#but on the other hand… there’s still 200 pages and i am not enjoying it.. maybe it could get better though? idk

[jasonisaacs]

should you try to force yourself to finish a book you really aren’t enjoying or is it better to just abandon it and move on to a different book? i’m curious to know people’s thoughts on this..

[cheylouwho]

i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and i want to hear someone from SPHS’s thoughts.

i know you’ve noticed the “tiktok” fan base- the ones that only watch clips of the show and then say they’re fans. i read one of your posts talking about these types of fans and making blatantly incorrect headcanons. that’s something that bugs me, but another thing that bugs me is the fact i do not believe south park is tiktokable. i’ll use family guy as a comparison for my points.

first of all, compared to family guy, the humor is different, pretty much everything they explained in the cartoon wars two parter explains what i mean, m&t are not fans of interchangeable jokes and are able to give characters emotional progression throughout the episode. that’s one huge factor, i hope you get what i’m trying to imply with that. m&t are passionate about their story telling and it pays off in their episodes. i know not EVERY SINGLE joke follows this, but there are jokes made better by understanding the characters and the circumstance of the episode. the episodes work best in their entirety. (that was difficult to explain so i fear it can be misinterpreted easily)

the characters are another thing i want to mention. i watched the episode TSST with two friends awhile ago, one of which who had never seen an episode and didn’t understand cartmans character. she kept asking questions about him, or said how weird his hitler obsession was. the other friend hadn’t finished south park and said he hated cartmans character and it’s hes one of the bad pieces of the show. i believe even if you don’t like cartman as a personal preference thing, you should at least appreciate him as a character and his placement, it’s hard to understand him (despite us watching an episode that really dives into him, they still didn’t know much about him before). with family guy, one episode is enough to grasp the character, hell, even a single scene is i’d say, while m&t are very good at developing and fleshing out character personalities over time. it’s why they can pull off making sad episodes (like kenny dies and assburgers), heartwarming episodes (like tweek x craig and even bits of episodes like in raisins) all while still being a comedy show. they understand how to make the characters react in a way that can make you feel something while maintaining a good amount of jokes in the episode.

i dont know, theres more i could add but i’m just writing whatever comes to mind first so it might make no sense or it might be wrong. also, i’m by no means an old fan. i’ve rewatched the series quite a few times, watched commentaries, researched through wiki pages and am constantly trying to better my knowledge of the show, but i know i’m not quite there yet and could just be making a mistake GAHAH

No anon, I actually totally get this and agree 100%. SP as a show is not something that works well with out of context clips (and even then, the ones that do work are usually from very early in an episode before the plot fully gets established and stakes as drawn). Until pre s18 when they started soft continuity (and then s19-21s full continuity, after that is a whole other discussion entirely), the shows syndicated nature did make it easier to hop into any episode and watch it in its entirety and enjoy it without much prior knowledge of the show or it's characters. However, even then, you really needed to watch the *whole* episode to get the big picture of it's message.

And I get it, SP full length episodes are not as accessible as they once were. People these days don't know how or aren't willing to pirate things if they don't have the streaming service SP is hosted on, and beyond that, south park used to be free to watch on their website. Like, that's how I ended up catching up on the show when I finally decided to take it all in other than a handful of episodes and scenes I'd seen during my childhood back in 2013. It was all entirely available (save for Super Best Friends, 200 and 201, which I had to go track down on other websites) for free, with ads unless you used an ad blocker, right at your fingertips. And that's how M+T wanted SP to be consumed, because they explicitly noted that they didn't care about making money on streamed episodes, they cared about getting their show out there. (I will have to go find that interview, I know it's somewhere).

But still, regardless of that, you're right. SP is not something that you can consume short form as a brief tiktok video, and that's why I think we have newer fans with such big gaps in knowledge that seem like they would be easy to fill in. It's not that they're being willfully ignorant, they're just being fed a very piecemeal version of the show through social media, which is how we get people thinking Pip is a he//llpa//rk OC (augh!!! dont get me started) instead of realizing this dude was actually in the fucking show, or headcanons that are very easy to contradict with canon itself by watching like 3 episodes. That's not me knocking HCs btw, go wild and do whatever you want, but these people don't even know it's ooc, and that's a little troublesome. I've made some outlandish character decisions in the past but I at least KNEW they were not evidence based.

What that means for the fandom down the road I don't know, and its made a lot of discussion and analysis more shallow-- it's so hard outside of my SPHS friend group to find good breakdowns these days. I'm hoping maybe something will change, but who knows.

TLDR fuck tiktok and its watering down of media

[moonshynecybin]

do you have any books recommendations? 🙏

okay usually i like to know a general vibe for recommendations bc this is INTIMATE!!! and im actually in a weird place in my reading journey where im trying to branch out and try a bunch of different books in a bunch of different genres bc i got lowkey sick of what i was reading all the time so this is all over the place. whatever fuck it. here are some recent ones in no particular order that ive enjoyed OR at the very least found interesting. most of these are pretty famous i'll be real im not breaking the wheel here. under the cut bc she is long

our wives under the sea by julia armfield. was this book good hmm i dont know. was it kind of fucked up and interesting. YES. some of the prose is legitimately sooo gorgeous and the portrait it paints of the central relationship is intimate and oftentimes heartrending i still think about it which is kind of what you want from a story tbh... a really slow plot (kind of nonexistent) thats frankly more about grief than anything. theres some spooky body horror here so beware

slaughterhouse five by kurt vonnegut. shes a classic for a REASON. do you ever pick up a book that is very beloved and famous. and then get genuinely and pleasantly surprised that it actually rules. happened to me. legit kind of life changing and also made me laugh out loud. if you havent read it get on it

the kingdoms by natasha pulley. read this over the summer and i vividly remember sitting in the basement at my job hiding so i could read one more page i was RIVETED!!! its historical fantasy its time travel its amnesia it is. on a boat. basically like what if fucked up gay love and also magic made france win the napoleonic wars would that be crazy or what!!! and it was!! also read some of her other stuff which is VERY similar and it was like. fine to good. but i LOVED this one

carrie by stephen king. read it around halloween and i enjoyed it more than i thought i would ! some category 5 stephen king sexism but its an interesting 200 page scifi novel with epistolary elements and some great characters i can see how it launched his career into the stratosphere... really good one to start off with reading stephen king if you wanna dip a toe in but are wary of the 1000 page doorstop novels. i say give it a try !

demon copperhead by barbara kingsolver. recent pulitzer prize winner. its a retelling of david copperfield with a distinctly southern appalachian lens which im always interested in because i am from southern appalachia and frankly the way we get treated in fiction is wild. like hillbilly cannibals who are illiterate coalminers wild. if i ever catch the guy that wrote hillbilly elegy we are throwing hands. but i liked this ! the region does have a long history of poverty and it was interesting to think about that in conversation to the social commentary with a victorian vibe from david copperfield. i mean this is decidedly unvictorian but that was floating in the back of my head at all times reading it so it made me THINK.

giovanni's room by james baldwin. another one where i was like do you see this shit?? this shit is crazy. and the shit in question is one of the most acclaimed and beloved novels of all time. anyways another life changer get on it.

even as we breathe by annette saunooke clapsaddle. another southern appalachia moment ! this one rings VERY true for me actually, despite being a historical novel... written with a lot of love for the area and made me cry a bit cause i was homesick at the time... great mystery and cool local history. also! one of the better representations of the cherokee people ive seen in fiction. which usually im hesitant to like. pin that as a THE major reason you should read it bc the story is ALSO very good but its a central theme of the novel so i thought i should mention it. plus the author is cherokee so she's coming at it with knowledge and care

in memoriam by alice winn. recommendation from a tumblr mutual so i thought id continue the tradition! read it in literally a day so im fuzzy on the details but its about rich eton style english schoolboys getting their spirits basically destroyed in the trenches of ww1... also a gay love story... lots of poetry very tragic but not overly so and certainly very readable... a competent historical gay romance if thats ur thing youll probably enjoy it

the poppy war by r f kuang. interesting bc it initially feels like a historical fantasy novel with a young protagonist going to a magic school and overcoming the odds slash beating the evil enemy story thats been done one billion times. but it is DEEPLY not that. takes the conventions of the genre and kind of refuses to make them reducible or easy to package. deals with war (read the warnings etc). deals with genocide. deals with race. wrestles with the ethics of all of its characters and comes down with some nuance. kind of a slay

and then here's some all time faves that are just GOOD and im reasonably sure anyone would have a good time with:

jane eyre. i have quoted this enough on this blog cmon. also if youre following me youre probably a fan of fucked up relationships so you should go. be with the OG. fly. like its foundational to the GENRE babyyyy

dracula. yayyyyy epistolary novelssss... another "fun" classic along with dorian gray... read em both they slap

the book thief. took me a year to read. made me cry lots.

daisy jones and the six. look at me look AWAYYY from the amazon series look at ME. this is a fun book. and if you are in a reading slump i frankly HIGHLY recommend it bc it is done in the style of like. a documentary autopsy on a fleetwood mac esque band implosion so its told in 100% dialogue as if they are being interviewed. you can read it in a DAY and its FUN and sometimes they CONTRADICT each other which i LOVE

the queens thief by meghan whalen turner. GOD!!!!! all time. all time. straight relationships in fiction that make you crazyyyyyyy and also genuinely delightful twists at the end of each book i LOVED them. i read them all in the pandemic they slayyyy

howl's moving castle. delightful. if you like a silly time in a fantasy world that makes you laugh a lot i would recommend. also the sequel its fun

any terry pratchet novel thank you goodnight

[ajokeformur-ray]

This post has been a long time coming but I just haven't had the time, the energy or the words.

But now, eight months later, I have all three, so here we go.

@rosesloveletters and I FINALLY got to meet in person in October 2022. It was everything we dreamed of and more. We had a lot planned for our holiday, and I mean a lot. An entire A4 page full of ideas and we managed to do every single one of them and even a few more which were impulsive and thought of on the day. Rose took me to four or five different clothing shops because I wanted a very specific type of shirt and I wasn't willing to compromise on what I wanted (we practically studied the reference photos, looking for The Right One™️ and to this day, you need a crowbar to get it off me), she took me to Smoothie King just because I vaguely mentioned I wanted another of what I'd fallen in love with a few days before (read: I begged her for my favourite drink and she was generous enough to take me even though we only went the day before💖). Not to mention the time she took me to Hot Topic and watched me spend $200 in ten minutes on band t-shirts. I went feral.

But unanimously, our favourite times were when we watched films, ate snacks and cuddled on the sofa every night. Hanging off each other's shoulders at 1am in her kitchen because we somehow fucked up s'mores so bad that all we could do was laugh about it. Were they delicious because we made them well or because we were high on laughter and each other's company? I still can't decide and I don't think I'm supposed to.💕 All I wanted to do when I flew from the UK to the USA was give the woman I have come to know over the last (almost) four years as my sister, more of a family member to me than some actual biological family members, a good old squeeze. All I have ever wanted from Rose is a hug, and the more she gave me, the more I wanted. I stop counting after our tenth hug and started enjoying them without worrying about memorising the number.

Within just five minutes of meeting her for the first time, I had hugged her, touched her face to ascertain that she was real (this bit felt like a dream; I only recently asked and it was confirmed that I did actually do this🥺). I had managed to achieve a dream years in the yearning and making for the both of us, and headbutted her shoulder affectionately like a cat. I am not a touchy person, generally speaking, but with Rose, I was following her around her house like a puppy, wanting every second with her that I could. In the two weeks we were together, the longest amount of time we spent apart was when one of us was in the shower or we were sleeping. If those two things weren't happening, we were side by side and living the life.

I have never in my life felt so at peace and relaxed. I was in a totally new country having used my passport for the first time, been in an airport for the first time, flown for the first time, gone to America by myself with severe anxiety and depression (at the time I was undiagnosed and unmedicated) for the first time... I was a total wreck emotionally speaking and I had many an anxiety attack. I had people back home - primarily my aunt - pretty much holding my hand through phone and video calls to help me navigate the flying process and make it to Rose in one piece. I was so scared but then when I saw her coming at me through the crowd, it was like nothing mattered. I'd reached my sister, I was there with her... and that had been all I cared about. All the way between the home airport and the airport where we met, I just kept thinking Rose is on the other side, keep going, Rose is waiting... and it got me through one of the scariest self-imposed situations I've ever been in (so far).

All the daydreams in the years before we got to meet... none of it lived up to the reality of seeing Rose running towards me... I'm surprised we didn't knock each other to the floor, honestly. We practically flew at each other. Even now, I think of hugging her every day and meeting her again. It usually makes me cry, or at the very least go about my day smiling to myself. I am so so grateful to and for Rose... she really is like a sister to me, we share many similarities and any differences between us are minor. The aesthetic differences between us makes me giggle; sometimes talking to her is like talking to me, but our clothes went in the opposite direction to one another. I love her so much, so much, and I miss her every day.💔

The point is, I crossed the world to give Rose a hug and she welcomed me with an open home, open ears and open arms and I'll never be able to thank her enough for her warmth and generosity; not just once but twice, because I have already fully paid for my next journey to see her again in September 2023!🥺😍🙏I just... I love her so so much, she's the sister I always wanted. I wanna grow old with her, but I suspect I already am.🥰🫂💖

[existentialterror]

For your book disease poll: I answered "Yes", but since it's research for fiction, I thought you might enjoy the reasoning. Basically, I am terrible at reading and don't really like it at all anyway. I'm 23 and could count on one hand every Real Book (ie not a children's book with 5-10 sentences) that I have actually genuinely read the entirety of, including school-assigned books. I was an avid fanfiction reader for a while, but even then I would skip or skim paragraphs that bored me, not really read them. So I am 100% confident that there's nothing on the first page of a book that could incline me to genuinely read 200 pages.

However, I do think the more interesting question besides just "would you read the first page" is "how would you approach this". If just one page won't hurt, why not read the last page instead? You might be confused but you'll know how it ends. Or, why not gather a group and each read 1-10 pages each with a specific outline for how to rewrite them, and make a plagiarized version of the book -- would that still possess killing properties, even though it's not the original words? Does it matter if you read the book in order? What if someone spam e-mailed you one word from it (in order) every day, and you read each of those emails/words. Did you read the book/get the disease?

Thank you for the datapoint, kind stranger! (re: this poll)

Yeah, I think the approach thing is definitely interesting. What I'm thinking is that I have kind of a sense in my head of how this book works but not necessarily every specific case. Yet. But in-universe, I'm imagining that the whole world knows about this - people do have a pretty good sense - if not big studies, than at least theories and enough anecdotes from people who tried something new (and either succeeded or wrote down what they did before they beefed it.)

I figure that for my interest in doing a poll is moreso getting a sense of people's overall reaction and engagement with it - I love the though processes but I figure that everyone who's being like "well what if I only read every other page" is probably still going to engage with the book to a level they deem safe and WON'T charge ahead and read the whole thing on a whim - they clearly care about not dying!

[curiosity-killed]

Would love to hear your thoughts on atfots… the plot really surprised me given how the last book ended but overall it felt like a mixed bag to me

*cradles ur face tenderly in my hands* babycakes u have opened a can of worms

I'm not even going to pretend that this will be short or coherent so tl;dr: if I'm looking for a fun AU, I turn to ATFOTS; if I'm looking for canon compliant, meaningful sequels to HOTE, I turn to fanfiction.

General disclaimer that here be spoilers for ATFOTS and that while I don't intend this to be lambasting ATFOTS by any means, it's not the most positive review. So like, don't read below if you a) want to avoid spoilers or b) enjoyed the book, probably?

I think there are roughly 2 main categories of critique I have for ATFOTS, with a third just being the catchall for anything I miss and/or me yelling about the things that matter most to me lol so:

I. Sequel Sins

I am generally not a fan of sequels primarily because I think they tend to fall into a lot of similar traps such as overexplaining, inconsistent characterization, and undermining their own themes. This may be a product of growing up in love with sprawling series that all wound up basically having the same formula. ANYWAY.

Overexplaining: ATFOTS starts off by reintroducing Cliopher Mdang. My good sir. The POV character for the other doorstopper novel that came before (& which I love). I get the desire to make a sequel accessible to people who haven't read the first book but ATFOTS feels consistently like it's holding your hand very gently and bending down to make sure you're getting its full sincere eye contact and talking very slowly. I don't have a copy of the book on me to pull quotes, but it's especially flagrant in the first couple chapters.

Inconsistent characterization: WHOO BOY. Cliopher is so old! No he's young again! Now he's middle-aged! I have mixed feelings on the characterization overall—Rodin, for instance, came a bit out of left field—and most of it comes down to the way I loved the characters in HOTE and then in ATFOTS they all felt...a bit flatter and a bit caricaturized and a bit less true.

Undermining themes: The character thing comes in hard here IMO. One of the major threads of HOTE is Kip shaping his own path of success and receiving acknowledgment from his loved ones for his unique, uncommon route. And then ATFOTS comes in and is like ACTUALLY we're going to overwrite that with this GRAND and MYTHOLOGICAL story that also conveniently follows closely the story that will be familiar to your family. This isn't to say there isn't value in that type of story, but it definitely cheapens (imo) the thematic value of HOTE. And this is true for...kind of a lot of the stories' themes. ATFOTS seems to want to be "HOTE themes but bigger and better" and in doing so, kind of falls flat in delivery imo.

II. ATFOTS-Specific Pro/Con

Alright now onto a little more specific issues. This will be brief bc I think they're pretty self-explanatory lol

Con: Overall, I think ATFOTS tries to do too many things. I love a good book with many plotlines (see: erha my beloved) but ATFOTS' structure felt borderline episodic rather than building together into a satisfying reveal/culmination.

Pro: I'll get into Kip's sexuality below but do love the concept of fanoa

Con: It felt like a lot of tidbits of "oh ACTUALLY this was happening all along in HOTE I just didn't mention it"—see the comment that started this all around humming Aurora—in a way that felt less like a delightful little revelation and more like VG retroactively trying to incorporate things she hadn't decided on till that moment. Also feel this way about Ludvic's fam reveal but I'll get into that below.

Pro/Con: While I think the writing structure was a little tighter than HOTE (I'm sorry, I love Kip and I love HOTE but there were like 200 pages of having the same conversation over again) (maybe not actually 200. possibly 20. still.), girlie REALLY needed a copy edit. Like. I will copy edit ur book Ms. Goddard for u (I am cheap) but please let me fix the errors.

III. Getting My Grubby Little Gay Hands All Over this Book

aka personal preference shit that is entirely my opinion without critique for the writing quality but nonetheless are part of my critique

I love HOTE and I love HOTE principally for three four main categories: The Household (and Them), civil service, being The One Who Left, and ASEXUALITY BABEY. There are other aspects I love, of course, but these are kind of the big non-negotiables for me and four that ATFOTS kinda...did dirty imo.

In terms of the Household, HOTE gave us these middle-aged dudes who are pretty much defined and fulfilled by their dedication to their job to the exclusion of most other things. Kip has family but it's not family that really understands him most of the time and it's family that is very far away (*this will come up again). The rest of them don't have family outside of the household. They are very sincerely found/forced thru work family in a way that feels both very natural and blessedly free of nuclearization. They love each other and understand each other** in a way that none of them really have access to outside of this group.

And then ATFOTS (and admittedly RPA) comes along and is like "Ludvic has a dad! Conju's sister and boytoy are alive! Rodin has a devoted penpal!" in a way that feels a BIT like pairing off everyone so that the main couple can be together. Which like. I love Kip/Fitzroy, don't get me wrong, but I love the household and their weirdly intimate and formal and seemingly smooth as clockwork but internally messy vibe. I was so looking forward to reading about the retirement house and how that unspools (or at least thinking a lot about it in the way of the blorbo in the microwave) before ATFOTS.

So much of the heart of HOTE is the idea of community and connection (or isolation) and ATFOTS mostly veers away from that both thru the pairing off and through the things like Kip's solo adventures. It also, in some ways, sort of undermines some of the characters' core traits, such as Ludvic's devotion. Ludvic being a stout, unflinching companion for HR because he believes in him and sees the true man behind the Serenity is imo very different from Ludvic being an unflagging companion because he views HR as his uncle. Idk about y'all but family duty and personal devotion from choice are two different things in my experience.

On their own, they aren't bad but they are disappointing when compared to the aspects of HOTE I loved and would have hoped to see expanded upon in the sequel.

Kip's experience in civil service is also really important to me (literally made me more patient and cheerful at work when I was actively envisioning setting a plague of frogs loose upon my supervisor's house so like. Significant Importance to Me.)! This will not be articulate (I've legit been starting and deleting this sentence for like 5 min) bc it's very near and dear to my heart but the ideas of a) choosing to take a harder path, that is outside your community/family's conception of "normal" because you believe it is good and worthy, b) trying to improve a shitty system because you believe it can be made to better serve the people, and c) learning from both systems—are! just! very important to me okay. And not something I see a lot in fiction, but especially not in my most beloved of monstrously large fantasy novels.

And then ATFOTS is just JK time for an epic fantasy romp! and that's cool but that's not why I loved the first book! that's not the right tone at all!!! if i wanted an epic fantasy romp I would pick up Iron Widow but I wanted the bureaucracy D: (shoutout to ao3 user alfgifu for giving me the bureaucracy and also sorry for all the nonsense comments)

This is also super closely tied to Being the One Who Left tbh because well. Me. But one of the core elements of HOTE—the part that actually first snagged me and pulled my attention in—is that Kip is the one who left his community behind for no good reason to chase a weird dream instead of settling down and following the normal path to success.

*eyeing my high school classmates who are all settled down with 2.5 kids and starting photography businesses on the side while living within 20 minutes of where they grew up* Huh I Wonder Why This is Relatable

At the heart of being the one who left is this tug between guilt and desire/love/duty/curiosity/whatever pull factor. In HOTE, Kip is pushed to stay home by his duty to his community, his love of his family, and his family's own pressure. He's pulled to stay in the service by his duty to the world/government, his love of his found family, and by the urge to do more, to make things better as much as he can. In both places, he's not fully understood and when he's in either location, he misses the other. The importance is the tug, the dual identity, the sense of always being partially understood and partially misunderstood in different ways depending on the ground you're standing on. I could...very literally, write essays on each of these last items but I am trying to wrap it up bc I should actually be coding rn whoops

ATFOTS blots this out by transforming his Solaara experience into, basically, Just A Job. A job he cares about and can be proud of, sure, but just the job. It really...kind of aggressively, ignores the relationships and life Kip has made there in favor of focusing solely on this glorious return to home while conveniently giving everyone else people to be with instead of the household. which I'm sure my mom would like but ANYWAY

and now, last but decidedly not least OR clearest *drum roll pls* ASEXUALITY BABEY

okay so I will caveat this by saying different rep serves different people, there are infinitely many ways to be asexual, etc etc that all being said ATFOTS' handling of Kip's sexuality just left me a little...dissatisfied? And tbh I struggle to articulate it because I feel like it probably comes down to "this isn't the rep I would like but I can see where it's meaningful to others."

Like I can justify it—a lifelong commitment as fanoa is described is different than a romantic or sexual relationship, it's entirely fair to have a character want that commitment without risking it by mixing in romance/etc., it's good to have a devoted and platonic relationship at the core where normally a (straight) romantic/sexual relationship would be

and yet. I caught myself making faces at the book half the time when dealing with their relationship. Some of it feels a little like trying to Do All The Rep in one go—Kip's tingly fuzzy feelings and (mostly) lack of romantic attraction, neutrality around sex and aversion to sex in this relationship—in a way that almost definitely describes actual humans out in the world but feels a little...off in a fictional character? My general wish for asexual characters is getting to be in devoted relationships where the allosexual partner(s) is willing to not have sex and still be committed but I caught myself being like "y'all just fuck already" in ATFOTS which is uhhhh not the norm

tbf my ideal Kip/Fitzroy retirement relationship is basically just them (and the household) all living together and everyone on the outside kind of being ???? is it a sex thing???? while they contentedly carve out their own life yet again but this time with more touch and laughter and song.

Actually having gotten to this point, I feel like my main sticking point with ATFOTS sexuality is that Sex Is A Big Thing in the book while never being super effectively resolved imo and also not actually being a big thing to the characters in HOTE. Like one of these dudes has been celibate for 1000 years or so and another one has had like 3 brief lovers across the same amount of time. I think there are some other things we could focus on here

[shedaresthedevil]

This is the ache that says "You do not want him"

Pairing; Matt Murdock X NB! ReaderOC

18+ MINORS DNI!!!!

Warnings : SMUT. sexual tension filled fight sequences, mutual pining, two idiots in love but they wont admit it, mentions of male and female anatomy, afab! Reader, choking, violence, sprinkle of angst

HOLY shit you guys I'm back! I've been in a writing slump and I think I'm finally out of it with this 8,861 word pure h o r n y jail fantasy. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the "what is the thing you find most attractive about Matt " post! I was able to incorporate everything. I really wanted you all to be involved because I could not have done any of this without you. Ironically, I reached 200 followers the other day, and this is the 100 follower special. I already know what I'm doing for 200, and 300 when we get there. Until then, I have quite a few fics on deck for you to enjoy.

As usual, I will be continuing to edit even after posting. So if you see a mistake, no you didn’t.

Tell me your favorite line? Please?

@matt-erialgirl  @freshabogados  @loki-silver-tongued-god  @e-dubbc11 @lexlovescoffee  @pleasedin  @candyello  @carisi-sonny  @sobachka-korol  @1800-fight-me  @mydeerprongsie1960  @alrighty-matty @hellskitchenswhore @hellskitchens-whore @reborn-rekall @alidafirtup @moonlarking @saintmurd0ck @last-honey @xbamboowishesx @mindidjarin @skvatnavle @bunnywritesmarvel @mccnknightstcrdst @fluffyprettykitty @aramora

  "Again." You panted, rolling on to your feet to stand.

Matt circled you, his signature smirk resting on his lips.

"You sure? You don't have to get it perfectly today."

"Says you. Don't you know I have to do everything correctly or I'm a failure and I'm never doing it again?"

Matthew laughed quietly, shaking his head.

"That's entirely untrue, sweetheart."

"Yeah, you wouldn't know anything about that, would you Matt?"

Your tone was dripping in playful sarcasm, and you were glad the two of you were on the same page. You kept each other in check, pushing each other when necessary. You tossed his nightstick back to him and he caught it with ease,even with his back turned to you.

The other night you had been unable to escape a hold, your neck still bruised from the piece of pipe that had been held against you. You were in the middle of fighting two other people when a third had come behind you, stealing your breath as the metal was forced against your throat with monstrous strength. You had kept the other two at bay with your feet for as long as you could.Your hands had become useless as the oxygen was deprived from your body, even as you tried to claw the pipe away. Your mind was overwhelmed with the fact that there was no air. You could not think of how to escape; there was only the fight to breathe. You had almost passed out, your vision slowly decreasing and getting darker by the second.

And then there was Matt, moving towards you, the full confidence of the Devil exuded in his gait. You would almost call it a strut, given the power in his approach. He commanded the space, almost in the same way as he would in the courtroom. But instead of a quiet storm that waited to strike, this was one that raged, one that roared with no question of if it would come raining down, but when. If you hadn't been struggling to breathe already, you might have even been flustered by it. Within seconds, Matt had freed you, pushing your assailant backwards and out of range from you. You fell to the concrete, straining for air as you turned to see how it would go down.

“I am not afraid to hurt you.”  You heard him threaten, voice low and dangerous.

A shiver ran down your spine, contrasting with the burn in your lungs.

Matthew was an incredible fighter, and you would be lying if you said it didn't excite you.

He was fearless, borderline vicious in his desire to protect the city and apparently, you. You heard bones crack against his fist, and finally, the last man fell. Matt rolled his shoulders, and you found yourself staring at them, broad and strong.

You had made your way to your feet, leaning with your hands on your knees while you fought to catch your breath.

"You should really watch your back, sweetheart." He had teased, head tilting as his tongue slid out to lick his lips.

You looked up at him, exasperated by his comment.

You held up a finger, and he laughed.

"When I regain the ability to breathe," you rasped, "I'm going to take that mask off your face and choke you with it. "

Matt simply shook his head, smiling all the while. The pair of you had left, leaping from rooftop to rooftop to avoid being seen. The adrenaline had worn off by the time you were almost back at Matt's apartment, and the pain of the asphyxiation had sunk in. You ripped off your hood and face shield, settling down on the couch. Your throat still burned,but otherwise you were intact, save for a few cuts and bruises. Stripping off your hoodie, you tossed it to the chair, leaving you in your binder and undershirt.

Matthew had already walked to the bathroom to gather the medical kit you had insisted you two put together. He could smell the coppery tang of blood from both himself and you, as well as the sweat that coated your skin and… salt. You were crying, but he wasn't sure what for. Matthew had found it was better to let you tell him on your own why, rather than asking. He re-entered the living room, and you leaned forward, elbows resting on your knees. The black paint you hid your eyes with was smeared across your palms from you wiping it away.

"Here, try this." Matthew offered, handing you a wet washcloth.

You took it with gratitude, wiping your face and hands off as best you could. You would need something stronger to get it all off, but it would be sufficient for now. You set the cloth down, looking toward Matt, who had already removed his mask to wipe away  his own sweat and blood. Flipping open the box, you reached for an alcohol swab for the cut on Matt's face. Standing, you walked to meet him.

"Let me see, Matt."

"You don't have to do that. I can do it myself, I have for years. " He replied, tone coming out harsher than he had intended.

You swallowed, taking a step back.

"I'm sorry. I don't want to make you feel incapable. That wasn't my intention." You apologized, gaze dropping to the floor.

You sounded defeated, and moreover you sounded hurt. Matt raked his fingers through his hair, regretting his response. He knew you had retreated inwardly; you had backed down almost instantly. You never backed down, even when he was in a mood. It was one of the things that he loved the most about you- you challenged him, even if he was certain in his conviction.

"That's not what I meant either. This week has been difficult, but that doesn't mean I should take it out on you. You're only trying to help."

Which was true. They had lost a case in court earlier in the week and Matt had been thrown off since. You felt more in the way than helpful this week, and that sense of worthlessness had begun to take its toll on you.

Your brow furrowed, and your lips twitched from side to side. You started to reach up toward his wound again, but Matt stopped you, taking hold of your wrist gently.

"I'm sorry. You're upset."

"I'm not upset, Matt." you countered, swiping against the blood that still stained his face.

Lie.

"Please don't lie to me. Talk to me."

You shook your head, biting your lip as you fought the burn in your eyes. Crying was your body's first reaction to you being frustrated, and you loathed it.

"I'm not upset. I'm frustrated." You finally admitted, placing a bandage across his cheek.

Matt could practically hear the thoughts of self doubt rolling around in your brain. You were so hard on yourself, and he could recognize it easily; he was the exact same way.

"Is it because you got caught off guard? I've had that happen before, it's not as rare as you think it is ."

You scoffed, warm tears falling down your face without your permission as you continued to clean Matt up.

"Yeah, but the difference is that you got out of it. Even with everything I know, I still couldn't escape it. I couldn't even think of how to get away, I was so focused on trying to breathe. My brain stopped. I just…"

You trailed off as you felt Matt's fingers graze lightly across your cheek, taking your tears with them.

"What is it, sweetheart?"

Matt's tone was soft, empathetic, the facade of arrogance falling away.

"I hate feeling like a burden. The last thing I want is to be an extra person that you have to protect or look after. I should be able to hold my own and not have to wait for you to come and help me all the time."

Ah. There it was.

"Stop. Come here." he said, drawing you into his embrace.

"This week has been shit for both of us. You are not a burden or an inconvenience. You've saved my skin more times than I can count, I'm just returning the favor, okay?"

You inhaled against his chest, the scent of black oak and amber soothing to your anxiety ridden body.

"Okay." You mumbled, stepping out of Matthews arms.

Your mouth twitched again, a telling sign that something else was bothering you. Your breathing also changed in pattern.

"I know you need to say something else."

"I just hate that I cry so much. Really makes me seem like I get overwhelmed too easily." You groaned, running your fingers through your hair.

Matt gave a low laugh, moving to clean your wounds in reciprocation.

"No, it just means you feel things very deeply, " he began, cleaning a split in your lip, "I do too, and not just because of my senses being heightened. "

You flinched at the sting as Matt wiped your skin. You hissed as he cleaned the gash on your shoulder, feeling particularly sensitive.

"Sorry." He whispered with a small smile, trying to be more gentle in his work.

"I've had worse." You joked, making a motion toward your throat that was already darkened with bruises.

Matt reached out, resting his hand at the base of your neck, fingers brushing against your pulse point.

"I'm sorry I wasn't faster." He whispered, hearing the soft tissue shift and your windpipe rasp as you breathed.

You reached for the side of Matt's neck, mirroring his actions, touching the hand that was on you with the other.

"You feel that? I know you can hear it, but do you feel it?"

Matthew nodded, tongue sneaking out over his bottom lip as he swallowed.

"I'm here. I'm whole, and so are you. We have each other, Matty. I'm not going anywhere."

A small, but genuine smile appeared on Matt's face as the two of you stood there, grounding each other. You were definitely in his corner, the past three months had proven as much, but it was more than that.

 He could never tell you how terrified he was to lose you; that wasn't what you wanted.  He couldn't tell you what you meant to him beyond what already was, even if your touch made him ache for you. Matt could not tell you that he wanted to be intimate with you, on more than a physical level. You were always there for him after everything, whether it was emotionally or to tend to his wounds. You embraced him exactly as he was, both as Matthew and as The Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

"Could you…. Could you teach me? How you get out of a hold like that?"

The smile quickly turned into a smirk.

"I thought you'd never ask."

And now here you were, in your basement learning to get out of holds and to improve your disarming skills. The hold against your throat you had gotten pretty quickly, but the disarming technique you and Matt were currently working on was taking you some time. You had run through it about a dozen times now, and you still were not getting it right.

"C'mon, again." You repeated, readying your hands.

"You really want to get hit again? I'm starting to feel bad."

It was true, your ribs ached from being struck repeatedly with his nightstick, but you were determined to get it, at least once. Matt scrutinized your stance, head tilting to the side.

"Wait. Your hands are too high. I think that's the problem."

You dropped your hands, unsure of where exactly you should put them. Matt shook his head, coming to stand behind you.

"May I?"

You agreed, and Matt took a hold of your hands to reposition your arms where they needed to be, bending slightly to do so. You tried not to think about how his hands felt on your skin, the light calluses creating a pleasurable friction.

"You're trying to compensate for my height, but I'm striking in a downward arc like someone who would try and hit you would. There."  He explained, finally satisfied with your arm placement. His hands dropped to your hips, feeling the lack of tension in them.

“Spread your legs a little wider for me. Just like that.”

Matt's voice was low and directly next to your ear. You suppressed a tremble as he withdrew, returning to his place across from you.

"Ready? We'll go step step by step again."

You nodded, taking a deep breath. Matt swung, and the stick came towards you with a blinding speed. Your forearm connected with the center, holding it at bay. You withheld the cry of triumph in your throat.

"Excellent. Let's do it again and then we'll move on to the next part."

Matthew reset his position, as did you. He swung once more, and you blocked it again, a wicked grin spreading across your face. You dropped your hand down, grasping the baton tightly.

"What's next?" Matt encouraged, a grin of his own trying to form.

"My other hand comes over to push the nightstick up and away , and I grab your arm. I use the hand that's on the baton to take it from you as I push your arm down and twist away."

"Alright let's see it then- well, as well as I can see anything."

You groaned, shaking your head as you reset to try it all together. You ran through it slowly, making sure you had the motion down.

"Can we try it at your real speed now? I know you've been holding back even when you "weren't."." You asked, hoping Matt would say yes.

Getting it in a slow, practiced motion was one thing. Getting it at the speed of the Devil? That was another matter entirely. Matthew sighed.

"If you think you're ready. I promise I won't hold out on you."

"I am. Show me what you've got, devilish man." You prodded, rolling your shoulders back.

Matt raised his eyebrows, and then struck without warning. You blocked, then took hold of the wood, using it as a fulcrum as your other hand came to grab Matthew's arm, twisting away with the nightstick in hand. Matt advanced, coming behind you. You turned quickly,  down swinging the baton to protect yourself as you did so. You felt it connect with his hip, quickly raising it again to deflect the blow that was headed towards your face.

The two of you panted hard, Matt's signature smirk gracing his features.

"Good girl."

And the alarm that settled on Matt's face wiped away the look of satisfaction that had been there only seconds before.  He heard your heart rate tick upward at the praise, but he assumed it was because he had used a feminine term. You felt something, but it wasn't anger. You felt it stir low in your body, tendrils of mild arousal climbing up your skin.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean-"

Matt felt his face heat and a light laugh left your lips. It was a rarity to see him flustered, but you didn't exploit it. Not when he was genuinely concerned that he had upset you.

"Matt, it's okay. I use she/they, remember?"

Matt swallowed, still completely thrown off by his mistake.

"Is that okay, though?"

You simply shook your head, placing your hand on his arm to reassure him.

"I identified as female for Twenty-three years of my life, and sometimes I still feel that way. Traditionally feminine compliments and words do not bother me, okay?"

Matt nodded, asking if you were ready to move on to sparring. You always ended training with a hand to hand match, seeing who would last the longest and make the other submit first. You tossed the stick aside off the mats you had laid down on the floor. You began to circle each other, waiting each other out to see who would strike first.

"You're going to make me pay for all the times I hit you in the ribs, aren't you?" Matt said playfully, focusing on your mouth as your lips slid into a smirk.

He quickly focused elsewhere, as the thought of how your mouth would feel against his entered his mind. Your presence was…distracting today, but that would not deter him from making you give in.

"I feel like you would be offended if I didn't."you quipped.

Your eyes locked in on his bare shoulder, the black fabric of his tank top clinging to his soaked body. You shook your head once more, trying to anchor your attention somewhere else.

"You know me so well." He replied, leaning out of the way of your strike.

His eyebrows raised, head tilting in amusement and expectance.  He continued his prowling; that was truly the only way you could describe it- a hunter and his prey.

"Interesting. " He mused, rolling his shoulders back.

Matt was sizing you up, trying to anticipate your next move. He was excellent at reading you… most of the time. The scent of your sweat blending with the perfumed oil on your skin was enticing and he ached to intertwine it with his own. Matt was ripped from the thought of how he would do exactly  that when your fist connected with his ribs, and then his jaw.

You shook your hand out, bones aching at the impact.

"You were saying?" You quipped, watching as he wiped the blood off his face from where he had bitten his cheek.

You found yourself biting your own lip for only a moment at the sight of the deep, dark red staining Matthews mouth.

"Aw, I'm sorry. Did I hurt your hand?" He teased, moving to retaliate.

Matt's leg was headed straight for you, and you barely had time to evade it.

"Shut up, Matt." you shot back, matching his playful tone.

"Why don't you come and make me, sweetheart?" Matt urged, brows raising as if to say “come and get me”.

You were both annoyed and entranced by his confidence, and you aimed to wipe the smirk right off his mouth. Unfortunately for you, your plan did not go as intended. Matt took a hold of your wrist, his opposite arm wrapping around your back as he sent you around his body. You landed on your feet, and Matt still held you in his grasp. You were low, almost as if you were being dipped during a waltz. Training with Matt often felt like a dance; it was fluid, seemingly effortless when you had the right partner. Thrashing in his grasp, he pulled you back up and you were now inches from his face. Matt smiled once again, knowing how frustrated he could make you.  You moved against him and he let out a light laugh.

“I thought you were going to make me be quiet.”

Your free arm had come to rest around his neck, and you decided to take advantage of that. Your hand found its way up the back of his head, Matt's soft hair gliding in between your fingers.  You swore heard Matt hum low in his throat, almost like he was purring at the feeling. The sound of pleasure turned quickly into a deep, thrumming growl as you pulled, showing your teeth as you moved even closer to his face.

"Who said I still won't, Counselor?" You whispered, a wicked grin forming across your lips.

It was distraction enough for you to break his hold on your arm and shove him away, and you twisted to the ground, falling into a crouch. Your hair had come undone and now fell in loose waves at your shoulder. You tossed it back as you stood, pulse racing as the thrill of the fight began to sink in.

Matt’s head tilted, lips sliding into a smirk once again, taunting you.

“So we’re fighting like that today, huh sweetheart?”

You laughed, amused at his reply.

“What is it you always say? ‘Win by whatever means necessary’ ?”

“Exactly.”

Matt struck out, and you whirled to block. At the last moment he dropped to his knees, gliding across the floor and grabbing your ankles to pull you down. You rotated as you fell, landing on the mat with a solid thump. The air was knocked out of you, but you wasted no time trying to roll over.

You were not fast enough to escape the Devil.

The moment you were on your back Matt was hovering above you, pinning you with his hands, strong thighs bracketing your hips and holding you in place. You moved underneath him, struggling to free yourself, groaning quietly as you did so. You hated feeling trapped, and hated losing even more.As you worked against his hold, you realized his grip was not as tight as it you thought it was. You did not want to give him the pleasure of having you concede, so you formulated an exit stratedgy.

 Matt had to hold it together as he heard you borderline moan while you writhed beneath him. He was grateful that you could not detect changes in scent like he could. Matt could scent the arousal coming from himself and you, but he also knew that it was a natural reaction to adrenaline and stress on your body.

“I win.” he proclaimed, satisfied with himself.

You arched your back upwards, coming back down with a cry of exasperation, your inability to escape purely performance.

You shook your head.

“You’re hurting my feelings, Matthew.”

His brows furrowed in confusion, but by the time he realized what you were doing it was too late. Your legs wrapped around his and thrust him to the side, yanking your hands out of his hold to shove his chest away simultaneously. You had flipped him successfully, parallel to the exact position you had just been in, your hold on his legs more secure. You leaned down, hair brushing lightly against his cheek as you spoke.

“Those aren’t the rules we agreed on. It’s not whoever pins the other first, it’s whoever submits first. I never submitted to you, and therefore you do not win.”

Between you being on top of him, the scent of sweat mixed with your pheromones and the oil on your skin, Matt could barely think, barely breathe.

“Well, are you admitting defeat or are we going to drag this out?”

“Not a chance.” he shot back, a fierce defiance lacing his voice.

Matt used his body weight to push upward, driving you backwards and pinning you back to the floor. Your hands were still free, and your right slipped down to your boot, reaching for the karambit blade that was wedged between your leg and the leather. You gripped the acrylic sheath, choking back up to the handle once it was in your grasp. You brought the covered blade up to Matt’s throat at the same time as he brought the one from your left leg to yours.

“You have two of these, remember?” he chuckled, breathing hard.

Your mind raced; currently you were grid locked, each with a knife to the throat. The pair of you would be lying if you said it didn’t turn you on. Matthew pinning you down certainly was not helping, as your mind drifted momentarily to you being pinned down in a different circumstance. Matt must have grabbed it when he turned the tables, and you scolded yourself for not expecting it. The only way you could secure victory now was to completely take him down, make it so he could not move. You had to work quickly if you wanted to be efficient in your scheme. The curve of your knife angled underneath his, shifting upward to pry the karambit from his hand. The blade clattered against the floor as it landed across the room. Your legs were still locked together; Matthew had no choice but to move with you as you rolled sideways.

Matthew gasped as he felt the shift in position, your speed surprising even with how exhausted you were. Your arms hooked underneath his own, one hand pressing against the back of his neck, the other crossing to the opposite shoulder. He swore he felt his hip bones  bend, yielding under the pressure of your thighs as you forced your legs in underneath his to immobilize him. Matt heard you laugh softly against the hollow of his neck where your head rested to protect your face as he struggled, trying desperately to find an out. There was no way for him to get you off of him without intentionally hurting you, which was not the point of the training exercise.

You felt the heat that had risen up earlier from his praise return as he groaned in frustration. You hoped the amount of sweat would cover the scent of your body’s reaction to the sound. Fighting with Matt just did something to you, and hearing men make any kind of noise resembling a sound of pleasure had always turned you to liquid internally. Finally, after several minutes of fighting against your grasp, you felt Matt’s hand tap your shoulder blade three times.

“What happened to not a chance, Counselor?”

"Fuck you." He replied, laughing through every syllable.

"Fuck me yourself coward."

It was reflexive at this point with the both of you; provoking each other was second nature.

Matt suppressed another tremor as he felt your breath on his neck, the softness of your lips brushing against him. God, you were so close, skin to skin in some places. He wanted you, and contemplated telling you for only a moment. Matt wanted you physically, that was true, but he wanted you on an emotional level as well. You were the first thing he thought of when he woke up and the last thing on Matt’s mind before he went to sleep, which more often than not these days was with you, be it in his bed or yours. Each other’s presence brought relief, and he found solace and comfort with you. But if you wanted him in return, you would have told him before now. He did not take you for a person to mislead him, and you had shown no indication that you wanted anything more than his companionship. So it would have to stay that way.

“I know when I’m beaten, sweetheart.”

“Say it.”

Matt knew what you wanted. He decided to rile you some more.

“Isn’t me tapping out more than enough?”

You scoffed against his skin.

“Absolutely not. And I am not releasing you until you submit fully.”

He liked the sound of that, but the level of submission he thought of was in a completely different context. Matthew felt your grip tighten even more in emphasis, as if to say that you had no problem waiting. He sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Fine. I submit. You win.”

Your hold loosened and you pulled away slightly, meeting his blank stare.

“See? That wasn't so hard. You’ve won the past two times, let me have this.”

He just couldn’t help himself, taking the small edge of advantage he had now that your guard was down. Matt flipped you both, hovering above you again, leaving your hands free.

“No, I don’t see, actually.” Matt teased, a smug smile on his face.

“You still tapped out. I still won.” you huffed, frowning beneath him.

“I don’t recall doing that.”

“Oh, so you getting frustrated because I had you pinned down thirty seconds ago didn’t happen?”

“Are you calling a blind man a liar?” he replied, feigning offense.

You wrapped your legs around his hips, gripping onto the damp fabric of his tank top and turning the tide once again.

“I would never.” you said, sitting up to stand, offering your hand to help him up.

Matt’s grasp on your hand made you wince. His brows rose, stepping closer and softening his grip.

Concern was evident in his tone as he asked if you were alright.

“Yeah I think so, I think you just grabbed my bones too hard.” you joked, moving to unwrap them.

You had shaken out your hand after connecting with his face earlier, and had winced even though he hadn’t squeezed that hard.

“Stop,” he requested, head tilting to hear better, “Flex your fingers, I want to see if I’m right.”

You did as he asked after Matt took your hand, and sure enough he heard the slight creak of the bones in your hand.

“Your wraps are too tight. Make them a little looser next time.” he advised, unwrapping the moon phase patterned fabric from your hands.

Mathew took it upon himself to massage your hand, moving your fingers in circular motions to loosen them up. He moved on to the next one, unwinding the fabric.

“You don’t have to do that, Matt. I would have survived with aching hands. I've done worse.”

 Matt chuckled, dark hair falling in his face from the downward angle of his head. His laugh always made you smile, even when you didn’t feel like it.

“I wanted to. Besides, I can't have my partner in pain when we need to go out later tonight.”

Partner. Not ‘partner in crime’ as you teasingly called each other, just partner. Your chest tightened  as you looked up at him. Matt felt your eyes on him, and he tilted his head upward to meet your gaze as best he could. His eyes were so beautiful and warm, and you wanted them on you always. You realized you were staring, and swallowed, taking your hand back gently.

“I should um, I should take you home.” you said, breaking the silence.

Matt grinned weakly, nodding in agreement that it was time for him to go.

“You’re tired, I’ll take a cab. You worked really hard today, you deserve to rest before your session with your client.”

“Matt, it’s twenty minutes, I don’t mind.” you protested, zipping up your hoodie and heading upstairs.

“That’s twenty minutes of your time, plus ten minutes of traffic, plus thirty back. That’s an entire hour. Go relax and cool off before you have to throw yourself into work on your day off.”  he countered, grabbing his jacket from the kitchen chair he had hung it on upon his arrival.

Matthew was right, you supposed. You had taken a client on a saturday as a virtual reschedule, which you usually did not do. But this particular client was fragile, and always on time. You did not have it in you to say no, not when you had made so much progress the previous week.

“If you’re sure...” you conceded, following him to the front door.

“I am. I’ll see you later, for… work part two.” Matt reassured you, sliding his glasses on and calling for a cab once he was out the door.

You followed him out to the porch, sitting beside him on the swing while he waited. The early morning light made the strands of auburn in his hair shine, and you wanted to run your fingers through it, just to touch him. That was a level of intimacy that you saved for after vigilante activities; for in the dark after you patched each other up and needed to be sure you were both still whole. So you settled for leaning your head against his bare shoulder instead.

Matt leaned back, letting  the slight breeze of early fall move through him, eyes sliding shut.

And then it was there again.

Sandalwood, patchouli, and orchids.

The wind had made your scent travel, and Matt could practically taste you. Your scent drove him insane, but also made him sad if he thought about it too much. Orchids had been Elektra’s favorite flower, and you reminded Matt of her in so many ways, but you differed in many more.. One of his favorite things about you was that you were  different from her.  You shared the same ferocity, the same passion and determination, yes, but you knew where to stop. You knew when enough was enough and never pushed him too far. You were unfathomably kind, even with everything that had happened to you. You never lied to him, and even when it was an accidental deception, you took accountability for it. Matt wasn’t even fully aware of the scope of your trauma, but he had connected quite a few dots.  There were still some things you could not tell him; you weren’t ready.

You felt Matt shift beside you, and you looked up at him, seeing the conflicted expression on his face. You didn't need to be able to hear his heart to know something was wrong.

"Is everything okay? I didn't hurt you did I?"

Matt released a light laugh, shaking his head.

"No, I'm okay. I promise. I'm just…thinking."

About Elektra.

You finished the thought in your head, not wanting to press the issue.

"Orchids were her favorite, and your perfume oil smells like orchids."

Oh.

He had never told you that, never said anything.

You softened instantly.

"I'm… I can change it to something else from here out if it makes you upset."

You had plenty of scents to choose from, but this combination went the best with your natural body chemistry.

"No, I don't want you to do that. It helps me find you when we get separated. It's cathartic  in a way. You couldn't have possibly known that those were her favorite, but yet it still ended up being the one you chose. It's like she's telling me that you're supposed to be in my life. Like she's still here somehow.

You smiled gently, relieved that the scent was more than just a sorrowful reminder.

"I'm sorry, that sounded really dumb."

You shook your head, reaching out and intertwining your fingers, giving Matt's hand a light squeeze.

Matt immediately eased at your touch, visibly relaxing in his expression.

"If you feel it, it's not dumb. Aren't you always saying that to me?"

He supposed that was true; it would be hypocritical of him not to take his own advice.

"Thank you." He said suddenly.

"For what?"

"For always understanding. It's far more than I deserve."

"I don't believe that for a second. You deserve the world Matt. What you do for this city, what you risk every day, it's beyond measure." You replied, voice breaking from the friction on your vocal chords.

Matthew could hear the slight rasp in your voice, the almost imperceptible strain in your breathing. He knew you were still bruised from the other night. 

“Does it,” he swallowed, changing the subject, “does it still hurt?”

Matthew looked down at you, reaching for your throat, not thinking of what he was doing. You turned in answer, your forehead touching lightly against his as you felt his fingers caress the damaged skin.

“No, It doesn’t, not really…” you whispered, hyper aware of the immediate proximity of Matt to you. His fingers were warm and soothed the ache from the deeply bruised flesh. How you functioned around him was beyond you; Matthew made you…nervous being this close.

Not quite a lie, but not entirely true.

“It’s only been two days. I can hear how much strain it puts on you just to breathe.” he whispered back, noting that if he moved even the smallest amount, your lips would meet.

You seemed to pick up on that detail as well, pulling away just enough to match eyes with him. His hand slid up the side of your neck, fingers brushing the back of your jaw.

“It does hurt, Matt. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.” you swallowed, trying to hide the wince that followed.

In truth, you had been hurt far worse between the vigilantism in the night with Matt and rehabilitating horses, but this was a dull ache compared to the emotional pain you had endured in your life. At least this pain would eventually fade, and you knew that with certainty.

Matt looked blankly at you, knowing full well that you were down playing your pain. Most likely it was to try and spare him some guilt over not being able to get to you quickly enough to prevent it. Your heart was racing, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. What he could make of your expression was a face he’d recognized on you many times. You were thinking, and thinking intensely- you always were, but this was different somehow. He wanted to know what you were thinking, wanted to know where you went when you went that deep into your head. Matt still hadn’t moved his hand, and you still hadn’t moved further away. 

“Yes?” you said, unsure of what to make of the way he said your name.

Matthew shifted slightly. He had said your name aloud, not just in his head like he thought he had. Maybe he should simply tell you, and you could move from there. Saying it, confessing it, might relieve the vast amount of tension he felt. It was becoming more and more difficult to be near you, even in a casual setting.

“I need to tell you-”

You both jumped at the horn from the taxi that pulled up to your home. The passenger window rolled down, and the driver asked if one of you was Matthew. He stood, picking up his jacket and cane and you stood to hug him goodbye. Matt breathed you in quietly, eyes rolling back from the aromatics of your body.

“What did you need to tell me?” you asked, pulling away.

Matt took the timing of the taxi as a sign. He let out a nervous laugh as he descended the stairs.

“I can't even remember. Must not have been important then. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Your brow furrowed momentarily, perplexed. It had sounded important by his tone, but given that Mathew’s memory was impeccable most of the time, it must not have been for him to have forgotten that quickly. You nodded, the sarcastic remark falling swiftly from your mouth.

“Will you see me later, counselor?”

Matt shook his head, ducking into the back seat and instructing the driver where to go. You waved goodbye as the car pulled away, turning to go back inside.

The ride back to Matt’s apartment felt over too quickly, even with the fifteen extra minutes of traffic. You had been exceptional today, so stubborn to get it right, so headstrong in your efforts to win against him. Your scent was still on him; in his hair, on his hands, on his clothes- you were everywhere. Usually, he could compose himself when he put some distance between the two of you. Your scent would fade and he could concentrate again, but today it was more intense than normal. He supposed it was because you had been training for four hours instead of your usual two because you had been persistent. You did not want to quit today, full of vicious determination, and God it made Matt want you.

Matt paid the driver, gathering his belongings and stepping out onto the pavement.  He made the trek up the stairs , wanting nothing more than to rest for a few hours until it was time to go out for the evening. Matt turned the key in the lock, pushing the door open as he heard the bolt slide. He sighed as he set his cane against the doorframe, placing his glasses on the table by the door. Matt tossed his jacket to the chair across from the couch and went to the kitchen to get water. Filling the glass, he downed it, and another and then another. Moving to his bedroom, he removed  his shoes,  and his tank top followed shortly after. He was simply too hot, that’s all it was. Matthew made his way back to the couch, hearing the soft sound of fabric hitting the floor. He turned, moving to pick up his jacket from the floor. And then he found it.

Your shirt.

That was why he couldn’t escape you. Matt felt the fabric in his hands, ran his fingers over the soft material. It must have been on the back of the chair he had draped his jacket on at your house. Placing the shirt on top of his hoodie, Matt took a seat onto the cool leather. It practically felt like ice against his bare back, and he savored the feeling. His repose lasted only moments as your scent once again ensnared him, making his mind go hazy as he looked toward the arm chair where your shirt was. Arousal stirred low in his body, and his fingers gripped the leather cushion, fighting against the growing length against the fabric of his pants.

Matt groaned, letting his head fall backwards, squeezing his eyes shut. He had to think of anything else except you, but that was difficult when he could not get away from you. Even though you weren’t there, he ached for you, grateful he had kept himself under control while the two of you were sparring.

Matt kept trying to send his mind elsewhere, but between the way the smell of the shirt affected him and the strain of his cock he was done for. He was going to hell anyway, so what did it matter?

He thought about just before he had submitted to you, the entanglement of limbs, the weight of your body on his. The way you had as good as moaned as you writhed underneath him, trying to free yourself from his hold.  Matthew’s hand traveled below the waist of his sweats, hand grasping around himself, stroking lightly.

Matt wondered what you would be like, in terms of sexual preference. Would you become soft, malleable;  A stark contrast to your personality? Would you yield to him, let him do anything he wanted?

His grip tightened, slowing down even more as he contemplated the idea. You being submissive to him was an alluring thought. But what if your taste was…the opposite and it matched your personality? What if you were as aggressive there as you had been an hour ago when you made him submit to you?

Matthew wasn’t sure which thought excited him more and he groaned at both possibilities.

He then pondered what you would sound like. He had a vague idea, based solely on the noises you made when you were in pain or when he pinned you, and he swore up and down that you did it on purpose, just to torture him. But what would you sound like in that setting? Would you be loud and direct with what you want or would you be quieter until you reached your climax? Matt began to stroke faster, setting his legs wider. What sound would you make as he spread your legs and slid inside you? His tongue parted his lips, lost in contemplation. Matthew ventured to let his mind wander to what you would taste like.

This was wrong, so incredibly wrong but he just couldn’t stop. He would get on his knees and confess his sins between your thighs if you gave him the chance, each orgasm he would give you his penance for his trespasses. Matt would give you as many as you wanted, as many as you could take and would do it gladly, just because he knew he could. He would be far different from anyone else who had you before; Matt would be able to read your body better because of his heightened senses, and he felt a tinge of satisfaction at the thought. He would pull every beautiful, sinful sound that he could from you until you begged him to stop.

Matthew felt the heat begin to coil within him as a deeper, darker thought crossed his mind; the way your throat felt under his hand today, and every other time he touched you. He wanted the frisson of excitement to trail across your body as his hands would explore you, feel your pulse race under the pressure of his hand around your neck. 

Close. He was so close.

The mere instance of you being atop him today had almost made him lose it, right then and there. The weight of your body on his hips was so inviting, and he envisioned it there now, with one exception.

He imagined you on top of him, riding him with his cock buried inside you, nails digging into his shoulders as you grew closer to the edge. What you would feel like between his teeth as he breathed you in. You would be warm, and wrapped around him so tightly from that position. He would be able to watch you as you fell apart on top of him, his fingers between your legs as you would rise and fall.  He’d be right behind you, spilling into you and rutting upwards, even though you were both overstimulated.

Matt finished with a ragged moan at the thought of you whimpering, with him still sheathed inside you, too overwhelmed to even form words. He flowed onto his hand, over his fingers, hips jerking in aftershock. His chest heaved, sweat was running down his back. Matt stood, heading to wash his hands, flopping into his bed soon after. He breathed deeply, running his hand through his hair. He felt somewhat better, but also worse. He would have to tell you or you would never know. Know how much he wanted you, how much you meant to him… how much he loved you.

⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸⚸

You had flopped down in your bed almost immediately after showering, towel open beneath you. You had set the water to nearly scalding to soothe your sore body and you were cooling down. Matt had been very…. tactile this morning. It seemed like he took every opportunity that presented itself to touch you, trying to distract you and throw you off later. Or maybe he just wanted to touch you. You were both lonely and starved for touch, and the pair of you snuggling down on the couch while you read to him or described a movie for him wasn’t unheard of. You had both slept in the same bed more than once and woken up with an arm wrapped around each other or a hand reaching towards the other. You were almost always touching each other in some way, whether it was in a comforting way or if it was to tend to each other's wounds in the late night hours.

You contemplated some more, concluding that he had, in fact , been trying to throw you off. Matthew may be blind, but he wasn’t stupid. Far from it. He was exceedingly, and unfairly attractive and he knew it. The way he smirked and tilted his head so often during your training was a testament to that. While it annoyed you, it was also enticing to look at him. Between his ample lips and that Gods damned dimple? You often found yourself staring at them both, wondering what they would feel like on you, in more places than just your mouth. You pulled a pillow over your head and groaned in frustration. Matt was amazing, but he did not want you, not like that. He was still mourning Elektra, and you were his friend, his partner. You didn’t want to cross that line unless he invited it, didn;t want to push it or misread it. Matt and the Devil were one in the same, a multifaceted duality of a person. Complex and forthright, all at once.

Throwing the pillow back in its place, you couldn't help but think about the events of that morning. The same hands that knew such violence and inflicted pain could be gentle and soothing , like they had been today when he unwrapped your hands and worked magick with his own. The very hands that had gripped your hips, telling you to “Spread your legs a little wider for me. Just like that.” and had made you want to close your legs, want to rub your thighs together for a taste of friction. His voice had been low and demanding in your ear. It was a miracle you hadn’t asked him to touch you out of reflex. When he moaned at you pulling his hair to distract him, had he scented the change in you? The arousal that had made you want him, did he know? Or would he attribute it to your body’s natural reaction to the excitement of sparring and nothing more? The fact that Matthew could hear, taste, smell and feel on a much greater scale than the average human was both irritating and intoxicating. He would know exactly what you wanted, what you needed, without you having to utter a word.

Your hand traveled  upward, towards your throat that Matt had touched earlier. You would gladly have endured the pain it would cause you currently if he were to have applied pressure. You had almost fucking moaned at the contact, but had restrained yourself somehow. Your hand trailed down your skin, wishing it was the lightly calloused hands that had been on your earlier. You shivered at the thought of Matthew touching you like this, like you wanted him to. Would he be taken aback by your scars or turned on by them? You had many, maybe even more than he did.  You knew that the dominance he presented during training and fighting alongside you would most likely translate to the bedroom. If it had not been for your determination to make him submit to you, you would have given in the second he pinned you to the mat. You felt your hips rise slightly as your fingers ghosted over the cradle of your pelvis, moving even lower to the ache between your thighs.

It wouldn’t change anything between you if you thought of him while you touched yourself, so you had no reservations about it as your fingers found your core soaking. You drew small, languid circles around your clit, imagining it was Matt’s hands or better yet, his tongue. He was constantly licking his lips and it was often distracting to watch it glide over his pretty mouth. You wanted both his tongue and his lips on you, wherever he wanted, he could taste you. Imagining the scrape of his stubble against the inside of your leg sent a thrill through you. You could hear his voice in your head again, and you fixated on it, fingers moving a little faster now.

“Good girl. Just like that.”

A breathy, quiet moan escaped your lips at the reminder of his praise.  You felt the heat crawl up your legs- you wouldn’t last long if you kept envisioning what Matt would be like in bed. How he would feel touching you, fingers sliding inside you to tease you until you couldn’t stand it any longer and neither could he. How would he take you? Would he pin you down like earlier with both hands? Or would he hold you in one hand and wrap the other around your throat? You reveled at the thought of just giving yourself over to him and not having to think, only feel. You would let him do anything he wanted, and there wasn’t much you didn't find pleasure in. You would willingly submit to him, as long as that meant he was touching you. You felt the familiar heat twining low in your belly, and you felt your release climbing toward its end. Matt’s voice was burned into your mind, and it wasn’t hard to pretend you could feel the brush of his mouth behind your ear and you chased your orgasm.

“Good girl, cum for me.”

You cried out, eyes shutting hard as you writhed against your sheets. You panted, exhausted. You wanted Matt so desperately, and that alone sobered you. You had never been able to have casual sex or think of anyone casually and get off; you simply could not unless there was an emotional connection. You had been denying it all this time, but this was the final nail in the coffin. He deserved better than you, someone whole. There was so much you still hadn’t told him, had not been ready to tell him.

You were not sure you ever would be able to explain to him the horrors of your past, even though Matthew may very well be the only person to understand how much violence and pain it took to make you as gentle as you were sometimes.

You had told yourself over and over again You do not want him.

That you were just touch starved and lonely, and that he was off limits. You were both still grieving, and that wouldn’t be right.

You rolled over, pulling the covers over you. You had two hours before your virtual client would be on, and you needed some sleep before you ran off into the night with Matt. If that is all you could have, you would still take it over never having him at all.

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

Grabbing Smoke

As much time as Sam spent with her best friends, sometimes she enjoyed a little bit of time alone.

Tucker was helping his mother bake cookies for some kind of fundraiser for the hospital, and Danny was busy visiting Pandora for fighting lessons. Apparently they were using swords today.

As fun as it sounded, Sam opted to stay behind, it had been a while since she'd been down to the park to feed the ducks. She didn't get quiet moments like that very often any more.

There was an uncharacteristic skip to her gait as she walked to the park, a canvas tote bag swinging from her arm.

Living in Amity Park, and especially hanging around with Danny, gave her an eerie sense to when something was amiss. Nothing quite like Danny's ghost sense, but she'd learned to detect a particular chill to the air, a prickling at the back of her neck. It could easily be mistaken for a chilly breeze, but Sam knew better. The crunch of gravel under Sam's boots was the only sound permeating the still air, not even the trees were rustling.

She continued her walk through the park, past the wishing fountain and through a trail where the trees grew slightly more dense.

The trail opened up to a large pond, it wasn't anything especially picturesque, the reeds were a little overgrown, the ground was muddy, but there were a few simple weather worn benches by the path that looped around the water.

Sam took a seat, pulling out a bag of frozen peas. She opened it, tipped a few into her hand and tossed them into the water.

The ducks immediately sped across the pond toward her, fighting for the peas that the turtles hadn't already gotten to.

Instead of grabbing another handful, she held the bag out to the empty seat to her left, waiting for a moment before shaking the bag impatiently.

A green hand slipped into the bag, pulling out a handful of peas before tossing them into the water.

"How'd you know I was here?" Kitty asked, now sitting visibly on the other end of the bench as Sam poured out more peas for both of them.

"I have my ways." Sam smirked. "What I want to know is why you've been following me all week."

"You knew for that long and you didn't say nothin'?" Kitty huffed. "Damn, I gotta up my game."

A duck waddled up and nibbled on her boot.

"Alright alright, ya hungry little doofus." Kitty lowered a hand full of peas and cooed as the duck happily ate from her palm. "Aww these guys aren't shy at all, do you come here a lot?"

"When I can." Sam tossed a few more peas into the water for the turtles. "So why are you following me?"

Kitty sat back and pressed her lips together, thinking.

"Look it's just... I don't remember much from when I was livin', you know? It's all sorta grey and fuzzy, I can't remember what anyone looked like, except Johnny." she tossed some peas to a smaller duck at the back of the group. "But as soon as I showed up here in town and I saw your face, I thought I felt... I dunno, somethin'. Like I'd seen you before, or maybe you just reminded me of someone, but I can't remember who, it's like grabbing smoke."

She lobbed a few peas a little harder than was necessary at the water. The turtles sucked them up greedily.

"So you've just been following me hoping you might remember something else?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Kitty sighed. "But it's not working."

Sam swung her foot idly between a pair of scuffling ducks, splitting them up before tossing out some more peas.

"Maybe I'm related to someone you knew. Where did you grow up?"

Kitty frowned down at the water.

"I... I don't know." she said, deflating somewhat. "I didn't even realise I forgot that."

Sam couldn't help but feel for her, Danny had told her that ghosts would often forget things from their past, especially once they'd been dead for longer than they'd been alive. Somehow she had never really considered how terrifying that must be.

"You know..." Sam started carefully. "I could show you some old family photos. Maybe you'll recognise someone?"

Kitty looked up, eyes shining brightly.

"Really? You'd do that for me?"

"Why not?" Sam shrugged. "If you were here to cause trouble you would have done it by now."

"Aw, I never thought you'd wanna do something like that for me." said Kitty, smiling brightly. "You always seemed like such a bitch."

Sam laughed.

"If you'd spent a week being someone that wasn't Paulina, I would probably have seemed like less of a bitch."

"So you guys are big rivals or somethin'?" Kitty asked, grabbing some more peas and giggling as three ducks tried to eat from her hand at once.

"It's more that we have... conflicting ideologies. She thinks that appearances and reputation are the most important things in life, just like my parents." Sam lobbed some more peas into the water, they both watched them disappear as the turtles quickly snapped them up. "It's shallow and stupid, and I don't get why they have to push that shit on everyone. I don't care what people think, I just want to be whoever the hell I wanna be without having to fight for it all the time."

Kitty's face turned contemplative as she tapped her nails on the back of the bench.

"I think... I was like that." she said, slowly. "I wanted to feel fun and exciting, but my parents..."

She trailed off, frowning.

"My parents... I didn't like them. They didn't like me bein' the way I was, I can't really remember why."

Sam emptied out the last of the peas and scattered them over the ground, she scrunched up the empty packet and shoved it back into her tote bag.

"You know, if we went to school together we would probably have gotten along." said Sam as she stood up, gesturing toward the path. "Let's go check out those photos."

Instead of floating invisibly behind, Kitty walked by Sam's side as they headed back to her house. She idly waved at people as they drove past, grinning when someone stared a little too long and almost ran a red light.

"You know, it's nice bein' able to walk around in the day." Kitty said, skipping a little. "Wish I could do it more often."

"What's stopping you?"

"What do you think?" Kitty's lip pulled up in disgust. "Any time I show up your dumb friend sucks me up in his stupid thermos. Only reason I can walk around right now is because I got you as my get out of jail free card."

"Danny doesn't care if you just want to walk around." Sam scoffed. "He lets ghosts wander around town all the time, he only gets involved when you start breaking things."

"Uggghhh but just walking around is so boring." Kitty pouted. "I mean yeah it's nice and I like it but it gets old real quick."

"Then you'll have to get used to getting tossed back in the ghost zone. Do not pass go, do not collect $200."

"Don't you ever get sick of his goody goody attitude?" Kitty asked. "I mean you and I aren't so different right? You're all about the rebel gig, don't you ever feel like keyin' some asshole's car, or takin' a baseball bat to some mail boxes?"

"Only if they deserve it." said Sam with a smirk. "But I feel like you aren't especially picky about whose stuff you're breaking."

They approached the door to the Manson mansion, Sam hopped up the steps and stuck the key in the lock. She touched the mezuzah on the doorpost without a second thought before opening the door and standing aside to invite Kitty in.

The ghost stared up at her warily.

"I can't get past it."

"Past what?" Sam asked.

"The mezuzah, it keeps me out."

"What?" Sam frowned. "It hasn't stopped other ghosts from getting in."

"Well it stops me." Kitty insisted. "I think it's got somethin' to do with what we believed in when we were alive. I haven't got a problem with churches but when Johnny tried to ride his bike through one he couldn't get in. His mom raised him Catholic, he says he doesn't believe in any of that stuff, but I think he still does, deep down."

"So does that mean you were Jewish?" Sam asked, smiling curiously.

"I AM Jewish." Kitty crossed her arms. "Bein' a ghost hasn't changed that, it just... means that we got a few things a little wrong."

Sam thought about that for a moment, before stepping aside and gesturing toward the door again.

"Well, if you've been invited and you're not going to cause any trouble, then I don't see why you shouldn't be able to come in."

Kitty climbed the steps slowly, fingers reaching out and cautiously brushing over the mezuzah, she didn't feel anything unusual, no zap or burn or pain. She took a step through the doorway and passed the threshold without issue, no invisible force or barrier like the last time she tried to follow Sam inside.

"Well, what do you know." she said, grinning.

Sam lead her into a large, open planned kitchen and dining area, the tiles were bright white save for the specks of mud Sam's boots tracked through the room. The decor was minimalist, the atmosphere bland and sterile, she could smell some kind of citrus surface cleaner.

The back wall was all windows, leading to a patio surrounded by perfectly trimmed grass. As they approached, Sam turned, heading towards a door to their right.

The next room felt a lot more friendly, it was full of bookshelves and red tones. The lounges looked soft and inviting, a fireplace sat cold and empty against the back wall, but Kitty didn't have to try hard to imagine it roaring to life, filling the room with its warm glow.

"This is basically my Grandma's part of the house." Sam informed her, voice low. "Her bedroom is just through there, she's usually napping around this time of day so try not to make too much noise."

Kitty slipped off her jacket and laid it over the back of the lounge, already feeling at home in the cosy little room. She looked over the books as Sam fussed around some kind of large ornate chest.

"Here it is." She hefted a large photo album from the chest, carefully closing and latching it again. "Let's see if you recognise anyone in here."

Kitty sat down beside Sam as she opened up the pristine book, the outer cover was beige with the name Manson inscribed in golden cursive on the front. The first page was full of old faded photos, in greyscale or sepia tones.

"Ugh, I'm not that old." said Kitty, flicking ahead a few pages.

The pictures were colourful now, but still grainy, there was a young blonde boy in seventies style jeans leaning casually against a Chevrolet.

"Wait hold up," Kitty pointed at the boy. "Him, I feel like I've seen him before."

"That's my dad." said Sam, surprised. "His name is Jeremy, did you know him?"

Kitty hummed a little, gently tracing a finger over the picture.

"Jeremy... Jeremy, I'm not sure," she frowned. "But he definitely looks familiar."

They continued through the book, when suddenly Kitty slapped her hand down roughly on a photo of a pair of young women.

"Her! I know her! She was a mega bitch!"

"Shhh keep it down." Sam hissed.

"Sorry," Kitty pointed to the blonde girl in the photo. "That one! I don't know how I knew her, but I definitely knew her. She was a total brat."

Sam slipped the photo out of its sleeve and read the neat cursive on the back.

"This is... my Aunt Caroline, in 1985. She's my dad's sister." Sam looked up at Kitty, amused. "I can't believe you had beef with my family."

"Your family are snobs." Kitty sniffed. "Carrie was such a ditz, she thought she was sooo bitchin' because her daddy bought her a Mercedes."

"Yeah, that sounds about right." Sam grimaced. "Did you guys go to school together or something?"

"Maybe..." Kitty took the photo from Sam's hand, staring intently. "I'm pretty sure I skipped school a lot, I hated it there. It was a private school, we had to wear uniforms, barf."

"I would never have guessed you were a private school kid." Sam shook her head. "But most people would say that about me so it's not like I can judge."

"You went to private school?" Kitty asked, "How'd you end up in that Casper High dump?"

"Got myself expelled." said Sam, voice thick with pride. "Elementary, middle and high school, got kicked out of all three."

"Damn, you're good."

Sam grinned, slipping the photo back in its sleeve and continuing to the next page.

Kitty pointed to a few other photos, remarking on their familiarity, but not quite able to grasp how she knew them, the memories only flickered in her periphery.

"Wait," Kitty whispered, fingers brushing over a polaroid containing three people. "This is..."

The picture looked as though it were taken at some kind of party, a man and a woman faced the camera, each with a glass of champagne raised in their hands. The woman's other hand rested on the shoulder of a teenage girl with auburn hair, pulled into a tidy braid. She stared glumly at the camera.

"That's Katherine." Sam said, pointing to the girl. "She was my dad's cousin, but she got hit by a car when she was-"

Sam paused, looking over at Kitty's wide eyes and then back to the photo.

"Noooo way." Sam pulled the photo out of the sleeve. "Is this you?"

Kitty took the photo in trembling hands.

"I... I forgot I used to look like that." she fiddled with a lock of her green, teased hair. "I remember this party, I didn't want to go but mom and dad threatened to take away all my records and cassettes if I didn't."

Sam stared at Kitty, mouth agape.

"You're Car Crash Katherine?! My dad talks about you all the time! He always told me about the shit you used to get up to, he'd tell me that any kind of 'rebellious behaviour' was a slippery slope to 'dying on the back of some delinquent's motorcycle'." Sam put a hand on Kitty's shoulder. "You were my bad influence role model."

Kitty's red eyes shone with tears, photo still in hand, she wrapped her arms around Sam.

"This is majorly wicked! My legacy lives on! Corrupting the youth from beyond the grave!" Kitty laughed. "My parents would go totally mental."

She stopped laughing, her face turning forlorn as she drew back from Sam and stared down at the picture.

"Are they still alive?" she asked, a tremble in her voice.

"Yeah..." said Sam. "They live in a retirement home in Florida. They don't come around very often."

Kitty traced a finger over their faces.

"I wonder if they miss me." she said quietly. "Or if they were glad to be rid of the family embarrassment."

Sam didn't answer, she had wondered the same thing herself, if her parents would even care if she died. They hadn't given her a lot of reason to think they would.

She rested a sympathetic hand on Kitty's arm.

"Oh, you have a friend over bubbeleh?" a croaky voice spoke from the bedroom doorway.

Sam and Kitty both turned to see Ida Manson shuffling into the room, cleaning her glasses with her sleeve.

"Sorry Grandma, we didn't mean to be too loud." Sam apologised. "This is my... um, friend, Kitty. Kitty this is my Grandma Ida-"

"Ida?!" Kitty shot to her feet, staring in shock at the old woman. "Aunt Ida?!"

Ida squinted at Kitty, before quickly setting her glasses back on her face.

"Well as I live and breath, is that you Kathy?"

"Oh my god this is getting super weird." Sam whispered.

Kitty leapt over the ottoman to wrap Ida up in a tight hug, the old woman was surprised for a moment, but held her warmly in return.

"It's me Aunt Ida! Not really living or breathing but it's me!" Kitty laughed breathlessly.

"Oh my goodness, when all the ghosts started showing up all over town I wondered if I would ever see someone I knew." She rubbed comforting circles on Kitty's back as the ghost choked on a few sobs. "It's good to see you again Kathy."

Ida pulled away and wiped a tear from Kitty's face.

"And I'm so glad you aren't stuck wearing what your parents buried you in."

Kitty couldn't help but laugh through her tears.

"Let me guess, it was that putrid blue dress, wasn't it?"

"The dress wasn't nearly as bad as what they did to your hair." Ida snickered, patting Kitty's hand. "It had little ribbons in it and everything."

"I almost forgot you." Kitty placed her palm gently against Ida's face. "You were the only one in the family who ever loved me for being me, and I almost forgot you. I'm so sorry, I should have come to find you sooner but I just-"

"Shhhh, it's okay bubbeleh." Ida grasped her hand tight. "I think being dead is a pretty good excuse for forgetting a few things."

Sam stood beside the lounge, watching the two in shock, she wasn't entirely certain whether or not to intrude. Whatever she had been expecting to discover with Kitty today, it certainly hadn't been this.

Though in hindsight, it did explain Kitty's familiarity with Sam, people always said she had taken after her Grandma.

Ida let go of Kitty and hobbled over to the photo album still sitting on the lounge.

"Oh you don't want to look at that album." she said, as she shoved it onto the coffee table. She wandered to the other side of the room and began rummaging around in a small cupboard. "You want this one."

She pulled out a book with well worn, peeling edges. Pieces of the plastic sleeves had cracked off and crumbled away. It was old, and weatherbeaten, it was obvious that Ida had looked through it many many times.

"Here we go." she sat down in the middle of the lounge, gesturing for the two girls to come sit beside her. "These are the forbidden photos."

She opened the pages, the photos inside were entirely different from the 'official' album, there were no perfectly poised, prim and proper photos of people in nice, presentable clothes. They were all candid shots, people in the middle of eating or laughing, some were stumbling around blind drunk, a few were smoking joints. There were pictures from parties and protest rallies, in backyards and drive ins.

There was a picture of Jeremy as a young boy, grinning with one of his front teeth missing and grass in his hair.

"Only in this family would losing your baby teeth make a photo 'unsavoury'." Ida grizzled as she continued through the album. "I saved so many pictures that my husband would have thrown out otherwise."

"Ugh, Uncle Peter was such a prude, he wouldn't even let me in the house if I didn't have my shoulders covered up." Kitty rolled her eyes.

"He used to be so much more relaxed when we were young." Ida sighed. "He changed when he inherited his father's business, he forgot how to have fun."

A few pages later Kitty squealed in excitement.

"Oh my god! That's Frankie! She was my best friend, we used to do everything together!"

The Kitty in the photo looked far more like the Kitty Sam knew. Her hair was teased up, and she was wearing a crop top and a miniskirt. The other girl, Frankie, had short curled hair and a leather jacket. They each had an arm around the others' shoulder and grinned wildly.

"I love this one." Ida smiled as she pulled the picture out of the sleeve. "That was the night I gave you a lift to that concert."

"Oh that show was sooo good! I got my nose pierced there! It got so infected, Mom grounded me for a month." Kitty laughed.

"Man, and I thought I was cool for skipping school to go see Circus Gothica." Sam grinned. "I'm gonna have to come home with a tattoo next time."

"I can't believe I forgot about Frankie, I can't believe I forgot about all of this." Kitty held the photo close to her chest, a few tears running down her face. "I'm so glad it's not gone for good."

She kept the photo in hand as they looked through the rest of the album. There were many pictures of Ida, all of them with other people of all walks of life.

"Oh this was when you took us to that pride parade!" Kitty smiled. "You made Frankie so happy, and you knew a lot of the drag queens there, like a LOT."

"Grandma took me to a drag show when I was 10," said Sam. "Even took me backstage to meet them all, my parents thought we went to the theatre to see Romeo and Juliet."

"Oh I have photos from that." Ida flipped through the pages, getting closer to the end of the album. "Here we are, oh Evelyn just LOVED you."

Sam looked at the picture of Evelyn, frowning slightly.

"Oh weird, she kinda looks like Mr Lancer's sister, he keeps her photo on his desk..." Sam paused as she processed what she just said. "That's not his sister is it?"

"You probably shouldn't bring it up." said Ida gently. "Teachers can get in trouble for associating with this sort of thing."

"That's so bogus!" Kitty cried. "I really thought this kinda stuff would be better in the future!"

"It is," Ida assured her. "But we're a long way from perfect."

Ida flipped back through the album, searching for more pictures of Kitty and Frankie. There were a good few of them, each one Ida pulled out and passed over for Kitty to look at and hold onto.

"Oh woah, is that Johnny?" Sam pointed to a picture of Kitty sitting on the back of a motorcycle with a blonde boy. "He looks exactly the same, just a little less pale."

"Oh, did Johnny come back as a ghost too?" Ida asked.

"Yeah! We've been together all this time, in sickness and in death." Kitty beamed. "Mom and dad blamed him for everything I did, even if he wasn't around when I did it. They said him and Frankie were 'corrupting' me."

She rolled her eyes.

"I bet they blamed him for my death too. They'd be so mad if they knew we were still together."

"Just goes to show they had no chance of keeping you two apart." Ida said. "Not even death could do that."

Kitty held the photo tight in both hands, her shoulders began to shake slightly.

"It was my fault you know." she said with a trembling little giggle. "Funny huh? My parents always blamed him for everything, but in the end it was my fault we got hit. We were havin' a fight over somethin' stupid and I distracted him-"

Ida wrapped an arm around Kitty, patting her head comfortingly as she laid it against the old woman's shoulder.

"I think you're being too hard on yourself bubbeleh." Ida whispered gently into her hair. "It was raining, the truck that hit you was running a red light, the driver was charged for both your deaths. Even if you did distract him, you weren't the only card at play that night."

She gave Kitty a light shake.

"And don't think I didn't see the way Johnny used to drive that thing, he was reckless. I have no doubt that he wasn't paying as much attention as he should have been." She placed a kiss on the girl's forehead and squeezed her tight. "It's not fair to hold all of that responsibility on yourself, even if you both did everything right, that truck still would have run that red light, it still would have been raining. It was just pure rotten luck."

Sam had never heard a ghost talk about their death before, even Danny didn't like talking about his accident, and asking about it was incredibly taboo. Sam had been pushing her luck earlier just by mentioning the car crash.

It said a lot about Kitty's love for Ida that she chose to open up about it. Sam couldn't say she was surprised, her Grandma had always been like that. Never anything but an endless well of love and support, and the occasional kick in the pants if you needed it.

"Johnny's always had rotten luck." Kitty sniffed. "Follows him like a shadow."

"Literally." Sam snorted.

After a few more moments, Ida pulled herself away from Kitty, she got up and began rooting through the cupboards, muttering to herself.

"Aha, here it is."

She brought over an empty photo album, it was roughly the size of a small pocketbook, containing only one photo sleeve per page.

"I meant to fill this with photos for Sam to keep." Ida admitted as she shuffled back over to the girls. "But I don't think she'll mind donating it to a good cause."

She winked at Sam, who nodded back.

"Here," Ida pressed the little album into Kitty's hands. "Memories are a fickle thing, but photos are forever."

"I can't take these!" Kitty insisted, pushing the album back. "They're your memories too!"

"Oh my god you're both so old." Sam laughed, "Dad has a printer/scanner. I can make copies."

As Sam took the polaroids to her dad's office, Ida and Kitty pored over the rest of the album, Kitty picking out more photos to copy. She chose a few of Ida and Sam, and even one of Carrie.

"She was a total loser and I hated her but I don't hate remembering her, you know? I want to remember everything, even the bad stuff."

She took a photo of her parents, just one.

When Sam came back with the last batch of photos, Ida finished slipping them into the little album.

"There's still a few sleeves left." Sam pointed out, holding up her phone with a smile. "We've got room for a couple of family reunion pics."

The two girls squished up against Ida as Sam snapped as many shots as she could. Ones where they smiled, ones where they laughed, ones where they laid haphazardly across the lounge together.

Then Sam took a few candids of just Kitty and Ida, as they looked through the new album they'd just made together. Capturing Kitty laughing at something as Ida looked at her with a soft, loving smile.

Kitty clutched the album to her chest as she gave Ida a long, drawn out hug.

"Thank you so much." she said, her voice thick with gratitude. "It's like I can see my life in colour again."

She left the house with the assurance that she would always be welcome back, at any time, and a promise that she would always be looking out for her 'new favourite cousin'.

Sam flicked through the photos she took on her phone, she would have to make sure to have copies printed by the time Kitty returned to visit.

She knew Kitty coming over regularly was going to make things complicated, her apparent newfound protectiveness over Sam could potentially backfire in many spectacular ways, she was petty and troublesome when in the right mood.

But then again, so was Ida, and so was Sam.

At least she had better things to do now than beat up strangers' mail boxes, Danny was certainly going to be glad to hear that.

[greenhappyseed]

Things are getting dark in the BNHA manga, so I wanted to return to brighter times and do a post on Inko Midoriya and her many parallels with All Might. Their interactions are some of my favorites in BNHA, not as a ship (although I am multi-ship friendly) but as two adult humans with little in common and no overlapping life experiences that nonetheless become co-parents because of deep empathy and one determined kid with a knack for bringing people together. The canon Inko-All Might interactions are short, but they occur at critical points in the story and touch on almost all major themes of the series.

The main chapter where All Might and Inko meet starts with them depicted as adversaries, facing off for a fight. #1 hero vs mama bear! Except...they don’t actually fight. They talk through what they each want for Izuku and come to a mutual understanding. These characters really see and trust each other in a way that contrasts with the Todoroki “watch me” story. Before I dive deep, check out the difference between the beginning and the end of Chapter 97, because this art is everything:

Ok, now for the good stuff.

1. In a story about succession and what we owe future generations, Inko is All Might’s predecessor with respect to Izuku. If Nana Shimura gave him OFA and made him a hero, Inko gives him a second life and unofficially-but-actually-officially makes him a “dad.”

2. Much like how All Might can’t be the sole pillar supporting society, Inko can’t be the sole pillar supporting Izuku. The difference is that we watch Inko arrive at this conclusion in the span of one chapter while All Might and, uh, society, aren’t there yet. When Inko truly sees how much Izuku is driven to become a hero, and how much he NEEDS something she can’t give, she starts to back down. Unlike Endeavor, she knows her son’s future is not about her.

Izuku wants this so much he won’t stay with Inko and will “go wherever”.... and it’s almost like All Might will follow to help Izuku be that hero...

3. Speaking of, allowing Izuku to move out at 15 and having All Might “raise” him is an incredible sacrifice on Inko’s part. She’s unexpectedly “retiring” as an active day-to-day parent and letting go of the one thing she spent her life building and protecting. Trusting your life’s work in someone else’s hands is really, really hard, but she does it. (Can All Might?)

After the Overhaul arc, we see Inko acknowledging the progress Izuku has made, which includes All Might by extension (because she’s clearly thinking about him too). Seeing how Izuku can grow without her, Inko is slowly getting comfortable with her decision to “retire.” (Can All Might?)

4. Inko’s weight gain parallels All Might’s weight loss in that both characters neglect themselves to help others (parenting and hero-ing) and they PARTICULARLY ignore themselves when worrying about Izuku.

5. Izuku, Inko, and All Might all seem to know when people need a little saving. Starting with Inko...when All Might flexes into his iconic muscle form and performs dogeza (and then poofs down to his true form), he’s not merely apologizing — he’s showing deference to Inko. She has power over All Might AND she’s not sold on the bloody reality of her son becoming a hero, even if she supports his dream. From here, she could block the next symbol of peace. She could take away the child All Might loves. She could extract whatever she wanted from the longtime #1 hero. Just think about what some other, less charitable characters might do.

But Inko doesn’t take anything from All Might. Instead, Inko sees how much Izuku and All Might need each other (I mean, LOOK AT THEIR FACES when they think she’s saying no!!!). She moves to reassure All Might that Izuku needs him, that she doesn’t hate UA (even though she railed against the school minutes earlier), and that she doesn’t want an big, heroic sacrifice. Inko trusts he will help Izuku “walk a path” different from his bloody one. She just wants a happy child, and All Might is integral to that because these 2 boys are a bonded pair. Izuku lives for All Might and All Might lives for Izuku. All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall. Inko sees how deeply All Might respects and cares for Izuku, to the point that the next symbol of peace is secondary (unlike Endeavor, who is invested in Shoto carrying on his legacy above all else).

Oh hey, 200 chapters later, it turns out All Might IS willing to follow Izuku anywhere, because he just can’t be apart from his boy. And, after Inko and All Might built mutual respect in Chapter 97, we see in Chapter 309 that All Might is not afraid to cry in front of Inko and show his real concern about Izuku. (He doesn’t cry in Chapter 97, but he readily lets the waterworks flow in Chapter 309.)

Now, we don’t see Inko’s reaction to All Might beyond the second panel below, but we know she previously decided to trust the boys despite her own fears. It’s not out of character for her to trust them again. In fact, it’s kinda sweet to see them both reassure her [while still clinging to their dumb plans, sigh]. Izuku makes clear he’s not intending to sacrifice his life, and All Might won’t let Izuku go alone. Of course, both of these promises will be...challenged...in chapters 310+, but the intent is there and that’s all Inko can ask for (I mean, that was all she originally asked of All Might in exchange for her consent — no sacrifice + “look after” Izuku.)

Finally, note how All Might stands throughout the scene, projecting a large, protective presence because it’s his turn to give back. Izuku extends his hand to his mother; All Might extends his height above them both. For all of 309 he’s high above Inko and Izuku; in 97, he’s shown equal to or below Inko except the brief moment he looms over them just before kneeling to the floor.

6. Inko and All Might only interact twice in the manga, but both times are critical turning points between acts AND both times are shortly after encounters with villains — Shigaraki/AFO in particular. The first is in the immediate aftermath of Kamino and All Might’s retirement (literally, All Might retires at the beginning of Chapter 96 and he meets Inko at the end). The second Inko-All Might interaction is in the immediate aftermath of the war and jailbreak (Chapter 309). At a meta-level, Inko’s character page is at the end of Chapter 94, right after we see Izuku & Shigaraki with AFO saying “it’s your turn.”

Interestingly there are TWO earlier near-interactions in canon. The first is in the School Briefs light novel, taking place just after the internships/Stain arc and before final exams. TL;DR: There’s a Parents Day at UA that involves a villain kidnapping 1A’s parents (spoiler: it’s really a rational deception by Aizawa and the parents are in on it). But things go awry and Inko nearly falls into a fire pit for real. A playing-the-villain-but-actually-in-his-true-form All Might swoops in to save her, of course! Afterwards, Inko runs over to thank him, thinking she’s talking to a local theater actor. :)

Lastly, in Chapter 70, right after Izuku runs into Shigaraki at the mall, Inko and All Might are both near Izuku at the police station. However, neither one speaks to or acknowledges the other, and the art doesn’t even show them together. The closest we get is the bottom right panel:

Despite both All Might and Izuku knowing about these two near-meetings, neither one tells Inko. My head canon is that they do this to avoid embarrassing her — she’s obviously terrified when All Might visits her home, so All Might saying, “we’ve met but you didn’t know” would be impolite. Likewise, if she at all remembered All Might from the police station, she doesn’t say so. Kindness all around!

I don’t know if it’s likely, but I’m really hopeful that a “found family” with most (all?) of these characters will happen in the end (maybe with Shigaraki too??)....I enjoy them way too much!!

[rigelmejo]

Notes today o3o)/

1. Chinese

I am 5/12 chapters through 第十二封情书 and I also recommend this as an easy-ish read, especially if you want to pick up some school related words. School related words are a weak spot for me lol because I never needed to learn 班长 is class monitor. The writing is fairly straightforward if you wanted to guess word meanings they're fairly clear from context.

Where this fic shines is its words about feelings/ideas/reasons since it's half in rhe form of introspective "love letters" Zhang zhijun never plans to send, so it's him writing how he feels and wondering if he's nervous or worried to tell his feelings, if he wants to stop the feelings and move on, if people you like become perfect in your eyes, etc. All really good conceptual words on thoughts and emotions which would help one figure out how to word their own feelings in a conversation, in a journal, or if you plan in the future to read stuff where the narrator does get self reflective.

I checked out the 200+k story 你喜不喜欢你, and although Heavenly Path ranks it as Upper Intermediate, Readibu is giving me an hsk 4 comprehension 83% and hsk 5 comprehension 93% for it, which appears to be comfortably in my Extensive Reading zone. So i may read some of that next... though 撒野 is equivalent in difficulty because of Length reasons at that point, and similarly easy language for me. 你喜不喜欢你 supposedly has ghosts though... and I love me a modern supernatural story. See: my favorite pingxie fics ToT 寒舍 and 半夜寒衣. Which, I would read those 2 pingxie fics next but. Readibu stats put them as harder (hsk 4 comprehension 77%). So while I've read them before and know a lot of THEIR specific words, on the other hand I'm reading "easier" stuff right now just to get a lot of reading in. More reading practice = more improvement, so I'm not exactly dying to slow down my progress lol.

On the other hand though? Reading stuff with more unknown words/stuff does increase opportunities to learn things I have a weak spot in. For example I'm reading this school focused thing, which is definitely filling in my high school/college vocabulary gaps. Reading a business setting with economics discussed would fill in gaps I definitely have, etc. Like... I will ultimately NEED to read stuff I'm unfamiliar with, to become familiar with it. So it's not a bad idea to push myself into Unknown vocabulary territory every so often.

Yes, I'm still trying to find out if that 9000 pages in your target language makes u able to read better ToT. One day ill get to prove that claim true or false. One day ToT

I am still reading dmbj 1. But it's slower going cause those chapters take me 20-30 minutes a piece. And of course... once I finish I've got a LOT more fucking dmbj novels ToT. Which... I might do 云村笔记 next, since it's got useful words and it's mostly a slice of life novel so I don't need to keep reading another 30 chapters of our dudes scared in a tomb! (I tell you what though: if you want to get comfortable with tomb genre words read dmbj... I feel like after this first novel, the majority of new unknown words will be sand/water setting related or names, because the vast majority of other words in dmbj are scary/reaction/tomb/old stuff antique/bugs/tomb gear which the first book is covering and getting one familiar with).

2. Japanese

I started Yakuza Like a Dragon yesterday, with Ichibian!

And like every single fucking time I start a Japanese game, my brain goes into overdrive to remind me of what's familiar but I fucking forgot ToT, what I don't know yet and desperately try to guess, what I remember but needs to Snap Back into place again, and how much I just wanna Get Better At Japanese so the task of me enjoying comparing the japanese to the English translation gets easier. (Don't ask why I enjoy so Much comparing japanese original with translations, but wow do i, I'm absolutely overwhelmed with doing it automatically and loving it a lot whenever I stumble into japanese again ToT).

The thing is. Every time I remember jjapanese, the Chinese word for things usually zooms right out of my active vocabulary and gets replaced with the japanese. This spring I played through several yakuza games and my japanese recognition and new learned stuff increased (I got to the point I kept forgetting how to converse in chinese and the japanese sentences were all that were fucking coming to me... 时间shijian was GONE and replaced with 時間 jikan ToT and nanren was replaced with otoko it was a mess, I truly couldn't remember something as basic as nanren ToT). But it just shoved my active chinese vocabulary right outta my brain - which to be fair, I was doing no chinese studying in the spring to KEEP it active.

Meanwhile, this past week I read 5 chinese stories and I'm going on 2 more. So my chinese active vocabulary I forgot this spring came right back, and now I can remember how to chat in chinese (which is good for particular personal life reasons at the moment) but that also means I blanked out on all my old japanese active vocab. Nanren replaced otoko, haizi replaced Kodomo, jiehun replaced whatever the fuck wedding was in japanese but I forgot. (I do notice my mental active vocab seems to replace the hanzi/Kanji cognates the worst, I think cause my brain just hates multiple pronunciations for a given character so it doesn't like conceptualizing multiple... which is part of why hanzi clicked so easy for me with their usually only 1-2 pronunciations, versus Kanji which I STILl fucking struggle to pronounce with their usual several pronunciations). So yeah, my chinese is great again rn... but just playing a game with japanese audio, my brain goes into overdrive trying to remember again lol.

I find it so funny. I find it so funny things can be so easy yet so hard. That u can learn more and be eons past where you used to be in progress, and then realize how much you still don't understand and must learn. Then you learn more, get aware of New things you never realized you didn't know, and the process repeats. In japanese I was OVER THE MOON last year when I realized I could read manga finally, without a dictionary! Then I was over the moon this spring, listening to Final Fantasys X audio and just able to actually PLACE each scene I heard, follow some of the dialogue meaning. Now it's fall, I've "progressed" and I pick up Guardians japanese translated novel... I slog through the intro character page, and realize just how brutally few Kanji words I know how to pronounce, how much I'm leaning on chinese hanzi knowledge to "guess" what I'm reading. I start playing some yakuza, and realize how HYPE I was in spring to understand "I'm going to get Oden, yeah he'll kill you, ikuzou etc" when now I hear a solid 4 words I don't know and get So antsy i can't grasp that part lol! That I realize now I can follow that daily life stuff so it doesn't blow my mind to understand anymore, it's not progress that blows my mind anymore to just manage to reach (though it used to), now I've moved on and my brain insists its Frustrating to not grasp new particular details.

It's just. So funny how it's both SO motivating to be on the beginning part when you feel you made a breakthrough and comprehend more! Then it's almost demotivating to realize the new things you Still Don't grasp and desperately want to (even though objectively it's a good thing - you're making more progress if this is happening). Funny what the brain gets happy versus frustrated over.

Which is happening with me for chinese too right now. At lightning speed! At the beginning of this month my brain was DELIGHTED I could read a novel in 2 days and know almost every word! OVER THE MOON I could grasp so much, when I've read stories fully before and Never Comprehended them with such detail as this week. And now, toward the end of this week? My brain is acting frustrated if I try to read and skip or guess an unknown word! Just 1-2 unknown words feel frustrating! When I know good and well I've seen 10-20+ unknown words a chapter in rhe past, ans EASILY read, grasped main idea, and enjoyed. I know that literally earlier this week, I read a story extensively and didn't know maybe 2-5 words a chapter, and it didn't bother me at all! But now it's the end of the week, and my brains going "Oh this feels so hard to read! It has a handful of vague words (that I could definitely guess if I put the effort into and aren't hard to quickly look up)". It makes me wanna force myself to slog through something MUCH harder, if only to remind myself it's not actually a big deal that should make me STUMBLE AND STOP if I don't remember 情致 and 感情s difference absolutely perfectly in a sentence. Or if i dont remember specifically how touch 触碰 and 触摸 differ. Lol its not a big enough deal to actually impede understanding of main idea, and yet now that it's the end of the week these "vague confusions" and driving me up a wall! Lol if I went and read 默读 or 杀破浪 without a dictionary I would quickly realize how much it doesnt fucking matter if I know the specific nuance, and I'd just be grateful to see words I recognize to help me guess all the words I DONT.

Anyway it's. Funny and ridiculous to see the process. How a brain doing something Super Hard acts like it's amazing to successfully understand, but a brain doing something reasonably easy is like "oh but I'm not doing it perfectly so I wanr to give up!"

I also watched 2008 ep 1 of Legend of the Condor Heroes last night in chinese only and uh. Nothing like some huge dialogue chunks of wuxia 4 hanzi wordings to remind me I don't know shit, I can follow a much more confusing story line to me than I think I can ToT. I followed it fine, though yeah it was a bit of a struggle. It reminded me I followed Word of Honor in chinese, and to be so Grateful word of honor was actually mostly fairly modern straightforward dialogue except for a few things Wen Kexing, Prince Jin, and the big sect leader said. Versus Legend of the Condor Heroes 2008 where the first maybe 20 minutes is all several fighters saying lots of 4 hanzi line phrases with just a little relief of action and direct sentences like Tie and Guo fighting and dying. Then finally it flashes 16 years forward and I was so relieved it was regular spoken kinds of everyday stuff again like shoot the black bird/save the white bird/my daughter X/etc is coming.

Anyway back to japanese! I yet again wanna go thru my japanese old audio glossika files. So I can know more of the fucking words I'm hearing in yakuza. Though, knowing me, the words I'm gonna pick up wouldn't even be in glossika. Like I doubt kill is in that course ToT, but I sure had to learn it to follow a lot of yakuza lines.

[chibivesicle]

Golden Kamuy - Kikuta really deserved better [part 2] 277-279.

Can you tell by my title that I’m a fan of Kikuta and I have some choice words for Noda?  Chapter 277 starts out with an introduction to the regional politics of Meiji era Japan.  The entire political shift occurred with the marriage of convenience between Choushuu and Satsuma (the Sat-Chou alliance) and how that is playing out in government and the military. With Hanazawa on the Satsuma side a commanding officer is having Tsurumi deal with the damage control.  That being Lt. General Okuda (and Kikuta’s boss)

He discloses how he’s the person who helped to cover up the scandal for Hanazawa and more of the regional politics comes into play as he pulls Tsurumi into this.

Recall that Tsurumi is from Niigata and we know he is from a family that lost power and wealth due to political changes.  He assumes that of course Tsurumi would hold a grudge towards those from the Sat-Chou alliance.  Usami is also from a fallen samurai family in Niigata and we know that Ogata is from Ibaraki and also from a samurai family on the losing side.  Tsukishima is from the island of Sado where unwanted people were dumped in Niigata so he is also an outsider.  We learn of his ‘true’ feelings as the tells his core group his opinion on things.

I love how we get unhinged Tsurumi calling it all a farce and he’s over Central.  But most importantly Okuda confirmed his own intel about the gold he learned while in Russia at some point in time.  His gold plan can slowly move along.  So Tsurumi becomes in the Hanazawa scandal cover up looking for the young 2nd Lt. and Kikuta, working under Okuda’s direct orders.

Despite his best efforts, Kikuta’s plan is revealed by a secretary at the Military Academy, while we know that Sugimoto and Kikuta are en route to the engagement dinner.

Hanazawa panics and sprints out to determine what is happening. Right on his tail is Tsurumi and his key team of Ogata, Tsukishima and Usami.  Clearly this is going to become a huge mess.  The next few pages are amusing, but really don’t add value to the plot.  I am impressed that Kaeko has an excellent plot to get Sugimoto naked and I commend her efforts!  GK is never short of strong female characters.  Who enjoy sex.

This sets up a hilarious moment where he’s naked and trapped in a bedroom while she leverages the potential scandal to her advantage.  By that point Tsurumi has caught up to them.  What is most interesting is when Usami addresses Ogata as Hyakunnosuke and asks him what he thinks about meeting his brother.  It is clear this isn’t out of concern from Usami’s part, we know he hates Ogata to his very core.

But as usual, Ogata doesn’t respond and we just see only a part of his eyes, not even a glance of his lips to give us an idea of what he’s thinking.

Kaeko and Sugimoto continue to talk as she reveals what she knows from Hanazawa Hiro.  She had been a nurse during the first Sino-Japanese war so it has allowed her to reflect on the impact of war on individual soliders.

This tells us a few things;  Hiro’s patriotism is more nuanced.  If she were being selfish and just saying she doesn’t want her son to go off to war without experience it, that would be one thing.  Instead, she knows being a military spouse first hand what happens - no one could say she didn’t do her own duty and go likely above and beyond.  Ultimately, she wants to protect her son from her own experiences and observations and be a mother.

Sugimoto then realizes he needs to bail and leaves poor Kikuta confused.  And then bam! The 27th is there.

Of course this leads to the most Sugimoto situation of all time!  Tsurumi threatens Kaeko with his handgun and Ogata asks where Yuusaku is.  Of course Sugimoto flies out of the bathroom naked sans Kikuta’s hat and Ogata is just amused beyond belief.

This would be complete if he were relaxed eating a box of popcorn or something like that. 278 continues this absolute chaos and lots of fan service for Miss Kaeko!  I really don’t think the fight scene needs much meta.  Ogata just finds it amusing (and btw sucks at hand to hand combat) while Usami rumbles with Sugimoto.  Tsurumi realizes he’s not Yuusaku and Kikuta rushes in and gets shot in the shoulder by Tsukishima.

Somehow, Kikuta is able to get the rest of them to flee but not without running into the actual Hanazawa Yuusaku.  Awkward.  Tsurumi only then realizes that Kikuta was doing his job and they run out into the street.

Kaeko tries her best to convince Sugimoto to marry her.  Granted he is a very heroic figure and he fought to protect her.  However, reality wouldn’t allow that to happen and Sugimoto decides to join the army - thinking he won’t starve that way.

Kikuta looks so sad and disappointed when he hears this.

He’s definitely thinking of his younger brother who died b/c he told him to join the army with him.  I loved the fact that we learn that Kaeko got to be a successful woman who was also compassionate to others. 

There is a quick exchange that shows the first encounter between Ogata and Yuusaku.  Yuusaku notices Ogata and salutes him as a cadet.

Ogata doesn’t even return the salute and he look he gives him out of the corner of his eyes.  What is he thinking?  I’d say Yuusaku doesn’t know who Ogata even is.  But something has him very suspicious to be this leery of him.  This also makes me think of this previous encounter between Koito and Ogata in chapter 200.

This time Ogata is bolder when he walks by Koito who is also currently still in the Army Academy.  Except unlike Yuusaku who doesn’t seem to pick up on Ogata’s vibes, Koito does!  And the two of them stare each other down.  I think that this in part shows that Koito has more innate awareness of things and could be considered more of a ‘natural’ in the military.  Which Yuusaku isn’t.  We have no evidence Yuusaku has any sort of military talent or skills. 

The chapter ends with Kikuta asking Sugimoto if he’s serious about joining the military and how he’s already fated to go to hell based on what he’s done in his life.  279 continues the conversation between Kikuta and Sugimoto and he flat out tells Sugimoto about how his brother died of illness in the army during the Sino-Japanese war.

Sugimoto then becomes Kikuta’s younger brother telling him that it is time to move on.  This continues the trend in GK where a character that is speaking becomes someone else to the listener.

This is most evident with Asirpa when she becomes Yuusaku on more than one occasion to Ogata.

But this facial expression from Kikuta [sobs].

No wonder Kikuta worked so hard to save Ariko’s life!  He can’t just always be responsible for the deaths of others.

Sugimoto convinces Kikuta that he’ll be alright in the army and he relents and lets him keep the cap.  This shows that Kikuta has moved on from the death of his brother - a big deal!  In an unusual way, Sugimoto has helped Kikuta move on and take the next step in the healing process. Kikuta reports to his commander in the 1st.  Okuda wants him to keep an eye on Tsurumi.  Obviously, he knows now that Tsurumi interfered with Kikuta’s plans for Hanazawa rather heavy-handedly so he would need someone else to balance it out.

It then reveals that Ogata is also working for Okuda in the 1st.  This explains why when the two of them crossed paths in the brewery they did not engage but nor did they appear to exchange any information.

I can’t help but feel like something is still off with this.  Ogata does have skills from working in intelligence with Tsurumi.  He’s observant, makes himself invisible and can get others to talk easily.  But Ogata being a 100% willing spy - it seems like he wants something else out of this. Kikuta’s character screams secret agent - but Ogata, he’s something else.  I’m not sure if Ogata’s choice to be a spy on Tsurumi was a real choice.

When Ogata and Tsukishima had their shoot out in Yubari at Edogai’s, Tsukishima told him he was a pet cat for Central.  Ogata replied that they were part of a rebel element.  We know that Ogata was working with Tamai at the beginning of the manga.  I struggle to see how Ogata has loyalty to anyone honestly.  He seems to be moving throughout this game with again his own mysterious objective.  Ogata is cynical and has no belief in the nation state nor does he harbor any sort of deep patriotism towards Imperial Japan.

Since Okuda is friends with Hanazawa and is based in Tokyo, he may have known Ogata since his birth and has kept tabs on him after the Ogata grandparents took him back to Ibaraki with his mom.  Ogata’s existence might be a sort of trump card that Okuda is keeping . . . but others found out as well like Tsurumi.  Did Okuda have Ogata tell or leak information that Ogata is Hanazawa’s first son? The chapter jumps to the 203 meter hill in the war and we see Yuusaku fallen on the battlefield.  Ogata watches from distance, his face cut off while other members of the 27th run out to help Yuusaku.

This finally reveals Yuusaku’s eyes!  Not the anticipated reveal - I kept thinking this was something that Ogata was going to see but it shows us clear eyes.  Which look sort of similar to Asirpa’s eyes.

So many thoughts are jumping around in my brain about this reveal.

1.) These eyes are not the ‘trademark’ Hanazawa eyes.  Dark black orbs with those eyebrows!  This indicates his eyes aren’t from his father.

Seeing this, I can’t help but think that Yuusaku is not Hanazawa’s son.  Instead, Hiro had an affair with someone else.  A major theme in GK is that the children inherit the skills of their parents.  Asirpa is able to do many things as she inherited the intelligence of Wilk.  And that Ogata is the true inheritor of Hanazawa’s military skills.

Recall this from chapter 58.  Ogata leads the crappy local gang against Hijikata and acts like a commander.

We know that Tsurumi’s lie about Ogata wanting to avenge Hanazawa is to keep Nikaido in the dark.

This would also explain why everything we learn about Yuusaku is terrible at military things.  If he also isn’t Hanazawa’s son it would make it even more reason for Hiro to try to prevent him from entering the military since he’s not even genetically related to this great line of Hanazawas.  I wish we knew more about the Ogata side of things - I think we’ll also learn that the Ogata side had competent military men on it as well.  2.) Yuusaku’s eyes are the same as Asirpa’s and indicate their sort of innocence.  In this case, it would perfectly explain why Ogata sees Yuusaku instead of Asirpa when he has the fever and then the melt down on the ice floe.  Yuusaku kept himself naive and innocent to meet his father’s expectations.  A man who I don’t think is even his father at this moment.  Therefore, Ogata’s guilt on killing Yuusaku is tied to his sort of innocence in these situations and why he can’t seem to shake his mental confusion when it comes to Asirpa.  However, unlike Yuusaku, Asirpa has never forced herself on him to do things or guilt tripped him so it leaves things open for him to not link her to Yuusaku.

3.) Yuusaku was going to blow Ogata’s cover working for Okuda.  Now that we know that Ogata was working for Okuda while in the 27th it means he’d have to keep his role quiet.  If Yuusaku found out that Ogata was working for Okuda, I could see him going to Tsurumi and telling him this information.  Therefore, to protect his status, Ogata used this as his rationale to kill Yuusaku on the battle field.  I have never figured out if Ogata was nudged to kill Tsurumi by his ‘don’t kill him right now.’ comment as one of Tsurumi’s backwards motivations that lead Ogata to directly killing him. So many possibilities!  I want more Ogata backstory dammit!

Anyhoo, to not make this meta super long let’s get back to the action. Asirpa begins working out how to try to break the code.  Hijikata notes that Wilk could have used something other than kanji, since he’d know the Latin alphabet for Polish and Cyrillic for Russian.  Shiraishi makes a clear point that this could be a message from Wilk towards her, though it feels like he’s channeling Kiro.  Out of many of the Japanese characters Shiraishi time and time again comes out much more sympathetic to the minorities than others.

Asirpa begins to wonder how the coin is linked to the skins. She’s thinking things through and is on her way to solving the puzzle.

After saving Ariko, Kikuta is returning to Tsurumi’s group in the church.  Oh Roger, this is why I love you so much.

Look at that smirk with a slightly watery eye.  At the same time Tsurumi is also looking at the coin and realizes he’s figured it out.

Kikuta approaches the rest of the group and comments on if he’s found the location.  Tsurumi states that things are just getting started.  He casually pulls out his gun and fires two shots into Kikuta at point blank range.

And with this I am deeply saddened and shocked.  How dare you do that to Kikuta!!!  He was my Kiro replacement and now he’s also going to die.

First Boutarou died and now Kikuta.  [cries].  We know that Tsurumi is a shinigami but this is just brutal.  The bear death trio died early on in the manga.  Ogata escaped.  Kikuta now is the next link to Central that goes down.

[kookiebunnii]

lucky in love || min yoongi

→ summary: you didn’t expect to start your day with an arrow to the heart, quite literally, but neither did you expect to meet cupid himself. quickly realizing that you aren’t dramatically falling in love from the effects of cupid’s arrow, the two of you unexpectedly team up to solve this curious dilemma. however, at the end of it all, what if cupid is the one falling in love?

→ pairing: cupid!yoongi x reader

→ genre: roman/greek mythology au, fluff 

→ word count: 6.6k

→ warnings: mature language

→ a/n: this is sort of a half-gift to myself and @cinnaminsvga​, the author who actually inspired me to write again. i just hit 200 followers, and i guess i also wanted zee to know that her works definitely motivate and inspire others!

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡     

Sitting in your armchair, embroidering little white carnations into the hem of the wedding dress in your hands, you truly thought that you couldn’t be any more content. This particular order had recently prompted the idea of “love” into your mind whenever you worked, as your customer had practically beamed with excitement when talking about her fiancée. Although your family and friends seemingly had your relationship status on the forefront of their minds, it wasn’t something you chose to fret about. You’d had your fair share of boyfriends, men you enjoyed spending time with and even one you thought about a “happily ever after” with. But of course, your career and independent personality typically got in the way.

It had led to heartaches and internal turmoil early on in your life, but now you were a freelancer, a fashion designer making clothes from your apartment. It wasn’t the most luxurious life imaginable, but it was the life you wanted. You were able to do what you loved while helping others. Romantic love just wasn’t on this week’s to-do list...orders were.

You set the piece down and slowly rotate your wrists to chase the stiffness away from your joints. Taking a sip of your chamomile tea, you watch as the horizon outside your window lights the buildings aglow with an orange and pink hue. The colors are beautiful, and you’re briefly inspired. Heading to your workbench in the room next to you, you grab your pocket notebook and scribble down the colors you see outside. You always wrote little notes in this particular journal, hoping to use it for your own creative works someday if not for a future customer’s order. Examining the words “pink, orange, yellow blending” in your casual scrawl, you flip to previous pages to reread your past bouts of inspiration.

You sigh, knowing that this wedding dress was your last big order for the month. Perhaps you now have enough time and funds saved up to work on something for yourself next week.

Your discarded cell phone on the couch begins beeping incessantly, so you set your notebook back down and skirt over to check what it’s for. You make a small sound of happiness, remembering that you had ordered Thai food for dinner tonight. Taking off your work apron and hanging it on a hook in your office, you find the warmest coat you own before rushing out the door.

Weather these days is like a finicky child who can’t make up his mind. In the daylight you’d have to pull on a t-shirt and a long skirt to fully appreciate the rare breezes that danced through the open windows. However, after sunset, temperatures could drop quite steeply. You’re reminded of this again when you’re forced to tuck your hands into your pockets and tell yourself to hurry.

The street is lit with soft lamplight and despite the cold and hunger resting in your belly, the artist in you can’t help but appreciate how beautiful this sight is as well. Round circles of yellow going from intense to faded against a midnight blue backdrop fill your thoughts. It’s so distracting that you almost walk past your destination without realizing.

Quickly backpedaling a few steps, you head into Thai Us Together—you must give the owners credit for their pun-tastic name—and greet the familiar worker at the front desk. She engages you in some polite conversation before handing you your usual order and bidding you goodbye.

It’s only when you are a few steps away from the entrance to your apartment complex that you are hit in the chest by an arrow.

You realize this not because you feel any sort of pain from the attack, but because a translucent arrow radiating a pinkish glow is now visibly protruding from your front. Firmly planted above your ribs, you’re momentarily at a loss. Perhaps any normal person would be screaming in terror, but you just stare, wide-eyed, wondering if you were dreaming. Things never got this crazy in your dreams though.

“Why isn’t it working?”

You blink and suddenly there’s a dark-haired, pale-faced man in front of you. He doesn’t look much older than you, as he stands in front of you with his arms crossed. Frowning in discontent, he stares in the direction of your chest unabashedly and you feel that you have the right to be more than a little offended.

“Um, hello? My eyes are up here.”

When his eyes finally find yours, they’re filled with shock with a little bit of fear mixed in. You almost wonder if you’d grown a second head or something, with the way he was staring at you.

“You can see me?” he asks, pointing at himself as you roll your eyes in response.

“Who else is staring at my chest around here? Yes, you.”

The boy starts laughing, his gums showing cutely in response to your curt reply. You can feel your cheeks warming as you wonder whether your statement deserved to be received with this much amusement.

“You’re a funny one,” he finally notes, before a worried expression takes over his features again, “But you’re human aren’t you? You shouldn’t be able to see me.”

You adjust your takeout in your hands before resting a hand on your hip, “Well, I see you very clearly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have pad thai to enjoy and an arrow to the heart to deal with.”

He grabs your arm, and the touch is so palpable that you know now that you’re definitely not dreaming. You turn to meet the stranger’s gaze again, and the curiosity filling his brown eyes is undeniable.

“You see the arrow too?” he whispers in awe, gesturing to the faint but very noticeable projectile still lodged in your front.

Sighing, you say, “Okay at least I’m not hallucinating this then. Look, I need to try and get this thing out and get to my dinner. If you don’t have any suggestions on how to remove arrows that don’t even feel like they’re actually there, then I suggest you head home.”

He follows you through the gate, matching your hurried steps with ease until you finally snap and turn on him. He almost bumps into you as a result of your sudden halt but quickly readjusts himself and looks at you with an unreadable expression.

After a short glaring contest, he gives you a small smile with a glint in his eye, “I know exactly how to get that out. In fact, I was the one who shot it.”

 ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡    

 Maybe all these years of living alone has finally dulled your warning senses to the point where you were fine letting dangerous strangers into your home. You’d always been too trusting of a person, but you felt too tired and confused to put up much of a fight tonight anyways. You just wanted to enjoy one of your favorite noodle dishes and get rid of whatever black magic was involved in this painless arrow buried inside you. If it meant inviting a random puzzling but handsome individual into your abode, then so be it.

As you dig into your meal, you watch as your guest sips on his glass of water. He had denied your offer of food, but you could at least say you were a polite host. With your stomach now appeased, you take your own gulp of water before launching into an interrogation.

“Who are you?” you ask.

He tilts his head, observing you for what feels like the seventh time that day. Finally, he leans back in his seat in thought. The silence permeates your residence for a good minute before he finally utters, “I’m Cupid, God of desire, attraction, and affection.”

You stop mid-chew to openly gawk at the black-haired male in front of you. This boy, dressed in a large hoodie and ripped jeans, is supposed to be the fat baby featured on Valentine’s Day cards? Maybe you brought a crackhead into your home.

“I know what you’re thinking. You mortals have ruined my image recently and as a result I am no longer receiving the respect I deserve,” he purses his lips before setting his water glass aside and openly observing you again, “But I am in fact Cupid.

“Okay let’s say you are Cupid or whatever and you shot me. Doesn’t this mean I’m supposed to fall in love now or something? I don’t feel anything other than a desire to finish the rest of this delicious pad thai.”

He doesn’t even smile at your attempt at lighthearted humor, instead wrinkling his brow further at your words.

“That is rather curious.”

Fiddling with a stray bean sprout on your plate, you add, “Well, could we start with removing this first?”

He finally gives you an amused grin when you gesture to the faint outline of an arrow above your ribs, which appears to be growing increasingly hard to see as time passes. Maybe you are finally going off the deep end.

“It’ll disappear soon,” and as soon as the words leave his lips, the arrow has faded entirely. He turns slightly, and a quiver suddenly appears on his back. You count 11 arrows before another slowly fills the remaining empty spot to complete the final dozen.

Your jaw is practically on the floor at this display.

“I need to figure out why this is happening,” he muses, resting his chin on his hand and training his unwavering gaze on you once again.

Jeez, you were starting to feel like an exhibit at the zoo.

“Look, as much as I appreciate meeting a god, I have work to do and a deadline to meet. I’m sure this is very fascinating, but frankly I’d rather not fall in love anyways so I’m quite glad this didn’t work,” you stand up to set your cleared dish in the sink before heading for the door to escort him out.

“Why not?” he asks, as if he couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever not want to be in love.

You turn after undoing the lock at your door to find that he still hasn’t budged from his chair. Clearly not on the same page as you are, you saunter over to him and do your best to give him a menacing look, “I’m happy the way I am. Now are you leaving?”

You definitely weren’t usually this rude, but the amalgamation of your anxiety to get back to work and the confusion of trying to understand what was happening to you made for a deadly combo. Today’s events were definitely giving you a short fuse. If this offends him, Cupid sure doesn’t show it, because he just gives you a small tilt of his lips before heading to your kitchen to wash his empty cup.

You watch, mystified, as he sets his cup on the drying rack before washing the plate you had left in the sink earlier. At this point you rush forward, embarrassed, but he simply shakes the excess water off the plate before leaving it next to his discarded cup. You thought Cupid was supposed to be mischievous, and maybe this guy was, but he was definitely going out of his way to be nice to you.

“Thanks” you mumble halfheartedly, suddenly feeling a bit regretful that you were trying your damnedest to shoo him out earlier.

He chuckles, drying his hands on your teacloth hanging nearby before asking, “Can I ask you some questions?”

Deciding that no ill-natured person would go through the trouble of washing your dishes before murdering you, you lead him to your living room where you were previously working on embroidery. The wedding dress is still resting on the arm of the chair you previously occupied, so you briefly excuse yourself to move the large piece back to your workspace.

When you come back, he seems to be running his tongue against the inside of his cheek in thought. It distracts you for a bit until he finally asks, “Are you getting married?”

Sputtering with a bright fuchsia across your cheekbones, you quickly reply, “No! No, it’s an order for a customer. I’m a designer.”

He sighs in relief, “Thank Zeus, I honestly thought I had lost all of my powers including my sense. Maybe it’s just my arrows that are faulty.”

When he notices how you’re looking at him quizzically, he kindly explains, “Usually, getting hit with my arrow means you fall in love with the person I’ve assigned. For some reason that clearly hasn’t happened for you. Besides, you’re definitely not supposed to see me or my arrows unless I will it to happen.”

You frown, worrying your bottom lip between your teeth as you think. If this dark-haired boy is to be trusted, was there actually something wrong with you? Additionally, who had he chosen for you? Maybe if it was meant to be and all that jazz, you could just have Cupid introduce the two of you and he can be on his way. That’d be much simpler than trying to wrap your head around the idea that Roman Gods existed.

“Who’s the person?”

He smirks, appearing to be amused at your shy remark, “Mortals are simple creatures. It matters more whether your significant other is as good-looking as you imagined than the possibility that something is very wrong with you.”

“Hey, I didn’t say that. Besides, you could just wingman me with the guy you picked and then go back to shooting people for fun. You’re acting like the end of the world is coming.”

Lounging on your couch, he grabs one of the decorative pillows next to him and begins playing with the loose strands like an easily entertained cat. You sit down next to him, grabbing the other cushion to hold in your arms for security while he exhales in disappointment.

“It’s not that easy. This isn’t something that’s supposed to happen,” he admits, tossing the pillow aside and training his eyes on you.

“Well, you could always ask one of your fellow gods, right? Isn’t your mom Venus or something? I’m sure she has plenty of experience in the love department,” you suggest, wondering if you were being too gullible by accepting and participating in his fantastical stories.

He scoffs, “If she knew about you, she’d just tell me to kill you.”

“Okay so we won’t be asking her for help under any circumstances. Got it.”

He laughs again, and you can’t help but crack a smile of your own. Maybe in another world, if he just happened to be a random boy you bumped into one day, you’d actually want to be friends with him. But in your reality, he was supposed to be a god. If your lessons in Roman mythology meant anything, humans should probably fear those like him instead of inviting them into their one-bedroom apartments.

“You’re probably one of the more amusing mortals I’ve met recently,” he grins, “Do you still want to know who I chose for you?”

Heart racing, it was as if you could feel your pulse thrumming in anticipation. Wasn’t this what every person wanted? To know who they would end up with, to know who they were supposed to love until their last breath? Even if you were a self-declared non-romantic, the idea was still interesting. Its appeal was still undeniable, even if it wasn’t a priority for you.

But then you hesitated, wondering if it was beneficial for you to even know this. Did you like the idea of this cheeky boy just randomly selecting a guy for you? Maybe free will was just an illusion, but how would you even go about your life if you knew that you were supposed to be with someone—no alternatives? That kind of pressure just didn’t float your boat at all.

“Never mind actually. It’s probably better if you don’t tell me.”

This statement surprises him, because he actually leans forward to rest his palm against your forehead with a concerned expression on his features. Up close, you can see the pretty faint freckles across the bridge of his nose and the small speckles of gold in his irises. No, this boy is definitely not human.

“What happened to Y/N?” he jokes, laughing when you brush his hand away to look at him with a frown.

“Look, it doesn’t mean I’m not curious. Besides, now I can pick who I want to be with without your ministrations being a part of it,” you huff, crossing your arms.

Smirking, you can see the mischievousness lighting up his eyes at your words, “And how will you know that the man you’ve ‘picked’ isn’t just someone else I’ve chosen to hit you through the heart with?”

You don’t respond at his teasing question which causes your guest to lean back once again with satisfaction. If he really was the omnipotent entity he claimed to be, you guess you wouldn’t really know if you liked someone out of your own volition. At least you could now pin the blame of being with some of your past exes as a result of Cupid’s interference and not your lack of good judgment.

“I’m going to have to monitor you for a few days. I’ll head back to Olympus every once in a while, seeing if I can find any answers for this oddity. If anything strange happens, just call for me.”

You pull out your cell on instinct, and he laughs while taking the device and slipping it back into your pocket. Instead, he takes your hands in his and intertwines your fingers together as if you were praying.

“You want me to pray to you and you’ll just show up?” you ask incredulously, trying hard to ignore the way you could feel the blood rushing to your head at his warm touch against the backs of your hands.

He nods, “It’s how it used to be, back when you all believed in us. I’ll be off now. See you tomorrow.”

One second, he’s there and the next he’s not. Standing awkwardly in the middle of your living room, fingers interlocked, you could genuinely convince yourself that you had just had an extremely hyper realistic dream. Unfortunately, the lingering heat of his hold on you remains undeniable.

 ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡    

 Enjoying the tart taste spreading across your tongue from your homemade lemon tea, you set your glass down before admiring the semi-finished piece in front of you. You had set the wedding dress onto a mannequin in your studio after completing the final details to better observe the overall look. You need to pull in the waist a bit more and fix the neckline, so you step forward to remove the dress and get to work again.

“It looks nice.”

The sudden words cause you to almost trip over your own feet and you have no choice but to grab your mannequin for balance. Cupid chuckles from behind you, and you glance at him wide-eyed long enough to catch what look like wings folding behind his back before they disappear.

“Hello,” you squeak, surprised at his random entrance after leaving you alone for two days.

“You’re quite talented for someone who designs and makes the pieces herself,” he muses, stepping closer to you to catch the fabric of the lace sleeve in his fingertips.

“It’s nothing really. I’m just a decent option for someone looking for something original and unique, I suppose.”

He tilts your chin up to look at him and the motion sends an entire series of shockwaves through your system. No one had been this close to you in a long time, so maybe you were just reacting because of the unfamiliarity. 

Yeah, that’s probably what it was.

Cupid hesitates, as if he had lost his train of thought, before quickly recovering, “Give yourself more credit, love.”

Pulling away from you, he leans back against your workbench with his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. Shaking the bangs away from his eyes, he says, “Do you feel any different?”

“No. I had half the mind that I just dreamt the whole thing,” you reply, finally letting go of the mannequin and stepping towards your desk to find some thread and a sewing needle.

He hums in thought, watching your movements as he says, “I haven’t had much luck either. I went to Vulcan, asked him if he could look at my arrows. He said they were in good working order but replaced a few of them anyways at my request.”

“Vulcan? Is that Hephaestus’s Roman name?”

“Yes, I wonder why Greek names are more familiar to you. Perhaps schooling is different nowadays,” he comments, watching as you take a seat across from him and begin making your adjustments.

“If it’s any consolation, they do look shinier than before,” you tease, pointing at the quiver appearing on his back.

He gives you an amused chuckle, pulling out one of the arrows to examine it from its point to the sleek feathers at its very end. When it finally disappears from his hands to return to its home on his back, he quips, “Are you sure you’re not a demigod?”

The question catches you off guard for sure, but you decide to play his game anyways, and think back to your parents. Did they ever do anything that seemed…otherworldly? Did they seem like the type of people to run off and have a tryst with some Olympian god or goddess?

Haha, definitely not.

You shake your head, giggling at the possibility since you knew your parents very well. He takes your answer with a nod and continues looking out towards the large window at the scene outside. The sky is a pale blue today with fluffy white clouds gliding by with ease. You were almost done with this order, and you planned to ship it to your customer this weekend. Maybe you’d enjoy a picnic outside to celebrate afterwards.

“Do you…have another name that you use? Calling you Cupid just seems weird. I still can’t get the name to disassociate from the image of a chubby winged baby in my head.”

He takes your question seriously, a trait you notice by the way he’s seemingly lost in thought. You wait patiently though, continuing to work on your methodical stiches as he ponders.

“Yoongi,” he finally says, appearing satisfied.

“Yoongi? That’s an interesting choice,” you reply, feeling the way this new name rolled off your tongue.

“It was the name of a mortal I knew. I quite like it.”

You accept his choice, finishing your alteration on the neckline and deciding to call it a day. You’ll spend the next few days attaching the sequins, which was bound to be an exhausting task. Just as you’re about to set the dress back on your trusty mannequin, the sound of glass breaking causes you to scream.

A creature seemingly out of your worst nightmares crawls through the windowpane, flames of fire spilling from its mouth. You can’t help but cling onto the back of Yoongi’s sweatshirt once he backs up against you in a defensive stance. The monster looks like a lion from the front, but you notice what appears to be a snake lazily dancing back and forth from where its tail ought to be. Oh, and was that the head of a goat sticking out from its back?

You never thought about how you would die, but this sure wasn’t at the top of your list.

“Fuck, why is this here?” Yoongi growls, and the deep sound that resonates from his chest makes you tighten your fingers on him.

“What is it?” you ask, but the way your voice is compressed in fear barely lets the words escape from your lips. It seems to ignore Cupid altogether, the blazing coals it calls eyes refusing to look away from your fearful expression.

He ignores your question, instead sweeping you off your feet and uttering, “Hold on tight” before skirting around the edge of the room with the creature hot on his heels. You don’t need to be told twice, immediately ducking your head into his shoulder, trying your best to ignore the way the beast sounded dangerously close. When you finally dare to open your eyes, Yoongi has ducked through the gaping hole where your window once was with his hand on the back of your head. He looks down at you briefly before jumping off the ledge.

Your scream sticks in your throat, as you feel the pit of your stomach fall alongside your body. A second later however, the two of you are gliding upwards as if flying. The buildings are a blur with how fast you are going, so you opt to just close your eyes and keep a locked grip on your savior. Even though you had no clue where you were being taken, you sure as hell weren’t about to return to your apartment even if it hadn’t turned into a pile of ashes by now.

When Yoongi finally stops, it feels like an eternity has passed, and your head is so dizzy that you’re forced to lean against a tree for support. As you try to keep the contents of your stomach from making an appearance, you make out the blurry form of your new friend pacing back and forth with his hair a mess. He is very clearly stressed, so you shift to grip the side of his pant leg when he paces closer to you.

“We’re fine now,” you mumble, tugging him closer. You hope he sits down so you could lean your head on his shoulder. It was starting to get chilly and you want to get ahold of whatever warmth was currently available.

Perhaps he can read your mind too because he kneels in the grass in front of you and fixes the locks of hair plastered to your clammy skin. He doesn’t seem the least bit grossed out, instead having what looks like worry in those odd eyes of his.

“I can’t believe you’re reassuring me when I’m pretty sure you would’ve died if I weren’t there.”

The words bring you back to reality as you shudder uncontrollably. You definitely would’ve died. That thing looked like it could rip you in two if it truly wanted to, and you weren’t exactly skilled in self-defense. Maybe you were too dumb to realize the danger of the current situation, but you were more concerned by the fact that Yoongi looked deathly afraid.

“Was that something from…your world?” you ask, grateful for the gentle grasp Yoongi had on your wrists. It comforted you knowing that you weren’t alone in this chaos.

“That was a chimera. Our worlds are essentially one and the same, but yes, creatures like that usually don’t just stop by for a house party,” he grunts, shifting so he can sit in front of you with his legs splayed to corner you against the tree.

You still have your legs pulled against your chest, so you lean your cheek against your knees as you regard him intently. He didn’t look anything like a god, and if you saw Yoongi walking on the street you probably wouldn’t have given him a second look. This whole ordeal balanced on the edge of surreal, but you were sure now that with whatever just happened, you were in danger. You wish the arrow worked on you earlier. You would’ve fell in love with some random person but at least you wouldn’t be fearing for your life. Maybe you wouldn’t have met the living embodiment of attraction, but you would’ve been back to normalcy. Isn’t that well worth it?

Struggling to understand why your heart hesitated at the possibility of never meeting Yoongi, you’re barely aware that he is pulling you to your feet until he has an arm wrapped around your waist to support your weak form.

“Can you stand?” he asks, and his fingers feel like they are burning against your side. Even through your sweater, you clearly feel each indent against your skin.

“Yeah, I’m good,” you give him your best attempt at a smile, following him as he walks you further into the forest. Thankfully, he eventually lets you go when he’s assured that you can walk without passing out. His proximity was doing crazy things to your senses, so you are grateful that he let you process your experiences without distraction.

He’s led you to an inconspicuous cave whose entrance is covered by a few hanging willow branches. He brushes these aside before letting you crawl in. The inside is surprisingly dry and you finally take a seat on a smooth, protruding boulder in the corner to stretch your legs out from the trek.

“It’s not a 5-star hotel, but it should do for now. You’ll be safe here until I find out what’s going in,” he says, and in the darkness you can barely make out his form in front of you.

Snapping his fingers, a fire appears in front of you. As you realize that this fire appears to be without a fuel source, you are once again forced to accept that your life is never going to be the same. Hesitantly reaching out to warm your shaking fingers against the heat, you watch as the light of the flickering flames dance across Yoongi’s face. He looks worried and concerned for you, so you can’t help but look away.

Your hands itch for your notebook, but you simply make a mental note to yourself instead: fire and shadows, a golden-eyed boy, warmth.

At this point, he takes off his hoodie and you can’t help the way your eyes immediately dart to the sliver of skin that shows at his waist when his t-shirt rises alongside his movements. When Yoongi finally emerges, a hand running through his locks, you hope that the heat you’re feeling is only from the fire.

He wraps the garment around your shoulders before tying the sleeves around your arms without a word. Taking one last look at you, he lets his touch linger for a second too long against your thigh before he stands to take his leave. This time, you keep your eyes trained on his as he begins to slowly dissipate. You tell yourself that you won’t blink because as long as you’re looking, he can’t leave. Your weary gaze finally betrays you, and when you open your eyes, he’s gone.

 ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡    

 Turns out you wouldn’t have to worry about food, because every couple of hours, you’d magically find some food appearing by the fire Yoongi had made for you. Your phone had long since died, so you weren’t even sure what day it was. Using the appearance of the regular meals to gage the passing of time, you hoped that Cupid would come back for you soon. Your customer’s order would be due soon anyways. At this, you couldn’t help but giggle when you realized how much your commitments meant to you-- even if you were on the verge of getting eaten by a lion hybrid.

It appears that Yoongi had been more observant that you gave him credit for. Every meal, he has only given you pad thai with the ingredients you ordered the night you met him. It was cute how he went with something he knew you liked, likely worried that he could choose something you were allergic to or disliked. He did alternate between cool lemon tea in the mornings and warm chamomile tea in the evenings, but you are sure you won’t be ordering thai food for a long time after you get out of here.

Just as you finish the last of your tea while pondering actually praying to him to get him to show up, Yoongi appears before you. Without a second thought, you scramble up to give him a hug. It seems that even for a god, he doesn’t expect this. Your tackle causes him to briefly lose his balance.

“Easy there,” he laughs, his deep voice mixing beautifully with his laughter as it echoes against his chest.

“Sorry,” you fumble, pulling away quickly and wondering if mortals were allowed to be hugging Roman Gods.

“Have you been alright?” he asks, ruffling your hair fondly with a smile.

You hum in agreement, relishing the way his fingers felt tugging against your locks, “Might need to take a break from pad thai for a while though.”

Chuckling, he extinguishes the fire with a wave of his hand before tugging you out of the cave. The sudden sunlight causes you cover your eyes, gripping his sleeve instead to guide you as you walk. Instead, he carries you in his arms once again before flying off to god-knows-where. At this point, you simply submit in his hold, as you trust him enough as the only person who knew better than you did at the moment.

You’re pleasantly surprised to find that he has brought you to your apartment, and even more pleased to find that your window has been returned to its original state. In fact, everything inside remains perfectly undisturbed.

“How’d we get in if the window is fixed?” you ask, pressing your fingertips against the glass to ensure that it was indeed repaired.

“I stopped by before the chimera appeared without having to bust your windows open, if you remember,” he teases, pulling the curtains aside to let in some light.

“Fair enough.”

You immediately head inside to ensure that the wedding dress was still in your office. You let a relieved sigh escape your lips when you notice it resting happily on your mannequin in the corner, looking as perfect as before.

“Y/N, we need to talk about something,” Yoongi says, pulling out a chair and straddling it as he watches you work with the bag of sequins you prepared earlier for this project.

“What’s up?” you ask, already getting back to work by sewing each individual sparkle into the layers of fabric.

“The chimera from earlier, it was sent by someone.”

His words cause your hand to falter, but you remind yourself that you have to make up for lost time, so you continue working furiously.

“Who have I angered?” you ask, trying to keep the concern out of your tone.

Cupid sighs, and when he finally replies, you’re forced to drop the dress entirely.

“Venus? So, she found out about me?” you bite your lip to stop it from trembling under this revelation.

He grips your hands in his own now that yours are no longer busy with working. The emotions swirling in his gaze allows the weird feelings to return to your heart once again. When he makes a request of you, you can’t help but take notice of the way he’s practically begging.

“Y/N, please let me protect you. I can take you somewhere she’ll never find you. We can be together, and you’ll be safe for the rest of your life. I promise.”

Of course, the offer is tempting. You aren’t sure if it’s the confusing feelings you’re beginning to develop for him or if he’s working some sort of love magic on you, but you actually consider his proposition for a good second or two. But eventually, the dazzle of the pearl white dress on your workbench breaks you out of your reverie. Did you want to spend the rest of your life in hiding? Would you still be able to do what you loved? Would you still be able to see your family and friends?

“I can’t,” you reply, giving him a sad smile and a small squeeze with your hands. You can’t accept the hurt on his face, so you go back to work so you can focus on the shiny beads on the waistline of the dress instead.

“I can’t let you die.”

His voice sounds so broken, so lost, so defeated that you almost didn’t recognize its owner. Brushing aside the wetness suddenly flowing across your cheeks as a result of his words and your own fear, you try your best not to let your tears fall onto your customer’s order.

“Y/N please. Look at me?” Yoongi begs, and when you risk a look at him, the tear clinging to edge of his waterline finally rolls down his cheek.

When you realize you’re kissing him, the first thought that manages to form is that his lips are so soft. It’s like you pressed your mouth against a carefree cloud, or some bright pink cotton candy based on the gentle sweetness that slowly begins spreading throughout your body. His cheeks are damp, and you can’t help but whisper “please, don’t cry” against his lips. His laugh mixes with a sob, as he tightens his grip on your waist.

You pull back, and for a second you forget that the man before you is an all-powerful god. As he sits in front of you, brushing your tears away with the pads of his thumbs, he is simply a soft-hearted boy crying over imagining a tomorrow without you. You wonder momentarily if it were possible for him to fall in love, because you were already beginning to feel the rush of falling.

“Am I crazy for liking you?” he chuckles, staring up at the ceiling as if the answer were written there, “I make others fall in love for the shits and giggles, and now I’m the butt of the joke.”

“How did I attract a god?” you muse, pinching his cheeks for your own personal enjoyment.

Yoongi falls back into his thoughts again, and you once again wait patiently for him to form his words. You were willing to wait, because you knew that when he finally spoke, it meant that he had truly considered each and every word he uttered.

“You’re witty. You love to crack jokes, especially when the situation turns awkward. It’s endearing, so much so that I just want to kiss the satisfied grin off your mouth. You’re hardworking and talented, placing the needs of others before your own. You commit yourself to your job, creating art as if it’s second nature. Even after your life gets hit with a whole shitstorm, you work on a wedding dress someone else ordered and tell me not to cry.”

A laugh escapes you as a desperate attempt to cover the fact that you’re certain you are as red as a cherry tomato and that you have the sudden urge to kiss Yoongi again.

The two of you decide to enjoy the simple happiness you feel with your newfound feelings for as long as you can without discussing Venus again. Once again, you find yourself working on the silky fabric of a bride-to-be’s wedding dress in your armchair in the living room. Except this time, Cupid has his arms wrapped around you as you sit in his lap. The two of you watch the sunset together after you decide to take a break, and he massages your wrists for you.

“I don’t want to hide, Yoongi.”

He makes a small noise acknowledging your words, seemingly more invested in nuzzling the exposed skin at the crook of your neck. You pinch his thigh to get his attention before continuing, “I can’t live like that. I’d rather die doing what I loved and enjoying every moment than being locked away somewhere—even if I were with you. Does that make sense?”

“Of course, my stubborn Y/N. I’ll do my best to keep you safe from her nevertheless.”

Raising an eyebrow, you shift in your seat so you can finally look at your brown-haired boy with surprise. You almost regret this decision, because the amount of adoration pouring from the personification of affection himself is almost too much for your mortal self to handle.

“I’m your Y/N now?”

He chuckles, smoothing out your furrowed brow with the tips of his fingers, each stroke leaving a lingering trail of warmth against your skin.

“Are you forgetting the vow I just gave you? A god just promised to protect you, mortal. Have some decorum.”

You frown, feeling too foolishly emboldened to be stopped now.

“Yeah well the witty, hardworking, and talented mortal just asked you a question,” you say smartly, playing with the strands of hair at the edge of his ear.

The golden stars in Yoongi’s eyes seem to shine brighter than before as he says, “For as long as you’ll have me. I’ll love you.”

♡ 

[th3-0bjectivist]

Taking a break, see ya soon(ish)...!

      I need a respite from posting stuff on Tumblr, and I know I have a hand full of regulars (no need to mention your avatars, you know who you are, thank you all for your much needed signal-boosting) that check my profile every week which is the reason I’m letting you all know. In retrospect, I should have done what other people did at the beginning of the year and just taken a few weeks off during the slow period after New Year’s. I’m gonna let the contents of this page sit in a crock pot, let it stew, and make a triumphant comeback.

      I’m taking a break primarily because there are some writing/audio/video projects I’m involved with that require my full attention if they ever stand a chance of coming to fruition. That, and I really need to generate lots of quality material for this page (new art), as well as meditate, read a book, and somehow find some inner peace during unemployment. I need some ‘me’ time. Don't get me wrong, I’m happy as hell with the amount of success I’ve had in the last six months and LOVE how, for a few months, I could so much as sneeze out original art and end up racking up 100-200 hits overnight. But likes and reblogs aren't everything, and I am a humble man. I just need some time to recoup, and I’ll still be checking out your blogs while I regenerate.

      In the meantime, I have consistently posted a plethora of stuff 2-3 times per week, every week, since last September (over 550 entries, most of them not my own work), so enjoy the archives and I will see you all soon. Oh, and in case you haven’t seen my vids I’ve got over an hour of content waiting for ya down below. 

The 0bjectivist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2sONH8IwzL_2sZie0ZNSnw/

I’m also on BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/uvKfJpNkzkIL/

¬ Luke (th3-0bjectivist)

[drxwsyni]

Petrified (pt.3)

Yandere Erasermic x f!Reader

SERIES MASTERLIST

a/n: is this what they call a slow burn?? i promise the intense yandere stuff goes down soon...-ish. i’d like to have a new part out every week or so, give or take a few days. we’ll see how it goes, but for now enjoy the new chapter!!!

ALSO WE REACHED 200 FOLLOWERS LAST NIGHT THANKS Y’ALL, YOU’RE AMAZING

(5.8k words)

Warnings: reader experiences mild anxiety

If there was ever a time in your life when you felt like you could finally take some well needed rest, it was now.

It wasn’t like you had a choice though, your nurse making it very clear that you weren’t cleared for discharge yet. Therefore another long bout of unconsciousness was the only option you had whilst in the dreary hospital room, and waking from it felt much more pleasant than you anticipated.

Your sleep schedule appeared to be unaffected by the recent events, something you were grateful for. It had you up on this fine Sunday morning at precisely 8:12 am, according to the time on your phone. Unfortunately, you neglected to bring a charger with you to work on Friday. So when your abandoned belongings were retrieved from that dreaded alleyway, you were still left with relatively nothing to keep you occupied. The phone was running on a steadily declining 14% battery life, leaving its use to be minimized to an expensive clock.

With nothing to pass the time in that regard, you simply observed the world coming to life outside your window. It left you the chance to go over the past 48 hours in peace, and you specifically regarded the strange development from last night.

It wasn’t something you hadn’t already been over multiple times in your head, but you still couldn’t manage to wrap your mind around the motivation that was fuelling Shouta and Hizashi to propose such a request. Concern over your health did explain some of it, but the extent of the actions caused by this concern was not at all equal to the reasoning.

Regardless, you’d already accepted to fulfill their strange request, so there wasn’t much that overthinking the situation would do to benefit you at this point.

_____

Breakfast came at around 8:30 am, effectively pulling you out of your wandering thoughts. It was simple enough: eggs, sausage, toast, a side of bland oatmeal and a tall glass of water.

The nurse left you to your own devices after that, telling you that for now it was a matter of continuing the same treatment before any more judgments could be made.

This wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t growing increasingly bored by the minute due to the lack of distractions. So when the sound of a certain voice hero’s conversation could be heard on the other side of your door not long after breakfast, it served as a great relief to the mind numbing atmosphere.

Not a moment later and you heard the familiar rapping on the wooden frame, before the blond pushed it open and entered.

“How’s my sunshine doin’ this morning? Ya feelin’ any better?” Hizashi was dressed in casual clothing with his hair down. In addition, he appeared to be holding some sort of shopping bag in his right hand.

You watched as he made his way towards the right side of your bed, responding to his worries. “Well, the rest definitely hasn’t gone unnoticed. My head still hurts but they’re giving me some pretty powerful meds for that thankfully.”

You figured he would sit down in the armchair, but instead he opted for settling on the edge of your bed again. “Ya sure you got enough shut eye? I can come back if ya need to snooze a lil’ longer.”

His open compassion for your health was comforting, albeit a little insistent, but it made for a relaxing atmosphere for now.

“I don’t think I could sleep anymore no matter how hard I tried, thanks for the concern though.” You gave a warm smile, sensing that he was almost stressed over your wellbeing, unnecessarily much in your opinion.

The blond brought the bag up to rest on your lap, and vaguely you could make out the contents for a brief second.

“Well, Shou’ and I figured you didn’t have all that much to live off of since being admitted, so I went and grabbed ya some essentials on the way here.” He gestured to the bag, to which you hesitantly reached for.

He continued, “I wasn’t quite sure what my favorite listener needed, so I just bought a lil’ bit of everything.”

You peered into the opening, seeing quite the assortment of toiletries. Picking up the packet of cleansing facial wipes, something you desperately needed, you continued to peruse through the items. Smaller things like high quality travel sized tissue packets and floral scented lotions were settled aimlessly at the bottom.

One thing that did catch your eye was a small stuffed black cat, wearing a white frilly dress. You took the plushie out of the bag for further inspection, also singling it out for just being cute.

“Shou’ picked that out. Sent him some photos from the gift shop downstairs since he’s not a mornin’ person. Thought it’d keep you company until ya get outta here.” You looked up at Hizashi, seeing him smiling warmly at the thought of something so wholesome, and you couldn’t help but do the same.

“It’s adorable, thanks…” For a moment you sat in the feeling of being cared for so well, something that you didn’t have much time to receive given your lifestyle. However, that sentiment was quickly overshadowed by the circumstances you were in, particularly with this man.

Once again, your body became riddled with grief over the fact that they’d spent not only their time, but now their money on you. Not that you didn’t understand that Hizashi was genuinely concerned for you―nobody could miss that. It’s just there was no reason for it as far as you were concerned.

The two had done more than enough as it is, and the overkill only made you feel worse. “...I just―I can’t help but feel bad that you spent so much on me. I’ll pay you back completely, it’s the least I could do for how much you and Shouta have invested in me so far.”

That’s what you said, and you meant it completely. But you knew that the voice hero wouldn’t stand for it, so you could only hold onto a string of hope that he’d at least let you compensate for half of the valuables.

He almost let out an amused laugh at your worry for the state of his finances. “Look, I know ya mean well, baby. But this stuff costed no more than pocket change. After all, can’t have you bein’ neglected in this place after going through all that trouble to get ya here.”

“Can I at least pay back half, just for some peace of mind.” He was more stubborn than you initially thought, just another trait of his you were growing used to.

“Not gonna happen, sunshine! But there is one thing ya can do…”

The blond pulled out his phone from his jacket pocket, unlocking it swiftly. He handed it to you, the screen appearing to show a page for new contact information. “Go on and type in those digits of yours. We’re gonna need a way to contact you if some new info pops up about the case from Friday night.”

You glanced at his awaiting expression before silently agreeing, typing in your phone number.

“Also, we gotta work out when that dinner night is happening. Can’t have you runnin’ off on us before then.”

He was right, the only way they were letting you make up for their generosity was oddly by letting them provide you more of the manner. It was your only option, so you settled with the new belongings and finished typing in your contact information.

As if to make sure you didn’t give him the wrong number, Hizashi sent you a quick text of a sun emoticon. You took the opportunity to save his information to your phone.

Just as you did, the screen turned black and wouldn’t come back to life no matter how many times you pressed the power button.

“Outta juice?”

Your eyes darted to Hizashi, who moved to rummage through the bag. He pulled out an object you somehow managed to completely miss: a phone charger.

He began unwrapping the cord from its casing, getting off the bed to find an outlet.

“The police ended up havin’ to go through your bag to file everything as evidence. Shou’ was there when it happened, told me to grab a charger cause you were missing one before I left this morning.”

Just another expensive item you wouldn’t be able to compensate for. It’s like he wants you to feel bad for being so helpless.

“Thanks…I’d be pretty screwed without you I guess.” You didn’t want to keep going on about the regrettable feeling that was all too persisting, seeming as it didn’t matter much anymore.

He handed you the end of the now plugged in charger, letting you hook your phone up to it. “No worries, actually I―”

The same nurse as last night had interrupted his train of thought, making her presence known before entering.

“Good morning Yamada sir, checking up on my patient I see?” She didn’t let him respond,  “Well, I hate to break it to you but I’m going to have to steal her for a while.”

He regarded the nurse with a smile. “‘Course, I’ll talk to you later, songbird.”

The blond gestured some finger guns in your direction as he spoke, walking out of your room.

Regardless of the circumstances, you thought, at least I have someone coming to see me. That’s what I get for throwing myself into work and not making friends I guess.

You let the nurse close the door all the way, silently awaiting the slew of information about to be sent your way.

_____

It would seem at this point the only stimulation outside of examinations was in the form of boring phone games, and your newly acquired, and insistent, hero companions.

One of which was currently posted in the armchair, waiting for you to finish eating dinner before you told him about the exciting day you had. Shouta, reserved as ever, kept on his phone until then.

You finished up as soon as possible, the silence eating away at your psyche due to its growing awkwardness.

“How was your day?” Simple, the only thing you could think of asking, great for breaking the silence.

The erasure hero looked up from the screen immediately. “Good, actually. Still haven’t heard anything from the station.”

Remembering that fateful night wasn’t something you particularly wanted to do, but for now it had to be dealt with. “I doubt much will come of it, not exactly like what was going down wasn’t obvious, so no need for an investigation, right?.”

“Probably...any changes with yourself?”

You knew well enough that like his partner, Shouta seemed genuinely interested in your health. The difference was that his way of conveying this was much more...intimidating.

The look he gave you demanded a response, even if the question was harmless enough.

“Ah―not really I guess. I’m here until tomorrow morning for sure, but that’s about all they’ve said.” You wouldn’t know if he was pleased with the response if you didn’t catch the slight nod he gave.

“Well, it’s not a bad thing. You could certainly use the rest.”

Now that’s something you could agree to, but you’d still rather do so in the comfort of your own bedroom.

“Listen, as much as I want to keep you company, my students are expecting graded essays back tomorrow morning. I’m afraid I can’t stay any longer.”

While you did appreciate his presence as a change of routine for a short while, it was only to an extent. You’d be lying if you said the atmosphere didn’t feel heavy while he was around, even if just a little in times like these.

“That’s no problem, I’d hate to keep you from your work.”

He slowly stood up from the armchair, “Hizashi will probably visit tomorrow morning. He’s got the day off so he’ll likely stick around as much as possible. Just tell him to leave if he’s annoying you.”

You watched as his eyes drifted to the stuffed cat resting on the bedside table next to the bouquet, the sight influencing a tired smile.

“You should try and get to sleep early―oh, one more thing.”

Like his partner had done earlier today, he reached for his phone, handing the unlocked device to you. Having done so already, something he was also aware of, you silently typed in your information.

“Don’t be afraid to send one of us a message if you need anything.”

You returned the phone to him, “Right, thanks for stopping by Shouta.”

As he exited the room, you were left with feelings of confliction over the whole ordeal. It was strange―having someone being concerned about your wellbeing was nice, but something, you couldn’t quite place what, was getting in the way of your gratitude.

The two men were clearly busy people. Hero work, on top of being teachers, would more than suffice as something to occupy most of their time. When it comes to dealing with victims, you’d assume that for the sake of efficiency a hero would just drop you off at the nearest hospital and then be on their way.

And yet, for reasons still incomprehensible, the presence of the strange duo was something you couldn’t shake off. Perhaps it wasn’t intentional, but the reality left a peculiar underlying feeling of...suspicion?

It was too soon to say, and frankly it’d be rude to judge them after they’d been so kind to you. However you’d always been someone who falls on the more overstrung side, and neglecting the situation by simply ignoring it was not something you could do.

_____

It was just as his partner had foretold―the next morning you had once again been graced with the presence of Hizashi.

You noted how he was awfully chipper for being up at 8:20 am on a Monday, but like the couple other odd traits of his, you chose to disregard it.

Especially since this person also came bearing quite the appetizing breakfast.

“The nurse said ya didn’t have to eat the hospital food if someone brought you a meal instead. Thought you’d appreciate somethin’ homemade so I whipped it up before leaving.” This time he was seated in the armchair, likely because there wasn’t enough room on the bed with the table that was positioned over it so you could eat.

The meal consisted of―somehow still warm―scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, fruit, and a side of blueberry pancakes. All in all, it was delicious, and you didn’t quite think it was something he could just ‘whip up,’ but you’d let that slide. You thanked him profusely for it before regarding just how little you’d been informed of things since coming to the hospital.

“I didn’t even know that was allowed to be honest. They don’t tell me much aside from whether or not my condition has changed.” You tried to talk in between bites, not wanting to let the warmth dissipate by waiting to have a full conversation.

“Funny you say that cause she also told me you’d be cleared to leave by the end of the day. Looks like the hit you took wasn’t too serious.”

Well, you would’ve appreciated being the first to receive this news. Isn’t there like a doctor-patient confidentiality thing to keep others from knowing stuff like that?

Regardless, it was still good news. The hospital room was starting to drive you a bit crazy.

“That’s good to hear, thanks for letting me know.” You quietly continued your meal while Hizashi went on about similar things―cases that were like yours, his opinions of the hospital staff.

If there was anything he was good at it was filling the silence, and you supposed this was where his relationship with Shouta came in handy. Not that his partner didn’t seem to mind talking, it was just he wasn’t the most energetic when he did so, whether he knew that or not.

In general, the two of you quickly realized that there wasn’t much to discuss, given how you’d been holed up in the tiny room for the last few days―it didn’t really allow for the most exciting news.

He asked you about a few work details of your own occupation―how long you’d worked there, if you liked your coworkers―menial stuff mostly. By then you had long finished breakfast, and it would seem that the blond had no intention of leaving, much like his partner warned you of.

So, you listened patiently while he went on about this and that. Sometimes trailing off into hero stories, other times bringing up his work as a teacher.

In general, you had no problem listening to him go on. You’d speak up here and there, but not for long as he’d quickly resume with whatever topic he’d fixated on for the moment.

One would think it’d be annoying, and perhaps this was just a result of some form of exposure therapy that made it bearable, but it was enjoyable hearing him ramble.

Yet, good things only last for so long.

It’s not that you eventually found the endless discussion boring, rather the developing behaviour was due to you still recovering―even just in the slightest―from recent events. You didn’t even notice it, but gradually your eyes were becoming heavy, and the sound of Hizashi’s voice was becoming more and more distant.

Embarrassingly, he was the first to pick up on it.

He was mid sentence when he caught you nodding off. Rather than being offended, the blond actually found it endearing.

Instead of alerting you just yet that he’d taken notice of your behaviour, Hizashi silently stood up out of the chair, walking over to the windows of your room.

Your half-lidded eyes just barely picked up on the movement, vaguely seeing him pull the blinds closed before coming back to your senses.

“Oh god, I didn’t mean to―you weren’t boring me I promise. I just-”

“Relax, songbird. It’s my fault, ya must still be a lil’ done in, no worries.”

Naturally, you felt terrible. He was acting like he didn’t care, anyone would be offended at this point.

It was excruciatingly awkward, and you desperately tried to collect your thoughts. “No, no it really was interesting, you can keep going if―”

“Stop it, sunshine.” He started towards your bed, which you instinctively shrunk into. You always defaulted this way, panicking immediately in the face of little to no danger. But Hizashi wasn’t dangerous, you told yourself. He continued, “I should’ve known you weren’t better yet. Still not sure how but you really managed to wear yourself out, didn’t ya?”

He pushed you back down into bed by your shoulders while he spoke, continuing to pull up the blankets you discarded earlier.

“I’m gonna head out so you can get some more shut eye, yeah?”

“Um...o-okay. Yeah, I guess…” You inwardly cringed at how small your voice sounded, but to be fair it wasn’t like you could exactly help it.

It was confusing, how he acted so indifferent to the unspoken insult that you gave him by nearly falling asleep. Was he acting?

Hizashi moved away, heading towards the door, leaving you somewhat comfortably tucked into the hospital bed.

“Get some rest, ‘kay sweetheart?”

“Y-yeah, thanks.”

You heard the door click shut as he left, the room falling into silence amidst the now dim lighting.

Okay...what the fuck.

Devoid of any distractions in your proximity, the hard thumping in your chest was more than clear. At times like these you didn’t even realize any growing anxiety―not until the ordeal was over and you were left with the aftereffects.

The attention to it was only drawn more when you processed the increased rate of beeping coming from your heart monitor.

The last thing you wanted to do was bother the poor nurse taking care of you. Steeling yourself, you took deep breaths, focusing your attention on calming down. It worked soon enough, leaving no need for medical intervention.

You noted that getting like this always drained you of energy―mentally and physically. Heeding Hizashi’s orders, it was easiest now to try and sleep off the anxiety.

You can think about whatever just happened later, maybe when your not still hospitalized.

_____

You were stirred awake by a gentle hand on your shoulder, lightly shaking your resting form. Eyes fluttering open, you observed the dedicated nurse you’ve seen time and time again leaning slightly over you.

“Miss (l/n), I have an update on your condition.”

That was more than enough to give you motivation to pull yourself from the jaws of sleep. You sat up slowly, although it was your best attempt at doing so quickly.

The nurse continued, “Well, it’s good news. You’ve been cleared for discharge. Your condition has improved considerably, so you can continue the rest of your recovery at home safely.”

You needed to hear no more, immediately looking around to find your bag that had been delivered to you from Friday night. Still, you figured that this deserved a response.

“That’s really great to hear, thank you for taking care of me...also, where are the clothes that I came here in?”

“Oh yes, they’re in your bag.” You watched as she reached underneath your bed―no wonder you couldn’t find the damn thing.

The nurse settled the bag next to you before continuing. “Here you go, miss. I’ve prescribed some pain medication for your head injury. Directions for consumption are on the label...and I believe that’s it.”

You rifled through the bag, retrieving your clothing from the bottom.

“Oh, one last thing actually. Now, this is only a recommendation, but given your health it would be beneficial if you were to remain home for the rest of the week. You can go to work if you’d wish, but it may slow your remaining recovery process.”

“I’ll have to think about that one, but thank you for letting me know.”

She turned off the heart monitor before removing the clip on your finger. The IV had been removed yesterday, so there was no need for attention in that department.

“Perfect, you can get dressed and gather your belongings. Please speak to the receptionist at the end of the hall―right before the elevator―so you can pick up the prescription before you leave.”

“Sounds good.” You offered a warm smile to her, and she politely excused herself from the room.

You got changed, clothing appearing to have been washed at some point while you were asleep. Somehow you managed to pile all the things Hizashi brought you the morning before into your backpack, and you threw the shopping bag into the garbage.

It was nice to finally stretch your legs for longer than a few minutes to use the washroom, although your muscles did feel somewhat weaker now.

Slipping on your jacket and bag, you exited the room, closing the door behind you. The receptionist’s desk had been exactly where the nurse said it would be, and you handed over your information to the man behind the counter. He left for a moment before returning with a paper, your prescription printed on it with an illegible doctor’s signature. You thanked the man before heading to the elevator and stepping in.

Nothing was more enticing at this point than returning to the comfort of your own home. The thought of your bed waiting for you was enough to have you drooling, being so done with the unfamiliar setting of the hospital.

The elevator chimed, signalling it had reached its destination of the ground floor. The doors slid open and you stepped out, heading straight for the front entrance.

At least you were, until you collided into some poor unsuspecting human standing in your path.

How many times are you going to embarrass yourself before the day is up?

The person had caught you by the shoulders, stabling the both of you. You were quietly trying to apologize while, painfully so, you lifted your head to assess the damage.

You weren’t sure to be thankful or not, but you were met with a familiar gaze.

“You really shouldn't keep your head down like that all the time. Are you okay?”

Shouta looked down at you with a stern yet concerned look. He didn’t exactly back away, rather he continued his hold on your shoulders as if you were going to fall over any second. Hizashi also stood close by his side, and therefore close to you.

The sudden proximity had your head spinning, blood quickly rushing to your face.

“Ah―yeah. I’m fine.” Your response was pitifully sputtered out, and gently you moved back, out of his grasp.

“You headin’ out? Shou’ and I were just comin’ to check up on ya.”

The blond regarded his partner, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll drive you home, have you eaten yet?” The erasure hero didn’t seem to be asking permission over the matter, but you still forced yourself to give them your take on it.

“You don’t have to do that, I was just about to call a cab. And I have stuff at home for dinner, so I honestly can’t impose on you two anymore.”

“Aw, but we're already here sunshine. It’s no problem, c’mon.” The blond flashed a warm smile before moving to place a hand just beneath the nape of your neck, guiding you to the front entrance alongside his partner.

You were beginning to grow frustrated with the way the two acted, disregarding your wishes so casually. Sure, they weren’t doing anything inherently wrong―just helping a poor civilian get home―but that wasn’t what irked you.

They were too insistent, and it was making you uncomfortable. Clearly they either didn’t notice, or simply didn’t care.

Heroes or not, you couldn’t just let them do whatever they want.

But...would they be offended if you got mad? They’re just trying to help, so what’s the big deal? It’s not like you would have to deal with it much longer, surely you could put up with a bit more of their pushiness.

...Just endure it a little more, you’ve already done enough damage anyways.

It was growing dark out, the sun having just set over the horizon. The crisp air hit you hard as the automatic doors slid open, being equally refreshing and shocking to your system.

An involuntary shiver wracked your body, and you felt Hizashi’s hand slip to your shoulder, gently pulling you closer to him.

It made your stomach churn ever so slightly, but you pushed the feeling down.

Shouta walked in front of you two, presumably leading you to their car in the parking lot. Approaching it, you weren’t surprised to see the expensive looking exterior, and were even less surprised to find an equally luxurious interior as the erasure hero opened the backseat door for you.

You offered a quiet ‘thanks’, removing your backpack and slipping in. The door shut with a heavy thud, and you waited for the two men to enter the vehicle while putting on your seatbelt. It smelled of pine inside, likely due to an air freshener somewhere that you couldn’t see.

They stepped inside, immediately turning on the heat. Shouta was given the responsibility of driving tonight.

“We can grab you something to eat on the way home, I know a couple good joints around your area.” Hizashi seemed quite invested on the topic of good food, but you had to turn him down at least once today.

“Oh, no thank you. I’ve actually got a frozen dinner that I made last week that I was gonna heat up.” You felt the car start to move, grateful to be getting home faster than you would’ve by cab.

For the first time in a while, the blond actually acknowledged and accepted your opinion. “Alright then. Hey, did the nurse lady have anything new to say ‘bout the whole passing out thing?”

“Surprisingly not, guess it wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

Yeah, because they didn’t know why you were so tired, or how getting the crap scared out of you was the final driving force that night.

“That’s good to hear. I take it you’ll be staying home for the rest of the week to rest?”

Once again, you noted the tone in Shouta’s voice that was a little off-putting. He was asking a question, one that you had the freedom to answer however you see fit. But the lowness, sounding like a warning rather than a simple inquiry about your future actions was all too present.

It made you nervous.

“Well...I’m definitely going to take Tuesday and Wednesday off. But I’m already feeling good so I won’t bother to cancel for the rest of the week after that.”

You could only anticipate the disagreement in silence. And disagree they did.

“I’m not too sure that’s a good idea, sunshine. You went through a lot, its best ya hold off for a while.” You could hear the passionate concern in Hizashi’s voice, but it did little to deter you.

You briefly glanced outside, thankful that your apartment wasn’t too far from the hospital. “Maybe, but the end of the week is always really busy, and I usually handle evening shifts anyways. It wouldn't really be fair on my coworkers to bail for that long.”

Without skipping a beat, Shouta replied. “It’s not fair on yourself to put unnecessary strain on your body.”

Well, he’s not wrong, but that’s not the point.

“I can handle it just fine, besides it’s still a few da―”

“‘Zashi told me you fell asleep while he was there today. That doesn’t sound like handling it to me.”

Confrontation had never been your strong suit, even less so when it was directed at you. His words made you want to disappear into thin air, or have the backseat swallow you whole―anything would do at this point. You felt the shame from earlier today resurfacing, despite the internal fight you put up to contain it.

You were a little over halfway home.

“I was just a bit tired. Nothing a nap c-couldn’t solve.”

This time the blonde spoke up. “We’re just thinking ‘bout what’s best for you right now. And with the way things have been...maybe working so soon ain’t the greatest idea.”

The atmosphere was weighing down on you, thick with tension likely only you could feel. “The nurse said that it was okay to work if I wanted, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Is that all she said?” Your eyes flickered up to the rearview mirror, Shouta’s hard gaze meeting yours for a moment before you shied away.

God, this man is relentless.

You could lie, it might make this easier. But something told you that they would know if you did. They were pro heroes after all―didn’t they train to detect stuff like that?

“She said working might slow the recovery process, but I think two more days is more than enough time to get better.”

The two men exchanged looks mixed with annoyance and doubt, which you would’ve seen if you hadn’t had your head down, incessantly picking at your nails to distract from the bubbling anxiety you felt.

“Songbird, if the nurse said to stay home then you should listen to her. Going back to work ain’t gonna do ya any good.”

What could you say to prevent this from getting worse?

“She recommended staying home, I don’t have to listen to her.”

“Even though you should?” There was that tone again.

There was a silence in the car that felt like it lasted for an eternity. Clearly both of them were thinking the same thing, Shouta was just more insistent over it, much more insistent.

“What I should do is take responsibility as an employee. I’ll be okay by the time I have to go back.” Somehow you managed a response, despite feeling yourself physically shrinking back into the seat with every passing second.

Judging the surroundings, you were about one minute away from your apartment. One minute away from freedom.

You heard the blond sigh, “We know you wanna work, just promise you’ll think about staying home this week, give us some peace of mind?”

If that’s what will get them to stop hounding you over the matter, then whatever.

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

The car pulled into the parking lot of your apartment complex. You would’ve jumped out at full speed and ran into the building to escape the tension at this point. But that would be rude, and you didn’t want to look like a lunatic. And even if you didn’t care about that, the car doors were locked.

“We better not have to bring your unconscious body to the hospital again, especially if it happens because you thought going back to work was a good idea. If you think we’re worried about you now...well, this would be nothing compared to what would happen if you pass out again. Understand?” Shouta glared at you in the rearview mirror as he spoke, creating more than a lasting impression of his warnings.

You swallowed dryly, “Of course, thanks for the ride.”

Another moment of silence, then the click of the car doors unlocking sounded.

You opened the door, grabbing your bag while stepping out, trying not to trip over yourself in the rushed panic you were in.

Rounding the vehicle, you started towards the entrance to the complex.

“We’ll catch ya later, sweetheart!” Hizashi’s voice boomed after you, having the car window rolled down.

Out of courtesy, you turned back around, giving a small wave and a smile before stepping through the doors.

In a haze, you shuffled back to your apartment, pulling the keys out of your jacket pocket. You locked the door as soon as you stepped inside, chucking your bag on the floor in the entryway.

You didn’t even bother to heat up dinner, knowing the nauseating feeling in your stomach wouldn’t allow for sustenance at this time. Instead you showered, taking the time to massage your scalp in an attempt to relax.

Sliding into your pyjamas, you found that eating still wasn’t an option, but drinking likely was.

Not alcohol, but herbal tea―it always seemed to do the trick.

The exhaustion set in quickly after you’d gotten only halfway through the cup, so you retreated to the comfort of your bed. You knew the feeling was a mixture of coming down from a stress induced high, the tea, and your still recovering system.

It served as plenty of foundation to knock you out the second your head hit the pillow. This time, you welcomed the inevitable unconsciousness with open arms.

End of Part 3

_____

taglist: @tjhonoluluprezstitch626 @shinsous-eye-bags @roseloverofpastels

[mahou-queen]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚lolita fashion then vs now: how the fashion has changed over the last decade ˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

I started getting into lolita fashion in 2010 and so much has changed in the fashion since then. Trends, websites, community opinions, etc. So I thought we should take a look into the past and reminisce about lolita fashion since 2010~~

Everything below is based on my personal experience and perceptions in the egl community. These are not necessarily facts, and other lolitas may not agree or relate to everything stated below. 

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

✿❀Rectangle headdresses:

At the height of 2010-2012 sweet these types of headdresses were not in style. They were considered ita and absolutely taboo for new lolitas. At the time the community was trying really hard to separate themselves from lolita cosplay and maid cosplay which were both really popular at the time especially at cons where a lot of lolitas would also be. In recent years with the resurgence of old school lolita, rectangle headdresses are back in style and I personally couldn't be happier as I have always liked them. 

✿❀Animal ears:

Also considered ita and taboo for its associations with cosplay. Today we see a lot of animal ears, particularly bear and bunny, sometimes cat but not as much. Even big brands like angelic pretty are releasing animal ears regularly. While they can definitely still be ita if they are costume quality or irrelevant to a coord, they are definitely back in style and looking very cute

✿❀Chiffon half blouses:

The 2010 sweet era was all about cotton blouses. And while cotton blouses are still alive and well, these days we have the wonderful chiffon half blouse. Very comfortable, more size inclusive, light and pretty. These were not in style/ not widely available when i first got into lolita. 

✿❀Low collar blouses:

Absolutely existed, but were not as in as they are now. Peter pan collars and high necks were all the rage, these days with the prevalence of chiffon blouses, we are seeing a lot of slightly lower neck lines.

✿❀Chocolate explosion:

Around 2013, it seemed like every release was chocolate themed. All these chocolate prints came out in 2013:

Angelic Pretty started transitioning into “sweet classic” around 2014 which was when I took a break from the fashion. 

✿❀Split wigs:

Split wigs were super popular in the early 2010s both in natural and unnatural color varieties. These day some people would say they’re ita but I think the fashion has come to a really nice place of balancing old and new styles so many loltias still wear split wigs and wear them well. 

✿❀Circle lenses:

When i got into lolita it seemed like circle lenses were almost mandatory. They were a part of every makeup tutorial, every popular lolitas coord, circle lenses were everywhere. I could never wear them due to my astigmatism so I was always upset about circle lenses. I am glad to see they have not been prominent in recent years.

✿❀Replicas:

It seemed like replicas were everywhere, everyone had one, they were generally accepted, and promoted by other lolitas. Dream of lolita was making replicas of all the major AP prints and filled the pages at clobbaonline, oo jia was a facebook based brand that made the most convincing replicas available. Replicas still exist but since 2011 major bans have been placed on reselling them and reputable resellers stopped carrying them for the most part. They are not celebrated and most lolitas are against them now. 

✿❀RTBU:

Refuse to be usual was a taobao reseller on ebay in the early 2010s. Idk if they are still around but i know they up-charged more than twice the price of the item. Secret shop tea parties were going for $95 on rtbu. They had hit or miss reviews and a lot of people didn't trust them. I never bought from them but i did window-shop

✿❀The only real resellers were clobbaonline and qutieland:

Clobba did not have a full website, only a gallery where you had to place your inquiry and order via email. These days clobba has a fully functional website with a wishlist and shopping cart feature. Qutieland no longer exists. These days we have seemingly endless taobao reseller options of varying quality

✿❀Egl comm sales:

I never figure out how this worked because lacemarket took over not too long after i got into the fashion. But it was an entire second hand market being run out of livejournal. It seemed very Intricate

✿❀Bodyline:

Ohhh bodyline in the early 2010s. The lace monsters, mr yan, the sundries department, the items never restocked, good times. I have 3 bodyline main pieces these days and I love them and plan to keep them for as long as i'm in the fashion because they are cute, comfortable, and the prints look good. There was a time in the mid 2010s where bodyline and people who wore bodyline were scoffed at and everyone who had only burandoo thought they were better than everyone else. But these days with the booming lolita industry in china (on taobao) and even western brands getting bigger, the emphasis on brand is becoming less and less and what makes good lolita is based more upon actual quality and coordination skills and less on the tag. 

✿❀My old dream dress list:

I never got any of these and many of them would never fit me anyway. I did get sweetie violet but in lavender as I no longer like the sax colorway and I don't know why I ever did.

My favorite lolita online at the time was @herajika-blog

✿❀bonus:

Sweetrococo.com, does anyone remember this place? You could allegedly design a lolita dress yourself with any colors/prints/images from the internet and they would make it for you. I remember designing a my little pony skirt on the site for fun and not getting it because it was $200 LOL. I swear that site was a fever dream. 

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚as we can see a lot had changed in the lolita fashion community and trends over the last decade. Do you remember any of these things? What is your experience? I really enjoyed this trip through memory lane. And while sometimes i miss the times when i was just starting out, these days the lolita community is so much more accepting, more accessible, and more experimental. It doesnt even seem like there are trends right now, just that any trends are ok as long as theyre lolita. What do you think?˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

[loveforbooksandcoffee]

The Cellar Review

I'm sorry about the lack of posts recently! Also, I'm going to try out something new for the reviews and start posting some of my favorite book/game quotes. I've been caught up with school but now I'm officially done for the week so let's get into this book review!

The Cellar was overall an interesting book, the author's name is Natasha Preston. Remember this is all just an opinion, if I don't really like it, that's okay! I still recommend you to try any of the books I review. :)

For a little background of the book, here's a quick summary:

"Sixteen-year-old Summer Robinson doesn’t think anything ever happens in the small town of Long Thorpe, England. But she strays from a party and is snatched by a man who calls himself “Clover.” He forces Summer into his cellar, where she finds three other young women who were kidnapped just like her. Summer, who Clover calls Lily, joins Poppy, Rose, and Violet as Clover’s flowers, his family of beautiful, pure girls."

With a quick summary of what the book was, let's get down into the deep of it. It took me around 3 days total to read full it fully, that's counting the days I had available to read it. It's only around 200 pages long, maybe a little bit longer. Honestly, at first, I didn't really get into it. I found it to be VERY slow-paced. But then it started to pick up and that's when I thoroughly enjoyed it! I read one of her other works, The Lost, and it was the same exact way.

Now with the middle picking up, there were some parts that visibly made me cringe! I won't get into details, in case you want to read it yourself, but wow! It truly got creepy. The middle kept me interested, on my toes, and like I said before, made me cringe. The ending on the other hand felt a little letdown, it ended very simply and honestly didn't match the vibe of the rest of the book. I do like the fact that it changed character perspectives, like going from Summer, the main character, Lewis, Summer's boyfriend, and then Clover, the kidnapper. I thought that added such a great element into the storyline.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes thrillers and this is a great read for somebody in high school! I would rate this 4/5 stars.

You can find this book at your local library or find it here!

Check out my other book review and my sims challenges! Thanks and have a great morning/day/night!

- Wishlist

- Game Reviews

- Book Reviews

- Sim Challenges

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.” — Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre