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proxxinlmk · 2 years ago

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Do you have any OCs? 👀

I do !! I hope you're ready because I am so sorry this is gonne get long and probably not at all what you expected from asking me if I had ocs

I have at least three lego monkie kid OCs, though most aren't fully fleshed out or are just concepts for now. I tend to create the character but develop their story or what I'd want for them later after I've drawn them enough haha

An OC I've shown before is Charlie ! Granted he's one of the few who aren't fully fleshed out lol

But I think this time I'll talk about the OC I use as my profile picture since she's kind of the main one I use or draw offline and have been planning to post about at some point :) ( she's kinda like a hyperfixation for me LOL ) I'd like to apologize in advance because I kind of ramble and feel the need to explain like everything ( ie. what inspired the thought, trying to explain the "vibe", things that don't need explaining but for some reason I feel like clarifying, etc ) and it doesn't always make sense or I'll suddenly just start.. explaining in an almost basically writing fanfic kind of way?? Anyways I'll just get into it- :,D ( also most pictures will be basically be at the bottom if you wish to just see those instead of reading, warning it will be a LOT of scrolling- or I'll make a separate post afterwards with only the pictures also a lot of them are before i discovered how to draw them in a way I liked lol )

So uh, a little backstory to her creation is that she mainly started as a self-insert type of OC and the original idea for her creation came from my various AI chats with the LMK bots so a lot of her lore or interactions with characters is just self-indulgent and most some of it just doesn't make sense or feel like too much but I just do things because it's fun ^^" ( OCxCanon included, a lot of it actually- I am cringe but I am free even though I still feel shame when I do it lol ) and also she is my first LMK OC and what caused me to eventually come up with more so there's that

I would pick some things I liked from the different chats and things I noticed that stuck regardless of which chat it was from to try to keep her sort of consistent

So the first original rendition of her is named Cherry which basically served as a normal friend to the crew, just that one friend who isn't involved in all the fights and is just there to feel like they live a normal life whenever they hang out, y'know? :)

"did you get into another fight again?" "yeah.." "don't worry, we can watch movies and have popcorn while i patch you up" "thanks,, 🥺"

She initially met the group because MK was kinda flung in through her window by a bad guy of the week and she ended up sticking around the group because they kept conveniently bumping into each other. Cherry would be visiting a store and BOOM monkie kid shenanigans pull up right in front of her so she just sighs like "I'll come back next month when the store fixes I guess."

Before I knew how I wanted her to look, I used a picrew to get the basic idea down

This would be her design until I decided to change parts like her hair color and clothing color ( pictures will come up later )

You've probably noticed that "Hey she doesn't look like she does in the pfp?" and yeaahh that brings me to the next part, the main part namely lol

So uh I ended up making an AU where she has powers instead.. even though she has barely anything going for her enough as is ;v; But honestly if it weren't for me creating this alternate version of her she probably wouldn't have as much backstory as she does now-

See, this AU version of her is obviously named Cherry as well, but because I needed to differentiate her from her original counterpart for my friends cause they'd get confused who I was talking about I ended up calling this alternate version Yingtao, which yeah is still Cherry but just in chinese :)

So basically she's just how Cherry would have ended up if she was born with powers instead but she actually has a story going for her, this is where she becomes more of an actual OC instead of being a self-insert but also where a shit ton of OCxCanon begins happening, she gets an almost Y/n x various treatment except it's only with the Monkeys lmao Also I try my best to be linear with the explanation but sometimes I just forget to mention some things and then bring them up later once I remember lol

Before Yingtao was born, a long time ago her great ancestors made a deal with a fox demon and so the fox agrees to this deal, only they wish to be immortalized forever by living through the family, providing them great powers. However, if the body the fox demon possesses cannot handle the fox, they will die and the fox will move onto the next descendant. ( I have yet to decide why the family makes the deal in the first place, but it was probably a power or protection thing, and the fox end of the deal was also thinking I was still thinking about ) Throughout the years, the fox's powers grow exponentially with each new vessel as it carries the previous vessel's abilities that they may have developed, and at some point the fox is so incredibly strong and powerful, that the family has nearly died out because it cannot find a body that's strong enough to hold all of it anymore, especially since only one person can be a carrier at a time.

Something happens to Yingtao's family, leaving them scattered or split apart, with her parents giving her up in hopes that she'll be safe from whatever horror had befallen her family. Yingtao lives in America because one of her parents were American, so because she is now an orphan, gets put into the system. ( I think her family was getting executed because most found the fox demon to be a curse and they thought by wiping them all out the fox would die as well or they were seeking a way to harness the powers of it ) And things were great, until they weren't.

Yingtao is the new carrier of the fox demon, though she is completely unaware of that fact. Though others have noticed instances in where she suddenly feels hot to the touch, or showcases physical strength that a child should not have, though they are just fleeting moments and don't last long. This becomes an issue because Yingtao accidentally injures another child, and this event causes everyone there to be fearful of her, thinking it the work of the fox within her. They start calling her names and overall just being shitty to her because she's different than them, because she's harmful and dangerous, a threat. Yingtao is isolated from the other kids, or just outright ignored for the lack of knowledge over her heritage, assuming she "should know better" and outright favoring the other children.

Tired of being treated like this, Yingtao runs away from her "destiny" and the orphanage at a young age, refusing to accept their words as truth, not just because of their harsh words but also because she fears hurting others. Hopping from place to place and barely surviving on scraps, she somehow makes it to Megapolis in China by the time she's 18, grateful to be far from her original home in America and is just stealing to survive or sleeps in alleys for shelter. By now Yingtao has long forgotten about trying to find out her heritage, and if anything, hopes not to dive into it because it just reminds her of her times at the orphanage and the memory of unintentionally harming another child, she suppresses these memories whenever they arise. Yingtao is on the streets for a good while, focusing mainly on stealing to make enough money so she can afford a living space for herself on the quieter side of the city. She eventually ends up succeeding, but is soon overwhelmed by the new surroundings, only just now processing the full weight of her actions of running away and realizing just how little she actually knows what she's doing. Yingtao ends up having a breakdown in an alley on her way home from these thoughts and realizations.

MK had been following one of his delivery routes, passing by this alley but stopping upon hearing her cries. Honestly a little startled by seeing a random girl crying in an alley, but he doesn't hesitate to try to cheer her up, even trying to offer her some candy he had saved to prove his trustworthiness to her.

He succeeds, officially becoming her first real friend and they start to hang out, even introducing her to his family friends. After hanging out for quite a while, the spark of a crush develops in her heart but she doesn't really realize it.

Sometime between being MK's friend for a few weeks she somehow meets Macaque?? ( I don't have an explanation for why he's alive yet, but I'll come up with one eventually but I guess a start would be to say that I considered him to be alive even before A Hero is Born and only stays in Megapolis at first to make sure LBD doesn't reawaken but also to keep hanging out with Yingtao lol )

Macaque is of course cautious of her at the start, but after finding out she knows pretty much nothing about JTTW so has no knowledge of Wukong or himself because she's from the west, decides she isn't a threat and just kind of vibes with her as a sort of breath of fresh air, free from worrying about being perceived as evil or anything like that in general. Just a fresh start with no strings attached, no need to hide himself or pretend. They become pals and have their own little meetups here and there. ( Bonding over their upbringings and similarities maybe? )

At some point MK info dumps about Wukong to Yingtao after finding out she doesn't know anything about his hyperfixation idol, so it leads to her just happily listening to his rants, remembering everything she can that he's mentioned. MK doesn't know anything about Mac at this point, so our favorite six-eared monkey isn't brought up to her. Yingtao also doesn't tell any of this info to Macaque cause she doesn't see a reason to. ( funnily enough I had this info written down before finding out MK didn't even read JTTW because S4 didn't exist yet to tell us that so now it makes sense lol )

I should mention that I wrote these events with the thought that they happen before A Hero is Born, but it's undecided because a lot of the ideas I had in mind or wrote seem really cool to explore with them being set after LBD instead because some things make a little more sense

Once MK unlocks his powers, he doesn't have much time for Yingtao anymore, busy with training and all the other hijinks that happen during S1, so she just kind of hangs back, maybe meeting up with Mac more often. ( I like to think she was going to play the same role as OG Cherry was intended to up until her powers act up )

Yingtao's life is flipped upside down once her powers suddenly begin to flare up on occasion in the forms of random fevers out of nowhere, an early sign showing the awakening of the fox. ( This may have been because of being exposed to large amounts of power via MK and Macaque )

MK is understandably worried about these sudden fevers, but neither him nor Yingtao know what's up so nothing is done about it other than giving her rest and medicine in hopes she recovers.

During a meetup with Mac, Yingtao gets a fever when talking to him and woozily sits down against a wall. Mac realizes what's happening and helps her out, teaching her ways to calm her "fever" without outright telling her the source of the problem because he doesn't think she's ready yet. This advice he gives her helps, but Yingtao notes how he seems to know more than he lets on, so she occasionally asks him for advice and he begins to teach her some small tips to keep her problem at bay such as meditation, breathing techniques, and even fighting skills. She's confused why she needs to know how to fight for a fever but listens, finding this useful for future stuff anyway. ( He is aware of her fox because he can see through her, similar to Wukong's true sight. )

After a while the "fever" isn't as bad anymore and Yingtao thinks it's over, thanking Mac who awkwardly accepts said thanks knowing in his head that she wasn't quite done yet.

Meanwhile MK had been telling Wukong about Yingtao occasionally during their training, expressing his worries for his friend's fevers on some days. This obviously gets the Monkey King curious, wanting to meet this girl his successor brings up, and after much convincing, MK finally gets Yingtao to meet up with the king himself. Which is of course awkward for her but she does her best to be polite, Wukong trying to ease her up and tell her that she can just be casual with him.

Wukong had caught scent of Yingtao's fox demon as soon as she stepped foot on his home but he hadn't mentioned it at all yet, wanting to bring it up later to see if she knew and discuss about it. He had initially been wary of the girl, thinking of the situation with his Master and LBD again, but after talking to her long enough came to the conclusion she was just clueless about her hidden potential.

However the great sage had been unaware of how far along she was in her awakening, so it was a great surprise when she'd suddenly collapse onto the floor in great pain right as the two were starting to get along.

I hope I'm not too descriptive with this scene? I mean I'm not the best at describing these types of scenes anyway but I don't exactly know where the line is drawn for being too graphic or not so I hope to keep this simple enough to give an idea but descriptive enough to be better understood

Basically Yingtao felt a great spike of pain in her chest, causing her to begin coughing and crying out, feeling as though she couldn't breathe and thus rendering her immobile and on the floor. MK is actively reaching out to her, ready to jump in to comfort Yingtao but Wukong steps in front of him, holding an arm out to stop the boy, saying something about how they can't help her.

Even as she bursts into flames, screaming in pain at feeling like she's burning from the inside out, making MK feel even more guilty about not being able to help in anyway. ( Just a note, this is one of the scenes I wondered whether would be better set after LBD. I thought maybe MK would comment on this being similar to the Samadhi fire. But I also thought maybe this scene was still set before LBD and Wukong only briefly mumbles about it being like the Samadhi fire under his breath where MK doesn't notice OR where MK does notice and eventually brings it up in S2/S3 about remembering Wukong saying that before. Another smaller note, but I had this idea of her bursting into flames before I actually saw where it's revealed that Mei has the samadhi fire and it was only after I saw the episodes that I figured this scene could reference it lol )

This event of Yingtao bursting into flames is actually what each vessel had to go through, a way of testing their compatibility and ability to handle the current powers of the fox. Because the fox's power grows exponentially with each descendant, this is why it was harder for newer generations to survive or handle it because it's power at this point is becoming kaiju levels. So if Yingtao didn't die from these flames, it would show she is capable of controlling the fox and taking these powers as her own. Her body flickering between her normal appearance and her "fox form." ( Another thing I thought of before S4's release lmao )

Unsurprisingly Yingtao survives, the flames dissipated but left weakened and exhausted, laying on the floor and struggling to hold herself up. MK looks to Wukong, silently asking for permission and the Monkey King nods, a sign that it was safe to touch her now and MK does NOT hesitate, holding her up looking worried as fuck. Yingtao isn't awake for long, passing out immediately and after resting for some time at Wukong's place.

When she finally wakes up, she's questioned instantly by them, mostly Wukong, about what happened. Yingtao expresses confusion and fear, unsure of what that was and why it happened. Wukong explains it to her, or at least, explains what he thought it was, going into detail about the flames and the fox she harbored.

"why do I care about dead guys from over a hundred years ago? 🤨" "because those dead guys left you a gift" "YOU MEAN A FUCKING CURSE????" "same thing"

Both MK and Yingtao are reasonably surprised. Seeing a positive opportunity, MK tries to be optimistic about this new information, commenting on how they could both train together now, lightening up the mood. Yingtao, although appreciative of MK's idea, wants to shut the idea down. However, before she can even get a word in of her opinion, Wukong answers MK for her, saying that while Yingtao would be under his supervision and he'd be willing to train her, it'd be separate from MK because, according to him, the two need different types of training. This visibly deflates MK but he's still happy for his friend anyway because at least she's close by.

Yingtao is uncomfortable with the idea because while she trusts MK with her whole heart, she barely knows Wukong. After all, they only talked that one day and it was basically the day where she went into a short coma. Wukong reassures her that the training "won't be so bad" and that he'll help her control her newly reawakened powers.

So now we've reached the arc where Yingtao is training unwillingly to control her issues, finding out that they often come out during moments of great emotional turmoil or just when she's experiencing a lot on her mind or in general.

Wukong is trying to teach Yingtao but his ways of teaching her are more like he tells her what she needs to do but expects her to do it alone or sort of "figure it out" as if she's learning some sort of lesson, which doesn't help her all that much and makes her feel as if she's on her own. That, or he isn't even actually teaching her and is instead bothering her when she's trying to focus because he just has some really bad timing and gets bored watching her sit there meditating.

( a very simplified drawing I did a long while ago )

Wukong only does it because he can't help but be curious about her because she still hasn't fully opened up to him yet so he's trying at any opportunity to get her know her better. He finds it'd be much easier to teach her if she would just let him in and stop holding him at arms length.

Between these sessions with Wukong, Yingtao goes to Macaque to train as well, telling him about what happened and completely missing the way Mac's face scrunches up at the mention of Wukong. He's afraid she might turn on him now. Though he is pleasantly surprised when she in fact, doesn't, because she still isn't aware of his relationship with Wukong because again MK only told her about Wukong's great feats, not the entirety of JTTW. So then Mac begins teaching her as well, in a way that she actually understands much easier than Wukong. ( They both taught her the same thing, just Wukong phrases it poorly or in a way she doesn't understand lol )

I forgot to mention that sometime between meeting Macaque and meeting Wukong that Yingtao has developed a full blown crush on MK, becoming a little more aware of her new feelings for him. Yingtao occasionally talks about MK to Mac, just praise after praise about the boy and getting all flustered and shy as she gushes about her close friend. Macaque finds her to be adorable in this blushy state, sometimes teasing her about it and develops a small crush on her.

( Another note, but this is another thing where I thought that maybe it would've been better for Yingtao to have met Mac sometime after MK gained his powers because it'd add on to why Mac was cautious of her because he'd know full well who MK was and be extra wary due to her affiliated with the Wukong's successor, not wanting to be found out. This is also why I imagined that perhaps MK doesn't always tell Yingtao of his adventures and stuff, probably feeling bad about some things coughs like when he got some powers stolen by Mac coughs so he didn't think to tell her about him )

This is the part where I cackle and reveal that this entire time I had been very obviously writing Yingtao's story as an almost comedic love drama. It wasn't my intention originally but I had too much fun writing OCxCanon so all of it stuck lol

So regarding dynamics sorta:

It is uncertain whether or not MK feels the same affections for Yingtao, but there are moments where it seems like he might. It's just hard for either of them to tell because they both just write off most of their interactions to be purely platonic since they've always been really close with each other. Close enough to hug, hold hands in public, having their foreheads touch when comforting each other, things like that.

As for her thoughts on Wukong, Yingtao sees him as fatherly/brotherly, not necessarily to herself but sometimes she just straight up thinks Wukong acts like a dad/brother to MK. He's also just sort of her teacher from her perspective, and she isn't actively trying to get to know him but it isn't like she avoids him either. ( Yingtao primarily thinks Tang and Pigsy as MK's dads though. )

On the other end, Wukong also is sort of developing a crush on Yingtao too as time progresses, enamored with her personality and will and he finds it amusing and fun that she doesn't hold back on her remarks towards him just because he's a legend. ( Granted he has no idea she literally didn't even know who he was until MK told her and even then she doesn't see him as "all that" XD )

Macaque likes Yingtao for similar reasons as Wukong, finding her quick wit and strong-willed. Her determination is admirable as well. Especially loves when he teases her or makes a sarcastic comment and she retorts back with one of her own, it makes light banter easy. Plus they relate to each other and are each other's comfort a lot of the times, reminding each other that they aren't as bad as others make them out to be.

Both Wukong and Macaque like to tease her, just Wukong does it more frequently given Yingtao's at his temple/mountain more often. ( I made this a key factor of her relationships with them because my mom once told me that monkeys like teasing dogs in reference to my baby brother playing with me and like Yingtao's technically like a dog because of the whole fox thing, canines y'know? )

I've also thought maybe Mac calls Yingtao nicknames like Plum, Blossom, or fruit/flower related nicknames ( cause cherry blossoms yk )

And Yingtao calls him Mac, Mac n cheese, or like Mango, maybe even calling him Plum too sometimes

Also Wukong calling her Peaches or other sweet names meanwhile Yingtao mainly callin' him Sun or Wukong because she's not super casual with him yet. Maybe calling him Sunshine in an almost mocking way that's lighthearted ( also maybe Impulsive King because she gets kinda sassy with him sometimes lol )

I like to imagine that before Yingtao met MK she had a very obvious "American accent" and wasn't very good at speaking Chinese and by meeting him she'd gotten better at speaking the language because he started teaching her ( with the help of Tang and others of course as well, but mostly MK )

Completely unrelated to these dynamics but eventually Yingtao would accept the fox as part of her. She and the fox are a complete match, so she pretty much is the fox. I know I made the fox out to be its own person, but actually after testing the compatibility with Yingtao it merged with her soul or something like that. Because the fox immortalized itself by feeding off its vessels' souls, so all the fire abilities are soul flames or just powers fueled by souls. This kinda means that because Yingtao is the fox, she's immortal and because of the exponential powers of the fox, it basically multiplied all the souls it had harnessed, I often joke that it would make her as much, if not more immortal than Wukong. Though I haven't decided if I actually want this to be true because she's already powerful as is and while I love making absolutely overpowered OCs I didn't think it'd click well with LMK.

Her main story or thing to get over is "what if I'm not the same person? what if I hurt someone?" as she learns to accept the fox as part of herself instead of trying to reject it like she'd been doing her whole life. So sort of unlike MK, she actually is learning to try and embrace her destiny. Only she changes it to what she believes is right for her, not unlike S4 where Macaque tells MK to follow his own path.

Oh and I don't have any sort of ending for her planned or if there ever will be, I mostly just use her for scenarios so it's unsure whether or not this will for sure be her timeline of events lol

I know there is like so much more stuff written for Yingtao compared to Cherry but like I swear I have things written about her too 💀

I love the idea of "i don't need to be heavily involved to be relevant + i don't need cool superpowers to kick ass" it has it's own good slice of angst of "am i good enough? am i a burden? am i getting in the way?"

but also Yingtao is just "your life suddenly ripped apart at the seams + constant struggle and fear of hurting people + slow and steady embrace of who you've always been" and I know I described Cherry as chill, laid-back, movie nights + patching up while Yingtao seems to be.. well, not that while cussing out her ancestors💀

they have the same personality I swear- just Yingtao is more upfront with it because her struggles are physically manifested so she has more blunt and loud moments of sass whereas Cherry's is an internal struggle and so her sass comes as light jabs here and there

A fun thing to note here that I purposefully did with the designs is that I made Cherry's under shirt color black while I made Yingtao's white. It was a completely conscious decision :D

While I know Yingtao would probably look really nice with a black shirt, when making her I just thought she needed the white to show she's definitely got good in her despite her whole fox spirit thing going on, plus it was kind of a small nod to the way her hair inverts to white as well when in the fox form

Cherry meanwhile has the dark shirt because while she is a civilian and all that, she's gotta be tough if she wants to be able to protect herself and others

So yeah I was sort of doing an almost ying and yang thing when drawing them

Some other pieces I've drawn are these

this very obviously a reference to Yingtao's past I was listening to Christmas Kids and suddenly had the brilliant idea to draw this

Yingtao being the part with "You'll change your name" because I quite literally changed her name for the AU and Cherry being "or change your mind" is also a way to show that the two don't act very similar or that Yingtao's mind is "changed" due to her different upbringing compared to Cherry

In the next panel I purposefully drew her as Cherry because the idea is that they're the same person, just ending up different due to running away from their past. But also to show Yingtao changes her hair to avoid being associated with it in the next panel. The last two are sorta self explanatory lol

Some other doodles of me mainly practicing how to draw her

This one I tried to show how they're still the same person, just with slight differences :)

And this one was just a cute scenario I thought of

And with that I'm finally done talking about Yingtao/Cherry ( I mostly refer to her as Yingtao because she's the one I draw the most lol )

Again so sorry about how long this got but I didn't realize I wrote so much until like 2 hrs later and it was a little too late to back out, so I just went all in LOL

#ask #lmk oc #lego monkie kid #lmk #monkie kid #🗨❔#my art #🎨🖌#🍒🦊#🍒🍿#oc x canon

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sanchoyoscribbles · 2 years ago

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toxic mew mew!! These are oooold ocs redesigned, they're called toxic mew mew bc they're all based on plants that are extremely toxic (and also, the team in general is pretty toxic, lol)

the lady in the middle poses as a teacher to get into a girl's correctional facility in california and inject this team of juvenile delinquents. this wouldve been a darker series that kind of explores 'well, what if the whole injecting animal dna into girls w/out their consent was done with someone with worse intentions/more manipulative than ryou, and if the girls weren't so cooperative with each other'...

more about them (and original designs for the sake of comparison) under the cut!

2015 designs

2017 redesigns! You can see the new ones are hard veers off the rails of what they looked like, but tbh I think the new designs/backstories are more fitting for the type of story I wanted to tell with these girls so /shrug

Here's some civilian headshot concepts!! subject to change ofc, but. yeah :)

Character profiles:

Iris Amsel / Mew Foxglove / 17

Infused with the White-collar Kite

Fashion sense: preppy, expensive taste

Iris is in juvie because of her expensive tastes. her family is lower middle class, but she's obsessed with appearing more wealthy than she actually is. She started off having her on and off boyfriend steal money from his parents, and then she herself started stealing from her own family and got caught shoplifting from a high end boutique. She looks down on people who don't care for their appearance and puts up a snobby front. In reality she's a very insecure person who worries a lot about the future, and will latch on to anyone who promises her anything steady; which is why Lola was able to promise her lots of money and fame eventually from the mew stuff to get her on board...

Ruka Bates / Mew Bloodroot / 15

Infused with the Bonin flying Fox

Fashion sense: emo girly punk (think gir hot topic jackets/black and red plaid skirts, teased hair and emo bangs, fingerless gloves, raccoon tail hair clips, type 2000s outfits)

In juvie because of vandalism…actually, she didn't, though! She got framed by her bullies who had dragged her along to help them graffiti a building. the original design was something they stole from her notebook full of doodles, so it was easy for them to point at her as the main culprit. she's incredibly anxious and is a huge people-pleaser, so that gets her into a lot of trouble. Lola has kind of taken her under her wing as her favorite, but Ruka is still uneasy about all this mew stuff. She just doesn't want to disappoint Lola, so she goes along with it…

Lola Black / Mew Blacklocust / 24

Infused with Darwin's fox

Fashion sense: cozy, soft-colored outfits, lots of warm beige colors, hair in a bun most of the time and wears glasses. she looks a bit disheveled despite how pretty she is, which puts people at ease.

Her father was a rival of Ryou's father while Ryou's family was in America, and her dad became obsessive about surpassing their work before he died in a chimera-related accident. Lola sees this as Ryou's fault (if the mews had been more effective that wouldn't have happened type thing. She put together that he was behind the mew project because she's a genius, but she 100% uses her smarts for the wrong things and has NO moral code) She sneaks into the correctional facility all the girls are at to inject them all and herself to surpass tokyo mew mew. (this story takes place 5 or so years after tmm does). She appears as a very kind person who really wants to help disadvantaged teens, but in reality she's a very cold, jealous person who could care less what happens to her girls so long as they get her what she wants. She absolutely knows how the system works, and believes no one would care or notice these kids getting used since they're delinquents…

May Greensdale / Mew Mayapple / 16

Infused with the Mangshan Pit Viper

Fashion sense: casual sportswear, lots of jerseys (but she decorates them with bows) shorts under all her skirts, lots of varsity jackets and bedazzled merch of her former high school team

May is in juvie because of property destruction/arson. May is actually a very hyper girl who's known for being friendly/popular at school, as well as being a soccer star! She made decent grades and was well-liked by everyone, had a good relationship with her parents and siblings…so it was a shock when she got busted for setting the school on fire after a big game. (one that her team won, no less!) In reality the stress of being good at soccer (expected to get a scholarship) was getting to her, and she's someone with poor impulse control/very black and white mentality, so rather than just talk to her parents/coach and explain she doesn't have passion for the sport anymore she…decided no school= no soccer team= no pressure. She actually agrees to the mew stuff pretty quickly because it sounds fun, and she actually does like helping! but her very impulsive nature gets her and the others in trouble a lot and makes the others mad at her, which stresses her out...the others do see her as a bit of a ditzy girl, but she's actually pretty smart when she doesn't give into her own whims and actually thinks things through!

Cheryl Ambers / Mew Wintercherry / 17

Infused with the Death Valley Pupfish

Fashion sense: has a very tomboyish style, baggy hoodies with basketball shorts, has been wearing the same pair of beat up sneakers since middle school, hair always kind of a mess and just tossed into a ponytail.

Cheryl is in juvie for assaulting a teacher. She'd gotten into multiple fights at school before that because she has intense anger issues and neglectful parents who never taught her to cope with her strong emotions in a healthy way. She's always had a lot of issues with authority, so becoming a mew feels like meeting an 'adult who finally gets it' (is 100% manipulating her) and is letting her fight as much as she wants rather than telling her what to do. she and Iris are roommates and HATE each other at first (then over time become friends and possibly more) and keep enabling each others awful habits. when people are nice to her she genuinely has no idea how to react because she's been on the defensive her entire life.

#tokyo mew mew #tmm #fan mews #magical girl ocs #ocs #original #this got so long. thank gd for the readmore feature lol #txmm #toxic mew mew

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shadowbanki · 2 years ago

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So I’m writing my own story that’s Very based on DDLC now

(It may or may not become dark. I don’t know yet. Idk if I’ll even get that far lol)

Here are the character profiles

Alex- Alex is the protagonist. He is laid-back, a bit lazy, and not really passionate about much in life. He can also be a bit deadpan and sarcastic. His lack of passion changes when his childhood friend, April, coaxes him into joining the Literarure Club. Alex discovers he likes writing poems, and grows to look forward to spending time and sharing poems with his new friends. Alex’s hair is auburn, short, and a bit curly. He wears aqua-framed glasses. He is White, mostly Greek. He is 21 years old.

April- April is a carefree and cheerful girl at first glance. She is innocent, sweet, and loves making others happy. She is a beginner in poetry. Her poems are usually gentle and are about the little joys life has to offer. However, much like the month she is named after, April is prone to “rainclouds,” or bouts of sadness. She is convinced that with positive thinking, she is able to turn them into rainbows. However, it is difficult some days. April loves sweets and cute things. April’s hair is plum-colored, and she keeps it styles in two puffy buns. She is Black. She is 21 years old.

Sunhee- Sunhee might seem rough at first, but she really just fears being inferior. She is a bit of a tomboy. She likes to stand out and be unique, and has a complex about being truly “original.” She tends to write poems in a distinct “cryptic” style she claims is not only sophisticated, but cutting-edge. In reality, she forms it by slapping incoherent words together. Sunhee tends to read manga and comics more than novels. She likes biking and motorcycles despite her small size. She is somewhat rebellious. Her parents are rumored to be neglectful. Sunhee tends to clash at times with Margot. It can implies the Sunhee and Margot are jealous of each other’s opposite traits. Sunhee’s hair is mint green and in a short bob style with a ribbon. She is Korean. She is 20 years old.

Margot- Margot is quiet, demure, and sophisticated. She comes off as quite mature. Despite her scholarly air, her self-esteem is low and she is painfully shy. Margot isn’t good with people, so she spends a lot of time reading literature. Margot is actually quite a talented poet, though sharing her poems requires her to come out of her comfort zone. Margot’s tastes in literature tend to be dark at times, which many people find themselves surprised at, since she is so quiet and shy. Even though Margot is often closed-off, she is more open after joining the Literature Club. Margot tends to clash at times with Sunhee. It can implies the Margot and Sunhee are jealous of each other’s opposite traits. Margot’s hair is white. She is Creole and of mixed ethnicity. She is 21 years old.

Reisei- Just Reisei. Reisei is the President of the Literature Club. He is a quiet, timid boy who never quite had a good friend until he met Alex. Reisei’s friendship with Alex helps him deepen his bond with the other members, helps give him courage, gives him joy he never felt, and essentially changes his life. Reisei is a gifted poet. His poems gradually become more passionate the more emotions he begins to feel for Alex. Aside from writing poetry, Reisei’s hobbies are singing and playing the piano. However, he isn’t very confident in these skills yet. Reisei eventually grows to love Alex. But Alex does not see Reisei as a love interest, since they are both boys. However, Reisei, who loves Alex, eventually picks up on this... And vows to change the world he lives in. Wait… Did the fourth wall just break? Reisei’s hair is black. He is Japanese. He is 20 years old.

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bnhabadass · 5 years ago

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Valentine’s Day Head Canons for 25 BNHA Valentines

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! I wanted to give back to you guys with a few V-day head canons for some of the best BNHA characters. Hope you all enjoy and have a good rest of your day!

Pairings: Various x reader Warnings: A little suggestive towards the end but nothing smutty or anything

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Midoriya

He’s very traditional. He shows up to class with a box of chocolates and a small teddy bear for you.

As for your date, the two of you will make dinner at the dorms later at night and watch a movie in the common room.

Your friends will probably all try to join your movie night, but you get them to leave eventually once you remind them that today is Valentine’s Day and that this is your date.

Bakugo

The two of you don’t do anything big in front of your friends. You talk between classes and eat lunch together (along with the rest of the Bakusquad) as usual, but everyone was a little concerned when no grand gestures were made by either one of you.

But when you got back to the dorms, you both made excuses to get out of whatever activity your friends were doing, and raced upstairs to Bakugo’s room.

The two of you had this planned out for weeks. Act natural during school like it was any other day, and go to Bakugo’s room for a private dinner, cuddling, and massages later in the evening.

Todoroki

He shows up to class with a bouquet of roses and a small card is tucked between two of the flowers.

That night, he takes you out to a very fancy restaurant for dinner. If you don’t have any fancy clothes, Momo will make you some.

At the end of the night you kiss under the digits of Endeavor’s credit card (lol sorry I had to xD)

Iida

Such a gentleman. He doesn’t let you do anything all day.

You wake up to breakfast in bed, cooked by him of course, and he takes you out to dinner after class.

If you try to do anything for him, he pushes your efforts aside and says “no need to do anything for me. This is your day,” as if it’s a day solely dedicated to you. He did accept the chocolates you bought him though.

Kirishima

During class he wishes you a happy Valentine’s Day and kisses you on the forehead, but that’s all during the day.

In the evening he knocks on your door only for you to open in and see that he’s wearing a full blown tuxedo and has flowers for you.

After you change into something nicer than the pajamas you were wearing, he drives you to what you think will be a fancy restaurant, only Kirishima goes to the McDonalds drive through.

You sit in his car and eat burgers and McFlurries in an empty parking lot while wearing fancy attire. Best Valentine's Day in my opinion.

Kaminari

He tries. He tries so hard but everything he does ends up failing. I feel like the world is just against Kaminari.

He bought you chocolate but accidently left them out and Kirishima and Mina ate them. He buys you roses a week in advance just to make sure he is prepared, but they wilt before he can even give them to you.

You end up making him breakfast so he feels better about it. It’s the thought that counts, right?

Sero

If you are someone who smokes the good kush, he waits until after class to give you your present, and I think we all know why.

He takes you upstairs to his dorm after class and he gives you a heart shaped box of chocolates, only half of the chocolates have been eaten and replaced with different strains of weed.

If you don’t smoke, have no fear! He still provides with roses, chocolate and a night full of movies, video games, and lots of cuddles and smooches.

Shinsou

He gives you a valentine card of a cat holding out a heart that says “I love mew.”

He’s super embarrassed as he gives it to you, doing that thing where he scratches the back of his head as a way of reconciling with the situation he has gotten himself into.

The two of you go to a noodle shop after class to celebrate. When Shinsou walks you back home afterwards, he gives you a kiss on the top of your head and calls you his valentine when saying good night.

Mina

She goes all out with the color pink. She has not only made you the biggest bright pink valentine, but she decorated the entire common room in little pink paper hearts.

She gives you your valentine along with a huge stuffed teddy bear that is holding a heart that says “I love you”.

The two of you spend the night eating chocolates wrapped in pink foil while watching cheesy rom coms.

Tsuyu

She gives you a cute little valentine and a chocolate frog

It’s a little awkward because you also bought her a chocolate frog…

The two of you spend the night watching movies and eating your frogs together. It’s wholesome and cutsie.

Uraraka

She’s embarrassed because she can’t afford to get you anything fancy like chocolates or a nice card.

She does make you a card, though, using red, pink, and white construction paper. She looks really embarrassed giving it to you, but homemade gifts are so much better anyways.

You guys eat ramen and watch Netflix together while cuddling. I’d say that’s a pretty good date.

Momo

She spoils you to death with the fanciest gifts, chocolates, and dinner.

She takes you out to a fancy restaurant and if you don’t have anything nice enough to wear she will buy you a properly fitted garment appropriate to the restaurant you will attend.

When you show up to class wearing a diamond encrusted wrist watch and designer clothing, everyone will know that you had a happy Valentines Day.

Jiro

She writes you a love song for Valentines Day.

With encouragement from Momo and Denki, she plays it for you in front of the whole class and accompanies it with your favorite chocolate and candies.

She looks very embarrassed. She’s scared that it isn’t good or that you won’t like it, but she has nothing to be worried about. Her song is beautiful and it’s been your favorite Valentines Day present ever!

Mirio

Mirio loves tacky valentines with horrible puns.

He’ll sneak them to you throughout the day, taping them to your locker or sneaking them inside the vents, passing them to you during or in between classes, taping them to the door to your dorm room. He loves the look on your face reading the stupid puns.

He makes you a nice dinner after class and you spend the night in.

Nejire

Nejire is a fan of all things cute (which is why she’s dating you xP).

You got each other matching teddy bears by accident, but that just shows how cute the two of you are.

You make heart shaped dumplings together and watch romcoms until the wee hours of the morning.

Tamaki

He gives you a card and chocolate during class, and he’s blushing the entire time.

When you give him a kiss on the cheek his face turns beet red and he’s not sure if it will ever turn to the original color again.

After classes, you encourage him to go to a concert with you as a fun way to spend the night out. Tamaki is wary to go, of course, but all in all he’s glad the two of you mixed up your night a little and got some time out of the dorms.

Aizawa

You spend the morning having lazy cuddle time in bed. Lots of lazy kisses, lazy cat naps, and eating breakfast in bed because you are too lazy to get up (breakfast is cereal straight out of the box that you keep by your bedside. Fight me).

During classes when you are supposed to be teaching, you and Aizawa will text each other constantly about how much you miss one another and can’t wait for your plans for that night.

Your plans are a simple dinner date at a restaurant. Aizawa also picks up a bouquet of flowers for you and a bottle of chardonnay for the two of you to enjoy later.

Present Mic

You make heart shaped pancakes with each other in the morning.

Yamada has plans to stay late at the radio station playing love songs, so you’re a little downtrodden when he tells you you can’t have a Valentine’s dinner with one another.

But when you get home at night and turn on the radio, you can’t help but smile, as the song that he plays is your favorite love song. You stay up late and listen to the show. He plays that song for you about ten times. Everyone thinks he just forgets that he’s already played it, but you know that the entire time he was playing it for you.

All Might

Valentines Day with All Might is difficult because the world now knows about his regular form.

You guys keep getting mobbed by his lovesick fans who all want a piece of him.

Toshinori can tell that it’s getting on your nerves and makes you very, very uncomfortable. So he makes it up to you that night with a homemade dinner, glass of wine, and lots of massages and cuddles.

Midnight

The morning starts out with her not wanting to get out of bed, so you tempt her with a homemade breakfast.

You divvy up the day evenly. You make her breakfast in the morning and she cooks dinner.

When the dishes have been taken care of, Nemuri has a very special surprise for you waiting in the bedroom. Have fun you two!

Hawks

As with All Might, Hawks gets bombarded by his fans constantly. He, however, is willing to flirt back with them. He likes seeing you get jealous as he calls his other fans his little birds, because that’s the nickname he calls you.

He makes it up to you by buying you a lot of expensive gifts, flowers, and chocolates.

But gifts don’t always make up for everything. That night, he treats you so well with kisses, massages, and lots of other sexy things.

Shigaraki

He doesn’t really see the point in Valentines Day.

So he was very surprised when you put a bar of chocolate in front of him, wish him a happy V-day, and kiss him on the cheek.

He’s never celebrated Valentine��s Day with anyone before, so don’t be surprised when he reciprocates that same thing you do, but with a half drunk bottle of whiskey. Babe is trying his best.

Dabi

Like the other villains, Dabi can’t take you out or do anything special with you because he has to keep a low profile.

So you spend the night in together. You play poker and drink together like any other night, but there’s something about the aura of the room that makes it feel so special.

The night ends with a drunken hookup, but this time Dabi actually wanted to cuddle after. Looks like the Valentine’s Day spirit is growing on him after all.

Toga

Knife wife doesn’t need a holiday to tell you you’re cute and shower you with love and affection.

Granted, her ways of showing love and affection are a little off, but she gives you a sack of candy she’s robbed from a convenience store.

When you give her a new knife with a sharp blade and her name etched into the side of the wooden handle, she is speechless. She waves it around in everyone’s faces and brags about how she has a better s/o than anyone in the world.

Twice

Twice’s Valentine’s present is making you a clone of yourself to clean your apartment.

He’s a little wary of doing it at first, but your reaction at seeing him make your double and it getting to work doing your dirty dishes was worth it.

While your double is hard at work, the two of you order takeout and watch movies together or the couch.

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myelocin · 4 years ago

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Diver | Miya Atsumu

Synopsis: For you, decisions have always resulted in one, then two, then twenty steps back from the jump you know you want to take, but never find the courage to do so. Miya Atsumu was one of those decisions, and it baffles you how he makes the edge seem so inviting.

Characters: Miya Atsumu, You

Warnings/Tags/Genre: Self reflection, Slice of Life, Fluff (atsumu is cute lmao), Mentions of sitting on a cliff, Friendship w Bo!! Pining!Atsumu, hard to get reader when irl ur just confused , more sky references are surprised? no

WC: 4.6k+

a/n: this was purely based on my desire to explore atsumu and the y/n i headcanon’s character more. this is also to those who struggle to decide which risks are actually worth taking. (atm this is not edited bc im just gonna do that tomorrow lol)

playlist: Hello by Elijah Who

++note: please click keep reading bc whole thing is posted!

You remember standing at the edge of the cliff and thinking about how big and beautiful the world looked at age seven. You think back to the words your grandfather tells you when he sits on the ground next to you and begins to tell the familiar tale of the boy who lived life too scared to leap. You don’t think it was a true story; some elements changed every other time the same story was retold but you listened with rapt attention either way.

Every summer when you visited your grandfather in that little house by the cliff hours away from the rush the city brought, more than half of your days were spent sitting by the edge watching the clouds chase and envelop one another. You’d watch as the blue moved into gold, then orange, then red, then back to blue—and finally dive into black. There was never a day where the chase looked exactly the same.

At nine, you still thought the world looked too vast and beautiful and now you think it was because there was still so much you didn’t know. At sixteen, you remembered seeing more streaks of pink along the horizon in the distance but when you look back at the photos now—it was still really just swirls of red and kisses of orange. Maybe that was the summer you first felt love, because the world you saw in those days were through the rose colored lenses that only you wore.

When your grandfather would ask you why you preferred to sit out by the edge instead of run in the field with the kids you knew nearby you only shrugged and said you didn’t want to miss the stories in the sky later that day. Some days, he’d sit next to you and you’d listen to the story of the boy who never leaped again, but during the last few years of his life when he became too frail for the world, he’d only ruffle your hair and go back inside the house.

There wasn’t a particular reason either; no dramatics that told a heartfelt backstory towards your infatuation with the sky, or a long spill about how you love letting the sounds of the waves crashing silence your thoughts—it was quite the opposite, really. Even when your first love told you it wasn’t working out and you spent the entire evening and the next crying over a story ended, you still sat and watched the colors changing with the expression of wonder that stayed constant since you were a child.

“I still care for you,” you remember him saying and his voice clear in your head doesn’t fight over the sounds of the waves crashing on jagged boulders below.

“—we’re just not meant for each other,” he says again but you don’t feel the need to look away from the sky because the sun’s beginning to dip into the horizon and the violets are starting to paint swirls in the sky.

“I don’t think I ever loved you, (y/n),” you hear along with the cry of a seagull somewhere on your left but you only let out the sigh you’ve held in when the show is over and the black curtains cover the sky. You remember closing your eyes to try to search for that twinge of pain you always read about when your first love is over. But, when you breathe in, you only hear the water below roar. When you breathe out, you hear your grandfather’s call from the house behind you.

That night when you stood up to leave, you dusted the dirt off of your pants and stepped closer to the edge; you weren’t going to jump but you wanted to step into that line of uncertainty to feel that rush.

The feeling you always get when you’re tipping your seat back and you let your fingers graze off of the table you’re supporting yourself with—and you’re dipping into the territory of whether you’ll fall forward or backward. Whether the fall either ways could mean good, or bad.

“Can’t we work this out?” is what you knew you wanted to try to say in the moment he turned his back. And then the first step towards him became one, then two, then three—before your hand stopped short of grabbing his shoulder because you realize you don’t want to say it.

Maybe because you were sixteen and the chemistry test you had to take next period was a more important thought than this, or maybe because this was the kind of puppy love where it as quick as it started—so you didn’t want to tarnish the final chapters with an ugly fight. But, really, you began to think, as your hand curled back into a fist and you watched him with dry eyes turn the corner and disappear, you just don’t have a reason to want to work it out.

So then as the bell rang, you turned to take a step that went from one, to two, to three, four—and then eventually six steps back.

Six steps away from the edge where you let yourself be dangled by uncertainty.

The strange part is you don’t remember what began shifting afterwards; when you lost sight of the horizon you spent years losing yet finding yourself in all at once.

After that night, for the years that led up to now it felt like there was never a balance when it came the climax of your decision making. Every time the atmosphere tensed and you feel your gut twist with the pressure of the outcome, your brain is suddenly creating loopholes to mend the situation and your body is already in motion—every single time moving one, to two, to twenty steps away from the drop. That way, you could rock your heels to the side or tip the back of your chair as far back as possible without the need to pull back because you know the steady ground would always break your fall.

You weren’t sure if you necessarily enjoyed it but the cliff by your grandfather’s house doesn’t look the same anymore. This time, you’re sitting in a chair on the porch, a heavy distance away from the pull of gravity down below. Because it’s safe, you reason, but the horizon from your spot doesn’t look quite the same. Peering at the strokes of colors in the 6pm sky through cracks in the porch’s rooftop makes the world feel so little. You hear the sound of the TV running inside the house instead of the water roaring below and you know it isn’t the same.

But when the sun peeks in finality before diving the world into dark, you stand at the edge of the porch like you did at the edge of the cliff so many times before.

One foot hovering over the ground below and you know your balance is tipping, but you don’t feel anything. There isn’t a hitch in your breath and the feeling of weightlessness and heaviness simultaneously nipping at your skin.

You sigh in blankness as you thrust your body forward and let yourself dive. Before you even leap you already feel the ground beneath your feet.

The ground is only two feet below you.

In your mid-twenties, Miya Atsumu came into your life in a whirlwind of laughter and expressions.

He wasn’t really that spectacular. Sure, Atsumu could twirl a pencil like the honor roll kids as well as he could land a service ace, but that was kind of it.

How the two of you became close friends was always a wonder to you as well. You knew his twin brother—Osamu, after frequenting his onigiri shop every day for lunch, but your interactions with him were mostly limited to the “hi”, “how are you”, “thanks”, and “goodbye”.

Atsumu was, well, interesting to talk to because of all the expressions that substituted some verbal cues in the conversation.

It took getting to know him for about a year and joining him in the last minute road trips he pulled with you to realize how much Atsumu embodied uncertainty.

He was like the push and the pull of the wind when you’re standing at that edge again. Like somewhere between the moments of unfiltered fear from plunging down into the ocean you know you can’t swim in, and that step back of reasoning that tells you a two more steps further means two more steps safer.

He was neither of those, but at the same time, made you feel the magnitude of both simultaneously. Atsumu, to you, was the cliff, the rocking wind, the steady ground, and the plunge below.

And it was frustrating because you couldn’t read him at all.

When he asked you one day if you wanted to join him for dinner, this time, just the two of you while the apples of his cheek blushed a visible shade of red despite the dimmed lighting of the sky—you felt your gut churn in uncertainty.

For a while you’ve felt he wanted to push the boundaries of your friendship into a territory more unknown to the both of you, but you thought it would just stop at the experimental prodding. You weren’t blind. You felt how his eyes would trail your profile when he thought your attention was too engrossed in a book, knew that the unmarked box of chocolates were from him because he wasn’t subtle in hiding the special instructions written on the bottom of the box. You saw the triumphant spark in his eye when you told him the gift he gave you on your birthday was exactly what you wanted even if he just shrugged and said he guessed lucky.

And that’s the thing—Atsumu was painfully obvious. He wasn’t explicit about his intentions—he was just obvious; you know he wasn’t dumb enough to leave all these hints and expect you to still not know so that frustrated you even further. Did he want you to find out? Did you want to find out?

“Do ya think you wanna get some dinner tonight?” he quips beside you, “—just us two?” he adds, finishing awkwardly as you two come to a halt in front of the train station.

You think about his offer; you really do. The feeling in your gut doesn’t go away and your left foot is subconsciously rocking backwards. One step back.

“Maybe next time,” you hear yourself say. Atsumu’s deflating in front of you and his right hand rests on the back of his head while he shoves the left into the pocket of his jeans.

Two steps, “I’d love to—“ you continue, “but I may miss the last train and I don’t really wanna take a taxi tonight.”

Atsumu’s nodding his head saying, “Of course! Of course. Yeah, definitely. Next time!” And in a way you’re thankful he doesn’t mention the fact that he could always drive you back instead of letting you take a taxi.

Three steps, as you wave at him from the top steps of the station’s exit.

Four steps, “For sure next time!” you call out as he waves at your retreating figure with a smile. Neither of you really have faith on when next time will be, nor were sure if either of you believed it in the first place.

It’s when the train doors close and you’re holding on the railing where it dawns on you that you just took about 20 more steps back.

Two weeks after Atsumu’s offer of a dinner date was when Bokuto comes to you to say that he understands why you rejected the offer.

“You and him are just too different from each other,” he says like he made a profound discovery and not like he’s commenting on your love life.

“Aren’t opposites supposed to attract?” you ask.

“Not all the time,” Bokuto answers almost immediately and you nod your head choosing to not expand on the topic while your mind begins to whirl at his words.

On the bright side, you were glad neither you nor Atsumu spoke much about it. The days where you’d spend the afternoons with the team until practice ended, if nobody wanted to catch dinner the two of you would eventually just part ways at the train station he walked you to every night.

“I could always drive you home, ya know, I’m a good driver,” he says when you search through your bag for your PASMO card.

“I live in the opposite way you’re going, ‘Tsumu,” you laugh, albeit still appreciative at his offer.

“I know,” he replies and rattles his keys in his hands.

You’re still digging through your bag as you look for the card you know you must have left at home before you finally sigh and look at him looking at you holding out his keys.

“C’mon, (Y/n), I won’t speed I swear!” Atsumu laughs as he leads the way to the parking lot.

A few more weeks pass and you’re glad no one mentions the fact that you follow Atsumu into the parking lot every time practice ends. The day after he drove you home for the first time, you flashed the PASMO card you made sure to have with you this time and told him thank you for dropping you off the day before. He only rolled his eyes as he grabbed your wrists and pulled you in the car with him.

In hindsight, you could have said no and waved him off like usual, but your feet were matching the steps in his before you could even process what you were doing. He just drove you home, made small talk, and asked about your days most of the time—so all in all it was pleasant.

And you lived in the west side of town so drive always meant that the both of you had a front seat view to the sky’s art show. One thing you noticed (and appreciated) about Atsumu was the duality in his focus.

First hand, you’ve seen up close the intensity of his focus during his serves. The air would whip itself into a deafening silence at the drop of his hand and his eyes steeled over as fast as the sounds came to a halt—it was eerie, almost. In the way that sent chills down your spine and admiration bubble in the pits of your stomach. Then, as quick as the ball slams on the spot of the ground he aimed towards—the yell of triumph he’d express and the smile that would break into his face would overflow from his whole being. Like exhaling shakily after a sharp intake of breath—Atsumu was everything intense.

But, Atsumu, you think as you peek at him looking at the skies in front of him, was also serene. The kind of focus that pulled you in all the right ways. Like the gentle teacher you had from elementary who would coax you softly to focus sounding out the words in the passage you had trouble pronouncing. His hands were steady on the wheel, at 10 and 2 and the car would slowly come to a stop at every red light instead of the sharp lurch your body moves into when you press the brake a little too harshly. He only sometimes put music in the car—he told you he prefers to have your voice as company instead of hearing about the weather from the radio.

It surprised you, but at this point Atsumu brought nothing in your life but surprises. Then again, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing—you were just used to feeling the ground before you fell so his uncertainty was still very much of an unmarked territory for you.

“Is it something about me?” he asked when the two of you exited the car and stood outside the entrance to your apartment building.

You know what he’s talking about, but you opt to stay silent and look at him with your head tilted instead because you already feel the urge to take one step back.

He’s still looking at you even as the passing moments are stretching into an awkward silence so he sighs and shoves his hands back in his pockets—something he does when he’s nervous, you noticed—and waved you off when you opened your mouth to try to retaliate. You’re thankful because you aren’t exactly sure what it was you were going to say anyway.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he says as he turns.

“See ya tomorrow?”

He waits for you to nod and wave a goodbye at him, which he first smiles at, before he starts the car and drives away.

His question “doesn’t keep you up at night,” is what you try to convince yourself when it’s 2:05 am on a Tuesday night and all you’ve done so far is toss and turn in bed. To prove your own point, you’ve sat up and turned the bedside lamp on while you scroll through some unopened emails on your laptop.

Halfway into retyping the same email you know you’ve been staring at for the past hour, Atsumu’s contact photo chimes in your phone in the form of a text message.

“you up?” it reads from the notification bar and you automatically shut your laptop close, turn off the lamp, and throw your covers over your head.

“No,” you reply out loud and you internally groan because of how ridiculous you’re being.

Your thoughts from the night before still remain in your head as you’re sitting on the bench beside the court later that afternoon as you type away at your laptop. It’s still the same email you never replied to last night, but you try to ignore that. You also ignore the fact that you’ve kept count of how many times the ball slammed on the opposite side of the net when Atsumu practiced his serves.

You don’t notice it when Bokuto takes a seat next to you and looks over your shoulder at the email you’re not even halfway through typing.

“That’s the same email opened since this morning,” he points out and you groan before turning to face and quickly shush him.

He’s laughing when he takes a seat next to you.

“You know,” he begins, “I think you’re just scared to feel something for Atsumu.”

You close your laptop—the draft of your email unsaved, like it had any coherent content anyway.

“Bo, you’re being silly,” you reply knocking your shoulder against his in laughter.

“You’re avoiding the conversation, (y/n),” he laughs back and you wave him off towards the court in laughter when the coach calls for him. He stretches when he stands back up and tells you, “We’ll talk about this later because I think you need it,” before jogging off to the other side of the gym.

Inwardly, you heave another sigh, because this was one of the times where Bokuto’s being more serious. You had to give him credit—the duality in his personality and harsh line when he switched from jesting to seriousness was impressive. Bokuto Koutarou wasn’t smart in many aspects of the domestic parts of life—he didn’t understand taxes, or why you needed to change the oil often, but he had a way of looking through the layers people build around themselves.

At first, it caught you off guard because two weeks after you met you had only been sitting outside a convenience store watching him lick the melted parts of his ice cream on his hands when he suddenly turns to you and says, “(Y/n), I wish you would take risks more. You’re too cautious.”

He never brought it up again, but every time he chose to tell you something—it was always something you knew, never acknowledged, but needed to hear.

So when Atsumu waves at you and shouts that he’ll just shower and be out in thirty minutes, you ignore the urge to step back, and smile at him instead.

You’re thinking about Bokuto’s words again as you listen to Atsumu yell something at Sakusa from inside the locker room.

You’re too different from each other.

You suppose there are differences, especially in the way you address your friends—Atsumu’s not afraid to clap your back while he laughs while you choose to keep your hands to yourself. He’s not afraid to let his intentions be known while you try to wrestle with your thoughts every time you’re shifting closer to the edge.

You could always walk away, you tell yourself every day, but every day you also choose to not do that. You know day by day and sunset after sunset you watch with Atsumu you’re nearing that edge again—and you want nothing more than take twenty more steps back but each day he offers you a new joke that you genuinely laugh at you know it’s a couple centimetres closer to where you’re afraid of going.

Bokuto’s right, you’re different from each other, but you know deep down that you’re alike in so many ways. When Atsumu talks about what he wants to do accomplish in life outside of volleyball, he talks with such a childish wonder in the certainty of the tone of his voice. At times, he was stubborn to the core—just like you were, and you realize that would clash between the both of you some day but Atsumu smiling as he’s jogging towards you has you realizing that you don’t really mind at all.

“Ready to go?” he asks and you could only nod as you follow him out the door.

Bokuto’s looking at you and giving you a thumbs up which you nervously return with a smile of your own.

During the car ride back home, you’re thankful that Atsumu chooses to flip on the radio this time; you didn’t plan on telling much of a story, and your thoughts are too jumbled up with everything for you to even settle with small talk.

“You good?” he asks, then looks over at you at the red light. You nod yes and shift the bag sitting in your lap.

“The sky looks pretty today,” you begin, “—the sunset today looks like the ones I grew up seeing when I was a kid at my grandfather’s by the coast.”

Atsumu hums, but it’s still heard over the low volume of the car’s radio, “You should take me to see one day.”

Your gut churns and you curse yourself when you habitually chose to stay silent.

“I don’t mean it like I’m inviting myself there, (Y/n)—“

“It’s okay, you should visit with me next time,” you reply then turn to watch his expression shift from flustered to surprise from his profile. You’re watching him with baited breath and your heart thumping can almost be heard when the radio dips into a silence in the commercial.

The light switches to green and Atsumu eases his foot off of the break as the car slowly gains momentum before he’s nodding his head and saying a soft, “Yeah. Sure. Totally.”

It’s quite uncharacteristic for him to be so muted with his replies, but you suppose these are one of the similarities you’re discovering you have with Atsumu. He’s confident and barks out his comments when his emotions are running high, but at the moment you know the both of you are tiptoeing around that line of uncertainty at the moment.

When his pointer figure taps the steering wheel in an unknown rhythm, a nervous habit of his, you feel yourself slightly relax. The difference this time from that hallway breakup you had when you were sixteen was both of you were at the same page. That boy who said he didn’t love you let the certainty in his intentions be known in the way you could already anticipate the long term ending for. There was nothing more to be uncovered—and you didn’t find the push to dive down for more.

This, with Atsumu, was a different story. You had curiosity with the unclarity. You craved to unravel his truth.

Truthfully, every decision you’ve made so far had you already seeing the outcome—that’s why you’ve only felt like you were only jumping to a ground two or three feet under you.

With Atsumu, you’ve come to realize that he personified the edge. At the same time, he was the push and the pull of the wind when you’re balancing yourself between curiosity and reason. You know the frustration you feel when you can’t read him comes from the fact that you’re only seeing him from the surface. You see licks of who he is with every slam of the ball and every spark in his eye.

But just when you feel that knot in your stomach, you allow reason to cloud your desire to jump into the blurred lines of variability— Every. Single. Time.

And it frustrates you because twenty steps back have become too comfortable for you to try to leave. You hated it, but you knew what was waiting for you every time, so you learned to find the comfort in it.

The truth is, you’ve always had the curiosity towards what it felt like to plunge. Like the story your grandfather would tell you—it ended with the boy dying by the edge he never found the curiosity to jump in, surrounded by the questions that ultimately died with him. It was a pitiful end, and up till now you believe the entire story could have been avoided. You know you’re always thinking about the dive and what comes with it, but never found quite the push that’d lead you to want to throw your body forward and seek.

You know Bokuto always had a point in the passing comments he tells you when you least expect it. Bokuto presented them to you in forms of declarations not even in questions.

The sky in front of you is the same sky you stood under when you dangled your feet over the edge, fearless, years ago. Atsumu feels like the push and pull of the wind, and the tug of gravity under your soles when he looks at you as you stand in front of your apartment building.

You’re not in the cliff side this time but you see the horizon you forgot you loved when Atsumu shoves his hands in his pockets and offers you a smile.

You hear the cry of the waves below and the call of the seagulls to your left when Atsumu says, “About earlier, you don’t have to worry about it—I was just jokin.”

“You’re scared to feel something for Atsumu,” you hear Bokuto tell you when you itch to take a step back, then, “I wish you’d take more risks.”

“I wanna take the risk,” you say out loud and Atsumu looks at you quizzically, before softening his eyes when he realizes what you’re trying to say.

And you could almost laugh because of course he understands what you mean. Atsumu knew more than he let on and you could laugh again at the mirroring of your personalities. It was opposite and identical at the same time: identical like the both of you understanding each other’s metaphors without explanation, and opposite in the way he always addresses them while you do, well, the opposite of that.

“I wanna jump,” you say even if it doesn’t make sense because you’re confident the message will reach him all the same.

Atsumu’s beaming and you think it looks like the sun that’s looked at you from the horizon for years. When he takes your hands in his, you inhale yet feel breathless because the balls of your feet feel weightless and your body is leaning forward.

And when the clouds in the sky blend with the painting and Atsumu leans forward, you let gravity take you—

Then, you’re diving.

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thoughts-on-bangtan · 4 years ago

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Jungkook and Taehyung Apple Music updates

by Admin 1

I don’t know if any of you have been on twitter, or checked up on JKs and Tae's Apple Music profiles but on JKs profile (or at least what ARMY believe to be his profile) the profile picture has been changed while on Taehyung’s the biography changed.

Now the questions are--what does that mean, and does it mean anything at all? Let’s have a little discussion and check out all the facts and theories we can gather.

What we know about their mixtapes

Over the last seven or eight months Taehyung has been working on his mixtape, lovingly dubbed by ARMY as Taetape, TH1 and mixtaepe, and even showed us a few tracks from it, including tiny one second snippets in his most recent vlive. From his Christmas post that accompanied Snow Flower, we know that the mixtape has been delayed, and we were told we’ll likely get it early or mid 2021.

Meanwhile Jungkook mentioned working on a mixtape a long time ago, the one furthest back being a mention of it all the way in late 2018. We also got a minute long snippet of a track called Decalcomania on twitter in 2019, and in the same year he spoke about how he almost had it all finished, but then realize he wasn’t happy with it and started again. We also know that Your Eyes Tell, as well as Stay, were both supposed to be on his mixtape, but were repurposed as Japanese OT7 track (Your Eyes Tell) and subunit track for BE (Stay). But he hasn’t said a thing about when the mixtape might come, if he’s steadily working on it or anything else.

These are all the hard facts we know for sure since they explicitly told us about them. Now for the theories below the cut:

Theories

In the last few weeks we’ve suddenly had something like a resurgence of Taekook content, in form of the two of them sitting next to each other, joking around, and even a vlive together as well as a selca at the end of 2020. This is noteworthy since otherwise a lot of the content we got in 2020 was more focused on Jikook, along with a few very lovely Vmin moments in-between. We know that big “showy” ship moments are a marketing tool, so perhaps some of that was purposeful to draw attention back to Tae and JK, instead of JK and Jimin, in preparation of them having their mixtapes released?

Why am I even bringing all of this up? Well if you check the picture on JKs AM profile, it actually shows both him and Tae in it, though it’s rather odd that a picture was chosen that was taken from the making book in BE. But, if nothing Bangtan ever do when it comes to their music is a coincidence and no one is just messing with ARMY, that’s why it made me think of Tae and JK and their mixtapes, how there might be some kind of connection, not necessarily that they’ll have songs together but just that their mixtapes perhaps might come out in a similar timeframe.

As most recent “moment” we could mention the relay after the Golden Disc Awards where Taehyung specifically asked JK why he dyed his hair, which JK commented by saying that he’s been asked that like four times already that day yet didn’t actually answer the question itself. It may seem like nothing noteworthy, but I’m sure Tae could’ve asked that in private, yet chose to do so in that moment in front of the cameras as though to once again draw attention to his very drastic hair color change. JK also said that Tae has become a reliable guy, which could be him talking about Tae doing a good job when it comes to being the visual director for BE, but perhaps he also meant that Tae was reliable and did a good job with their schedules which in turn allowed both of them, not only Tae, to work on their mixtapes, much the same way that Hobi and Jimin could work on a song together in that time as well. It might be farfetched, I know, I’m just playing with ideas and putting it all out there. This is all meant as fun after all.

Furthermore we also had Namjoon say that following to JK as part of the same relay:

It’s finally today, Jungkook-si, in 10 years! You are Golden Maknae! The day that you will prove your nickname! You are proving it right now with your hair color, but in 2021, I hope the year will be filled with gold, like your nickname. Stay healthy. Let’s ‘Jje-kkit-up’ together this year too! (check it up.. the usual Namjoon saying lol)

I mentioned in my Gold Disc Award (x) post how this kind of made me suspicious and wonder if Namjoon wanted to subtly hint at something with his words, like he wishes JK so well because he knows something is coming and he hopes it’ll be successful perhaps? We know Namjoon is the king of spoilers after all, and this would certainly be very tame and low-key for his standards.

Months ago during a OT7 vlive JK, along with Seokjin, mentioned how he got to listen to Tae’s mixtape and how it was really good, that he liked the songs. Likewise we also know that Tae heard Stay while it was still a JK song and encouraged him to show it to the rest of the members, and eventually Stay turned into JKs subunit song with Namjoon and Seokjin for BE. So we know they have both heard what the other is working on, and both of them had their songs be repurposed into OT7/subunit songs. What if, perhaps, they exchanged songs, as in Tae wrote a song for JJK1 and JK wrote one for TH1 (lyrics or melody wise), or worked on them in some way the same way Namjoon helped Jimin with Promise and Christmas Love, or wrote a tiny bit of Abyss for/with Seokjin.

One thing though I find highly odd about the updated version of Tae’s biography on AM is the fact that it sounds very much like something a fan would write, and not a BigHit staff member, even more so because it mentions other groups (even though BTS are the most famous one and it feels unnecessary) but mostly because Sweet Night isn’t mentioned despite being Tae’s biggest hit and the song with the most iTunes #1 in history. Something feels very fishy and off about it, so I’d be inclined to believe that someone simply might’ve hacked his account when they noticed the buzz on social media about JKs profile change.

There is a very big chance that while all of this is very exciting and I’d very much love to hear both Tae’s and JKs mixtapes, that someone is simply playing a very big prank on ARMY right now. They saw that people fell for the changed profile picture on the JK profile so they decided to add fuel to the fire by changing Tae’s bio as well. Which would mean everyone got hyped for absolutely nothing, though this moment of excitement and theories certainly is very fun.

However long it might take until we get TH1 and JJK1, I’m willing to patiently wait for it and I hope, should it turn out to just be a prank, that ARMY will be mature enough to handle this situation accordingly and not go on some kind of rampage against BH and the members.

#Taehyung #Jungkook #TH1 theories #JJK1 theories #taehyung mixtape #Jungkook mixtape #Taehyung mixtape theories #Jungkook mixtape theories #BTS #I'm just having fun with theories #none of this is meant as fact or anything

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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago

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Survey #360

“we are the ones that wanna play / always wanna go, but you never wanna stay”

"Crawling" or "In The End?" I want to say "Crawling," but I really can't be sure. Both are bomb. Is your window open? No. Monsters Inc. or Shrek? Shrek, my man. What did you last hear that made your jaw drop? Jason's mom died. What is the longest shower or bath you have ever taken? I remember as kids, Nicole and I would sometimes play 'til Mom made us finish because the water was cold by then. As an adult, idk about my longest shower. Do you have a preference of chocolate? Yeah, milk chocolate. Is there anyone you’d like to hug right now? Yeah. Could you ever picture someone writing a biography about you? Definitely not. Do you have a clock in your room? No. Do you shut off the computer when you’re done using it? No, I just close it. Do you usually catch a cold during the winter? No. I just about never get sick. Are you a good multi-tasker? NOOOOOOOOOOO. Do you know any deaf people? If so, is it easy or difficult to have conversations with them? No. Is there a door knocker on your front door? No. Were you ever into Pokémon? Bitch I still am. Do you drink a lot of water? Sigh, no. I'm definitely better than I used to be, though; once upon a time, I literally never drank it unless I was extremely hot and dehydrated. Nowadays, it's usually after I finish my soda for the day that I then only drink water, normally around one full tall cup of it. Do you like fireworks? They're beautiful, but I'm personally against them out of respect for veterans suffering from PTSD as well as animals, because I'm not exactly interested in traumatizing them, either. Is respect given or earned with you? It's given, the way I think it should be. Are you “in the closet” about anything? No. Are you missing any teeth? No. Do you like scrapbooking? I've never gotten into it and am not really interested in doing so. What was or will be your first tattoo? It's a semicolon butterfly on my right wrist. Sometimes I've thought about getting it covered with a cooler design but the same concept; it was literally from Google, and I'm very much not into "sharing" tattoo designs with probably thousands of other people. But, I still think it really is cute, and it's just very special to me as my first, so idk. Do you have any tattoos dedicated to someone special? I have one written in Sara's handwriting inside a heart, and my "ohana" tattoo that I am 100% getting covered was dedicated to my former best friend Colleen. I've talked before about why "ohana" has never really resonated with me, and I just don't like it anymore at all. Thank God it's small. Do you like ghost stories? Oh HELL yeah, lay 'em on me. What was your favorite movie as a kid? The Lion King. Some things never change, ha. Do you own a lot of cookbooks? Mom has looooots, but never uses any. I think her mom gave them to her, so she just keeps 'em. What’s your father’s handwriting like? It looks like every other man's handwriting I've ever seen lol. All the letters are capitalized. Did you wash your hair last time you showered? I wash my hair every time I shower. I have to with it naturally being so oily. What does your shampoo smell like? Coconut. Do you listen to Guns N' Roses? Not a lot, but yeah. They've got some bangers. I actually want "Sweet Child O' Mine" to be the father/daughter dance at my wedding. Have you ever been a bridesmaid? Yeah, at my sister's wedding. What was the last video game that you beat? I replayed Silent Hill 2 a long time ago. Have you ever hyperventilated? Yep. Do you talk in your sleep? I scream in my sleep. Nightmares/terrors are a blast. Whose house did you last sleep over? Sara's. Have you ever been cut by scissors? No. Do you like peaches? It's odd, I like canned sliced peaches, but the actual, full fruit, I don't. I love peach flavored juice, though. Do you enjoy being surrounded by neighbors, or would you be more comfortable someplace secluded? Take me back to the middle of nowhere, please. I'm really not digging being in an actual neighborhood. Is there any sibling rivalry between you and your siblings, if you have any? Not at all. Do you usually root for the good guys or the bad guys? Ha, the baddies... Are you allowed to have pets at your house? We're allowed to have what we currently own and then maybe one dog if Mom finally finds one. Have you ever lived in a trailer park? No. Is there anyone that you know through the internet that you would feel comfortable meeting in person? There's quite a few, actually! Have you ever had a dream involving characters from a game/movie/television show? Yeah. What’s the last thing you wrote down? My signature, I think? Do you remember any phone numbers from years ago that now belong to someone you don’t know? No. Have you ever found something strange in your mailbox? No. Who was the last relative that came to visit you? My half-sister and her husband. Does your bedding all match? Not currently. Are you more comfortable with having short hair or long hair? SHORT. Are you interested in fantasy movies/shows? That's my preference. Have you ever gone whale-watching? No, but that'd be dope. What is something that you have a large amount of? Meerkat plushies. Who is it that you’re in love with? Nobody. Have you ever gotten love and infatuation confused? No. Do you have a steady income? No. Do you take your medications in the morning or at night? Both. Have you ever bought a YouTuber’s merch? No, I wish. :( Do you think oatmeal tastes better when made with water or milk? MILK. I don't eat it with water. When was the last time you ran into someone that you didn’t want to see? Idk. Have you ever tried vlogging, and if yes, did you stick with it? Noooo, I'm completely disinterested in doing that myself. If you go to church, what is your favorite thing about it? I don't go. Even as a kid when Mom made me, I hated it. ^and what is your least favorite thing about it? N/A What do you do for exercise? I don't. .-. I want a pool SO badly to swim and strengthen my legs without having to worry about sweating or collapsing, though. Mom says we don't have space, but we definitely do. Not a lot, but enough. Do you have a birthmark? If yes, what color is it? Yeah, it's just a bit darker than the rest of my skin. Do you need to lose weight? Yes. My sister, Mom, and I very recently started a Weight Watchers subscription and we're all working our asses off to stick to it. Ash has already lost like, 12 pounds (she started before Mom and me), so I'm kinda hopeful. Have you ever had a cat? Growing up, after we took in a stray female, we ended up with a fucking empire of cats, literally around three dozen, I'd say. They were all outdoors, too, and not fixed because we couldn't afford it, so tomcats would come around and, y'know, make matters worse. Eventually, animal control took them all and I was DEVASTATED, but looking back, I understand it was necessary. Anyway, I have one cat now. Indoors and fixed and the prince of my world, haha. Have you ever had a dog? We've had a few. I was born with my dad having a collie named Trigger, but I don't remember her at all; she died of old age I believe when I was very young. Then we briefly had a pup named Angel, but she died due to that disease some puppies just have. We didn't get another dog until Teddy, who was my Christmas present, and he was put to sleep only last year, rest my baby's soul. We also had Dale, Cali, Delilah, and Bentley. Have you ever any other kind of animal? A LOT. I'm probably going to forget some, but we've had hamsters, rats, snakes, fish, a turtle, two lizards, gerbils, guinea pigs... just a lot. Animals have always been very important in my life. Have you ever had a pet rock? HA, yeah. I didn't take it seriously at all, but I had one. When was the last time you painted something? Not since my Painting course in my final college attempt. Do you have any disabilities? Not in the traditional sense, no. My social anxiety though is at such a severity that it majorly infringes upon my ability to do a LOT of things, though. What are five of your favorite stores at the mall? I couldn't name five. Just Hot Topic and Spencer's, really. What season do you want to get married in? AUTUMN. The actual dream situation would be to get married in the snow in a black dress, like can you IMAGINE the pictures, but realistically, it'd be in the fall to avoid the biting cold. Has anyone ever spread lies about you? Yeah. Anything special planned for today? Nope. Blue or green? Blue. How much older/younger than you was the person you lost your virginity to? He's two years older than me. Do you still care for that person? Very much. Can you completely annihilate the first Mario game in less than an hour? I haven't even played the first game. I've never really been into the games to begin with. Did you make it all the way through the Oregon Trail game? Yes! I was OOOOOBSESSEEEEEED as a kid. I would usually play it after school when my mom was an assistant teacher and was finishing up her work for the day. Have you ever contemplated climbing a water tower? Uh, no. Those kind of people got some wanderlust levels that I ain't got, haha. If you have a Facebook, when was the last time you changed your profile picture? It's been a few months. Would you ever marry someone who was lower class? Um, yes? You can deny it all you want, but answering "no" is pretty much the same as saying you'd marry for money. Is there a guy you wish you hadn’t let slip away? ugh Which do you prefer: English or math? English, by light years. Who is a singer that has given you chills? David Draiman's voice in the Disturbed cover of "Sound of Silence" is fucking haunting. Greatest cover of all time. Do you watch America’s Got Talent? I did when Sharon was a judge. Do you think you could win America’s Got Talent? Hell no. What act would you perform in a talent show? uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Have you ever practiced yoga? Yes. I used to be BANGIN at it. What is your favorite thing to buy at the Farmer’s Market? Fruit! Do you get carsickness? No. What color is the rim of your full-length mirror? Black. What is your state’s bird (if you live in the US)? Cardinal. Which style of wedding dress is your favorite? I'm a sucker for ballgown dresses. Do you enjoy editing videos? I used to love it, for many many years. Now, I just don't have the dedication or motivation to. Do you enjoy editing photos? Yes. If you gave birth, do you think you would want it filmed? Um, absolutely not. I would have NO desire to look back on me shrieking my lungs out and essentially dying. I handle abdominal pain very poorly, so I've got a goooood feeling that if I actually wanted to have kids, I'd be that woman screeching like a banshee.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''aerials'' by system of a down

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managedmischiefs · 5 years ago

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north commentary//chapter one

it’s finally here!! I apologize for the time it took for me to actually get this posted but it’s finally here. I didn’t edit any of the actually commentary so if there’s mistakes then I’m very sorry. also, I’m not going to tag anyone on the tag list for north, but if I do more of these in the future then maybe I will.

I’m going to begin editing chapter two immediately after posting this and it will be up probably sometime tomorrow night, so look out for that! enjoy my commentary. hopefully you find it insightful in some way and you get a deeper understanding for my oc and for my interpretation of spencer.

SPENCER

Being late to work is not something that I tend to enjoy. I hate it, in fact. I feel like I'm letting my team down if I'm ever late to round table meetings or if I miss a briefing. But these days, sleep is rare. And if I do sleep, it's not uncommon for me to sleep over the array of alarms I have.

Hello lovely followers and readers!! Thank you for spending your time reading this commentary and for getting involved and being interested in the way that my brain works while writing this fic. If you like commentary like this then I’ll definitely do more in the future!! There’s future chapters that I would absolutely kill to do commentary on and would love to explain my thought process on. This commentary is mainly about why I choose to make Spencer and my OC act certain ways because this is only the first chapter and there aren’t plot points to dissect, but if I do more in the future then I’ll definitely talk about plot points and such. Enjoy!!

Coffee is a must have for me at all points of the day. No sleep means exhaustion and exhaustion means my brain doesn't work as quickly as it could and that means we don't solve cases and not solving cases means more people die. I can't have more people die on my watch so I drink as much coffee as I can. But the coffee in the bullpen isn't always the best so if I ever have time, I stop at a cafe on my way to work. I take the extra five minutes to walk there before hopping on the metro.

I mumble off my coffee order to the tired looking barista and she scribbles down my name. I hand over a few stray bills to pay and get some change in return, tucking it in my pants pocket. I give a tight lipped smile to the barista before moving to a table in the corner of the cafe, pulling a book out of my messenger bag and starting to read, crossing one of my legs over the other. I don't look up while I wait for the barista to call out my name, not even when two people bump into each other in front of the door or a tourist asks someone else for directions. I just read my book and chew my lip, tapping my fingers against the hardcover.

We all know that Spencer lives his life on coffee and would probably fall asleep standing up if he didn’t have coffee every morning and at multiple points throughout the day. There’s quite a lot of mentions throughout the show that coffee in police stations is really bad, so I wouldn’t imagine the coffee in the BAU is much better. So in my mind, Spencer would search for a coffee shop that he liked and one that he thought was cozy and peaceful. He doesn’t strike me as a fast paced person in his personal life. What I mean by that is I don’t think he would be the person to only allot himself just five minutes to get his coffee, catch his train, and get to work. He strikes me as someone who wants to take his time and be able to sit down and read his book. Thus, this scene was born.

"Spencer," I hear my name being called and finally allow myself attention to be lifted.

I stand quickly, tucking my book in my bag and closing the flap before heading back to the main counter. But the buckle of my bag gets caught on the button of my sleeve when I try to close my bag all the way. I pull at my sleeve, trying to get the buckle unlooped. But in this tussle with myself, I don't even realize that I'm still walking until I bump right into someone. I move my attention from my bag and catch the person's shoulders so I don't completely knock them over and make not only a fool of myself, but of them too.

Spencer is clumsy, we all know this. He’s not just clumsy when he meets girls and is flustered by their attention/affection but he’s clumsy in these types of social situations where he has to rush to stand and grab his cup of coffee. There’s a lot of times in the show where you can see him struggling to put his messenger bag on because it gets stuck in his hair. He’s just not too swift. But we all love him unconditionally.

"Oh my gosh," I say immediately, my eyes widening, "I'm so sorry,"

"It's okay, it's okay," the girl laughs, her hands squeezing my arms as she regains her balance, “didn’t even fall. You caught me. I didn’t even break a sweat!”

My eyes finally find the girl's face and I'm rendered absolutely speechless. I somehow notice everything about her right away and I memorize her beauty. Her eyes are a bright, beautiful shade of ocean blue and her eyelashes cast shadows over her perfectly pink cheeks. Her hair is wavy and blonde with brown roots, but there's a yellow and blue patterned scarf tied around the front of her head like a folded bandana with pieces pulled out to frame her face. Her nose is small and I can only liken it to a button. Her lips are full and plump and a pretty light pink color and her Cupid's Bow is one that Cupid himself should be jealous of. Both of her ears are full of different types of piercings, and her nose even has a hoop in her right nostril.

She's wearing a light blue knit sweater tucked into a tight denim skirt, along with a pair of short black boots with small heels on them. Her nails are painted white and her fingers are full of rings, each of them different styles and various shades of silver with yellow gems. I notice a tattoo on one of her fingers but she moves and I can't make out what it is. I wonder if she has more tattoos. I find two straps around her shoulders and realize she's wearing a leather backpack, one probably very similar to my own bag. The last thing I notice is the old fashioned camera hanging around her neck, resting just above the waistband of her skirt.

Spencer doesn’t feel like the kind of guy who would judge a book by its cover. He doesn’t seem like he would take one look at a person and decide the type of person they would be. I don’t even think he would necessarily abuse his profiling skills in his everyday life and with the strangers he meets. But if he managed to stumble upon a girl that he really liked and had an instant attraction to, like what happens right here with Amelia, I really think that he would want to know everything about her. He would scramble to collect information about her, based on her appearance and just the sound of her voice and off of what she ordered. So not only do these last two paragraphs serve as me being able to be outright about who Amelia is and what my OC looks like (because I always have a really specific look for my OC’s) but it also serves as Spencer collecting as much information this girl he just met and that he finds much more than intriguing.

I've seen my fair share of pretty girls. I've seen girls that I wouldn't mind getting to know better. I've met girls that have caught my attention. I've even been in what I believed to be love. But what is this? If I thought I'd seen a beautiful girl before, I clearly hadn't met this girl before. She looks like an angel sent directly from heaven. She looks like she was crafted by God himself and put on this earth to grace mankind with her beauty. Is it fair for one woman to be this beautiful? Is it even possible? I didn’t think that one woman could possess such beauty.

What the hell is wrong with me? I can barely even breathe. I’m just staring at this gorgeous specimen, admiring her smile and trying to memorize the way her fingertips feel on my forearms. I quickly try to think of something to say, another apology for running into her, but I can barely even breathe when I stare at her, much less speak.

Spencer doesn’t get a lot of girls, and when he does, he doesn’t generally have good luck with them (Lila, Maeve- lol). But I truly believe that when he catches feelings, he falls so hard. He doesn’t fall too fast, and this is explored in upcoming chapters, but he falls really hard and he treats his girlfriend/crush like an absolute queen. He worships to ground she walks on and thinks she put the moon and the sun and the stars in the sky. This is just how I imagine how Spencer would see and treat his SO in a relationship. He would really love them with all of his heart and dote on them endlessly and give them his whole heart.

"Spencer," the barista calls out my name again, setting my cup down on the counter before walking away. Saved by the barista.

The girl smiles at me and her face lights up, only further illuminating her features. She's got two dimples on her cheeks, bringing out a childlike spirit in her that I pick up right away. "Um," she says with a laugh, "is that yours? You should probably grab it before someone else steals it,"

I wish I could say more about Amelia’s character right now because she is so beautifully complex and so confusingly real, if that makes sense. She appears to be so put together, as Spencer so aptly observes, but as time goes on, she really starts to fall apart at the seams. But every person is like this. Nobody is truly ‘put together’ no matter how hard they try. That’s what makes us human. We all fall apart eventually. There’s a little glimpse into the future for you.

Okay, Spencer, breathe. You can do this. You’ve spoken to pretty girls before. Sure, it’s hard and it’s scary, but you can do it. Just say words. Preferably, coherent words. Preferably, maybe, a full sentence.

More of Spencer being adorably confused when it comes to girls. How can you not love him??

"Right," I finally force out, dropping my hands from her arms. I hadn't realized until now that I was still holding onto her and she was still holding onto me. I reach over and grab my steaming coffee, almost wincing at the heat under my fingertips.

The girl still hasn't moved when I turn back to her, but now she's fiddling with her camera. "Are you," I start to say before hesitating. Her head pops up and she smiles again, letting her camera fall against her stomach. I gulp, shuffling my feet against the floor as I attempt to speak a full sentence. "I didn't mean to bump into you like that,"

"Oh, it's totally fine," she waves her hand at me casually. "I wasn't paying attention either. No harm, no foul. Like I said, I didn’t even break a sweat,” The girl pushes her hair behind her ears and places her hands on her hips. With the confident way she speaks, I almost expect her to keep speaking, but she doesn’t. She just looks at me with the cutest smile, even baring her teeth, waiting for me to say something else.

Amelia is very much so an extrovert and it’s obvious in the way that she has no problem participating in this conversation (and how she has no problems remembering how to breathe like Spencer does), but she’s not bouncing off the walls and screaming and grabbing at Spencer. He wouldn’t gel with someone like that, in my opinion, because they would overwhelm him. I wanted Amelia to be like a breath of fresh air for Spencer, or the feeling of the sun on your skin, or how the relief you get when you lay in bed after a long day (I don’t like that last comparison but just bear with me). I wanted her to, right off the bat, being a calming presence to him. If you notice, Spencer points out that he expects her to speak but she doesn’t. She waits until he speaks and in my mind, I envisioned that as Amelia reading the situation and recognizing Spencer’s slight anxiety and waiting until he was comfortable speaking. She didn’t want to push him and cause more anxiety. Do with that information what you will. Let us continue reading.

So I clutch my cup of coffee and swallow thickly. “I-" I hesitate yet again, but when the girl's eyes scream for me to continue, I do. "What's your name?"

She opens her mouth to speak but before she can, another cup of coffee is placed on the counter. "Amelia," the barista announces before walking away.

Amelia laughs, taking a step over to grab her cup, which I immediately notice is tea and not coffee. "Took the words right out of my mouth,"

Remember when I said he was trying to collect as much information on Amelia as possible?? He notices she’s drinking tea instead of coffee.

"Amelia," I repeat as if testing the way the word rolls off my tongue. It tastes sweet. "You heard already, but, um, I'm Spencer,"

"It's nice to meet you," Amelia holds her hand to shake mine, and the panic starts to set in. For a moment, I debate on actually just shaking her hand so I don’t seem like a total freak to this girl that I seem to have a massive crush on. But the prospect of shaking a total strangers hand is repulsive and when I find myself looking at her hand for more than two seconds, I’m starting to count up the amount of germs that would be present there and I have to force myself not to make a face.

The show is very inconsistent with Spencer’s hand shaking because sometimes he’s giving out handshakes like it’s candy but other times he’s waving. So fuck the cm writers. In my head, Spencer rarely shakes hands with people other than those on the team and those he really trusts. So the sheer fact that he’s even considering shaking Amelia’s hand is a huge deal. He wants to make a good impression on her and he’s just hoping that he doesn’t look stupid in front of her. He’s even willing to shake her hand to make a good impression. He’s willing to do something that he absolutely hates, and to me, that’s a huge deal.

So of course, while my hands get clammy and my heart rate speeds up, I do what I do best. I spit out a fact that Amelia didn't ask for. "On average we carry 3,200 bacteria from 150 different species on our hands,"

Amelia's fingers curl into her palm and she retracts her hand, looking down at her palm and smiling just a tiny bit. "You know, I don't blame you for not wanting to shake hands. It is kinda gross anyway,"

"Sorry," I blurt out immediately, still shuffling on my feet. "That was rude of me,"

"It's not rude," Amelia counters, sipping her tea without so much as grimacing at the inevitable heat. "Are you in a rush?" I glance down at my watch and see that I still have ten minutes until I should be getting on the train. I relay this information to her and watch as she smiles again. "Would you like to sit with me then?"

Guys, I love Amelia so much. I know that my .2 brain cells created her, but I really love her. She doesn’t cut of Spencer when he gives her a fact about germs and she goes along with his aversion to handshaking without a second thought. There’s no interruption or eye-rolling or sass. She listens to him and accepts him and then offers to sit down with him. I think that Amelia found Spencer attractive at first, and now that they have been conversing for just a few moments, she finds him much more intriguing, and that’s why she asks him to sit. She wants to know what this guy’s deal is.

"Oh," my eyes widen slightly and I squeeze my coffee cup so hard that I think I might poke holes in the sides, "y-yeah, sure,"

"Cool," she breathes out, waving me on and leading me to a booth on the other side of the cafe. I'm far too anxious with this situation and by Amelia's beauty and her comfortability around me to even think about relaxing, or drinking my coffee, or taking my bag off from around my shoulder. I definitely can’t remember any of Morgan’s advice on how to chat up girls or any of the conversation starters I’ve memorized for social situations like this. My mind is completely empty, just when I need it to be full and plentiful. How lovely.

I’m trying to imagine Spencer trying to implement Morgan’s advice on picking up girls and it’s. Wow.

Amelia sits across from me and grins, and every time she does, I swear my heart skips a beat and another butterfly breaks through its cocoon in my stomach. "So where are you off to this morning, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Work," I answer, and then realize that's an incredibly vague answer. Amelia raises her eyebrows as she lounges back against the booth, clearly waiting for me to elaborate. "Uh, I work for the FBI, actually. More specifically, the BAU- the Behavioral Analysis Unit,"

"You're a profiler!" Amelia perks up again, sitting up straighter with a huge grin on her face. "That's super cool! My dad is a police officer, sheriff actually, back home in Texas and I'm pretty sure he's worked with the BAU before and he says you guys are awesome. You catch serial killers, right?"

I'm almost stunned by her reaction. Most people don't believe behavioral profiling works, and most people resist the practice, especially local police. But her acceptance of it is incredibly refreshing, and it's welcomed. Honestly, any type of excitement from this Amelia girl is welcomed. It’s a beautiful sight.

I can feel my cheeks turn bright red as I nod, still clutching my coffee cup. "Yeah, we do. And um, what about you?" I hate talking about myself so I change the subject. "Where are you off to?"

"I'm actually meeting a friend of mine to go shopping a few blocks over," Amelia gestures out the window. "But since we're talking about your job, I'll tell you about my way less cool job, which is an artist. I went to Carnegie Mellon and then moved here and I’ve been here ever since. My preference is canvas painting but I bring my camera around a lot, hence," she holds up the camera around her neck, "the camera now. I try to capture spontaneous moments for when I do exhibits and galleries and such,”

I’m not sure why but I feel like Spencer would really meld well with someone very artsy. He’s not necessarily an artistically driven person, so I think he would need someone who could open his eyes to a new world. I think that’s why I didn’t like Maeve. She was basically the female version of Spencer and it just wasn’t really an interesting thing to see two identical people get together. But if Spencer could have his eyes opened to the world of art, it would be a magnificent thing.

"I've always loved art. Never been talented at it, but I like it." I shrug nonchalantly and sip my coffee, trying to divert my eyeline down to the table, but when Amelia smiles at me, I can’t find it in me to break our eye contact.

Something about Amelia's smile brings me in. Every time she flashes her teeth, I feel myself sink further into my seat and I feel my head get fuzzier. I almost forget that I have to get to work in just a few minutes. But I don't want to go anymore. I want to stay here and keep talking to Amelia. I want her to keep going on and on about canvas paintings and her education at Carnegie Mellon, or even just tell me why she likes tea over coffee, if that’s even true. I don’t know anything about this girl but I want to.

"Nobody is technically good at art," Amelia responds. "Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses in the arts, everyone sees art differently, and that's okay. I'm sure you're not horrible, I'm sure you just haven't found your strength yet, Spencer," She enunciates my name with such beauty and grace that I almost ask her to say it again. I'd do anything to hear her say my name again.

I like adding in these little moments, like having Spencer getting lost in the way Amelia says his name. I think it takes a scene or an encounter from just being superficial and takes it a little further. Instead of them sitting at a table, he’s sinking further into the reality that the two of them are creating through their conversation, even if it’s just because Amelia is saying his name in a way that sounds like liquid gold.

"If-" I'm cut off when my phone rings in my pocket, so I lean over and fish it out. I read a text from Garcia that tells me we have a case, meaning we'll be briefing for a new case this morning. I sigh defeatedly, wishing I hadn't just gotten a text that usually piques my interest. Today, it makes my heart drop.

Guys!!!! Spencer loves his job!! As much trauma as it’s caused him, I really think he loves helping people immensely and he loves going to his job every day (apart from the times he’s being kidnapped and tortured haahahahaha moving on). How often does he not want to go because he would rather socialize? Amelia must mean a lot. Wink, wink.

"You have to get to work?" I look back up at work to see yet another smile on Amelia's perfect face. "Go ahead, it's okay," I’m so used to seeing disappointed faces when this text comes in, not a smiling face. It’s odd, somewhat confusing.

I grab my coffee cup and stand as Amelia does the same. She holds her cup to her chest, looking down at her feet. "Will," I chew on the inside of my cheek when she looks up at me, ocean eyes wide with anticipation as I struggle with my words for the umpteenth time, "can I see you again? We barely got to talk and you-"

"Yeah," Amelia nods before I can even finish my sentence. "Can I give you my number?"

I have to hold myself back from jumping up and down in excitement. "Y-Yeah, sure, of course," I pull my phone out yet again as she does the same. She tells me her phone number slowly so I can get it down, but of course, it sticks in my brain immediately.

"Just text me," Amelia murmurs, looking over my shoulder at my phone where my shaky thumbs press against the buttons on my phone to type out- hi, it's Spencer. She waits until her phone rings and then she smiles at me. "Great, I've got it. Now, um, go. Don't let me be the reason you're late in helping people. You don't have to text me if you don't want to," she pauses for a moment, and I wonder what she's waiting for. Is she waiting for me to confirm or deny that statement? Is she waiting for anything at all? Is it an open-ended statement? Where have all my profiling skills gone? Forget profiling- where is my common sense? "But if you do wanna text me," I'm thankful when she starts talking again, "don't until after you've solved your case. Don't worry about me until you've saved lives. But like I said, if you don't wanna text me, you don't have to,"

My phone buzzes again and I can only imagine it's someone from the team asking me where I am, hurrying me along so we can get started on our briefing. I ignore it for now. "Well," I have to clear my throat to be able to speak again. I give Amelia a bashful smile holding up my phone for her to see, "I'll text you when I'm back home,"

Amelia blushes, her bottom lip being pulled between her teeth. She breathes out a tiny laugh, nodding. "I look forward to it, Spencer,"

I take a step towards the door and feel my body grow cold at the distance starting to increase between us. "I'll talk to you soon, Amelia,"

I also really love the idea of Spencer immediately feeling the loss of Amelia around him. Like I said, she’s meant to be like the sun shining on his face. Spencer doesn’t get to experience warmth, love, and comfort much and I really wanted to douse him in that.

And with that, before I have it in me to take one more look at the angel standing in the corner cafe, I hurry out the front door. There's a dumb smile on my face as I rush down the stairs to the train platform, struggling to swipe my card and respond to Penelope's text at the same time, all while running to catch the train at the platform. I'm somehow successful at all of this and only manage to breathe once I'm inside the stuffy car. Amelia's face is stuck inside my head and I can't get it out, and I'm positive that I never want to.

///

"Reid? Reid!" My head pops up as Morgan forcefully says my name, catching my attention and bringing me out of my daydream.

When I look up at him, he's already staring up at me with his eyebrows raised, clearly expecting an answer out of me about something. I have no idea what that something is, but he’s wanting an answer about it. I clear my throat, placing my cup of terrible police station coffee on the table and running a hand over my face. "Sorry," I apologize half heartedly, "I was thinking,"

Morgan sits across from me at the table and folds his hands. "Case related?" I glance up at him before deciding to completely ignore him, standing and walking up to the board, returning to examining the geographical profile. "Reid, come on, we've been on the case three days. You've been distracted ever since you walked in for the briefing. You can talk to me," I keep ignoring him. I stare at the map in front of me. "Is something going on? Is it your mom?"

"My mom is fine," I spin around and cross my arms over my chest, ignoring the way my heart starts to speed up when Amelia’s face resurfaces in my brain. "Can we just solve this case so we can go home?”

I had another paragraph written after this sentence that I wound up deleting because I thought that this was just a better ending than whatever it was that I originally wrote (I literally don’t even remember). I don’t imagine Spencer was too distracted that his work was impacted but I imagine that when he has just a few moments to let his mind wander off, he would allow himself to think of Amelia and how happy she made him feel. I really believe he’s a daydreamer and when he’s given the opportunity to let his mind rest (as in not exert himself as much as he does when he’s working cases) he would let his mind cling to something that brings him comfort and something that would almost lull him into a sense of security and safety, and I think that thing quickly becomes Amelia. At this moment, right after their first meeting, I don’t think Amelia is Spencer’s main daydream just yet, but this will be quick to change.

Here’s the writers commentary for chapter one!! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. Chapter two will be out very soon so keep your eyes open. If you want to be on the tag list for this or for North, let me know and I’ll add you on. Thank you so much for reading <3

#nikos writing #nikos north fic #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fic #spencer reid x oc #matthew gray gubler

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gwentoryfics · 5 years ago

Text

Hot for Teacher, Part 7.

Genre | College Student x College Professor Smut AU

Pairing | Reader x Hongseok x Hyunggu (Kino) x Wooseok

Words | 9.8k

Summary | You never realized how much one drunken night could color the rest of your college experience until you discover that the handsome stranger from your cousin’s wedding is also the new professor at your university.

Warnings | Swearing. Masturbation. Mentions of underage drinking. Uhhhh pining? Lol

Parts | 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 5.5 • 6 • 7 • More Coming Soon

Note | WOW this update took forever, but I feel like this is a super special part of the fic and I hope you all enjoy. PLEASE let me know which of the boys you’re rooting for - I’m trying to make it difficult (can you tell) and I really want to see how you’re all feeling 😏😏 love you, peaches!

Wooseok plops onto Yuto’s couch, tucking his bowl of fresh-out-of-the-oven pizza rolls between his knees as he picks up his gaming controller.

“You know those things are terrible for you.” Yuto criticizes the snack choice as he resumes the video game, skillfully ducking around a corner to avoid being shot.

“Yeah but they’re fucking delicious, so suck my ass.” Wooseok patiently waits for the food to cool off, not ready for the inside of his mouth to get burnt to hell. “Stop stocking your fridge with pizza rolls if you don’t want me to eat them.”

Yuto shoots Wooseok’s avatar twice in the back and once in the head until he collapses. “I only do it because you’d complain about how I ‘never have anything good to eat.’”

“What the fuck, dude? Friendly fire!”

“You literally stood right in front of me and blocked my sight. Make better decisions.”

Wooseok finally bites into his cheesy pepperoni pizza bite as he waits to respawn, and it’s lava on his tongue. With a hiss, he tries to cool his mouth. Eventually says, “Speaking of bad decisions…”

“What did you do this time?”

“Remember how you talked to me about _____…”

“Wooseok, you fucking idiot.” Yuto seethes. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“It was her idea! I literally apologized for, like, making out with her and fingering her and stuff. And she was just like, nah it’s cool, let’s be friends with benefits.” He pops another one in his mouth and it’s just as hot as the last one. “I wasn’t gonna say no to that, so we hooked up. Also I’m not supposed to tell you about it so keep your mouth shut.”

Yuto pauses the game again just so he can look Wooseok in the face and express his full disdain. “Friends with benefits? As in, no romantic feelings?”

“Right.”

“...So does she know that you like her?”

Wooseok frowns. Yeah, he thinks she’s hot as fuck and she’s super cool and fun to be around, but he’s not, like, in love with her or anything. “I’m not even in it that deep! It’s totally fine, and we’re just having fun. So what if I’ve got a little crush.”

“It’s not going to be just a crush if you keep sleeping with her.”

“You know, at some point you need to stop parenting me and just let me do what I’m gonna do. Just trust my judgment for once and if I end up being wrong, that’s my problem to deal with.”

“If you’re wrong, then I have to listen to you whine and complain about your broken heart.” Yuto is unrelenting in his disapproval. “You know that she probably won’t reciprocate your feelings if she ever finds out.”

Against his better judgment, Wooseok accidentally holds out hope that she could. “We don’t even know that she won’t. It’s just a hunch that she might like Kino. I could be totally wrong about that.”

“And if she does like Kino?”

Wooseok chews his bottom lip, his brows pinching together. “Then it is what it is.”

“What is that?” Yuto points at Wooseok’s face. “What’s that look? Are you sad? Is this sadness?”

“Shut the fuck up, Yuto,” he grumbles. Yeah, he’d be fucking disappointed if she and Kino turned out to be a thing. But it’s not really up to him to decide who she likes.

Yuto eases up just a little, showing his soft spot for Wooseok. “I can’t let you walk into this mess. You have to stop this. Either quit it with the hook ups, or come clean about liking her.”

“But I-”

“No ‘buts.’ It has to stop. And what the fuck, Wooseok?” Yuto frowns. “You’re supposed to keep this all a secret, but you’re telling me anyway?”

“You know I can’t keep secrets. I just need you, my one and only confidante, to know about this shit. Although I don’t even know if I can call you that anymore,” Wooseok turns the blame to Yuto. “Now that I know you went and told _____ not to get involved with me because I might get hurt.”

Suddenly there’s a knock at Yuto’s door, and he groans, completely ignoring the issue Wooseok just brought up. “Do you think we can pretend I’m not home?”

Wooseok’s petty side comes out and he yells, “Who is it?”

Yuto elbows him. “What the fuck, dude?”

With a shrug, Wooseok defends himself. “You kind of deserved that.”

Through the door, a female speaks. “It’s Nailah, I just need to talk for a second.”

“Ooo, who’s Nailah?” Wooseok prods, a stupid grin on his face as he looks at Yuto.

Yuto tosses his head back, resigning himself to having to get up and socialize. “She lives across the hall with _____, coincidentally.” He makes his way to the door, and Wooseok follows him like a little puppy.

“_____’s your neighbor? Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Why would I when I know you’re just gonna try some dumb shit?” He throws open the door, bluntly addressing their visitor. “Yes?”

Nailah seems unbothered by his rude greeting. “Hey, Yuto. I just wanted to extend an invitation. I’m throwing _____ a birthday party at my friend’s place on Saturday, and I figured it’d be cool if you came.” She hands him a hand-written invite.

“_____’s birthday?” Wooseok chimes, inserting himself into the conversation. “Wait I think I know you.”

Nailah nods casually. “Yeah, we ran into each other before, I think. _____ brought me to that party that got busted at your place.”

“Oh shit, yeah.” Wooseok chuckles. “Was a good night ‘til it wasn’t.”

“How much trouble did you get in?”

“It wasn’t awful. I just couldn’t do clubs for a few weeks and I had to write a paper about how I’m going to make more responsible decisions.”

Yuto crosses his arms over his chest. “Clearly that made an impact on you.”

“Shut up.” Wooseok nudges him before changing the subject in a way that doesn’t really change the subject. “Is _____ home?”

“Yeah, but- hey!” Nailah steps back as Wooseok pushes past her, taking all of two strides to reach her apartment door.

“_____!” He knocks on the door, rapping a quick rhythm. “Open up!”

He turns back to Nailah. “Is the party a secret?”

“No, she-”

“_____! I wanna go to your birthday party!” Wooseok knocks again, and this time she opens the door.

She looks a little bewildered to see him, but she’s wearing a smile that’s just honest to God the cutest thing in the whole damn world. “Fine, you can come,” she laughs.

Wooseok tries not to be distracted by the memories of last night, but her messy hair is too much of a reminder. He pushes through the urge to come on to her, but only because he doesn’t wanna make a scene. “Were you not gonna invite me?”

“Of course I was. I was gonna bring your invitation to R&B Ensemble tomorrow.”

“Okay, good.” Wooseok leans against the doorframe, sliding a hand into his pocket in an attempt to look cool. “So your birthday’s Saturday?”

“No, it’s Tuesday.”

“Cool, cool.” He keeps his face fixed in a relaxed expression and delivers a promise that he’s not quite sure how to fulfill. “Look forward to a bomb ass present.”

“Dude, you don’t have to get me anyth-”

“Nope. We’re buds. You’re getting a present. Don’t you worry about that, short stuff.” He’s not at all subtle as he winks at her, and her eyes flash, a flirty grin on her face.

“Watch it,” she whispers, trying not to raise suspicion from Nailah and Yuto.

“It’s fine,” he speaks lowly, not concerned by their audience but still trying to keep a low profile for her sake. He knows he’s going to get a talking-to as soon as he returns to Yuto’s room, anyway. “You look hot today, by the way.”

Without missing a beat, she sasses, “When don’t I?”

“Good point.” He can’t hold back his laughter at her bold statement. “Alright, I’ll let you get back to doing whatever you were doing.”

“Okay,” she giggles. “See you tomorrow.”

He gives a two-finger salute as she closes the door, then turns back to Nailah. “Make sure I’m on the guest list. I’m RSVP-ing right the fuck now.”

“Great.” Nailah just stares at him with wide, questioning eyes. She’ll probably have some questions for _____ after this, but he’s trusting her to handle it however she wants.

Yuto’s got a flame of frustration in his gaze as he stares Wooseok down. “I’ll be there, too.”

And Nailah seems fully unsure of what to make of all of this. She looks between them both for a moment before heading back to her room. “Great. See you goons Saturday.”

Wooseok doesn’t fight the name-calling, and Yuto is far too focused on his idiot of a best friend to be bothered by the insult. He follows Wooseok back into the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Before you say anything,” Wooseok defends himself, “I just want to remind you how much I love parties. I heard there was a party and, like, my inner party monster just took over, and I had to make sure I was invited.”

“Quit the bullshit.” Yuto’s calm aura makes him even more intimidating. “What was all of that?”

Wooseok can’t help the sheepish grin that forms on his face as he tries to lighten the mood. “She seemed kind of into me, right?”

“Oh my God I’m going to beat some fucking sense into you.” Yuto threatens, but Wooseok knows it’s empty.

“Whatever.” Wooseok falls back onto the couch. “Are we playing or what?”

With a deep sigh, Yuto joins him. “Let’s do it.”

Hongseok’s favorite place to run is along the water. It’s so peaceful to watch the boats and hear the soft waves of the lake as it laps along the shore. Not to mention, the striking difference between the fluidity of the water next to the sharp, structured skyscrapers is a dichotomy that he finds profoundly intriguing.

Now that the temperatures are dropping, only the truly dedicated still run the lake trail. It’s windy and brisk, but Hongseok has always preferred running in cooler weather, anyway. Feels a little less like he could die of heat stroke.

The rock music coming through his headphones suddenly changes to his ringtone, and he slows to a gentle jog as he checks the phone strapped to his bicep. Hwitaek’s name appears on the screen, and he smiles as he swipes to answer.

“Hwitaek! Hey!” Hongseok falls into a walking pace to make it easier to talk. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“I know! We’ve both been busy, I guess.” Hwitaek sounds glad that he answered.

“Right, how’s married life?” Now that he thinks about it, Hongseok’s not sure that he’s really talked to Hwitaek too much since the wedding. He headed back to the city before Hwitaek and Jiyoo returned from their honeymoon, so he had to say his goodbye at the reception. They’ve both kind of missed each other since.

“You know it’s really pretty weird, but in a good way. If that makes sense.” Hwitaek chuckles. “I feel like I know Jiyoo better than anybody, and it seemed like we were already so close that marriage wouldn’t really change much. But it really does make the whole relationship feel different. More official, you know.”

“A little slip of paper and a tax break can really do that much, huh.”

“I know you’re skeptical, Hong, but love can be whatever you want it to be. Maybe for us it’s the ceremony, the certificate, the too-expensive dress, the whole nine yards. But you don’t have to avoid relationships just because that’s not the kind of love you want.”

“I’m not avoiding relationships,” Hongseok scoffs. “I’m just busy.”

“Whatever you have to tell yourself to be able to sleep at night,” Hwitaek concedes.

Hongseok hates to admit it, but there is a seed of truth to what Hwitaek’s saying. He’s never been a fan of traditional love - it just feels ingenuine. Like everyone is following a script, just doing and saying the things they’re supposed to. He wants it to actually mean something when he does a gesture like planning a day together or giving a gift. He’s not going to buy flowers just because that’s what guys do. That’s not how he is.

With a sigh, Hongseok says, “If something happens eventually and I fall deeply in love with whomever it is, then fine. It happens. But I’m in no rush. It was nice enough for me to watch you do the whole marriage thing.”

“So when it does happen, I think you know that I’m expecting to be the best man,” Hwitaek says indignantly. “It’s only fair.”

“Would Jiyoo be okay sending you off to my bachelor party?” Hongseok laughs just imagining the fit she would throw. He was much more of a partier during their college days than Hwitaek was, and he’s positive Jiyoo would prefer for her adult husband to behave himself.

Hwitaek’s voice is noticeably softer as he says, “I’ll do what I want. I don’t need her approval.”

“Is she nearby? Is that why you said that so quietly?”

“Yes and yes. But you’re my best friend so I’ll make it work.”

“A true brother.” Hongseok smiles warmly as he pauses to stretch his legs. Damn, he misses hanging out with Hwitaek.

“So, actually the reason why I called…” Hwitaek smoothly changes the subject. “Um, just out of curiosity - maybe this is none of my business - have you been talking with Minseo at all?”

“Minseo?” The name doesn’t immediately ring a bell.

“Yeah, Jiyoo’s cousin. Kind of tall. Loud. Really nice teeth, though.”

Hongseok struggles to come up with a face to match the name. “I don’t think I know her.”

“Wait, I’ll send a picture. She was just over last night.” A moment later, “Okay, check your phone.”

He pulls the phone out of the case strapped to his arm and opens the message to find a somewhat familiar face resting on Jiyoo’s shoulder.

The face of the girl that convinced him to dance with _____ at the wedding.

She’s the only one who actually knows what happened that night.

Christ.

“I do recognize her.” Hongseok tries to keep his voice steady so as not to give away that he’s hiding a secret. “Why are you asking about her?”

“I was just wondering if something might be going on. Or if she might be pestering you. I don’t know, like I said she’s just kind of a big personality and I just wanted to make sure she’s not, I don’t know, trying to get with you or something.”

“Why would you think that?” Surely that’s incredibly far from the truth, and it strikes him as odd that Hwitaek would have that impression.

“She just keeps asking about you. She wants to know what you were like in college, what your relationship history is like, whether you cook. Just really random stuff and I don’t know why she’d care unless she were into you.”

What Hwitaek doesn’t know is that the only possible reason why she’d be asking all of those questions is because she’s trying to share the information with _____. That’s it. That’s why.

Does that mean _____ has been trying to find out more about him? Has she tasked Minseo with a spy mission?

Hongseok rubs his temple, gripping his phone tightly. He really should tell Hwitaek what’s up, even if he doesn’t want to own up to what happened. Walking towards the water, he finds himself a place in the grass to sit. “She’s not asking for herself. She’s asking for _____.”

Hwitaek, the poor ignorant bastard, asks, “Why would she do that?”

Here it comes. With a single deep breath, he finally sets the truth free. “I slept with her after the reception.”

“With _____?” Hwitaek is audibly shocked. “You slept with Jiyoo’s cousin? At our wedding?”

“After the wedding, okay? Jeez. It’s not like we fucked while you were at the altar.” Hongseok defends himself. “I even made a point to say goodbye to you beforehand to officially end the night, so really the whole situation is completely removed from the ceremony.”

There’s a lot of noise coming over the phone, because Jiyoo very obviously heard Hwitaek say the whole you slept with Jiyoo’s cousin? thing. Hongseok’s head falls back in dread. That’s a whole can of worms he was not prepared to open.

“Just put me on speaker phone and I’ll explain.”

Immediately, Jiyoo’s voice responds. “You slept with _____? My baby cousin?”

Hwitaek jumps to his defense. “Don’t sound so disgusted! Hongseok’s not a bad guy!”

She retorts, “He had a one night stand with my sweet little _____. She’s not that kind of girl.”

“She certainly was that night.” The words come out of Hongseok’s mouth before he can stop them.

“HONGSEOK!” Jiyoo screeches.

He just frowns as he hears Hwitaek frantically try to calm Jiyoo down. “Buckle up, you guys, because the story’s not over.”

“Don’t tell me it happened more than once. Please.” Jiyoo’s voice is lined with an unspoken threat.

“It hasn’t, I swear.” Another sigh as he gears up for the last bit. “We haven’t done anything but talk. But you two should know that she’s one of my students.”

Jiyoo doesn’t say a word, which somehow makes it worse. Hwitaek speaks up instead. “I didn’t even realize that she went to your school.”

“Neither did I.” Hongseok rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms before returning his gaze to the water, shimmering in the bright sunlight. “I wouldn’t have touched her if I knew. But she and I had a conversation, and we agreed that nothing can happen between us again. The class is strictly business. Neither one of us wants to risk getting in trouble with the school for misconduct.”

Sassily, Jiyoo’s voice returns. “So he has a brain after all.”

“Sweetie, come on. Cut him some slack,” Hwitaek pleads. “Yeah, it wasn’t a great idea to sleep with her, but it happened and it’s over. There’s no use getting so worked up about it.”

Even with Hwitaek defending him, Hongseok can’t just sit there and take this. “Stop acting like I’m the villain and she’s some innocent victim. She’s capable of making her own choices. I didn’t force her into anything. It was fully consensual, and now we’re both handling the situation like mature adults.”

That may be a bit of a stretch. He’s done nothing but ridicule her for acting like a child since the semester started. But he’ll stick up for her if it means getting Jiyoo off their case.

“My apologies.” Jiyoo comes off much softer. “I need to take a moment to let this all sink in.”

Hongseok hears her leave the room, and then Hwitaek’s voice is much clearer as he turns off the speakerphone. “Don’t worry about her. She’ll settle down.”

Hongseok lets himself take a deep breath, feeling much safer now that he can talk with only his friend. “I just needed to tell you that. I think Minseo might be digging for more information about me to share with _____, because she knows what happened between us. And she knows that I’m _____’s professor.”

“Are you handling all of this okay? It sounds like a really tricky situation to be in.”

“It’s… hard. It’s really difficult. I’ve been really cold to her just to prevent anyone from thinking I might be biased in any way, but that’s just caused so much tension. And then she just does stuff sometimes that’s so cute…” His memory flashes back to the time she sang Aerosmith in his office, and then the song played in class and she started laughing. It was just so endearing. “Do you think I can stop being attracted to her? That would make everything so much easier.”

“I don’t think there’s a real answer for that, Hong. In my experience, you’re usually just attracted to the people you’re attracted to, and that’s that.” Hwitaek attempts to reassure him, but it’s useless. Especially when he follows up with the most problematic question he could’ve asked: “Do you have feelings for her?”

Hongseok pulls his knees in towards his chest, tucking his head down and effectively curling into a ball. He’s been trying so hard to avoid all of this and now he has no choice but to just confront whatever it is that’s been going on in his head and his heart. He’s felt attracted to her ever since he first laid eyes on her, but could it be anything more than that?

The night they spent together was nothing short of incredible, and he fondly remembers the way she so warmly looked up at him in the moments before he kissed her, the soft touch of her lips overwhelming his senses and driving his desire for more.

Even though the nature of their relationship is obviously very different now, he still sees flickers of that warmth in her. He sees the way she absentmindedly bites her lip when she’s thinking, and the small taste he’s gotten of her ridiculous sense of humor makes him wonder just how great they could be together.

If only she were older.

If only she weren’t his student.

Hongseok can’t even pretend that he wouldn’t be interested in her if the circumstances were different. He knows that under different circumstances he would certainly try to date her, because he already tried the night they were together.

He gave her his phone number with the boutonniere. He gave her the opportunity to reach out and establish something more than just that one night, but she didn’t do it. That’s part of the reason why he was so frustrated to see her in class - it’s one thing that they slept together, but it’s entirely different to know that he expressed an interest in seeing her again and she rejected him.

And now he has to watch her work admirably hard in class once a week and pretend like it doesn’t make his chest ache.

Forever reticent, he seeks a way to keep his thoughts to himself. “Do I have to answer that question?”

“That response says a lot.” Hwitaek sighs. “It might feel better to just get it off your chest and say it out loud.”

“Nope. Saying it just makes it harder to ignore.” Hongseok peeks up from the crook of his elbow, finally starting to feel chilly now that he’s been sitting for so long. He stands and briefly stretches his quads, getting ready to continue his run.

Hwitaek tries to encourage him. “Well the most important thing in this situation is that you just get through the rest of the semester without acting on it. And then she won’t be around anymore, and you’ll be able to move past it.”

“You’re right. I just have to make it to the end of the semester.”

“And that’s not so far away, right? You’re probably about halfway by now.”

“Midterms were about two weeks ago, so yeah, we’re nearly there.”

“See? You’ve got this.” Hwitaek sounds cheery as he motivates his best friend. “I’m rooting for you. I think it’ll all turn out fine. It’ll continue to be difficult for a little bit, but it’ll pass.”

Hongseok lets out a deep sigh, feeling some sense of relief for the first time in months. “I should have told you about this a long time ago. Thanks for looking out for me.”

It seems like Hwitaek is also a bit relieved after this conversation. “I’m glad that we got to talk.”

Hongseok smiles, returning to the path he had been running. “Go take care of Jiyoo, okay? And if you want, it’s okay to tell Minseo that you two know. I’ll leave that up to you. But don’t tell anyone else.”

No matter how hard he tries, Kino simply cannot stop thinking about Saturday night. Something about holding her hand completely captured his whole consciousness and he could think of nothing except the feeling of their fingers intertwined and his lips on her forehead.

He had probably gone too far by kissing her like that, but it just felt right, even though they’re only friends. He just feels so comfortable with her, and it’s easy for him to get wrapped up in the moment. She hasn’t seemed interested in anything more than friendship, especially after that whole dirty voicemail incident, but she also didn’t seem to be bothered by the kiss. If anything, he distinctly remembers the cute way she looked up at him right after he did it, like she was surprised but definitely not opposed.

There’s only one way to find out for sure what she thinks… but he’s not ready to have that conversation yet.

As he waits in the lobby of her dorm building to walk with her to R&B Ensemble, he tries to at least clear his head. He has something important to ask her, and he doesn’t want it to accidentally come out awkward.

He stands there, trying not to pace, and he notices how much lighter he feels the second he spots her coming off of the elevator. She waves cheerfully when she sees him waiting there.

“Hey!” She greets him as she approaches. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Was trying to wrap up that aural skills homework.”

“You know it’s not due until Wednesday, there’s no rush on it,” he chuckles. She’s such a go-getter.

“Well yeah, but tomorrow’s my birthday and I don’t want it to be full of homework. So I’m knocking it out now.”

Kino sucks in a breath and bites his knuckle, grimacing. “Ah, I completely forgot about your birthday, shoot…” It’s a total lie, but he just wants to get her worked up.

She deflates a little, but it’s hardly noticeable. “That’s okay. I didn’t expect you to remember or anything. I probably only brought it up once.”

“_____, I’m teasing! Of course I remember!” Kino nudges her playfully. “You’re like, my closest friend. How could I forget?”

With a shy smile, she loops her arm in his, and they head out into the cold. “That’s right.”

“Do you have anything planned for tomorrow?”

“Just class, actually. Nailah’s organizing a party for Saturday, though, and you have to come! I have your official invitation in my backpack. I’ll give it to you when we get to rehearsal.”

“I can totally be there Saturday.” Kino immediately agrees.

“Good. It’ll be a shitty birthday party if you’re not there.” She tugs on his arm, and it makes his cheeks grow warm.

He takes a deep breath now that it’s his turn to extend an invitation. “Okay, so if you don’t have any plans for tomorrow night, you should be able to come to the birthday dinner reservation I have for you and me downtown. Right?” He hates that he can’t keep eye contact, but he just can’t get himself to look at her while it feels like he’s asking her on a date.

But it’s not a date, exactly. It’s just a nice dinner. Between friends. For a birthday.

Totally regular stuff.

She scoffs. “Well I guess I have to if you made a reservation and everything.”

Kino pulls his scarf closer around his chin and jaw, trying to block out some of the cold wind. “I mean you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. Don’t feel like you don’t have a choice…”

“Kino, stop. I’d love to go to dinner with you. It better be a nice place, though. I’m a woman of taste.”

“Says the girl who downed a whole family size bag of salt and vinegar chips in one sitting.” Kino cringes at the memory. Even the smell of the chips made him shrivel up in disgust.

“Okay you’re the one with a suffering palate. Salt and vinegar chips are the bomb.”

“Gross.”

They spend the whole walk to class bickering about food tastes, and it’s a completely pointless conversation, but he’s fully invested because it feels meaningful when it’s her.

When they enter the rehearsal room, they’re both full of smiles and laughter, but his smile fades when he locks eyes with Wooseok. The tall drummer is standing next to Yuto, and he seems less than thrilled to see Kino with _____. He looks a little disappointed, actually.

Kino gets himself set up with the other singers while she heads over to the rhythm section, and Wooseok’s expression changes as he playfully greets her, pulling her into a headlock and messing up her hair. She squirms and laughs, and Kino tries desperately to pretend like their interaction doesn’t bother him.

He stops paying attention until she comes up to him with a little envelope in her hand.

“Here,” she hands it to him. “That’s for Saturday. Wooseok and Yuto are coming, and so is my friend Shinhye. You’ve met her before.”

“Yeah I remember her.” Kino nods.

“And some of Nailah’s friends will be there too, since they’re hosting the party. We all thought it would be a good idea to have the party off campus, since there’ll be booze.” She grins impishly. “It’s gonna be fun.”

Kino laughs. “I bet. I’ll be there for sure.”

“Awesome.” She squeezes his arm. “And honestly, I’m seriously looking forward to dinner tomorrow. It’s super sweet of you to make dinner plans.”

“No problem.” He tells himself to smile confidently so she doesn’t see how flustered he is. “Just make sure you’re wearing something nice and I’ll come get you around 5:45.”

“Sounds great.” With one last squeeze, she heads back to her part of the room.

This time when Kino catches Wooseok’s gaze, he doesn’t stop smiling.

It’s just another class. Just another Tuesday morning. That’s what Hongseok tells himself, anyway. But when she shows up, he immediately realizes that this is actually a very special Tuesday.

Shinhye’s trying to convince her of something, as they walk through the door, but she refuses. And then Shinhye turns to Hongseok.

“Professor Yang! It’s _____’s birthday today,” Shinhye announces as she holds up a piece of silky fabric with ‘Birthday Girl’ embroidered on it. “Can you tell her that she has to wear this sash for class?”

The birthday girl averts her eyes, clearly unwilling to participate in whatever Shinhye’s trying. As flatly as possible, he comes to her rescue with an incredibly practical excuse. “No birthday sashes. It’s a hazard around the power tools.”

A perfect smile breaks across her lips as she finally looks up at him. She holds his gaze for a moment, and it’s really a beat too long before she finally turns back to Shinhye. “See? Now put it away.”

The girls walk off to their spot in the back of the room, and he forces himself to focus on his computer to keep himself from looking back at her. There’s something especially magnetic about her today, but maybe it’s just because he knows that it’s her birthday.

When he has today’s workshop playlist set, he looks around the room and realizes that the birthday sash would have been the least concerning part of her clothing choices. The olive colored v-neck sweater she wears draws his gaze directly to her chest, and he knows today is going to be more challenging than usual.

He wishes he could just avoid her during class, but he needs to make sure all of his students get the help they need. Most of them don’t know anything about sawing, sanding, or the appropriate way to use wood glue, and he needs every kid in this class to leave the room with all of their fingers intact.

Inevitably, he makes his way back to her after weaving through the room and helping other students with their projects along the way. A few pieces of wood that will eventually become the body of her instrument lay on the table in front of her. He helps her select the right grit of sandpaper to sand down the edges of the pieces she finished cutting for the top and bottom of her dulcimer. The last big piece of her project build is to bend the side pieces into the hourglass shape she wants her instrument to have.

He had to bring in his bending iron just for her, since literally every other student wanted to do simple instruments with straight sides. It’s not a difficult process, but it’s a little tedious.

Hongseok picks up one of the side pieces and walks her over to the bending iron. “So the shape that you want is going to require three bends in the wooden piece. Here, here, and here.” With a pencil, he marks the two spots where the wood should curve out towards the top and bottom, and the spot in the middle where it should curve in. “You don’t have to be perfect with this, but work on getting the general shape.”

She just nods attentively. He tries desperately not to look at her for fear that he might accidentally look down her sweater. Thankfully, it’s fairly easy to do as he demonstrates how to use the iron.

With a wide, clean paint brush, he brushes water onto the first spot they’ll bend. “First, you want to make sure that the wood is wet before you bend it. The water turns to steam from the heat of the iron, and that’s what bends the fibers in the wood. You’ll have to reapply water pretty regularly to keep it from getting dry. Then you just rock the wood over the iron like this.” He shows her how to slowly work the wood. “The iron does get really hot, so keep your hands at a safe distance, and just apply a bit of pressure. Not too much, though, or you might crack the wood.”

“Got it.” She nods again, observing.

He takes a moment to get a bit of a bend started, and then hands the wood to her. “It’s going to take some time, so you just need to be patient. Rushing the process will just damage the wood.”

“Okay. I’ll be careful.”

Hongseok’s not sure why, but it almost sounds like she’s reassuring him that she’ll be okay. He wasn’t trying to come across as being protective, because he gives all of his students the same warnings whenever he shows them a new tool. But he just nods. “Give it a try.”

She steps up to the iron, wets the wood, and starts mimicking his rocking movements.

“Keep the edge of the wood parallel with the back of the iron, otherwise the bend is going to be crooked.”

She follows his instructions. “Like this?”

“Exactly. You can even use just a touch more pressure. If you don’t use enough, the wood won’t bend.” He resists the urge to reach over and show her, reminding himself that he needs to keep his distance.

“Just gotta find that happy medium,” she chuckles, and the lighthearted sound makes him smile.

“That’s it.”

She presses down on the wood a little harder, and her form looks good. “How soon should I re-wet it?”

“You can give it a few minutes. So just do that until you’ve got a nice curve going for the lower body, and then you can do the waist and the upper body, in that order. You might not get to all of it today because you want to give the wood some time to cool between each bend.”

He loves sharing his craft with his students, but there’s something different about sharing it with her. It just feels so intimate to share such an important piece of his life with her in this setting, and her genuine interest in the subject only makes him want to share it with her more.

At the end of the day, he knows that it’s only because he’s slept with her. Every little interaction feels sexually and emotionally charged. She’s just so attractive in both looks and personality, and he’s drawn to her over and over again.

But he can’t let himself give in to whatever it is that he’s feeling for her. Hwitaek’s advice rings in his head and he reminds himself that he only needs to get through a few more weeks before the semester is over.

He can avoid the temptation for at least that long.

“Seriously, Kino, this place is amazing,” _____ gushes, taking the last big bite of her steak, savoring each chew and talking with her mouth full. “Jesus, this steak is fucking delicious.”

Kino covers his mouth as he laughs, trying to maintain some semblance of maturity. They’re at an incredibly fancy restaurant, after all - one that he’s certainly spending way too much money at, but it’s worth it for her - and he doesn’t want to make a scene when it’s clear that they’re just two dumb college kids trying to have an experience.

“Maybe you should swallow first before you talk,” he comments.

“That’s what he said.” She doesn’t miss a beat, making it even harder for Kino to keep his composure.

“No,” Kino nudges her leg under the table with his foot, softly lecturing her. “Bad.”

“Kino, are you trying to play footsie with me?” She nudges him back, playfully teasing.

She’s been in particularly high spirits all night, and he’s trying to convince himself that it’s only because of her birthday. Everything has been borderline flirtatious since he picked her up from the dorms.

“Stop it,” Kino gives her a warning look, but he’s still smiling. “You’re just asking for trouble.”

She smiles and takes a sip of her water. “I’m just having fun. Thank you for taking me out tonight, Kino. I’m having a blast.”

“I am, too.” He feels his cheeks unintentionally grow warm.

“Good! I’m gonna use the bathroom. I bet they’ve got bathroom attendants and everything in a place like this.” She gets up from the table and heads off to the bathroom, the skirt of her dress clinging to every curve as she walks and making Kino way more flustered than he should be. When he had told her to dress up, he hadn’t quite expected her to wear something so… hot.

It’s not a big deal, he sees dancers clad in tight clothing every day. But it’s her, and that makes it different.

While she’s gone, he flags down their waiter. “Excuse me, it’s my friend’s birthday today. Could we get a dessert?”

“We have a chocolate lava cake that she’d likely enjoy. We can even write a Happy Birthday message on the plate for you.”

“That sounds perfect! Thank you.”

As the waiter heads off with his special order, Kino notices _____’s phone on the table, lighting up as multiple messages come in. He’s not a snooper by any means, but when his eye catches Wooseok’s name as the sender, he can’t help but feel curious. She hasn’t said anything more to Kino about Wooseok since the night she came over drunk, but he never pried. He always figured that she’d share whatever she felt comfortable sharing.

The previews of the messages give away everything he needs to know, though - the number of eggplant and winky emojis that comes across is enough to make him feel embarrassed. That has to mean something’s happening between them, right?

A sense of dread suddenly sets in. Maybe this was all too much, and it’s going to come across like he’s romancing her when she’s already involved with somebody else. He doesn’t want to be that guy, if that’s already the case. Ordering that dessert was definitely too much… ah, he definitely shouldn’t have done that…

No, it’s fine. It’s just a cake, and it’s her birthday! He’s just being a good friend. That’s all. He’s just a good friend.

_____ reappears right in the middle of his internal debate. “I was right! There was a lady in there, and she squirted soap into my hands and then dried ‘em off with a cloth towel after I washed up.”

“Wow,” he breathed, forcing out a small chuckle. “That’s fancy.”

“Right?” She takes her seat, and the cake comes out shortly after. There’s no song because this restaurant is clearly too classy to have the waiters sing. But the joy on _____’s face is absolutely precious, and he’s glad that he ordered the cake after all.

“Kino! Did you do this when I was in the bathroom?” She surveys her plate in awe, with the beautiful chocolate sauce message and the strawberry slices atop the chocolate-drizzled lava cake.

“Yeah. We can’t have a real birthday dinner without cake, can we?”

“Kino… This is so sweet…” She looks like she’s getting a little choked up, but she manages a smile. “You’re the best friend I could’ve asked for. Thank you so much for doing all of this for me.”

“You’re welcome, _____. Happy Birthday.” He smiles wide, pretending like his whole chest hadn’t painfully tightened at the word friend.

It’s fine. This is what he wants. He’s just her friend.

After they wrap up their meal and he pays the astronomic check - still worth it for his best friend, he reminds himself - they hop on the bus and head back towards their dorms.

“I’m actually coming to your building,” she announces as the bus pulls up to their stop. “Wooseok said he has a birthday present for me, so I’m going to stop by.”

“Ah, okay.” Kino tries to seem cool about it, but he just has to say something. “He’s seemed pretty flirty with you recently, don’t you think?”

“Wooseok?” She lets out a laugh and they step out onto the sidewalk, heading for the dorm building. “Nah, he’s just like that. He’s playful, you know?”

Kino hums. “Yeah, I guess he is.” He holds the door open for her, and they pile into the elevator together, each pressing buttons for their respective floors.

“Thanks again for tonight, I seriously had so much fun.” She pulls Kino into a tight hug that lasts just a bit longer than it probably should. But he holds her, completely willing to keep her there as long as she wants. When the door opens and she finally pulls away, she parts with the cutest smile. “Next time, don’t wait for a special occasion to get dinner with me.”

He lets himself smile, even though he’s fully aware that he’s filling with false hope. “Okay.”

Wooseok crosses his arms over his chest as he surveys his handiwork. He didn’t mean to make her gift so romantic. When he had considered what to do for her birthday, he thought to himself, you know what’s cool? Fuckin pillow forts. It was supposed to be something fun but like, there’s no way that she’ll see what he’s done and say wow, thanks for this pal, you’re really just a true friend, let me just casually suck your dick now.

Not that a blow job is expected. He just likes to think about it sometimes.

Anyway, he knows nothing sexual is gonna happen between them tonight unless she doesn’t care that his roommate is home. Wooseok had tried to get him to go somewhere else, but Minho was adamant that he was staying in and going to bed early, since his Wednesday 8am class regularly kicks his butt.

Briefly, he considers tearing it all down, but she’s going to be here any moment and he doesn’t want to be empty handed after promising her a cool gift.

Hopefully she’ll like it and it won’t be weird.

Right on cue, there’s a knock at his apartment door, signaling her arrival. Wooseok ducks into the bathroom for just a moment to check his hair before giving himself a weird look in the mirror. Why is he concerned with looking good? He’s not, like, trying to impress her or anything. It’s just casual.

He pushes his hand through his hair once before deciding it’s fine, and he heads for the door. She looks super cute in her dress, her jacket hanging open to reveal the tight fabric clinging to her curves. It immediately makes him think of the time she showed up and handed him her panties - which he safely stored in his underwear drawer, because that just makes sense - and it nearly gets him hard on the spot.

“Hey,” she glows as she smiles up at him.

“Is that dress comfortable?”

She raises an eyebrow suggestively. “Why, you want me to take it off?”

“I’d definitely never say no to that, but… just a sec. Cover your eyes.”

“...Okay.” She gives him a quizzical look before holding her hands up to her eyes. He guides her into the apartment and directs her into the bathroom.

“Just a sec.” He flicks on the light and closes the door.

She laughs from the other side. “What are you doing?”

“Just hang on!” Wooseok shouts as he dips into the bedroom, where Minho is diligently reading his history textbook.

“She here?” Minho doesn’t look up.

Wooseok digs through his drawers, pulling out a clean t-shirt and some sweatpants. “Yeah. She hasn’t seen it yet, though.”

“Girls love that shit. She’s gonna fall head over heels for you as soon as you show her.”

Wooseok’s heart pounds with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. He definitely likes the thought of her falling for him, but there’s also a good chance that this whole gift won’t go over well and she’ll feel like he’s trying to make a move on her, and then she’ll want to call the whole thing off. So he needs to make sure he frames it right. “I guess we’ll see.”

“Good luck, dude.”

“Thanks.”

He emerges from the room and opens the bathroom door just enough to hand the clothing in. “Put this on. You need to be comfy.”

She takes the clothes with a quiet giggle, and then opens the door a few minutes later.

The way his heart jumps into his throat at the sight of her in his shirt is unreal.

His clothes are big on her, of course, since he’s basically a giant, and the way the fabric hangs on her frame is just the most adorable thing that he’s ever seen. He knows immediately that he made a mistake and she should’ve just kept the dress on.

Regardless, he swallows his heart and gives a thumbs-up. “Better?”

She nods with a cute smile. “Very comfy.”

“Good. Close your eyes again.”

“Whyyy?”

“Because it’s a surprise, dipshit.”

As soon as she covers her eyes again, Wooseok pulls her into the living room and angles her to face his masterpiece. He doesn’t let his hands linger on her shoulders any longer than they have to.

“‘Kay. You can look now.”

He’s completely fixated on her as she drops her hands, anxious for her reaction. And when she sees what he’s done, she completely lights up.

“You made a blanket fort?”

“It’s cool, right?” He tentatively asks.

“It’s awesome!” She laughs joyfully. “Can we go in?”

“Nah, we’re just gonna look at it from out here.”

She playfully smacks his chest before approaching the fort, lifting up the sheet to peek inside. “Wow, this is so much cooler than the ones my brother and I would make when we were kids.”

From the outside, it looks like just a couple of sheets draped over various pieces of furniture, but the inside is really where most of his effort went. The fort’s ceiling is lined with twinkling lights, and there are decorative pillows of all shapes and sizes lining the back and sides. Small fake candles are scattered throughout and a fresh bowl of popcorn sits next to his opened laptop.

“Wooseok…” She crawls inside, making herself at home. “This is seriously awesome. I can’t believe you did all of this.”

He follows her in, taking extra care not to bump any of the blankets or chairs out of place with his large frame. “I promised you a cool birthday gift, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.” She looks up at him, and her sweet gaze is a little too much for him.

“So I thought maybe, like, a lowkey movie night would be fun? We can just relax and hang out and watch your favorite movie or something. Or we could pick something we haven’t seen. Your call, birthday girl.”

After a few minutes of browsing online, they eventually pick a movie to put on. It’s a crime thriller that he’s surprised she’s interested in, but she insisted that this is the one she wants. And then the movie starts, and they’re just sitting there side by side, and he’s internally debating whether he should put his arm around her. He knows the right choice is absolutely no, but it’s just so tempting to let her snuggle up next to him.

Wooseok glances down at her to see where she’s at, and he notices that her little eyebrows are pushed together in concern.

“Hey, you alright?”

“Hm?” She looks up at him and throws on a smile. “Oh, yeah, sorry. I’m alright.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing. I just…” She scoots a little closer, curling her legs in towards her body and leaning against him. “It’s nothing.”

Is that the signal? Should he go for it? She’s trying to cuddle with him, right?

Wooseok feels hopelessly lost. This would be so much easier if he didn’t actually have some kind of feelings for her. Even though they both agreed that they’d come clean if any feelings ever cropped up, he just can’t convince himself that it’s a good idea to confess. If he says something, then they’ll stop hooking up, and she’ll probably feel weird about being his tutor and hanging out with him. He can suck it up and pretend like he doesn’t have feelings.

“Woo.” She shortens his name to get his attention. They lock eyes. “You know, you haven’t actually wished me a happy birthday yet.”

“I haven’t?”

She shakes her head minutely, her gaze not moving a centimeter. There’s something deep in her eyes, and he’s probably just reading into it all too much, but it feels like it did the first time he kissed her - like they’re connected and grounded and alive in this moment.

This time, he doesn’t ask for permission.

Wooseok kisses her slowly, as if she might break if he’s not careful. His eyes close as his lips connect with hers, and she’s soft and sweet as always. He fights off the urge to hold her hand, to cup her face. He just wants to kiss her, and that’s what he does.

It’s a long moment before he pulls away from her. She looks happy and he feels like at least for tonight, he’s done a good job.

“Happy Birthday, short stuff.”

Hongseok finishes off his bourbon and looks around, not really sure why he thought it would be a good idea to come back to Andy’s jazz club. He had planned on going to the bar across the street, thinking he might be able to find someone there who could serve as a distraction for the night. He had plenty of hookups when he was at university so he knows how that scene works.

But as soon as he got there, curiosity got the best of him. It’s the Friday after _____’s birthday, which means she’s probably looking for a way to celebrate, right? And she’s snuck into Andy’s before, so why couldn’t she do it again?

Honestly, even if he found her there, he’s not sure if he’d tell her to go home or just be glad to cross paths again.

When he arrived, she was nowhere to be seen. He knows that’s for the best, since she's still not legally old enough to be here, and he shouldn’t be going out of his way to try to interact with her anyway.

The best he can do now is just look for a distraction as he had originally planned.

Hongseok leaves his empty glass at the bar and approaches an attractive woman in a deep red dress. He smooth talks her. He lays it on thick, because he notices right away that she’s eating it all up. He asks her to dance, and she agrees.

The band tonight is great, and they play plenty of music that’s perfect for dancing. The smooth jazz makes for perfect slow dance music, and he clasps her hand in his, his other hand resting on her back and keeping her close. He murmurs everything she wants to hear, his lips brushing the cusp of her ear as he flirts. She’s like putty in his hands.

And when the moment’s right, his lips find hers.

He kisses her like it means something, like he’s not just trying to avoid his problems. And she kisses him back, a delightful breath of fresh air.

Perhaps he can actually break free of _____’s spell.

It’s not long before their kiss becomes more than what is socially acceptable in public, and he suggests that they go back to his place. But she declines, claiming that she’s not that kind of woman, but leaves him with her phone number and a request to meet up for dinner next week.

Not exactly what he had hoped for, but he can't let himself be bothered by the fact that they both want different things. Still, he decides to keep her number, because she is quite beautiful. Who knows if anything will ever happen between them.

The pianist on stage starts a solo, effectively catching Hongseok's attention and driving his gaze to the front of the room. The melody is tender, full of longing, and for just a brief moment he thinks it might be _____ at the piano.

Of course it's not.

That's all the reason Hongseok needs to get the hell out of there.

When did he get in so deep? When did he become so crazy for this girl that he's hoping for any chance just to see her? He has no excuse for acting this way, but he can't help the fact that he's been completely enamored by her from the moment he first spoke to her at the wedding reception.

Hongseok returns to his apartment to settle in for the night, realizing that the only distraction he could possibly get for the night is his music. He lounges on his bed, plucking at the strings of one of his many acoustic guitars, his cat stretched out next to his leg.

His fingers move freely as he tries not to think about her, but is there really much harm in just getting lost in his thoughts?

He remembers the first time he saw her in his classroom, and how differently it hit him than the first time he saw her at the wedding. He remembers how dreadful it felt to see her sitting in the back, yet how thrilling it was to invite her into his hotel room.

He remembers her anger, her joy, her ecstasy. She’s beautiful and fun and sexy and charming, entirely intoxicating.

The memories of their night together visit him once again. He thinks about it far more often than he should, but he’s always told himself that he can at least savor the memory if he can’t let himself be with her again.

As Hongseok lets himself relive that night in his mind, he sets his guitar to the side, his hardening length capturing his attention. His hand slides down the front of his sweatpants, tentatively stroking himself in search of some relief.

The mental image of her naked body very quickly drives him wild. God what he wouldn’t give to be inside of her again, his hands massaging her round ass as he peppers kisses along her throat. He wants to hear her sighs of pleasure, wants to watch the way her lips part as each wave of her orgasm washes over her, her walls pulsing around his cock.

And the feeling of her tongue as it swirled around the head of his cock… he’d never get over it.

It’s like she knew every single one of his buttons. Like she already had full and total control over his pleasure.

Hongseok breaks out of his fantasy just long enough to push his sweatpants down and grab the lube from his nightstand. His hand alone isn’t enough, doesn’t do justice to the incredible wetness of her.

He lets out a groan as he resumes his stroking, his cock twitching delightfully in his hand.

And, completely swept up in the heat of it all, he allows himself to imagine what would happen if he caved.

What if he told her how badly he wanted her, and she said the same? What if he invited her over, and she agreed without hesitation? What if he gave himself just one more chance to taste her, explore her, ruin her…

Love her?

Hongseok lets himself moan as he pumps harder, imagining his cock plunging into her, her nails digging into his back. He can practically hear her voice as it wraps around his name in the most seductive tone he’s ever heard, and all he wants is to give her everything she could ever ask of him.

He wants to bite her skin, squeeze her curves, bury himself so deeply in her that he completely loses himself.

Hot ropes shoot from his cock onto his v-neck shirt as he thinks of nothing but her, and once his breathing returns to normal he finally realizes just how fucked he is.

It feels harmless, but he knows that fantasizing about her will only continue to chip away at his already weakening willpower, and eventually he’s going to end up doing something incredibly dumb.

After pulling off his dirty shirt and cleaning himself up, he returns to his bed, picking up his guitar once more. Unfortunately, not even his release is enough to get his mind off of her, so really he’s just back to square one.

He remembers how he played in his office for her, how she watched him in awe. He wonders if she feels music just as deeply as he does, if she feels the same connection to the melodies she plays and hears.

She had asked if he could drum while he played, and his attempt had been mostly unsuccessful. He was sorely out of practice at the time, but he's been working on it since then.

He fingers a tune, taps his fingers on the face of the guitar, bumps his palm against the wood. If only she could hear him now, she'd surely be impressed.

And then - he has an idea.

The rest of his night is spent in the makeshift recording studio he's created inside of his closet with his best guitar, his microphone, and the desire to create something just for her.

Post Script | Thank you for reading! Please stay tuned for Part 8.

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mellowmoonballoon · 4 years ago

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P2 of the Primer - Minho!

Fandom primer for fandom feels.

So, Minho, dance leader!

Minho (Lee Know, Lino...) is the Stray Kids’ Marilla Cuthbert. Very controlled with showing his feelings. Wants to feed everyone. Hard working and practical. Dresses like an old woman who is constantly freezing.

His lack of desire to embarrass himself on screen is very relatable to all anxious perfectionist introverts. He often gets confused for shy or cold because of this, when he will just not do silly things in front of the camera if he’s not sure of the result. His terrible art? He knows it’s terrible and that’s acceptable. His amazing dancing? He knows it’s amazing and that’s acceptable. Things he’s not sure about which include being vulnerable in front of strangers? NOT ACCEPTABLE. I respect that. So this “primer” will not perpetuate any “mean-ho” ideas thank you bye. (Felix calls him tsundere so if you see me use it, it’s not my fault.)

Anyway Minho is a dancer. That was his job before he joined SKZ (he toured with bts etc) and it was his primary role in SKZ for a while. When he first joined he wasn’t a good singer or rapper, but he would have been ok if he wasn’t constantly shaking because he was convinced he’d get kicked out. Which is valid because he did get kicked out.

oh also - I will treat his and Felix’s story as if the elimination wasn’t a setup just because whatever else was going on, they thought it was real.

His singing voice wasn’t great so he was asked to rap instead. He had never done it but said he’d be willing to try. They were given... what? No time? To prepare for that change and famously, Changbin rapped backup for him and Han held his hand and timed the beat with it.

so i cried, and then he did get eliminated because he messed up the lyrics next time so i cried more and then he sent a final message and i FUCKING BAWLED.

To Han: “The time I failed, was it because you weren’t holding my hand?”

Changbin helped him a lot during practice for the second song and they both felt so bad for different reasons. Minho kept saying he was sorry that someone younger than him had to be helping him and that he was failing despite it. “If I had slept one hour less, would I have been able to do it better?” and Changbin with “What did I do for him, that I couldn’t teach him better?” Anyway this show was torture but I’m gonna go back to the good stuff now.

Minho got to come back and they were a band happily ever after. Before the elimination tho he helped the other members with their dance routines. So, shit i learned about kpop peripherally: most bands are made by formula like “2 members rap, 2 members dance, 2 members sing” or something like that. Minho could dance and Changbin could rap and Seungmin could sing and the goal is rarely to get everyone to be great at everything. And Minho was like “nah.” And he made it his goal to make everyone as good a dancer as possible. So while others were helping him with singing and rapping, he was helping them with dancing.

For me a very important scene in the show was when Bang Chan kinda lost it at IN’s lack of ability to dance and he had everyone stand aside and kept telling IN to try again and Minho gave Bang Chan side-eye and went over to IN to teach him how to do it better.

baby bread’s defeated baby face :(

and Minho’s face just saying “you’re not helping” as he walked over in clear defiance of any hierarchy.

So Minho’s whole approach to the group was “I will help everyone be better at dancing”. According to Chan he picked Minho with the idea that Minho would be in charge of dancing. Which is a big fucking deal. For Bang Chan personally and band as a whole.

Changbin asking this question, who else. Chan was like “that phrasing doe?” But eventually:

(Changbin is listening but also not giving a shit, he’s just waiting for Chan to be done so he can ask what his role is and be told he’s the visual, Minho feeds him so fucking well.)

In group dances Minho tends to not stick out. In fact, Minho would really like it if no one stuck out. His goal is to have them all as synchronized as possible and he’s really good at it.

His solos fucking murder us every time tho :(

m... where was i.

Oh yeah. He’s very good at his job. He has also gotten SO MUCH better at singing. I don’t think he gets enough credit for how fucking hard he must have worked on that on top of everything else they do. I know the color of his voice doesn’t pop out like Seungmin or IN’s, but he can hold his own now. (His parts in Slump and Neverending story for example. Slump in particular because apparently Han wrote that whole ass song to fit HIS high notes and everyone just went “I guess” and then Han said “but I’ll only rap in it”.)

But enough about how much I respect him as an artist. Let’s talk about how if he is your favorite in the band, there’s a 99% chance your kink is being spit on followed by a good aftercare. Look I don’t make the rules. Just accept it like Hyunjin has.

Did he tickle him after that? Who knows. Not Hyunjin.

but he feeds him well so it’s all good.

In fact, other than making everyone dance well, Minho’s second mission in life is to make sure everyone is well fed. (He is definitely that grandmother who will tell you you’ve gained weight and then get upset when you don’t eat everything she made for you.)

Life is too short for a full compilation of Minho feeding people so here’s a little vid and a few pics.

How is this post still fucking going? How do I have so many thoughts on this one man wtf? Anyway just a quick note about his ex husband.

Back in the olden days Minho made lunch and wrote a lovely thank you letter to Seungmin and things were great. Now they jokingly call each other the divorced couple and even though they are roommates they both claim they can’t be roommates. I have a theory that could be way off but I will type it up here anyway. My theory hearkens back to the first paragraph which is that Minho doesn’t like doing things in front of the camera when he’s not sure how it’s gonna end up. And I think Seungmin for his own reasons isn’t very expressive either. And maybe sometimes on camera he didn’t react like Minho needed him to. And it ended in Minho adjusting his on camera attitude. Again, I could be way off, but the way I see it, there is safety in teasing. The same way he’ll show off his giraffe picture and be like “isn’t it beautiful” when he clearly has functional eyes, he can show his friendship with Seungmin and say “lol isn’t it horrible” and he gets the expected feedback and it’s fine. It’s better than being seen as overly needy or reaching out and not getting what you want. And tbh I think he and Seungmin pingpong this at each other and this is why every tsundere needs a Felix or Han to hug them despite the shit that’s coming out of their mouth.

But Seungmin can still recognize him by his tiddies so clearly they’re fine off camera.

As far as fan stuff goes, Minho has a regular live where he eats delicious food and talks to fans. Sometimes fans are really shitty and he plays it off but he is human and y’all need to get your shit together. But since all his fans are subs it all works out in the end. (Go on, tell me he’s your bias and you’re not a sub, I won’t believe you.)

I’m going to end this now and sneak edit when I remember other shit like I just did with BC.

Oh PS: I am not getting into Minho and Han now. Maybe ... MAYBE by the time I’m on Jisung’s profile I’ll be emotionally ready for that.

Wait did I do a whole fucking primer on Minho without mentioning his cats? Shit I’m gonna get arrested. He has 3 cats, adopted or found. He also does a shitload of charity stuff, a lot of it animal related. Ok ok ok there.

Bang Chan - Minho - Changbin - Hyunjin - Han - Felix and Felix2 - Seungmin - Jeongin

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 5 years ago

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Five years ago, while a student at Columbia, Sulkowicz lugged a dorm-issue, extra-long twin mattress around campus for as long as she had to attend school with her alleged rapist. This was Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), a globally viral art piece that made visible the weight of campus sexual assault. It transformed Sulkowicz into an icon. Since then, her artworks have regularly roused the internet: a video of her reenacting her assault, a bondage performance at the Whitney that doubled as institutional critique. This past spring, she tweeted an image that was perhaps even more provocative: a photo of her grinning alongside two of her libertarian critics — not performance art, she insists, but a byproduct of her new curiosity about other views.

“All my clothes are in boxes,” she tells me, gesturing apologetically to her oversize charcoal hoodie. She’s in the midst of moving from a sublet owned by a tantra instructor (mirrors surrounding the bed to create an infinite regression — that kind of thing) to an apartment in lower Manhattan whose location she asks me not to reveal, since “there’s some really scary people who are obsessed with me.” Her hair is short-cropped and coffee black, its natural color after years of bright dyes, and her voice is buoyant, laughter always bubbling underneath. Since 2016, Sulkowicz has identified as gender fluid, and she sometimes uses they/them pronouns. When I ask what to use for this article, she texts me, “Lol I’m not clear about it either,” before settling on she/her.

During the summer of 2018, Sulkowicz tells me, she was single for the first time in years. Swiping through Tinder, a man she found “distasteful” super-liked her. “It smelled like Connecticut,” she says of his profile. “He was very blond, law school, cut jawline, trapezoidal body figure, tweed suit kind of vibe, but something inside of me made me swipe right, I don’t know.” They began messaging, and she found him witty. “He was actually way more fun to talk to than any other person I matched with.”

Eventually, Sulkowicz stalked him on Twitter and realized that he was conservative — “like, very conservative.” At first, she was repulsed and considered breaking it off. But then she thought, “Wait, actually, that’s kind of fucked up because he’s the most interesting person I’ve come across, shouldn’t I be open to talking to him?” After dispelling her initial fear, she texted him that it would be “interesting (progressive? Powerful?) for two people who might be the antithesis of each other to go on a Tinder date.”

Ahead of this date, they traded reading assignments: Sulkowicz gave him the password to protected areas of her website, and he sent pieces he’d written for conservative magazines, which she printed, annotated with her critiques, and brought to their date. This man expected Sulkowicz to be “the patron saint of wokeness,” but when he met her, he found that she wasn’t actually trying to litigate the issues — she was mostly just “curious about this different perspective that she had not been as familiar with.” The two “sort of dated” for a while and then realized that their chemistry was more conversational. They became “amazing friends.”

Not having known conservatives before, Sulkowicz had to play catch up. Early in their friendship, she asked him to recommend one book to help her understand him, and he picked Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. It’s a book that explains, in evolutionary terms, the human tendency toward political tribalism and the importance, in light of that, of learning from one another’s beliefs. She calls the book “mind-opening.” Its resonance with her new friendship did not escape her.

Shortly after, Sulkowicz attended a book talk of Haidt’s. This was for The Coddling of the American Mind, which diagnoses the campus left with the kinds of cognitive distortions that addle the chronically anxious and depressed: a tendency to blow everyday problems out of proportion, or to believe that one’s negative feelings reflect reality. This book kicked a hornet’s nest on the left, and when Haidt learned that Sulkowicz was at his talk, he didn’t assume she was a fan. “I expected her to be the sort of person who sometimes asks the angry question when I give lectures on campuses,” Haidt tells me. “And when I first saw her and she had blue hair, that fed my assumptions and expectations about what her views and values would be.” But Sulkowicz surprised him. “It changed the way I think about politics,” she said about The Righteous Mind, “and I wanted to thank you for it.” The two became friends.

Soon, she began attending house parties and happy hours with conservative and libertarian intellectuals, reading Jordan Peterson and articles from the National Review. In the past, Sulkowicz dismissed opposing views without understanding them, but now she sees intellectual curiosity as intertwined with respect: she wants to disagree with people on their own terms. This is an ethical position, but one with personal resonance. “I’ve always been upset,” she admits, “that there are people out there who assume that I’m a bad or mean person without ever having met me.” When she describes her political journey, she fixates on the experience of surprising people, of walking into a group who might otherwise dislike her and “disrupting their expectations.” At these parties, she reflects, “I can become fuller to certain people rather than staying the same caricature. I’m going from flat to round.”

- - -

A couple weeks after our lunch, Sulkowicz brings me to a book party at a dark bar on Bleecker Street. Here, she introduces me to her friend from Tinder, who asks that I not use his real name for this article. (It might be a distraction at his white-shoe law firm and, besides, “Emma is inured to online hate, but I am not.”) When he asks if he can choose his own pseudonym, I tell him sure. He picks Chad. It’s a reference to the incel term for men who, due to serendipitous genetics, are attractive enough to have oodles of sex. All of us laugh, but Sulkowicz laughs loudest, her voice tinkling, bell-like, and leaping between octaves.

Chad is a Chad, by the way, and he does “smell like Connecticut”: he has cornsilk hair, a shieldlike chest, and a jawline that an incel might show his surgeon for inspiration. But Chad is also a different kind of conservative than I imagined. Rather than a bowtie-sporting William F. Buckley type thumbing his nose at populism, he finds Reaganism laughably passé and aligns himself with Tucker Carlson’s anti-elite drive to regulate markets. He says that he would support some of Trump’s policy agenda, if only the president were competent enough to achieve it.

This party is for Robby Soave, a libertarian reporter on the snowflake beat whose new book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, is — per Soave’s own description — “a book that is extremely critical of [Sulkowicz] and that I don’t wish her to read.” Soave met Sulkowicz a month or so before at another libertarian happy hour. Initially bewildered, he warmed to her, finding her to be inquisitive and even fun to talk to. “We exchanged contact information,” he tells me later, “and talked about maybe becoming, I guess, friends or something?” He laughs incredulously as he says this, sounding a bit on edge.

As Sulkowicz swirls around the party, her presence stirs an obvious question: whether this is performance art. Soave brings it up twice when we speak on the phone afterward, acknowledging the possibility that he’s being set up. While he’s inclined to believe that Sulkowicz is moved by earnest curiosity, he’s aware of her background in “elaborately planned performance art” and her reputation as a provocateur. Since graduating from Columbia in 2015, Sulkowicz has done around a dozen performances touching on issues like consent, anti-institutionalism, climate change, trauma, wellness, and female sexual desire. It’s natural to wonder if she’s currently breaking bread with this crowd to lampoon civility politics or to expose views she hates. Honestly, it might be harder to believe that she’s simply trying to learn.

But Sulkowicz is adamant that this isn’t performance. In fact, she insists that she’s quitting art altogether. After one of our lunches, she bikes off to return the keys to her studio, which she’s emptied and swept clean. “For many years,” she explains, “I wasn’t interested in listening to other points of view. I was very emotional and making performance-art pieces that were very reactionary and fiery.” Without disowning them, she describes these artworks as something she “got out of her system.”

Having found the art world humorless, narrow-minded, and grotesquely competitive, Sulkowicz says she stopped making art about a year ago. She quit a fellowship at a museum, ceased teaching art classes, and was essentially unemployed for a time, drawing income from occasional speaking gigs, mostly about campus sexual assault. (Her remarks on Me Too have been fewer; she supports it, but wants a clearer path to forgiveness.) She has been working on a memoir that draws on her diaries from Mattress Performance, and last month, she started a full-time, four-year master’s program in traditional Chinese medicine. There, she’ll learn skills from acupuncture to herbalism, which have been her “personal healing modality” for years. Sulkowicz has parried assumptions that this is performance art, too. It grates on her. “I’m a human and humans can change,” she says, insistently. “I’m telling you that I don’t want to make art anymore.”

But in some ways, it’s easier to assume that Sulkowicz’s political posture is performance art: this provides a clear motive, one that’s politically straightforward. If Sulkowicz is not making art, then it’s much harder to grasp why she’s doing this and what it means. Part of the confusion, Sulkowicz assumes, springs from a pervasive misunderstanding about who she is, rooted in the dissonance between her public image and private consciousness. While many assume she’s at Soave’s book party for some admixture of art and progressive politics, Sulkowicz says she’s mostly there for fun.

#emma sulkowicz #profile #mattress performance (carry that weight)#politics #power

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wondersbeyondcompare · 5 years ago

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Finally finished up Kodi’s profile and a simple character sheet! ( ´ ▽ ` ) Berenice might take a bit longer... most of her first profile was filled with ??? after all...

Full Profile+Additional Sketches are below!

(Before I get into anything, just wanna say that the main inspiration behind this boi was this one Twitter post about cuttlefish that I found really cute back then (altho he’s not venomous lol). Plus (・_・;) Youtube recommended me an hour long documentary on the animal, and I ended up watching all of it, so then I became even more attached...)

Full Name: Kodi Sepiama

Name Meaning: Tbh, I just read this sentence from the Wikipedia article on cuttlefish: “The "cuttle" in cuttlefish comes from the Old English name for the species, cudele, which may be cognate with the Old Norse koddi (cushion) and the Middle Low German Kudel (rag)”,and the rest was history; His last name is a combination of the scientific name for the giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama)

Dorm: Octivanelle

Twisted Off Of: Nothing (He’s based off of a cuttlefish though)

Year: 2nd Year

Birthday: April 07 (Aries)

Age: 17 years old

Height: 1.77m/5’10”

Place of Origin: Village of Harvest

Voice Headcanon: Miwa Takahiro

Personality:

Tends to have delusions of the grandeur when it comes to imagining his ideal school life. A very expressive boy who wears his heart on his sleeve. As a result, he has significant trouble hiding how he feels, both on his face and through his actions. Due to his unique magic Kodi has a very weak presence compared to most people, and, although he’s eager to make friends with everybody, he mostly goes unnoticed by his peers. As with most Octivanelle students, he’s often tasked by Azul with one errand or another, but he manages to keep up a (mostly) optimistic attitude in spite of all his work.

Will carry out any of Azul’s orders no matter how questionable they may seem, acting as a pawn to the dorm leader’s chess board by gathering info on other students around the school undetected. He’s a smart guy when it comes to academics, but since people like Azul and Riddle are in his grade, his ranking isn’t as high as he would want it to be. His common sense, however, is a different story.

Likes: Akashiyaki, tending to both animals and plants, anything that keeps him busy, basketball, art, buying new watercolor sets, aquariums, his friends, crossing things off his to-do list

Dislikes: The cowardly part of himself, his unique magic, oranges, disappointing others, when people forget about him

Background:

Despite being an Octavinelle student, Kodi grew up in an environment where most spent their days tending to the land: The Village of Harvest. The boy was a result of his mother having a romantic summer encounter with a cuttlefish merman on one of her rare trips to the beach, therefore his father wasn’t really in the picture when he was growing up. However, his mother didn’t hold any resentment towards his father, often speaking fondly of the man and the memories she held of him.

He was raised by his mother and her family on a small farm in the area. Because of this, Kodi never really felt lonely when he was younger, having been surrounded by his many relatives most of his life. It is from them did he learn practical skills when it came to both farming and everyday life, such as how to take care of plants and animals, how to cook healthy meals, etc. The village in general was a tight knit and welcoming community, so it also wasn’t uncommon for Kodi and his cousins to play with the children of other families and even stay over for dinner at different houses once they ran out of steam. One of his best friends was Epel, whom Kodi happily regarded as a little brother figure since most of his cousins were older than him.

As a child, Kodi was much more stoic than his current self, taking after his mother. It wasn’t as if he were shy or traumatized into being emotionally guarded, but rather it was physically difficult for him to show emotions. His face nor his voice would hardly change regardless of how strong of an emotion he was feeling. It was because of this did some of his peers think he was cold, especially when it came to situations that involved sympathy, but his personality didn’t hurt his reputation that much.

It is only when his magical abilities began to kick in did Kodi notice a drop in attention being paid to him. Since his unique magic involved blending in with his surroundings, this caused his overall presence to become weaker as well. Sometimes his friends would forget about him during their games (especially if they were playing hide and seek), other times his relatives would forget to set a plate for him at the dinner table; it wasn’t as if he was forgotten about completely, but these little hiccups really hurt his self esteem. It was because of this did Kodi begin to act out to get a little more attention, but he still went unnoticed. Eventually Kodi gave up and resorted to learning different ways to improve himself. He thought if he worked hard enough in a variety of areas, then surely he will get the recognition he deserves. Maybe he might even get lucky and get to go study at Night Raven College, becoming a famous magician after completing his studies at the magic school. He upped his athleticness by playing basketball with his cousins, created arts and crafts with Epel, and studied hard in school to pass his classes.

When the carriage came to take him away to NRC, Kodi was overjoyed. Well, it didn’t really show on his face because, :/ y’know, but he was shaking a lot from excitement when they placed him inside his coffin.

He didn’t really think much of which dorm he wanted to be placed in. Despite having little to no expectations, Kodi couldn’t help but be a little surprised when he got sorted into Octavinelle. He was aware of his mother’s encounter with the merman, but he thought she was telling him some sugar coated story to explain the absence of his dad. In fact, he was still skeptical of his mother’s tale until he accidentally fell into the large tank just outside the dorm’s lounge after he was done feeding the fish. Having grown up in a place not near any large bodies of water, Kodi didn’t think he needed to know how to swim, and, boy, did he regret it as he sunk deeper and deeper into the water. He blacked out once he ran out of oxygen, but when he came to, Kodi found himself as a cuttlefish laying on the tank’s floor. It took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to turn back into human afterwards.

Kodi came in contact with Azul early in his first year since they had a lot of the same classes, as well as the same dorm, together. However, it wasn’t until the start of his second year did Kodi decide he'd had enough of being ignored and that he wanted to sign a contract with Azul to fix his circumstances. His exact wish involved being able to express his emotions more freely as he believed that was the root of his problem. Azul agreed to help him out so long as Kodi did him a little favor that would “better acquaint him with the students on campus”. Thinking nothing of Azul’s vague wording, Kodi accepted his offer and became the overly expressive boi he is today. In exchange, he was to gather information on all the students on campus and create a basic profile on each person that was to be put into a catalogue held by Azul, just so this octopus man knew the type of clients he was going to be dealing with. For the first time, Kodi felt what it was like for fear to contort his face.

As of now, Kodi wears two mood bracelets around his wrists as physical proof of his contract. The bracelets change colors depending on what mood he’s in, but he tries to hide them under his sleeves out of embarrassment (you could still see how he feels on his face tho… (￣^￣) ). In addition to bending to Azul and the Leech brothers’ whims, he found himself helping out in a little smuggling business within the school, sneaking in certain outside goods that are hard to get on campus through a network of students. Kodi was assigned to deliver the packages in a secretive way, usually using his unique magic to his advantage. At first he was skeptical to join, but after being convinced that it wasn’t technically against school rules and that it wouldn’t take up much of his time, Kodi was on board with the idea.

Kodi also tried to keep in touch with Epel once the latter joined NRC, but the first year often regards him with disdain, thinking he’s become less cool when he entered his second year. But they’re still decent friends and sometimes have lunch together when their schedules match up. Kodi has attempted to befriend Majid due to him being a first year like Epel, visiting Scarabia to have a chat with him every once and awhile. Majid initially tried to reject him, but eventually became placated when Kodi began to bring snacks he made whenever he came to visit. Kodi doesn’t know how to act around Berenice and is lowkey kind of scared of her since she’s part ghost. He still acts friendly enough towards her though.

(Side Note: I kinda came up with his story before playing Chapter 3, and I’m not entirely sure what would happen to Kodi after all of (･_･;) that happened with all of the other students’ contracts. If Kodi’s contract had the same fate, his mood bracelets would probably become inactivated and go back to those cheap ones you get at souvenir shops. Kodi would still be expressive as always, yet would go back to having his old RBF when he’s not thinking about anything in particular. Or we could pretend that his contract was forgotten about in the chaos (￣∇￣) continuing with the running theme of him being forgotten…).

Powers:

Unique Magic (Hide-Away): This ability enables Kodi to seamlessly take upon the appearance of his surroundings, whether it involves becoming a part of the wall or a large potted plant. His generally weak presence enhances this ability as well. He has tried to imitate the appearances of other people, however, his unique magic doesn’t seem to accomodate for that type of mimicry. :’) Back to being a part of the wall he goes.

Cuttlefish Transformation: Due to being a quarter cuttlefish, he can only become fully human or fully cuttlefish. There is no in between. Gets kind of jealous whenever he sees Jade and Floyd switch into their merman forms during their visits to The Sea of Corals. Sometimes customers can catch a glimpse of cuttlefish Kodi swimming around the huge tank in Mostro Lounge, testing out his recently discovered form.

Stunning Hypnosis: Doesn’t really use this ability until he’s forced to. Whenever Kodi finds he’s in a tough situation, he can make his eyes mimic the hypnotic light show cuttlefish would normally display on their skin, his irises quickly shifting between different colors as he does so. This ability temporarily stuns his victim for about one to five minutes, giving him enough time to do whatever he needs to do.

Trivia:

He had curled all his hair for his high school debut, but somehow half of it got flattened during his time in the coffin on his way to NRC. Kodi tried to frantically fix it before the entrance ceremony in the bathroom until a random upperclassman complimented his “daring” hairstyle. He was so flattered that he kept doing his hair like that for the rest of the year.

Both Jade and Floyd tend to tease him about him not being able to turn into a merman. It didn’t bother him that much until they started tossing him around in his cuttlefish form like some terrified beach ball on one of their ocean visits.

Was tempted to join the Magishift club at first but decided otherwise when he fell off his broom in the first meeting. No one noticed, but he was embarrassed all the same. Switched over to the basketball club because he was more familiar with the sport. (*wheeze* kodi no basuke)

The shirt he wears with his Octavinelle uniform was given to him by his grandmother, saying that he would look so nice and sophisticated wearing it at school; he was personally reluctant to take it at first, but you can’t say no to grandmama

He so desperately wants to be relied upon that he’s willing to do almost anything to gain others’ respect; this often leads him to being a huge pushover tho

Can be scarily protective over the people he cares about; works from the background to make sure offenders get some kind of karma for what they’ve done

A good majority of his peers and upperclassmen who he knew in his first year became genuinely concerned when Kodi did a complete 180 in his second year; some worried he hit his head the wrong way and offered to take him to the hospital; others just gradually accepted this new Kodi; besides, it’s nice to see a huge smile finally cross his face when he gets excited about something for once

#twisted wonderland oc #art #my post #my art #twst oc #ocs #oc #my ocs #Kodi #i purposely made him 1cm taller than azul just to have one more octavinelle member that was taller than him #also to spite him a little on how slight the difference was owo #i really like azul and his amazing work ethic but i couldn't pass up this opportunity #his backstory isn't as complicated as Majids but i really just wanted a smiley idiot oc for once...so...#had to lighten up a bit!!

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