#and the tagline was 'every two seconds someone dies'

[starheirxero]

drawing original art after drawing fanart forever is so scary ..... like yea sorry unfortunately a random mysterious potentially fake commercial enraptured me for no reason so i had to make it into a whole piece and y'all'll just have to deal with that. whatever

[lovelyhan]

— underlying pretense ⟢

pairing: wonwoo x reader

summary: being two of the most popular streamers across the board, your subscribers often speculate if your constant bickering with wonwoo has some underlying pretense. little did they know, the two of you have everything on display on a single, unsuspecting twitter account. 

word count: 10.3k words

tags: fuck buddies, not quite enemies to lovers but it's the thought that counts, streamer!wonwoo, streamer!reader, attempt at humor, smut

warnings: wonwoo n reader run a shared porn account bc they're filthy like that, alcohol consumption, graphic sexual content (minors dni!!)

notes: thank you sm for giving the teaser some love! this was just supposed to be pwp filth but...it grew itself a plot :| it also has some valorant jargon here and there but i'll come clean and say i've never played a second of that game my entire life LMAO

this is part of the game over series!

smut tags: sex tapes, unprotected sex, degradation, daddy kink, hard dom wonwoo, choking, overstimulation, aftercare

additional notes for the chat names!

texts: 🐈‍⬛ (ww), 🐈 (reader) discord: W0nwoo (ww), Koyahngi (reader) twitch: everyone_woo (ww), Koyahngi (reader)

taglist: @wonderfulshinee - @misssugarlips - @yourfavoritefreakyhan - @jeanjacketjesus - @just-here-to-read-01 - @hanihans - @venusrae - @taestrwbrry - @minnie-mouser22 - @seoksoop - @hanieb - @dreamhannies - @renjunphile - @thvhannie - @sysymei

Wonwoo doesn’t make it a habit to watch your streams for two reasons. 

The first is because you’re one of his tightest competitors in the streamer market. Giving you even a single view means that he’s contributing to your rise in popularity, which is very much detrimental to both Wonwoo’s pride and his career. 

Not that someone who only plays boring, open-world games can easily dethrone one of the most renowned competitive players on the platform, but he learned the hard way to never underestimate the charms of a cute girl who knows her way around both technology and the wallets of her subscribers.  

The second reason is…somewhat related to the first.

They’re all hanging out in Seungcheol’s apartment when Vernon opens up a Twitch stream to watch. Wonwoo is in the middle of a petty but intense Fruit Ninja competition with Mingyu on their phones, so he doesn’t get to see which streamer he’s watching. Vernon is the type that likes to give newbies a chance, though, so at that moment, Wonwoo couldn’t really care less.

But when he hears a familiar, high-pitched voice dish out her opening tagline for every stream, even Mingyu notices the way Wonwoo's face scrunches up with distaste.

“Can’t believe you pulled a Koyahngi and Chill while Wonwoo’s in the same room,” Seungcheol laughs when he returns with some beer. “We all know he’s allergic to the sound of her voice.” 

“Hey, I think it’s cute,” Vernon says. “Her outfit is, too. Look.”

Wonwoo, still stewing in his annoyance, doesn't move an inch, while Mingyu scoots closer—glancing over Vernon’s shoulder before letting out a wolf whistle.

“I really don’t see the benefit to playing Stardew Valley in maid-cat girl fusion cosplay, but at least she’s still in theme—oh, shit.”

Seungcheol looks at him once he settles himself on the sofa as well. “What’s wrong?”

“My phone died while I was in the middle of a game,” Mingyu whines. “Wonwoo-hyung, lemme borrow yours. We still haven’t decided who’s buying takeout tonight.”

While Wonwoo would’ve normally responded by scoffing at Mingyu to just borrow a charger from Seungcheol, he completely ignores him—stern eyes glued to his phone as he types away at rapid speed. The moment he hits send, Wonwoo hears a soft chime ring over Koyahngi’s lo-fi background music. 

You pause for a moment from whatever introductory segment you have planned and tell your viewers you’re just going to answer a text. Wonwoo’s friends are none the wiser when he receives a reply the moment you put your phone back down and interact with the chat.

🐈‍⬛: What did I say about wearing that outfit?

🐈: hmm, can’t remember :P

Fucking brat.

“Hyung?” Mingyu calls out after emerging from Seungcheol’s room—presumably to hunt for a charger—when he spots Wonwoo already halfway to the door. “Where are you going?” 

“Friend’s having set-up problems. He texted me asking if I could come over and take a look,” he reasons calmly as he slips his shoes back on. “I’ll head back here once I’m done.” 

Seungcheol pouts at him. “You better! Mingyu over here told us you’ve been busy with some girl, that’s why you couldn't hang out with the boys anymore.”

Vernon glances behind him to shoot Wonwoo an incredulous stare. “Wonwoo-hyung? With a girl? You’re not just making stuff up, right?” 

Mingyu immediately springs into action, blabbering something about how Wonwoo isn’t the heartless prude people thought he was, but Wonwoo really doesn’t give two shits about how his friends perceived his sex life. In fact, he was more interested in what’s playing on the screen of Vernon’s iPad—the view now unobstructed because the youngest has deigned to move away.

Again, the second reason why Wonwoo doesn’t watch your streams is related to the first. 

You’re literally his tightest competitor, but when he sees you all dolled up in your stupid fucking catgirl outfits, he’s suddenly no different from the degenerates vying for your attention in the chat.

And there is nothing else that Wonwoo hates more than being thrown off his game like that.

Funnily enough, he’s reminded of the very thing that started this constant back-and-forth he’s been toeing around with you for a better part of the year when he slips into the driver’s seat of his car. Just before he can drop his phone into one of the cup holders on the middle console, a Twitter notification lights up on screen. 

Wonwoo would’ve thought it was from the account dedicated to interacting with his viewers outside of streams. He’s got a decent number of followers there after all. Except the notifications for his official Twitter account have long been muted because of the massive online traction his tweets gain everyday. 

No, this one’s from another account entirely.

He feels no shame, opening up the most recent video you put up. What he does feel is a sick sort of pride at the sheer amount of engagement that the video received overnight—those faceless Twitter accounts in the replies looking for other desperate fucks to recreate it with. 

This is one of Wonwoo’s favorites. Part of the select few that he actually deigned to keep hidden in the gallery of his phone for…future use. He can barely contain his own heady arousal as he watches the same clip he took with his own camera the previous night. 

Those desperate little noises you made. The way your body writhed while getting a good dicking down. And how you were so fucking eager to slide Wonwoo’s cock back inside your cunt after having him cum all over your tits. 

Seeing you wearing the same goddamn fishnet bodysuit beneath your stupid maid costume on the stream not only made him pop a hard-on in the middle of boys’ night, but also called for drastic interventions, so to speak.

🐈‍⬛: Finish up that stream asap. I’ll be there in 20. 

🐈: fuck you, i just started 5 minutes ago

🐈‍⬛: You know I don’t like it when you talk back, right?

🐈: fine

🐈‍⬛: What?

🐈: …yes, daddy

🐈‍⬛: That’s what I thought.

It all began during a relatively harmless Discord call between their circle friends. 

Hanging out with other streamers isn’t such a foreign concept to Wonwoo. If you live in the same apartment as renowned social butterfly Kim Mingyu, you’re bound to get roped into his goings-on anyway, so Wonwoo relents every time—telling himself there’s no harm in meeting a bunch of new people, as long as they aren’t shitty teammates in-game.

Tonight, though, it’s Vernon who brings a new face to their server, and their Discord tag is something that Wonwoo recognizes almost immediately.

“Hey,” says one Koyahngi#0000, sounding a lot different than Wonwoo remembers. “It’s nice to meet you guys. Vernon said I could come hang out.”

The others in the voice call greet you with varying degrees of enthusiasm—from Jihoon’s mirrored but relaxed ‘hey’, to Soonyoung’s immediate invitation to team up with him on a new FPS game they’re trying out for the night.

As if having the same train of thought as Wonwoo, someone immediately pings him from the private server he shares with Mingyu, Seungcheol, and Vernon—one that Mingyu pathetically named as GAM3 BO1s. Wonwoo is quick to click on it more to eliminate the annoying red ping notification than anything else.

Min6yu: hey isn’t she the new streamer who always gets on wonu-hyung’s nerves

Min6yu: bc her voice is always so…squeaky

Min6yu: @W0nwoo

5coups: hasn’t it occurred to u that maybe that’s just part of the online persona

5coups: i think the reason why wonwoo is annoyed is bc she’s stealing his brand

5coups: you know, as the government-assigned twitch cat

V3rnon: you guys aren’t seriously talking about the person i invited in a server i’m also a part of, right…

5coups: gotta live with it, vern. you know gyu is the town gossip

W0nwoo: can we talk about this later?

W0nwoo: i can’t be the only one hearing soonyoung wailing in the call because we’re taking too long to form teams

The first few rounds progress exactly as Wonwoo envisioned them to be—with you being a constant dead weight to Soonyoung’s team, as Wonwoo’s comes out victorious each time. But it seems that the only person remotely miffed by your presence is Wonwoo, as everyone else in the call would resort to saying things like, that’s alright, you’ll get better with practice or come hang out with us more often so you can get used to it! 

Wonwoo isn’t a fan of the latter, but if the tides of favor are pitted against him, twelve to one, he can’t just overrule the majority like that. 

Of course, he doesn’t have a personal vendetta against newbies. That’s where everyone starts. Back in high school, Wonwoo used to be so bad at aiming his shots in FPS that Mingyu wouldn’t talk to him for an entire day because Wonwoo inadvertently embarrassed him in front of some girl he was trying to get with at the time. 

But there’s just…something about you that ticks him off.

You aren’t even using that pick-me-girl voice you typically do on your streams whenever you’re in a voice call with them, but it’s like you’re playing badly on purpose just so his friends could coo and coddle you. Wonwoo seems to be the only one who can see straight through the farce, and he doesn’t know how to fucking deal with it.

Or maybe he shouldn’t have to deal with it. He can just suck it up whenever one of his friends invites you to play games or fuck around in a Discord call. It’s not like anyone’s holding Wonwoo at gunpoint to interact with you. 

Except one day, Jeonghan thought it would be a wonderful idea to have a quote-unquote friendly Valorant competition on-stream. 

Wonwoo isn’t as opposed to it at first. These little contests have always been a constant since they all started gaming years and years ago. Chan, Minghao, and Jun left the call a bit early for some prior commitments, which means the opposing team would be Jeonghan, Joshua, Woozi, Seokmin, and Seungkwan. Should be easy enough.

But just when Wonwoo thought he’d be playing with his usual Valorant team consisting of Seungcheol, Mingyu, Vernon, and Soonyoung, he’s presented with a bit of a surprise.

“What?” Wonwoo blurts out of instinct once the news that you’re going to be replacing Soonyoung for today’s stream reaches his ears. “What’s wrong with Soonyoung?”

Jeonghan tuts at him in the call. “Now, Wonwoo-ah. Weren’t you the one who suggested switching things up every now and again? You’re the only one who seems miffed at the idea of getting to play alongside our new friend over here.”

“Yeah, and there’s a new banner coming out tonight in this gacha game I’m playing,” Soonyoung quips. “I’ve been sponsored with a fuck ton of cash to use on summons, so I gotta do the rolls live. Actually, I’m gonna head out now. Good luck!”

The moment Soonyoung leaves the call, you’re all-too quick to jump into the spotlight.

“Don’t worry, Wonwoo, I’ll try not to drag you down too much,” you tell him, and Wonwoo startles at the sound of your voice speaking to him directly. “You might have to carry me a little, though~”

He doesn’t like the idea of letting you have the last word, but Wonwoo would rather not antagonize you right before a joint stream with his buddies. Even if you seem to thrive off pushing his buttons whether knowingly or unknowingly, he has enough tact to keep things civil, especially in the middle of a voice call. 

At least, that’s the plan until all of you are several rounds into the first game.

“Do you have some sort of grudge against me?” Wonwoo mutters into his mic as his agent dies for the nth time on stream, while you—having played Sage since the beginning—stand over him without doing a single thing. “You haven’t tried to resurrect me even once.”

The jeering laughter of his other friends on the call inadvertently pisses him off, but the sound of you simpering is what makes his blood pressure rise into dangerous levels. “Oh? Sorry, I kind of forgot how Sage’s abilities work. My bad!” 

“This is our twentieth round,” he reminds you, eye twitching with annoyance. “And you literally just resurrected Cheol, like, a minute ago.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to waste her ult on scrubs who can’t dodge headshots,” Mingyu snorts and Wonwoo has to keep himself from getting up from his chair just to give his best friend in the other room a knuckle sandwich. “I dunno if Wonwoo-hyung’s just terrible today or if Seungkwan actually got better at using sniper guns, but this is the most fun we’ve had in a while.”

“Speak for yourself, asshole,” Wonwoo grunts.

He can hear Seungkwan laugh as well. “It’s a compliment, but that somehow still feels like an insult—whoa! Shua-hyung, Vernon’s planting a spike in—”

Before Seungkwan can even finish the sentence, his agent is swiftly annihilated by yours from behind—making quick work of Joshua, who was hiding behind a cargo holder while you’re at it, too. Wonwoo can hear Jihoon belting out a string of very colorful language that Jeonghan might have to edit out once he cross-posts the stream on YouTube. But with all agents from their team having been eliminated, the twentieth round inevitably goes to Wonwoo’s team. 

Normally, Wonwoo would’ve been glad to celebrate his team’s victory, even if he was hard-carried for an entire round because of some careless choices early on. But the fact that his best friends are all-too enthusiastic with that last play you made did his peace of mind no favors.

“See, we told you you’d get better with practice,” Mingyu says, and Wonwoo would honestly like to digress.

You’ve never been bad at FPS. That’s just what you wanted everyone to think, so the moment you finally made groundbreaking plays, all attention would magnetize solely on you. Not that he’s been much of a glutton for the spotlight, though. Wonwoo simply despises people with hidden agendas, no matter how harmless, and the fact that he’s the only one who realizes this makes it even worse.

It doesn’t help that he has a hunch that whatever blatant dislike he has for you, is very much reciprocated on your end.

Your friends assumed the constant bickering you had with Wonwoo during these streams is nothing but good-natured banter at the end of the day.

However, Wonwoo knows much, much better that this is more than just to boost the viewer engagement because of how entertaining it is to watch the two of you argue about the smallest things. (Typical ‘everyone_woo and Koyahngi catfight’, as Soonyoung horrifically dubbed it.) 

There has to be something he can do to make you see yourself out of their circle as soon as possible. Pretending you don’t exist just won’t work anymore because: 1.) Wonwoo is very, very easy to get a rise out of and; 2.) You always seem to go out of your way just to fuck with him every chance you get. 

He needs to get rid of you, stat.

Don’t misunderstand, though. Jeon Wonwoo isn’t some sort of vengeful person who makes it his life’s goal to break you off from their circle entirely. It’s not like he’s actively looking for some dirt on you so he could finally make his idiot friends see the light about your real personality. He kind of just hopes that karma would do its thing without requiring Wonwoo to lift a single finger.

Eventually, that does sort of happen. Just not in the way he ever would’ve expected.

Wonwoo isn’t particularly fond of using Twitter. Aside from the fact that he doesn’t have much to say for his followers to see, the things that appear on his timeline can be a bit…questionable. 

From threads justifying that everyone_woo and min6yu_k have been dating since middle school, here’s why to the blatant Twitter porn that his other, more degenerate streamer friends keep bringing onto his feed with their likes—Wonwoo is yet to have a pleasant experience with the stupid app. He mostly just uses it to post stream schedules ahead of time, and thank the occasional follower when they make nice cat-themed merch for Wonwoo to see.

Wonwoo doesn’t know what compelled him to scroll through the dumpster fire that is his Twitter timeline on this specific day, at this specific hour. When he has nothing better to do, he usually just channels the boredom into working out. 

But today is more of a lazy day, and Wonwoo wants nothing more than to lounge on his gaming chair while waiting for something interesting to pop up. Why he’s expecting such a thing on Twitter is beyond him, but he’s already here anyways, right?

About five minutes through his infinite scrolling, it finally pops up. 

It’s another porn video liked by this guy he collaborated with for a Twitch event once—a rather…promiscuous person named Johnny. Now that he thinks about it, Johnny seems to be the main source of all the NSFW content popping up in Wonwoo’s feed, and he considers soft blocking him for a due timeline cleanse altogether. 

But when Wonwoo finally reads the caption attached to the video…

🔞 • @_asd624915 pov: you’re fucking k0y4hng1 from behind 🤤

He scoffs the moment he finishes reading it, attempting to just block both the person who posted the video and Johnny at the same time. But what catches Wonwoo’s eye is the red neon setting of the scandalous clip. 

Wonwoo doesn’t have to watch your streams to be familiar with the trademark neon red lights you had set up inside your gaming room. The streamer portrait at the bottom corner of your screen always contrasted with the games you played, and it was sort of an eyesore sometimes. 

As the degen who tweeted it described, the girl in the video is being railed from behind while her partner films the entire thing with his phone. Wonwoo couldn’t make out any other details because of the stark, neon red lighting, as well as the shitty 480p quality, so he figures that person just wants to project his sick fantasies about you on some amateur sex tape. 

Thinking about why Johnny would even like this sort of thing gives Wonwoo a headache, so he just quits the application altogether—deciding to finally drag his ass back to the gym so he can just let it pass.

It’s none of his business anyway.

Except it happens again a few days later.

The gaming community isn’t completely full of people with questionable tastes. There are still streamers like Saerom that Wonwoo would actually consider a friend outside of his usual circle. She used to be more popular back when battle royale games were still a hit, but Saerom has since lied low in the gaming scene, and only goes live on Twitch at least once every three months. 

So Wonwoo finds it a bit surprising to see her in the chat for tonight’s stream. 

His newer viewers don’t seem to know her, but some of the veterans on his channel all greet Saerom happily—spamming the chat with the cutest emojis available on stream. He thanks them for their discretion, as he can’t quite scroll back to read her first message. The chat is moving a little too fast, and things are getting a little too heated in the Valorant Icebox map. 

Wonwoo isn’t quite used to queueing solo anymore, so after carrying the rest of his team for thirteen rounds straight, he decides to cut the stream earlier than he usually would. He says goodbye to the viewers, not forgetting to give Saerom a quick special mention before ending the live. 

However, just when he’s about to shut off his computer, he gets a Whisper notification.

SAEROM: hey, you’re friends with koyahngi, right?

everyone_woo: Uh. Sort of. Why?

SAEROM: oh um

SAEROM: i’m sorry if this seems a bit odd…but i’m just concerned about her. 

Saerom’s response makes him arch an eyebrow. 

Did something happen to you? And is it so bad that a semi-retired Twitch streamer is reaching out to him just to check in on you?

everyone_woo: Is something the matter? 

everyone_woo: I haven’t really hung out with them in a while, so I wouldn’t know

SAEROM: oh, i see

SAEROM: it’s just that…there are some weirdos on reddit saying they discovered her sex tapes

SAEROM: i had something similar happen to me in the past even if it's complete bs, so i’m just looking out for her, yknow? 

SAEROM: their reasoning is so stupid too! just because the girl in the video has red mood lights, doesn’t mean it’s koyahngi, right?

Huh. She must be talking about the same video that Johnny unknowingly put on Wonwoo’s timeline a few days ago. He hasn’t really been paying attention to social media platforms that aren’t Twitch and YouTube, so he wasn’t aware that those clips managed to gain some traction in the degen community after all. 

everyone_woo: You know how fans and viewers can be sometimes.

everyone_woo: That’s the reason you laid back for a while, right?

SAEROM: well, yeah but just bc it’s a normal thing, doesn’t mean i have to just sit back and watch it happen again to other people

SAEROM: sigh sorry i’m rambling. all of this just doesn’t sit right w me, and you’re the only friend of hers that i’m still in touch with

SAEROM: you must think it’s weird for me to be fussing abt someone i’ve never spoken to before lol

Wonwoo feels quite the opposite, actually. It’s kind of relieving to know that there are still people like Saerom in this world—caring enough to be frustrated on your behalf even if the two of you have never interacted. 

everyone_woo: Would it make you feel better if I talked to her about it?

SAEROM: omg? you’d really do that?!

SAEROM: seoyeon was completely wrong abt you, you're not a cold-hearted guy at all!

everyone_woo: …So is that a yes or?

SAEROM: ok first of all, i’m not sure if that’s necessary ‘cause idek if she knows me 

SAEROM: you don’t have to Talk to her about it, but at least look after her for me? 

everyone_woo: Ok. I’ll try.

SAEROM: thank you, you’re the best! 

It’s only when he’s halfway through his evening shower that what Wonwoo just offered to do for Saerom finally dawns on him. The moment the realization hits, Wonwoo closes his eyes and let the steady spray from the showerhead prickle his face—breathing deeply through his mouth before...

“Fuck!”

Mingyu asks what the commotion was about when Wonwoo joins him at their two-seater dinner table. He probably heard him not-so gracefully lose it inside the bathroom, but Wonwoo is too pissed at himself to entertain Mingyu’s question, and thankfully, his roommate is sensible enough not to pry.

“Gyu, can I ask something?”

Wonwoo asks this in the middle of cleaning up after dinner. He’s in charge of doing the dishes, since Mingyu was charitable enough to cook dinner for both of them tonight. Mingyu glances at him from the couch, pausing the RPG he fed into the PS5. “Yeah?”

“If you have something important to tell a girl, where would you do it?”

Honestly, Wonwoo thought it would be alright to check up on you through a quick message on Discord. But the nature of your supposed…problem is a bit too sensitive to bring up in a casual conversation. He figures that talking to you in person would be more appropriate. Never mind the fact that every other instance Wonwoo has met you in real life consisted of him completely avoiding you. 

The sound of the water running is the only thing that can be heard throughout their apartment as Mingyu processes Wonwoo’s question with an unreadable look. It’s the first time he’s seen his roommate look so serious about something, so Wonwoo decides to give him some time to answer while he scrubs off some particularly tough fond sticking to the frying pan. 

In reality, Mingyu actually had a last-minute meltdown in his head the moment Wonwoo asked the question. His roommate and best friend for more than ten years never expressed feelings or interest in other people. So the fact that Wonwoo is coming up to him now, asking about where to confess his feelings is kind of a big deal.

(Okay, that’s definitely not what Wonwoo asked, but it might as well be, right?)

So to speak, Mingyu is trying to handle the situation as delicately as possible. He just knows the moment he lets even the tiniest laugh slip, Wonwoo would just scowl at him and drop the matter entirely. Which Mingyu does not want to happen, because surprise, surprise. He’s actually rooting for his normally stoic roommate! 

“Hmm, I think the new samgyeopsal joint downtown serves some mad bulgogi,” Mingyu suggests because barbecue is always a safe choice. Unless the girl Wonwoo’s trying to get with is a vegetarian, but that’s out of the scope of Mingyu’s concern right now.

Wonwoo scrunches his brows together. “Samgyeopsal? Do I really have to eat with her?”

His roommate looks at him like that’s a pivotal piece of information that everyone is aware of. Everyone but Wonwoo, it seems. 

“Duh! It’s to set the mood and stuff,” Mingyu says, and Wonwoo is starting to wonder if they’re talking about the same thing. “Anyway, it’s better to invite her out for dinner. Nothing beats grilling meat and sharing a beer after a long day, am I right?”

Mingyu isn’t exactly wrong about that. 

Every time they all went out for samgyeopsal and a few drinks, the atmosphere has always been oddly comfortable. He might not like you as a person all that much, but Wonwoo would want you to be comfortable before he asks about…the thing.

“Fine,” Wonwoo relents just as he’s finished putting the last plate on the drying rack. “Thanks for the input.”

When Wonwoo slowly pads back to his room, he wonders again if he should really exert this much effort for someone he doesn’t even get along with. Sure, he told Saerom that he’d check up on you, but…she insisted that he didn’t necessarily have to talk to you, right? 

All of a sudden, Mingyu starts clapping all the way in the living room—effectively startling Wonwoo from his quiet contemplation. 

“You can do it, hyung,” he says with an earnest smile. “I believe in you!”

Wonwoo simply shoots him a bizarre stare before slamming the door behind him, muttering about how strange Kim Mingyu could be sometimes. 

W0nwoo: Hey. Are you free tomorrow evening? 

Koyahngi: …did you send that to the wrong person or

W0nwoo: No?

Koyahngi: who are you and what did you to do wonwoo

Koyahngi: the Real wonwoo would rather throw an entire match than ask me if i’m free tomorrow evening

Koyahngi: you better start fessing up or i’ll tell mingyu

W0nwoo: Can you stop being weird about it? I just need to tell you something important.

Koyahngi: oh? professing your undying love for me already?

W0nwoo: Just answer the question.

Koyahngi: oooh you like ordering people around huh? but yeah i should be free after my stream.

Koyahngi: where are we going, lover boy?

W0nwoo: New samgyeopsal place downtown. Gyu said you already went with them once.

Koyahngi: okay, sounds like a date to me. 

W0nwoo: Whatever. Just don’t be late.

Of course, you make it a point to arrive twenty minutes late.

Wonwoo is already in the middle of grilling the restaurant’s famed bulgogi when you slide yourself into the seat adjacent to his, grinning so sweetly at him, Wonwoo almost rolls his eyes. 

You aren’t dressed the way you usually are in streams and conventions, having settled with a worn out sweatshirt and a pair of leggings. It’s a far cry from all those complex catgirl outfits that Wonwoo has no idea how you have the patience to put together every stream. The switch up throws him off a bit, but he doesn’t comment on it—content with grilling his meat in silence as you flag down a waiter to get your order in.

“So,” you start, lacing your fingers together, “what does the elusive everyone_woo want from little old me?”

He forgot that if you’re annoying in their damn voice calls, you’re ten times worse when you’re actually in front of him. Wonwoo breathes in the fumes from the grill, willing the succulent aroma of grilling meat to calm him down before he responds.

“You should eat first,” he insists, popping a piece of beef into his mouth. “You might lose your appetite if we talk about it right away.”

You snort. “You make it sound like you know a deep dark secret that can potentially ruin my life.”

…In a way, he does, yeah.

Wonwoo assumed that eating outside without the company of your mutual friends would make the entire ordeal awkward as hell. He’s used to bearing the brunt of uncomfortable silences, but it’s just like you’re built to never feel cumbersome in your life—easily carrying the conversation with someone you supposedly hate, and hates you right back. 

You’re not someone who just talks and talks without discretion either. You know perfectly well when to fill the silence and when to let that silence set. Given that majority of his interactions with you involved his twelve other friends, that’s not something Wonwoo would’ve noticed about you right away. 

Fine. Maybe you aren’t as bad as he thought.

“Oh, right. Do you remember Saerom? The famous battle royale player from a while back?” you suddenly ask, and Wonwoo nearly chokes on his beer. “She popped into my stream earlier. It was fucking crazy! I’ve looked up to her since I was still in college, and then I see her leaving little hearts in the chat.”

As Wonwoo attempts to compose himself, he feels slightly reassured by the thought of Saerom easing herself into your orbit. The fact that you consider her as some sort of idol might just be a bonus, too. He wonders if he still needs to carry out what he’s supposed to do tonight, but then again, he’s already here.

And he’d be lying if he isn’t the tiniest bit concerned about your PR once that Reddit fiasco starts spreading around. 

That evening, he learns that you’re somewhat of a lightweight. Just two beers in, and your face is already red, and you’re laughing way too much in between sentences. Wonwoo has a sinking suspicion that he won’t be able to get his main agenda over with tonight.

He takes it upon himself to help you into the passenger seat of his car, trying to keep your grappling hands off him as you whine about how this is the only opportunity that you’ll get to be in close proximity to Wonwoo before you go back to hating each other again in the morning. Wonwoo can only sigh in complete defeat—wondering why he ever thought doing Saerom this tedious favor was worth it in the first place.

Thankfully, you’re coherent enough to tell him your address, and much to Wonwoo’s chagrin, you live on the other side of the district. It makes him ponder about why you accepted his invitation if the restaurant was completely out of the way, but then again you’ve always been a little eccentric. 

“We’re here,” he says, nudging your knee once he pulls up in front of your apartment complex. “Can you climb up the stairs or am I going to have to be your human crutch again?”

Blinking out the sleepiness swimming in your eyes, you manage to beam at him with a smile that makes your eyes crinkle.

“Your duty is not over~”

You did not just fucking quote Sage in your drunken stupor. 

There are only two things that pisses off Wonwoo these days. The first is Mingyu’s penchant for leaving his dirty clothes in the bathroom after a shower. The second is every single thing about you, which is un-fucking-fortunate for him because he’s forced to play Good Samaritan while you repeatedly wail, “Even death cannot stop me,” and every single one of your favorite agent’s in-game voice lines for no one but him to hear.

Wonwoo distantly wonders, if those weirdos on Twitter and Reddit saw you now, would they still think about you the same way?

When he’s finally in front of your door, you fumble a bit for your keys—doing a pathetic little fist pump once the lock turns on the first try. Wonwoo sighs. 

“Y’know…” You peel yourself away from his grasp before leaning against the doorframe, staring at him in the fluorescent light of the hallway. “Saerom-unnie already mentioned the rumors going around about me after my stream.”

At that moment, Wonwoo feels like an anvil has been dropped into his stomach. He narrows his eyes, wondering if this is some sort of conversational bear trap that he’s in danger of falling for. But the look in your eyes is a little too glazed over to be anything but honest.

“What did she say?” he asks instead.

You hum, chuckling to yourself as you fold your arms in front of your chest. “That you went out of your way to check on me on her behalf. So sweet of you, Wonwoo. Here I thought you were just some asshole who’s never dated a girl in his life. That definitely explains why you’re always so mean to me.”

Wonwoo’s gaze turns stony in a split second—the familiar dregs of irritation prickling the back of his neck. “I’m assuming you’re at least sober enough to walk back inside your place without my help? If that’s the case, I’ll be going—”

“They’re all true, you know.”

Your voice came out so softly, Wonwoo would have missed it if he wasn’t as observant as he is. He scrutinizes you for a moment, deciding whether or not you’re messing with him again, but the way you hold his gaze so confidently tells him it’s the latter.

“Of course, I didn’t tell that to Saerom-unnie,” you sigh, carding your fingers through your hair. “But yep. The girl in the video that a bunch of creeps are saying resembles me? That’s actually me.”

The clip in question replays in the forefront of Wonwoo’s mind like he didn’t spend days forgetting about it altogether. He shakes his head when he catches himself thinking about it a little too long. 

“Okay.” He swallows the lump in his throat. “Why are you telling me then?”

You shrug. “Beats me.”

“You’re being very strange tonight, you know?”

“Yeah. I know,” you chuckle, leaning your head back while exposing your neck in a way that’s a bit too sensual to be normal. “Maybe it’s because I know the truth’s safe in your hands. Kinda weird if you think about it, though—trusting the guy who hates your guts with a dirty little secret that could end your entire career.”

If the context was any more different, Wonwoo would’ve agreed. This is what he’s been waiting for, right? To get enough dirt on you so he can convince his friends to just kick you out of your little circle altogether. 

But as insufferable as you might be, Wonwoo isn’t such a terrible person that he’ll throw you to the wolves without an ounce of remorse. He’s seen what scandals like this have done to the careers of old streamer friends he no longer has contact with. Even if you’re purposely living your life on the literal edge, he would never consider deliberately ruining it. 

He tells himself that the only reason he feels that way is because he refuses to get his hands dirty from…whatever you’ve got going on for yourself. Not because of outright concern for you. Definitely not.

“If you don’t have anything else to say to me,” Wonwoo starts, trying not to think about the flush on your cheeks while you’re slumped against the doorframe, “I’m heading back home.”

He turns around with full intention of leaving without hearing your answer. However, you completely anticipated his next move, immediately snapping into motion to grab Wonwoo’s wrist before he could even take a single step away. He grunts with surprise when you tug him closer—enough that your chests are flush against each other.

“I just remembered the other reason why I decided to tell you,” you giggle, running a finger along the rim of his glasses. “My old dom quit on me, so I need to bring in someone new to make more content with.”

Wonwoo’s eyes widen by the second as the implications of your words start to connect in his head. “What?”

You roll your eyes. “No need to act so prissy with me, Wonwoo. I make sex tapes on the side for the entire world to see. As of the moment, there’s no one to have sex with. You’re a semi-attractive guy that’s pressed up against me right now, and I’m pretty sure fucking around with you wouldn’t be too—”

“Stop. Holy shit. Stop talking,” Wonwoo rasps. He physically has to push you away so he can hear the sound of himself talking over the thundering of his heart.

You pout at him. “Don’t tell me you haven’t once thought about fucking me. I’m pretty sure your other friends have entertained the idea at least once.”

“Can you shut up for one fucking second?” 

That seems to do the trick. In fact, Wonwoo doesn’t miss the dazed yet pleased look in your eyes the moment he says the words with a bit more authority that he meant to channel into his voice.

Oh, you are so fucking sick.

“Look,” he sighs in between, dragging a palm over his face out of perplexion. “This probably isn’t a conversation we should be having in the hallway of your apartment complex. If your neighbors overhear, what then?”

“Hmph. You think I’ll let myself live in a place with paper thin walls? The soundproofing here is great, mind you. The couple that lives a few units over might be having the wildest sex imaginable and we’re none the wiser!”

“That’s not the fucking point,” Wonwoo growls. “You’ve obviously had too many to drink tonight, and you’re spilling all your life’s secrets willy-nilly. Don’t proposition me like that again when you’re not sober enough to deal with the consequences after.”

You simper, hands gliding to the lapels of his jacket as you tug him back. He has to physically bite the inside of his cheek when those fingers glide across the flimsy fabric of his t-shirt, grazing across every ridge of his muscled chest.

“Oh? Those consequences you speak of sound a bit too tempting to ignore.” 

Wonwoo looks at the pristine ceiling of the fourth floor hallway, as if praying for some sort of deliverance.

“Go home and get some sleep. Don’t make me repeat myself,” he says, testing the waters of…whatever the fuck this is, and Wonwoo finds relief in the fact that you actually do as he says, stepping away from him just like he ordered.

“Not even a good night kiss?” you ask—the teasing lilt in your voice yet to fade. 

Mustering all the self-restraint left in his body, he turns on his heel and walks away without another word.

Wonwoo doesn’t hear from you for a few days after that.

He convinced himself that the conversation he had with you just outside your apartment was nothing but a fever dream. Though he only had one glass of beer, as he’s supposed to drive home, he can’t really underestimate the effects of alcohol. 

But just when he thought his life had finally resumed his preferred cadence of normalcy, another unexpected visitor hops onto his latest stream—sending the chat into a complete frenzy.

Unlike the mixed reactions that Saerom’s arrival last week incurred, seeing the renowned Twitch streamer Koyahngi leaving cat emojis in Wonwoo’s stream chat is enough to drive his entire viewerbase up a wall. 

Thankfully, he isn’t playing a game that requires 200% of his utmost concentration—having given the open-world gacha game that Soonyoung keeps begging them to play a chance—so Wonwoo gets to peer over at the messages flooding across one side of his screen. One in particular catches his attention: why are a bunch of hot girls dropping by wonwoo’s stream these days? 

Wonwoo ultimately decides to brush them all off for now.

However, unlike Saerom who just observed his stream quietly after making her presence known, you constantly made comments about his overworld progress—saying that he’s building this character wrong, and that there’s an easier way to go around the obstacles; he just needs to use his head. Wonwoo forgot that this is a game that you also played frequently, and having to be on the receiving end of all your unsolicited advice made him want to end the stream altogether.

Except he can’t dish out his snarky rebuttals like he typically would on their friendly Discord calls because, wow, his viewers really were eating this shit up. Since the two of you typically argued on your friends’ streams and not his, Wonwoo hasn’t seen the gravity of these splintered interactions until now.

His eyes parse through the fast-paced comments flying into the chat, catching on a few questionable ones, like someone begging for the TikTok fans to make edits, the fanfic writers to create stories about the greatest enemies-to-lovers couple in Twitch history, and so on. 

Wonwoo has been making his livelihood off the internet for years, but he still can’t get used to how strangely people behave sometimes.

He half-expects you to continue pestering him even after he finishes up with the stream, but his Discord notifs remain oddly silent, and Wonwoo decides to just hit the gym when Mingyu asks if he wants to come.

After he’s satisfied with today’s session, Wonwoo waits for Mingyu by the locker room, as his roommate is still getting their usual trainer to spot him while he does his bench presses. But when he fishes his phone out of his gym bag, he’s surprised to see a couple of messages from yours truly.

Koyahngi: sooo are you free tonight?

Koyahngi: i haven’t posted anything in a while, my followers must miss me

Wonwoo scowls at his phone once he reads the contents of your messages—earning himself a wary stare from this one person that passed him in the hall. Clearing his throat, he schools his expression into complete neutrality as he types in a response.

W0nwoo: Why do I have to get roped into this again? Can’t you just make your own content by yourself? 

Koyahngi: they’re more into seeing the actual thing that just me playing with myself

Koyahngi: that, and i’m kind of really horny these days

W0nwoo: …So this is your idea of a booty call?

Koyahngi: pretty much, yeah.

“Wonwoo-hyung, you wanna get some chicken before we head home?” he hears Mingyu call out at the other end of the hall.

He has half the mind to tell him that stuffing his face with fried food right after working out is counterproductive as hell, but then again, it’s not like Wonwoo can reprimand him when he won’t even be there to begin with.

“I…actually have other plans.”

…

What the fuck is he doing here, honestly?

It’s not like Wonwoo doesn’t have any sort of sex drive or anything. In fact, the night after he dropped you off at your apartment, he might’ve had to…relieve himself during a quick shower before bed. Not that he’d ever admit to ever doing it. Letting off some steam every now and again is understandable though. 

But this? Sitting at the foot of your bed as you got ready for him to fuck you silly?

This is a different breed of foolishness.

He seriously considers sneaking out of your apartment before you can emerge from the en-suite. Wonwoo can just shoot you a quick message, saying that this was all a mistake, and that he hopes you can find a more suitable partner to fuck around with. Because…he doesn’t just do these kinds of things with other people. He wouldn’t go as far as calling himself a romantic, but casual sex has never really interested him—insisting that there are other things in life to focus his energy on.

However, you come out of the bathroom before he can even hope to make up his mind, a cute robe patterned with pink kittens hiding your body from view. You muster up a kind smile as Wonwoo swallows thickly.

Yep. No backing out now.

“You look so tense for someone who just came from the gym,” you chuckle, making a beeline for your desk to grab your phone. “Aren’t work outs supposed to be a form of stress relief or something?”

“They are, but a certain someone is stressing me out again.”

“Hm. I wonder who?”

A few moments later, the mood lights hooked up to the ceiling start to glow, and you pad over to flip off the light switch. Almost immediately, the room is plunged into near-darkness, and Wonwoo feels himself take in a sharp breath when he sees how the red lighting paints your objectively cute robe in a more…lascivious light. 

“So how do you wanna do this?” you ask before finally making your way towards the bed—planting a knee on either side of Wonwoo’s hips before hoisting yourself up to sit on his lap. He doesn’t dare to move an inch. 

“Why are you asking me? Aren’t you going to direct how your own content plays out?” he questions gruffly, keeping his palms firmly at his sides despite the sudden compulsion to place them on your hips. 

You chuckle as you make a show of biting your bottom lip—one finger trailing down the dri-fit shirt that Wonwoo changed into after showering at the gym. “I don’t think you understood what I was telling you the other night. You’re my dom, Wonwoo. You get to call the shots, not me.”

He closes his eyes with a withering sigh, wondering what sort of atrocities he’s committed in a past life to warrant having to end up in this situation.

“Don’t we have to get this on film? Can’t exactly hold a phone when you’re all over me like this.”

A soft giggle reverberates in your chest before you roll your hips, earning an exasperated groan from the man below you. This time, Wonwoo can’t contain the need to touch you, and his hands migrate to your thighs as he presses his hips further against yours—eyes never straying too far from your own. 

“You don’t have to think about that just yet,” you murmur, trailing your lips along the cut of his jaw. “Let’s get a feel of each other first. I’ll let you know what I like, and you let me know what you like, yeah?”

It gives him so much vertigo, seeing you like this under the same red lights he’s always found disparaging to catch a glimpse of in your streams. Wonwoo is tethering dangerously across the tightrope of his self-control, but when you lace your fingers around his nape to press your foreheads together, Wonwoo realizes the effort is completely futile.

“What do you say, daddy?” 

He doesn’t have a daddy kink. He knows he doesn’t. He’s always found it weird how others got off at the prospect of calling their sexual partners such a thing. 

So why the hell is Wonwoo crushing your lips together like he’ll die if he doesn’t kiss you right this second? Why are his fingers gripping the swell of your ass as tightly as they are—grinding you down on his hardening length with a growl resonating deep in his chest? And why does he feel a rush of pride surge straight into his skull when you whimper against his mouth?

As he busies himself with devouring your lips, you shrug off the sleeves of your robe, making Wonwoo peel himself away for a second to get a glimpse of what you’ve been hiding underneath. When he’s rewarded with the spill of your bare breasts, he takes a sharp breath through gritted teeth—rolling his hips upward at the thought that you’ve chosen to forego underwear altogether.

“What’s your safeword?” he rasps, mouth hovering above your chest before he goes in for the kill, nipping and biting at your skin with the intention for it to hurt. A sick sense of satisfaction ripples in his chest when you moan out his name in response, and Wonwoo all but secures a strong arm around your waist to keep you from falling off.

“Red,” you mewl, all while you discard your robe altogether, rutting your bare cunt against his middle. 

He sighs, reaching between your thighs to get a feel of just how ready you are for him. Wonwoo nearly bites down harshly when he finds you wet and wanting—your essence already trickling out of your needy hole and onto his sweats.

“Fuck,” he groans, lathering his free hand in your slick. “So fucking wet for me already. Did you touch yourself before I got here?” 

“Mmmm,” you purr, taking his bottom lip between your teeth. “Fucked myself with a little toy thinking it was you.”

You assumed your eagerness to finally lie with the guy you’ve been trying to get with for months might spur him further into action. But something unspeakable shifts in the air and for a moment, Wonwoo is so silent, you figure he didn’t hear what you just said. Just when you’re about to call out his name, however, Wonwoo quickly maneuvers you off his lap, shoving you back onto the mattress with little heed for your comfort. 

At first, you thought he was about to manhandle you into oblivion, but when the searing warmth of his body departs from yours, you look up at him with an inquisitive scowl.

“Sounds to me like you don’t need my cock after all,” he says coolly, yet fails to mask the anger sparking in his dark eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that? You’re obviously content with using a toy instead, right?”

“Wonwoo,” you groan, frustrated that he’s playing games now when you’re finally so goddamn close to what you’ve been hoping to happen for months. “Can you not go too deep into the domspace because I really, really need you to rail me like, right fucking now.” 

“Shut up,” he scoffs before crossing his arms together. If it weren’t for the outline of his cock bulging through his sweats, you would’ve thought he was genuinely displeased with you. “Cocksluts like you don’t have the right to make demands.” 

Fuck. 

You only had a hunch back then, but Jeon Wonwoo might just be the dom of your dreams.

Instead of playing the brat like you always do, you let out a helpless whimper, sliding down to the floor before crawling to Wonwoo’s feet. He watches your movements with an impassive stare, looking so immovable even as you prop yourself up on your knees to nuzzle his clothed cock.

“Then what can I do for you, daddy?” you ask, fingers catching purchase on the strong flesh of his thighs. The heady scent of musk and detergent pervades your senses, and it takes every ounce of patience for you to keep yourself from pulling his sweatpants down and take him into your mouth. “You’re not just going to stare at me all night while you’re all pent up like this, right?”

Whatever semblance of playfulness you deigned to parade around Wonwoo is quickly snuffed out when he roughly grabs your chin, forcing you to meet his ticked off gaze.

“I don’t think you understood your own words when you said I’m the one calling the shots here,” he growls, and you can feel another gush of slick seeping between your thighs. “You’re not allowed to talk until I say so. Keep those cheeky fucking comments to yourself or I’ll leave you high and dry. Got that?”

Oh my god, he’s fucking perfect.

When Wonwoo finally gets to fuck the frustration out of his system, he lies next to you on the sheets—waiting for you to swim out of that post-orgasmic high as he inspects the damage he’s done to your body.

It’s been a while since he’s gone out of his way to hook up with someone, so he isn’t surprised to see the plethora of love bites and bruises he ended up scattering across your skin. Wonwoo feels particularly pleased with himself when he sees the deep rise and fall of your chest—the bloom of hickeys you’ve amassed on your breasts still recognizable even under the deep red lights. 

“I think I might be in love with you,” you sigh wistfully once you finally come to your senses. Wonwoo rolls his eyes. “I haven’t come that hard in months, Jesus.”

“Compliment me any more and it’ll get to my head,” he says before adding—much more sincerely than he usually sounds— “Are you okay?”

Turning around to face him, you pull him down for another kiss. Wonwoo grunts against your lips but snakes a hand around your waist anyways. 

“I think you’re just about ready to film us now,” you whisper into the kiss, licking into his mouth in a way that’s stoking the ebbing flames of his arousal back to life. “Can I borrow your phone?”

Wonwoo raises an eyebrow at your request but moves to the nightstand where he unceremoniously discarded his phone before fucking you stupid. There are a couple of texts and other Discord notifications on screen that he completely ignores in favor of handing it to you unlocked. 

You adjust your position on the mattress, easing your legs apart with the silent invitation for Wonwoo to come between them again. He can hardly believe that you’re still looking at him with the same bedroom eyes that you’ve been giving him since the night began. Just how much cock can you take, really?

“The mood lights shouldn’t be too dark, so don’t use flash,” you instruct him, handing Wonwoo his phone back with the Camera app already up and running. “Other than that, you’re free to do whatever you want to me, daddy.”

Wonwoo heaves yet another internal sigh as he positions himself between your legs, rubbing his half-hard cock along your ruined cunt. With a bated breath, he hits the Record button.

He hasn’t watched a lot of Twitter porn for a dozen reasons, but Wonwoo figures he shouldn’t get your face in the frame. Now that he’s finally in the shoes of whoever was fucking you from behind in the first clip he saw, he realizes it’s a little hard to keep filming this debauchery while subsequently trying not to lose his mind from how good your pussy feels. And he isn’t even inside you yet. Fuck.

The sensual way you move your body to meet his shallow thrusts makes him want to just chuck his phone back on the nightstand and ravish you all over again. But Wonwoo doesn’t do that. He simply continues with his ministrations, relishing in the cock-drunk look in your eyes once you reach out to pump his length in your smaller hand. 

You don’t talk; neither does he. All that matters is the sensation of his cockhead sliding across your wet pussy lips while you jacked him off with a hazed out look in your eyes. 

A possessive part of him takes great pride in knowing he’s the one making you feel like this; that he’s the reason behind that depraved expression you’re wearing. The moment you guide Wonwoo’s cock back into your tight channel, he uses his free hand to clamp his strong fingers around your throat—pressing down with just enough pressure to make you feel lightheaded.

The squelch of your cunt is sickeningly sweet, especially knowing that you still have his load inside you. Wonwoo is a bit too eager as he fucks his spend even deeper into your abused cunt, all while maintaining a steady grip on his phone as he captures all this on camera. He’s ruined you so badly that each time he slides himself to the hilt, he can see the creamy ring of your mixed juices at the base of his cock.  

You’re driving him so fucking crazy, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

After a few experimental thrusts, Wonwoo picks up the pace—the grip he has on your throat tightening ever-so slightly. Just enough to have your eyes rolling to the back of your head. 

Fuck it. 

He tosses his phone somewhere on the bed before moving to hook your legs over his shoulders. You shoot Wonwoo a bewildered look, a question already resting on your tongue, but the words are ground to dust when he pushes himself back into your sopping heat—deep enough that you can feel the fat head of his cock graze your cervix. 

“Fuck, daddy!” you wail, completely helpless as Wonwoo pounds into you with unforgiving vigor. “So good… So fucking good.”

If you uttered those words the first time he fucked you earlier, he would’ve choked you out for going against his ‘don’t speak unless I say so’ rule. But Wonwoo is just so obsessed with the tight fit of your cunt fluttering around his cock that he can’t even find the headspace to be mad about your disobedience. 

“You’re such a greedy fucking slut,” he growls, nipping the lobe of your ear. “Can’t get enough of this cock? You had to come onto me and let me ruin you twice in a single night?” 

The only response you can come up with is a high-pitched keen of his name as Wonwoo feels your cunt pulsate around him, squeezing his cock so fucking tight as you lose yourself to your nth orgasm. He hisses as he pulls himself out of the velvet heat of your pussy, jerking himself a few times before he’s painting your tits with white ribbons of cum. 

Wonwoo delights himself with the sight of his emission shining atop the marks he’s left on your body, and even entertains the thought that he won’t ever mind seeing such a sight again.

It takes about thirty minutes for you and Wonwoo to clean up—at his insistence, of course. After all, if he’s going to break you apart, it’s only fair for him to put you back together once all’s said and done. 

For some reason though, you haven’t stopped looking at him weirdly as he runs a clean washcloth all over your spent body. Like the concept of aftercare is something completely foreign to you. But instead of bringing it up, you ask Wonwoo if you can borrow his phone again, and all he gives you is a small grunt of affirmation before padding over to the en-suite to get himself cleaned.

“You didn’t stop recording when you tossed it away?” He hears you laugh from the bedroom. “Oh my god…”

He didn’t…? Oh, well. He was too goddamn horny to notice anyway.

Wonwoo gets dressed while you continue tinkering with the video he took on his phone—airdropping it to yours so you could do a couple of changes. Turns out, there are a couple of instances where your face got caught in the frame, and you’re going to have to crop it and trim out the part where you’re audibly moaning each other’s names if you want to keep committing these acts of deviance on the side. 

“Gotta say though, you’re a natural at getting my good angles,” you say, sounding completely pleased. “I wouldn’t mind having you over again~” 

“Don’t push your luck.” He scoffs as he fastens the string of his sweats and puts his glasses back on. 

But the two of you know he’ll be back either way.

When Wonwoo gets back to the apartment, he finds Mingyu lounging in front of the TV despite it being almost three in the morning. Something about marathoning a new drama that Wonwoo might’ve heard in passing. As exhausted as he is, he decides not to reprimand Mingyu altogether and marches straight to his room.

But just as he’s about to collapse straight into bed, his phone buzzes with another notification that makes him click his tongue in annoyance. It’s been going off non-stop since he left your place, but he didn’t pay it much mind since he assumed they were all Twitch and Discord notifs. Some of his friends did like pinging him unnecessarily even in the dead of night.

Although when Wonwoo realizes they’re Twitter notifications, he pauses.

He muted the notifs on his Twitter account ages ago. 

Confused, he takes off his glasses and places them on the nightstand, eyes narrowed when he realizes a new account has been logged onto his phone. An account that just happened to tweet the same video he just took on his phone not two hours earlier. 

🐈 • @ goodcat_badcat miss me? 💦

As fate might have it, a text notification hovers on top of his screen—with a contact name he doesn’t remember putting himself, but recognizes all the same. 

🐈: hope you enjoyed the show, daddy <3

As he reads through the text, he wonders distantly when this will all come back to bite him in the ass.

But then again, Wonwoo really couldn’t care less.

part one - part two - part three - part four

end notes: hehe i really enjoyed writing this, so i hope you enjoyed reading as well! this is actually slated to have a second part sometime in the future, but for now, i think it'll do well as a standalone. i'll let wonwoo and reader fool around with their spicy sex life first before giving them ~feelings~ to worry about ^__^

this is part of the game over series!

[bewitchingbooktours]

Obedience by Liza Snow #RomanticSuspense

Obedience

Ties That Bind Series

Book One

Liza Snow

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Date of Publication: April 4th 2023

ASIN: B0BXJZFW6S

Number of pages: 617 pages

Word Count: 155000

Cover Artist: MiblArt

Tagline: He’d searched a lifetime for the perfect student. She’d always dreamed he'd be her teacher. Together they’ll soar in the silks.

Book Description: 

Cassandra

Growing up, I was mesmerized by a man soaring the skies.

The greatest silk aerialist in the world, Chandler Moreau.

He was once my lifeline, the dream I clung to after my parents died. I’ve always believed he was my destiny. To join him at the Dreamers Academy. To perform for him.

To soar with him.

He’s more than I ever imagined. Far more than a mentor. When I am high in the silks, turning, flying, falling, he’s my lifeline once again. Twisting my heart and my body into knots like the knots of his beloved Japanese rope bondage, Shibari.

I don’t want to live without him. With each lesson, each touch, I crave more. Only he can satisfy me. And only he can destroy me…

But I must keep him safe from the past that relentlessly follows me.

Chandler

She is my protégé, the student I’ve been waiting to take under my wing for my entire career. Someone with whom I could share my lifelong journey in my family’s circus, Cirque du Lys.

I never intended to fall in love with the student I was supposed to protect—from myself and the demons that lurk in my shadows. But sometimes fate has other plans.

Cassandra, my beautiful butterfly. I know she’s off limits. Forbidden. Still, I want her in my life. My heart. My bed.

My grandfather's taunting words still linger.

Mieux vaut plier que rompre.

Adapt and survive.

It’s what we must do. Cassandra and I share a history that entwines us more than the silks we’ve spent our lives mastering ever could.

There are secrets from the past that must never be told. And truths that could destroy what we’ve just begun…

Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/6oKPIEIwyAk 

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3JBCeaA 

More to Love

In addition to the paperback, Obedience is also available in a full-cast narrated audiobook, starring Daniel Zbel and Rapunzaroo, along with a cast of additional voiceover actresses. 

Brought to life in the way the story is meant to be told, and it will be the best audiobook you listen to this year—possibly for a very long time.

You’ll love listening to the two voices of these iconic characters. And don’t forget to read along with them and enjoy a fantastic, immersive experience. You’ll need the paperback copy to fan yourself off from some of the narration!

Listen to An Audio Excerpt Here: 

https://bit.ly/3yzdb1t

Excerpt:

I hadn’t needed to prompt her. She began, pulling herself upward, drawing those silks around her small frame as she went. Climbing high into the air as the two women began their duet. The French lyrics pulled me in every time. It was perhaps one of the reasons that while I simply tolerated most opera songs I’d heard, I adored this song.

Every time I heard it, every time I got lost in those little nuances of the language, it brought me back to summertime in Melun, France. Playing on the hills overlooking the city, lost in the grasses filled with wildflowers. Climbing into Meme’s apple trees. Perhaps the time in my life when it had felt so simple. All there were, were the memories of when I’d been happy.

And if there was any place I wanted to be, as I watched Cassandra ascending above me, knowing in seconds I would be right beside her, it was in those memories again. Bringing her with me.

The first stanza finished, and my mind immediately centered. My hands had already been wrapped in the silks without having to think about it. She paused, and I saw her attention drift downward. We fell captive to one another, and it was all I needed to see. I knew it was my turn to go to her. She was waiting for me.

In the same fashion she had moments earlier, I began my way up the silks beside hers, which had been a deep royal purple color. The entire time I made my way high into the room, I immersed myself in the French lyrics, the strings complimenting every rise and fall of the two women’s voices. Some moments, I’d lose myself in what I was doing, taking careful note of all the little adjustments my body was making. Other times, my attention drifted upward. Until finally, I was just beneath Cassandra.

When I paused again, I took a few deep breaths, steadying myself. Focused entirely on the beautiful woman above me, who was just as attentive to me. I nodded to her, signaling I was ready, prepared to follow her in whatever she had thought to do next.

At the precise moment when I had met her, she had already begun moving herself into a sailor pose above me, legs splitting, and much to my satisfaction, every single part of her in perfect position. All the small details I’d shown her the first lesson we’d had together were as pristine as when I’d helped her myself.

I would have taken more time to truly enjoy how proud of her I felt if she hadn’t twisted downward, dropping her torso straight toward me in a graceful fall. Before she’d completed it, I knew what she’d done. A Rainbow Marchenko. A famous move of Jeanne’s for many years. But watching her as she settled into it, I would have thought it was hers alone.

Cassandra’s hands dropped, releasing the silks. Dangling inches away. The only thing holding her in the air was the precise folds of those green fabrics wrapped around her legs.

Looking into her eyes as she hung there, waiting for me to act, all I could do was smile. She’d been focused, lost in her own world, but she’d come back to me. We were together again in the very place I had wanted to be with her ever since I’d seen her flying through the silks at her audition. I had dreamt about it every time since, every lesson we had, every time I’d watched her from the shadows of the theater while she practiced.

I had taken her to those fields in Melun with me, high in the trees. Trapped us both in those treasured memories, made all the better knowing she was there.

“I’ve got you, Cassandra,” I called out to her, gently. Steadying myself, my body locked in place. Breathing slow and rhythmic and calm. I watched her take the same breath as I had, waiting for the little drop in the lyrics before the next few lines began.

The moment their voices bellowed into the theater again, she let herself drop in a salto. In a gentle sweep of my body, I caught her gracefully into my arms. Twisted us together, letting the silks take hold of the two of us as we swung across the room, dozens of feet above the stage below us. Falling like two feathers locked together, dancing into the wind.

When the fabrics released us, I swung us outward. Our bodies drifted apart again as she spun around me, both of us still descending toward the floor. As beautiful as she looked, circling outward away from me, the moment she had, I wanted her back. I used my legs to give myself enough momentum to swing forward, latching on again once she’d appeared.

Cassandra had been so close I’d felt her breath against my face while we dangled above the stage. I got lost in the way it felt to be tangled up with her, a mess of bodies and fabric. Consumed by it. Convinced I might never let go of her again.

As we’d traversed the rest of the way back to the stage, I didn’t. The two of us descended together as a singular unit, just her and I and the fabrics. Improvising the graceful fall we were doing, finding little tricks and motions to carry out, all the while never leaving her side.

We’d both reached the floor, perfectly in sync with one another. I heard a gentle thump as we landed. Followed by the sound of both of our light, audible breaths. Steadying ourselves back on the ground.

Even having left the air, the silks still wrapped around us. Neither of us had freed ourselves. Cassandra was still in my arms, something I realized, when I hadn’t been so caught up in what we were doing all those feet above us, was happening for the very first time.

The sweet smell of oranges overwhelmed me. Her beautiful hazel eyes, those captivating flecks of grays and greens and browns, drowned out the world around us. I watched her breathing softly, holding her to me and those silks holding me to her.

And in those next few moments, every single solitary thing keeping me from her since the day we had met no longer existed in the little reality we were trapped in. Every fear I had, every reservation, disappeared. I tightened her to me, my hands capturing the sides of her face in a gentle sweep, as elegant as every other thing we’d done those last few minutes.

Our mouths fell together, and I lost myself in her. Trapped in those profound and so unbelievably relieving seconds in which the things that had stood in our way no longer mattered.

I hadn’t thought anything could have surpassed the experience the two of us just shared.

Undeniably, it had been the best minutes I had ever spent in those silks in my entire career. As simple as it had been. And we had barely started. This was only the beginning.

But this moment now was just as wonderful. As perfect as I could have hoped.

About the Author:

A bestselling independent author from Florida, Liza has been putting romance books into her readers hands for over a half decade and has loved every minute of it.

Liza lives with her husband, her two dogs and her cat, ten minutes from the beach. When she isn't writing, you can often find her walking and enjoying outside, with a coffee and a book in hand. 

Website: http://www.lizasnowauthor.com 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lizasnowauthor   

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/lizasnowauthor 

Newsletter: http://bit.ly/3yBrJhm 

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[neoheros]

sometimes, atsumu finds himself regretting not going to college.

it's only for small, short periods of time though. nothing much to mull over if he's really talking about it, but sometimes, moreso, in this case, right now, he finds himself a little more immersed in the thought than usual.

the decision to not go to college is completely his, no one forced him into it. it's all completely on him.

"and the professor just kept going on and on about how this was such a missed opportunity for a better tagline, and i wanted to say that i agree with him, but sir, your pants are falling down."

it’s a thursday morning, and usually he’d find himself very busy at the gym working on some of the reps his coaches told him to brush up on, but it’s his free day today, and what better way to spend that than visit you at your college?

your arm’s linked with him in a casual manner, like it’s something the two of you have done for forever, and he stops walking only when you stop walking.

"are you listening?" you pause your story to ask, the cup of coffee in your hand easily matching the one in his own.

"hm?" atsumu smiles as he looks at you, "no."

you nudge his side, "i resent that. i'm a very good story-teller."

a second passes in the air.

walking around campus like this, enjoying your free time with each other, it’s just something that you’ve been wishing for a lot lately.

it always feels like you’ve been missing each other so much, and now that he’s finally here, with you, it still feels like something is plotting to happen.

"hey," you stop walking, looking at him briefly as you do, "you still didn't tell me why you're here."

you love his unannounced visits, you love him waiting outside your classroom because he just happens to know your schedule, with your favorite coffee in his hand as he tells you how he wanted to surprise you.

atsumu looks at you, "i wanted to visit."

and you raise a brow, teasing, "because we already don't see each other at all at our house that we share and go home to everyday?"

"yes, exactly." he rolls his eyes, his grin playing free on his lips, "plus my mom called cause she knew i had a free day today and i needed a valid reason to not tell her that samu and i are in a fight."

( osamu asked atsumu to housesit for him the other day and apparently, atsumu never agreed to it, but osamu was under the impression that he was.

long story short; osamu came home to a very messy house and his plants on the brink of dehydration.

they’ve been ignoring each other for days, but osamu still sends you onigiri every sunday with a note “if you share even a bite with tsumu, i’ll know and the onigiri will stop coming.”)

"so instead of telling your mom you can't go to samu's today because the two of you are still in a childish fight that could really easily be resolved by someone saying "sorry", you chose to spend your one free day all week at my college campus."

your tone is questioning, but the laughter rising from your throat breaks your expression.

"yes." atsumu answers straight up, turning to you briefly with a teasing grin, "and i love hearing you talk about your professor and his weird pants."

of course, he was listening.

"hey, miya!"

the reply you had dies in your throat as you’re both interrupted.

your head turning slightly upwards to see who it is that called, and you only really half recognize the girl who approached you two as one of your classmates.

"hey." you give her a polite smile.

and there’s a way atsumu wants to kick his feet at the thought of you being so accustomed to his name.

"i sit behind you in modern literature," the girl smiles nervously as she looks at you, "and i was wondering if i could borrow your notes on it from last week?"

you nod, your eyes crinkling as you reply, "yeah, for sure."

and without even you having to ask, atsumu hands you your backpack, standing in the sidelines as lets you look for those notes.

your classmate takes a good look at the two of you, between the matching cups of coffee in your hands and the fact that he was just holding your things just now, it’s not hard to realize that the two of you may be … involved.

"who’s this?" she asks you, pointing slightly at atsumu as she tries her best to stay polite.

"my hu–"

"boyfriend." atsumu answers, ignoring you as you look at him with narrowing eyes.

what is he up to?

"oh, sorry, did i interrupt you guys?" she asks, her expression falling even further.

"you're fine." atsumu smiles, "we were just walking around."

"i don't think i know you," she tells him, the politeness in her voice evident, "do you go here too?"

"oh, he –"

"yeah!" atsumu cuts you off, his words laced with laughter, "i sit at the very back of the class so that's probably why we don’t know each other."

that wasn’t the response you were expecting him to give.

your classmate looks at him, "oh, you share modern literature with us?"

you finally look up, your smile conniving, "he does."

and atsumu’s eyes crinkle even further as he nods, "i do."

you hand her the notes you’ve finally gotten out of your bag, one that she’s more than happy to take with a vigorous amount of "thank you"s.

"i'm sorry, i feel like such a jerk right now for not knowing your name." she looks at atsumu, eyebrows quirking together as apologizes.

oh, this poor girl.

"miya." he tells her, proudly smiling as he does so, "it’s miya atsumu."

"you’re both miya? are you guys related?" she asks, and she kind of feels weird asking that seeing as just a few seconds ago she was absolutely sure that the two of you were dating.

you blink, and you look at atsumu to answer for the both of you.

"no." atsumu answers, and for a second he shoots you an assuring look, "it's uh... just a coincidence."

"yeah," you nod, trying your best not to laugh, "it’s weird, people tease us about it all the time."

atsumu adds, "it’s actually like we’re already married."

and you elbow him lightly in the side as you try not to laugh.

"well hey, since you're in modern literature too then, can i get your notes on it as well?" she asks atsumu, and you’re grateful that she doesn’t say anything about how weird the two of you are being right now.

she shrugs, "i need all the help i can get."

you slightly tilt your head to look at atsumu, biting in your inner cheek to anticipate how he talks himself out of this one.

he doesn't spare a second to give you a reassuring glance, instead, he shakes his head apologizingly, his hand immediately touching the back of his neck as he laughs.

atsumu's smile stays polite, "i would, but i was completely thrown off the entire lesson, i forgot to take my own notes."

you raise a brow.

"i was so distracted the entire class — which is a shame cause it's usually so good, — but when our professor started talking about taglines and how they could be so much better, i wanted to agree with him so bad, but," and he trails off in suspense, a teasing glint in his eye as he looks at your classmate.

atsumu is way too good at this.

thankfully, she gets what he's trying to say, a rise of laughter coming up into her expression as she nods vigorously, "you noticed that too, huh!"

"it was so embarrassing," she shakes her head, "i didn't know where to look."

and atsumu nods slowly, "me too. he needs to get pants that fit him."

she eventually thanks the both of you, apologizing once again for interrupting your walk, and telling you, extremely teasingly that “you two look good together.”

and she’s off.

she runs back to her group of friends with your notes in her hands, and you think about what kind of explanation to give her the next time you share modern literature and your so-called “boyfriend” isn’t there to share it with you.

you and atsumu are back to walking around.

"you stole my professor + pants anecdote." you scoff, your arm linking with him out of instinct.

"i told the story better than you did." atsumu says, his tone convinced.

"now, you're openly lying to me?" you scoff harder, staring him down with narrowing eyes, "you’re a thief and a liar."

the bell rings and everyone around the two of you rushes to their respective classrooms, walking and jogging as their break’s finally came to an end.

some people look annoyed, others not so much, but if atsumu noticed one thing everytime he came to visit you, it’s that everyone — everyone in the campus — has always had an agenda they had to keep up with.

"college is fun." he tells you, smiling as he notices that the more the two of you walk the less people there is around.

you look at him, "yeah, you totally blend in here."

"i do?" he asks you, a smile lacing his tone.

you shrug, "well, you are here all the time."

"i’m not," atsumu scoffs, and he laughs, "i’m here … maybe half the time."

your arm falls from his as the two of you stop linking it together, this time his hand holding onto yours tightly as you let it sway in between the both of you.

"that’s okay," you smile, "i like you here."

"you just want someone to carry your books for ya." atsumu rolls his eyes, and you laugh, because he’s never let you carry your own books ever.

not even back in high school. if miya atsumu was around, everywhere you went, no matter if his arms were already full, you were not carrying your own things.

"don’t think i don’t see how people turn their heads to look at you when you’re here." you nudge his side, sighing dramatically as you fake a frown, "i hate being married to someone hot."

"excuse me?" atsumu practically scoffs as he looks at you, his eyes crinkling as he tease, "and you think i don’t notice all the people who turn their heads to look at you when you visit me?"

the edges of your lip tug upwards, but you refuse to give him the satisfaction.

atsumu stares you down, his toothy grin wide and giddy as he tells you, "i hate being married to someone hot."

"stealing my lines too now, huh, miya?" you roll your eyes, pushing past him to avoid him having to see the relenting smile on your face.

but that doesn’t really work either because he always easily catches up to you anyway.

he’s laughing, "well - miya - what the hell happened to all that ‘what’s mine is yours’ stuff you said in your vows?"

you walk faster.

atsumu takes your hand before you can fully leave him in the dust, laughing as he does so, he watches as you don’t resist into his touch.

he regrets not going to college. but he knows that if he did, he wouldn’t be where he is right now, and he’s pretty sure that he would regret that more.

there’s no one around, and he can’t say how many times he’s thanked the deities for that.

"miya." he says, and it feels weird, because it’s his name but he’s talking to you.

your eyes crinkle lightly as you smile, greatly appreciating his arms right now.

"i have a boyfriend, he’s in class right now so i don’t think he’ll appreciate us being this close." you smile, and atsumu laughs.

he shrugs, "i heard he steals your pants + professor anecdotes."

"yes," you try not to smile so much, "and he’s also always late, has the messiest hand-writing, and falls asleep on top of me."

"okay, now you’re just listing all my amazing quirks."

"you can’t keep falling asleep on top of me, tsumu, my back is so sore."

"i don’t recall ever sleeping on top of you therefore it must not be real."

the apparent november air, the cups of coffee on the ground that you’re both probably gonna end up forgetting — it’s all a bit cheesy.

but as much as atsumu regrets not following through with the whole college deal, he knows he won’t regret it as much as not having had married you.

your face is close to his, "my boyfriend–"

"he sounds amazing, i know." atsumu grins, but his nose touches yours anyways.

there’s no one around.

and so he kisses you.

he kisses you many times, a lot in the interval of one deep kiss, pulling away every time his lips touches yours to tease and peck and have you laughing.

but when he pulls back for the last time, and he just stares at you to stare at you, he kisses you with a lazy smile on his face, but kisses you as deep as he can.

"i hope your boyfriend doesn’t mind i did that."

[spatort]

I’m at my parents’ house and I have too much time on my hands apparently, so it’s time for a trip down memory lane! More specifically, a trip into the weird world of 1990s for-profit teen idol RPF, such as this beauty:

No, I did not find this at my parents’ house, I bought it second-hand specifically in order to make this post because I’m a person who enjoys studying fan culture in her free time. So, if you’re wondering what the hell the monstrosity pictured above is, and why it exists, don’t worry, I’m about to answer that question extensively.

LONG (AND HOPEFULLY FUN & INTERESTING) POST UNDER THE CUT

Let’s start with a bit of history: In the pre-internet era, fan culture differed from today in a few key regards. Although fanfiction existed, without the internet it was much harder for fans to share their stories with each other. Large fandoms such as Star Trek did have fanzines where fanfic could be printed, but all in all it was a much more niche thing than it is today with millions of fics accessible on AO3.

Fan culture in general, however, was a big thing in the 90s – particularly when it came to pop acts that appealed to teen (and tween) audiences, such as the Backstreet Boys, the Spice Girls, or (mostly in Europe) the Kelly Family. When I was in elementary school, you basically had to pick whether you were a BSB or an NSYNC fan – and god forbid you were a Kelly fan like me, then you were the lowest rung on the social ladder and the target of relentless mockery. Like many German kids in the 90s, me and my sister would religiously read teen magazine BRAVO, cut out every single bit of material about our faves and collect them in folders and self-made fanzines. We created fan art and fanfiction without having words for these things. Without the internet and social media, fans did not have a constant stream of content about their idols, and were left with no other choice but to cling to every bit of information they could find in magazines, on TV shows, or on the radio.

Enter a savvy businessperson who comes up with the perfect merchandise product to sell to these popstar-obsessed teens: fan novels! These books, featuring taglines such as ‘The novel for all Backstreet Boys fans’, typically revolved around a relatable female teenage protagonist who is a fan of the celebrity or music group in question, and usually ends up meeting their idol or, gasp, even becoming romantically involved with them. As far as themes go, they look pretty much exactly like your classic self-insert RPF. Except there is a big difference setting these books apart from ‘actual’ fanfiction: Rather than being written by real fans to express their ‘fannish’ feelings about the subject, fan novels were most likely commissioned works created by professional romance authors purely to profit off of actual fans. There is very little background information available about this ‘genre’, but I did stumble across an academic work on Google Books which featured a passage about these fan novels (translated into English by me):

There are several commissioned works by professional authors, which could be mistaken for fanfiction. Especially in the 1990s, when lots of boy bands were on the market, many books of this kind were published. […] These are fictional stories for fans [redacted].

Jennie Hermann: Backstreet Girl. Projektionsfläche Popstar - Wenn der Fan zum Schriftsteller wird (2009) [Popstar as Projection Surface – When fans become writers]

One of the things I find most intriguing about this type of commercially published fanfiction is the question of personal rights. Obviously, the celebs in question or their management must have consented to using their names in the story, their pictures on the cover and so on – because a profit could be made with this. Especially with the fan debate around RPF allegely being unethical, I wonder if the celebrities themselves were aware someone was writing these stories about them, putting words in their mouth, and if they had any clue what exactly happened in these novels. Now, I’ve read a couple of them in my own youth. Some of them deal mostly with the state of being a fan, e.g. I recall a novel about a girl who is so obsessed with Leonardo Di Caprio that she doesn’t pay attention to real life guys at all, only to learn that her actual dream boy has been in her life all along! This story did not feature Di Caprio himself as a character, it was more about the protagonist’s arc of realizing your idols are not all that matters in life. Others do describe fan encounters with teen idols, and some even feature (hints at) romance with a celebrity. When I decided to purchase a vintage copy of one of these books, I opted for one of the latter category, precisely because of the popular argument that writing romance stories featuring real people is somehow ‘wrong’. For only a couple of euros, I was able to get my hands on a weird and wonderful relic of fan culture: Mein Frühling mit Nick (My spring with Nick) by the likely pseudonymous Maxi Keller, heralded on the book cover as ‘the novel for all fans of the Backstreet Boys’.

The story revolves around 16-year-old musical prodigy and designated wallflower Katharina, who lives in a German small town and cares about nothing else than playing the organ – certainly not about boys, let alone ones that are super-famous American pop stars. This means she is not initially a fan of the Backstreet Boys, which I guess is something of a trope itself – the protagonist meeting a celebrity by chance without knowing who they are and the celeb being thrilled that someone doesn’t just like them for their fame. Anyway, the boys visit Katharina’s hometown while on tour in Germany because band member AJ is doing some research on his German ancestors who happened to live in this very town. Katharina runs into them, she and Nick (who was only 17 himself when this was published in 1997, so it’s legal) fall in love at first sight, she helps them dig up information on AJ’s ancestors and finds out the two of them are related, the boys invite Katharina and her friend Saskia backstage after their show and … nothing happens. The book is 200 pages long and Katharina doesn’t even get one kiss with her boy band sweetheart, even though they mutually crush on each other right away. Perhaps that’s as far as the band or their management agreed for the novel to go – a hint at romance, but no trace of any on-page action, no matter how innocent.

That said, the book is so hilariously poorly written that it was still very entertaining to read. Although I could not find out anything about the author Maxi Keller, and therefore assume this might be a pseudonym, their writing style very much suggests that their are a professional romance author who usually writes for an older audience (plus, the book was published by Bastei Lübbe, who also publish a range of cheap romance novels known as ‘Romanhefte’). The language is extremely flowery at times, and even teenage characters speak with an eloquence that is hardly age-appropriate, with some 90s teen slang peppered in at unfitting times (such as the overuse of the English word ‘girl’). Often the novel loses itself in pointless detail that does nothing to move the plot forward (such as an extensive description of a house party hosted by Saskia’s rich parents, with minute details of their luxurious lifestyle and assets, even though Saskia is only a supporting character in the overall plot). It appears as if the author is desperately trying to fill the pages with meaningless drivel so they don’t need to write too many scenes featuring the presumed main attraction, the boys themselves.

If Keller was indeed merely hired to write this, and is not a fan themselves, one must still admit that the author did their research when it comes to the band. Whereas fanfiction typically assumes that the audience is already familiar with the characters and often skips any introductory descriptions of their appearance or personality, Keller makes sure that even a reader who is completely unfamiliar with the Backstreet Boys can keep up. The author delivers extensive descriptions of the boys’ appearance and demeanor, even spelling out their full names repeatedly, and frequently peppers in ‘fun facts’ such as ‘Kevin was raised on a farm in Kentucky’. While an actual fan might do so to prove how knowledgeable they are, and earning their status as a ‘true fan’, in this case it only seems like Keller really wants to show off how much research they did – as if not a single piece of information they took in must go to waste by not being used in the novel.

When it comes to the question how realistically the non-fannish author replicates the way the boys act and speak, there are two barriers to delivering a well-founded answer: Firstly, I was personally very young when BSB were popular and I really don’t remember too well what each member was like. Secondly, the elephant in the room: the language barrier. All of the aforementioned fan novels were written in German, and the problems posed by writing about an English-speaking band interacting with German OCs (and teenage ones at that) are addressed poorly, if at all. Pretty much all dialogue is written in German, and the audience is left to assume that everyone is actually speaking English whenever the boys are involved – except the novel does nothing to explain why two 16-year-old German girls would be able to express themselves so effortlessly in a foreign language. (Remember, the internet was not a thing, so German kids were not exposed to the same amount of English in everyday life as they are these days.) It would have been easy to make one of them a language nerd who gets straight A’s in English class, and give the other a British parent and make them bilingual. Instead, Katharina initially even worries about the prospect of having to talk to boys at all, and in English on top of that! But when she actually does, the language barrier never comes up again. The suspension of disbelief expected from the reader is therefore immense. The language barrier also gives the author an easy way out when it comes to imitating the way the boys speak in real life – there is no need to take into account idiolects or regional differences (such as ‘you guys’ vs. ‘y’all’) if the boys’ speech is essentially translated into a foreign language. However, I wanted to give you guys (or y’all, if you will) a taste of how Keller attempts to write a scene where AJ and Nick discuss the latter’s crush on Katharina:

I would argue that this sounds realistic enough for what it’s worth, if a little cheesy, which is excusable in this genre. Perhaps a true 90s BSB fan would beg to differ, so if you happen to be one, feel free to drop me a message. But in my semi-professional opinion, this most likely holds up for readers.

So, to answer the initial question that drove me to purchase this book: Do fan novels like Mein Frühling mit Nick count as fanfiction?

If we assume that something is only a fanfic if the author themselves is a fan of the subject matter, then I would argue no, Maxi Keller is probably not a fan themselves and therefore this work of for-profit real-person fiction does not qualify as fanfic. However, fan novels definitely have a (however small) place in the history of fan culture and fan-adjacent works, and I personally found reading this relic both entertaining and insightful!

[harringroveficlibrary]

soulmate fic recs? been in strong mood for those and having a hard time finding some :) thanks!!!

sure thing :^) (under the cut because it got a bit long) -cade 

Blood and Pain by Carerra_os (1/1 | 1,583 | Teen+)

Billy and Steve are soulmates, they don't find that out till they fight.

-

It kind of feels like being punched in the gut, seeing Nancy’s neat scrawl on the inside of Jonathan's arm, the exact same scrawl Steve saw on her bare arm just a few moments ago. Jonathan and Nancy both look guilty, at least, but it does not make it any easier. Steve thought she was safe, thought she was like him, that she did not have a soulmate, and it hurts, finding out different. Steve has always been good at ignoring though, at pushing down his own feelings and putting on a good face for others, and now is no different.

warnings: blood & injury, canon typical violence

Origin of Love by TaytheBae (1/1 | 4,168 | Teen+)

Billy Hargrove was an asshole. But it wasn’t his attitude that stopped Steve dead in his tracks during basketball practice two days after Billy’s arrival to Hawkins. They were playing shirts and skins, and without a care in the world, Billy ripped off his shirt. Along with revealing miles of tanned skin and firm muscles, Steve saw a faded red mark right above Billy’s navel that seemed to resemble the sun. While it wouldn’t seem unusual to anyone else, Steve couldn’t take his eyes away from the little red splotch. -

Steve never knew what the red sun-shaped mark right above his bellybutton was for. Not until he met Billy Hargrove.

Lips to Lips, Scars to Scars by lostnoise (1/1 | 7,491 | Mature)

From the soulmates prompt, #15: the one where every lie your soulmate tells you appears on your skin.

His parents have to sit him down and tell him what it means - not the words themselves, but what it means that they showed up at all on his skin. That there’s someone out there waiting for him. That he should pay attention to what kind of person his soulmate is.

Because only their lies will show up on his arm.

warnings: implied/referenced child abuse, temporary character death, period typical homophobia

Tall Tales and Fairy Rings by lostnoise (1/1 | 1,394 | General)

The Harrington Estate sits upon the edge of Hawkins Forest, acres and acres of wooded land. Steven, heir to Lord Harrington, is sixteen when he starts exploring the lands of his father and forefathers.

Growing up, he’s hears all the stories about the types of creatures, things, that live in the forest. He’s heard of kelpies living in streams and wayward ponds; he’s heard of trolls who stalk through the forest looking for their next meal; he’s even heard of werewolves, men who change at will, men who must change under the full moon, taking residence up in their forests.

Of all the creatures and tales Steven has been told, the very last he expects to find, at the base of the thickest tree at the very heart of the forest, is a fairy ring.

my baby lives in shades of blue by psychdelia (1/1 | 1,250 | Teen+)

Before blue, Steve's life was dull. Lifeless.

The Secret Voice of Hidden Love by Yikes_Writes (11/11 | 22,328 | Mature)

Steve's soulmate was good with words. Billy's soulmate was a beautiful artist.

-

In other words, a soulmate au where whatever is drawn on one soulmate, appears on the other. Plenty of mutual pining and the Steve & Barb friendship for the ages.

warnings: implied/referenced child abuse, underage drinking, & drug use

talk to me by lesbianferrissbueller (1/1 | 2,904 | Teen+)

/“On your 18th birthday, on your wrist will appear the first words your soulmate will ever say to you.”/

And they always say it like that: “will ever say.” Not has said. Because it’s practically unheard of that you would have met your soulmate- your literal twin flame or whatever- before that. Which is why, Steve is staring at the words on his wrist in absolute shock because either he’s heard this a million times or he’s heard it very specifically once and he doesn’t know which one it is.

/“Harrington, right?”/

Lit up like a match by nagdabbit (1/1 | 4,043 | General)

And then in swooped Lillian fucking Hargrove. Lillian with sun lightened curls and miles and miles of tanned skin. Lilly with a fight in her belly and a fire in her eyes. Billy with a mean right hook and permanent bruises that Steve was too late to identify. Billy who didn't seem to know soft or sweet or kind. Who didn't seem to know what to do with Steve, so she settled for hating him instead.

On a Friday night, in a Chicago dive, Steve meets a familiar face.

Keep me in your glow by nagdabbit (1/1 | 1,770 | General)

He was a face in a crowd, and usually he could remember that. Usually he could find comfort in that. That there was a whole world spinning on, and it didn’t revolve around him.

But some days, someone would go out of their way to let Billy know just what they thought of him. A stranger with a cruel, twisted face would come right up and spit insults and curses at him that left his hands shaking and eyes burning with a fear that he’d thought he’d left back in Hawkins

Sometimes people are dicks, and Steve makes it better by rambling.

Bruises by I_Will_Die_With_This_Ship (1/1 | 1,213 | Not Rated)

On their fifth birthday, a person would get something on them to indicate who their soulmate was. Be it a symbol, a name, an initial, or in Steve's case, a bruise.

warnings: creator chose not to use archive warnings, self harm

and they lived happily ever after by pratintraining (10/10 | 14,526 | Teen+)

Ever After Inc. was a small family-owned business that dealt in organizing and facilitating fairy tale Happily Ever Afters for their clients. Owned by the Harringtons, they've built a reputation for themselves over the years in using the tiny bit of magic they have to look at a person and put them in just the right place at the right time to make good things happen for them. Their most famous service was being able to unite soulmates. As their tagline said, "It's not chance, and it's not just fate. It's Ever After." (And then came the harp that started their trademark jingle.)

Steve gets hired to find a soulmate for Princess Nancy. He tries his best, and everything works out. Rated T for some swears.

let lips do what hands do by halfofmysoul (1/1 | 7,284 | General)

In a world where soulmates are rare and cause you to see in color, Billy and Steve collide on Venice Beach when they're nine years old.

warnings: graphic depictions of violence, domestic violence, homophobic language

We've All Got Bruises by deansangel_cas97 (1/1 | 2,296 | Not Rated)

Steve doesn't remember the first bruises. All he remembers is that one day he was fine, and then the next morning a bright purple and yellow bruise was blossoming on his chest and a small round one on his cheek.

warnings: creator chose not to use archive warnings (and judging by the summary id recommend proceeding w/caution if you’re easily triggered)

Open Book by tracy7307 (1/1 | 2,559 | Explicit)

When Steve was fifteen, he received a parchment, just like every fifteen-year-old did. It was about the size of a half a sheet of notebook paper, and he knew that if he pressed an inky thumbprint to it, it would reveal one simple word that would be associated heavily with his soulmate -- sometimes it was a name, sometimes an eye color, sometimes an important object to that person, or the first word they’d say to you. Sometimes there was no word at all, for those who were meant to be happiest with no romantic partner.

“Here goes nothin,” he said, and pressed his inked thumb to the parchment. His stomach swooped low and nervous as he waited for the word to form, terrified for several seconds that it might actually remain blank, but then a word appeared in faint ink and grew darker, eventually turned vivid and black in front of him.

CAMARO

If it Keeps on Rainin', Levee's Goin' to Break by shocked_into_shame (1/1 | 10,255 | Explicit)

In a world where soulmates only know they are soulmates until they kiss and the bond is sealed, Steve is afraid that he's never going to meet his missing piece.

And there's no way in hell that Billy - who makes Steve's blood boil day in and day out - could possibly be that missing piece.

No way.

[a soulmate AU]

i wanna be (the place you call home) by wickedlittleoz (1/1 | 2,213 | Mature)

But there were a lot of Steves in this world and Billy hardly thought he’d meet his soulmate in a shitty hole like Hawkins.

warnings: creator chose not to use archive warnings, implied/referenced suicide

My Heart Knew by LadyFrandrews (14/14 | 29,766 | Mature)

He knows his reputation isn't the best, but he's never messed around when it comes to his heart.

Before she died, his Ma spoke to him all the time about what having a soulmate meant. But he's seen what happens when your soulmate dies and he doesn't want his. Not if it means he's going to turn into his old man. Or try to make a pretend, happy family with someone else who's lost their soulmate too.

He was doing just fine until they uprooted and replanted themselves in Hawkins. His pendant never changed temperature until they got closer and closer to this shitty little town.

He absolutely ignored the prickling it caused underneath his skin the night at Tina's Halloween party. It's been months.

keep your heart open (i'll keep mine open too) by callunavulgari (1/1 | 7,915 | Explicit)

“Did you even like me before you found out I was your soulmate?” Billy murmurs as he kisses a line down Steve’s throat. It bobs a little under his lips as Steve swallows, and Billy can feel Steve’s fingers digging into his hips, but he isn’t pushing him away.

“I don’t even like you now,” Steve says, but it’s a little too breathless, a little too much of a lie. Billy looks at him, and presses a careful kiss to the bruise on Steve’s jaw.

Steve’s eyes are dark, and he isn’t pushing Billy away.

Billy bites down on Steve’s ear, murmurs into it, “Liar.”

warnings: child abuse, recreational drug use

You're ripped at every edge (but you're a masterpiece) by BarbarianBillyHargrove (1/1 | 4,445 | Teen+)

When Billy showed up on the Byer’s doorstep, Steve watched with a red haze as he contemplated what it meant. His first soul match had failed- or was on the way there. And his second appeared to be a mistake. He’d heard stories of one-sided soul bonds, they were messy and ended only with disaster. This is what Steve thought about when purple blended with red and he lost consciousness to his potential soulmate’s fists.

warnings: child abuse

The Undertow by Ceose (1/1 | 2,563 | General)

Billy is born with his mark.

warnings: character chose not to use archive warnings, off screen character suicide/death

The Sapling by flippyspoon (1/1 | 3,641 | Mature)

Billy's mark appears.

To The Edge by Greedy_Insanity (1/1 | 1,963 | Teen+)

When your soulmates last words are on your wrist, do you really want to meet your soulmate?

Or two teenage boys deny their love for each other, until they realize they can't.

warnings: creator chose not to use archive warnings

Love Me Rotten by Rebldomakr (1/1 | 1,084 | Mature)

Steve was born with a crudely drawn sun on the middle of his chest, Billy was born with a garland around his wrist.

[shiavanzin]

💀  * [ timothee chalamet + cis male + he/him ] —— have you met zigmund ‘shia’ ivan vanzin? they are a twenty  year old junior currently studying political science. they live on decker house, and word around campus is that this gemini is witty + charming, as well as manipulative + self destructive. i wonder if they’ll make it out alive. snorting lines off a priceless mirror, writing ancient runes in cigarette ash, the thrill of victory that accompanies a low ‘checkmate’. 

hello all, my name is pepper and i have never been on time for anything, ever, in my life so this is very on brand for me! that said, i am very excited to be here. shia is one of my favourite muses but because of his background it’s kind of hard for me to find places to play him, so i really jumped at the chance to be a part of this rp. that said, he is heathen so sdkjdsjk you’ve been warned, i suppose.

ABOUT THE MUN. fuck this *unfocuses my eyes*

fun fact about me, i’ve been working every day for the last ten days so i love that for me dkjdkj which is literally why me getting myself here was so chaotic honestly but i’m here i made it and we love to see it. honestly i am just a humble fergie enthusiast (patiently waiting for my girl to come back from her hiatus. any day now). i would die for a good aesthetic like pinterest owns my ass. i am big fan of the bachelor and specifically demi from the bachelor (demi from the bachelor if you are reading this i would like to hang out with you friday when i am free. please contact me if you’re able to hang out (on friday when i am free)). i am a huge superhero nerd. the first fanfic i ever wrote was a teen titans/danny phantom crossover and honestly? most ambitious crossover of all time, sorry endgame. i’ve never seen star wars or lord of the rings, and i’m okay with that. oh, and funnily enough i have never played chess which is about to be very ironic and i think that’s the perfect transition into shia’s bio.

BIO. child abuse tw, addiction tw, drug tw, and i think that’s it rip. 

(tldr literally just click the link in the second bullet point for a summary because that’s how shia grew up, with psychologist parents determined to make him a prodigy. he is technically a prodigy now as the youngest grandmaster in history. his family is weird and fucked up and cold blah blah blah takes a lot of drugs, drinks a lot of alcohol to cope with his messed up childhood blah blah blah went to boarding school for high school. oh, and there’s a meme of him. and that’s pretty much it.)

okay first of all here is shia’s pinterest board and here is his playlist, which is honestly just??? really messy and just filled with songs that remind me of him (like it doesn’t flow at all i’m pretty sure yk) so! yeah!

second of all, shia’s backstory is thoroughly inspired by a true story. like I legitimately found this (look at the early life portion to see what i’m talking about if you want but i’m about to explain it all below anyways) and was like !!!???? so yes, that’s how this mess was born (although i highkey think that gerard way got inspo from that family for the umbrella academy like??? that’s my little conspiracy theory. WHERE ARE THEIR ROYALTIES GERARD!)

Shia doesn’t remember life before he was adopted. Before he was Zigmund Ivan Vanzin, the fourth child of the carefully selected Vanzin 6. Honestly he’s not quite sure his life prior is of much importance, because things didn’t truly get crazy until after he was officially taken in by the Vanzin family at the tender age of two.

Shia and his five siblings were all part of an educational experiment carried out by their parents, Moira and Yakov Vanzin, in an attempt to prove that children could be trained to be prodigies if immersed in a specialist subject from a very early age. ‘Geniuses are made, not born’, was the tagline of their parents thesis, and the foundation on which Shia and his siblings’ entire childhood was based on. They would all be molded into prodigies, and they would be living, breathing proof of their parents achievements.

Because of the magnitude of their experiment, and Shia’s parents reputation (both of Shia’s parents was a very famous educational psychologists in their own right, and due to their fame, their experiment and their children were covered in magazines and newspapers worldwide. To this day a quick google search will lead you pictures of the Vanzin 6 growing up slowly on the covers of publications such as Times Magazine, Forbes, People, and of course a myriad of academic magazines as well.) they received heavy criticism at the time from some western media for ‘depriving the siblings of a normal childhood.’ But since all of the Vanzin children were born and raised in Russia, that criticism didn’t do much in the way of stopping them. Shia’s parents coolly ignored it all. They wanted to leave a mark. To change the future. And they both truly believed that their research would do that. They believed their work would completely revolutionize the way that children were educated, and that therefore, they would revolutionize the future.

And so the children were affectionately dubbed The Vanzin 6 by the media that wasn’t completely against the experiment. A cute little nickname smacked on what would normally be considered a child endangerment lawsuit. Sure, there were still those that protested, but their cries were quiet in comparison to the roars of the intrigued, of the curious, of the fans, because of course there were fans. So it goes without saying that Shia’s first photo op was when he was still in diapers. He smiled cheekily through the whole thing, in striking contrast to his siblings all staring empty eyed into the camera. Their lives were pretty much put on constant display from that point on, and honestly, at least in terms of Shia’s approach to photo ops, not much has changed on that front.

Shia’s parents educated their six children at home, each with their own specific subject to focus on. From the age of four, Shia, or Zigmund, as his birth certificate so lovingly displayed, (it should be noted that Moira and Yakov named all of their children after psychologists, and that Shia was simply unlucky enough to get Freud. So perhaps lovingly wasn’t the right word.) showed a talent for chess, and therefore that talent was ‘nurtured’. In other words, Shia was only allowed to live and breathe chess from the cursed day his chubby little fingers picked up a chess piece to, presumably, the day he died. If he wasn’t eating, sleeping, or doing his school work, Shia was playing chess. First he played against his father, and mother, and siblings and when that stopped posing a challenge, he got involved in official competitions. Those were somehow even less of a challenge, but granted, his siblings were being trained into geniuses. At first he played children his age, and then slightly older, and then much older, which Shia will admit, was the most fun. Even as a child there was just something about seeing a grown man go red in the face with frustration as he lost to a child. Something amusing. Something powerful. Admittedly, chess got old. But that specific red faced look never did.

Shia rose up the ranks slowly and steadily from then on, already creating quite a stir in the world of chess by the age of six. And considering this was what they wanted, you would think his parents would be proud. Thrilled even. However that was not completely the case.

For as long as Shia can remember his relationship with his parents had been more ‘professional’ than affectionate. To start, he and his siblings all called them both by their first names. Considering he was adopted, Shia would never know what his first word was, that memory was lost to him and kept only by the parents who didn’t want him enough to keep him in the first place. But even if he was born to Moira and Yakov, if the two were his flesh and blood, he knows with absolute surety that the first words to come out of his mouth wouldn’t have been ‘Mama’ or ‘Papa’. The two never referred to themselves that way, and they didn’t expect their children to either. Shia remembers with painful clarity first and only time he tried. Or rather, he remembers the stomach turning look of both confusion and contempt from Moira that followed the one time he tried. He never tried again.

His parents didn’t offer much when it came to what normal parents did he supposed. He didn’t receive much physical affection from them, or sugar coated words. They were their parents, yes, but they were also their handlers, and being raised with that emotional distance definitely had an impact on Shia’s psyche. All Shia wanted to do was impress his parents. Maybe get a good job, or a hug, or a smile. The kind of things he’d seen other kids get just for breathing, or using a toilet. But he knew his parents expected more. He knew they expected the best. So the only way he knew how to achieve his goal of attaining his parents affection was to work harder. To be the best he could at chess, the best anyone could at chess, and once he did that he knew his parents would reward him. He knew they would love him for taking the first step to make their dreams come true. When he was young he used to have dreams of that reward. Of how good it would feel to know they were proud of him. He imagined it feeling warm. And light, like he’d read in books. He imagined it feeling worth it.

Shia and his siblings were never the children that got asked that question, you know, the question that all children can relate to answering with bubbling wide eyed excitement. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ The answer was laid out for them. It was decided before they even had a chance to think about it, and any time someone made the mistake of asking them the question, their parents  answered for them. She will be the world’s youngest prima ballerina. She will be a legend in the musical field. He will be grandmaster. No, dreams weren’t for the Vanzin children, so Shia’s kept his quiet. Kept it close to his heart where his parents couldn’t admonish him for being sentimental or fickle or any of the other large words they used that Shia was only instructed to look up in the dictionary. His dream of gaining their favour was his, and his alone. Shia learned very quickly in life to keep your cards close, and your heart buried.

And after years of hard work and dedication, and a lot of blood sweat and tears, Shia did it. He won. He finally beat everyone there was to beat, and at the youngest recorded age of ten to boot. Shia was officially the world’s youngest grandmaster. His record has still yet to be beat to this day. And that day, he looked to his parents, ready for them to run to him and shower him with the affection and praise he longed for. It didn’t take long for the ecstatic expression on his young face to fall.

The most Shia got was an approving nod from his mother from across the room. His father, for his part, was on a phone call. That was it. The crowd roared around him, and the audience clapped with the enthusiasm usually reserved for sports games and concerts. The reporters at the event stumbled over their words trying to communicate the record breaking event that they had just witnessed, from one of the lionized Vanzin 6. It was chaos, beautiful, celebratory chaos, all for Shia, but it was all a blur around him. He couldn’t see it. All he could see was Moira and Yakov, turning away from him and towards each other, whispering god knows what. He had their full attention for maybe all of a minute. They didn’t even smile.

(There is live video of Shia having his dream crushed right before his eyes. Recordings of it on youtube. How many people can say that, aye? The true power of celebrity. The gif of Shia’s shocked and empty expression amidst a crowd of ballistic celebration even became a meme at one point, a meme that Shia later bitterly used on occasion, because what was more powerful than using a meme of yourself? Than using your own pain for humour? Nothing, in Shia’s opinion.)

After Shia became grandmaster everything stopped. After all, there was nothing more to train him for. He had achieved his goal. He had won. And with his parents no longer focusing on training him and leaving him completely to his own devices, well, they stopped paying attention to him completely. Shia was all at once almost completely emancipated. The freedom of it all was freeing for all of a week. Then, Shia started to feel painfully invisible.

Prior to becoming grandmaster, Shia was quiet. Polite. Very calm, very observant, a bit distant and reserved for a kid, but no real red flags. Afterwards, however? After he felt like his parents no longer had any use for him, no longer had any anything for him, well Shia lashed out. Rebelled. Became louder, sharper tongued, more mischievous. He started acting out in hopes that they would give him some of the attention he so desperately craved, and while they did, none of it was positive. Shia quickly became the problem child of the Vanzin 6, somehow both his parents pride and joy as the first of their children to reach their goal, but also their greatest disappointment as the first one to turn against them.

Without chess to focus on, Shia turned to his siblings for entertainment. However Shia’s version of entertainment was never completely harmless. From a young age he had a habit of using people like chess pieces, of manipulating them and turning them against each other or towards each other for his own cheap entertainment. Shia could singlehandedly trick his siblings out of an argument when he was younger (or into an argument, when he was feeling particularly chaotic). He could trick the few peers he came across into simply giving him their toys or snacks, and trick bullies into leaving him alone a good amount of time too. It was both a gift and a curse, because people were never quite happy when they caught on. Most didn’t but the few that did were memorable in the violence of their anger. And besides, his parents never liked it. Shia would come home with an armful of toys that other kids ‘gave’ him and his parents would always force him to go bring them back, despite the fact that the Vanzin children were never really allowed toys of their own. The fact was, Shia’s moral compass was faulty. He never quite understood why what he was doing was wrong no matter how many times his parents tried to explain to him that people were not to be used as tools. Shia didn’t get how what he was doing was that much different from what they were. After all, weren’t Shia and his siblings nothing more than tools in his parents experiment? He asked them the question once. All he got for his efforts was a stinging cheek and a cold reminder from Moira not to be cheeky.

As Shia got older his rebellion got worse. In his defense, he was left unsupervised. While his siblings were busy with their training, Shia would be sneaking out to parties or bars or clubs. It was in those places that he was introduced to his first great loves. Drugs and alcohol. Moira and Yakov kept the Vanzin mansion dry as a monastery, so Shia had never even had a sip of beer before the age of thirteen. But the moment he did, he was a goner. Or rather the moment he got drunk he was a goner. There was something so beautiful to him about intoxication. So addicting, for lack of better word. When he was high, or drunk, or preferably, both, he felt happy. He didn’t remember his parents, or his responsibilities, or his failures, or even his successes. He was warm. And light. And content. Turns out he didn’t need his parents to make his dreams come true. Just a bottle of vodka and a line or two of coke.

After about a year of Shia coming home drunk or high or a combination of the two, eventually his parents couldn’t take it anymore (in the sharp words of Moira Vanzin, ‘Zigmund your behaviour is distracting your siblings from their training’) and sent him off to boarding school. Honestly, it hurt. His parents were basically getting rid of him because he was inconvenient, and he could never forget their out of sight out of mind approach to the whole thing.

Boarding school flew by in a mess of Riot Club like antics during which Shia did things like discover his bisexuality and somehow, against all odds, graduate. (TBH I wanna leave this pretty open in case there is any other boarding school kids who could have perhaps gone to the same school Shia did, so hmu if you have a boarding school kiddo.) He definitely attributes his acceptance to Holloway on his name completely, because honestly Shia was completely high when he wrote his college application, so high that he can’t even remember why he did it. He had no plans of going to college before that, but he figured... why not party in america and waste his parents money? What was stopping him?

So here he is, a whole mess in another country, and honestly he’s having the time of his life. Well, you know. Until people started dying. That isn’t ideal.

PERSONALITY. emotionally damaged, but make it sexy.

manipulative (we been knew) sometimes without really trying to be though. will manipulate people to get what he wants, but sometimes he just thinks of it like a nudge in the right direction. like he’ll manipulate a friend into talking to that girl they’ve had a crush on for half the year just because he wants them to be happy (and also he’s tired of hearing them talk about her)

selfish/self centered cause it’s just not?? his first instinct to think about other people’s feelings?? and it’s also kind of hard for him to empathize sometimes, especially if he’s never been in that situation or he doesn’t like KNOW and CARE about the person.

charming and charismatic, he’s got a great smile and he knows how to use it. also just very endearing if you don’t know him well, and even sometimes when you do. this is mostly a facet of him being very manipulative because he usually uses his charm to get what he wants, but still.

witty oof, this boy’s humour is inspired by klaus hargreeves and villanelle (what a duo,,, when will they meet) and he’s very rarely serious. always telling jokes, always pretty nudge nudge wink wink, even in very serious situations when he shouldn’t be. uses humour as a coping mechanism 100%, whether that’s at his own expense or someone else’s. honestly, can be kind of mean with it? like if anyone can go for the jugular with a joke it’s shia.

a big flirt honestly. will flirt with anyone he’s interested in, and will sometimes flirt without really noticing it? sometimes will flirt just for sport, or for fun, or to bug someone, or throw someone off. the type to flirt with his professor as a joke (why has he not been kicked out of here already) and has probably slept with a professor as a result. not really a player, but he enjoys physical intimacy and he knows how to get it. has been in more than a few relationships in the past, but is never very good at it because he’s almost constantly looking out for number one, aka himself. so? a mess basically.

vengeful, petty, spiteful, vindictive, all when angry or jealous or feeling as if he’s been wronged in some way but we been knew,,, we been knew.

rebellious !! still the type to suggest skipping town and partying instead of sticking around for exams. not really invested in school tbh. he has no idea what he’s going to do with his future.

a big superiority complex! cocky as hell! kind of acts like he’s the best thing since sliced bread because he was over praised as a child by like everyone but his parents. the type to think he ain’t shit deep down so he acts like he’s The Shit yk

craves love and intimacy but thinks romance is a sham. a big pessimist like ‘we’re all just floating on this rock life is meaningless we’re all gonna die anyways’ pessimist but kind of a realist tbh, he just doesn’t see the reason to sugar coat things unless ofc he’s manipulating someone then he’ll say whatever he needs to

trust issues, after his parents tbh. the only people he trusts 100% are his siblings and maybe a few close friends. i honestly may put in a wanted connection for his siblings at one point, but that’s for later.

HEADCANNONS. running for your life (from shia labeouf) he’s brandishing a knife (it’s shia labeouf)

a thick russian accent. speaks pretty impeccable english though because his parents tutored him in the english as a child. He also speaks a bit of french, german, and latin, and is currently taking mandrin chinese.

Is taking political science because he figures being a politician is just manipulating people on a larger scale, and he’d be right. However he’s not sure if that’s what he’ll actually end up going into. Honestly, Shia isn’t the slightest bit sure what he actually wants to do with his life.

His eldest sibling Jean was the one to give Shia the nickname ‘Shia’ after he confided in her that he’s always hated his name, and he’s gone by it ever since. His parents still call him Zigmund, and some of his siblings probably still call him Zig or Ziggy but like i said sdkdsk he has always hated the name (he does not want to be associated with the guy who invented the concept of the Oedipus complex). The only nickname he can stomach sometimes is Z, but other than that he’ll only accept Shia (or Shy to a select few).

was never raised with a television?? didn’t even go to a MOVIE THEATER until he was like fourteen??? so he has absolutely NO idea who Shia Laboeuf really is. People keep making jokes about it to him and he’s like ???? Honestly he googled him once and just gave up after thirty seconds, convinced people were fucking with him because this person couldn’t be real dlksdskld anyways yeah, knows next to nothing about a lot of pop culture, especially anything like before 2010, but has learnt a bit since coming out of his families little bubble. But there are still times where Shia’s like ??? what tf is that and someone’s got to explain what rolly polly olly is to him yk

Shia has a photographic memory, but honestly he doesn’t really care about it. In his eyes having a photographic memory doesn’t make you a genius, it just makes tests easier. Like to him it just means he doesn’t have to flip through his source material for quotes sdkjsdjk. It’s nothing exciting to him sdkdsk he skipped a grade because of it though but honestly?? All he really uses it for now is receipts like a little shit. Shia will legit be in an argument like “oh that wasn’t what you said in that text you sent to me at 4:45 on monday june 3rd 2017???” sdkjsdj. Occasionally he also uses it as a party trick, like if you give him a specific date he could probably tell you the newspaper headline on that day.

Has zero athletic skill. Absolutely none. Would one hundred percent lose in a fight, which is funny because he talks SO MUCH SHIT. He talks constant shit, and yet if you were to throw a punch at Shia he would go down like a rock. He doesn’t particularly care if he gets his ass beat though, so he continues to talk large amounts of shit, occasionally from a safe distance but usually not.

Honestly if you were to see him and his parents interact today it’d be wild, like you wouldn’t even know they were related. They literally act like strangers or acquaintances. Like it’s all like ‘Moira, Yakov, good to see you.’ and ‘You too Zigmund. I trust you’ve been well?’ and that goes on for like five minutes and then Shia has to hyperventilate in a corner for a bit. Like it’s so weird but it’s just been like that all his life. Normal healthy affection??? He doesn’t know her

Has a tattoo of a queen piece on the index finger of his left hand, as a little nod to what used to be his passion. Is also left handed.

Has a scar through his eyebrow that he got on a wild night out when he was thirteen. He got drunk and like passed out, and hit his head hit the edge of a table in the process. There was a lot of blood and a lot of panic, but in the end Shia only had to get a few stitches and he was very quickly back on his bullshit the moment he left the hospital. Literally, he went straight from the hospital to a house party (after all, it’s not like his parents even came to visit him and make sure he got home, so Shia simply did whatever he wanted to.)

Has a helix piercing in his right ear. It’s just a very basic silver hoop though.

His parents never really let the siblings have hobbies, but I imagine one of Shia’s siblings is a horse riding prodigy so he has some experience in that. One of them is a language prodigy, hence why Shia is conversational in so many. Jean, the eldest, is a musical prodigy and has lovingly taught Shia a bit of piano and violin. He is nowhere near as good at those things as he was at chess, but doing any of them reminds him of his siblings, so he tends to actually turn to them more often than chess. If I’m being honest I don’t think that Shia has played a game of chess since he became grandmaster unless forced to by his parents?

Mentally Shia knows he’s an adult now and that his parents technically have no control over him, but emotionally whenever they look at him he just… feels like that empty little kid again.

Tends to always have one of those travel sized bottles of vodka on him so if you’re feeling stressed hit your boy up.

Has honestly been rich since the day he was adopted, like literally has no idea how to function without copious amounts of money?

Shia is staying in the Decker dorms because he thrives on the chaos.

Definitely an addict, definitely high functioning though but also like? It isn’t a secret? I contemplated making it a secret but once again Shia has always got a travel sized bottle of vodka on him sdkjsd you can see him casually spiking his drinks if you’re ever out with him, he pops whatever pills he can find in his pockets in the morning. So yeah it is not a secret that Shia is an addict, he is rarely sober and that’s the way he likes it. Doesn’t consider himself an addict though, funnily enough.

WANTED CONNECTIONS. god we finally got here sjsdj if you got this far you’re the real mvp.

okay to start here is my wc tag for shia so i would absolutely love anything inspired by anything in that tag.

FRIENDS FROM BOARDING SCHOOL. i already talked about this a bit but i would absolutely love it so i’m mentioning it again sdjds i am really flexible about where shia went to boarding school, so literally wherever your muse went works for me. all i want is some dead poets society antics you feel me.

CHILDHOOD FRIEND. listen to me. i love childhood friend connections so much give it to me please and i will give you my first born child in exchange. again, shia grew up in russia, but it could be a long distance friendship if need be. we can make it work, i will literally change stuff around to make it work.

PREVIOUS ONE NIGHT STANDS. honestly shia would have multiple of these cause he’s a hoe. did he ghost your muse? did they mutually ghost each other? was it a one night stand gone wrong?

ENEMY. it’s so easy to hate him man. anyone who wants to hate him please feel free. did shia screw your muse over? did he manipulate them? did he i don’t know throw up on their shoes while particularly drunk? maybe shia was high when he did the thing they hate him for, maybe he doesn’t even remember but he just hates them cause they hate him. it’s the principle of the thing really. (me in my head: *junie b jones vc* princiPAL cause he’s your PAL). unreasonable completely baseless hate for no reason at all? 

FLIRTATIONSHIP. a fun ‘will they, won’t they’ kind of situation because why not. what’s stopping us. just fun banter on both ends. 

EXES. shia doesn’t date so he wouldn’t have too many of these but it would be fun. maybe their relationship was toxic because of shia’s toxic ass traits skjdsj maybe things were getting real and shia dipped like the coward he is. maybe it’s was a the colonel x sarah esque relationship where no one got it because they both seemed to hate each other the whole time and they very much did hate each other but were dating anyways. maybe it’s maybeline. 

FWB/EWB. honestly this is more shia’s speed, so he’d probably have more of these as well as ex-fwbs/ewbs, which is such a fun concept. did it stop because someone caught feelings? or did they just get bored of each other? some other reason? but okay, back to the point, yes sexy enemies. sexy friends. we love to see it. 

HIGH SOCIETY. someone he gets fucked up with! multiple people he gets fucked up with! they party together, drink together, do lines together. it’s a beautiful relationship of them all enabling each other. 

GOOD INFLUENCE. counter actively. someone who tries to get shia away from his self destructive tendencies. someone who’s door he comes knocking at when he’s black out drunk because he knows they’ll give him a place to sleep. Someone he calls when he ends up in butt fuck nowhere with no shoes after a crazy night. Also, as wild as it is, flip it, where Shia’s hypocritical ass cares about your muse enough to try and take care of them. High off his ass but still trying to stick his fingers down their throat so they don’t get alcohol poisoning. They text him when they’re ‘going home’ when they were pre-gaming at their house in the first place. Shia is very ‘you would die without me’ about this person.

BAD INFLUENCE. shia is the devil kronk on their shoulder. he tempts them to the dark side with promises of a good time, and he delivers thank you very much. 

A DRUG DEALER. i mean??? i’m ngl shia i very dependent on drugs, so he would probably keep this person close and do his best to keep them happy.

SOMEONE SHIA CHEATS FOR OR CHEATED FOR. maybe shia did their homework or took a test for them, all for an ominous ‘you owe me’?

SOMEONE SHIA SCREWED OVER. he does this all the time so yeah there can be multiples of this skjsdj shia is honestly like genuinely loyal to only a few people, so there are probably more than few people he left in the dust to save his own skin. maybe he saw the cops closing in on a party and left your muse for dead! or whatever else yk.

ANNOYANCE. it’s shia he’s the annoyance. 

okay i think that’s all i’ve got, and if you made it all the way down here you’re??? an icon??? wow, i really can’t believe. please like this if you want to plot and i will come running!

[bloody-fists-beating-hearts]

It’s a Fallout76/Bethesda rant

Bethesda just released Fallout 1st, a horseshit pay-to-win subscription system for their absolute cum-bubble of a game, and while it’s getting the flack it deserves there are people already putting on their kneepads so they can gobble down Todd Howards entire turgid cock, and as someone who likes rpg’s way too much this irked me, so have a massive and barely coherent rant i took off the discord because why not.

I want to start off with this:  Every good thing about current fallout comes from the fanbase. The stories people tell, the headcanons, the fanfics, the art, everything fans do for it is made with more love, and more thought, than anything Bethesda’s writing and games design team has done in the last 10 years

Now first of all, I haven’t bought or played 76. People are gonna stop me right there and go ”well you haven’t bought it how would you know its bad!!” yeah, I’ve never eaten dog shit either but I can pretty well guess that I ain’t gonna fucking like it.

I knew the second he said "there are no npcs" with actual enthusiasm that this game was gonna be shit. And if you give me 2 seconds to gloat, I never bought the game and I knew this was gonna happen and I was RIGHT so suck my fat hairy nuts all those fanboys who pre-order things mindlessly just because there's a brand name attached to it. If there is anything you take from this its DO NOT PREORDER. BRAND LOYALTY IS FOR BOOMERS AND BOOTLICKERS. FOR FUCKS SAKE BE SMART WITH YOUR MONEY.

Games like this are fucking 80-90 dollars or more in Australia so I actually have to think about whether this momentary distraction is worth almost an entire days paycheck, and I’m still looking for employment which means I actually haven’t bought shit in a while (side note, anyone wants to commission me for 10 dollars I’ll draw damn near anything. God I need to make rent)

Every executive at Bethesda seems to be playing catch-up to EA's monetisation scheme. Beth has abandoned their model of single-player rpg's in favour of a "games as a service" model. Fallout 76 seems to me like its a weird experiment for just how far they can stretch this and still make money. It actually makes me wonder if they are 

 a) just completely unaware of fanbase response [no idea HOW]

b) are running into financial problems and are doing this out of desperation

 c) todd howard is still mad that obsidian made a better fallout than he ever could and he's doing this out of spite 

  Games as a whole has become much like the movie industry where publishers will throw big buckets of cash around to development teams, and those teams have CEO's and higher ups that throw lavish meet n greets and have nice fancy suits and cars and then treat their development teams like shit, overworking them to the point of exhaustion, because the product has to be on time for release dates that are scheduled to be the most profitable (christmas is a notable one). 

And those products are consistently bland, shitty, shallow experiences. Narrative cum-dumpsters that are purposefully made to toe the line as safely as possible, to be open to as wide as an audience as possible so they can make the most money, and Bethesda is a huge offender. Skyrim was fun, sure, but it was watered down to fuck, it had shitty dialogue, it had bland one-note characters, it had a simplified skill system. It was impossible to lose. Seriously, try and fail a fucking quest in skyrim, other than one or two, it's a hand-holder of an rpg, but it has a huge community of fans that put in monumental effort, for free, because they like the Elder Scrolls, and they like the world bethesda made. 

  Then Bethesda goes "hey, that watered down thing we made got huge! lets release it about 12 more fucking times, with some of the SAME bugs, with the SAME content, with the SAME limitations and Yes, we absolutely expect you to pay for it, again. Then they release the remastered edition which, to their credit, is free to anyone who already bought the legendary edition (on PC), and does actually have updated 64bit capability and some graphical enhancements (that aren't anywhere near what some goober in his basement cooked up in his spare time, but whatever). Then, seeing that Skyrim was so popular, with kids especially, and made money, they turn their sights to fallout 4, a game that was so anticipated that someone made a fake countdown and caused a small meltdown on tumblr/social media when it was revealed to be fake (i was part of that fiasco, i remember the hype, i was there goddamnit)

So Fallout, a franchise that literally has its theme as its FUCKING TAGLINE, an ADULT game that is equal parts crude, gory and humorous. A game that satirises the cold war era of american my-country-tis-of-thee blind loyalty and openly mocks the way war was idealised, and shows that not even the literal end of the world could either stop humanity's lust for blood or its desire for conquest. Games that showed you the growth of the world - from shady sands to the NCR, from the vault dweller to arroyo, shit actually happened in the games, the world didn't just stop turning when the bombs dropped. A game where you you become a porn star for fucks sake, and it's funny. 

So Bethesda sees that, makes something like it (fallout 3) which is good, but a little rough around the edges when you look at it too hard. But the way they suck you into the vault, the way they build a relationship with your dad and your way of life is immersive as fuck, so when you leave the place you actually feel like you're leaving something important, not just finishing the tutorial

then they outsource a Fallout game to obsidian, because hey, we saved your franchise by buying it off you, but if you can make an entire game in one year and get a metacritic score of 85 we'll even throw in a bonus. And fuck me sideways and in the ear, if the obsidian devs didn't work themselves harder than a 4-armed hooker. And they made a game that on release was a clusterfuck of bugs, because they were given an unrealistic time limit and missed the metacritic score by ONE POINT so bethesda goes "nhey heh sucks to suck" and fucks them off the franchise forever. EXCEPT (and I admit I'm biased here) the game is good. The game is actually really good when you remove those bugs, and people start forming attachments to it, and mentioning how bad fallout 3's writing is by extension. 

  So Todd and Co. in his infinite wisdom, decide that the only thing a fallout rpg needs is 50s aesthetic and fuck all else, and he releases a game so watered down it can't even be called an rpg. And its not. There are no skills. There are barely any dialogue checks. Instead of dialogue, Nate/Nora is a flat, samrish individual that is either "yes sir right away sir may i have another", "yes but i'm gonna make an unfunny quip about it" "this option pretends to say no but its gonna give you the quest marker anyway". 

The game drops any pretence of difficulty by giving you a deathclaw, a minigun and some power armour in the first 10 minutes, allowing you to effectively reach late-game power levels with some minor scavenging for ammo or cores. Then the game ropes you into some inter-faction war that realistically you wouldn't give a shit about, because some spud in a cowboy hat fucking deputizes you into a military general because you shot like 4 raiders from a rooftop (with a minigun. in power armour. making you nigh-invulnerable to bullets). You're sad about your son about 3 times the whole game and then you're on your merry way to mowing down humans left right and center without a care in the world. God fallout 4's writing is so stupid it gives me an aneurysm.

 Remember the part about resources wars and america only having the veneer of a strong country while riots, inflation, and resource shortages tore it apart from within? Bethesda doesn't, have an eerily stepford pastel coloured glimpse at a world that was totally fine, nothing wrong here, shame it got nuked oh well moving on

Your spouse? yeah you love them, they're said 2 whole sentences to you then they died, be sad because you totally loved them and it is totally sad that they are dead. Your weird play-dough son shaun, you love him so much, you even tickled him on the chin once, okay he's gone off you go to chase him - woah now, don't chase him too hard we have all these side quests for you to do! What would be the narrative reasoning for a supposedly distraught parent to fuck around boston instead of finding their goddamn child? fuck knows! just go pick up some goddamn wood and get to base building sonny-jim! 

Companions? yeah, they're fun, we gave them a romance questline and it's thus: if you pick enough locks and pass a minor charisma check maccready will be ready and willing to tell you about his sick child, and then he'll ride you like a stallion. Talk to him like, 4 times, and he will be your bosom buddy for life in about 3-5 days if you just pick locks like a fucking madman, because character growth is hard and counting beans is easy.

 Also your son is a part of the faction we were talking about! something about synths, remember that one questline from rivet city that barely anyone actually remembers and was an interesting time waster at best? Well get ready to do that same quest but about! 15! more! times! because we could not think of anything else to write about synthetically produced humans that assume peoples identities other than having them as a hamfisted metaphor for slavery. Why do they take over people's identies? Well because the institute needs them to aasdkfjdh kshshshsh t9oe of course. 

Speaking of hamfisted metaphors, here's the underground railroad, named after the underground railroad that actually mattered, except this time its the same thing but synths. They are so top secret that the only way to find them is to follow the only bright red line in a street that is exclusively green-brown otherwise, and then enter their super secret password, which is "password"

They are then, like every other faction, absolutely willing to trust you, at face value, no questions asked, because have to actually do something or require a skill check might make this hard for people under the age of 12 to play. Then you go do whatever fuckin shit you do, I stopped playing at this point, and then you find out your son is actually 60, you guys have a tearful, 10 sentence reunion, then he diesthe whole reason you were out here in the first place dies, and you react appropriately, which is to say you say his name really sadly, and then go back to mowing down raiders with reckless abandon

And then 76 gets released, bethesda drops all pretense of fallout still being an rpg. You want a story? Fuck you, pay up. Its retro future and thats all that makes falloutSatirizing war mongering? You can nuke things in this game and its totally fine, its actually the goal, because fallout has nukes in it right? Pay us 10 dollars and you get army olive drab spraypaint because hurrgh war is fun and great, wasnt that the tagline from the first game?The more i rant the more angry i am because people put their heart and soul into writing this. The lore and dialogue is actual work that someone researched and loved and felt proud of and now  it's becoming a hilariously meta parody of itself. 

Honestly FUCK bethesda and and fuck todd howard for his pisspoor cash grab. Not even worth calling it a video game anymore

[artboitrash]

His Bloody Rose (Stefano Valentini fanfiction) Chapter 4 - Guest Speaker

I walked into my second class of the day, still shaken from the morning's proceedings. Stefano had been nothing but kind and respectful to me for the two times I had spoken with him. Questions fluttered around in my head all day, especially why an absolute stranger felt the need to kiss me on the head.

Why would he show me his work when I was just a gallery attendant? Why would he be so kind to me after the first impression I seemed to make was "rude observer" and "clumsy woman."

I set all my things down as I took my usual seat, pulling out my laptop to take notes. My muscle memory was ingrained enough I could probably take notes without thinking too much. Hopefully at all, hopefully distracting myself from literally anything.

People chatting filled the room until the teacher walked to the front. The voices died down and waited for her to speak, recognizing that as the sign that class was going to begin. I rubbed my temple as I felt a headache coming on, pulling out my second coffee thermos to try and stay awake through this class.

I opened my laptop and typed in the password, opening a webpage to get to my documents saved in a cloud. The teacher began speaking as a new page loaded, making glance up as I typed out the date and waited for the information.

"Well, I hope everyone is having a good Monday." said the teacher as she usually did every Monday.

The class rippled with some quiet laughter. I smiled without joining in. I didn't feel like emoting right now, I wasn't in the right mindset for that.

"Like I said last time, we have a guest speaker today. It's the Chief Officer from Krimson City's police department."

The class half-hardheartedly clapped as the police officer made his way to the front of the class, the professor making her way to the back of the classroom to observe. He smiled and raised his hand, causing everyone to become silent again.

"Hello, everyone, thank you." he began, turning to the computer and inserting a flash drive. When a window opened, he opened a PowerPoint and turned it to full screen.

I began typing along with the officer as he spoke, keeping my mind on my hands on the keyboard. "Criminology class, guest lecture, name..."

"I am Officer Phi," said the officer as he walked to the side of the presentation, holding the remote to the projector. "I am the chief at the KCPD, and I'm sure I've met or will meet all of you eventually."

The class laughed again.

"Today, I've been asked to talk about the mentality of most criminals that we come across in this profession." The slide changed as he talked, a picture of several drugs laying on a table near a ruler after being seized appearing.

"Most of what we deal with are drug users, homeless, and burglars or muggings." He turned with a knowing smile to the class. "Who can tell me the difference between a burglar and a robbery?"

A few people raised their hands. He selected one of the students across the aisle from me, "A robber takes something from a victim that's present, and a burglar doesn't need or doesn't have a victim present while the crime is being committed."

"Absolutely correct." Officer Phi switched the slide, now presenting a photocopied sheet from a book. "For this class, let's go over the personality traits of some of these people. Or, more importantly, what leads these individuals to commit these crimes?"

I typed out the notes along with the slides, listening as the officer monologued with his slides and occasionally asking questions to keep the class engaged. I listened and tried to commit it to memory, since some of what he was saying I knew would be on the next test. I wondered slightly if the teacher had encouraged him to make his presentation about certain things to relate his lecture to real life. I typed the traits of common criminals, desperate situations tend to lead to robbing, depression or helplessness leads to substance abuse, and several other things that were being highlighted.

As we were moving on from common traits that make someone a common criminal, someone raised their hands.

"Yes, do you have a question?" Officer Phi asked as he pointed at them.

"Sorry, sir, since this is a little off topic, but could you tell us about the traits that make a serial killer?"

The room went silent. The atmosphere felt tense and the question hung in the air. No one seemed to move, as though someone had hit a pause button on the scene.

Officer Phi eventually sighed, then walked to the teacher's desk and sat down on an open spot in front of the computer. He still paused, and I could see him looking at the teacher in the back of the room. Eventually he straightened up and spoke again.

"I suppose I should have prepared for this question," he laughed slightly. "Unfortunately we don't have enough information on this serial killer's habits just yet. However, there are a few things that we can say about this one."

"We haven't covered serial killers just yet," the teacher spoke up from the back of the room. "But if you want to take notes for when the chapter comes up, feel free."

Officer Phi nodded, then continued. "The evaluations of what we do know has come back from the FBI, and a behavior profile has been made of them. What we do know, from previous serial killer cases like this, is he or she is likely to be a charismatic individual."

I went to the top of the page and made a new paragraph and typed along with what the officer was saying. Writing notes at the top of the page on an unrelated subject felt best.

"From what we know, it's likely they are attractive and lead people to believe they are safe around him or her."

I mentally scoffed. It's rare that I see anyone as attractive, and especially any serial killer story I've looked into doesn't appear to be attractive. But whatever, some people think they're attractive, and kudos to them. I typed out the attractive note and wrote "subjective, I'm sure" as a mental tagline.

"This killer seems to view the woman he or she has killed as objects, and seems to believe he's entitled to their body, and seems to only have interest in women since no men have shown up dead with the same Modus Operandi. Perhaps not in a sexual way, since none of the victims seem to have been sexually assaulted, but certainly in a very perverse and... enigmatic way."

Officer Phi took a breath and paused, closing his eyes as though to compose himself.

"From what we can tell, the victims didn't know their killer long term, only briefly knowing them. Perhaps a modelling agent as most of the women were aspiring models in some form, which would be a quick way to allow these women to lower their guard around the murderer."

He paused again. Something picked at the back of my head, about the mention of models. I decided to ignore it for now, but I could always come back to it. I made a note in the back of my head to revisit it once I reread these notes.

"This serial killer seems to have a distinct affection for actions while dismembering his or her victims." Phi scratched at the back of his head.

I wrinkled my nose. I had an issue with how he used the word "affection" and "actions" in the way he did. It sounded more like poetry than a statement or cautionary explanation from a police officer. It was definitely a romanticism of what the serial killer was doing; he was filling in the gaps for the students with information we don't know, for all anyone knew he was just interested in dismembering his victims to hide their identities and throw off police.

"He prefers to know how they react to their surroundings, perverting their environment and shifting the scene from trustworthy to nightmarish."

Officer Phi looked out at the crowd of students as he spoke. I could see him glancing over each student, studying each one carefully.

"The killer seems to gravitate towards young women especially, women upcoming in their lives, moving forward with their dreams. This serial killer likes to victimize women with pale skin, with as few imperfections like freckles, scars, or acne and so on as possible. They like victims with dark hair, brown or black, none we seem to have found have had a lighter hair color."

I realized that we were no longer just students to him. At least for the pale females in the room, he was looking at all of us as potential victims. He was trying to look at all of us through the serial killer's eye, see us as they might see us, and single out who could be the next victim in order to catch the killer or save the life of the next girl. 

"Unfortunately other details completely vary. The length of the victim's hair, the ages, the eye color, and their heights all change from each victim."

I continued typing as he talked.

"Make no mistake, we are doing all we can to stop this killer. We are using all resources available to us, and we will be receiving more detectives and more help from the FBI shortly. While we don't know much just yet about this killer, we will catch them, and we will hold them accountable for their crimes."

"So how do we keep ourselves safe?" asked one girl. I glanced up and saw she was pale with a fair complexion and dark hair. I mentally agreed with her, seeing the fear written clearly on her face.

"Make sure everyone knows who you're meeting and where you're going. If you think you are likely to be attacked or targeted, please make sure that you are in contact with someone at all times. Don't believe everything anyone says, and especially if someone tries to get you alone make sure you do not spend time alone with them. Even if you trust them, make sure at least one person you also trust or especially are meeting later knows who you are going alone with."

I wrote at the top of the paragraph "How to protect yourself" since I was unable to keep up with what the officer was saying. I frowned slightly, hoping the note would be enough as I continued typing.

"Well that's certainly some food for thought." The teacher spoke up from the back of the class. "I'm afraid we'll have to cut these questions short. Let's get back to the presentation."

Officer Phi nodded in agreement. "I'm sorry for getting so off topic. If you have any more questions or worries about the serial killer, I'll still be here for a little bit after your class ends. I have to make a public statement later today, so going over the details again is always good. Now, where were we with this presentation...?"

The subject moved on and we continued talking and listening to the officer's lecture about common criminals. I continued typing out notes along with him, but every once in a while I would scroll back up to review the list of things about the serial killer. I kept filling in what I could remember from the last statement he had made about staying safe. I tried keeping a level head, knowing that I would be safe since I'm not likely to be targeted.

The class ended, and I gathered my things. I tucked my computer and coffee thermos into my bag, pulling it over my shoulder, and making my way out the door. I hoped I could make it to the bus, sometimes the class runs too late and I miss my bus to go home.

I made my way home to my apartment and tossed all my school supplies by my bed when I got in the door. I pulled off my bra and changed into some pajamas. I couldn't care less about anything else happening around me, ignoring any other assignments assigned or lectures I had sat through, knowing I had earned a long and heavy sleep. So many of the thoughts and interactions today left me drained. I hadn't slept well over the weekend, so hopefully today is what's enough to completely knock me out.

I collapsed into my bed with a sigh, trying to let my mind unwind from the day's proceedings, the time I had spent trying to draw and scrolling through the social medias I had. The news story of the dismembered woman and what the chief had said in class floated back to me. My mind couldn't help but think on what the chief officer had said about being safe. How can you stay safe when you know so little about a killer other than their killing habits.

The ride home had gone by, thankfully, without much need for cognitive thought. My eyes fluttered closed with the fleeting thought of how my class in criminology was the only one with constant guest speakers.

Unavoidably, my mind went back to Stefano and the pictures he showed me. The curiosity about him surged back to life in the back of my mind, the way he had looked at me after he had kissed me continuing to draw itself up from the surfaces of my subconscious. He had looked at me so intense both times he moved his lips away from my skin, eyes like an electric storm at sea, lit up and wide, as though ready to pounce at another word. I was oddly curious about that man, wondering what he had gone through to prompt a change in how he had seen the world, and what was going through his mind when he would act like an old friend to me.

But I couldn't let myself think about that right now. I'm too tired to think it through. My mind is just too full of information and too groggy to sort any form of properly coherent thoughts.

For now, all I desire is sleep...

[canecainkane]

The Spirit of Christmas (2015)

Description: “Kate, a workaholic lawyer, has three weeks to get a haunted bed and breakfast appraised and sold. The uncooperative manager claims a spirit who lives there will not approve. With Kate's possible promotion resting on accomplishing this task, she checks in and haggles with the aforesaid Christmas spirit, who suspiciously seems awfully solid for a ghost.”

Yeahhhhh, perfect tagline. Generic af and twice as long as it needs to be. 

RATING:

Candy Canes: 2.5 out of 5

Starts with a break-up (+1) between some dude we don’t care about and a workaholic (-1) estate lawyer (+1 for specificity) who needs to travel to a historical B&B (-1) where she ... falls in love with a ghost with a Macklemore haircut (+WTF). The movie basically breaks exactly even. It’s on the boring side, but at least it’s a plot I haven’t been bored by before instead of a plot that’s been boring me since 1996.

Dean Cains: 1.5 out of 5

Half-Buzz Haunted Hottie just moods & broods the whole time, and he is a convincing brooder, I guess? But kind of a sack of meat for the rest of the movie. At least he has a chin. The lead actress plays her scenes like a grown-up child actor: hits the mark and reads out her lines super loud and super fast, occasionally with so little conviction it sounds like she memorized them phonetically. But the modern scenes pale in comparison to the 1920s scenes, which are totally middle-school drama club. I’m like 99% sure one of the flappers said “forsooth” at some point. 

Citizen Kanes: 0.5 out of 5

Automatic half-Kane because the ghost logistics were so incredibly nonsensical that the greatest pleasure of the movie was shouting at the TV about how little sense everything made. And if that’s not what we watch Hallmark movies for, then I don’t know what is.

TOTAL:4.5 out of 15

I forgot this movie as soon as it was over. Literally. I finished it, then rewound it by a few minutes to capture a GIF -- then my husband asked if I wanted to make lunch and I told him, with no irony, “Give me a few minutes, I’m almost at the end of this boring-ass movie.” It took me three minutes to realize I’d already seen the alleged climax of the film.

WTF Moments:

*Okay, I could get into how bananas all the half-assed ghost logistics were -- by why not let the movie do that for me?

*But who needs a logical plot when you have a hot-ass lead actor? At least that’s the gist of pretty much every review I’ve read of this movie. I’m not into Ye Olde Timey hipsters, especially since his beard looks like long, wet chest hair.

Nonetheless, the movie’s stance is “he’s sexy and we know it.” Like 40% of the movie is just weirdly lit shots of him brooding. All of these shots are taken from a randomly chosen NINETY SECOND section of the movie:

Seriously, like 60 out of the 90 seconds.

*The reviews aren’t as interested in the female lead (Jen Lilley) but I found her way more interesting. My favorite Hallmark Channel movie game is trying to figure out who the actors are store-brand versions of. Usually they’re a portmanteau of two different actors, but I couldn’t really place Jen Lilley. From some angles, she was Rip-off Anna Kendrick, then Generic Jessica Chastain, then Squint & You’ll See Young Debra Messing, then flashes of, weirdly, Tina Fey? I think I ended up settling mostly on JoAnna García, which made me like this movie more, because I’ve always found her super charming + stupid beautiful, and wish she had a better career.

*Got to love a Big Romantic Ending where a couple runs through the snow toward one another -- and the woman runs like Judge fucking Dredd.

*Okay, I lied, a little more about the ghost logistics. Hard to parse this garbage fire, but it seems that in the world of the story -- whenever a ghost dies while they are in love with someone, they get to ... make a dying blessing to protect the person? And also if you are a ghost who hasn’t crossed over yet, then crossing over = kind of dying and you get to make a blessing on someone? And ghosts can cross and un-cross at will, but only when they died or when they leave on an international trip that will end in their death, and sometimes they are solid and living but sometimes they are invisible and just whisper creepily? 

Okay, nope, nope, nope, I really can’t -- except to say that of all the ridiculousness of this plot, the MOST ridiculous part is that apparently if you die, then your ex gets to decide, at their sole discretion, whether or not you come back to life?!

I’ve never before understood why people stay friends with their exes. I mean, I still don’t, but. 

*My favorite character in this movie, by far, is Haunted Hottie’s ex-lover, who only shows up at the very end: in the 1920s, she put her death blessing on Haunted Hottie, causing him to blah blah blah, whatever, but finally at the end, after 95 years of waiting for him to get ready to cross over -- he decides to abandon ex-love to stay with the woman he met 12 days ago?

Ex-Lover Lilly’s face tells the whole story perfectly: 

I’ve never seen a woman shout that fuckin’ guy louder in body language alone. No wonder she’s so willing to (use her magical powers to miraculously bring him back to life and) let him go. As, indeed, we are all willing to wave adieu to this confusing mess of a movie.

[lovelyhan]

— underlying pretense (a teaser) ⟢

pairing: wonwoo x reader

summary: being two of the most popular streamers across the board, your subscribers often speculate if your constant bickering with wonwoo has some underlying pretense. little did they know, the two of you have everything on display on a single, unsuspecting twitter account. 

word count: 1k words

tags: fuck buddies, not quite enemies to lovers but it's the thought that counts, streamer!wonwoo, streamer!reader, smut

warnings: wonwoo n reader run a shared p0rn account bc they're fllthy like that, graphic sexual content (minors dni!!)

notes: no hardcore smut tags needed just yet, but do Not interact with this post if you're a minor, still.

Wonwoo doesn’t make it a habit to watch your streams for two reasons. 

The first is because you’re one of his tightest competitors in the streamer market. Giving you even a single view means that he’s contributing to your rise in popularity, which is very much detrimental to both Wonwoo’s pride and his career. 

Not that someone who only plays boring open-world games can easily dethrone one of the most renowned competitive players on the platform, but he learned the hard way to never underestimate the charms of a cute girl who knows her way around both technology and the wallets of her subscribers.  

The second reason is…somewhat related to the first.

They’re all hanging out in Seungcheol’s apartment when Vernon opens up a Twitch stream to watch. Wonwoo is in the middle of a petty but intense Fruit Ninja competition with Mingyu on their phones, so he doesn’t get to see which streamer he’s watching. Vernon is the type that likes to give newbies a chance, though, so at that moment, Wonwoo couldn’t really care less.

But when he hears a familiar, high-pitched voice dish out her opening tagline for every stream, even Mingyu notices the way Wonwoo's face scrunches up with distaste.

“Can’t believe you pulled a Koyahngi and Chill while Wonwoo’s in the same room,” Seungcheol laughs when he returns with some beer. “We all know he’s allergic to the sound of her voice.” 

“Hey, I think it’s cute,” Vernon says. “Her outfit is, too. Look.”

Wonwoo, still stewing in his annoyance, doesn't move an inch, while Mingyu scoots closer—glancing over Vernon’s shoulder before letting out a wolf whistle.

“I really don’t see the benefit to playing Stardew Valley in maid-cat girl fusion cosplay, but at least she’s still in theme—oh, shit.”

Seungcheol looks at him once he settles himself on the sofa as well. “What’s wrong?”

“My phone died while I was in the middle of a game,” Mingyu whines. “Wonwoo-hyung, lemme borrow yours. We still haven’t decided who’s buying takeout tonight.”

While Wonwoo would’ve normally responded by scoffing at Mingyu to just borrow a charger from Seungcheol, he completely ignores him—stern eyes glued to his phone as he types away at rapid speed. The moment he hits send, Wonwoo hears a soft chime ring over Koyahngi’s lo-fi background music. 

You pause for a moment from whatever introductory segment you have planned and tell your viewers you’re just going to answer a text. Wonwoo’s friends are none the wiser when he receives a reply the moment you put your phone back down and interact with the chat.

🐈‍⬛: What did I say about wearing that outfit?

🐈: hmm, can’t remember :P

Fucking brat.

“Hyung?” Mingyu calls out after emerging from Seungcheol’s room—presumably to hunt for a charger—when he spots Wonwoo already halfway to the door. “Where are you going?” 

“Friend’s having set-up problems. He texted me asking if I could come over and take a look,” he reasons calmly as he slips his shoes back on. “I’ll head back here once I’m done.” 

Seungcheol pouts at him. “You better! Mingyu over here told us you’ve been busy with some girl, that’s why you couldn't hang out with the boys anymore.”

Vernon glances behind him to shoot Wonwoo an incredulous stare. “Wonwoo-hyung? With a girl? You’re not just making stuff up, right?” 

Mingyu immediately springs into action, blabbering something about how Wonwoo isn’t the heartless prude people thought he was, but Wonwoo really doesn’t give two shits about how his friends perceived his sex life. In fact, he was more interested in what’s playing on the screen of Vernon’s iPad—the view now unobstructed because the youngest has deigned to move away.

Again, the second reason why Wonwoo doesn’t watch your streams is related to the first. 

You’re literally his tightest competitor, but when he sees you all dolled up in your stupid fucking catgirl outfits, he’s suddenly no different from the degenerates vying for your attention in the chat.

And there is nothing else that Wonwoo hates more than being thrown off his game like that.

Funnily enough, he’s reminded of the very thing that started this constant back-and-forth he’s been toeing around with you for a better part of the year when he slips into the driver’s seat of his car. Just before he can drop his phone into one of the cup holders on the middle console, a Twitter notification lights up on screen. 

Wonwoo would’ve thought it was from the account dedicated to interacting with his viewers outside of streams. He’s got a decent number of followers there after all. Except the notifications for his official Twitter account have long been muted because of the massive online traction his tweets gain everyday. 

No, this one’s from another account entirely.

He feels no shame, opening up the most recent video you put up. What he does feel is a sick sort of pride at the sheer amount of engagement that the video received overnight—those faceless Twitter accounts in the replies looking for other desperate fucks to recreate it with. 

This is one of Wonwoo’s favorites. Part of the select few that he actually deigned to keep hidden in the gallery of his phone for…future use. He can barely contain his own heady arousal as he watches the same clip he took with his own camera the previous night. 

Those desperate little noises you made. The way your body writhed while getting a good dicking down. And how you were so fucking eager to slide Wonwoo’s cock back inside your cunt after having him cum all over your tits. 

Seeing you wearing the same goddamn fishnet bodysuit beneath your stupid maid costume on the stream not only made him pop a hard-on in the middle of boys’ night, but also called for drastic interventions, so to speak.

🐈‍⬛: Finish up that stream asap. I’ll be there in 20. 

🐈: fuck you, i just started 5 minutes ago

🐈‍⬛: You know I don’t like it when you talk back, right?

🐈: fine

🐈‍⬛: What?

🐈: …yes, daddy

🐈‍⬛: That’s what I thought.

end notes: hehe i hope you like it so far! i think it will take me a While to finish this, and i didn't want the blog to go stagnant for too long, so i thought, eh, why not post a teaser? edit: thank you for giving the teaser some love! the full fic can now be found here!

[peckhampeculiar]

Feel the rhythm

Bradley Zero’s record label Rhythm Section has enjoyed huge success since it was founded in Peckham in 2009. We chat to Bradley and MC Pinty, who’s about to release his second EP City Limits  

Words: Emma Finamore; Photo: Lima Charlie  

Peckham’s Rhythm Section started life as a radio show and dance in 2009, founded by DJ Bradley Zero. Next came an accompanying record label and its first release – Rye Lane Vol. 1 by Al Dobson Jnr – in 2014, and a nomination for Label of the Year at Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide awards. Since then Bradley’s label has gone global, but an upcoming release shows how the dance’s tagline – ‘Peckham Strong’ – is still part of its DNA.

MC Pinty – a local MC and DJ – is putting out his second EP, City Limits, with Rhythm Section after his first independent release (Midnight Moods) in 2015. As well as keeping it local, the upcoming record shows how the dance remains central to the label’s output too. Pinty honed his skills on the mic at nights he used to hold under the arches at Loughborough Junction, and says the ambiance of these late-night parties and sounds of 4am streets permeate his new tracks.  

"It was in such a sick place, round the corner from the flat where I was born actually,” he remembers of the dances he put on, aged just 19. “They were dope, some of the sickest time, and it was always such a good vibe. The guy that ran it was a real character, I think he was an old sound boy from around Brixton, so all his sound system was there and he was really careful about the set up. If there was something wrong he would get right onto it – someone that really cared about the sound. It was cool, very atmospheric."

Music was a core part of the Pinty’s youth. His brother – who tragically died in an accident in 2002 – was a garage MC during the golden years of UKG, and as a student at the Brit School he and his friends were surrounded by creativity. He and fellow attendees like Archy Marshall (aka King Krule or DJ JD Sports), Cosmo Pyke and Jamie Isaac were mates but also went on to become musical collaborators – a dynamic group of South London producers, singers, musicians and rappers.

"Music’s always been a part of me, I guess,” says Pinty. “I always had it around, and I was always into dance music more than anything else. Archy was the first one to put me on it [music]. He was like, 'You should do this, really. It feels like you've got something to say'." 

The south London connection runs through much of his work. The first track he made – named Midnight Moods, like his club night and subsequent EP – was produced by DJ JD Sports, as is the City Limits EP, along with production from other south London producers.  Pinty also went on to do shows on local Peckham/Brixton stations Balamii and Reprezent with Cosmo Pyke and DJ Maxwell Owin, another local artist.

"We go back-to-back, it's basically my favourite thing to do, pretty much, that show,” he explains, of his ‘Second To None’ Sunday evening show on Reprezent with Owin – a South London producer and bassist. “I always look forward to that show, we've got great energy and just bounce around the studio. We both get so immersed in the music we're just jumping around." 

Pinty has been making waves with his live performances too: he’s played in Paris with hip-hop star Rejji Snow, at Glastonbury Festival with Sub Luna City (a King Krule project), and with RATKING – an experimental, punk-inspired hip-hop crew from New York.

Now – having been brought into the Rhythm Section family after meeting founder Bradley Zero at a festival – he’s hoping the new EP will create more waves. While Pinty’s 2015 debut had a distinctly garage flavour, City Limits takes his sound in a new, house and dance-led direction.

He explains: "A lot of the beats on the next EP are pretty four-on-the-floor [a rhythm pattern associated with dance music] so I think this is going to separate from the earlier stuff. The sound is kind of ‘housey’ street sounds with a lot of lyricism in there. And that's the thing about the project that's different - I'm trying to help people see that house isn't just some straight party, mostly white, Berlin stuff. There's substance and realness to it too.

"It's just my story: where I've come from, what I've seen and what I've been through. There’s a night-time element to it too, like when you're walking back through a dusty street when there's no one around…the night bus home. I'm definitely trying to get away from that garage MC gimmick – I think it is quite a gimmick sometimes.”

Pinty says he’s been influenced by everything from ‘Escape (The Piña Colada Song)’ by Rupert Holmes to The Streets  – anything with a story. "Stories just grip me, I guess,” he explains. “When I realised 'A Grand Don't Come For Free' [a sort of rap opera – The Streets' second album] was a whole story in itself, I thought that was amazing. I've always found storytelling really interesting. "

This love of narrative is particularly poignant on City Limits' final track. "It's the definitive track on the album," says Pinty.  It includes samples of his brother MCing, alongside snippets of a conversation with his brothers' mate – south London photographer Andrew Gillman – who Pinty interviewed a few years ago about their shared loss. "It comes out really nice," he says. "It was quite eerie making it though, kind of dark. But it is quite a special thing. It was nice to be able to sit down and record it, but then to use it in a special way too." 

The pair spoke for two hours, reminiscing, and Pinty says that while it's taken time for him to be able to talk about his loss, recording with his friend and putting the track together was therapeutic. The EP's title is also loaded with meaning – connected with a group of Pinty's brother's friends – making it an especially personal body of work. 

Pinty plans to tour off the back of his upcoming release, and says he’ll be putting out more new music as soon as possible after City Limits. "That's the plan,” he says. “I've waited so long – after this I want to just keep pushing stuff out more man."

Bradley Zero sees the release as a natural partnership for Rhythm Section: “As the label has grown we’ve released music from all over the world, but the genesis of the label – as well as the ongoing focus – has always been Peckham. We’ve played a role in establishing local acts such as Henry Wu, Chaos in the CBD and FYI Chris so the idea of working with Pinty was immediately considered.  

“Musically, our influences align on the crossroads of house, hip-hop and UK sound system Culture. Much like our debut effort from Al Dobson Jnr, Pinty’s style takes influence from a wide palette of sounds to create something uniquely his own. Long story short, Pinty’s style, sound and story has 'Rhythm Section' written all over it!”

Peckham holds a really important place in Bradley’s heart, which is why continuing to put out music by innovative artists from the area – like Pinty – is especially vital to him. “We host our seventh anniversary dance in November – how time flies! It all started in Peckham,” he explains. “The label and the party weren’t born out of a business plan; they where born out of a community, and everything we’ve produced so far is a product of that community.

“My musical journey began here, whether honing my burgeoning skills on the decks of Bar Story every Friday night, hosting my first ever radio show on Reprezent from its original Asylum Road studios, or putting on my first ever party in Canavan’s. While the music and the message has begun to spread its wings around the world, Rhythm Section will always be rooted in Peckham.

“Before the Overground came, people didn’t often venture south of the river and folk who lived down here tended not to leave so often, so we got what I like to call the ‘ pressure cooker effect’. The musicians and artists based in Peckham felt largely disconnected from what was going on elsewhere, so we made our own fun, collaborated heavily and eventually the word got out.”

For Bradley, pushing forward home grown talent is important in maintaining some of Peckham’s individuality, and he talks about broader things like rent controls to help protect longstanding residents and businesses from being pushed out. “There is a genuine community here that cares deeply about what goes on and how the area grows,” he explains. “We must nurture and this, and champion the independent spirit of our community.” City Limits – in its reflection of south London nightlife and demonstration of south London talent – will do just this.

[tothewaterhq]

ACCEPTED // BIRCH PEMBROOKE

district 10 → victor of the 68th hunger games → aaron taylor johnson fc

positive traits: one-handed weaponry skill, charming, nature knowledge negative traits: empathetic, only one forearm, difficulty with crafting and fine motor skills

describe their arena:

Pompeii. It was a few days before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, an ancient volcano that has been mentioned in old books from times past. The tributes were raised into the middle of a clearing in a forest. A cornucopia did not lie in the middle of a circle of tributes this time, but lay beyond the forest and across a field on the outskirt of Pompeii. The tributes were lined up in a single line all of them facing their destination. It was about 2 kilometers away through rough forest and an open field. An announcer told the tributes this and the Games had begun.

The first day it was rather uneventful, not many tributes died except in the bloodbath and not all of them were in the city. At the end of the first day, the ground rumbled and a landslide was triggered outside of the city. Any tributes not in the city were either killed or driven to enter the city. The city had several buildings and roads and a tribute could hide or wander the streets as they wished.

At the beginning of the second day, another earthquake shook the buildings, causing a couple of them to collapse.  forcing some tributes out into the street. There were aqueducts, baths, and fountains that were filled with water, but if one were to drink it they would lose their mind temporarily and attack anyone around them. Mutt dogs also roamed the streets and would chase and attack any that stumbled towards them. The second day ended with another tremor, collapsing a few more buildings.

The third day broke and the tributes woke to ‘people’ celebrating a festival. The 'people’ were celebrating the god of fire and sacrificing small beasts to the pyre in the middle of the town. Any tributes that attacked the 'people’ had the crowd turn on them and rip them apart. When the bell tolled at noon, the 'people’ began to hunt tributes to sacrifice to the god of fire. Two sacrifices would make the townspeople stop hunting the tributes and retreat to their homes. At the end of the festival, a table with 7 backpacks sat on a table, signalling the feast. The third night fell with another strong tremor.

On the fourth day, an explosion was heard from the volcano that sat north of the city. Fiery rocks were ejected from the volcano and landed on the city. They rained down on the remaining tributes and they destroyed several parts of the city and tributes. A flow of lava entered the city, causing the tributes to climb to the highest building in the city (the Temple). Then a cloud of ash, swept into the city and pushed some tributes into the lava. The final two were atop the temple and the ash swirled away to mark a battlefield with lava flowing around the bottom of the temple. This was the final showdown until the last tribute was left standing.

biography:

Birch’s childhood was like any who grew up in the poorer part of District 10. He had a wonderful family with 3 brothers and 1 sister. They lived in a small house at the end of a tree-lined street. Out of the back door he could see the fields sprawled to the left and a small creek with a grove of trees to the right. He could see the workers and animals running around was excited to join them. His arms were strong even as a young boy. He would help his family with chores including tending the chickens that they kept in the backyard and chopping wood for their kitchen stove.

Whenever Birch had the chance he would bound out of the back door and head for the small grove of trees that defied the fields of most of District 10. He loved the shade and the feeling of being so small. He felt like the world couldn’t touch him among the branches of the birch and ash trees. He was insignificant and the world would leave him untouched. He reveled in the joy he felt in seeing life grow out of the dead logs and that a harsh winter could reveal small pink blossoms popping out of the grass. Birch understood the cyclical nature of life as a boy and as he grew it became his life’s tagline.

His family would have been okay if they only had two children, but with three extra mouths than what they could afford, the boys of the family all took tesserae when they turned 12. It meant that their family had a good life, even though they were stuck together in a small home.

Birch’s father was his hero. He toiled the soil out in the warm sunshine everyday and came home to see his family with hugs and love to go around. Terry loved his wife and family very much and encouraged his children to do what they loved even if they had to go to a tough job everyday.

Birch wanted exactly what Terry had and to be that kind of person. He wanted to work in the fields and use his body to feed his own family. He wanted to be happy in his own little world.

As a child, Birch saw the Hunger Games as a means to feed his family. His older brothers, Ansel, and Linden, had taken tesserae for years and he continued the tradition when he turned 12. He did not see glory in the games, but could care less that they happened. They did not affect him and he did not think he would ever get chosen from the pool. Even if Birch was chosen, his life would feed his family’s and that is all that mattered. Life would spring from his death, just as his little patch of trees showed him every year.

Birch was the middle child, stuck between two older brothers and his two younger siblings, his sister June and his brother Ember. To help out, just like his brothers, Birch left school around 15 and started to work on the fields with the horses, dogs, and cattle. He learned to ride fairly effectively and enjoyed helping transport cattle to other fields.

Then Birch was in an accident. He lost his forearm. His world crashed down around him. Birch could not work on the farm anymore. He had to spend a few months recovering in his home with few excursions into the sunshine. His family took care of him and had enough of a job that they were stable. The doctor who had seen him, kept checking in on him and gave him some options. He was a young doctor and said that he could build him a device to help him get some function out of his left arm. In the interim, Birch got stronger - maybe, just maybe that would get him his job back.

He was 18, at this point and had just gotten used to the prosthetic that his doctor had given him when the Reaping occurred. As always, Birch was nervous, but this would be his last one and he could let the tension recede from his body. But, his brother, Ember was reaped. At just 13, he would be at a huge disadvantage and Birch was the only one that could save him. He volunteered for his brother and headed off to the Capitol. He had no mentor, only an escort who was not very interested in him. He tried to make some allies and friends, but many did not want to interact with such a liability as him.

When he entered the Arena, Birch glanced for a second at the Cornucopia, but decided to head right into the forest and hopefully hang out for at least a day. He survived for most of the day, only seeing one other tribute - a District 12 boy - that also wanted to stay hidden. However, when the first tremor hit and triggered the landslide, Birch barely made it. He couldn’t believe it, but saw that the other tribute didn’t make it. The kid’s backpack had been taken with the landslide down to the outskirt of the town so Birch grabbed, thanking him silently. There was a pack of nuts, a little bit of rope, and a small dagger in the bag.

The next day goes by in a blur, as he was attacked by a dog mutt - learning along the way that his prosthetic could be used as a shield - killing the District 6 girl that had drank some of the fountain water and attacked him. He hunkered down in one of the buildings and tried to bandage up some of his wounds that he had gotten from his fights (a dog bite on his arm and a knife wound on his leg). In the night, after the tremor that scared him for a few moments, he received a box with some bandages and a large knife. Confused, he found out that it was from Lori, the trainer who had taken him under her wing. He was momentarily happy knowing someone was looking out for him.

In the morning, he skirted around the ‘people’ celebrating, hiding on the rooftops and fighting one other tribute he came across. Birch grappled with him before throwing him into the crowd below, triggering the crowds security measure and ripped the tribute apart. He was shaken at this point, but the day had only begun. As the ‘people’ roamed around the streets looking for tributes, Birch stayed hidden on a rooftop. He was not attacked physically, but the stress of the past few days got to him and his demeanour cracked. The tributes he killed or lead to their deaths seemed to chase him as the ‘people’ chased the screaming tributes around the town. Only when he saw the smoke rise from the pyre and the screams die down did he let himself out of his shell. It was a good time because he had to hop off of the building he was on to survive the tremor that tore down a couple more buildings. In a fit of impulsiveness, Birch rushed to the table where his backpack was sitting and ran to a far building. Inside his backpack there was a smaller two-handed axe and a sandwich. It was a little bit comforting.

He went into an uneasy sleep that night and awoke to something that sounded like a bomb. Several fiery rocks fell close to him and he bounded up to the rooftops to see where the rocks were falling. He continued to dodge and bounded from roof to roof, hearing rocks hit and cannons sound as tributes were killed. Lava flowed into the town and Birch’s mind couldn’t quite keep up with all of the things going on. There were a couple of times that his prosthetic almost slipped, but he managed to dodge and only get slightly burned by the rocks and get hit by some small stones. He continued to climb to the highest point on the temple and reached the top to face the District 4 tribute, Coral. Birch dropped his backpack on the ground and pulled out the axe and put the two daggers he had collected into his belt. There battle was epic and long. By the end of it, Birch’s axe had fallen into the lava, but not before taking a chunk out of Coral’s leg. Coral had also embedded a dagger into his shoulder and a scratch along the side of his face. At this point, Coral was a fatigued and Birch took the moment to pull off his prosthetic and threw it at her. She was so taken aback that Birch charged at her, pushing her backwards into the lava below. He had won. It was overwhelming, sad, and joyous.

Since then, his family had moved out of their small house and into one of the houses in Victor’s Village. His family was safe and they were prospering like never before. Birch kept their old home though, he liked coming back to it between Games and just enjoying a simple life for a few days.

He had been a Mentor coming on 7 years and he was content but tired. Birch hated the idea of him leading these kids to slaughter, but he enjoyed teaching them and becoming friends with them. It hurt much more when he lost them, but it was the right thing to do. Birch had a few friends in the Tower, but was otherwise single. He still wanted the life that his father had - full of love, a family and simplicity, but Birch wasn’t sure he would find it now.

PLAYED BY // CASSIE

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

News Two Kids Are Missing. Now Police Are Looking At A String Of Family Deaths And Allegations Of A Doomsday 'Cult'

News

First and main, 49-300 and sixty five days-feeble Tammy Daybell’s loss of life used to be chalked as a lot as natural causes.

The favorite college librarian had married her college boyfriend and helped him stumbled on Spring Creek E book Co., where they self-published apocalyptic novels geared in the direction of a Mormon viewers. The fantasies that Chad Daybell spun up featured Chinese language bioterrorism attacks, devastating pandemics and hurricanes, and rising civil unrest. Tammy’s family described her as “the precise backbone” of the operation, designing e book covers whereas also managing the company’s budget.

After she used to be stumbled on pointless in her Idaho dwelling final October, Tammy’s obituary said that she “handed away peacefully in her sleep.” But when Chad, 51, expeditiously remarried and went on the lag with his contemporary wife, authorities rapidly came to glimpse her loss of life as potentially suspicious. On Friday, amid an investigation into two missing younger of us and allegations that Chad belonged to a fringe, cultlike non secular team, the FBI and native law enforcement businesses raided the family’s ragged dwelling. In accordance with the East Idaho News, they were trying to salvage any possible forensic proof that also can lend a hand to demonstrate Tammy’s loss of life.

The investigation into Chad and his contemporary wife, 46-300 and sixty five days-feeble Lori Daybell, who are wished for questioning relating to the younger of us’s disappearance however possess no longer been charged with against the law, started Nov. 26. In accordance with police in Rexburg, Idaho, Lori’s prolonged family had grown concerned that they hadn’t been ready to focus on to her 7-300 and sixty five days-feeble son, Joshua, since September. Two days earlier than Thanksgiving, they asked for a welfare check, noting that the boy had particular wants.

When police confirmed up at the beige townhouse, the couple told them Joshua used to be staying with a family buddy in Arizona. It didn’t elevate lengthy for investigators to salvage out that wasn’t precise. But when they confirmed up the subsequent day with a search warrant, Lori and Chad were long previous.

Authorities rapidly realized that Joshua “J.J.” Vallow had left his elementary college in September and by no methodology returned. His sister, 17-300 and sixty five days-feeble Tylee Ryan, had disappeared around the identical time. Neither had been reported missing. Meanwhile, the Fremont County Sheriff’s Issue of job began to demand whether or no longer Tammy died a natural loss of life, noting that Chad and Lori had married roughly two weeks later. In a December issue, officials announced that her body had been exhumed so that a entire autopsy might happen.

“Those are the 2 pieces of this,” Fremont County Sheriff Len Humphries told Fox 13 in Salt Lake City. “And how they’re linked we’re no longer rather obvious, however we produce factor in they're linked.”

As it modified into out, Lori had a fancy backstory of her possess. Joseph Ryan, Tylee’s father, died of a coronary heart attack in 2018, the Rexburg Fashioned Journal reported. One day — it’s no longer sure when — Lori married Charles Vallow. But by February 2019, they'd transform estranged, and Vallow told a divorce court docket mediate that Lori believed she used to be a reincarnated deity, despatched to Earth to prepare of us for Jesus’ second coming.

Lori used to be contented she used to be forever married to the Mormon prophet Moroni, Vallow’s attorney wrote in court docket filings no longer too lengthy in the past unearthed by Fox 10 Phoenix, and also the grandmother of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. If he stood in the model of her divine mission, “she would assassinate him.”

True five months later, in July 2019, Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed Vallow in a Chandler, Ariz., dispute that is unexcited under investigation. In accordance with Fox 10 in Phoenix, Cox said that he intervened in an argument between the estranged couple, and Vallow hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Cox had shot the actual person in self-defense, he claimed. Then, on Dec. 12, Cox himself died of unknown causes.

Every other relative rapidly came forward with a tale of his possess. Brandon Boudreaux had been married to Lori’s niece until final summer, when she without warning asked for a divorce. Boudreaux attributed the spoil as a lot as the truth that his wife had started spending more time with Lori and varied contributors of the unconventional non secular team to which Lori belonged. “I believed I had a ecstatic marriage, so it used to be gorgeous overwhelming,” he told the Arizona Republic.

On Oct. 2, the Republic reported, Boudreaux used to be riding dwelling from the gym when someone shot at him. The bullet shattered the window of his automotive, missing his head by mere inches. In what Boudreaux believes is greater than precise an eerie accident, the automotive he had been riding used to be registered to Vallow.

Chad and Lori possess both denied any wrongdoing in the direction of their family members. “Chad Daybell used to be a loving husband and has the support of his younger of us in this matter,” their attorney, Sean Bartholick, said in a December issue to local media retailers. “Lori (Vallow) Daybell is a gradual mother and resents assertions to the different. We peep forward to addressing the allegations after they possess moved beyond speculation and rumor.”

Admire a different of Lori’s family members, Boudreaux has accused Chad of main her precise into a cult, though that hasn’t been officially confirmed. “There is a ton of speculation and quite loads of rumors, however nothing that we possess got sure of classified as a cult,” Rexburg Assistant Chief of Police Gary Hagen told the Fashioned Journal.

Before they married, Lori and Chad seemed collectively on podcasts dispensed by Preparing A Of us, a media company which touts the tagline, “Helping to prepare the of us of this Earth for the second coming of Jesus Christ.” The corporate has since denied being a cult and distanced itself from the couple, deleting the podcasts in demand and announcing in a December issue that it used to be “alarmed” and “deeply alarmed” to learn of the investigation.

“We also produce no longer fragment any of Chad Daybell’s or Lori Vallow’s beliefs if they're opposite to Christian solutions of honesty, integrity and truth, or if they produce no longer align with the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” owners Michael and Nancy James wrote.

Some family members are skeptical. “I don’t are seeking to attack somebody’s beliefs … however whereas you peep at the fruit that’s attain from this team and its beliefs … it no doubt, from my mind, doesn’t attain from God,” Boudreaux told the East Idaho News.

Tylee and Joshua are unexcited missing, and it’s unclear if they're alive. Closing week, police said they were obvious Lori knew what took space to them, however she had left Idaho along with her contemporary husband and “refused to work with law enforcement.” She also reportedly told of us that her daughter had died.

“Our important impart at this point is merely finding Joshua and Tylee and charging selections will seemingly be made in due direction basically based upon the proof readily available,” the issue said. “If we discover that injure used to be carried out to those younger of us inner our jurisdiction, we are going to prosecute whoever brought about that injure.”

Tammy Daybell’s family members are equally wanting to learn the truth and possess said that she perceived to be healthy and used to be in precise spirits two weeks earlier than her loss of life. Some possess expressed suspicion about a call she made to 911 in the times earlier than her loss of life, announcing that a particular person used to be pointing what regarded as if it'd be a paintball gun at her.

“We speculate worship all americans else,” her father, Ron Douglas, told Fox 13. “It’s laborious to know that we lost our daughter and that our son-in-law of 30 years has stepped into this mess. We don’t know. We’d worship to hope for the most uncomplicated. Every time you peel a layer off the onion it makes you scratch your head.”

[asntmc5recap]

EPISODE 1: The Girl Who Got Up and Walked Again

CHALLENGE

The first episode starts with us getting to know the contestant. After they arrived, Cindy revealed to them that their challenge would start right away, and as it is the tradition with Top Model, their first challenge is a runway challenge.

I think they wanted to do some sort of a Victoria’s Secret-themed fashion show, but it didn’t work for me. The clothes look cheap, the setting looks awkwardly placed (Natural lighting is quite unforgiving towards shiny fabric. That’s why you don’t see people going to lunch in their negligee.), and...

...these girls just aren’t exactly the sexy type, you know. Not like there’s anything wrong with not being sexy, though. I think Tu really nailed it (She almost died summore. It’s not worth it, girl.) Surprised to see her getting such a low score for the challenge.

So congratulation, Shikin, I guess, for nailing it in the first challenge. She’s got the attitude and she looks super comfortable on the runway. And the second spot goes to...

...Valerie? Seriously, wtf? I think her twin, Veronika, did better. Nametha, Cindy and Layla got the bottom three spot, with Layla getting the lowest score. And that would affect her photoshoot later on, where she decided to quit halfway (Tu managed to talk her into continuing her photoshoot though. Go, Tu!).

PHOTOSHOOT CHALLENGE

This shoot is reminiscent of last cycle’s trampoline shoot. Their photographs were taken by the super nice photographer, Joel Lim, and the brief was high fashion and high energy. Anyway, some girls really gave it their all, jumping in high heels, delivering some crazy, hair-flippin shot.

MY 5 BEST

1) Heidi, 5th place, 35.6 points

That’s a traffic-stopping shot right there. Put a Subaru car behind her with its tagline “Confidence in Motion,” and this photo would be perfect for a Subaru ad. It fits the brief, it’s breathtaking, every piece fits into the perfect spot - the fuck it got called fifth?

2) Clara, 1st place, 44.7 points

I, however, get why this is called first. What an exquisite photo. While I can see Heidi’s on a billboard, I can see Clara’s in a fashion magazine. It’s beautifully poised and delicate, but you can still see the high energy and movement there. She said during the photoshoot that she likes working with photographers that use lotsa compliments. Hope working with Yu Tsai won’t break her.

3) Dorothy, 7th place, 35.3 points

Another one that I don’t get. Seventh? Pia (Miss Beauty Pageant) said she’s seen this type of pose multiple times, but I like it. The facial expression could’ve used some improvements, but other than that, I think this one’s a killa.

4) Valerie, 2nd place, 41.5 points

Strong face, killer legs, but I think I’d like it better if she doesn’t look like someone’s just accidentally eaten the sandwich she’d saved for lunch. #killerglare

5) Maureen, 3rd place, 38.7 points

She’s quite petite, apparently. And it kinda shows in this photo. But I love the positioning of her legs and she looks super-composed in this shot. Her profile is amazing. And loving those cheekbones, gurl! 

I’m a cheekbone man.

MY 5 WORST

5) Shikin, 5th place, 35.9 points

Gurl got called fifth due to her high challenge score. This is sooo underwhelming. I get that maybe it’s harder for her considering that she got one of the taller heels, but so did Clara. Get your shit together, boo. Love, #TeamMalaysia

4) Veronika, 4th place, 36.0 points

She did utilize the garment well, but that’s about it. That face is whack and her hip looks distorted. Can’t believe she got called fourth.

3) Anjelica, Eliminated, 29.8 points

It’s not the worst in the bunch, you know. But the main issue that I have with this photo is how inoffensively bland it is. It’s not good, it’s not bad, and it’s not interesting. She got the fifth spot for the runway challenge so her score for this photo must be really, really low.

2) Nametha, Bottom Two, 30.6 points

Honey, THE FUCK?

And the worst photo of the week goes to...

1) Cindy, 10th place, 34.6 points 

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS, CINDY??” indeed.

Goodbye, Anjelica.

So the ladies bid farewell to Anjelica.

I have a feeling that there’ll be a lot of the judges playing favourite this season. I don’t really pay attention to the scores given by them (some Fb commenters pointed out that Pia gave an unreasonably low score to one of the girls) but I hope they’d at least make it less obvious than last season (Angie, anyone? Ugh.).

That’s all for this week folks. See you next Sunday.

[woodworkingpastor]

Ascended with Scars (Ascension Sunday, 2018); Acts 1:1-11

Call to Worship (based on Ephesians 1:15-23, The Message)

Jesus shows us who we are and what our purpose is.

Jesus had his eye on us long before we heard his call.

When we fell in love with him, we found ourselves home free: signed, sealed and delivered by his Spirit!

For the Spirit is God’s guarantee that God’s kingdom will come.

Now we need only to know Christ personally and to see what he calls us to do.

For he empowers a glorious life: endless energy, boundless strength!

And all this power issues from Christ!

For God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven.

He runs the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule!

And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything.

At the center of this, Christ rules the church. The church is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church.

The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.  Alleluia! Let us worship God in Christ!

One of the more exciting track and field events is the 4 x 100 meter relay. Four-person teams compete to see which team can carry a baton one lap around the track the fastest.  When this race is well done, it is a sight to behold. Olympic caliber men’s teams can complete the race in under 38 seconds; women’s teams in under 41 seconds.

As with any competition, there are rules.  Each relay team member runs approximately 100 m, and the three baton changes must each be made within a 20 m zone.  The outgoing runner (the one receiving the baton) cannot touch the baton before it enters the zone; the incoming runner (the one with the baton) cannot touch the baton after it leaves the zone.  And, of course, the runners must stay in their own lane.

The pass is normally done blind; the runner receiving the baton keeps their eyes ahead, one arm back, and listens for their teammate’s verbal command.

I was reminded of this event this week when I was at a track meet at Patrick Henry High School. There was a judge at each corner of the track where the baton passes were being made. If all the transfers were legal, the judge would raise a white flag. But if there was an illegal transfer, the yellow flag would be raised, indicating that someone would be disqualified.

If you’re wondering what a track event has to do with the less-commonly recognized holiday of Ascension Day, you might suspect that on this day, Jesus passed a baton to on to his disciples, a baton that has been passed down through the years to us. It’s a great text to consider our Brethren tagline Continuing the work of Jesus.

2018 has been an odd year with the coincidence of Christian and Hallmark holidays.

February 2 was Candlemas, the day that recognizes the infant Jesus’ presentation in the temple.  We also know February 2 as Groundhog Day.

February 14 was Ash Wednesday, and we had a worship service that evening.  Some, though, might have taken their significant other out for dinner because it was Valentine’s Day.

April 1 was Easter, and what a great set of worship services we had, also acknowledging April Fools’ Day

Ascension Day is described in Acts 1. We happen to know from the text that Jesus’ ascension into Heaven happened 40 days after his resurrection, which means that Ascension Day is always on a Thursday. But we recognize it on the following Sunday, which happens to be Mother’s Day this year.

To be completely honest, I cannot every remember celebrating Ascension Sunday in worship. It’s certainly never been a focus in the years I’ve served as pastor. But from looking through old Brethren hymnals, it would appear that what Ascension Day represents was more important in the past.  Our current hymnal has five hymns for use on Ascension Day. The red hymnal had two, and you had to pick those out of the section entitled “Resurrection.”  

But the 1926 Brethren hymnal wins the Ascension Day prize, offering up a whopping 10 different hymns for this date on the calendar, including this hymn written by Charles Wesley, entitled Hail the day that sees Him rise

Hail the day that sees him rise,

ravished from our wishful eyes!

Christ, awhile to mortals given,

reascends His native heav’n.

But most importantly, what is the significance of Ascension Day?  It is another day to worship Jesus:

like we do at Christmas, singing Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king.

like we do at Easter, singing Christ the Lord is risen today!

How does our attention to this day shape our character so we might more faithfully follow Jesus on all the other days?

We might answer that question by pointing to three different things that Luke tells us about:

First, we see Jesus giving convincing proofs that he was alive.  Sometimes I wonder if our familiarity with the Easter texts makes us almost numb to what the texts are actually saying; that in raising Jesus from the dead God not only reversed the inevitable and relentless natural biological order of life which begins with the specialness of birth and ends with the finality of death; but God also reversed the tragic spiritual order of life which begins in the innocence of childhood that is tainted with the impact of sin and leads to spiritual death.

The disciples had to be reeling from these reversals; it makes one wonder if it took the full 40 days for them to simply regain their balance and orientation to Jesus being right there in front of them. But in front of him he was, eating fish, sitting in chairs, talking, and building campfires, all things that people who are alive do. It was these proofs on which authors like Luke based their writing. The Jesus-movement was born based on the historical testimony of what we celebrated on Easter Sunday.

Second, Jesus spoke to the disciples of the Kingdom of God. Can you imagine that summer intensive class?  40 days with Jesus teaching us to not allow our imaginations to be co-opted by the powers and value system of our day, but instead be shaped by what God wants to do in the world.  

This was still a point of struggle for the disciples, and of course it is a struggle for us. Even after all they had seen and heard, their imaginations were still captured by what they had been taught in Sunday School, that the Messiah was going to establish an earthly kingdom and sit on a throne in Jerusalem and rule like his ancestor David.  The temptation was that God’s will would be implemented through the force of political and military power as it had been in Old Testament times. They could not yet imagine a Savior who would die rather than kill; who would serve rather than force; who would love rather than hate. The Kingdom of God is that radical a notion, cutting against the very ways we have come to instinctively suspect the world should work.

In teaching about the Kingdom of God, Jesus wants these disciples to know that we are better off living as if the old order of the world has ended, even though the world itself carries on. One way to understand the beginning of the Gospel message is to understand Paul’s words to the congregation in Rome: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: 

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). 

The Kingdom of God starts with the simple yet profound assumption that we are all—each one of us—broken in a significant way, broken to the extent that we cannot fix ourselves. Our mutual brokenness does not make us enemies. There is no ranking system or score sheet where we go down the list and add up point totals for the various ways we are broken, and then decide who is worth more because they are the “least broken.”  

Knowing this Jesus who loves us in spite of our brokenness, what are we to do?  Love one another. Thomas Merton says “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.” And so we do the things that Jesus did: Heal the sick; cast out evil; feed the hungry; welcome the stranger; preach the truth; challenge the hypocrites; demand justice; call people to leave their lives of sin and lead godly lives; forgive; embrace the outcasts; work tirelessly to convince people that God loves them passionately. That’s the baton that is passed to us. We are to go and do these things. The baton is being passed.

Third, the Ascension teaches us that Jesus really is in heaven. Our faith tradition affirms that Jesus is seated at the right hand of our father in Heaven. One of the implications of that fact is that in spite of our occasional feelings to the contrary, our prayers do so much more than “bounce off the ceiling.”  Jesus is alive to hear them.

That’s an important fact in many situations, but perhaps in a unique way on this day. Mother’s Day is a great day for some.  A friend of mine who grew up and now serves in a black congregation said Mother’s Day worship attendance rivals the attendance on Easter Sunday, because when mom says she wants you to go to church with you, you get dressed up and go.

But today isn’t the happy, special day for everyone; we also acknowledge that some approach this day with a sense of loss—for children they were not able to have; for children who died too soon; for mothers who are no longer here. I know of several who stayed away from worship on this day because Mother’s Day brings painful memories of one kind or another.

Jesus knows about our pain. In among all the work he did and encourages us to continue, he also knew the sufferings that accompany being human. Jesus felt the sting of death in his friend Lazarus; he got involved in the sufferings of mothers who lost sons and fathers with sick children and even soldiers with hurting servants. Jesus was moved with compassion for people who were suffering abuse from a broken world and he accepted all of this pain and brokenness into his own life and was crucified. And when he ascended to Heaven, he ascended with scars of his own. Jesus was not a stranger to his own suffering, and he is not unsympathetic to our own.

You are not alone in your suffering because Jesus knows suffering and is alive and in Heaven to hear it and to become involved with it, and to bring comfort.  

On Ascension Day, the baton was passed to the disciples, who down through the years have passed it on to us. Are you there in your lane to receive it?