#how we rewrote the stars

[mx-paint]

.

[ma1dita]

without a doubt

part one can be found here -> it will pass

words: little under 3k

summary: James has a lot of questions, but he quickly finds out Peanut is the answer.

warnings: none! angst–hurts before things get happy, peter (since some of yall might need a warning), all the marauders are alive and happy, lily is too smart for this, peanut and jelly 4 ever

a/n: thank you for all the love (and tears shed) for it will pass! i genuinely rewrote this about four different times and almost lost the plot, but please let me know if it meets your expectations!

(posted 9/11/23)

—

DAYS UNTIL JAMES PROPOSES: 4

I know it will pass, it’s just heavy. You’re all I know.

There’s something about the noise in your brain as you move around your silent apartment. It overpowers the fear that hasn’t quite left your body after he let the front door fall shut. Being paralyzed in the aftermath of the truth that left your lips…It’s maddening. And you can’t even talk to the person you want to hear it most. You love him.

I do love you (Y/N), just in a different way.

Those 10 minutes were a fleeting moment in the life you’ve shared with your best friend thus far. But now, he’s stopped writing, stopped calling, and you’ve never heard him be so quiet in the past few days after the fact. There’s a knock at the door, and the sound interrupts the way you breathe, dishrag in hand, and James’ sweater still on your body.

I know that, James. I just don't know how to stop.

“What a vision you make, (Y/N).” Remus jokes in an attempt to try to make you smile. He’s leaning against the doorframe as you pop your head through the opening and he slowly moves to follow you into your home. Why does it feel like you have to explain yourself this time? But Remus is deeply understanding in nature, and he opens his arms for you to burrow yourself in.

“Get yourself fixed up. Not taking a no for an answer, love. You’ve been MIA for long enough and you know how Pads is about his birthday. He’ll want you there, broken heart be damned.” Remus is rubbing your back, and you groan.

“Ever the fucking diva.”

His chest rumbles with laughter, but both of you know that you say it lightly. Years ago, when Sirius moved into the Potter’s, it was understood that every birthday was to be as great as he was to his found family.

Nothing has to change, Peanut.

Remus sniffs you lightly, nose crinkling, “Place is spotless. Your turn for a deep clean and then off we go.” A horrified noise leaves your throat as you push yourself out of his embrace.

As the steam from the shower slowly suffocates you, you realize that Remus innately knew the reason for your emotional sabbatical from James and the rest of your friends. You wonder if everyone’s known that you’ve been in love with James Potter, and scrunch your face at how oblivious you both have been. The cold water washes away the grief that’s had a handle on your being this past month. Out of all the pranks they’ve played, this tops it. What a sick joke for the both of you to be left out of.

I think you should go now. Please.

—

DAYS UNTIL JAMES PROPOSES: 3

All of Sirius’s birthdays are spectacular, but you really can’t fight the hurt crawling up your chest. There are too many memories here at Potter Manor, too many familiar faces asking where you’ve been, and James looks petrified, eyes following your figure around the Manor like you’re a ghost he can’t touch. You walk up the stairs like you have many times over the years, finding a hideaway in the west wing. You and James used to gaze at the stars here.

“So why the hell are you moping on my birthday? No one’s allowed to be sad today.” Sirius grins, breaking the silence as he walks across the balcony to throw his arms over your seated figure.

“Happy Birthday Padfoot.” you smile, leaning up to kiss his cheek. You clink your glass against his as he takes a seat next to you on the bench.

“Trust me when I say you always look stunning, (Y/N) but there’s this look in your eye that you get when you’re around Prongs nowadays. Might I say it’s why you dropped off the face of the Earth?”

Your face instantly drops at his words, and you’re glad he can’t see much in the dim light.

“How long have you all known, Pads?”

“I don’t know about much when it comes to love, (Y/N). But what I do know is that I’m his brother, and you’re his best friend. There’s a lot of responsibility being those two things for someone like that idiot. You love him like humans need air.”

“I just… I don’t know what to do with it.” The elderflower wine glides down your throat, its taste sweet on your tongue. Sirius sits with you, knowing what’s coming next. As an older brother, he also knows you’ve been waiting for someone to listen.

“What do I do with all the love I have for him? Where does it go now that he doesn’t want it?”

“I’ll take some. It sounds lovely.” Peter’s voice almost echoes in the silence as you both turn your heads to see him and Remus in the dim light of the hallway, a bottle of firewhiskey in hand and it makes you genuinely smile for the first time in days.

“Yeah, pass it around. Godric knows Prongs doesn’t appreciate you enough.” Remus says bluntly, and you hit his stomach when he ruffles your hair.

“Honestly, what a prat! Makes you plan his proposal and doesn’t want you at the afterparty? The nerve.” You choke on the remnants of your wine as you laugh at Sirius’s outrage for you, and all four of you are giggling in the dark like idiots as Remus pours you shots. If anything else goes wrong in this life, you’re glad that you have the Marauders to live it with you.

The laughter reaches the hallway, and in walks Lily, who teasingly asks “Did the party move in here without us?” James is as still as a statue behind her, watching you laugh with his boys. He can’t remember the last time he’s seen you happy and acknowledges that he’s to blame.

“You shouldn’t be surprised, Lils. There’s always a party when Padfoot’s around,” you remark, and everyone gets up to go back to the party. Lily looks around as if she’s missing something, then looks at James.

“I’m glad that (Y/N)’s back from whatever’s been keeping her busy. Looks like everything’s falling back into place.” she muses, and James can’t help but watch his best friend, no, his best girl, walk away, thinking that everything must be falling apart.

—

DAYS UNTIL JAMES PROPOSES: 2

It’s morning now, and a lot of the crowd has gone home or fallen asleep in the many rooms of Potter Manor. You decide to stay to help clean up for Mr. and Mrs. Potter, who were always like second parents to you as well. They had a thing for taking in kids who needed love. With your best efforts, you can’t seem to escape James, who has incessantly trailed behind you into every room you walk into. You dodge him again as you walk down the hall, but James, who has always been a chaser in more ways than one grabs you by the arm and pushes you into his childhood bedroom.

A shriek leaves you as he closes the door and has you up against the wall.

“What the fu—”

“You’re avoiding me. Why are you avoiding me?” his face is panicked as his breath hits your face.

“You told me to leave you alone. That’s what I’m doing now, James. What else could you want from me?” Your hands are on his chest, crinkling the dress shirt that you once helped him pick out at the shops, and you feel breathless, angry at knowing him too well, and angry at what he’s insinuating.

James is at a loss. He loves you. He’s never gone more than a weekend without you and now it’s been ages…. And he loves you. He’s looking at you differently now, in the sunlight that floods through his old bedroom. He loves you so much that it hurts.

His hands slide from the wall behind you, until they reach your shoulders, and trace down your arms. Intertwining your fingers together, James speaks.

“I didn’t mean…” he exhales. “I just…”

“Did you not want me here too? Because unfortunately, my friends are also yours, so maybe we can clarify exactly the terms you want me to follow next time, James.” you seethe, getting in his face.

You push him away, his arms chasing after you, pining for your touch. Your heart is racing with hurt, with anger, with love, all for the man standing across the room.

“Peanut…”

“No.”

“I never want you to leave me alone, okay? It’s been agony without you and I can’t even put into words how—”

“I can, James. How long have I been so oblivious to the fact that I’m in love with you and how long have you just let it happen? You can’t just… please don’t pretend that you don’t know that I’ve been waiting all my life for you to let me fill the empty spaces in your heart.” Your voice wavers as you pull yourself away from him, sitting on his bed.

“Just tell me what’s happening, Peanut. You’ve always had the answers. I feel like I can’t breathe when you’re not there and I….. my heart feels like it’s going to combust… I… I just feel…. so intensely. I miss who I am when I’m with you.”

James throws himself down onto the bed, hyperventilating with his head in his hands. Your hands are shaking as you reach for him. You’ll always reach for him.

He raises his head, as you delicately grab his face into your hands. Your fingertips brush his tears away, loving him for the mess he is.

“My life has been so quiet these past few days and I’m so scared to live life without you. Did I fuck it all up for us?” You whisper.

James licks his lips, and he’s playing with your hair in his hands. Your knees are touching on the patterned bedspread. The space between you diminishes as you realize that he’s about to ruin everything.

Your best friend is going to kiss you.

He’s holding your jaw so gently and for a second, you wonder if this is what it would feel like to be loved by him in the way that you do. With every single ounce of control, you turn your head away from what you’ve been craving most. James’ lips land on your cheek, and he’s chasing after you again, muttering apologies as he looks into your eyes and sees everything he’s been wanting. He sees his whole life with you through the split second your eyes connect. Pushing him away again, you stumble away with a sob.

“What was that?”

“I just… “ He’s gasping for air, feeling like his heart has exploded, and the silence is so loud that he feels like his heart must be in pieces, and you’re picking up the wreckage to take home. He’s in love with you. His heart has always been yours.

“You what, James? Don’t do that!”

He’s lived in a mansion his whole life but Godric, is this room suddenly feeling too small? You get on your feet, stepping away from him and he’s following you.

“Do what?”

“Don’t make me hate you, Jelly. Loving you has been painful enough.” Tears are blurring your vision as you hiccup, and maybe it’s better to not see him right now. Maybe you really shouldn’t have come.

“I just wanted to know. I know now, love, I…” James whimpers at the sound of his nickname. Your nickname for him alone has this man wanting to drop to his knees.

“No. Don’t you know how cruel you’re being right now? To me? To the love of your life? I would never do that to Lily!” Your voice is getting louder by the minute, and James is stoic in his silence, steps away from your blaze.

“But you told me you’re in love with me. Are you saying this is because of me?”

“Everything I do is because of you, James. And if you don’t know that by now…” Then maybe you don’t know me at all.

The words go unsaid but the both of you are hit with the reality of it. Your hands jangle the doorknob to get away from him, to be anywhere but here.

—

DAYS UNTIL JAMES PROPOSES: 1

Lily listens intently as James tells her everything he's been wanting to say for the last eleven years. She's not surprised, in fact, she knows this is the truth, but she's still heartbroken. Lily Evans and James Potter are both people who like to chase things, people—but after all that’s said and done, the thrill wears off. They’re more alike than they’ll ever know.

He tries to apologize, but Lily cuts him off and tells him there's no need. She's always known the truth, and even though it took him this long, she's glad he finally figured it out. Smartest girl of their year, after all.

“I mean, I always felt like she should’ve been dating you, but then we happened and I fell too hard and didn’t stop to ask questions. I tried to be blind to it, but…it was nice, wasn’t it?” Lily whispers, holding James’ hand for the last time. He looks like he’s about to pass out.

“I’ll be okay, Potter. I was before you, and I will be after you. So thank you for being honest. You’ve always been honest with me.” A small kiss on his cheek renders him breathless. Once upon a time, he would stay up all night at the idea of Lily Evans loving him. But his heart has always belonged to you. Without a doubt, James Potter is in love with you, his best friend.

He doesn’t tell Lily he was planning to propose tomorrow, since the situation is already as messy as it is. But Lily Evans always knows.

—

JAMES HAS A PROPOSAL

James is pushing boxes back into Potter Manor, and Mippy helps flit the rest of his belongings up the stairs with magic. The least he could do is give Lily their apartment after their breakup. He looks around, rubbing his fingers of dust as his mother calls him for dinner. How humbling, he thinks, to start all over because he was too stupid to realize he’s in love. Starting over in a place he calls home is absurd. He looks out towards the courtyard where you had your fairytale wedding, walks by the hallways you used to race training broomsticks in, and back to his room where he used to whisper hushed lullabies to help you sleep. Everything reminds him of you, and your love consumes each memory that flickers through his vision. The feeling shocks him like ripping your head out of a pensieve. He’s so utterly in love with you.

What the hell is he doing at his parents’ house? He should be getting his girl! James apparates to your apartment, knocking on the door like a madman. He knocks so loudly the wood is bruising his knuckles, red blooming under his touch.

The door rips open, and he’s never been so glad to see you angry.

“You literally have a key, James. You don’t have to be a dick every—”

“You’re wrong.”

Your frustration gives way, lines on your forehead wrinkling in confusion. It’s like there’s a glass separating the both of you, and you’re scared to touch him.

You shake your head as he continues, “You’re wrong, by the way. I don’t know if Lily’s the love of my life. I haven’t lived it with her, nor will I. What I do know is that I’ve loved you for most of mine.”

“What are you saying, Jelly,” you utter, and James’ is grinning so largely you want to punch his face in.

“I love you. As in I’m in love with you. Without any doubt, or excuses, or anyone holding me back, my heart is yours, if you’ll have me?”

He rushes to catch you, his proposal hitting you hard as you fall into his embrace, hands feeling as much of him as you can. His broad shoulders, his strong neck, the dimples on his cheek, the glasses on his face—all of him is in love with you.

Your blubbering is muffled as he finally pulls his lips to yours, finally feeling, finally… James’ kiss lays out all of what he’s been holding in, and without words you both understand that this wreckage in your beating hearts, the destruction of everything you’ve set together as best friends, is love. He’s clutching you to his body, moving you backward into your apartment, feet moving in sync like an orchestrated dance. You both fall onto your couch in a fit of laughter and tears. Finally.

“How foolish of me to be with another, Peanut. I’m a married man, after all.”

"Not bad for a second kiss, Jelly." You laugh at him.

James looks at your smile like it’s the answer to every question he’ll ask in this life.

—

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.” Fredrik Backman

tagged: @prongs-moon @alltheotherkidss @anehkael @princessprongs

[tarre-was-right]

ROUND THREE: MATCH-UP TWO

Remember, this is NOT about who would win in a fight. This is about who makes the best leader for Mandalore as a whole.

Explanation post

Seeding

Propaganda below the cut! You can submit more on this post and I will reblog it back to here!

TARRE VIZSLA

Anon: He was both a Jedi and a Mandalorian warrior. This means he had at least some knowledge of politics and how people work, and was a badass fighter. Both are important for leading a culture with a heavy focus on combat. He could also get advice from the Force, even if it was just a vague sense of whether or not something's a bad idea. (Also he was the one who created the darksaber, which isn't important on its own, but since it's his saber being used as a symbol of leadership, that implies he was at the very least a decent leader.)

@skykind: For all that we don’t know much about Tarre Vizsla as a literal person, Star Wars has always been first and foremost a symbolic story, and boy does Tarre Vizsla pack a symbolic punch. He is multiculturalism incarnate, is remembered centuries later as a great leader, and wields a weapon that can be used to defend as well as attack. When he died, said weapon was laid to rest in the Jedi temple—a choice that can be read as Tarre wanting to stop Mandalore’s repeating cycles of violence—and the dark saber only became a symbol of might-makes-right leadership when other Mandalorians stole it from the temple. - We don’t know that Tarre Vizsla wasn’t sexy!! He could have been! Fact: most Jedi we see on screen are incredibly attractive. Fact: Tarre Vizsla was a Jedi. Therefore: Tarre Vizsla was probably also incredibly attractive. I rest my case.

JASTER MEREEL

Anon: Jaster is the one who should rule Mandalore and all Mandalorians, although he started small he searched to make a new code of conduct for Mandalorian bounty hunters, he tries to keep the culture intact yet keep Mandalore progressive and not stuck in the past and from killing each other.

@spacetime1969: He literally rewrote what it means to be Mandalorian, and he created an entire movement around said philosophy that had a good chance of becoming the controlling party of Mandalore if he hadn't been assassinated. What more do you want?

Anon: Jaster for the win, he's the most recent one who actually knows some shit (as much as I love Din Djarin this poor man doesn't know ANYTHING), besides Jango and Boba but they're both very unstable individuals.

@nerdpickle: Jaster, his philosophy perfectly balanced tradition and reform, keeping the best of both worlds, he was also one of the few people chosen by the people

[hoseoksluna]

BERRIES | jjk ft. jhs

pairing: ex-boyfriend!jungkook x oc (feat. hobi)

genre: angst, tiny fluff, itty bitty smut

word count: 6.0k

summary: your ex-boyfriend shouldn't have this much influence over you when you have a new man, should he?

playlist: berries / pinterest board: berries

warnings: depression, daddy issues, use of titles, oc has dirty thoughts about hobi (do we blame her? no, we do not), slowburn, implied sex, dd/lg, soft argument

note: this took every last bit of my strength, so i had to split it up. i'm sorry if this is a piece of absolute shit, but as you all know work this week squeezed everything out of me and i'm so exhausted that i'm not even sure if this is worth posting. i struggled a lot with this fic, rewrote it multiple times, and i'm so very happy that it's finished. i hope you all enjoy the start of a new series, this time a slowburn that will have more parts, more depth and everything. and surprise! it features hobi, my beautiful husband. it was my first time writing about him and he's missing so terribly from my soul that it was one of the reasons why i struggled so much. i wish it weren't like this for my first time with him, but oh well. i hope you, guys, enjoy. please, let me know what you think. <3

The satiny material of your cream-colored dress must be the one and the same that these sculptures had worn centuries ago. You can almost imagine the softness kissing your fingerprint instead of the cool stone as you graze your touch against each and every immortalized angel of loveliness. You’re stirred by a sense of poignancy—that you’re alive and they’re not and yet you believe that as you stare at them, feel what they’ve been through the more you study their eternal expressions, they stare right back with their eternally tender eyes, see right through you, through your heart, know its contents. You wish you were in their place instead; you’re sure they would’ve handled your cursed life better than you can. 

Or you wish you were as stony as them. 

But you’re an opulent fountain of emotions that are anything but gentle. 

This thought distracts your attention from the way your feet ache in the boots you chose to wear to impress your date. Thigh high, with black knee socks underneath to keep you warm from the cruel breath of autumn. Hoseok is carrying your trenchcoat as you’re adventuring on your own in this art museum and that’s the only sliver of kindness he’s shown you this very morning. 

The only compliment you’ve received from him was a nonverbal one. An up and down look with a smirk creeping in when he picked you up at your apartment. No hug, no caress. You felt so small—and awkward a little bit, comparison rushing in. Not in the form of a wave of the sea, but in the form of a snake, its thick body tightening around your throat. An ouroboros, which made you regret going out on a date so soon. 

It hasn’t even been a month since you’ve become a single girl again, learning how to walk in this new, harsh reality, your legs wobbly, weak and too, too heavy. And the lack of comfortable physical contact made you see your ex-boyfriend before your own eyes, the memory of how he acted at the beginning of your first date. The way he picked you up into his arms due to his excitement of being with you and carried you inside his car. He put on your seatbelt for you. Drove carefully. Held your hand as he led you to the restaurant he picked for you. Even during the walk after while you talked about the stars and you couldn’t help but tell him that his eyes were filled with them. 

Hoseok did neither of those things. He had asked you where you wanted to go and you’ve wanted to visit the museum for quite a while, so you suggested it. He had agreed, no sort of enthusiasm evident in his voice muffled by the phone call. And you’ve barely exchanged a few words during the half an hour of your time spent here, let alone led an entire conversation. You should’ve heeded the warning when it was right in front of you.

Hoseok is certainly not of the artistic kind. 

Looks quite bored as you turn your head to look at him, your coat dangling from his arm so terribly devastatingly. And when you focus your gaze to your right, where a dark wine-tinged room, with golden frames of paintings, awaits you and where you’ve longed to go the moment you stepped a foot inside this grand building, a distaste pools on your tongue, your former aesthetic elation ruined. 

You’re surprised he didn’t stand you up. 

You don’t even want to take pictures. As a matter of fact, you want to go home. But you can’t. Can’t ravage your only possibility and means of forgetting the person you still love. Can’t really encourage Hoseok to leave your life, not when you’re the type of person that doesn’t find love upon every corner you turn to. 

This is your only chance. And he’s the only man you’ll conceivably have in your life for quite some time. 

You walk up to him and take your coat from his arm. His eyes deepen on you, in fact they haven’t strayed from you during the entire half an hour—and that bothers you. If your ex-boyfriend were here, he’d share the beauty with you. Make you laugh so hard that the sound would echo around the vast room. Perhaps give life to the sculptures and they would laugh along, too. 

Your heart hangs heavy in your chest, sinks ever so slowly and you can’t bear it. You need to leave. Take this date elsewhere, hope for betterment to grace you—to have but a fragment of pity for you. 

“You hungry?” you ask, softly, willing your voice to be smooth and not divulge the brassy storm of your emotions to him. Hoseok doesn’t know anything about you. Doesn’t know that you yearn for another person to be standing in his place. “Did you have breakfast?” 

Hoseok needed the date to be in the early hours. Said he had a meeting in the afternoon. Would be working on a project with his colleagues until the late hours. You didn’t mind, not really, in fact it animated you—brought briskness into the sadness of your headspace, knowing it was rainy and cloudy outside. Perfect weather for the influence of the arts. That is, until you realized that it was a grave mistake to take a businessman to a museum; that you dragged a heathen to a church.

Hoseok shifts his weight on each foot, his shoulders swaying with the movement, and he licks his lip, bringing your attention to them. Small, but full—you wonder what they would feel like against yours. Wonder if he’d be gentle with you or violent. If he’d stroke your hair or grip it; fondle the ribbon you’re wearing in a half up do or untie it, entirely. Use it for another means like your ex-boyfriend invariably did. 

Your distaste grows, but not for Hoseok. It grows like poison ivy for yourself and your tendency to compare him with someone he doesn’t deserve to be juxtaposed with. 

Guilt blossoms in your sternum, the leaves of that poison ivy. Pretty to the eye, but deadly for the body. Just like you. You’re too baneful for such a pretty man like Hoseok. You’d do well to respect his boundaries and abstain from physical contact, prevent red rashes from marring his skin.

“I haven’t eaten yet,” Hoseok says, just as softly, rubbing the nape of his neck, the black cloth of his dress shirt taut over his arms—a pretty sight, one that could be hanging in the wine-tinged room for generations to gawk upon. “Truth be told, I was too nervous.” 

A brief smile adorns his slender face and you melt, the poison ivy scratching you raw. Your heart picks up its rhythm, flattery clothing it in a protective layer and you pout, your hand itching to graze his forearm. But a hidden fight rises in you, an army of darkness ready with their bows, their arrows shooting thoughts into your brain about how little you’re worthy of such kindness and favor. 

Though when Hoseok blushes upon seeing your tender expression, it gives you some sort of strength to stand tall against those demons. Despite the fact you don’t understand it, you don’t question it either and you cling to it, sensing its freedom speaking to you in a foreign language. A yearning forms in you, one you haven’t yet had the possibility of meeting. A yearning to learn its syntax and vocabulary. And when you give in to it, the poison ivy in you lessens. 

This is good. 

You reciprocate his smile and you coo. Find it the easiest thing in the world. And because you’re so grateful for what he’s unwittingly done for you, you decide to share your truth with him as well. 

“Let’s go eat, then.” Your eyes crinkle and you’d bet light flickers in them, for your whole body does, you sense it. A warm light enlarges on its axis, taking a hold of the heaviness you felt. “There’s no need to be nervous. It’s what I told myself when I was getting ready. My stomach hurt and believe it or not when I told myself these words, it stopped.” 

Hoseok chuckles, his arm slapping back to his side, but you notice that it trembles. You’re so touched by it that you become angry at yourself, self-hatred clashing with that warmth. You misinterpreted him so unfairly and what’s more, you wallowed in your brokenness and your heartbreak, when Hoseok had been nervous and timid the whole time, which now sheds light on his lack of closeness with you. 

You’re despicable. And the awareness of it transforms into that snake tightening around your throat again. Only this time, you welcome it. Long for it to take your life. It’s the least you deserve. 

But you’re not letting yourself loll in the bed of your horrendous emotions. No, you lift your hand and you caress his arm, the one that quakes. And amidst the sepulchral attention of the sculptures, you’re a witness to that trembling’s halt, to Hoseok’s visible tranquility, and you want to weep. 

You know if you were to gaze at the eternal angels of beauty, you’d see stony tears appear on their ivory cheeks, too. 

“I’m sorry,” Hoseok mumbles and you curl your brows in confusion, not knowing what he’s apologizing for. Hoseok opens his mouth again to speak, but he pauses, sloshing the words in his mouth. You feel so bad that a craving to better yourself overcomes your entire being. “I’m sorry for being such a buzzkill. If you wanna explore this place more, we can. I saw you looking at the room with the paintings.” 

He tilts his head in the direction of the aforementioned room, but you care very little about it as of now. You’d much rather take this elsewhere and get to know him better, so you don’t make the mistake of distorting him again. You’re not very keen on forcing a heathen to pray, either, however you do appreciate his willingness and attentiveness. Carry those things into your jarred heart, fold them inside its chambers, the edge pieces to the puzzle of his personality. 

“Don’t worry,” you murmur, taking it one step further and hooking your arm around his. Hoseok sighs, his shyness slowly breaking apart as he clasps his hand over yours and if you could dissolve any more, now would be the perfect time for it. His hold is strong and steady—and it creates something stable within you, an orchard of fruit trees, pink and green, and bushes of berries, a safe place you want to rest in; lay down your brokenness and woes in. “You’re good. No need to apologize.”

His blush deepens at the reassurance and he smiles, softly, running his thumb over your knuckles. And the gratefulness you feel due to the fact he’s touching you, it is the rain that freshens up the apples and cherries hanging on the twigs of those trees, guiding it into full bloom. You focus on it—focus on the thick, cottony material of his dress shirt as you rub his forearm in response. You want to acknowledge yourself with the unspoken parts of him like these, remember them, allow them to heal you and crack the plaster over your heart. 

And there you hear it. The crumble as Hoseok leans in and presses a chaste peck onto your cheek, lingering there for a second more, inhaling your sandalwood scent. And his smile widens as he looks down on you at such close proximity, erasing your touch-starvation once and for all. It’s your turn to blush now and you feel an inkling to shy away from his gaze, but you stifle it back. Curl your mouth in a smile—your heart thumping louder amidst the orchard now that it has more space to function in. 

“No, I really want to apologize. It’s been too long since I’ve been on a date and you’re so stunning that I’ve forgotten my game, so I can’t help but to be nervous. I don’t know how to act around you,” he says, mutedly, punctuating his sentence with a breathy laugh, glimmering eyes flicking to the lining of your silky neckline just below your collarbones, tracing the miniature cherub hung up on your dainty necklace plated in gold, motionless against your dress. Your own heart grows wings and momentum in its place, fluttering in haste to move closer to him. He bores his gaze back into yours, letting it stay there. “Art isn’t really my thing, but you look like you belong here. Look like all those angels around.” He nods at your necklace. “And like that angel, too. Can I take a picture of you?”

You’re so taken aback that you don’t have time to respond. Pulling out his phone from the pocket of his dress pants, he withdraws from you and gently ushers you in the direction of the closest angel, your trenchcoat slung over his arm again, vibrating with life. He positions you how he likes—right in front of the immense sculpture, your head turned slightly to the side so the wisps of your white ribbon in your hair can be seen. His touch grounds you, tells your bloodstream, your organs that everything is okay, repeats it a little louder to your headspace—all before war could be declared with you. 

Hoseok, the prince of peace. 

The prince that crouches to the dirty floor so the vastness of the angel’s wings can fit in the shot. Yours, too. You think you’ve grown a pair of your own, alongside your heart, now that your shared honesty brought you closer.

You struggle to hold back your sob, to stop the corners of your mouth from rounding, your chin from quivering—all because the lightness that you sense wrapping over your heart is one you haven’t felt in a really long time. You feel taken care of, feel like you can depend on him, and while you can’t explain why you feel that way, you consider that such an immense blessing, regardless. So much that your eyes wet for the camera, but you don’t mind. Let that be captured in the memory—the mending that occurred. And let that be safe with him. 

You smile and the flash goes off, which causes you to burst into giggles, your liquid softness forgotten, and run to him, your palm covering his phone camera so nobody sees his defiance. You look around to make sure no employee is in sight before you face him, cheeks warm, heart warm, wings warm, body warm. Hoseok quirks a brow, confused, gaping up at you from his position, and you take a deep breath to halt another inrush of laughter.

“You can’t take pictures with flash here. They’ll throw us out,” you whisper-shout, your giggles escaping your tightened mouth. His own forms into an ‘O’, fingers clicking on his screen, presumably turning off the automatic flash.

“I didn’t know,” he whisper-shouts back, mouth stretched in a lopsided grin. “I haven’t been here since I was a kid.” You shake your head, shoulders still shaking with the last of your giggles. He probably didn’t have a phone back then, which makes it even funnier. He inspects his settings again to make sure it’s all good before his hand finds your thigh and pushes you back. “Okay, I turned it off. Go back to the angel.” 

It’s your whole body that flutters now, not just your heart, both pairs of wings unfurling, and when you retrace your steps, you still feel the heat of his touch—half on the fabric of your dress, half on your bare skin. And as you smile more naturally for the picture this time, greed kisses your core. A greed for more of his touch; on the same place as well as elsewhere. 

A twinkle of where he could possibly touch you flashes before your eyes and it’s all your focal point consists of when you turn your head to your former position the way he wanted it and he praises you for it: “Good, good.” 

Your muscles clench as you imagine his hand going underneath the fabric, exploring what’s hidden in there for him. The words of praise he would utter at the discovery of your private flesh. Your ears must be red. Such a twist of events you didn’t expect. A meek form of demureness creeps in, enveloping you in a feminine sensuality and you’ve missed feeling this way. Missed feeling pretty and alluring for yourself first, then for a man second. Missed being the center of your attention like this, of someone else’s as well. 

You’ve always loved it. Perhaps due to the fact that you very seldom have it—so when it does come, it changes your life and you attach your being to it. 

You didn’t anticipate going home with Hoseok, especially not on the first date. But because you’re being fed, you don’t really care about being proper. You want to go home with him and so you simply shall. 

Can’t let the opportunity run away from you. 

And so you arch your back a little bit more, look up at the angel and give her your silent thanks, your hair flowing around your form when you flick your gaze back to Hoseok to see him concentrated on the task, his smooth features gravely serious. Your stomach flips. 

“Now from the back,” he instructs without lifting his eyes off of the screen of his phone. “Just like you were.” 

A breath lodges in your throat, the double meaning burning the poison ivy down to ashes and you swallow it, let your stomach acid consume it until there’s nothing left of it, until all that your body carries is nothing but the lightness and the seductiveness that Hoseok gracefully gave you, the comfortable heft of the wings that grew because of him. 

It’s those things that drive forth your following words with the world’s ease, unabashedly. 

“You want it from the back?” 

Hoseok’s mouth parts and the look he exchanges with you should chill your blood, but it doesn’t. If anything, it boils it. The heat that wafts off it pools in your core before ascending to your imaginary wings, leaving them dripping with sweat and the dew of titillation. Hoseok’s eyes narrow, shadowed by the furrow of his brows, encouraging it all the more. 

There is it—the heady energy shift, permeated with the sweetest of berry juices, stemming from lust, from the orchard he planted in you. Strengthening your allure, steeling you from head to toe. You submit to it; kneel into it, notionally. Your elation raises from the dead—and you grin. 

“Behave.”

A pulse in your private parts. The lengthening of your expression of delight. Your wings, your muscles clench and the same winged creatures soar to your heart from your stomach, squeezing the beating flesh. You swivel on your heels, the hem of your dress rippling, exposing more of your tender skin, the ribbon in your hair following suit. 

Hoseok sucks in a breath. Your cheeks ache from the joy’s strain and it is utterly exhilarating to you. 

“Yes, sir.” 

Hoseok coos his approval and you can’t take it anymore. You let him take a few more pictures as you move around, dancing in your own way, running your fingers through your hair, trying to distract yourself from the throbbing between your legs, but to no avail. And when you sigh and face him head-on, Hoseok is already on his feet, walking towards you with a reappearing lopsided grin that forces the butterflies gnawing at your heart to go absolutely rampant. 

You’re done for. You need to take him home. You’re not even curious about how the pictures came out—you can always look at them later. 

Hoseok seems to know about your neediness because when he crosses the distance, he cups your chin. Makes you look up at him. And his smirk deepens while your heart increases in size, wings flitting at the special attention. 

“Such a pretty girl,” he murmurs, caressing your skin with his thumb. Your eyes round and the heat you feel is sweltering underneath your clothes. All the more reason for him to take them off. “The pictures are great. Wanna see?” 

Biting your lip, you shake your head, briefly. “What I want is to make you breakfast,” you say, mirroring his tone, hoping he gets the hint. 

Hoseok waggles your chin, humming. “Oh, yeah?” 

Fuck. If his scolding already didn’t make you submissive, then his response and his actions have. You wet your mouth, teeth instinctively sinking back in, and only nod. Hoseok opens your coat and covers your shoulders in its warmth, pressing the cotton twill fabric against your sternum. 

“Thank you, sir.” 

A fond sound pours out of him and the fact that he likes to be called by that title heightens the pulse between your legs. “Let’s go.” 

He leads you towards the exit with a hand on the small of your back and you’re so happy to be touched at last that with a final look at the angels, you send out your silent love and goodbye to them, thank them one last time for the kindness you received because of them, one that you so ferociously sought after and longed for. 

They seem to bow to you, happy to be of service, and you smile so profoundly that you feel as though nothing could stain your joy and mar it all over again. They wouldn’t allow that to happen—and a tendril of hope burst open within you like sunlight tearing through clouds, one that is suffused with the notion that Hoseok would stand in the way, side by side with those sculptures, too.

And he does when you swivel your head back and catch a glance of someone you know. 

A piercing on the side of his brow, unchanged from the last time you saw him. Round eyes, murky. Ashen complexion that used to bloom with vibrant tints. Full, soft-toned mouth, ever so stuck in that pout, one you used to kiss until it bruised. 

Your bloodstream doesn’t cease its flow. Not until you notice the person beside him. 

A girl with an aura so cataclysmic that it forces you to stop dead in your tracks. An August night storm personified, obnoxiously sweet-smelling of the past summer that you spent with her companion. The hollow, funereal scent of a meadow doused in petrichor—she walks with it, her hands intertwined before her in a clasp. 

You wished for him to be in Hoseok’s place so ardently that he appeared. And now that you contemplate him, the lack of distance between him and the girl, it makes you regret that you ever did. 

Because, unknowingly, it drenched you in gasoline and his presence is a lighter, hers the hand that has flicked it to life and now serenely holds it against your skin, waiting until the flames, little by little, devour you whole. 

And the job is finished when both of their heads whirl, meeting your livid stare. 

And Jungkook, too, stops dead in his tracks. 

“Do you know him?” Hoseok asks and you find it strange that you can hear him when all you can see is red. 

And the red fades into the matching black shirt that Jungkook is wearing, into his bluntly pained mien; into the strands of his date’s short hair and her scrunched up brows as she regards you with a strong aversion that makes you scoff. And the same red weakens when Hoseok turns your attention to him by playing with the ends of your ribbon, grazing them before twirling them around his finger. 

A breath of fresh air, he is. 

You don’t know what to say. Don’t know whether to tell him the truth or come up with something that won’t devastate what you have currently going on with him. But if you lie to him, you’ll stumble into a dead end you’d much rather stay clear of. You’d see it before your eyes once you do take him home and it would ruin the newness he brought up with you, preventing it from taking root in you. 

Devastation awaits you in either case. Both you and Hoseok. 

Cursed, your life is. Doomed, absolutely fucking doomed. 

What would the angels do in your place? 

Seeking their wisdom behind you, it is not in them that you find your answer, but in the passing pair dressed in black, making their way over to the dark-wined room. He’s pretending he didn’t see you at all, walking away from you without saying a word, despite the fact you broke up on good terms. 

You worshiped him in this very building almost on your knees and he dismissed you as if you meant nothing to him, caring for the feelings of his date, instead. 

Peculiarly, the sentiments Hoseok installed in you, both of the passionate and the soft kind, turn that fire blue and it becomes the driving force that guides you to act without a single thought spared. 

“Yeah, I do know him. Do you mind if I quickly say hi to him?”

The corner of Hoseok’s mouth curls and he caresses your hair down your back one last time.  “Go, I’ll get the car ready.” 

Such a confident, strong man, broken out of the confines of his former timidness. Not possessive, nor insecure—letting you do what you want. Respectful of your personal life that doesn’t include him just yet. And for that very reason it will—as soon as you’re done putting out that fire in you. 

It’s not only you that has gone through a change upon this hour and it strikes your awe, enough for you to lean in and peck his cheek, just like he did to you. 

Hoseok makes a sound of endearment, pivots on his feet to leave you to it, but you grab a hold of his hand. Have a need to say something to him. 

His brows rise at the attention and you brush your hand across his knuckles, mimicking his previous actions, having learned them, intimately. 

“Thank you, Hoseok. Really,” you say with a smile that could magnetically pull the sunlight out of its hiding place behind the clouds and bathe this bizarre room in light. You squeeze his hand. 

A swirl of shyness flushes his face in rose pink and he shakes his head. “No need to thank me,” he assures, reciprocating the smile. “And call me Hobi. You can save Hoseok for later.” 

Your jaw falls open and Hoseok chuckles, warmly, deepening the pulse between your legs until a wet spot adorns your panties beneath your dress, one that you look forward to showing him at the aforementioned time. 

He pivots again and you watch his tall, lean figure leave. Back muscles clothed in black, straining against the fabric. He must’ve undergone his military service. 

A beautiful man. You can’t wait to taste him. Taste that manliness. 

Loosening a breath, you turn around to search for your ex-boyfriend. And much to your dismay, he’s appreciating the angel sculpture—the very one and only Hoseok took your pictures with. Fire licks at your every nerve ending, but then you notice that his date is nowhere in sight. 

A perfect opportunity to do what you want to do. 

Pulling out your phone out of your little purse, you look for his name in the history of your calls and tap on it, placing the device against your ear, your hoop earrings clashing against the screen. You watch him palm his pocket as the vibration disturbs his aesthetic pleasure and he casts a long glance at your name filling up his screen. Doesn’t comb his gaze through his surroundings. No, he seems to be transfixed by the twist of events and when he swipes his finger to accept the call, his stare begins to dig a hole into the dirty, marble floor. 

Doesn’t say anything. 

You scoff, fury grazing your fire. “You’re pretending not to know me? That’s low.” His pout rounds and the tip of his shoe traces the edges of the ruination he’s caused. Remains silent. “Who’s your little girlfriend? I thought you’d introduce me. Where is she, anyways?” 

It’s him who scoffs now and he flicks his gaze towards the face of the angel. It’s like he’s staring right at you. “You shouldn’t be doing this, little one.” 

The too familiar pet name brings agony to your heart and you would break had Hoseok not given you his strength, if the dependability of him waiting for you outside wasn’t real. And the allure and the lightness in you, perhaps the very love of the sculptures encompassing you—all of those things only vivify your solidity. You have no reason to break, you’re safe. 

“Well, I think you should be a good Daddy and meet me right there in the red room,” you seethe, glad for the anger to be lingering in you, for the utterance of the title leaving you unscathed. You’re just giving him a taste of his own poison, nothing else. 

Jungkook runs a hand through his hair and sighs, clenching his jaw. “Don’t call me that.” 

You chuckle, enlivened by the provocation. “I can do whatever I want. Besides, you started it.” 

He grits his teeth. “Not when you’re talking to me, you can’t.” 

Your fire rises in overwhelming waves, your curt response ready on your tongue, but Jungkook hangs up, making you shut your mouth, instantly. 

You hate him for that; hate him with the entirety of your being. 

What has happened to your friendship? To the sweet, weeping Jungkook who broke up with you because he didn’t want to cause you any more pain with the state of his mental health, who has been dealing with depression for so long that he’s reached a point of no return, a lightless room with no windows, where all he saw was you, and he didn’t want you to be a victim of such unhealthy attachment. So he bid you goodbye, hugged you until you couldn’t breathe and let you go. 

Three weeks ago. 

You haven’t seen him or heard from him since until now. Until you’ve found someone else and moved on with your life. That’s just your luck. 

And now the person you’re gazing at, it’s not the same one that wept against your chest. Yes, he might have been strict with you during intimate times, teased you with his fatherliness during the day even—but that invariably was imbued with the mellowness of love. 

Try as you may while his words ring in your headspace, you cannot unearth any trace of that same mellowness in it. Only bitterness, coldness and a profound darkness. 

Jungkook pockets his phone and, leaving both of his hands there, sunk deeply, he walks over to the wine-tinged room, his frown obscuring the place in gloom. Murky clouds, personified. A perfect match to the storm of his companion. Bile lodges inside your throat. 

You follow after him, your feet aching terribly in your boots, but it serves as some kind of alleviation to the tautness of your emotions, of your confusion, disgust and offence. Makes you feel better—because once you see Jungkook ogling a certain painting of a woman beaming at him softly, dressed in flowers, blues and greens as the redness akin to your fire burns in her background, the agony tries to slither its way inside your heart, but fails.

You’re a locked orchard. 

Jungkook senses your presence and he swivels, biting the inside of his cheek, pierced brow quirking. There’s a strain to his shoulders and his Adam’s apple bobbles as he takes in your appearance. The creaminess of your short, silky dress, the darker shade of the same color of your trenchcoat slung loosely over your shoulders, exposing your brown, leather, high-heeled boots, your matching purse clutched in both of your hands as you strut towards him. Calm, all of a sudden. It does nothing to you, nothing whatsoever—your heart momentarily attached to Hoseok.

“I thought you’d already left,” he murmurs, tipping up his chin. Begins to sway back and forth on the balls of his feet, the carmine hues of the room swathing him in a deeper shade of darkness. “Isn’t your boyfriend waiting for you?” 

You don’t bother to correct him. It’s none of his business who Hobi is to you, not when he treated you like a stranger.

“We were about to leave, but then I saw your actions,” you say, quite monotonously, your calmness as disturbing as it is triumphant. You yourself even wonder at it. “What the fuck was that?” 

A smirk. “Glad to know I still have some kind of effect on you.” 

You scrunch up your brows, distaste once again pooling in your mouth. “Trust me, I would’ve done this with anyone I know. You’re not special.” 

His smirk widens. “So, you’re not jealous?” He rubs the side of his jaw, staring at you, intently, and disgust comes over you like a splash of a wave, soaking you in cold sweat. 

He did it for that very reason—to make you jealous. Walked right past you, just to get a rise out of you. As much as you loved him half an hour ago, that affection turns into dust within you, sprinkling the fruit trees and the berry brushes with its gray smithereens, poisoning them. 

Ouroboros, all over again. Full circle. Anger covers your disgust. 

A voice echoes within the room. Airy and light, as feminine as it is otherworldly, and you know, without a doubt, who it belongs to. It doesn’t suit her, not in the slightest. 

“There you are,” your ex-boyfriend’s companion trails off, the clapping of her flat shoes halting. “Who are you?” 

You only turn your head to the side, signaling to her that you’ve heard her question, because you fix your stare back at Jungkook as you answer it. “It’s not something you should trouble yourself with. Can you give us a minute?” 

You don’t hear any movement, so she must be stubbornly staying where she is. All right, she can join the conversation for all you care. 

When you turn your head back around, you catch stars oozing from Jungkook’s eyes, a conveyance of adornment painting his face in gentle colors that could never be associated with this room. There it is, the face you know, so resplendent of the one you last saw. And it grazes your anger, whispers to it that it was a mistake, a game of pretense, because you’re reverently acknowledged with his soul—you know who he is. While it may explain his fucked-up behavior, you don’t soften. Not at the hint of familiarity. Not even at the hushed hint of your deduction telling you that the reason why he unmasked himself was because you chose him and didn’t run away when his companion spoiled your short time together. 

You don’t soften because you simply don’t want to. 

You don’t want to give in to any means of getting close to him. 

The chapter is finished. You shouldn’t have called him. You should’ve left with Hobi. 

You don’t wish to keep him waiting long, nor do you wish to keep sprawling in your mistake. You pivot, ready to leave, but Jungkook captures your hand. Desirousness palpitates in his eyes as if he, too, needed to tell you something of urgency. 

You’ll hear him out, but that’s the end of it. 

“Can I see you later?” he asks, pupils growing in size until they absorb his chocolate irises, his grip over your hand tight and heated. A wind blows in your orchard, sweeping away all the darkened smithereens left by the bane, freshening you up. 

You don’t really think that’s a good idea. 

“I won’t have time for you later, I’ll be with Hoseok.” 

To Hobi, you won’t lie, but the same can’t be applied to Jungkook. 

His breath hitches in his throat, disappointment weighing him down, the thought of you being intimate with someone who is not him causing his posture to slouch even more. 

But he surprises you with the words he says next. 

“I’ll wait, then. Let me know when you’re alone.” 

And you surprise yourself even more when you nod, turning on your heel and scurrying off to meet Hobi outside. 

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @tkslovechild, @jjk7k, @parkinglot-nights, @bethvar, @Sexytholland, @yoongibaybee, @crystaleah.

© 2024 hoseoksluna, all rights reserved.

BACK to masterlist

[lovewireds]

been meaning to post my designs for these little guys forever. insane splatoon rambling under cut to explain design choices and lore related things ... read my autism boy

btw this is a repost from our art side blog this was written and drawn like months ago <- minorly rewrote some things tho

thx splatoon users drfreeman & drcoolatta for fueling my splatvrai autism brainrot ... i hate u /J

GORDON

idk how to explain this but Theoretical Physicist is inkling coded . maybe its cuz splatoon species social hierarchy

Native ink color is Orange, but he has Dark Brown tentacle roots.

Uses custom weapons to attach in place of his prosthetic; It works best with Splatlings but can be adjusted to attach other weapons.

If the thing above didn't make it obvious, he's a Splatling main. He switches out depending on his mood though.

sighhhhh technically an Agent... stares at the ceiling...Main character...

His arm loss is like pretty much the same as in-canon but it's with the octarian army shrugs. don't ask me why he doesn't just regenerate it cuz hes a squid thats for me to know and you to find out. (get partially sanitized loser)

Born & Raised in Inkopolis pre-splashtags; He wasn't informed of the switch to Splashtags being expected when participating in most activities around Inkadia.

TOMMY

I forgot why i made him an inkling why did i do that. I think it was bc i didnt wanna make them all octolings but i was wrong srry we all make mistakes /hj I ALREADY REDREW HIM ONCE IM NTO DOING IT AGAINNN

Native ink color is orange-brown.

His hat has an eye guard for sensory reasons; He covers up as much of his skin as possible because he doesn't like the feeling of foreign ink on him.

He isn't a specific weapon main, he just uses any long-range weapon to minimize the possibility of getting ink on himself. If he has enough guarding, he prefers to use N-ZAP '89.

Makes his own gear for sensory reasons as well :) It's legal when ur dad's the G-Man.

Exclusively plays in Turf Wars, Anarchy Battles, etc with friends. He hates playing with people he doesn't know.

Born in Splatsville !! He feels like a Splatsville resident. His occupation is resident I cannot imagine him doing Anything

His dad is that creepy curtain in one of flounder heights windows /j

BENR(E)Y

Octoling bc I wanted him to be sanitized :) Other than the visual part of being sanitized, I thought him being clinically dead fits /hj also lore reasons below

Pre-sanitization, his native ink color was blue.

Great Turf War veteran; He didn't do anything in the war itself, he was just enlisted lol. He was primarily security for the Octarian Domes in the years after the war. Yes, that also means he is over 100 years old.

"Raised" (debatably) in Octo Canyon.

E-liter main (4-star Base + 5-star Scope) and avid squidbagger. He also uses any heavyweight weapons (dynamo, tenta, etc)

Absolutely hates working at Grizzco, he only does Turf Wars and Anarchy Battles. He only works at Grizzco during Big Runs. The type of guy that does X battles.

Professional Anarchy / Ranked / X Battler btw. That's literally 90% of what he does.

Got on Gordon's azz over him not having a Splashtag; i wonder what that parallels.

BUBBY

Genuinely don't have a lot to say about his design. He gives off Splatoon 2 Octoling vibes (showoff /hj) also i wanted to make his hair wispy like it should be.

Native ink color is a light blue-gray gradient.

The drawing doesn't give it credit but I swear those are glasses not goggles .. they're opaque-colored slanted oval glasses !! ^_^ u can interpret them as spiked or just eyelashes, both are right.

oh also the text under bubby says "Is Best" in some splatoon font we downloaded awhile ago . i think it was ripped from splatnet

Blaster main. I don't know how to explain this one but it feels right.

helps with the practical Map props (ie ink rails) and with some weapon gear manufacturing ^_^ tech guy

COOMER

Was going to make him an Octoling for the convenience of making his hair curly but i didn't want to make all of them octolings + i think his personality generally fits Inklings more.

Native ink color is an off white gradient.

Slosher main cuz he likes moving his arms. this makes sense to me. Also is a fan of Splatlings and other Shooters.

i felt ill trying to design coomer without making his eyes two lines with eyelids

War Veteran...Stole some octarian tech and got fucked up super limbs. Cyber Inkling stealing from octos !! [inkadia crowd goes wild] /j

anyways outside of the war™ he's a data researcher. just generally. he does shit with splatfests and eggstra work.

If you splashed him with ink he would stand unmoving. He would not shake it off.

DARNOLD

Ok i'll be honest the Octoling choice is primarily bc Octolings have the afro style & inklings have no textured hair styles (i didnt have the energy to design smth that could work) . His personality fits octoling too though :3

Native ink color is red-orange.

The fucked up guy that makes those drink effects people never use ( i use them ... )

He doesn't participate in Turf Wars or Anarchy Battles, but he works some gigs at Grizzco for extra cash every once in awhile !

the type of guy that goes after flyfish cuz no one else will . god bles !!!

not a lot to say about his design & his place in inkadia , it kinda speak for itself . he just wants to get by and make his drinks in peace . #autism ... he is pretty much exactly the same as his canon self

[binniebakery]

​🇦​​🇳​​🇬​​🇪​​🇱​🦢

Bf!Taehyun x Fem!Reader Est. Relationship

♡ Warnings: very suggestive! sir kink, little bit of degradation (reader gets called a whore, angel, etc), little bit of exhibitionism mentioned as well, lmk if i missed something! ♡ A/N: i honestly forgot ppl were asking for more coquette tubatu... so ask and u shall receive smile. i rewrote this so many times too because I've been going through a period where i hate everything i write sdfgddfss so please be kind (i also know nothing about cars.. be warned.)

𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴: "Smarty" by Lana Del Rey

0:09 ━●────────── 4:47 ◁ㅤ ❚❚ ㅤ▷

——-˖⁺. ༶ ❤︎ ⋆˙⊹ 𐦍 ˖⁺. ༶ ❤︎ ⋆˙⊹——-

As stars began to bloom in the night sky, you meticulously glided your lipstick across those pretty plump lips of yours. Your room was filled with the scent of apple cinnamon along with a hint of slight smoke from the iron that you were using to form soft curls into your delicate hair.

Your pretty eyelashes fluttered shut as you hummed the tune of your favorite song, your heart soaring in excitement at the thought of your boyfriend coming over in his new car to take you out on a date.

With hair soft and neat, pretty heels in perfect combination with your lacey mini skirt and top, and your nails freshly done in pretty white and pink details, you sprinkle yourself in your favorite perfume. Fresh vanilla, something your boyfriend just couldn’t resist when you were in the vicinity.

A buzz from your phone interrupts your thoughts and you look over to see your boyfriend’s name displayed across your screen.

“Tyunnie!” You smile, your voice cheery as you practically jump in your chair from the excitement of knowing he was on the other line.

“Hi angel, I’m here. You ready?” Taehyun’s low voice mixed with the sound of his car engine as it rumbled in the background.

“Course I am! Coming out right now!” You chirp as you grab your purse, the sound of your expensive heels clicking against the floor while you skip out of your room.

“Good girl, see you right now then.” Taehyun ends the call with a click.

Taehyun is already standing outside of his brand-new car by the time you reach him. He watches you with a slight smirk, eyes following your every movement as you gracefully make your way to his car.

A black Porsche. A perfect match to your boyfriend’s polished and sleek appearance.

“Like my new car baby?” Taehyun tilts his head, his voice a saccharine tone.

“It’s pretty, looks expensive..” You stand in front of your boyfriend, letting him wrap his arms around your waist as he pulls you in.

“Yeah, you think so?… It’ll never be as pretty as my angel though” Taehyun mumbles into your neck, leaving a trail of soft kisses from under your ear to your collarbone.

Your breath hitches as you feel his teeth nip pretty purple flowers onto your delicate skin.

“Mm, tyun wait– let’s wait till we get to the d– drive in..”

You attempt to lean away, but the way his strong hands firmly hold you against him has your stomach tied in knots. Taehyun takes in the scent of your sweet perfume and smiles.

“Smell so good I could take you right now baby”

You let out a whine and Taehyun takes it as his sign to pull away before he gets carried away. Your boyfriend grins at the way your face is flushed, lips formed into the cutest pout.

His pretty, pretty girl.

Taehyun opens the door to his car and you slide into your spot as passenger princess, taking in the black leather interior and fresh scent of a brand new car. Your cute little heels were a sweet contrast to the dark aesthetic you were sitting in.

“You ready to see how fast this goes, angel?” he tilts his head towards you as the engine of his car purrs.

Taking your doe eyes off of the mirror, you bat your lashes as you turn to him.

“I’ll go anywhere you take me, sir.”

.⋆｡°♡

Your boyfriend always spoiled you, stopping by the nearest convenience store to buy you that same cherry slush you always begged for. After all, the cherry-flavored make-out session that followed was addicting to him, licking your red-stained lips in the back of his car as his strong arms lifted you into his lap. Your laced skirt riding up giving him the best view of your thighs, he always found himself gripping onto them while he made a mess of your makeup.

Every Friday night he’d pick you up and take you wherever you wanted to go, his treat.

If you were being honest, you had no idea what movie was being shown tonight, it didn’t matter as you had other ideas, and of course– your cunning boyfriend always picked up on anything you had planned.

As Taehyun parked his car towards the back of the lot, your eyes scanned around the area searching for any possible unwanted viewers. Luckily for you, the nearest car was quite a distance away.

“You finally got your nails redone, was afraid the money I gave you went towards something else.” Taehyun chuckles, taking your dainty hand in his large one. He gently holds your fingertips as he admires the details.

“Of course, I got them done just for you. Do you like them?” You smile warmly.

“Did you now?” Taehyun reaches for the dainty necklace hanging around your neck and gently tugs you towards him. Your body leans towards him over the console, exposed thighs trembling from how soft yet rough he was being with you.

The movie hadn’t even started yet.

“A-- ah yeah.. just for you..” You blurb out, face now flushed from the sudden closeness between you and your boyfriend.

“Just for me..” He repeats, his voice low and sultry as his face holds an unreadable expression. Taehyun’s eyes are scanning your entire outfit now– and you don’t miss the way his dark eyes hold a deep hunger as they trail over your curves.

“C’mere angel.”

Taehyun scoots his chair backward and you’ve never swung your body over to the driver’s side so quickly in your life.

You settle yourself into his lap and you can practically already feel how hard your boyfriend is against you. He wraps his arms around you and pulls you in, his chest pressing against yours.

“Such a pretty girl..” he tilts your chin to look up at him and the way your lips form into the cutest pout, the way your sweet eyes stare at him like a deer caught in headlights, so innocent and pure– it has him sliding his fingers under your skirt in between your thighs.

You feel yourself shiver and you can’t help but bury your head into his neck as he traces circles into the delicate lace of your panties.

“Not wearing shorts? Such a whore..”

You unwillingly let out a soft whimper at his remark, and Taehyun lets out a mean chuckle.

“You really are a naughty girl, aren’t you..? C’mon say it.”

“Mmh..y- yeah” you stutter, “I- I’m a naughty girl tyun.”

Taehyun pulls his fingers away from your aching core and the whine you let out is so embarrassingly loud you’re thankful nobody’s parked near your boyfriend's car.

“That’s sir to you, angel.”

[writingwithfolklore]

Your Hook

                Recently I shared my first 30 pages with my mentor, and now I’m sharing her advice to all of you. (This is part 3! Find part 2 here, and part 1 here). Her biggest advice was to change my very first line.

                I already knew that the first line was one of the most important lines of the whole book. It had to be the big hook to the novel, the reason to read to the second sentence, and then the third, and then so on until (hopefully) I’ve hooked my reader all the way to the end.

                However, I missed an important detail about it. The hook isn’t just about being interesting—it’s about conveying your main character right from moment one.

                Let’s take a look at some first sentences from a few books I’ve enjoyed recently:

“Mom is dying, and we both know it.” – A Wilderness of Stars by Shea Ernshaw

“Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love.” – The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

“They say you can spot a true Shennong-Shi by their hands—palms coloured by the stain of the earth, fingertips scarred from thorns, a permanent crust of soil and blood darkening the crescents of their nails. I used to look at my hands with pride. Now, all I can think is, These are the hands that buried my mother.”- A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin (The spelling on this one is a bit off, I don’t have the right characters on my keyboard. Apologies.)

“The night harrow found me, I was digging up a fox’s bones.” – These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall

                What do they all have in common? They immediately introduce the main character’s conflict, be it internal, external, or both. They draw us in right away by saying, “this person’s life isn’t perfect—here’s why.”

                You may remember when we talked about internal/external conflict in my Character is Plot post, except I called it Goal and Objective (respectively). These are the elements that make up your character’s journey, which is the main plot, so that’s what your first couple lines are for.

                Once I rewrote my first line to match this lesson, it was immediately more compelling. That’s the whole point of a hook.

                Good luck!

[sugar-phoenix]

Death of a Cowboy

synopsis: Before Boothill became Boothill, he was a cowboy on the planet of Aeragan-Epharshel, living with his foster caretakers. Everything was simple and perfect. That is, until the IPC descended from the skies. Alternatively: I rewrote Boothill's lore, expanded it, and made it a lot more devastating. tws: child death, trauma tags: boothill, boothill has a daughter, I gave boothill a name, heavy angst, trauma a/n: 2.5k words, get your tissues ready.

ao3 link here! PART 2 LINK HERE

The cowboy took a sip out of the malt fruit juice in his hand. Overhead, million of stars twinkled in the sky. He laid back, soaking in the night.

The cool wind gently bit at his skin. There was nothing but the sound of the leaves rustling, and the chorus of crickets in the grass. He breathed deeply, feeling the air fill his lungs, and the blood pumping beneath his hand which rested lazily on his chest.

The years had passed since the cowboy had been taken in by Graey and Nick, and although people had come and gone, and his caretakers had grown old with age, this planet refused to change. He was certain that no matter where he went, no matter if he decided to stay or leave, the leafy trees, the green grass, the burbling river… it would all be here forever.

A sound rose up from the night, one that was unfamiliar yet all too familiar. The cowboy got up to investigate it, and as he got closer, he realized what it was. He swore under his breath.

“Is that a baby?”

In the grass, nestled within a box with blankets, a baby wailed. He stared at it, unsure of what to do. Nick and Graey had picked up many children over the years, but since this cowboy had been one of the youngest (and quite honestly completely disinterested in the whole childcare thing) he had little to no experience or direction. He stood there and stared at the baby that was still wailing, frozen in place. Something within him compelled him to pick up the bundle and soothe it, and he followed that urge, raising the child to his chest.

“Shh, shh, there there little guy. It’s okay.”

Miraculously, the baby stopped crying, and looked up at him with bright eyes, cooing curiously. In the moonlight, he saw a note was attached to the bundle, and he picked it up to read it.

Please take care of my Hannah.

“Ah, sorry, little girl. You’re not a boy after all,” the cowboy whispered.

The baby started wailing again.

“Ah sh— I’m sorry! I’m sorry! How was I supposed to know you were a girl and not a guy?”

“Wes!”

A call came from the porch, and the cowboy turned around.

“Wes, is that a baby?”

“I don’t know, Nick. Someone left her out in the cold night like this.” Wes shouted back, his voice competing with the crying child in his arms.

“Well bring her in already. She’ll catch a cold if she’s out there any longer.”

A cold? Wes snapped up, quickly grabbing her box and rushing into the house.

Inside, Nick cleared the table.

“Set ‘er down here.”

Graey was busy whittling away at a block of wood. Too many times Wes’ siblings had tried to get him to give it up as he got older, fearing for the health of his hands, but he steadfastly refused.

“If there’s anything I’m going to enjoy in my old age, it’ll be my woodworkin.’ So let me do it until I can’t do it no more,” was what he always said.

Wes laid the baby down on the table.

“Is she going to get a cold?” Wes asked.

“No, no. She’s probably fine,” Nick said, waving his hand dismissively. He held a bottle of warm milk and handed it to Wes.

“Here, Wesson. You feed her.”

“Who, me? No!—” Wes started to protest, but he could see that Nick was not about to budge. He always used Wes’ full name when he meant business.

Sighing, Wes picked up the baby again, cradling it in the crook of his arm. These movements were stilted, stiff.

He’d seen Nick and Graey do the same thing many times. Now he was copying their movements and praying it would be enough.

The baby stopped crying when he picked her up, and that gave him enough confidence to continue.

“There, there. That’s right. Come drink your milk.”

Wes picked up the bottle of milk and held it to the baby’s mouth.

“There now, drink up.”

The baby did not drink up. It only looked at him blankly, then at the bottle, and then wailed again.

“Hey, hey, the bottle’s right here lil’ missus.” He continued to hold it in front of the baby’s face, but she only wailed louder and pushed it away.

“She’s not latching on,” he turned to the two elderly men in the room, who were watching him flounder with amusement.

“She doesn’t know it’s food, Wes. Squeeze a few drops in her mouth.” Nick took a leisurely sip from his cup of malt.

Wes did so, just as Graey chimed in with, “Just be careful not to choke her.” Wes looked up at him in horror.

“Choke? Couldn’t you have said that sooner?”

Graey only laughed out loud.

“Relax, Wes. Look, she’s drinkin’ now,” Nick pointed out.

Wes looked down. And true to Nick’s words the baby had latched on, suckling with all the ferocity she could muster. He let out a sigh of relief.

Wes watched as she nearly drank the whole thing, her red lips working the nipple of the bottle.  Like with the air in his lungs and the pumping of his blood, he felt something new bloom in his heart. Something unexpected.

“I think that baby’s yours, Wes.”

Wes looked up at Graey.

“Wh-what? No—”

“No, it’s too late, I’m afraid. You’ve got that look in your eye.”

“Same one we had when we found you, Wes,” Nick chimed in.

“But I— I can’t take care of a damn baby!”

“Damb.”

Wes looked down at the baby in his arms, startled.

“What was that now, lil’ missus?”

“Dammb,” the baby said proudly, then blew a raspberry at him.

“Damn,” the cowboy repeated reverently. “You’ve got some big words coming out of your mouth there, Hannah.”

Behind him, the two older cowboys smiled at each other.

☆ ☆ ☆

“Daddy.”

“Just a lil’ longer, lil’ missus. I got your guitar ready for you soon.”

The baby had grown up fast. She had taken her first steps only a few weeks ago, and with the gentle support of Wes they all watched as she made her way over to Nick’s guitar. It was often that the sound of his playing soothed her to sleep, but now she seemed to express a real interest in the instrument, giggling and shrieking as she plucked its strings. It wasn’t very long afterwards that Wes found himself asking Graey for woodworking tips. He’d never been big on the trade, but the idea of making a small guitar for Hannah to play with on her own had taken him by the throat. Graey happily complied, and now, a few days later, Wes was working on the last step: threading and tuning the strings. Hannah sat on the floor of the small workshop next to him, playing with her wooden animals. She rarely ever left his side. She squealed happily as she knocked a wooden cow and a wooden horse together, then raised the cow into the air. Graey had whittled toys for her,  and the cow one was her favorite out of all of them. She lovingly referred to it as “Beth.”

Wes looked down at her, smiling. He never thought of fostering a child, even in his wildest dreams.

“But that’s the funny part about stuff like this,” he heard Graey’s voice in his head. “They just happen, and all of a sudden you’re doin’ stuff you never would have done in a million years.”

“Here ya go, Hannah,” Wes said, crouching down to her level. “Here’s a guitar made just for you.”

Hannah squealed gleefully as Wes handed the guitar to her. She slapped at its strings, laughing louder with every sound it made.

“Wesson!” A shout came from outside.

Wes leapt up from the floor, hand to the revolver at his hip. He rushed out to the porch to find Nick looking upwards.

Following his gaze, he found a fleet of spaceships were descending from the skies.

“Newcomers,” Nick said. “And they sure as hell don’t look friendly either.”

Wes would come to see how true Nick’s words were.

☆ ☆ ☆

The men in black from the sky had no regards for the inhabitants of the planet they were invading. Wes watched over the weeks as families were uprooted from their homes simply because they existed over deposits of black ore, and men had died for trying to take back what their fathers had built. They wheeled in excavators, started carving into the earth, marring it with reckless abandon. The so-called Interastral Peace Corporation did nothing in the name of peace. Rather, they saw the planet as a fruit that was ripe for harvesting, and the people who lived on it as obstacles, pests to drive out and eradicate.

Their “negotiations” were rather demands that the natives leave their homes immediately and never come back. They were treated as lowlife savages, incompetents.

And at times, it truly felt that way. The IPC’s advanced weapons and turrets far overpowered the simple revolvers and horses that the people of Aeragan-Epharshel used. No matter how many men banded against them, it was a massacre each and every time. One that Wesson had to watch over and over again, as he outlived much of his friends and siblings.

Graey, Nick, Hannah, and the rest of the ranch were much further inland, so they were thankfully away from the struggle and bloodshed. At least for now.

Wes had joined the guerilla warfare against the IPC — but the approach they were using was ineffective, and they were only losing more lives by the day.

The only way to make it all end, he realized, was to go straight to the top. Deal with the man behind it all. And so, Wes schemed. He stole a Synesthesia Beacon from the cargo hold of a train, used it so that his words became theirs. Then he snuck onto the mothership, wearing a uniform he’d stolen off somewhere else.

Wes’ nerves were taut as he made his way through the ship. IPC employees casually walked past him, some laughing and joking with their colleagues as if there wasn’t a thing wrong in the world.  Every so often he’d tell himself not to reflexively put a hand on the revolver at his waist. He told himself to act like he belonged. To act like he owned his ship and everyone in it. After all it’s what they were doing. It was only fair to infiltrate them with their own tactics.

After what felt like hours, Wes reached the restricted area. The door to the core cabin was blocked by two guards, and he knew there were only more inside waiting for him.

“Hey,” one of them said, “You can’t come this— ”

He and his partner were shot through the head. Wes moved quickly now, since the guards inside would no doubt be alerted.

There were only three more guards beyond the doors, which were quickly dealt with, and then there was a long corridor that led to the core cabin. Wes sneaked up, slowing down when he heard voices.

He listened with disgust as they talked about Aeragan-Epharshel, talked about the beautiful planet he called home as thought it was nothing but a chip to gain for their own competitive advantage. He listened as they referred to his people as uncivilized savages, like as if they hadn’t been doing perfectly well before they descended down.

“We are running out of time,” one of them said. “You are permitted to use military force and bring civilization to this world.

And then, “Initiate the cannons. Wipe them all out.”

There is a level of terror that grips a man, that tells him that he is about to lose everything. In that moment, Wes ran. He forgot all about killing the man in charge, forgot about his schemes, forgot about ending it all.

As he bolted through the ship, as employees laughed and joked around him, his stomach twisting itself tighter as he felt and heard the rumble of what could only be cannon fire, he had one thought running through his mind. A plea.

Please let them be safe. Oh, please let them be safe. Please.

Outside, terrible thunder shook the sky as hellfire rained from above. Wes had no regards for his life as he ran through the crowd of screaming people, shells exploding left and right, as cowboys died around him. He ran through the plain, across the fields, back to where he was raised, the only home he’d ever known.

As he got closer, he saw smoke.

“No. No, no, no, no!”

Craters scarred the field around him. Where there was supposed to be a ranch and a house, there was nothing but burning rubble. Everywhere Wes looked, there was fire and wreckage.

“Hannah,” he shouted, the smoke drying out his lungs. “HANNAH!”

He didn’t hear her. Didn’t hear her soft angelic voice calling back to him, didn’t hear a cry or a scream.

“Nick! Graey!” He screamed their names until he choked on smoke, tried to dig through the charred wooden beams where his house stood until the fire seared his hands and he was forced to back away.

No response. No remains. Nothing.

The cannon fire had stopped by now, leaving pure and utter destruction in its wake.

Wes sank to his knees.

He took a breath. It was full of smoke. And then he took another.

And then he screamed. Screamed into the fire and smoke. Screamed for his friends. Screamed for the two men who were like fathers to him.

Screamed for his daughter, the small pure being who had taken his whole heart with her.

They didn’t deserve to die like this.

His scream cut out as he choked, this time on his tears. He crumpled to the ground, sobbing.

Nobody deserved to die like this.

She didn’t deserve to die like this.

He sobbed and sobbed, and for how long he didn’t know. He didn’t care if the IPC found him. Hell, they could shoot him dead if they liked. It made no difference to him. He had lost everything.

When he stopped crying, when the pain had dulled to an empty numbness, he closed his eyes. Soaked in his surroundings.

The heat from the fire threatened to melt his skin off. The air was thick and heavy with smoke. The only sound was the crackling of the wood, the trees, and the grass burning.

It was a stark contrast to what he experienced months before.

This irreversible landscape… it had been changed.

No.

Ruined. Permanently.

This wasn’t his home. Not anymore.

And someone needed to pay for it. For all of it.

Slowly, painfully, he stood up, his breaths shuddering.

As he looked around one last time, his eyes caught sight of something lying on the ground.

It was a small wooden cow, slightly charred.

He picked it up, and held it in his hand.

“This is for you, Hannah. Don’t you worry, Daddy will make those bastards pay for what they did to you.”

He slipped the toy into his pocket.

With long striding steps, he walked away from everything he had ever known, his unadulterated fury the only thing moving him forward.

LINK TO PART 2

dividers by cafekitsune! link to gif post

[mariacallous]

Content warning: This article includes scenes of physical and sexual harassment and assault.

The trouble in Antarctica started in Boston. It was August 1999, and Stanford geologist Jane Willenbring was then a 22-year-old self-described “country bumpkin.” She had just arrived to start her master’s in earth science at Boston University. As an undergrad with an oboe scholarship at North Dakota State University, she’d studied beetle fossils found in Antarctica and learned how, millions of years ago, the now frozen continent once pooled with freshwater lakes. “That’s not so different from the conditions we might expect in the future,” she says. She wanted to explore this critical science. “It seemed really important for future global climate change,” she says.

Of all the geologists, few were more renowned than the one Willenbring had gone to Boston to study under: 37-year-old David Marchant. Marchant, a scruffy professor at BU, was a rock star of rock study. He was part of a research group that rewrote Antarctic history by discovering evidence of volcanic ash, which showed that Antarctica had been stable for millions of years and was not as prone to cycles of warming and cooling as many thought. To honor his achievements, the US Board on Geographic Names approved the naming of a glacier southwest of McMurdo Station, the main research base on Antarctica, after him.

Willenbring says Marchant had insisted on picking her up at the airport, an offer she thought was nice but strange. It got stranger when he started making her feel bad for his gesture, which she hadn’t asked for. “I’m missing a Red Sox game,” she recalls him chiding her. “You really should have picked a better time to fly.” He asked whether she had a boyfriend, how often she saw him, and whether she knew anyone in Boston or would be alone. In a few months, she’d be heading with him on a research trip to Antarctica and the region with his big chunk of namesake ice. “It was almost like a pickup line,” she recalls, “‘I have a glacier.’”

But it’s what happened in the glacier’s shadow that led Willenbring to take on Marchant and become the first to expose the horrors faced by women at the bottom of the world. A report released in August 2022 by the National Science Foundation, the main agency funding Antarctic research, found that 59 percent of women at McMurdo and other field stations run by the US Antarctic Program said they’d experienced sexual harassment or assault. A central employer, Leidos, holds a $2.3 billion government contract to manage the workplaces on the ice. One woman alleged that a supervisor had slammed her head into a metal cabinet and then attacked her sexually. Britt Barquist, a former fuel foreman at McMurdo, says she had been forced to work alongside a supervisor who had sexually harassed her. “What was really traumatic was telling people, ‘I’m afraid of this person,’” she says, “and nobody cared.”

With a congressional investigation underway, Willenbring is sharing her full story for the first time with the hope of inspiring others to come forward and claim the justice they’ve long deserved. But even now, decades after she first got into Marchant’s car, she can’t help asking herself how, and why, the nightmare happened in the first place. “You never hear a women-in-science panel where people are talking about stuff like I do,” she says, “because they’re smart enough to fucking run.”

[breath-of-fresh-grantaire]

Marius felt no desire to retreat; he turned towards Enjolras, and his voice burst forth with a vibration which came from a quiver of his very being:--

"Aight, fam, let’s break this down ‘cause I’m about to drop some truth. No disrespect to France, you feel me? But mixing Napoleon in with her history ain't slapping her, it's elevating her. So, let's debate this. I just pulled up, but for real, y’all got me shook. Like, where we at? Who’s who? Who’s popping, and who even am I in all this? Let’s talk about the Emperor—y’all be out here calling him Buonaparte like you’re royal or somethin’. My granddad would do you one better, he’d hit you with “Buonaparte” too. Thought you were all young and lit? So where’s your hype at? What’s good with that energy? Who are you backing if not the Emperor? And what’s even more to want? If you ain't rocking with him, then who’s your “great” man? Bro had it all, no cap. The dude was a whole package—mind, body, and spirit. He wrote codes like Justinian, ruled like Caesar, and when he talked, it was like lightning mixed with thunder. He didn’t just make history, he was history. His bulletins? Straight up epics, like the Iliad. Dude mixed Newton’s math with Muhammad’s metaphors, and in the East, his name’s still ringing like the pyramids. At Tilsit? He taught emperors how to flex. Laplace couldn’t even with him at the Academy of Sciences. He rolled with the top lawyers, kept it sidereal with astronomers, and, like Cromwell, he was out here flipping deals for curtains. Bro saw everything, knew everything—and still had time to vibe with his kid. Then, when Europe was shook, they all stopped and tuned in. Armies rolled out, artillery booming, cavalry on the hunt—thrones were rattling. Maps were shifting like they were in a video game. When that sword came out, you could feel the whole world hold its breath. And there he was, lighting up the horizon with flames in his eyes, wings spread—his army and the old guard—and boom! He was the OG war angel, out here changing the game."

All held their peace, and Enjolras bowed his head. Silence always produces somewhat the effect of acquiescence, of the enemy being driven to the wall. Marius continued with increased enthusiasm, and almost without pausing for breath:--

"Let’s keep it 100, bruh. Can you imagine the vibes? For a nation like France to be the empire of a dude like that? That’s a whole flex! And when France adds its own fire to Napoleon's genius? That’s next-level. He was built different, fam. The way he showed up and straight-up ran the game, marching through cities, owning the capitals like they were nothing, turning his soldiers into kings, and flipping dynasties like a deck of cards. This man didn’t just play the game—he rewrote it, all while moving like a boss.

Every time he made a move, it was like he was holding the sword of God in his hand, sending shockwaves across Europe. The dude wasn’t just one man; he was the GOAT combo of Hannibal, Caesar, and Charlemagne. He wasn’t just leading a country; he was the reason your day started with news of another victory, like “Yo, we just won that battle!”

He had the cannon at the Invalides literally waking up the whole nation, blasting out names like Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram—those words weren’t just history, they were legends that lit up the sky. Every time one of his victories hit, it was like stars exploding in the heavens, bro. He made France a whole empire, like the Roman Empire's cool little brother, but with extra swag.

This dude had the world in his hands—his army was flying across the globe like eagles off a mountain, dominating, striking like lightning, flexing glory. France wasn’t just a country; it was a nation of gods, rolling through history with that Titan energy. He conquered the world—not just by winning, but by dazzling. This is the stuff legends are made of, and honestly, what could be better than that?"

"To be skibidi," said Combeferre.

[barid-bel-medar]

I would like to know what almost went into the most recent chapter of FtE. I loved the chapter even though I didn't comment. I try to comment and then I wind up staring at the comment bar going what do I say and then I don't comment i_i

Details that almost made it in/why something happened:

Originally Bakugou and Momo were supposed to interact, with the plan later on being for Momo to offhandedly mention that 'oh met this kid name so and so during work study week' and changed my mind, finding it better that Bakugou only saw Momo from a distance, so to say.

Originally the fight with Overhaul was going to come from Izuku's POV rather than Mirio's. Mirio and Nighteye weren't supposed to get POVs but then they had shit to say. I will also say I had *not* originally planned on having Mirio overhear Nighteye in context of OFA, but deemed this a good plan and the best means of justifying 'hey why would Mirio take two kids out on patrol undersupervised?' Since I do feel the likelihood that provisional licensed heroes are allowed to take interns who *lack* licenses out on patrols low.

Monoma Aoi was supposed to make an appearance. She was the originally planned on figure glaring at Gran Torino's shoulder at Nighteye, but I changed my mind. As is, I've decided to leave her as a background reference figure, with a different character taking a planned appearance of her's

Stain was always going to get shot in the ass.

I actually almost completely rewrote the chapter. The original version had different POV structures, including a plan of having a Katsuki POV break between everyone's internship POVs but changed my mind. I felt it worked better to give him only the small one he got and in a sense the difference between a student following his mom around for a week in a civilian job versus the 1-A crew. I will say the next chapter will be much more Bakugou centric.

Shouto is right in his POV that Endeavor is brooding on something. He's brooding on Legacy's speech and her point about 'this is not a game, and we are more than numbers' since well.... her comment is making it roll around in the back of his mind his obsessiveness over a *number* rather than what he's actually *doing*. So that also is partially why he says what he does to Ochako in her POV.

Though he did make her the Sports Festival offer due to being genuinely impressed with how she did.

The original chapter title was 'Teenagers Scare the Living Shit Out of Me' but I didn't feel it fit when I finally finished the chapter.

I'm getting really amused by people not picking up on the second pop culture reference in why I called Dumas Corporation that. Like the boys won't from an in-universe perspective but if you think on it I hope you guys guess from an out of verse standpoint.

I had way too much fun having Monoma and Izuku hit the nail on the head with Shigaraki.

1-A is in fact cursed.

Star Heart only was sent back to Europe (in particular the jail she's in, the Inferno, is located in Italy and yes it's the exact reference you're thinking of leave me alone I like Dante) because she is an EU citizen, is already *convicted* in the EU and frankly the HPSC doesn't want to deal with her. The way she was kept in the short time she was in Tartarus before transfer was a result of them not being entirely sure how to handle her Quirk if tried using it in her cell. I do seriously wonder how in canon Overhaul would have been kept contained if he still had arms .

[kalinara]

So I had a thought about Scott/Jean vs. Logan/Jean ship dynamics, in the 616 universe and I felt the need to share it. (Without scans for once because I am not at my primary computer. Alas.)

Disclaimer: I am a Scott/Jean fan (I'm sure anyone who's been to my blog is shocked) and I've never really seen the appeal of Logan/Jean outside of a throuple context. That bias will likely come through in this thought.

But anyway, something I find really interesting is how Scott/Jean and Logan/Jean kind of reverse a very common YA fantasy love triangle dynamic.

I mean, reverse is kind of a funny thing to say here, because I think both ships long predate the kind of YA fiction trends that I'm talking about, but it's still kind of funny.

Anyway, this is the trend that I'm thinking about: in many YA fantasy books, there is a female protagonist that is somehow caught in two worlds. Maybe she's secretly a faerie raised by humans. Or she's half elf, half human. But raised human. Basically, the idea is that the female character is an ordinary human girl until something happens that reveals that she has this whole other magical life and potential.

And in many of these books, there is something resembling a love triangle. The girl's got a boyfriend who is an ordinary human. He's in love with her as a human and helps her keep connected to her human side. He's usually conventional and a bit boring. Then there's the bad boy magic guy. He's the one who encourages her to embrace her elf/faerie/whatever magic side. Go wild with your sparkly chaotic magic.

Inevitably the boring dude loses out to the bad boy, because really, there's no competition.

But that's why Scott/Jean and Logan/Jean are kind of funny from that perspective. Because in this badly imagined comparison, Jean is of course, that ordinary girl. Now, she IS a mutant, so she's already not completely baseline ordinary. But we could look at the Phoenix as kind of her whole magical other self.

Scott, of course, is the conventional bland original love interest whose known her since her youth. Logan, of course, is the bad boy, wild guy she meets as an adult.

But the actual dynamics of the relationship are the OPPOSITE of the YA cliches.

Because Logan, for all his wildness, is a pretty conventional romantic. Oh, he's got the dramatic self-loathing and pining, but generally, he's a "bring flowers to the lady" kind of guy. At least with her. She's "Jeannie". She's normal and kind and sweet and she brings out the best in him and makes him want to be a better guy.

I don't know if we ever really get a clear idea of Logan's feelings about Jean AS the Phoenix in 616. Probably because back during the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga, Jean/Logan wasn't really a thing. He liked her, but she seemed primarily disgusted by him. (This got retroactively remedied in some of the X-Men classic stories that rewrote a few of those scenes to add some pining and reciprocity. But that's after the fact.) Basically, during the time when we were supposed to see Jean and the Phoenix as essentially aspects of the same person, Logan wasn't a romantic factor at all.

By the time Jean/Logan was a thing, the Phoenix was narratively a separate entity, and Logan's never particularly been in favor of it. He is, however, very into Jean as the girl next door. The human side of her.

But Scott, on the other hand, has always been MASSIVELY into Jean as the Phoenix. He never really seemed that put off by the Dark Phoenix. He was happy to propose marriage just before the Shi'ar decided to poke their heads in and make everything more difficult, and that was AFTER the woman nearly killed them all and ate a star.

There's at least one point in an X-Factor issue, when Scott's admittedly running very hot and cold (mostly due to the Maddie issue), where Jean outright accuses him of loving the Phoenix more than he loves her.

Claremont's had that moment of connection at the orphanage, and we've had at least a couple of Phoenix comes back stories that involved her directly coming for him (Endsong was my favorite. Scott gets her to back down by having Kitty's hand phased through his chest. Such a stupid fucking plan, Scott).

And there was a scene that, back when it came out, got Scott a fair bit of criticism. In New X-Men, to Emma, he vents something about Jean's wardrobe, the mom sweaters verses the Black Queen's corset. Now this was Scott at his most traumatized and self-destructive/self-loathing. I don't think he was literally saying that he preferred her when she was being mentally influenced (especially since she almost killed him at the time). I THINK it was more of an indicator of the out of control way he was feeling, and how her attempt to project normalcy and repress the wilder/more passionate/more powerful aspects of herself were something that he felt very alienated from..

(There were a lot of interesting Jean-and-Phoenix elements going on in that run, alongside Scott's trauma, and Emma's...many issues. It's worth a reread, though not all of it is a comfortable reread..)

There's a reason that the "psychic affair" started with Emma wearing the guise of the Phoenix.

And of course, the more powerful Jean is, the more Scott seems to be into it. This is the man who has, more than once, used "my wife could kick your ass" to win a confrontation. He's clearly turned on when she ignites a star.

It's not that Scott is ONLY into the Phoenix though. He loves Jean too, and we've seen that 100 times over in the 90s and in Krakoa and how they interact on a day to day basis. But to him, her power is an important part of her. And it's hot when she embraces it.

I feel like this may be the fundamental reason that Jean/Logan never really took off as a pairing, even when there was ample opportunity (except in the context of polyamory). Because for all that Logan has that bad boy sex appeal, he doesn't really work as a power fantasy. Not every girl is into civilizing the wild man, after all. Some really want to cut loose with them instead.

And well, when that's not an option, a quiet conventional man who'll happily hold your flower while YOU cut loose, that's got its appeal too.

[holleighgram]

So, go easy on me. This is my first time singing/recording/editing/mixing anything-- let alone posting it, but I really wanted to participate in March Caprice this year. I wouldn't have been able to even do this much without the incredible @projectdestati lending me their sensational talent for the accompaniment.

I hope one day to re:record this piece sometime down the road when I've got a few more collaborators (and can afford a decent microphone), Hopfully by then, I'll learn how to mix, or can afford to pay someone to mix it into an actual track. For now, there are 2 versions-- one with lots of nerdy call backs and the other that's a little more simple and .... tidy.

All that to say,

I rewrote the lyrics to Hikari to reflect the themes of Kingdom Hearts a bit better. Hikari has always hit a bit different than Simple and Clean, for me and I just wanted to sing along, so I made these lyrics. Hope you enjoy :)

Lyrics:

Been having dreams, At least it seems That way… How much is real Of what I feel And say?

Was I reckless diving in so deep and believing you would follow me, And dive in after? Was I wrong all along ? You and me weren't meant to be :( How can I face what lies ahead? How is this the path that my heart led?

And now dawn is breaking and soon you’ll be waking This that path I am taking Will lead me back to you. Hearing the dark call, I’ll fight it with my all Keep shining bright, Cause you’re my guiding light.

~Break~

Now back to back, We walk our paths, my friend But when we meet My hearts will beat again

Never thought that it would end like this-- With you and me facing the great abyss Though doors are closing Pick a side, you and I, we’ll get by Cause you’re next to me, we are the key we always were. Take my hand, And we’ll go together

~Break~

And now dawn is breaking and soon you’ll be waking This promise we are making Is like the one we made while Watching the stars fall-- I promised you my all. I’ll stand and fight For you, my guiding light

Slowly, The pieces come falling into place, and we’ve landed standing hand in hand. Regardless of heartless, I know that we’re prepared for this fight. You’re my guiding light.

Slowly, The pieces come falling into place, and we’ve landed standing hand in hand. Regardless of Darkness, I know one day we'll set this all right. You’re my guiding light.

[darth-noona]

episode 8 spoilers below the cuff cuz i’m going insane

Okay okay okay. First off the slow kyber crystal bleed of Sol’s lightsaber after Osha kills him? A stuff of Star Wars dream baby. Beautifully executed. Insane brain Lesley Headland to break the saber so that Osha’s hand was touching it when she succumbed to her emotions. You can honestly tell this woman loves this franchise so much.

Am I sad Sol died? Yes absolutely. Do I believe there is a chance he might be still alive? Yes, but I’m delulu and I love Lee Jung Jae so we move on. But if he is actually dead, what a cool arc. Like he died at the hands of the padawan he lied to and was toxically obsessed with. This really is the story of the Sith, not some redemption of the Jedi. And I fucking love it.

Okay now to the good stuff. All the Oshamir. So yeah I think some of this makes sense that it was originally planned for Season 2. I think it would have all hit harder if we’d had a whole season of them first. BUT I also think it was the right move with their episode lengths and Disney’s tendency to cancel shows. Cuz like Manny Jacinto’s arms will renew this season. They just will. Like Leslye understood the assignment when she said she rewrote the whole season after seeing Manny’s screen test.

But even though I would have liked more time with the ship to build them up to this point, man did they convince me that these are star crossed dyad evil partners in crime. Like Osha’s betrayal feels so tangible with Sol’s lies, I totally understand why she’d dark side over this.

And if we remember that Osha and Mae are two halves of one person, I like the idea that they have very opposite personalities. Mae just wants a family and was pursuing revenge only because there was no other option. Now that she has an option, she’s like “nah I’m out, I don’t want to anymore let’s actually find a way to solve this that lets me keep my sister and have a family again”.

Whereas Osha has been lied to for a decade. Manipulated to think that her sister killed her whole family, all for the “greater good” and Sol’s saviour complex stuff. So it stands to reason that she feels no hope for regaining some family or trust in the Jedi. And the only thing she can do? Save her sister from Qimir and take her place, while also exploring the Force in a way no one let her do before. And I love it.

Last thoughts: seeing new sides of Qimir is so fun. How petrified he was when she had the helmet on. How scared he looked of Venestra. The little look he made when he found out Osha and Mae are the same person. I can’t wait to see Manny absolutely smash a season 2 arc.

Renew the Acolyte! Please please please!

[bluestrawberrybunny]

For Luigi.

How was it when taking your brother's place in the Puzzlevision episodes remakes of Mario's Mysteries (Luigis Riddles) and Scooby Mario (Luigi), that took place when trying to get 5 star goal to beat Exubus? (Slightly chuckling) And.... who was the meat mallet and/or similar item?

Luigi: Uh… it was weird. Being in a dog body for those two episodes took a lot of getting used to. Made it a little difficult to film… Mr. Puzzles did put a lot of thought into it so that we could stop Exubus, even if it was a little pointless in the end. He thought back to the criticism that kept the originals from earning 5 stars and took those into account too. He also changed things a bit more in order to better fit my personality, which I think might have harmed the episodes more than it helped. Everyone prefers the originals, as do I. But it was funny that Mario was jealous of the whole thing. He really liked those roles then too.

Luigi: As for the meat mallet, no one took that place. It was my favorite role, even if I was brainwashed at the time, so Mr. Puzzles rewrote that part.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

can you explain why you dont believe the titanic switch conspiracy theory? didnt they find a propeller with "olympic" written on it amongst the wreckage?

i feel like the phrase "you just activated my trap card" applies here but i have also never watched yu-gi-oh so dont fully know the correct use of that. anyway whats the text limit on a tumblr post because i think i might hit it with this response.

before we begin (if you wanna join me on this fucking journey), ill just drop some useful sources on the topic:

olympic & titanic - an analysis of the robin gardiner conspiracy theory dissertation by mark chirnside in july 2006

titanic or olympic: which ship sank? by steve hall and bruce beveridge

olympic & titanic: the truth behind the conspiracy by steve hall and bruce beveridge

with that shipkeeping housekeeping out of the way, lets jump into it after the cut

so hands up, how many people knew that this theory originated in a book from 1995?

yeah, its a pretty modern theory considering titanic sank in 1912. the theory originated in the riddle of the titanic by robin gardiner and dan van der dat.

and the theory argues that the ships were switched and titanic (actually olympic) was deliberately sank as part of an insurance scam. now they didnt do this at all for shits and giggles. instead, the theory posits that the navy enquiry that followed the 1911 collision between hms hawke and olympic was biased which meant white star line couldnt recover the costs of repair from lloyds (the insurance company), and therefore, they wrote olmpic off as too damaged to be repaired, lied about the amount of damage, switched the ships and sank olympic disguised as titanic to recover some costs.

far-fetched? oh definitely and it gets worse, but ill leave that til later in this gargantuan response because its really fucking funny.

(seriously, i recommend you read til the end or just skip to the part where i start talking about the sinking itself because fam, gardiners theory gets wild )

according to van der dat, who is a dutch journalist and naval history writer with an incredibly dutch name, gardiner had wrote the manuscript after researching the titanic for however many years and sent it to his literary agent. this agent had previously worked with van der dat and so sent it to him to double-check the information by going back to the original sources. he then rewrote the book with line-by-line consultation with gardiner.

and would you like to hear a quote from van der dat regarding the theory? i think you would:

"the publishers were disillusioned when the theory did not stand up"

he also, in correspondence with titanic author and researcher paul lee, called it "bilge" which is a fun ship joke alongside calling the theory bullshit.

anyway, the publishers went ahead with the book anyway because fuck integrity, i guess... thats kinda harsh considering this first book (oh yeah, theres more) was praised for stellar research and for being balanced, and the final chapter of the book literally acknowledges that the wreck has titanics shipyard number (401) on it, hence disproving the theory.

in 1997, it was published in the us under the name the titanic conspiracy - cover-ups and mysteries of the worlds most famous sea disaster, and it sold like sliced bread in 1928 because 1997 was titanic fever, baby!

unsurprisingly, gardiner's following books (titanic: the ship that never sank? in 1998; the history of the white star line in 2001; the great titanic conspiracy in 2010) were a lot less well-received and were not co-authored by van der dat.

-

"but wait, kai!" you might shout if youre up to date with issues of the times from 1914, "what about raymond asquith's comments? he was junior counsel for the board of trade at the sinking inquiry!"

and i would say, what about it? the letter asquith wrote to the times was a sarcastic letter in response to a prior stance taken by the paper.

yes, he said "the architect, the owner, and the captain to repair their desperate fortunes by sinking the ship and sharing the insurance money" but said letter also included the phrase "manipulating dummy icebergs".

if were taking sarcastic or satirical responses outside of their original contexts as serious quotes, then i guess i need to cancel my dropout subscription since the company holds the opinion that oj simpson is innocent.

and while were here, that single deathbed confession from james fenton is not evidence of anything. his name is not on any crew lists or survivor lists, and not a single payment was ever claimed by a crewman called james fenton. he was not on board the titanic and his claims hold no weight.

-

now, my go-to explanation as to why i dont believe the switch theory is that their insurance scam would have lost them money and they would know that it would have lost them money.

see, it cost white star (which was a subsidiary of the international mercantile marine) £1.5million/$7.5million to build titanic and they insured it by lloyds (you can check their records on their website) for £1million/$5million.

you dont have to be good at maths to see a problem here.

they didnt just not insure the rest; it was self-insured by imm's insurance fund, but that still means theyd have lost £500,000/$2.5million on the sunken ship.

this whole insurance thing was established by uh the united states senate inquiry report:

"the vessel fully equipped, cost £1,500,000 sterling, or about $7,500,000. at the time of the accident the vessel carried insurance of £1,000,000 sterling or about $5,000,000, the remaining risk being carried by the company's insurance fund."

oh and the £1,000,009 insurance was announced in the daily mirror on 16th april 1912

and the insurance scam seemingly thought up by someones whose first and only introduction to maths was golf isnt the only way white star would have lost money on this.

after the sinking, olympic was temporarily pulled from service to increase safety measures like adding more lifeboats. obviously, a logical move made by a company with a brand new, safer ship on their hands who were desperate for any money they can make.

white star also halted construction of britannic, titanics other sister ship, in order to alter the design and make it safer. this costs quite a bit of money and is, again, an odd choice for a company apparently desperate for money.

-

and hey, question for you guys: if you were alive in 1913 and needed to cross the atlantic, would you

a) choose the near identical sister ship of that ship that sank last year and was the deadliest sinking of a ship at that time

or

b) choose any other option such as the lusitania or the mauretania or the ss france or the ss imperator

personally id take my chances with option a, idk about you

yeah so the point im making here is that the sinking of the titanic was what the kids say

a marketing disaster

it was the loss of the newest flagship on its maiden fucking voyage and it had been touted as "practically unsinkable". maybe just maybe people wouldnt feel that comfortable getting on a white star line ship after that.

i dont have any figures for you because reading through a detailed account of white stars history just is not on my to-do list, but that doesnt even matter. what matters is that its clearly a massive risk and who the fuck is taking that risk?

as titanic author, senan molony states:

"one doesnt need to compare designs and count portholes - a moments serious consideration of the reputational risk involved - individually and collectively - is all that is required to end any entertainment of the notion"

-

anyway, you guys wanna compare designs and count portholes? yeah? okay, here we go!

may i present a non-exhaustive list of differences between the ships:

olympics wheelhouse was curved; titanics was flat

titanic was 4 inches longer

the porthole arrangements on shelter deck c were different

on b deck, olympic had a 1st class promenade; titanic had 2 private verandahs and suites (put a pin in this by the way, it comes back in the best of ways)

titanic had additional cabins on promenade deck a

olympics promenade was open all the way along; on titanic, the forward half of the 1st class promenade on a-deck was enclosed with retractable glass screens

on titanic, the forward bridge wings aft docking bridge on the stern extended over the ships side by a couple of feet; this would not be true for olympic until the 1912/13 refit

the officers deck house was pushed out more on titanic

the iron gates of the elevators were different between the ships and this is evident in the wreck itself

their propellers had different pitches and hence not interchangeable (pitch is a theoretical concept which is like the distance a propeller would move if it turned once through something solid, yeah i dont know either)

the wireless cabin had an outside window on olympic, but not titanic

further, it was placed on the port side of the officers deck house on olympic but amidship on titanic

they had different air vent arrangements around the funnels

white star line cut the ships names into the shell-plating at the bow and stern, four feet high and a ½ inch deep

now, please, close your eyes, take a deep breath and consider how much money it would cost to switch just the list above. now compare all of that to the -£500,000/$2.5million youre losing in the insurance scam.

truly, a spend less on candles situation.

and while we're here, shall we quickly talk about how much hush money white star would be paying to silence everyone about this since its apparently an illegal insurance scam.

not to make another non-exhaustive list but heres just who i can think of that youd have to silence:

the 15,000 workers employed directly by the shipyard

the 20,000+ workers in support services or sub contractors

any permanent or casual staff at the belfast dock and harbour comission

all of the officers and crew who came directly from olympic onto titanic such as the captain or stewardess violet jessop (puppet history fans rise up) who interestingly remarked on how improved titanic was compared to olympic

any staff at white star, imm and harland & wolff (where she was built) who would be in the know such as designers

passengers who had previously sailed on olympic who then sailed on titanic

just like anyone in belfast who walked past while the ships were docked together

olympics wreckers: thomas wards & sons who kept huge loose-leaf ledgers for each ships. the one for olympic was 72 pages long and funnily enough olympics yard number and builders I'd frequently appear in it, as seen below

bob ballard who was the one who found titanic. hes known as a very honest man and didnt even claim salvage rights on titanic because he assumed everyone else would also recognise it was a gravesite. he also said "i think it is the titanic at the bottom of the ocean"

every other explorer or researcher like james fucking cameron or us navy consultant and titanic wreck explorer, parks stephenson

its been estimated likely over 60,000 people were involved in just the building of titanic. this was ⅕ of belfasts population and ⅓ of the working population. heres a photo of them leaving olympic at the end of the day

now maybe im just a fool, but that looks like a lot of people you need to silence, and unless white star were blackmailing them or idk fucking killing them i guess, thats a lot of hush money just in the photo above.

i mean, theres also the claim, from noted liar james fenton, that the surviving crew were forced to sign the official secrets act of 1911, but that act was about espionage that benefits the enemy military so im not sure how this is relevant to the switch, and also, again, the guy was never on the ship.

are you perhaps starting to get the picture as to why i dont believe the conspiracy theory because im still going.

-

okay so as established, if the ships were switched, there would have clearly been a lot of work that would need to be done to switch the ships.

and i only mentioned some of the structural differences, i didnt get into the aesthetic differences like the floor tiles and carpeting being different colours, or how the lounge furniture in each ship having the ship name on them.

mind you, this is what titanic looked like (in the foreground) when olympic was first docked next to her:

this was taken around october 11. olympic docked next to titanic on october 7th for repairs after that whole catastrophic collision.

now how much time do you think it was before olympic sailed away? mind you, titanic has already been launched at this point and just needs to be fitted-out, and that normally takes around 4 to 6 months?

oh, what was that? 44 days? why, kid, youre going somewhere. it was 44 days exactly!

now, i dont think i need to get into the fact that the dock only had 1 crane (which you needed to install and uninstall funnels and machinery) that physically couldnt reach olympic unless she was moved or how olympic was painted white for her launch and then painted black and that the white paint would get exposed in rough weather so the same would have to be applied to titanic so it would look convincingly like olympic.

i mean, you have that information now, but im hoping just by the words "44 days", you might get how off the wall insane it is to suggest white star was able to switch the ships so well no one noticed for decades in 44 fucking days.

"wait kai, youre forgetting that they were docked together again!" you shout, "after olympic threw a propeller, they were docked together from march 1st to march 7th 1912"

and i dont know dude, im pretty sure white star cant warp space time so i really dont know what eight extra days is gonna do.

i hate to strawman but man, the late robin gardiner would have won a gold medal in scarecrow hide and seek.

-

lets also take a quick detour into the idea that olympics repairs were so expensive.

without getting into gardiners claims about the damage because theres no evidence of it and as mark chirnside states "there are no credible sources indicating that the damage to olympic was worse than reported at the time - and indeed ample sworn expert testimony to the contrary", lets just quickly go over some financial stuff.

during the case, it was unofficially estimated that the damage didnt exceed $125,000. imm, by including lost passenger receipts, wanted to claim for as high as $750,000, but they lost that case.

during the year 1911, imms surplus profit was $822,062. so weve got:

750,000 > 822,062

now as we might remember from key stage 1 maths, the bigger number eats the smaller number, aka, their surplus profit covered the costs of repair.

aka, no ill-advised insurance scam needed.

-

"thousands of people in belfast would have seen the switch operation - and yet there is not one word in the papers of reporters or photographers rushing out to find out what was happening."

-dr paul lee

so this is the section where i ask how did no one fucking notice?

no one on titanic, who had previously sailed on olympic, ever said anything about the switch other than one guy who was literally not on the ship at any point.

no one who has ever explored the wreck or done research on it has definitively stated it was olympic. rather, they have definitively stated otherwise.

for example, what remains of the base on the wheelhouse shows it to be straight and not curved, and as you might remember: titanics wheelhouse was heterosexual straight and olympics was curved.

(id be impressed if you did remember)

also, as parks stephenson has stated:

"weve got actual high def images of this wreck. ive seen with my own eyes. weve identified the name titanic on the port bow"

its difficult to make out but its there; the name is on the fucking ship.

also, as you might remember, titanics b-deck was different to olympics. the 2 suites there were nicknamed the "millionaire suites" and jim cameron has used rovs to go inside of them.

funnily enough, robin gardiner has gone on the record saying that these suites didnt exist so make of that what you will.

and further, no one noticed anything about olympic even though she sailed for 24 more years. theres no written record of anything, theres nothing in the board of trade reports, theres no photographic proof and theres not even fucking hearsay.

she served as a damn troopship in ww1, youd figure someone would figure it out as all of her fittings were ripped out.

but no, theres nothing.

as i mentioned above, olympic was scrapped in 1935, but some of her fittings were auctioned off and still exist today. and these have the number 400 on them because that was her shipyard number. titanics was 401 and the wreck reflects this also:

the wooden parts are from olympic; the other has been salvaged from titanics wreck.

theres even the famous myth that olympic or olympus as one person told me is written on the propeller at the bottom of the ocean. its not, but you can see the number 401 written on it:

-

and while were disproving myths about the name olympic being on the titanic, the story about olympic being engraved on titanics lifeboats is also false:

theres no written testimony, no sketches and no photographs of this.

white star didnt engrave names onto lifeboats, the names were on metal plates that were screwed on

do you really think they did all of this work but just didnt fucking swap the lifeboats? if theyre this stupid, how did it take until 1995 for someone to figure it out?

-

we can also discuss the stupid olympic room thing while were here. see theres a maritime superstition that changing the name on a ship is bad luck and obviously, if youre swapping the ships, youre changing the names.

so to... get around this? cheat luck? outsmart superstition? i dont fucking know, to take a detour to avoid this, white star named a room "the olympic room."

i cannot find any evidence at all that this room ever existed. its not in the design plans or the blueprints, and no passenger or crew has ever said it existed, so im pretty sure the room just didnt exist.

and even if it did exist, titanic was in the olympic class of ships. thats what olympic, titanic and britannic were. its not weird to have an olympic room on an olympic class ship. i mean it is weird in this case since the room didnt exist, but you get my point.

-

and heres some quickfire myths and falsehoods

the myth about the 14 vs 16 bow portholes is also a false. yes, titanic had 14 portholes on launch but an extra 2 were added before her maiden voyage so yes, the ship photographed departing southampton with 16 bow portholes is the titanic, and do you really think it would take 83 years to figure this out if it was this easy?

similarly, titanic did have evenly spaced b-deck windows on launch, but then the extra verandahs and suites were added so the window configuration was altered, so that photograph is off the titanic.

the idea that titanic had a 2 degree list to port like the olympic before her is evidence of the switch theory is, to borrow a word from dan van der dat, bilge. plenty of ships at the time and now have minor lists. the one on titanic was only recorded by 2 passengers and we know that the list was related to coal consumption. it means nothing.

jp morgan (owner of imm) did not cancel last minute. as mark baber points out on encyclopedia titanica, it was announced in the new york times that hed be in venice on april 23. at that time, transatlantic voyages took at least 5 days so it would at least be a 10 day round trip and likely not give him time to get to venice for the opening of a store of whatever it was.

also, j bruce ismays wife and kids also didnt cancel last minute. theyd already decided to go on holiday to wales rather than sail on titanic.

addendum to that point: if ismay knew it was going to be sank deliberately and so warned his wife, why would he get on board himself? further, why would harland and wolff designer thomas andrews (who did not survive by the way) get on board?

-

and we're finally at my favourite part of this entire mess: the sinking itself.

see, a deliberate sinking doesnt really make sense for titanic because the conditions under which she sank has led to the descriptor "freak sinking."

these are: a new moon meaning less light, unusually calm ocean that disallowed lookouts to watch for foam as waves hit any icebergs, ice having drifted further south than normal for that time of year, and a sideways glancing blow that breached more watertight compartments than the ship could handle and stay afloat.

and idk dude, is there not an easier way? like maybe some light arson. just call it an accidental fire that got out of control and led to the ship being a write-off, this isnt difficult.

but you see gardiner has an answer to this, and i am laughing as im typing this, he claims that:

titanic didnt hit an iceberg, it hit an imm rescue ship.

thats right, this guy fully says titanic didnt hit an iceberg. apparently it hit another ship and NO ONE FUCKING NOTICED

i mean we have testimony from survivors but fuck them i guess.

he claims that as titanic was apparently a "steel double-hulled vessel" so an iceberg simply couldnt inflict so much damage.

yeah titanic wasnt double-hulled. she had a double bottom, but it was only after titanic that shipbuilders were like ah maybe full double hulls arent an unnecessary expense after all.

theres also the issue of uh no evidence of this rescue ship ever existing? at all? i dont know where it came from, i dont know where it went, and who fucking knows, maybe it was called the rms cotton eyed joe.

yeah so weve got a theory riddled with problems and im just gonna introduce some more problems with this theory as gardiner has also alleged that:

the original plan was to open the seacocks and slowly flood the ship, but this was interrupted by titanic hitting another ship

1) titanic didnt have seacocks? and 2) was the rest of it a coincidence then? i think its meant to be a coincidence.

i believe his theory is alleging that the crew on titanic would open the seacocks that didnt exist to flood the ship slowly, and that the imm rescue ship that also didnt exist was in the area in advance to help evacuate passengers, alongside other ships such as the ss californian.

this is that ship that was like 10 miles away or something and didnt respond to titanics distress signals. according to gardiner, they were expecting a rendezvous with titanic according to the "original plan", but never received it.

instead, they saw the rockets of the fabled imm rescue ship and helped them instead.

this is fucking stupid.

i cant be charitable here, its a fucking stupid theory. i mean, that imm ship did not exist, and also californian is a ridiculous choice for a rescue ship. her capacity was 47 passengers and 55 crew; there were more than 2200 people on board titanic.

to counteract this argument, gardiner alleges carpathia was also in on the scheme as a rescue ship. she, at least, had capacity for the passengers, but theres also several problems with this too.

for one, it was fucking 50 miles away and famously arrived several hours after the sinking even though the captain had her running at top speed to get there.

for two, carpathia was owned by cunard, white stars rival. was their rival line in on the insurance scam??? how much money did they have to pay cunard for this????? why? just why?

do you understand why i dont believe it? please tell me you understand. i need you to understand. i need you to tell me that you understand that the guy who created this conspiracy claimed titanic didnt hit an iceberg.