’s been 6 months and he thinks he is ready to admit that this is beyond what he signed up for. He signed on to get along, but this? This is a whole other journey he’s going on.

Taehyung sits up in bed, his face gone pale as he makes his realizations. His mouth hangs open as his mind races. Does Taehyung just want to fuck you? Or….does Taehyung like you?

Suddenly, there’s soft knocking on his bedroom door, his head snaps in that direction and he knows it’s you—well duh, who else would it be? He scrambles off the bed and he’s opening the door. You’re wearing yoga pants and a long sleeve shirt now with an innocent smile on your face.

“I turned the AC down.” You say. “Now I won’t make your life hard by wearing hardly any clothes.” You’re teasing him and he’s going wild for it.

“Oh really?” he breathes out, “Are you going to say sorry?” he teases back, his breathing picking up.

“Should I ask for forgiveness?” you mock him and he raises a brow at you.

“I’m going to make you beg y/n.” he says lowly, “Keep this up and I’ll be carrying you to the other bedroom.”

Your smile drops at his words. What does he mean by that? He’s taking the acting too far…

“You ever begged before baby?” He walks closer to you, making you uneasy. You step backward further into the hall and sigh out.

“Maybe.”

“From now on, you’ll only ever do it for me.” He says so low, that you barely hear him. But you do hear him and you shudder.

“Taehyung.” You warn softly, you push him by the shoulders, backing him into his bedroom. Once inside you close the door and look at him expectantly.

“What?” he rolls his eyes at you.

“You’re being too much…” you whisper. “But fuck, I gotta admit you’re good.” You breathe out roughly, “It almost feels real.”

“I wasn’t kidding earlier.” Taehyung walks towards you, his hand reaching out to touch the ends of you hair, “Who says this is for the cameras?”

You glance up at him, clearly confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh y/n.” Taehyung feels his heart start to race. “This just got a lot more interesting.”