#i always wonder who gets to pick the music and what they have available

[monotonous-minutia]

Waiting in the doctor's office (routine checkup) and they're playing an instrumental version of Musetta's Waltz on the intercom

[timbit-robin-art]

I saw your Mio doodle and now I wonder about a Light Music Club X-Men Edition.. Scott can be on drums he'd be so good at keeping time... whatever Ororo is on (because she'd slay at every instrument) she has to ALSO be on vocals because I believe that's just canon..

maybe Logan can be their roadie

Ah, K-On. My one weakness. I went a little overboard when picturing this, so whoops.

I imagine this being in a universe where there’s still mutants, but Xavier isn’t making them use their powers to fight. Instead, the institute is for learning how to control their powers/providing refuge for mutants who have nowhere else to go, and they go to a mutant/normal human mixed private school for normal education.

Here’s some of my ideas for the club members so far:

Ororo is the bass player and lead vocalist. She’s been inspired to be in a band ever since she lived on the streets as a little kid, where she saw a bass player performing live. Freshmen year of high school, she hears someone absolutely going ham on the drums, and finds Scott playing on his own. It took a while, but she finally convinced Scott to join her. She’s the heart and soul of the group, and main character along with Scott. I don’t see her living at the institute, though Xavier keeps the offer open. Instead, she may live with a 19/20 year old Gambit, who’s living off of the Guild’s money and trying to lay low.

Scott is the drum player. After Xavier picked him off of the streets, he got a bit lost in the mansion and discovered a drum set in the music room (I imagine it used to belong to Erik/Magnus). Xavier sees that the boy has natural rhythm, and decides to find him a teacher. Scott forms a middle school band with the O5, but they had a falling out, causing everyone to go their separate ways. However, Scott is still very passionate about the drums, which is why he eventually joins Ororo. He may be more pessimistic, but his passion for the drums is more than enough to keep him going.

Kurt is the pianist. He’s a transfer student from Germany and has always wanted to be a part of a band like Ororo. It was him that suggested the idea of forming an actual club, and he’s the big idealist/optimist of the group. I can see him not knowing too much on how to play piano, minus the basics he learned from his mother (she taught him how to play despite his three fingers), so when he moves into the institute, Xavier teaches him how to play better. Even though there are some people at school who treat him just as bad as the mobs from his home, he’s still willing to get out there and play with the group.

Hank is the guitarist. He used to be a part of the same group as Scott, but after everyone split a part, he stopped playing entirely. I can see him being intrigued by the talk of a “light music club,” but after seeing Scott was there, he wants nothing to do with it. Eventually, he joins a practice session after Ororo gets through to him, and he realizes just how much he misses playing. Scott and him have the friends-turned-hostile-turned-back-into-friends relationship. Unlike the other three O5 members, his love for music trumps any hostile feelings after the falling out, and he’s willing to give it another go.

Ah, but you can’t have a club without a faculty member as your sponsor;

Mr. Logan was the only available candidate for this. After a lot of begging (and promises that they’d wash his motorcycle every weekend), they eventually get him on board. He pretends to hate it, but it slowly becomes obvious that he has a soft spot for the group. He sees the passion they all have, and it reminds him of when he was younger (hmm… what if Logan was the bass player Ororo saw when she was younger…).

Of course, if we follow K-On, we must have a 5th member that joins later on. I have no idea who that could be. I think there’s a lot of fun ideas depending on who.

[iamjellyfish]

-`,✎The Idol Soldier-`,✎

❥ Author note: Hello:) this is my first fic! I suck at naming fics so it will be straight to the point! I should work on pin post first but my Soshiro brainrot needs to be fed! Thanks whoever got the idea of the reader being an idol TvT Ily!

❥ Summary: You're the famous and beloved idol of Japan! Jelly is your idol's name and a certain vice-captain is obsessed with you! Little did he know, that you joined the JAKDC for an appreciation song idea. He didn't realize it was you even though you only wear glasses!

❥Part: 1 you're already here:) ❥ Warning: English is not my first language, rejection, angst-make up, you fall first - he falls harder, simp Soshiro, oh yea very long ahh yapping from me:3... OOC?

Everyone is grateful for what JAKDC has done for society, and because of that, your producer thinks it might be good to make an appreciation song for them. You of course don't mind, but idol-fighting kaiju is something very fictional, to be honest. Of course, you panic about the examination test, what if you fail so misery?! The media would have a good laugh about you!

So you study hard for the writing test and have to pick up extra martial arts practice class because you're not sure if your current strength can get you in. It's not so bad for the most part, your normal idol practice makes this easier a bit, you kind of understand since it was famous that idol practice would be very hard and strict.

The day came, and you looked around to see how others doing, you could recognize the son of the famous Izumo Tech company, the famous Kikoru Shinomiya, and others who all seemed to have a lot of experience in this field, it made you a bit left out and odd out? At least better than standing out by being an idol. You disguise yourself with glasses because you were too panicked about the exam after you researched its rates to get in, lose sleep, and haven't had the time to prepare a better disguise to work with. So with glasses and a simple hair-down style, you somehow successfully disguise yourself, you kind of guess it's the Superman effect that you saw on the internet. But when you see Kafka chasing Kikoru in the field you wonder if your fans recognized you, would they do the same? You managed to get 21% on the suit though, your lucky number! Jelly had got into JAKDC!

❥Hoshina Soshiro's side!

Oh how much he loves his Jelly! The life of fighting kaiju is pretty stressful and when that happens, he finds himself listening to your songs. Jelly always encourages people to chase their dreams, to love, and to keep going, that's what makes him a Jellybean(fan name). He always feels left out because of his using blades and used to feel discouraged fighting kaiju with blades but you somehow always cheer him up! Hoshina Soshiro, the man who stays up at midnight waiting for the moment your concert ticket is available on the website, he will immediately buy it. The man who had one of the biggest Jellybean pages and posts about you in his free time.

Jelly announce she had the merch made a return and will be available to buy on XXX to XXX.

Of course, he would buy more of the merch even if he already had it! Hoshina Soshiro would use half his paycheck just to buy your merch, you know those crazy amounts of merch on a shrine of idol images? His shrine already goes viral once (nobody knows that the shrine is his).

He would also listen to your music a lot when he is doing his paperwork. Sometimes you would catch him humming your music while goes on patrol. He definitely talks about Jelly with Okonogi a lot and totally makes a jellybean club at the JAKDC!

They would roast the hell outta your antifan!

❥ current time: You sometimes hang out with Kafka in the library and since you trade secrets with the old man, he knows you're an idol, and you know he is a kaiju. You would now freely write your song lyrics while he doing his things. Tonight, accidentally watch the vice-captain training at night with Kafka. Oh man, he is so hot, his muscular figure got you good. You had silently got a crush on him for a while now. Reason? His voice is so hot, he has a good figure, and he is so cool. You did laugh at the old man for getting overwhelmed by Hoshina in battle but now if it was you, you would get overwhelmed too. Before the vice-captain recognizes your existence, you already dash back to your room using your dodging and runway from paparazzi skillsets, perks being an idol? Probably not. You could feel Kafka's annoyance for leaving him there with the vice-caption.

So after a while, you got along with everyone, especially Kafka's group. And you are encouraged by them to confess your love for the vice-captain. Even though you're unsure, your time at the defense force is running out and you can't keep hiding your feelings and probably never meet him again, you already have to leave on Monday so you have to shoot your shot quick. So you ask him to meet you on the rooftop at the end of the day...

"Um... Vice-captain..."

You spoke, anxiety filled your chest as you turned around and looked him in the eyes. Your heart felt heavy and you were so afraid of rejection, but even if you get rejected, you can't complain you were only here a few months and your idol life is unstable for love life since scandals about idols having lovers happened all the time. So in the warm radiation of sunset, you decided to confess with all your heart.

"Yes? Why did you call me here?" Hoshina said he looked a bit concerned since you sounded so afraid and ill too at the same time. He seems to kind of guess that you would confess since you kind of make it obvious by getting him gifts, letters, and sweets. You were a sweet one and he didn't want you to get hurt so he had to calculate how to reject you without making it sting, he had feelings for you too but the kaiju fighting life is no guarantee that he can make it or survive, he might even hurt your sweetheart even more if he doesn't reject.

"Vice-captain Hoshina, I really really like you!" You said with your heart out and your face basically blushes like tomatoes. You breathe slowly, ready for the worst, you keep telling yourself that you are ready for this. With the hope that at least the fall would be light, you waited for the results. Hoshina just sighed a little and then said in a usual upbeat voice.

"Sorry, but my heart belongs to Jelly! I'm a loyal Jellybean so I can't return your feelings." He smiled and you could see his little fangs out, before you could react, patted your shoulder while leaving and you could hear him say from afar "Keep up the good work though!". And you're kinda just standing there, surprised 'cause you don't really think that he likes you Jelly. That day, you were crying to Okonogi about it. "Shhh...Shhh y/n, you will find someone too! Hoshina is too obsessed with Jelly, don't worry there will be someone else better than Hoshina!" She said trying to calm you down, and you cried so hard that the glasses were all blurry and wet so you took off your glasses, wiped them, and tried your best to smile brightly at her after really thinking through it, since it was fine after all, at least you got a cool person as your fan. "Thank you a lot Okonagi-san! I really need it!" You got kind of confused when she kept staring at you with a calculating look. "You're Jelly right y/n?" "Eh-... Yea.." You ended up having to tell her about the whole song thing. "I'm already done writing the whole album so I will probably quit on Monday. Please keep a secret though!" You plead, since if the tea got spilled, you would definitely get yelled at by the producer. You kind of trying to manipulate her by using her sparkly idol eyes in the hope that she would keep it a secret, was it an ass move? Yes, but you're desperate.

"I'm not sure though... this secret is a bit too much..!" Okonogi said, waving her arms to signal she is very unsure of this. You sigh and then pop right back up saying. "It's fine! At least keep it 'till Monday alright?" You hand her a Jelly with a chat bubble "Thank you" keychain then leave before she can reject.

Glad that your producer handled the resignation process from the JAKDC because you had no strength left to look at the captain and vice-captain the last time. You packed your stuff and are ready to leave as your friends, especially Kafka all tearing eyes about you leaving. You were waiting for the company's car to come to pick you up so you didn't even bother to disguise yourself but Vice-captain Hoshina approached you. With hands in the pocket, he kind of tries to pick up the conversation but the awareness fills the air. "So, y/n or Jelly. Okonogi told me about you..." He said as she held out his phone with Okonogi's messages, her nickname was "The Nerd Jellybean 🤓☝". Not gonna lie, you almost laugh out loud at the nickname.

The Nerd Jellybean 🤓☝: You might wanna know this.

The Nerd Jellybean 🤓☝ has sent two attachments.

It's a picture of you in your idol outfit and your disguised self with red circles pointing at the similarity.

The Nerd Jellybean 🤓☝: If that isn't enough proof... The Nerd Jellybean 🤓☝ has sent two attachments.

It's a document of the similarity between you and your idol self, "She even has receipts on me, that's scary." you think to yourself as you look at the last messages.

The Nerd Jellybean 🤓☝: You still might have a chance though. Try to catch up.

"Hm... well at least still kept her secret."

You said, you certainly didn't expect that but you guess it was fine. Though, seeing the person you secretly admire standing before you... You of course very happy. But a part of you thinks if he comes here for the confession, does he really love you as you or because you're Jelly?

This is definitely not the first time you encounter something like this... People only love you because you're an idol or Jelly. You don't think he is that type of person but who knows? "Y/n, please stay in contact. I will be honest with you since we might never get to talk like this again because you're an idol and stuff but meh... I think you're very sweet, even as Jelly, you take my hand and pull me out of the shadow." He said, with stars in his eyes. No, it was you that was in his eyes, his star, his idol, his Jelly. He held your hands, his hold was tight, not that it hurt but it definitely surprised you. You could hear him rambling on and on about how you had saved him somehow. You feel very happy, you know you have cheered people on with your songs but hearing it from your fan, from him makes your heart beat faster. "But my life-fighting kaiju is not stable, I could die anytime and I don't want you to suffer because of it. So even if I don't want to, I still have to let you go." He said, you could see sadness in his eyes. Oh how you hate it, no, no... It can't end like this. You won't allow it. The next thing the vice-captain knows is that his dream of kissing has come true. You basically jump on him and put your soft lips on him, it was warmth and he thought this was a dream. "I changed my mind, I want to stay with you Hoshina! I won't allow you to push me away! I want us to try, to be together!" You said you hugged him tight, and you held your tears. He returns the hug and then quickly looks at you with worry on his face while he has a hand on the back of his neck and says.

"But you already submit your resignation paper. How can you stay?" You smirk at him with a devilish expression, as a jellybean, he knows that this means Jelly will pull something that could put everyone in trouble. You take out your phone and text your producer to help you stay and somehow make that resignation paper invalid. You kind of expect she would be annoyed and get mad at you but didn't think she would send you a very long ahhh email yelling at you.

"And, now Hoshina is my boyfriend and I can stay." You declare, as you hold his hand and move it on your cheek. You know this is a very bold decision, but in the end, you still had an idol career, and fighting kaiju while being an idol is like a weird combination but you wanted to try. Try and balance both out, because you found someone you love. Right now, staying with Hoshina makes you feel something you have never felt before, and you will let the present open itself for you to see what is inside.

"I already got things under control, so let's go on a date!" You said with excitement eyes full of stars and smiling at him with warmth, Hoshina opened his eyes to take on all that radiating sunshine deep in his memory and laughed, he never thought he'd see this side of Jelly, he knew from those shows and series that you're a ball of sunshine who would cause some kind of trouble that makes everyone laugh. But now? You're much more and he wanted to learn more. You laugh with him, that is what he remembers clearly to this day.

To be continued...

A/N: omg, I hope my write fic isn't a disaster:) I will learn to improve my writing the next time:D

[odysseyeurobeat]

Literally just me gushing about eurobeat

Y'know what? Tumblr, you get a little treat. I don't have much better of a place to post something long-winded like this, so here we are.

I love eurobeat music. Big surprise from the girl with it in her handle, right? But I don't just love one kind of eurobeat. No, I'd go so far as to say I love it all. This genre becomes an absolute buffet of delightful, energetic, silly fun when you forget about trying to look for ways it "doesn't count", and try to look for the ways it does.

I love early eurobeat! I love the stuff that's indistinguishable from early Italo Disco, the formative things where the tempo was still low and the disco vibes were still high! That's Eurobeat and the first few volumes of Super Eurobeat are great for this!

I love later eurobeat, too! Even if some of the sounds aren't always my favorites, I love that folks were trying new things and dabbling with new sounds, experimenting in ways that in previous years seemed prohibited! Comparing some aliases who have been going for multiple decades from this period to when they started is also super fun!

I love traditional eurobeat, if I could pick a name for it! Faster, more rave-influenced, whether or not it's still got some disco elements in it, themes about nightclubs and love and loss and betrayal and that ever-ubiquitous fire! Maharajah Night has some great examples, leading into the bulk of pre-200 Super Eurobeat volumes!

I love J-Euro! It turns out, folks in Japan have different ideas and tastes and approach the genre VERY differently than the folks in Italy do, and I love how it sounds! I love how the sound design is so different and the speed jumps a little higher!

I love indie eurobeat! I love hearing how new and amateur producers take a crack at the sound, and seeing what folks do as the tools for making it grow and evolve! Even virtual versions of the synths the masters used to use are available now, and it's fantastic to hear how those things sound in new hands! I love the ways indie producers bend, break, and work around the rules of the genre and still deliver a uniquely "eurobeat" experience! Without this category, I would never have found DJ Command, DJ Bouche, Turbo, Vikas Beatbox, the Galaxian Recordings crew, and so, so many more!

I love happy eurobeat! The nature of the genre makes it so straightforward to pair its signature energy with joy, delight, empowerment!

I love sad eurobeat! That very same energy that powers joy and happiness can be just as powerful for driving home sorrow and sadness, and some lyrics even carry strong emotional weight (we're well past the days of eurobeat being only about Burning Love Car Baby Fire Desire Tonight Drift Tokyo, y'know)!

I love fandom eurobeat! Yup! Vocaloid, Touhou, MLP:FiM, Vtubers; whatever you may be a fan of, chances are good there's a eurobeat remix out there (or even an original) that suits your fancy!

I love Initial D eurobeat! How could I not, right? The classics are classics for a reason, and eurobeat and drift racing are a uniquely fantastic pair. Of all the things eurobeat could be about, it's one of a few that really knock it out of the park!

I love feminine eurobeat! Masculine eurobeat is great too, but it already gets a lot of love in the other categories, so I want to celebrate those eurobeat songs that feel quite the opposite while still being perfectly eurobeat! Eurobeat is broad enough to express feelings like this, too!

I love songs that aren't quite eurobeat, but have elements of it! And I love eurobeat songs that heavily include elements from other genres, too! Eurobeat is like any other genre-- it has not always had the same chances to rub shoulders with other sounds in the dance space, but when it does, some wonderful things happen! And the whole music world is enriched for that cross-pollenation!

I love the songs I used to dislike! To think I'd go from vastly disliking Norma Sheffield's discography, to adoring it so fully! Disliking "Higher Higher More and More" to seeking it out from time to time! Not being fond of SAIFAM/BBB's style, to knowing some of its songs by heart!

And most of all, I love that I get to MAKE this stuff for a living! I do not take the fact that this could've not worked out trivially, and I hope I've rewarded your patiences well with a lot of new favorites and starting points for diving deeper into the genre over the last... almost 20 years, now!

And that's just the tip of the iceberg! I understand some eurobeat isn't to everyone's taste, but I think if you haven't tasted all that there is out there, you owe it to yourself to see how you feel about it. You might be pleasantly surprised!

[thedeathlysallows]

Glow

Pairing: Loki x Fem!Reader (previously established as Sugar Plum)

Summary: And I'm standing here handing you my heart 'cause I couldn't wait anymore

Warnings: depressed reader, angst, smut. Loki using his shadow magic for nsfw purposes, degredation, spanking, bondage, possessive!Loki, hair pulling. Warnings aren't exhaustive

Here's a part 2 to Santa Baby for y'all. I hope it lives up to expectations!

The year passes by in a dull, painful blur of building toys, spreading Christmas cheer, and ignoring the ache in your chest that appears any time you think about Loki.

No phone call.

No letter.

Nothing.

All you have is the ghost of a memory that fades with each excruciatingly boring day.

You can't even practice your magic properly... since... ya know... he was your teacher. Honestly, someone should've picked up on that. You're not your brother who takes everything in stride and seems to perfect everything with the ease expected of a future Santa Claus. You aren't your mother who just knows what to do to make someone feel better and keeps the elves satisfied and cheery without breaking a sweat. You aren't your father who is Santa Claus and brings joy to every living being across the nine realms.

You're... an imposter in a family of saints.

No wonder Loki ditched you as soon as he fucked you.

That's all you deserve.

To be used and tossed aside.

"You okay over there, sugar plum?" Sprinkle peers at you with curious eyes and rosy cheeks.

You clear your throat and straighten your dress. "Just fine, Sprinkle. How's the blushing bride?"

Sprinkle perks up even more, her mouth stretching into a wide smile. "She's perfect! I love Mrs. Claus more than anything in the whole world, but I think your brother picked a good girl! She'll be the perfect Mrs. Claus when your parents retire and pass the title!"

Sprinkle continues chattering but you block her out. You love Sprinkle, you really do, but it's difficult to listen to her go on and on about how perfect your brother's soon to be wife is. You know how perfect she is. You knew it the moment she stepped foot in the North Pole. You could sense it. Sprinkle is right; she will be the perfect Mrs. Claus one day. She'll have beautiful children who will one day also pick the perfect spouse and the tradition will keep going for as long as the world still spins.

And you'll be somewhere watching.

"I need to go. I can hear them starting the music." You cut off Sprinkle before your chest can cave in from the nasty feeling brewing deep inside you.

Anxiety, Doctor Jolly called it.

(You aren't sure about him with his credentials being from Gumdrop University, but your dad swears he's "the best in the biz". You're pretty sure your dad only says that because good ol' Dr. Jolly always prescribes hot chocolate for almost any ailment of your dad's.)

You wind your way through the labyrinth that is your home, meeting the rest of your family at the front entryway. Red and green garland wrap around every available surface, silver tinsel dripping off various fixtures. If this was your wedding you probably would've requested more decorations, but Holly wanted to downplay the whole "Santa thing" as she called it.

"My family thinks they're in Canada," she confided in you last week. "I couldn't tell them the truth, could I?"

No, she couldn't, but you still feel bad she had to lie to her family.

And all for your brother.

Ew.

"Oh, sugar plum, there you are!" Your mother reaches out for you, running her eyes over your perfectly pleated red dress before nodding to herself. "Sprinkle did a wonderful job."

"As usual." You give her a tense smile and turn to Holly. "How are you?"

She nods, looking flushed and excited. "I'm good! I've been waiting months!"

Months.

Holly and your brother have known each other for months.

Loki's known you practically your entire life and you can't get him to talk to you anymore.

"-go sit down," your mother says.

You've clearly caught the tail end of a conversation, but you can't find it in you to care. She tugs on you, wrapping her hand in the crook of your elbow before stepping through the heavy oak doors to head into what your mother affectionately calls "the entertaining room". It sort of reminds you of the throne room in Asgard, but less austere and more homey with all the dark wood and soft fire light. It's decorated similar to the entry hall, with red, green, and silver covering everything. A giant Christmas tree sits in front of the staircase with yellow twinkling lights and various handmade ornaments.

"They made it after all, how lovely!" Your mother nudges you in the side, forcing you to look up from the red aisle runner.

You follow your mother's line of vision only to meet Thor's eyes. He gives you a broad smile and whispers something to the brunette woman sitting on his left side. She looks completely awestruck, taking in everything. Whoever she is, she must mean a lot to Thor if he risked bringing her to the wedding.

You look to Thor's right and your throat constricts. Loki sits with his back straight and legs crossed, lips curved down in a bored frown. He looks up at the same time you and your mother take your seats in the front row. Not even the comfy cream and silver chairs the elves worked so hard on for the wedding can relax you. Loki's eyes burn holes in the back of your skull through the entire ceremony. You even miss your dad pronouncing the happy couple man and wife, you're so desperate to find an escape route.

For an entire year you wanted so desperately for him to say anything to you, and now all you can think about is getting away.

How brave of you.

Face your problems head on, Doctor Jolly told you months ago. It sounded nice at the time. Helpful even. Now? Now not so much.

No, you'll make the rounds at your parents' side and then go hide in your room.

Good?

Good.

The assembled crowd migrates to the dining room and you try to lose Loki in the throng of bodies. Much to your displeasure, it doesn't work at all. In fact, it's like he's zeroed in on you and nothing can distract him from stalking you in the giant room. You dance around him, downing one glass of champagne followed by two more. Eventually, you lose him and feel your shoulders relax.

"Hello, sugar plum," Loki's low voice purrs in your ear.

The tension in your body comes back immediately. "What the fuck do you want?"

He puts his hand over his heart. "How nasty. Is that any way to treat an honored guest?"

"Honored guest?"

"That's what the invitation said."

"Well I sure as shit didn't write that." You pluck a sugar cookie off the tray of a passing elf. "If it had been up to me it would've said something like "stupid liars need not show up"."

He raises a brow. "Stupid liars?"

"Yeah, well, it's a work in progress. But you get the idea!"

"No, actually, I don't believe I do. What exactly did I lie about?"

"Good question! You-" you bite off the cookie, trying to buy yourself some time. Loki just looks at you, half expectant, half amused.

"Admit it," he goads you. "I haven't lied to you."

"You took my virginity," you accuse.

Loki shrugs nonchalantly. "Something anyone could've done, sugar plum."

"But they didn't!" A few people turn their heads curiously in your direction when they hear your raised voice, and your skin heats up in embarrassment. "I didn't let anyone else. I let you and then you just left me."

Loki's mask of cool indifference falters for a second before he slips it back in place. "Did it not occur to you that I was otherwise occupied?"

"Oh, so you finally made that move on Sif now that she's free from Thor?"

"Of all the stupid, childish things to come out of your mouth, that one might earn the top spot." Loki bends so his lips are right at your ear. "It's been no one but you for a year, sugar plum. Shall I prove it?"

You shove him away and tilt your chin in defiance. "Fuck off, Loki. I don't need you."

Without sparing a look back, you leave the dining room and head to your bedroom. You'd rather be alone forever than spend another second in a room with Loki. Besides, everyone is so busy with your brother and Holly that they won't notice you're gone.

Once in the safety of your bedroom, you strip out of your dress, the heavy red velvet pooling around your ankles. A simple green bathrobe sits on the edge of your bed, but before you can grab it, long fingers wrap around your wrist. Loki tugs you toward him with ease.

"I've certainly missed this sight," he purrs.

"How did you-"

"Magic, sugar plum. You would've sensed me sooner had you been practicing with your own."

"Sorry, my teacher fucked me and dumped me, so I've been a bit depressed."

Loki hums. "Yes, so Sprinkle cornered me and told me."

You genuinely have nothing else to say. An entire year of dreaming of this moment, and now it's here, and you can't think of a single thing to say.

"Speechless, darling? I do tend to have that effect on women." He's teasing you, trying to get you to say something, but you still can't find the words. "Come now, sugar plum. I'm sure you have more to say to me."

You open your mouth only to close it before opening it again. "I don't."

"Not even if I said I've missed you every second this past year? Not even if I said losing my mother didn't even compare to losing you?"

You heard about Frigga dying. You even attended her funeral. Loki had been nowhere in sight.

"I wanted you," he continues. "Every second of every day."

"You're lying," you say.

"How can you be so certain?"

"Because..." You swallow the lump in your throat and blink back the tears. "I'm nothing. I'm no one."

"Who's the liar now?"

Your eyes flicker up to meet his. "You know it's the truth."

Green flames flicker and dance in the depths of his gaze. "I've met many beings in my life, sugar plum, and most of them never deserved to exist. But you? You're not one of them."

"Loki, I don't feel-"

"No, you never do. You never feel anything, do you?" He's angry as he pulls you into his chest, his long fingers leaving their mark on the bare skin of your hips. "If you refuse to help yourself, sugar plum, I suppose it's up to me."

He walks you backwards until the backs of your thighs meet your soft bed. The two of you topple over onto it, Loki's body still pressed firmly to your own. Through his finely pressed suit you can feel every single inch of him. What little bit of his skin is exposed is hot, feverish almost.

"I wasn't avoiding you," Loki says with a snarl.

He presses hot kisses to the column of your throat in between words. Something cold and almost mist-like wraps around your wrists, pinning them in place. You look to either side and see large shadows the same shape as Loki looming over you. That's what holds your wrists down. That's what slithers across your breasts, toying with your nipples and leaving goosebumps all over your skin. His shadows.

You struggle to catch your breath. "Then what were you doing?"

"Preparing, darling."

"For what?"

Loki hums, trailing his fingers from your hips to the insides of your thighs. His touch is light, teasing. "For you. You're mine."

"Y-yours?"

He nods. "Mine."

He spreads your thighs, dragging a finger over your slit. His shadows still hold you firmly in place, allowing their master to do as he wishes with your exposed body.

"Tell me, darling," Loki purrs in your ear as he sinks two fingers deep in your cunt. "Why would I want anything that isn't absolutely perfect?"

You bite back a moan and squeeze your eyes shut. You've wanted this, dreamt of this, for a year... and now you're totally overwhelmed to have his attention again. As Loki's fingers pump in and out of you, you arch your back, your brain going foggy with lust.

"You're a goddess," he continues. His lips are right by your ear and he nips at your earlobe. "I've been searching for a place worthy of us for the past year. You were made to rule by my side."

Loki leans back, a flash of green momentarily joining the warm orange glow of the fireplace. His clothes disappear in the flash and he's back on you in a second.

"You were made for me," Loki whispers. The firelight catches the sharp angles of his face, softening his expression. His shadows disappear and it's just the two of you now. Loki withdraws his fingers from your cunt and strokes his cock. "Yes?"

You nod, eager to have him inside you. "Yes!"

"Mmm, good girl."

He flips you over onto your front and grips your ass, fingertips digging into your flesh. His cock prods and your soaked entrance and you moan into the sheets. One of his palms moves to rest against the small of your back while he uses the other to guide himself inside you. It feels so good, so right, to have Loki buried to the hilt inside you. You feel full. Complete.

"Loki," you moan out as you arch your back, fucking yourself on his cock. "Please!"

Loki strokes your hair before grabbing a fistful and yanking your head back. "So pretty when you beg, sugar plum. But a good whore uses her words. Tell me exactly what you want."

You continue bouncing your ass on his cock, desperate for any sort of friction. "Please, Loki, please fuck me please!"

"Is that all? You just want me to fuck you? Is that all you're worth? A hole for me to come in and throw away after?"

"Y-yes." It comes out as a question more than a statement.

Loki's hand comes down on your ass, a loud slap echoing through the room. "Wrong. What did I tell you that you are?"

"A goddess!"

"What else?"

When you take too long to answer he smacks your ass again. "What else?!"

"Yours," you cry out. "I'm yours."

Loki snaps his hips forward, meeting your own desperate grinding. "Fuck yes you are."

You let your upper body fall forward, relaxing into his smooth movements as he fucks into your cunt. He's thick and hard inside you and reaches spots you didn't even know existed. Your mind goes absolutely blank until the only thing that exists is the sensation of Loki inside you. He moans your name, praises falling from his lips.

So good, he says. Mine. All mine.

"L-Loki..." you gasp out his name as your orgasm washes through you, leaving your body tingling in its wake.

"Yes," Loki groans. "My perfect girl."

His cock twitches inside you as he comes, his body draping over yours in the aftermath of his own orgasm. His chest rises and falls quickly as he rolls to his side and pulls you with him.

"Are you leaving now?" You hate how small your voice sounds when you ask the question, but Loki's answer has you sighing in relief.

"Never again, sugar plum. As I said earlier, you're mine. Now and forever. In every lifetime."

[the-s1lly-corner]

Hello how are you :3? I was wondering if you could write E.J., Hoodie, and Masky with a s/o that has a lot of scars? (Toby too but platonic for him) I’m not sure how many people we can request so if it’s too many just Hoodie? I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable and thank you!

Various!Creepypastas w/ a scarred!reader

waaaah im so sorry for not seeing this sooner! i didnt recieve a notification for this ask!! really theres no limit to how many characters you can send in! i think my personal max varies from prompt to prompt!! mix of how they approach the concept of a scarred lover (friend in tobys case) with some hints of fluff! cause of scars will be vague as admittedly i didnt know if you meant general scars or SH! side note i hope this posts right! im writing this on my computer, im used to mobile!! + apologies for any weird wording or typos, im listening to music and im getting hyped!! not proof read we die like my spiderverse brainrot

Includes: Eyeless Jack, Hoodie, Masky and Platonic!Toby!

CWs: touch and go talk of potential past trauma, body image issues, vague mentions of SH(?) in EJs part + Toby's parts

admittedly admin doesnt know if its technically SH due to the nature and motiv but personally id still count it as such and tag it as such

Eyeless Jack;

he gets it, he really does. the basic run down of my hc/take on ej is that he wasnt always some flesh eating monster; just some dude who got caught up in some bad stuff

so naturally, he doesnt... really vibe well with the concept of eating human flesh, which can lead to a few... instances. from intentionally to accidentally harming himself while hes lost in his instincts

so hes no stranger to being a little roughed up around the edges

but hes a stranger to comforting; he'll likely approach it from a logical side before trying anything else. "you've been hurt," before going on a small tangent about the formation of scars. hes not the most... emotionally... good... available... person

so youre going to need to lay out the general basis for what you need for basic comfort, on days where your scars become an issue; be is needing comfort or a distraction. it may take him a while, but hell eventually start to pick up on cues and hints as your relationship develops

otherwise hes very neutral about them, again approaching them with a blunt view; seeing it as neither good nor bad. he doesnt draw attention to them, but he doesnt act like theyre gross

really just. vibing with it, doesnt make a huge deal of it since he feels he doesnt have any place to judge, nor does he feel its his business to pry for information

solid 6/10 imo, hell comfort you if you express that you need it but hell likely not go out of his way to do it

Hoodie;

Soft touches, he almost does it before he has your permission to touch you

naturally he has his own fair share of scars from various.. activities

really im still all jumbled up with how i wanna write him and masky; not sure if i want to make them like how they are in their MH source or lean into the proxy thing that was prominent in the early days of the fandom... lowkey leaning into the proxy thing for this post because im more... versed..? in that, but anyhow

hes more upfront and compassionate than eyeless jack, in fact hes probably the most caring out of the four in todays post... maybe thats because i read one (1) fic years back that changed my entire approach to his character but! yeah

subconsciously trails his hands on them when the two of you are holding one another; something gentle and intimate, not too obnoxious to make you self conscious, but not careful enough to go unnoticed

i view hoodie, and by extension brian if i end up considering him and tim fully seperate from their 'proxy' parts, as a very tactile person

true to the popular fanon interpretation, hoodie doesnt speak much. but that only makes him a better listener, so on days where things get hard, hell let you talk his ears off with anything thats bothering you. very rarely, hell speak up and offer some words of advice, most times hell inch closer to grasp you. though it does get awkward since most the time hes just. blankly staring at you silently without emoting or saying a word

overall? personally hes a 7/10 for me, i would rank him higher if he were more verbal, but thats just because admin has an easier time venting if its a two way convo; but overall hell make sure that your scars dont effect your worth

Masky;

very similarly to hoodie, masky also has his own set of scars for the same reasons

he probably starts pointing out his own scars to you and mumbles about where they came from if he knows their origins

this doesnt mean "oh hes invalidating your experiences and hes trying to make it about himself," but more so "hes showing that he really does get it and he doesnt mean to talk over you"

much like EJ he approaches scars with a very blunt and upfront mindset, but to a lesser extent. he admits that whatever led up to the tissue forming, it hurt. emotionally and physically, and hes not going to deny that simple fact. hell listen to you, have a conversation with you about it, and try to help you through whatever you may be currently going through regardless of if youre injury is relevant.

or at least, thats what hes trying to do.

hes still has his own personal issues regarding going about his own problems in a healthy manner but hey thats something for another post; maybe, if i remember

honestly this post doesnt have enough fluff imo, and i can kinda see masky doing this, but imagine he boops his mask against your scars in a mockery of a kiss (doesnt take off his mask often, in fact youll probably never ever see him without it on), i can see jack doing this too tbh

thoughts? 8/10, gets the bonus points for being less awkward to rant to imo, plus i think asides ej, i think i have a bias for masky for the simple fact i had the fattest crush on him when i was in middle school

Toby;

okay! this one is going to be interesting for one main reason! i actually havent touched tobys character in YEARS! so hes probably going to have the shorter list... obligatory i havent built any solid hcs for him past what was going on in the fandom in the 2010s, before toby briefly became a mild discomfort... but we're back in business baby!! (^^ dont feel bad for requesting for toby btw! hes no longer a discomfort, and if i didnt want to write for him i wouldnt be including him right here!!)

obviously we cant talk about his part without talking about his cheek. and other, similar hcs. while i dont think most of the self inflicted marks on his body were from a place of.. for lack of better words, darkness; it doesnt change the fact he still has them. i think a lot of them are from the fact he cant feel anything; accidental burns, gnawing through his cheek, digging his fingers deep into himself. really i could go into detail, but due to the aforementioned fact that my take on him isnt as developed as other characters + i really dont think its appropriate for this post (or really, anywhere on this account,), ill stop there

while he cant relate to the physical pain of what caused your scars, he can sympathize through your feelings. do you feel sorrow, or anger to whoever hurt you? hell be getting worked up right with you, because to him youre one of his closest friends

i feel like he doesnt talk much about his past, regarding his family. but hed tell you, and you can sure as hell bet that hell do his absolute damndest to grant you the same feeling of security.

hell probably touch and prod without truly meaning any harm, but thats because he can have problems with boundaries, but hell listen if you sit him down and tell him it makes you uncomfortable if it does

more so emotional than outwardly... supportive? idk the words, but hes very empathetic with you and tries to relate to you through emotion rather than feeling what you felt. honestly? kinda based for that, but maybe thats because i dont see feelings about this topic being touched on, usually its straight up about how the scar makes the person look or the physical trauma they had gone through, but idk, maybe thats just a me thing

he can be an asshole at times but hell usually backtrack and cool off somewhere else if you call him out on it imo

not sure if its because as im LITERALLY investigating his characteristics and interpretations as we speak, but i think im starting to relate to him so ER-OH!

anyways, i wish i could make his segment more... in tune with the characters above but its probably going to take me a while until im comfortable with how i portray this dude, which sucks because as a kid he was probably one of my favorites

i dont think im going to give toby a rating like the others; since i dont think i can accurate rate him due to the lack of proper concrete ideas outside of him being empathetic to your emotional pain since he cant relate on how much it hurt

im gonna end this here since im starting to sound like a broken record on tobys part so!

i hope you enjoyed this! characterization may be a little off but i blame that mostly on the fact that i kinda fell out of the loop in regards for writing for these guys (that damn spider movie! the brainrot threw me off my creepypasta grind!/j) but its good to be back writing for this fandom! it was a fun little brain exercise trying to figure out each character goes about this kind of thing without making them all the same!! with that being said, im going to go listen to an audio reading of tobys story so i can regrounded in his character and hopefully do him some justice in the future!

[flamingo-writes]

Hi flamingo how are you? How are you with your leg pain since the move? Have you been resting? I hope so!

Well as always I leave you a mini request before starting the week ;)

What do you think that, reader is a not so well known singer ,who is starting out in the world of music and meets Hobie in one of their own performances when they are singing on stage.

hope you have a wonderful week tysm <3!

I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve had a bit of a writer’s block. I powered through it though. I thought of a million ways this could’ve played out and went for the one I liked the most. I hope you like it too, and I’m sorry for the late reply 😢 I rewrote this like three times help 😭 whenever I wanted to sit and write I ended up doing a lot of other things.

With A Little Help — Hobie x Reader

Title inspired by the song by the Beatles With A Little Help From My Friends. The bicycle thing is inspired after a real accident I had once, except I don’t play the guitar and but I did get hit on a freshly made tattoo 🥲

Warnings: cursing,

The moment you decided to start a band with your friends, you knew from the beginning it would go one of two ways.

You could either sign with a producer and basically sell yourself like whores. Somehow gaining a debt just by signing a piece of paper, and working an ungodly amount of hours just to pay your debt, and hope the fame you’ve gained actually helps you make money after the percentage the producing house gets. Becoming puppets for the producer to move around the way they want.

Or you could do everything yourself working with what you had. Recording wherever you found available –sometimes that place being your own room–, asking friends if you could borrow equipment or instruments. Asking for favours. Gathering coins your couch has been swallowing and hoarding for years to print a few hundred copies of posters announcing your next gig.

And out of the two, you knew perfectly well which one you wanted. One of them helped you maintain your freedom, which was exactly what your music spoke about. Gathering a small and loyal fanbase was relatively easy in the low underground bars. The punk scene, the alternatives, and the rock fans soon spread the word around their friends. Eventually, these same people started offering their help with equipment, a few bills for copies, even instruments. It was still a small fanbase, but it was more than enough and they were all somehow more helpful than most people

One day in particular, your guitar player gave you a call. To your nerves, you picked up your phone, furious.

“Where the hell are you?! You’re so late! We’re supposed to start playing in ten minutes!” You barked.

“Ye-yeah…About that…” Your guitar player said with an awkward chuckle. “You see, it’s a funny story…”

“Oh god, no…” You groaned.

“Listen. First of all I’m fine–”

“What the fuck does that even mean? Wait, shit, bruv, did something happen to you?”

“You see, this is where the story gets funny…” They said with an awkward giggle. “I was minding my own business, on my way to the bar. I was on my bike. Riding it, you know. When an old lady and a tiny ass dog appeared out of nowhere, from the corner. In an attempt to not run over either of them, I turned and there was a tree–”

“You can’t be serious…” You gasped, “you alright?”

“In the greater scheme of things, yes I am…But…I kinda hurt my wrist very badly…”

“God, I’m scared to ask…how badly…?”

“Uh, I don’t think my skin is supposed to look purple…And the lady I almost ran over is offering to drive me to the emergency room?”

“Shit. What do we do? Do we cancel—“

“No! Don’t! I don’t know. Improvise?”

“How? You’re our guitar player!”

“Go wild on the bass?”

“Fuck off!” You groaned, annoyed.

Hobie Brown was not far from there, hearing to actually both sides of the conversation through his enhanced hearing. Helping your drummer setting everything up.

“I think something happened to your guitar player, mate?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m hearing…” Your drummer said nervously.

“If you guys need help, I know how to play the guitar…I can sight read too, but if you give me a couple of minutes to look through your songs, it would be better…” Hobie said as your drummer’s face widened in surprise.

“Dude, seriously?”

“Yeah,” Hobie said, smirking confidently.

“The motherfucker broke–”

“We found a guitar player!” Your drummer interrupted, raising both arms in the air happily.

Hobie giggled and looked over at you. Your eyes remained wide and confused, wondering when the roller coaster of emotions was going to end. You knew him. You didn’t really, but you’d seen him around enough to recognize his face.

“Seriously?”

“Sure, why not?” He said, shrugging.

“Oh god, thank you! Thank you so much, mate!” You said happily, running your hands through your hair in relief, making Hobie chuckle.

“Call me Hobie,” He said with a cheeky smirk.

You introduced yourself, as well the rest of your band. As you discussed what t do for the set list, you insisted Hobie didn’t improve and sight read all of your songs, and instead settled for a set list made out of mostly covers from famous songs, and just leaving a few of your original songs distributed for Hobie to take a break from a hyper concentrated state.

As the anxiety was rising in your belly, about to make you puke a minute away from starting your gig, Hobie grabbed your shoulder, catching your attention.

“Hey, it’s going to be alright,” He said, trying to comfort you. “And if it blows, then what the hell? It’s not going to be the last time you play. That way you could always make a dramatic comeback and look even cooler,”

His words while making you feel less scared about it all, it did nothing for your nerves.

Although as soon as you started playing, the music consumed you. Playing with Hobie instead of your guitar player was simply different. Not that any of them was better or worse than the other, but the dynamics changed drastically. Despite not really knowing Hobie that well, the interactions on stage were fun, spontaneous, even comfortable, like you’d known him for way longer than just the last hour.

Hobie not only exchanged glances with you and walked over to you while playing his guitar, he also went over to your drummer. Sometimes jointing you for the choruses of the covers, or adding spontaneous riffs to guitar solos.

By the end of the gig, people were crazy, screaming, jumping around. As you grabbed the mic, covered in sweat and breathless you thanked them.

“We’d love to stay, but we actually have to go check out on our friend…” You chuckled. “Our guitar player had Ana vidente earlier today, and couldn’t play. We had the magnificent Hobie, here, helping us out!” You sighed. “Let me hear it for Hobie for being a real one!” The crown screamed and clapped, as Hobie smiled at you.

“Thank you for letting me help,” Hobie said, walking over to the mic and grabbing it. “Thank you guys as well!”

“Oh yeah. You guys made this very fun!” You said going back to the mic, your face bearing Hobie’s as he glanced at you with a smirk, “Have a good night, everybody!”

As you walked behind the stage, you grabbed a towel you had nearby and dried your face and hair.

“Good job out there,” Hobie said walking behind you.

“Thank you! It was all possible thanks to you!” You said looking up from your towel. “I’d love to stay and talk but…”

“Yeah, go check on your friend. You can buy me a beer some other time to return the favour,” He said with a cheeky smirk.

“Just one? An entire gig for just one beer?” You joked.

“Well, at least three,”

“Sounds like a deal,” you sighed, meeting his stare and biting your lower lip softly. Seriously, thank you…”

“My pleasure,” He said confidently, meeting your stare, as you noticed something in them sparking.

“See you around?”

“I hang out here an awful lot so, yeah,” He shrugged, putting his hands in the pockets of his vest.

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 90: What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are'. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about plotting vowels. But first, we have a fun, new activity that lets you discover what episode of Lingthusiasm you are. Our new quiz will recommend an episode for you based on a series of questions.

Gretchen: This is like a personality quiz. If you’ve always wondered which episode of Lingthusiasm matches your personality the most, or if you are wondering where to start with the back catalogue and aren’t sure which episode to start with, if you’re trying to share Lingthusiasm with a friend or decide which episode to re-listen to, the quiz can help you with this.

Lauren: This quiz is definitely more whimsical than scientific and, unlike our listener survey, is absolutely not intended to be used for research purposes.

Gretchen: Not intended to be used for research purposes. Definitely intended to be used for amusement purposes. Available as a link in the show notes. Please tell us what results you get! We’re very curious to see if there’re some episodes that turn out to be super popular because of this.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was a chat with Dr. Bethany Gardner, who built the vowel plots that we discuss in this episode.

Gretchen: This is a behind-the-scenes episode where we talked with Bethany about how they made the vowel charts that we’ve discussed, how you could make them yourself if you’re interested in it, or if you just wanna follow along in a making-of-process style, you can listen to us talk with them.

Lauren: For that, you can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: As well as so many more bonus episodes that let us help keep making the show for you.

[Music]

Gretchen: Lauren, we’ve talked about vowels before on Lingthusiasm. At the time, we said that your vocal tract is basically like a giant meat clarinet.

Lauren: Yeah, because the reeds are like the vibration of your vocal cords – and then you can manipulate that sound in that clarinets can play different notes and voices can make many different speech sounds. They’re both long and tubular.

Gretchen: We had some people write in that said, “We appreciate the meat clarinet – the cursed meat clarinet – but we think the vocal tract is a little bit more like a meat oboe or a meat bassoon because both of these instruments have two reeds, and we have two vocal cords. So, you want to use something that has a double vocal cord.”

Lauren: I admit I maybe got the oboe and the bassoon confused. I thought that the oboe was a giant instrument. Turns out, the oboe is about the size of a clarinet. Turns out, I don’t know a lot about woodwind instruments.

Gretchen: I think that one of the reasons we did pick a clarinet at the time is because we thought, even if it’s not exactly the same, probably more people have encountered a clarinet and have a vague sense of what it looks like than an oboe, which you didn’t really know what it was. I had to look up how a bassoon works. We thought this metaphor might be a little bit clearer.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: However.

Lauren: Okay, there’s an update.

Gretchen: I have now been doing some further research on both the vocal tract and musical instruments, and I’m very pleased to report that we, in fact, have an update. Your vocal tract is not just a meat clarinet, not just a meat bassoon, it is, in fact, most similar to a meat bagpipe.

Lauren: Oh, Gretchen, you found something more disgusting. Thank you?

Gretchen: I’m sorry. It’s even worse.

Lauren: Right. I guess the big bag – a bagpipe is made of a bag and pipes – the bag acts like your lungs. The lungs send air up through your vocal folds as they vibrate to make the sound. You do have a bag of air, just like in the human speech apparatus.

Gretchen: That’s a good start. What I didn’t know until I was doing some research about bagpipes – because the lengths that I will go to for this podcast have no bound – is that a bagpipe actually has reeds inside several of the pipes that extrude from the bag.

Lauren: Because there’s multiple sticking out in different spots.

Gretchen: There’s the one that you blow into, which doesn’t have a reed, but then the other ones, there’s the one with the little holes on it that you twiddle your fingers on and make the different notes, and then there’s also some other pipes up at the top. They also have reeds in them. Those reeds are just tuned from the length to a specific level. You know when you hear someone start playing the bagpipes and there’s this drone? [Imitates bagpipe sound] The sort of single note? That’s because of the note those reeds are tuned to in the other pipes that don’t have the holes in them.

Lauren: Ah, they’re not just decorative.

Gretchen: Right. They have this function of giving this harmony to the melody that’s being played on the little pipe with the holes in it, which is technically known as the “chanter,” but this is not a bagpipe podcast despite appearances to the contrary. We will link to some people on YouTube telling you more than you ever wanted to know about how bagpipes work if you want to go down that rabbit hole. But if you had an extra pair of hands or two, or a couple people helping you sort of reaching around your shoulders – this metaphor’s getting weirder by the minute – and you cut a bunch of little holes in the other sticking-up-the-top pipes –

Lauren: You would have less droning, and you could play multiple melodies or multiple notes at the same time. Hm.

Gretchen: At the same time. With this, you could make a bagpipe play something very close to vowels.

Lauren: Ah, cool!

Gretchen: This is so cursed.

Lauren: I mean, yes. Before we even talk about making it out of meat – it’s deeply, deeply cursed – it kind of reminds me of this instrument from the early 20th Century called the “voder.”

Gretchen: Would I pronounce that “vo-DUH” or “vo-DER”?

Lauren: With the R at the end.

Gretchen: Okay, “voder.”

Lauren: Thank you, convenient rhotic speaker here.

Gretchen: I’m glad to be of service.

Lauren: It kind of looked like something between a little stenographer’s keyboard and a piano, and with a whole bunch of finger keys and foot pedals you could manipulate it to make something that sounds like human speech.

Gretchen: Ah, wow. And this is pretty old?

Lauren: It’s from like the 1930s. There’s a little, short video snippet in one of the links in the show notes.

Gretchen: You could play these chords, and also have some consonants somehow, and end up with something that sounds like a synthetic human voice.

Lauren: Yeah. A lot of the early computer speech synthesis, as well, was actually quite good at making things that sounded like vowels. It turns out a lot of the consonant things are a little bit harder to do, but the very basic sound of vowels, as you say, you could play it with just a few bagpipes very carefully re-engineered.

Gretchen: I guess if you’re looking at instruments that can play multiple notes at the same time, we could also say that the human is like a meat piano.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Or at least you could make vowels on a piano by doing a sufficiently complicated sequence of weird chords, like notes at the same time.

Lauren: I mean, we also have an instrument that’s known as the human voice. Humans are very good at singing. We possibly don’t have to engineer all these cursed things to get to that.

Gretchen: Okay. Let’s talk about the human voice as itself. We start with the vocal cords or folds. The tenseness or looseness of the vocal folds is what produces pitch. Then they go through the throat, which we can think of as one tube. Then they go through the mouth cavity, which we can think of as a second tube. Each of these tubes bounces around the sound in different ways to add two additional notes – one from the throat, one from the mouth – onto the sound that’s coming out, which is what makes it sound like a vowel to us.

Lauren: You can map the physics of air moving through the throat space and the mouth space as it comes out to pay attention to the differences between different sounds.

Gretchen: If you’re taking a physics diagram or a diagram of the acoustic signal and saying, “Which pitches are coming out of the mouth, which frequencies are coming out of the mouth that are being produced by these two chambers?” then you can see what those are, and you can do stuff with those diagrams once you’ve made them.

Lauren: The seeing bit is spectrograms, which we looked at in an earlier episode and played around with making different sounds and how they look in this way of visualising it where you have all these bands of strength and information that you can see vary depending on the different sounds that you made. That’s because of those different ways that we manipulate and play around with the air as its coming out of our mouth.

Gretchen: The first band that comes out is just the pitch of the voice itself. The lowest one is what we hear as the pitch of the sound, but I can make /aaaa/ and I can make /iiii/. Those are the same set of pitches but on different vowels.

Lauren: There’s something more than pitch happening there.

Gretchen: There’s something more than pitch happening. There’s two more notes – sounds – that come out at the same time. If the throat chamber is large because the tongue is fairly high and far forward, then this sound that’s the next one after the pitch, which was call “F1,” is low. Then if the mouth is quite open, and the lips are spread, the mouth chamber is quite small, so that sound is quite high, so the next sound, “F2,” is high pitched. If you put your tongue far forward, and your lips spread, you get /i/. The first of these dark bands is low; the second of them is high. That produces the sound that we hear as /i/. Whereas, by comparison, if we make the sound /u/, the throat chamber is still large because the tongue is quite high, but now, the mouth chamber is big because we have the lips rounding that make it big – /u/. Now, F1 is low, and F2 is also low, and we’re hearing the sound /u/.

Lauren: We have a very clear way of telling from those signals in the spectrogram, if we look at it, the difference between an /i/ and an /u/, even if we can’t hear it, we can see it on the spectrogram. This is where you begin to read spectrograms.

Gretchen: Or if we want to start measuring spectrograms very precisely, we can start doing this. We can also start seeing, okay, is /i/ when I make it the same as the /i/ when you make it?

Lauren: They’re similar enough that we recognise it as the same sound. If we both say, “fleece.”

Gretchen: “Fleece.”

Lauren: You say, /flis/. I say, /flis/.

Gretchen: /pətɛɪtoʊ pətatoʊ/. I think they sound pretty similar.

Lauren: Mine is maybe a little bit higher. I really pushed my tongue forward and up. It’s a very Australian thing to do.

Gretchen: We can actually record some people making all of the vowels and compare their measurements for these two different bands of frequency and see how similar two people’s vowels are to each other.

Lauren: Depending on the quality of your recording, you can see a lot more happening there as well. There’re all the properties that mean that we can tell your voice from my voice, or my voice from someone who has exactly the same accent because we have all these other features. It’s very different to if you record, say, a whistle or one of those tuning forks that people use to tune instruments because they are giving a clean single note.

Gretchen: A pure tone that’s just one frequency, one pitch, not several pitches all at the same time that we then have to smoosh together and interpret as a vowel sound.

Lauren: That’s what gives the human voice its richness. If a human voice sings the same note as a clarinet and an oboe, which are definitely two completely different woodwind instruments, there’s all these extra bits and things in the spectrogram that you can pick up the difference in the quality or just use your ears – also another possibility.

Gretchen: Yeah. If you wanna do detailed acoustic analysis on it – which is kind of fun and can tell us more precise things about the differences between how different people speak, which is neat – then you have this very precise way of measuring it by converting it into a visual graph/chart thing or a vowel plot rather than just listening to someone and being like, “Uh, these sound pretty similar. I dunno. I guess they’re a bit different. How are they different? Hmm.” Sometimes, being able to do it with numbers is easier.

Lauren: In the era before we had computers to create spectrograms and take these measurements, people did use their ear. The best phoneticians had this amazing ability to tell the difference between really, really subtly-similar-but-slightly-different sounds.

Gretchen: And they’re so well trained in being able to hear the difference between “Oh, you’re saying this, and your tongue is a little bit further forward than this other person who’s saying this with their tongue a little bit further back,” but if you’re not very good at hearing tongue position out of sounds, you can also produce some stuff and make the machines tell you some numbers about it, which can be easier with a different type of training.

Lauren: When we talk about the position of the tongue and how open the mouth is, we can use a plot to map where in the mouth these things are happening. That’s called the “vowel space.” We made a lot of silly sounds when we talked about that many episodes ago.

Gretchen: The vowel space goes from /i-ɛ-a/ on one side.

Lauren: That’s all up the front of your mouth, and it’s just going from being more close to more open.

Gretchen: /i/ to /ɛ/ to /a/, but you can through all these subtle gradations between them, and through /u-ɔ-ɑ/ at the back.

Lauren: That’s from all the way up the top at the back to open at the back.

Gretchen: You can draw a diagram of this which is shaped like square that’s been a bit skewed. It’s wider at the top than at the bottom. It’s known as the “vowel trapezoid” because the mouth is not perfectly shaped like a square. The jaw can hinge open.

Lauren: Only so far.

Gretchen: Only so far.

Lauren: Because this represents how you say or articulate these sounds, this is known as “articulatory phonetics.”

Gretchen: But then because you’re articulating a thing that goes into a sound that we can also analyse as the sound itself, these ways that you can articulate things map onto things that show up in the sound itself. Analysing that is called “acoustic phonetics.”

Lauren: Because you’re paying attention to the acoustic properties – the sound properties.

Gretchen: The really nifty thing is that this vowel chart that we’ve made from over 100 years ago, linguists, before they had computers, were like, “Here’s what I think the articulatory properties of the vowels are based on my mouth and my ear and some other people’s mouths and ears.” You can actually map very precisely this acoustic thing. Once we had computers, you can make them correspond to each other in this way that – you hope it works because, obviously, people do understand the vowels, but it actually does work when you start measuring things as well.

Lauren: I had always wondered whether it was just a coincidence that the articulation – where you put your mouth – and the acoustic information about the F1 and F2 with the spectrogram, but explaining it in terms of F1 and F2 are the way you change the shape of your throat and your mouth that leads to these changes in the acoustic signal, you can see how the articulation and the acoustics come together, and you get a similar type of information across both of them.

Gretchen: Absolutely. I think it’s really neat that there’s this relatively straightforward correspondence. There’s also, you know, an F3 that also does other stuff because there’s other more squishy bits of your mouth, and we’re not getting into them.

Lauren: There’s also a bunch of flip-flopping of X- and Y-axes that you need to do that Bethany kindly walked us through in the bonus episode.

Gretchen: Because these diagrams were created in an era before they were doing the computer acoustics. Sometimes, I think about the alternate version of what phonetics would look like if we’d started doing it with computers right away, and how there’s all this analogue stuff that’s residual based on human impressions, and how our vowel charts might be completely rotated if we had just started doing it with computers the whole time.

Lauren: But then we’d have to imagine ourselves standing on our heads to say anything, so I’m glad they are the way they are.

Gretchen: That’s true. When you’re talking about vowels, it’s an interesting challenge with English because there’s lots of different dialects of English, varieties of English, ways of speaking English, and, generally speaking, we’re pretty good at understanding other accents. One of the big factors that accents vary on, though, is the vowels.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: If you’re getting people to record a word list to do some vowel analysis on, what you might wanna do is have them record a bunch of words that all begin and end with the same consonant insofar as possible.

Lauren: Because vowels are very sweet and easily influenced. They’re very easily influenced by the consonants that are next to them. You have to make sure that they’re all kept in line and not influenced by what’s happening around them by giving them all the same context.

Gretchen: They’re very susceptible to peer pressure. You can have people say something like, “beat,” “bet,” “bit,” “bought,” “boot,” all of this stuff between B and T.

Lauren: I learnt to record between H and D: “hid,” “had,” “hoo’d,” “hawed.” Some of those words are less, uh, common – frequent – than others, but again, a really consistent environment.

Gretchen: But this also, obviously, causes problems for when you want to talk about the particular vowels in a given accent or in a given variety because if you go around saying, “Oh, well, the /hoɪd/ vowel” or something like this, how do you know if that’s a Cockney person saying, “hide,” or it’s me saying “hoyed,” or something else because all your consonants are the exact same, and there’s nothing to let you figure out what the original word is.

Lauren: Someone did come up with a solution for this. That person’s name is John Wells.

Gretchen: John Wells is this British phonetician who I’ve never actually met in person, but I feel like I know him because I used to read his blog back when he posted more actively.

Lauren: He used to write his blog in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which means that if you read the IPA, you would be reading it in John Wells’s voice.

Gretchen: You absolutely would be. This was a challenge that I used to set to myself. Sometimes, he also wrote in Standard English orthography, to be fair, but sometimes he would just write a whole blog post in IPA, and you’d be like, “Cool, I guess I’m reading this out loud to myself and hearing John Wells’s accent and speaking it like him,” which was really neat. In the 1980s, John Wells was like, “Hey, it’d be really useful if we had a way to refer to sound changes that happen in different English varieties,” which often happen to – like, all of the times you say the /ɪ/ vowel are a little bit more like this or like that, depending on the accent.

Lauren: I think it was very personally motivated because he was writing a book called “Accents in English.” It gets very difficult in a book, especially, but even in an audio recording, to be like, “the /ɪ/ vowel,” “the /u/ vowel.”

Gretchen: Right. You could use the International Phonetic Alphabet to refer to the specific vowel that people are making. But if you want to say, “People in this area realise this vowel as that, and people in this other area realise the same vowel as something else,” how do you refer to that thing that’s the macro-category of vowel that people would consider themselves to be saying the same word, but the specific way they’re realising it is different? He came up with what he called “the standard lexical sets,” which are now also called, “Wells Lexical Sets,” possibly John Wells’s greatest legacy, which is a bunch of words that are, crucially, easy to distinguish from each other based on the surrounding consonants that you can say when you’re giving a talk – like you can say, “the ‘kit’ vowel,” or “the ‘goose’ vowel,” or “the ‘fleece’ vowel,” and people know that the “kit” vowel refers to the specific sound because there’s no other “keet” word in English that it could be confused with.

Lauren: John Wells was somewhat self-deprecating when he was talking about this, and he was like, “I just kind of came up with it in a week where I had to write this bit of the book, and it’s weird to think that they’re still in use now,” but it was based on years of insight into the different ways different varieties of English realise different vowels and the balance he was trying to strike.

Gretchen: He has this charming blog post from 2010 where he’s like, “Anybody’s welcome to use them. I don’t claim any copyright. Maybe this is my legacy now, I guess.” He does actually put quite a bit of thought into the sets because they’re words that can’t be easily confused for each other. Sometimes, that means the words are a little bit rare. You have “fleece.” You might think, “Well, why not use ‘sheep’ because surely that’s more common. People say that.”

Lauren: But “ship” and “sheep” are very hard to distinguish in some varieties of English.

Gretchen: Right. If you had “sheep,” it could be confused with “ship,” whereas if you have “fleece” and “kit,” there’s no “flice” or “keet” for them to be confused with.

Lauren: Good nonce words to add to your collection.

Gretchen: Thank you. Similarly, for people like me where I make the vowels in “caught,” as in the past tense of “catch,” and “cot,” as in a small bed, the same. If I talk about /cɑt/ and /cɑt/, people are like, “I dunno which one you’re talking about because you say them both the same.” And I’m like, “Great, neither do I.”

Lauren: You mean when you’re talking about /cɑt/ and /cɔt/.

Gretchen: Hmm. Yes, see, you don’t have that “caught/cot merger.”

Lauren: Very easy for me, but it’s much easier to be able to say /θɔt/ and /lɑt/ – much more distinct for me to perceive with you because they don’t have merged equivalents.

Gretchen: “Thought” and “lot” are much more distinct because the consonants are different. You don’t need to be relying only on the vowels. Some of these words are just super fun. Can we read the whole Wells Lexical Sets? There’re not very many of them.

Lauren: Sure. Let’s take turns in going through each of the words.

Gretchen: All right.

Lauren: So, you can hear the differences in the way we pronounce each of these vowels.

Gretchen: /kit/.

Lauren: /kit/.

Gretchen: / dɹɛs/.

Lauren: / dɹɛs/.

Gretchen: / tɹæp/.

Lauren: /tɹæp/.

Gretchen: /lɑt/.

Lauren: /lɑt/.

Gretchen: /stɹʌt/.

Lauren: /stɹʌt/.

Gretchen: /fʊt/.

Lauren: /fʊt/.

Gretchen: /bæθ/.

Lauren: /bɑθ/.

Gretchen: Ooo, very different.

Lauren: We’ll come back to that one.

Gretchen: /klɑθ/.

Lauren: /klɑθ/.

Gretchen: /nɛɹs/.

Lauren: My Australian English speaker in me is already immediately prepared for /nɛːs/.

Gretchen: So, non-rhotic. Very good.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: /flis/.

Lauren: /flis/.

Gretchen: /fɛɪs/.

Lauren: /fɛɪs/.

Gretchen: /pɑm/.

Lauren: /pæm/.

Gretchen: Ooo, very different. /θɑt/.

Lauren: /θɔt/.

Gretchen: Also, very different. We’ll come back to this. /goʊt/.

Lauren: /gəut/.

Gretchen: Bit different. /gus/.

Lauren: /gus/.

Gretchen: /pɹəɪs/.

Lauren: /pɹæɪs/.

Gretchen: Bit different. I have Canadian raising there. We’ll get back to that. /t͡ʃoɪs/.

Lauren: /t͡ʃoɪs/.

Gretchen: /moʊθ/.

Lauren: /mæʊθ/.

Gretchen: Also, we’ll get back to that. /niɹ/.

Lauren: /nɪɑ/.

Gretchen: /skwɛɹ/.

Lauren: /skwɛɑ/.

Gretchen: /stɑɹt/.

Lauren: /stɑːt/.

Gretchen: /nɔɹθ/.

Lauren: /nɔːθ/.

Gretchen: /fɔɹs/.

Lauren: /fɔːs/.

Gretchen: /kjʊɹ/.

Lauren: /kjʊɑ/. I’m only slightly hamming up my Australian English diphthongs there.

Gretchen: That whole set with the Rs where I’m like, “These are just the same sounds, but now there’s an R,” you’re like, “No, these are really different diphthongs.”

Lauren: /kjʊɑ/.

Gretchen: /kjʊɑ/. /kjʊɹ/.

Lauren: Taking you on a journey of my whole mouth.

Gretchen: One thing you could do if you’re trying to compare mine and Lauren’s vowels is you could listen to us saying them and being like, “Yeah, those sound kind of different in some places.” But another thing we could do, is we could draw some diagrams.

Lauren: That’s what we did.

Gretchen: Yes!

Lauren: We were very grateful that Dr. Bethany Gardner – who is a recent PhD in psychology and language processing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville in the USA – took the time to work with us to take recordings of us saying words and plotting the vowels onto a vowel plot.

Gretchen: Now, we can look at our vowel plots and compare our vowels to each other. We have a whole bonus episode with Bethany about how we made these graphs with them. For the moment, let’s just look at them and compare them with each other and say some things about the results.

Lauren: We sent Bethany recordings of us reading the Wells Lexical Sets, much the way we did just then.

Gretchen: Less giggling though.

Lauren: We did record them a little bit more professionally, but they also used some processes to scrape data of equivalent word recordings from episodes of Lingthusiasm using our transcripts – turns out, another use of our transcripts!

Gretchen: Get people to analyse your vowels for you. It’s so cool!

Lauren: You can see the difference between clearly spoken vowels where we’re really focusing on them and then that really compelling influence that other sounds have on vowels that drag them all over the space.

Gretchen: Yeah. I’m looking at the first set of graphs for each of us, which are the Wells Lexical Sets, and my vowels are a lot more consistent in them. When I make /i/ and /ɪ/ and /u/, all the points are quite clustered in one spot – because we said everything several times – but I seem to be hitting quite a consistent target there. Whereas when I look at Bethany’s vowel plot of me from the Lingthusiasm episodes, there’s way more stuff there, and I’m way more spread out. My vowels are less consistent with each other because I’m producing them in several words. They tested several different words. I’m just producing them in running speech where things merge into each other a lot more rather than this very clear word list style.

Lauren: And human ears and brains are so good at disambiguating things that might be very close to each other in the plot, but in a running sentence, we can hear them quite clearly for the words that they are.

Gretchen: Right. My “goose” vowel and my “foot” vowel – /gus/ and /fʊt/ – are almost totally distinct from each other when I’m reading a word list. There’s very little overlap in terms of how I’m saying them. But when I’m saying them in running speech, apparently there’s a lot of overlap because I’m probably saying something like, “Oh, go get the goose,” /gʊs/, rather than /gus/ with that really clear /u/.

Lauren: There’s no other word I’m gonna confuse “goose” with, or even if I did, in context, I’d know what thing you’re expecting me to go get.

Gretchen: Right. Even if I’m saying something like, “dude,” you’re not gonna confuse that for “dud.” I’d be saying them in different contexts.

Lauren: The nice thing is you can see, especially from our clearly spoken word lists, that we are speaking a language where the vowels are in a similar place, but there are some slight differences. You can actually start to get the hang of the differences in the way different varieties of English tend to use the vowel space from this information.

Gretchen: One of the things I noticed about your vowel plot, Lauren – and this is a feature of Australian English – is that your “kit” vowel and your “fleece” vowel are very close to each other, especially in episode speech rather than word list speech.

Lauren: Yeah, “kit” and “fleece,” for me, are both really far forward. You’re using other features like length or tenseness to really disambiguate them. People struggle to do it.

Gretchen: Or just in context. I noticed when I was visiting Australia that people would say things like /bɪːg/, and I’d be like, “Oh, okay, I would say that as /bɪg/.”

Lauren: It’s a pretty classic feature of Australian English. It does remind me of one of the most embarrassing times someone misheard me when I was living in the UK. I was talking about how I used to be on a team with my friends for social netball. This person was not listening that well, and it was a noisy environment, and they thought that I had said, “nipple.”

Gretchen: Oh, no!

Lauren: /nɪpl̩/ and /nɛtbɑl/.

Gretchen: /nɛtbɑl/, /nɛtbɑl/, whereas I think my /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ vowels, my “kit” and “dress” vowels, are pretty distinct from each other. They don’t really overlap.

Lauren: Whereas all of Australian English is really far forward. It tends to be quite high. The British English speaker – I don’t know what sport they thought we play in Australia, but there was a moment of deep confusion.

Gretchen: These are the types of things that you can find out when you get your vowels done the way sometimes people – I think there’s a trend on Instagram right now to get your colours done, you know, find out whether you’re a “winter” or a “soft spring” or something like this.

Lauren: I’m an Australian English “kit”-fronting.

Gretchen: Yeah. What are your vowels? What does this say about where you’re from? Is there anything you noticed about mine?

Lauren: I think, for you, definitely what becomes clear is that “caught/cot merger,” or, as I like to think about it, the “Gawne/gone merger.”

Gretchen: Ah, the “Gawne/gone merger.”

Lauren: I can tell if people have it if my name and the word “gone” sound the same.

Gretchen: The past participle of “go.”

Lauren: It’s very salient for me. The cot/caught merger is so famous, people don’t use the Wells Set terms for it. They just refer to it as “caught/cot.”

Gretchen: But you could also call it the “thought/lot merger” or the “lot/thought merger.” I never know which one goes first because I literally just think of these as being said the same.

Lauren: You can see evidence. We’re not imagining that you’re merging them. You are physically merging them in the vowel space.

Gretchen: I’m literally saying them as the same thing. I was always confused about the “thought” vowel when I was learning the International Phonetic Alphabet because I was like, “I can’t figure out how to make a sound that is somewhere in between this sound in ‘lot’ and ‘thought’ but doesn’t go all the way up to the /oʊ/ in ‘goat’.” It doesn’t feel like there’s anything between them for me. That’s true. The vast majority of Canadians have “thought” and “lot” merged. But unlike at least some Americans, we don’t have them merged low; we have them merged high. I have “thought” and “caught,” and in order to produce the other vowel, I had to actually produce something lower in my throat – like /θɑt/ /cat/ which sounds very American to me – I had to produce this lower sound because there was no space between “thought” and “goat.” They’re very close to each other. In fact, the thing that I wasn’t producing was /ɑ/, the really low one, that sort of dentist sound.

Lauren: Yeah. Movements and mergers can happen in all kinds of different directions. The merging of “cot” and “caught” also explains why it took me a very long time to understand that “podcast” is a pun because it’s meant to be a pun with “broadcast,” and /pɑd/ and /bɹɔːd/.

Gretchen: /pɑdkæst/ and /bɹɑdkæst/. It’s the same vowel for me.

Lauren: Whereas it works as a pun for you. That was very satisfying to learn that’s why that’s meant to be a pun.

Gretchen: The pun that I didn’t get based on my accent – and this is to do with the “price” and “mouth” vowels – I didn’t realise that “I scream for ice cream” was supposed to be a pun.

Lauren: Oh, because the raising that you have in Canada means that it doesn’t work that way, whereas /ɑɪ skɹim fə ɑɪ skɹim/.

Gretchen: Right, you have the same vowel in those – or the same diphthong – but for me, “I scream for ice cream,” those are very different. In “choice” and “price,” I have different vowels than I would have in “choys” and “prize” – if “choys” was a word.

Lauren: “Bok choys” – multiple.

Gretchen: “Bok choys” – yeah, several of them. And “prize.”

Lauren: Returning to “podcast” but moving to the other end of the word, /kɑst // kæst/ as a distinction is so famous in mapping varieties of British English that people talk about /bɑθ // tɹæp/ distinctions all the time.

Gretchen: I hear of it as called the “bath/trap split,” but as you can hear, the “/bæθ // tɹæp/ split,” I just say them both the same.

Lauren: Whereas in Australia, Victorians traditionally would say /kæsl̩/ like “trap,” and people further north and in the rest of the country could say, /kɑsl̩/ –

Gretchen: Like “bath.”

Lauren: So, whether you’re a /kɑsl̩/ or a /kæsl̩/ shows this “bath/trap split” as well, to the point where, in New South Wales, you get the city of “New /kɑsl̩/,” but in Victoria, you have the town of “/kæsl̩/ Main.”

Gretchen: Ooo, this “castle” distinction from the “trap/bath split” – I think sometimes when I’m trying to do a fake British accent, I will just make all of my “traps” and “baths” into /tɹɑps/ and /bɑθs/.

Lauren: Right, okay. You know there’s something happening there, and you haven’t quite landed – because it does vary.

Gretchen: Well, then they’re not different categories for me because it’s all one category, and I push them all forward rather than moving half of them because I don’t know which half to move.

Lauren: I find it very satisfying listening to “No Such Thing as a Fish,” because they talk about the /pɑdkɑst/ or the /pɑdkæst/, and their guests do, depending on whether they’re from Southern England or more in the midlands and north where they tend to say /kæst/ instead of /kɑst/.

Gretchen: I have literally never noticed this distinction. I’ve also listened to many episodes of “No Such Thing as a Fish” because you made me start listening to them back in the day, and I’ve never noticed that they say anything different because it’s just not something I pay attention to.

Lauren: It’s so salient for me as a Victorian English speaker, but I notice it all the time. There would be a really fun mapping variation activity to do listening through to Fish – turns out I just listen to it and don’t get distracted by that too much.

Gretchen: Well, if you want to commission Bethany to make graphs of their vowels, I’m sure that’s an option.

Lauren: I love how Wells’ lexical set has just entered – in many ways, the “bath/trap split,” it means you get all these other terms like “goose fronting,” which is just great as a term.

Gretchen: I love how vivid these words are. Things like “fleece” and “goose” and “goat,” they’re very common animal nouns that are quite vivid.

Lauren: And there’re definitely linguists who have dressed up as Wells Lexical Set items for Halloween. It makes a great group Halloween costume.

Gretchen: Oh my gosh, my favourite one of these was from North Carolina State University. They got the whole department, and they each dressed up as one member of the Wells Lexical Set. Someone was a “kit.” They dressed like a cat. Someone dressed like a goose, and someone dressed like a cloth or a fleece. Then they stood in the positions to create the vowel diagram. They posted a photo on the internet. You can see it. We will link to it. It’s really great.

Lauren: Magic. You and I also once had a project where we plotted the Wells Lexical Set using emoji.

Gretchen: That was your project.

Lauren: I did the making the joke. You did the graphic design. It was a good team project.

Gretchen: Okay, that’s fair. That’s fair. I feel like I remember you being the instigator of this.

Lauren: Shenanigans were shenaniganed.

Gretchen: You can get a goose emoji and a goat emoji, and you can map the vowels in there as well.

Lauren: And “Goose fronting” – because we’re talking about moving the tongue further forward or back or up and down in the vowel space – I have quite fronted vowels as an Australian English speaker for my front vowels. So, “goose” – I’ve already got it quite far forward compared to you. You can see that in the diagrams.

Gretchen: I think my “goose” – my goose is also cooked – my “goose” is also fronted. Because I think Canadian English is also undergoing goose fronting. There’s a lot of different regions that are all simultaneously fronting their geese – no, not their “geese,” fronting their “gooses.”

Lauren: Fronting their “gooses.” I feel like the really stereotypical example is from California, particularly in the lexical item “dude.”

Gretchen: “Dude” – sort of like a surfer pronunciation of “duuude.”

Lauren: “/du̟d/ you’re a fronted /gu̟s/.”

Gretchen: If you compare that with like /dud/, which would be less fronted, /dud/ sounds like you’re more of a fuddy duddy, and /du̟d/ sounds like you’re “so /ku̟l/.”

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, there’re other things happening there as well because I found a paper while researching this where someone looked at 70 years of Received Pronunciation, which is that incredibly stuffy, British, old-fashioned newsreader voice. Apparently, goose fronting is happening in that variety as well.

Gretchen: Oh, so if the Queen was still alive, she’d be fronting her “goose” as well?

Lauren: Quite possibly. Gooses are being fronted all over the place.

Gretchen: All over the English-speaking world. One of the things that can happen if you’re getting your vowel tea leaves read is you can say things about region. Another thing that looking at a vowel plot can do – because vowels just contribute so much to our sense of accent – is it can say things about gender. One of the cool studies that I came across about this is there’re studies of kids. People often assess someone’s gender based on their voice. If someone’s on the phone, you may have an idea about their gender. You may also have an idea of their age. Part of this is based on vocal tract size. Kids’ voices are high pitched because kids’ heads and throats and larynxes are smaller than adults.

Lauren: The cool thing is there’s no gender difference in that until puberty. People who go through a testosterone-heavy puberty tend to grow larger vocal tracts and tend to have deeper pitches. I mean, not in the scheme of things where they’re so completely different. There’s so much overlap. But we’re really tuned into these subtle differences. But before that age, anything that kids are doing different, it’s nothing to do with what’s happening with the meat pipe and everything to do with what’s happening with the social performance of gender, which is to do with your culture.

Gretchen: Even at age 4, when there’s really no physiological difference, age 8 when there’s really no physiological difference, you can see that kids are producing their vowels somewhat differently in a difference that increases with age based on their gender because they’re culturally acquiring “This is what it means to feel like a boy,” “This is what it means to feel like a girl,” and they’re doing gender with their voices even when they don’t have the vocal tract changes reinforcing that yet.

Lauren: Cool.

Gretchen: Yeah. You can see that there are differences at age 4 that increase with age and increase up to age 8 and 12 and 16 and get more distinct from each other. The other thing is, once people get a bit older in teenage-hood and in adulthood, there are gender differences in vocal tract. The general finding with gender differences in vowel plot size – so we’ve been talking about having some vowels be more front or some vowels be more similar to each other, but the overall finding when it comes to gender is roughly that, at least in English-speaking environments, men tend to have all of their vowels more similar to each other, more towards the centre of the space/ Specifically, cis straight men tend to have vowels that are all more towards the centre of the vowel space. Everybody else – so cis, straight women, gay men, lesbians, trans people of all genders, nonbinary people – use way more of the vowel space.

Lauren: Straight men, you’re missing out.

Gretchen: Like, cis straight men are doing this one very specific thing with buying into hegemonic masculinity of vowels where they’re not wearing interesting colours, and they’re not doing interesting vowels.

Lauren: Hmm.

Gretchen: There was one quote from one of the studies that I read where they had one cis straight man who was an anomaly in the list of not doing this very centralised vowel thing, and he was like, “Yeah, sometimes people hear me, and they think I’m gay, which I’m not. I’m just a nerd. I don’t really do that macho stuff.”

Lauren: Aww, it’s nice they asked him.

Gretchen: Yeah. “People just perceive my vowels as whatever. I don’t really care. I’m not trying to do that thing with my vowels.”

Lauren: Fascinating that the social discourse was enough that he had been made aware of it.

Gretchen: Yeah, and that doing anything out of that little man box of the very small set of vowels was enough to get him thinking, “Oh, yeah, well, it’s because I don’t buy into this particularly narrow view of masculinity.”

Lauren: Fascinating. I should say, you flagged English there, but that’s because we have more of this work in English. We need more of this work across the world’s languages. There’s so much to be done about the social dimensions of vowels.

Gretchen: Right. A lot of the early work in, especially, gender and vowels has this very essentialist framework of like, “We found the male vocal tract; we found the female vocal tract.” There’s a recent study by Santiago Barreda and Michael Stuart which I got to see at the Linguistic Society of America last year where they were looking at “What are the vowel differences between genders, and can we actually characterise these more precisely?” They found that the biggest thing that affected vowel spaces was actually related to height. Taller people have more space in their vowels – deeper voices.

Lauren: Makes sense. They’ve got more space for their bigger meat pipe. That’s more of a bassoon than an oboe, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Taller people have a bigger meat pipe. In fact, the relationship between height of your whole body and size of your meat pipe is very linear and doesn’t have a categorical distinction for gender. Of course, if you collapse this into two different buckets labelled “men” and “women,” you’ll find, on average, that men are taller than women on average, but of course, there’re lots of individual people who are exceptions to that, and it’s much more of a variant thing. Similarly, with some of the research on sexuality, some of the early stuff is like, “Oh, do gay men or do lesbians have different-shaped vowel tracts from a physiological perspective?” The answer is “No, this is cultural.”

Lauren: Right, yeah.

Gretchen: But the finding keeps being reported in terms of like, “Oh, well, gay men have more extreme vowels in various places,” especially with “trap” being produced further away from the centre of the mouth. Lesbian women tend to have further-back sounds for “palm” and for “goose,” or sometimes they’re intermediate between male and female targets. But again, this seems to very much be cultural. The bi women – some studies found they patterned with the lesbian women. Some studies found they pattern with the straight women. No one knows what to do with us. The one study I found on bi men found they patterned with the gay men, but again, maybe other studies would find something different. There’s a paper by Lal Zimman about trans men’s voices being perceived as quote-unquote “gay” after they go on testosterone. He finds that it’s not quite the exact same as the cis gay men, but it’s also because it seems to not be in that narrow man box. People are just parsing it as gay.

Lauren: So many cultural attitudes coming to bear on vowel spaces.

Gretchen: Studies on trans women’s vowel spaces is often fairly dominated by the speech pathology literature, which is about, specifically, vocal training and trans women really trying to make their voices sound different, but it still finds that they’re not doing exactly the same thing as either cis women or cis men.

Lauren: Right. Again, lots of cultural practice at play there. Anything about our nonbinary pals?

Gretchen: There is a recent dissertation by Jacq Jones, and they find that basically nonbinary people do whatever the heck they like.

Lauren: I love it.

Gretchen: Which is, again, not exactly the same as anybody else and not necessarily the same as each other either. They could just keep doing whatever they want. But yeah, there’s a lot of stuff on gender and sexuality, especially in terms of dispersion of the vowel space and regional stuff in terms of specific things being closer or further from each other.

Lauren: There’s so much happening in vowels in terms of plotting them all in this space in the mouth, but also so much happening in terms of plotting them in the social space. This is what makes vowels so rich and so interesting.

Gretchen: I feel like when we’re talking about vowel plotting, there’s this aspect of “Mwahaha, I am putting my fingers together and plotting,” which is maybe the fact that vowels do convey so much social information about who you are or where you’re from that you can make plots about people when you know what their vowels are. If we were going to make a meat clarinet or a meat bassoon or even a meat bagpipe –

Lauren: Oh, dear.

Gretchen: I’m so sorry. We would not only want it to be able to convey the basic vowel chart. One of the reasons why I think these synthetic versions of the human voice often sound so weird is that they don’t have all of this additional demographic information, regional information, gender and sexuality information that’s also so important to our experience of vowels.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode – including visualisations of our very own vowel plots – go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all the podcast platforms or lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including the IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch – like “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and aesthetic IPA posters – at lingthusiasm.com/merch. Links to my social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com. My blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: My social media and blog is Superlinguo. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you want to get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Our most recent bonus topic was a chat with Dr. Bethany Gardner, who built the vowel plots we discussed in this episode. We talked to Bethany about how to do vowel charts and how you can plot your own vowels, or you can just learn about how they did it for us. Think of it like a little behind-the-scenes episode on the making of this episode. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[guqwrvte]

if you’re still taking requests,, could i ask for a meet cute with idol!taehyung? 🥺🥺 could be any dynamic you want!! hope that’s okay <3

⨽ pairing: (soloist) idol!taehyung x reader

⨽ genre: fluff

⨽ warnings: none i think of!

⨽ word count: 1305

⨽ a/n: not sure if this is what you wanted, but i tried! i hope you like it! <3

---

You looked at your phone screen as you nervously fiddled with your fingers, waiting for the call to be connected. 

You couldn't believe that this was happening. You were about to get on a call with the Kim Taehyung. 

At the start of this week, you opened Twitter to see Taehyung had posted a tweet asking fans to enter their names and contact details into a google form because he was going to call some lucky fans. He explained that the winners would be picked based on the number of their submission and the help of google's random number generator. 

You decided to take a chance and filled it in, not expecting to win... especially after the artist posted about how he received over 500 thousand submissions. 

But to your surprise, on Wednesday, you received an SMS from a staff member stating that you were one of the lucky fans to have won a video call. After checking when you were available, they asked you to be ready to call on Friday at 9 pm. 

It was seven minutes past nine, and you were sitting in your room, phone up and leaning against a pile of books as you waited for your phone call with Taehyung to be connected. 

You sighed as you glanced at your mirror, wondering if you should've dressed up a little more. Your hair was in a low ponytail, and you wore a light grey hoodie and white shorts. You weren't wearing any heavy make-up, considering how after the call ended, you were probably going to sleep. You didn't want to waste time removing heavy make-up. 

"Should I have dressed up a bit like the other fans seem to do?" You whispered to yourself.  

This was your first time going on a fan call. From what you saw from tiktoks and videos on Twitter of fans going on calls with their favourite artists, they always seemed dressed up. Either their hair looked amazing, they were in beautiful outfits, or their make-up was on fleek. Sometimes they were all three.

You were so deep in thought that you didn't realise the call connected until you heard a "Hello?"

Your eyes widened, and you turned to the screen to see Taehyung setting his phone up somewhere.   

"y/n, right?" he asked with a smile once the movement had stopped. 

As you slowly nodded, you couldn't help but notice how beautiful he looked, despite being bare-faced and in casual attire. His hair was long and fluffy, almost covering his eyes, and he wore a light grey hoodie.

"Oh! We're matching!" he giggled, pointing to his screen. "And finally, someone who won't make me feel underdressed. Everyone else was dressed in flashy and cool clothing, hair done and make-up looking fire."

"I... I thought about dressing up," you softly said, feeling shy. You couldn't believe you were talking to one of your favourite artists. 

"Well, thank God you didn't," he dramatically sighed before resting his chin in the palm of his hand. "Anyway, sorry for answering late. Did I keep you waiting long?"

"It's okay, and n-no not- not really," you stuttered, mentally cursing yourself for being like this. 

"Are you feeling nervous?" Taehyung asked, cocking his head to the side, and you nodded. "There's no reason to be! Just think of me as a friend and speak comfortably."

'That's not going to be easy,' you thought. 

"Tell me about yourself, y/n. I love getting to know about the people who listen to my music," he smiled. "If you don't want to do that, just tell me a random story."

"Uh, okay," you said, shifting in your chair. "I'll tell you a little about myself, then tell you a story."

"Sure! Go ahead."

You began to speak, telling Taehyung little things about yourself, occasionally agreeing with you on some of your likes and dislikes. 

"You don't like coffee much either?" He asked when you briefly mentioned how you preferred tea compared to coffee. 

After getting to know you a bit, you moved on to telling him random stories from your life. 

Talking to Taehyung wasn't as awkward as you thought it'd be. It didn't feel like you were talking to your favourite artist anymore... it felt like you were talking to a friend. 

You didn't realise how much time you had spent on the phone with him until your bedtime alarm rang, telling you it was half past ten. 

You and Taehyung had talked for almost one and a half hours. 

"Is someone calling you?' Taehyung asked. 

"No, uhm, it's my alarm," you told him, turning it off. "I'm supposed to be going to bed soon."

"What time do you normally go to bed?" he asked. "It's almost eleven! We've been talking for a while. 

"Eleven," you told him. "And how were we able to talk for so long?"

"The time for artists to talk to fans is shorter when they're in a group. Not to mention there are a lot more fans waiting for their call to be connected," he explained. "I have more time to talk to fans because I'm taking calls during the weekend too. You're the last fan I'm talking to for today, so there's no time limit."

"What's the longest you've talked to a fan?" You asked, wondering how much time he spent talking to others. 

"How long have we been talking for?" 

"About an hour and a half," you replied, looking at the time again. 

"That's the longest I've talked to a fan," he chuckled. "You're an interesting person, y/n. I liked hearing your stories and getting to know you a little."

It was true. 

Most fan calls barely exceeded 45 minutes because things between him and the fan were awkward (no matter how hard or many times he tried to lighten the mood), or fans were weird and crossed some lines. 

There were a couple of good and 'normal' ones, but there were more bad than good. 

"I'd love to tell you more, but I need to prepare for bed. I have a busy day tomorrow," you frowned, and a playful pout appeared on his face. 

You couldn't believe that you were the one who was ending this conversation. You really didn't want to, but you had to. 

"Aw, I was hoping we could talk longer, but I understand. When will I get to talk to you again?" He asked.

"The next time I fill in a google form and magically win a fan call," you chuckled. "And only you know when that'll be."

"T-that's- that's so far," he whined, knowing the company wasn't going to do this again for a while. 

"Until then," you shrugged. "I've really got to go. I'm so happy I got to talk to you."

"Aw, it's okay. Let me not keep you any longer," Taehyung smiled, waving. "It was nice meeting you, y/n. We'll talk again soon!"

Before you could say anything else, he ended the call. 

"I'm going to save their details on my personal phone and just message them myself," he whispered, taking out his phone.  

He enjoyed talking to you so much that he just had to save your details. He couldn't wait for you to enter whatever competition or event the company planned. 

As soon as he ended the call, you couldn't help but squeal. You talked to the Kim Taehyung, and it went way better than you thought it would. 

While you were finally allowing yourself to fangirl, a notification came in, and it was from an unknown contact. 

"Who?" you frowned, taking your phone to look at the message. 

Instead of waiting for a google form, you could've asked me to save your details! That way we don't have to wait that long to be able to talk to each other again - Taehyung ^^

[sofia-is-a-sturniolo-triplet-fan]

Need You (Soft!Dom!Chris x Sub!Reader)

Warnings: Use of (Y/N), foul language, Dom & Sub relationship, p in v (wrap it you guys) unprotected, light choking, slight degradation, moaning, & possibly more.

Word count: 3.1k (I tried my best you guys 😭🙏🏽)

There will be some plot because I cannot write purely smut 😅

LMK what you think! (please do not copy my work in any way. If you feel as though I have written something that has already been done, please message me and let me know! Enjoy!)

Second Person POV

You were at the Triplet's house sitting on a stool, elbows propped up against the kitchen island, hands resting underneath your chin. You were waiting on Matt and Chris to get ready for a movie night that Nick had planned. Nick was popping some popcorn while waiting on his brothers. He had his headphones on, swaying his hips to the music that was blaring into his ears. You couldn't help but laugh at the sight. He always looked so ridiculous when he danced.

You turned your head towards the stairs, hearing footsteps approaching. Matt came up first, wearing his blue-light glasses, a grey tank top, and black sweatpants. Chris followed closely behind him, wearing a white tank top and grey sweatpants. You couldn't help but stare at his crotch, wondering how he looked without them.

You watched as Matt snuck up behind Nick, quietly waiting for the perfect moment. You held back a laugh as Matt shook Nick's shoulders lightly while shouting 'boo!' The girl-ish scream that erupted from Nick's mouth made you lose all composure. You were laughing so hard you couldn't breathe.

Looking to your left, you met Chris's eyes. He wasn't staring at his brothers, he was staring at you. He was staring at the way your left hand gripped the countertop, knuckles going white from the pressure of your grip. He was staring at the way your right hand gripped your chest in an attempt to slow down your rapid heart beat. He was staring at the way your boobs jiggled in your baby blue Fresh Love T-shirt. He was staring at your legs in the matching Fresh Love sweatpants. You wearing his brand did something to him that he couldn't explain.

You stared back at him with equal curiosity. Your smile never wavered as you tilted your head to the side in question to his staring. His wavy brunette hair fell in his eyes slightly, making you want to get up and brush it away.

You watched as he stepped closer to you, noticing the way his mouth moves up into a smirk at his brother's antics. (Or so you thought)

He pulled a chair out beside you and sat down, smiling at you. You smiled back, turning your attention back to the two boys who were now arguing like children.

"Matt!" Nick yelled, covering his ears like a kid. Matt attempted to pull Nick's hands away, but failed miserably. "Nick, grow up! It was just a joke!" Matt shouted back. "You grow up, Matt! I had my back turned, not paying attention to the outside world. You nearly gave me a heart attack!" Nick argued. "Oh please!" Matt countered with an eye roll. "You're perfectly fine. Your health is well enough to scream at me!"

Nick just rolled his eyes, grabbing a bowl of popcorn and making his way to the living room. Matt too, grabbed a bowl of popcorn, a can of soda, and made his way to the living room. 

Chris rose from his chair while he spoke, “You can go ahead into the living room. I'll get our popcorn and drinks.” You felt bad, so you offered to help. “Are you sure, Chris? I don't mind helping you.” He just shook his head with a smile. “I'm sure. Besides, someone needs to watch Nick and Matt to make sure they don't rip each other's throats out.” Laughing, you made your way to the living room.

Matt and Nick were both on the ‘L-Shaped' sofa, leaving only the love seat available for you and Chris. You sat down, and listened to their conversation. “Nick, let our guest pick the movie!” Matt scolded. “Shut up Matt! She won't care if I pick it.” Nick turned his attention to you. “Right?” You put your hands up on surrender. “Don't put me in the middle of this.” Nick looked back to Matt in victory. “Ha! See? I told you she wouldn't care!” Matt stuck his tongue out at Nick, rolling his eyes. “Oh please, she just said she wasn't going to have sides. Just don't choose a shit movie.” “My movie selections are not shit!” Nick protested, finally selecting the movie. ‘Wreck-It Ralph'.

Chris walked into your vision as the previews came to a close. In his hands, he held a large bowl of popcorn and two sodas. He then sits down and places the popcorn in between the two of you, handing you a can of soda with a smile on his lips. “Thank you, Chris.” You said while smiling back at him. “Of course!” he replied,his smile widening. 

“Let's watch the second one!” Nick suggests, automatically putting the movie on without asking for anyone else's opinion. “Gee thanks for asking the rest of us, Nick!” Matt joked. Nick rolled his eyes for what felt like the billionth time that night, turning his attention to you and Chris sitting in close proximity on the love-seat. “You two don’t care, do you?” Nick asked with a hopeful gleam in his eye. Turning your head slightly, you looked over to Chris, eyebrow raised in question. He simply shocked his head with a smile, indicating that he didn’t mind if the second movie was played. In response, you smiled back at him, turning to Nick. “We don’t mind, Nick. You can play the second movie.” Nick shouted in yet another ‘victory.’ “Matt, they do not care, so you shouldn’t either.” Matt huffed out a sigh of annoyance. “Whatever, Nick. Just play the damn movie.” With that, Nick pressed play.

As the second movie’s end-credits displayed on the living room television, you pried your eyes away from the screen to see Matt and Nick cuddled up and asleep on the couch. Much contrast to their previous mood towards each other. You smiled at the sigh, thinking of just how much it goes to show that sibling relationships are that of a strange one. Chris started moving around, making your attention turn to him. 

Chris POV

As the movie came to an end, I looked to the couch and saw Nick and Matt curled up together, fast asleep. After fighting and arguing all day, I am not surprised that they wore themselves out.

Since I had been sitting for so long, I started to shift uncomfortably in the love seat. This made Y/N’s attention turn to me instead of my brothers’. Locking eyes with her, I couldn’t help but smile. She was absolutely stunning. I couldn’t help but admire the way my brand looked on her. The way her eyes searched mine, looking for a sign of who knows what, made my heart swoon. She was everything I had been wanting and more. A light to my dark world that was constantly shining a bright, blinding light in my path.

Y/N's beautiful smile brought my attention away from my thoughts of her. Her smile was infectious, making it impossible not to smile back. I felt a warmth spread through me, a feeling I hadn't experienced in a long time.

"Did you enjoy the movie night?" I asked, my voice soft and genuine. I wanted to know if she had as much fun as I did.

"Yeah, I did," she replied, her eyes sparkling. "It was a lot of fun, and the company made it even better."

Hearing those words made my heart swell with happiness. "I'm really glad to hear that. We should definitely do this more often," I said, hoping she felt the same way.

As we sat there, the soft glow of the television casting a warm light over the room, I couldn't help but feel that this was just the beginning of our night together.

Y/N's POV

As I stared at Chris, I felt my cheeks flush. I wanted to lean in and kiss him. I fluttered my eyelashes against my cheeks, trying to muster the courage. The moment felt perfect, and I didn't want to let it slip away.

Chris seemed to sense my hesitation. He leaned in slightly, his eyes never leaving mine. My heart raced as the distance between us closed. The warmth of his presence was comforting, and I felt a surge of confidence.

Taking a deep breath, I closed the gap and pressed my lips softly against his. The kiss was gentle and sweet, filled with all the unspoken emotions we both felt. When we finally pulled away, Chris's eyes were filled with a mix of surprise, happiness, and a hint of something I couldn't quite make out.

"Wow," he whispered, his smile widening. "I've been wanting to do that for a while."

I couldn't help but smile back, feeling a sense of relief and joy. "Me too," I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper.

We sat there, our hands intertwined and hearts beating in sync. My need for him grew within each passing second. My need to taste him. Taste his lips back on mine. Taste his sweet skin on my lips and in between my teeth. My need to feel him. Feel his lips back on mine. Feel his soft skin on mine. Feel his skin on my lips and in between my teeth. My need to hear him. Hear him say my name. Hear him moan my name, even. My need to see him. See him underneath me, on top of me, beside me, inside me, and any other way out hearts desired. I just needed him, in any way that I could have him.

Third Person POV

Chris leaned into Y/N again, closing the distance between them. She met his lips in a passionate kiss, this one much more heated than the last. Both feeling a need for air, they slowly pulled apart, a trail of saliva leaving both their lips. Their foreheads rested against each other's, content smiles plastered on their faces.

Chris's breathing was heavy, his eyes dark with desire. "Y/N," he whispered, his voice husky, "I need you."

Y/N's heart raced at his words. "I need you too, Chris," she replied, her voice trembling with anticipation.

They quickly made their way to Chris's bedroom, excitement and desire flowing through both their bodies.

Without another word, Chris's hands began to explore Y/N's body, his touch sending shivers down her spine. She responded in kind, her fingers tracing the contours of his muscles, feeling the heat of his skin beneath her fingertips.

Their kisses grew more urgent, more desperate, as their need for each other intensified. Chris's hands moved to the hem of Y/N's shirt, slowly lifting it up and over her head. She shivered as the cool air hit her skin, but the warmth of Chris's touch quickly chased away the chill.

Y/N's hands found their way to Chris's shirt, pulling it off with equal urgency. Their bodies pressed together, the heat between them almost unbearable. They moved to his bed to find a more comfortable position, their limbs tangling together as they explored each other with a fervent passion.

Every touch, every kiss, every whispered word brought them closer together, their desires merging into one. It was as if the world outside had ceased to exist, leaving only the two of them in their own private universe.

Chris reached for Y/N's bra, locking his eyes with her's, silently asked for her permission to continue. With a slight nod of her head, Chris unclasped her bra, leaving her bare chest exposed to him. His eyes went from her face to her chest, ogling at her breasts as if he's never seen a woman. Y/N let out a soft and teasing giggle, her hand reaching out for his chin to make him lock his eyes with her's.

"You can touch them if you would like, Chris." Eagerly, his hands touched her chest. Fingertips brushing over her hard nipples, lightly pinching and rolling them. The noise that Y/N let out was music to Chris's ears. He leaned his lips down to her's, kissing her again for the third time that night. His hands never left her chest, massaging her chest as they kissed.

Chris deepened the kiss, his tongue exploring her mouth with a newfound hunger. Y/N's hands trailed down his back, feeling the tension in his muscles. She could sense his excitement and eagerness, which only fueled her own desire. Breaking the kiss, Chris moved his lips to her neck, planting soft kisses along her collarbone. His hands continued to explore her chest, each touch sending shivers down her spine.

Y/N arched her back slightly, pressing herself closer to him. "Chris," she whispered, her voice breathy and filled with anticipation. "I want you."

Chris's eyes darkened with desire at her words. He paused for a moment, looking deeply into her eyes to make sure she was certain. Seeing the same longing reflected in her gaze, he nodded and began to undress her further, his movements slow and deliberate, savoring every moment of their intimacy.

They both lay there naked, staring at each other with nothing but love in their eyes. Chris lines himself up with her entrance, watching her face for any discomfort. The pleasure on Y/N's face as his tip fills her hole, makes Chris push himself inside her more.

Chris moved slowly, giving Y/N time to adjust to his size. He watched her closely, ensuring she was comfortable and enjoying every moment. Her soft moans and the way her body responded to him encouraged him to continue. He pushed deeper, feeling her warmth envelop him completely.

Y/N wrapped her legs around Chris, pulling him closer. The connection between them was intense, both physically and emotionally. Every thrust brought them closer together, their bodies moving in perfect harmony. They were lost in each other, the outside world fading away even more as they focused solely on their shared pleasure.

Chris leaned down, capturing Y/N's lips in another passionate kiss. Their movements became more synchronized, each one bringing them closer to the edge. He moved one of his hands from her hips to her neck, squeezing lightly as she let out a sound of pleasure.

Chris's grip on Y/N's neck tightened just enough to enhance her pleasure without causing discomfort. He increased his pace, thrusting deeper and faster, driven by the sounds of her delight. Y/N's squeals and moans filled the room, each one spurring Chris on.

Their bodies moved together in perfect rhythm, the intensity of their connection growing with each passing moment. Y/N's nails dug into Chris's back as she held on tightly, her body trembling with pleasure. Chris could feel himself nearing the edge, and he could tell Y/N was close too.

With one final, powerful thrust, they both reached their climax together. The waves of pleasure washed over them, leaving them breathless and satisfied. Chris collapsed beside Y/N, pulling her into his arms. They lay there, basking in the afterglow, their hearts beating in sync.

After cuddling for a little while longer, Chris got up to get a warm wash rag from his bathroom to clean her up. He gently pulled her towards the edge of the bed, wiping both of their releases from the inside of her thighs. After getting her clean, he left gentle kisses all along her legs and stomach, kissing all the way up her chest, to her face.

Chris pressed a kiss to each of her cheeks, her forehead, her nose, her chin, then finally, her lips. His hands moved to either side of her face, holding her gently as his lips moved against her's in a gentle rhythm. Pulling away, Chris smiled at the sight of Y/N. Completely fucked out, mind in a pure bliss.

He moved to his dresser, pulling out a T-shirt of his for her to wear while grabbing a pair of boxers for himself. Chris put his shirt on Y/N, pulling up his boxers for himself. He climbs back into bed, opening his arms as an invitation for her. She happily obliges, resting her head on his chest, his fingers running through her hair softly.

Chris's tenderness towards Y/N was evident in every gesture. The way he cared for her after their intimate moment showed a deep connection between them. Y/N's content expression mirrored the blissful aftermath of their shared experience.

The exchange of gentle kisses and the cozy act of sharing clothes created a sense of intimacy and comfort between them. It was a moment of vulnerability and closeness that they both cherished. As they lay together, Chris's touch and Y/N's peaceful demeanor spoke volumes about the bond they shared. It was a beautiful moment of tranquility and affection, a memory they would both hold dear.

They fell asleep, holding each other tight in their arms, peacefully unaware that Matt and Nick had heard their rendezvous.

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

Nick and Matt walked into Chris's room the following morning, smiles plastered on their faces. "Morning love birds!" Nick shouted roguishly, while Matt flicked on the light. Chris threw the covers over both his and Y/N's face, groaning loudly. "It's too early for this shit." Chris complained, his voice deep with sleep.

"It certainly wasn't too late last night for you two to be fucking each other." Matt retorted. "I need to bleach my ears because of you guys." Nick said dramatically. "Fuck off you two." Chris sassed, pulling Y/N closer to his chest.

She looked up at him with love on her eyes and a smile on her face. "It's okay, Chris. We still have to shower. Let's go do that, yeah?" He nods in agreement, sitting up on the bed, pulling Y/N along with him.

"Chris gross! Put some damn clothes on!" Nick scolds. "Get the fuck out of my room, and you would be seeing me in my boxers!" Chris argues back. Matt takes Nick's arm, pulling him out of Chris's room.

After showering and getting ready for the day, Y/N and Chris met Matt and Nick in the living room.

"Did you guys fuck in the shower?" Matt asks, with cheeky smirk shown on his face. "MATT!" Nick yells, covering his hands over his ears, much like he did the night before.

Looking at each other with knowing smiles, Chris and Y/N simply nodded their heads. "Chris that's disgusting!" Nick reprimands. "Matt asked, and I answered." Chris explained with a shrug.

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

Lmk what you guys think. This is my first fic featuring the Sturniolo Triplets. It's also my first fic writing a Sub & Dom, so I apologize if the representation is inaccurate.

Thank you for reading!

Much love,

Sofia :)

[muppetjackrackham]

i want to take a moment to sit down and talk a little bit about sweeney todd.

my good friend @allthemidnightmemories has already talked about what this revival has meant to her and i want to do the same. like m, i grew up knowing who josh groban was for most of my life, but it wasn't until the last few years that i really started to connect to his music. after natasha, pierre and the great comet of 1812, i started paying more attention to his work, listening to songs like if i can't love her and dust and ashes every once in awhile and occasionally commiserating with great comet fans about the 2017 tony awards.

then they announced the revival.

now i'll admit, i was skeptical at first. josh groban as sweeney todd? the demon barber of fleet street? i wasn't nearly as invested in sweeney todd as i would be, but i had seen the 2007 film and i had a very hard time wrapping my head around the notion of josh groban playing sweeney todd on broadway...but it certainly kept my attention.

when i was a kid, i used to love musicals. i grew up with the films of the disney renaissance (i'm sure it will come as no surprise that the lion king was my personal favourite 🦁) and graduated to other musicals and films like moulin rouge and phantom of the opera. when i was in high school, i auditioned for a few of them myself. i was also bullied and picked on, which led me to quitting choir and theatre and putting as much distance between myself and the performing arts as i could. i stopped watching the films i loved, i stopped singing along in the car and the shower, and although there were a few notable exceptions every now and then, i was convinced i would never be able to enjoy it the way i used to.

sweeney todd changed that.

it was the first time in a long time i had really, truly cared about a musical. i kept up with the announcements. i read every article i could get my hands on. i watched every interview the second it was available, and when it finally started previews, i hunted down every single bootleg audio i could find until eventually i got my hands on a proper bootleg (shoutout to @bikinibottomdayz for the bootleg i purchased from them, it's absolutely gorgeous and i highly recommend their services).

much like m, it feels strange that a musical about revenge, murder and bloodshed could be so comforting, but i truly could not be more grateful for the joy and the comfort it's brought me during this particular point in my life. it reignited the love i used to have for music, it brought beautiful and wonderful new people into my life like m and @twoheartsoneclara, @loverboygf and many, many others, and for that alone i could not be more thankful. what josh and annaleigh have done with these roles has been a joy and a privilege to experience. it has introduced me to new music i wouldn't have otherwise found (chess pa svenska at 1am you will always be famous), it has inspired me creatively, and it has, above all else, become something special beyond words.

ever since they announced this brilliant, bloody revival, i have taken it upon myself to watch as many versions as i could get my hands on, and while all of them have their strengths, there is something about this revival, from the cast to the costume design, the orchestration and set design, that will undoubtedly be my favourite version for years to come.

josh and annaleigh and the cast and crew of sweeney todd, you may never see this post, but know that you have brought some much needed joy to someone in a time of need, and that they will always be so very grateful for that experience. thank you for all your hard work, your blood, sweat and tears, your laughter, your tears, and your love for what you do and for this story.

to stephen sondheim, wherever you are, thank you.

thank you.

-🦁

[woneuntonzz]

𝓲𝓼𝓷'𝓽 𝓲𝓽 𝓬𝓵𝓲𝓬𝓱𝓮? જ⁀➴

sohee x afab!reader; as “Xen”

( part 1 ⟡ part 2 )

warning/s: cussing

genre: fluff -`♡´- highschool love

word count: 6k words!!

˚₊· ➳❥ description: performing arts club singer!sohee x performing arts club president!reader(xen) | he who admired from afar and he who'd keep you close to his heart, maybe, there could be a sweeter story than this. [note!!: this is connected to the “what's it like to love?” (anton fic) —a backstory to Sohee and Xen | reader will be referred to as Xen!! (!!), Y/n from WILTL will be referred to as Eza!! :3]

People just loved to assume the worst in others, and in their eyes, the sweet and talented Xen was just another overachiever. 

You'd beg to differ though. Because unlike them who seemingly have got nothing else to do with their lives, you thrived on having responsibilities. It was the feeling of playing a vital role in school, and in your own classroom. You were a student council representative, the president of the performing arts club, and the class secretary. 

You had a lot going for you. During your time in the club, you'd perform recitals for school events and festivities, solo and accompanied. You played the violin, you sang, and you sang like a nightingale. 

Many students could recognize you just from your name alone.

“Oh, Xen? she's wonderful, I can't really imagine that girl having any flaws and faults at all.” 

Flaws and faults, huh. 

You've always thought that you've lived a pretty decent life, you were content. Growing up you helped your friends fight off their troubles, helping them lift the weight off of their shoulders. Your friends did just as much for you, and you loved them. They were the main reason why you'd say: “I'm having a great life.” 

Not much was behind it all really. You had your own unique interests, but that's natural to everyone. You had some attitude, but mostly, it's just to be humorous. You for sure would get frustrated at certain people sometimes, especially if they're making your job harder for you or for anyone else. 

Was there something missing? perhaps…

“There's a bunch of applicants this year, a bunch of freshmen as expected —a total snoozefest if you ask me.” you scoffed at the club vice president —Keeho— who had just burst in the music room with a thick but humble amount of papers stuffed in one folder.

“The freshmen are adorable.” you uttered as you went through the papers.

“Adorably disrespectful, you mean?” you laughed at his humorous griping. “It's true though. God, I cannot live another day without running into one of those little rascals in the corridors bumping shoulders with me like they own the world!”

“Yeah. Some of them don't respect anyone else but their teachers. Sad, they're very sad.” you shook your head as you spoke.

You were still going through the application forms. You spared each with only less than a minute of your time. You would only be picking thirteen students, having only that many slots available. You would just have to pick a handful that caught your eye, you estimated you would pick more than thirteen, so you would conduct a little interview to see which ones were worth keeping.

“Huh, look. It's a boy from my year level, never seen him before though.” you held this one application form a little closer to your face to evaluate it further.

“Well, it's not like you actually know everyone from your year.” a playful retort escapes Keeho's mouth.

“I do! just by face…” your voice would fade off into the distance as you moved yourself to a nearby chair to sit down.

“Lee So-Hee…”

Keeho gasps loudly making you jump from your seat. “The actress???” he would say in the most dramatic tone ever.

“No! girl, be quiet!” you'd shush him before continuing to read through the form.

Keeho eyed you as you made the same face you would make when you watched him suffer through your antics. You would soon nod as if already approving for this boy to walk right into the club, Keeho would follow your motions but with a suspecting expression on his face —and an amusing one at that.

“He has quite the history of performing. Only a couple of competitions, placed pretty high, championed twice —must be a really good singer.” Keeho scoots over to you, one end of one of the legs of his chair touching the side of your shoe.

“Lemme see.” you hand him the paper. “Hmm. You just want him in because he's cute probably.”

You lightly smack his side as he puckered his lips to create a provoking expression.  

“Stop, I'm not like you!”

“Excuse me!?”

After spending twenty-six minutes on creating a list of your picks for the mini-interview, you went to the cafeteria for lunch and met with Eza whilst Keeho wandered off to his group of friends.

“How's the club going?” you hurried to take a bite off your food before answering Eza's question.

 “Pretty— good.” you swallowed in between, giving your friend a thumbs-up after.

Seconds later, a boy approaches Eza. He had such a sweet smile, you might've thought he was there to sell you some cookies. The boy stopped near behind Eza, his eyes landing on you. You took the short time before Eza noticed him to observe, needless to say, you knew who he was.

“Oh, Sohee. What's up?” you heard Eza say as you focused on eating your food.

“Your mom…” was all you heard before looking up to see Eza hit him on his side, making him wince in pain. 

“What? My mom what?” you almost laughed seeing how Eza widened her eyes as a means to provoke the boy in some way.

“I wasn't finished!” the boy pokes back. “I was gonna say…”

From that, you couldn't really hear anything else other than mumbling that you couldn't make sense of. Eza would chortle after Sohee had whispered something to her —from what you could assume— and they would both look at you wearing smiles of their own, one appeared to be incredibly amused and the other diffident.

“Oh, Xen! This is Sohee, by the way. He's the childhood best friend in my stories, he wanted me to—” Sohee nudges Eza, and she stops speaking. She would continue after lightly biting her bottom lip and clearing a throat. “Anyways, he just transferred here.”

“Oh, is that so?” the boy gave you a timid nod, making you chuckle. 

You avert your eyes from Sohee and would be met with Eza who eyed him with a look you couldn't quite comprehend.

“I-I'll go now.” Sohee says before walking away, dropping off the same shy smile before he disappeared from your sight.

Looking back at Eza, she had a grin that you would only see whenever she was going to say something stupid —could be something completely random that would make you laugh or something to tease you, but instead, she says nothing and continues to eat. 

Curious, you eyed her until she'd look back at the leery but grinning expression on your face. “What?” she struggled to utter, still yet to finish chewing her food. 

“What was that all about?” you playfully prodded. 

Eza just shrugged at you with a downturned smile, the movement at the area of her throat indicating she had just swallowed her food.

“He thinks you're cute.”

Your eyes were wide and alive, breathing at an irregular pace as if your nose was stuffy. You continued to eat, not knowing how to respond —or if you should even believe what your friend is saying. 

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You were always painfully oblivious to flirting or any signs of a person fancying you. You once had a student athlete who had gone lengths to reach for you. At first, you could barely even believe his confession —and he'd tell you that he only joined the performing arts club because of you. You rejected him, and it went…

“So… is it Keeho?” you raised your brow at the boy in front of you.

“What are you saying?” you asked back and you would watch as he crossed his arms over his chest, a lump appearing on his right cheek as he poked from inside with his tongue. 

“You like Keeho, would explain why you're always together.” you almost laughed at his face, but you remain respectful since you weren't that familiar with this boy.

“Uh, yeah, no. We're just close friends —and I don't like anybody.” you eyed his foot that was a few steps ahead from the other, beating on the floor with the front of his shoe rhythmically. “Look, I never even knew that you liked me, I just thought you were… being nice.”

He'd scoff at you and hastily turn his head to the side. “You can't be serious right now.”

When he looked at you again, you would hold a shallow mien as your eyes traced the lines that separated the floor tiles. 

“Xen, I would never bring someone breakfast everyday just because I'm being nice, I would never compliment you on every little thing just cause I'm being nice —no one would ever pretend to care about the most trivial things you babble about, just cause they're being nice.” his irky tone got to you, causing your brows to knit together. 

“Did you expect me to just change my mind with what you said? Are you hearing yourself?” he would only scoff at you again, aggravating the growing ire reflected on your face.

“Never mind. I'm not coming back to the club. You're not worth it.” he turns his back at you and walks away with a galling noise from every step he takes. 

You consider this moment pivotal. It was the first time you've felt so agitated, so perturbed because of a stupid boy. The situation made you think about how dense you could be and how oblivious you are to basic signs of attraction. It made you think, and think, and think. 

How much did I miss?

The probable circumstance of you being so clueless towards others' affectionate efforts constantly blocked your train of thought, always being met with a dangerous cliff of unwanted emotions. 

You thought about the other men in your life who have treated you nicer than what you'd expect from a man. 

You thought about Keeho. Even if it seemed as if your understanding of bonding was pulling a knife against each other's throats, you two clicked in an instant, acquiring the keys to each other's intellect the moment you met. It was admittedly cringey —and in some ways disgusting— to think that your current closest male friend had a thing for you, but your mind dipped itself into a messy whirlpool, unable to get out until the waters calmed. 

“Okay, so, I have a guy friend—” Keeho released an exaggerated gasp that surprised you and stopped you from finishing your sentence.

“You have other guy friends?” you were confused as to why he reacted that way, because what was his business with you having guy friends?

Is he jealous? Is he threatened? Does he like me— your mind had the most outrageous thoughts. Looking back at this sour memory, you realized that it was just Keeho being Keeho. He always had a knack for being so sarcastic like you were to him too. 

Then a second thought. Sungchan —that one senior that complimented you top to bottom, surface level then to your very soul, you were honestly rethinking your whole life and asked yourself a gazillion times over and over if you liked him.

He was two years ahead of you, and he was a student athlete too, but unlike that jerk who called your interests that you value most as trivial, Sungchan was rather sentimental. It got to a point where you'd forget that he was a guy and would talk to him like one of your girl friends. You gave him the nickname 'tough cookie', and you remembered that he had a custom made keychain with that nickname imprinted on it and you would always see it during their football matches since he had it attached to the zipper of his gym bag. 

“Why 'tough cookie'?” he had his arms crossed, head tilted as he looked at you with his doe eyes, lips forming a small pout as he waited for you to answer his question.

You froze for a moment, your eyes wandering around his figure —around where you shouldn't be looking.

“Xen?” you shook your head away from your anomalous thoughts after hearing his low and sweet sugared voice— “You okay?”

You cleared your throat. The question was simple, and the answer was even simpler. He was kind, warm-hearted, contrary to his gigantic stature. He was quite the guy.

Sungchan would leave the next year and you still had no idea if your mind was playing games with you or if you actually started seeing Sungchan in a different way. “Ugh!” a bitter taste was left in your tongue. He was nice enough to compliment your voice or the way your fingers delicately moved along the notes with your violin after the recitals where he'd watch, lend you his umbrella when you left yours at home or had lost it, walk you home when you finished practice late—

“He walked you home?” enter, Eza. 

You consider her your opposite in this situation. The ignorant and the delusional —she's the delusional one if you couldn't already tell. Eza has been around since freshman year, but it wasn't until mid-second year that you two would become inseparable. You two became friends through a reading assignment, she'd muster up all her courage to ask you about the full instructions given, unsure what to do after reading the passage. You're demure, and her constant praise left your mouth agape and your cheeks flushed. 

“Don't treat me like a celebrity, I could be just as trashy as everyone else.” —would prove to be true with every passing day.

Eventually, like every pair of highschoolers, you two would share each other's deepest secrets, the most embarrassing stories from your childhood and recently, family troubles, school troubles and love troubles —you'd hate to label them boy troubles.

“So you're saying he used to walk you home?” you shrugged at Eza who had such a distressed face. “Wha— wait, you didn't even, like, I don't know, suspect?” 

You shrugged again. “I don't know. I liked to think of him as a big brother, that's all.”

Eza sighed, crossing her arms and tilting her head, the same posture as Sungchan in your memories, everything was on point apart from her eyebrows that were nearly touching. “Well, can't blame you. But honestly, you're perfect.”

“Don't think so.” you shook your head as you looked down on your physics assignment.

“Assuming you're thinking about what could be wrong with you, but you know what I say? your imperfections make you perfect.” Eza took a sip from her canned coffee before speaking again. “Wouldn't be surprised if half of this school had a crush on you.”

You laughed, playfully rolling your eyes at her as you shook your head again. 

“Half of the school —except teachers and staff, that would be weird a-f.” you two would end up laughing together.

“That's so cliche of you Eza.” you chuckled. “But thank you.”

This would subside your thoughts of Sungchan, just for a while before you'd spend the rest of school hours sighing like it's a full time job because you were struggling to focus on anything.

It's been another year without him. He would never be brought up by Eza, Keeho, or any of your friends, but your mind would scoury the memories of him you had buried deep whenever you were put in such situations.

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And here it was again. 

“Stop messing around.” you chuckled and this would finally break a laugh out of Eza who struggled to take another bite of her food.

“It's true!” she exhaled through her laughter. 

You looked at her, piercing through her soul thinking what could be so funny that made her cackle uncontrollably like a chicken early in the morning. “The hell…”

She would suddenly stop and look at you, and in a serious tone would say, “He just whispered to me that—” she looks around the cafeteria, “Never mind.” 

You scoffed in disbelief. “Wow, you're so…”

You would end up bickering, and by the end of lunch you would give up on coercing and she would grow tired of poking at you and you two would just laugh it off in class. 

───── ⑅ ♡ ⑅  ─────

Your finger tapped on the table as you patiently waited for the applicants you have chosen for the mini-interview to show up. It was the next day and you had some independent time before the actual start of your classes. You were done with all the juniors and were moving up to the folks around your year level. 

You leaned back to your seat and glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes, you had approximately fifteen minutes before you could stand up and tidy up the room, gather your things and take off for your first class of the day. 

You grabbed your phone that laid flat on its screen next to the application forms that laid before you and started typing out a message to be forwarded to the rest of the applicants yet to be interviewed that their time would be moved to lunch time, when suddenly, you hear a knock at the wide and welcoming door that you had left open. 

“Sorry, I'm pretty sure I'm late.” was all he said, only showing half of himself and hiding the other behind the wall.

“No, no, it's okay. Sohee, right?” you smiled at him, urging him to come in and take a seat. 

He stood, unmoved for five —no, eight seconds, you counted. Suddenly you started taking notice of things you had never bothered to even think of. His cheeks were rosy, but very subtly so that it blended in well with his skin —Adorable —you thought, smiling even more now.

He sat down on the seat across from you. You leaned in a bit, resting your elbows on the table. “What's your main motivation for joining this club —there's no wrong answers, and I'll be judgment free, go ahead.”

You. —Sohee gulped, his smitten self was, thankfully, enough to hold him back from his thoughts and start pouring everything out. Okay, control yourself, you got this, “I love to sing and I'm really looking forward to performing here.” —with you —he bit his bottom lip as he suppressed a smile.

However, your soft chuckle would make him lose his sanity for a mere second, blushing and smiling timidly.

You noticed it all, you just thought he was adorable, harmless. “Well, that makes sense. Your application form speaks for itself. Anyways, I'll be seeing you this Thursday. We'll be opening for the sportsfest the week after next, so, see ya Sohee!”

You extended your arm to him for a handshake which he gladly took. He would walk out first, having his little victory hops, slamming his fists into the air, and he would stop when he heard your soft giggles. You walked past him, waving goodbye as you headed to your homeroom.

“Shit.” he mumbled to himself, all hot-faced and startled. 

───── ⑅ ♡ ⑅  ─────

You and Eza got into a call just an hour after getting home. You were 'studying' for the biology test the next day. 

“Oh my God, did you hear that a bunch of top-athletes from universities will visit tomorrow? oh wait, I think they said Friday.” you couldn't help but crack up at Eza's sudden eager sharing.

“Yeah? and is that a part of the parasympathetic or the sympathetic region?” you teased her off of her dithering that kept her away from the sole objective of your video call.

“Umm, I think so…” you bursted out laughing, your head going off-frame on Eza's phone screen. “I mean —GOD YEAH I'LL STUDY.” 

Laughter filled the speakers of your phones, and even with Eza's brief moment of bringing herself —and you— back to concentration, she'd come around to recounting everything she's been hearing around class and the school grounds. 

“I think they were invited to coach or something, well anyways, it wouldn't hurt anyone to eat lunch at the gymnasium, right?” with raised eyebrows, you looked at your friend as if she had eaten a roach. 

She'd guffaw at the look on your face, not stopping as you spoke. “What happened to 'boy-break'? You had just gotten over that Jung-idiot.”

Eza's laughter would be cut short, and soon you would be the one laughing when you saw her straight, but menacing face —not really menacing, but more of an attempt to be. “What happened to not bringing up the past? Girl, I'm over it, just stop bringing it up! literally, disgusting.” Eza shook herself, allowing the imaginary dust of her past relationship to fall off her shoulders.

“Okay! sorry!” you laughed. “But are you seriously gonna be eating lunch in the gymnasium? it's gonna smell like sweat, you're gonna want to throw up without even touching your food.”

“Ha! Nothing a cologne can't fix!” you would give Eza the same look you had given her when she had first brought up her otherworldly idea, and you two would laugh it all out at the end. 

───── ⑅ ♡ ⑅  ─────

It was a typical Thursday, nothing special really, same amount of schoolwork, a couple of tests waiting to dawn on you by next week, and projects, some solo work and some group work in the mix. It was the end of the day, you were staying back for your two-hour practice.

You sat on your favorite stool, practicing with your violin, not minding the other sound that filled the room —it was mostly just Sohee's singing, he practiced as he listened to the original song whilst you and the others practiced the instrumentals simultaneously. 

Sohee would repeat and repeat until he got the notes and the riffs exactly like how it was as he heard it. If he was being honest, he only took long because he couldn't keep his eyes off of you —well technically he did for a few times when you looked close enough to his direction— and the way your knowing hands moved to the rhythm of the song as you played your instrument. He'd find himself re-adjusting the well-putted and untouched collar of his uniform when he saw your figure approaching him from the corner of his eye.

“Hi Sohee! how are you finding practice?” you popped a question as soon as you reach a respectable distance where you'd be able to hear him.

“Pretty good!” you could hear the excitement despite the slight shakiness of his voice, shaky, because it was at the end of his tongue, just compliment her, just do it. —he pushed himself hard but just couldn't get it out.

“Well, you should take a break, everyone else is on break right now —or if you want, I can help you with whatever you need help with.”  your inviting smile blocked off the synapses of his brain and he could only give you a nod as he gave you the same shy smile he had from the interview. 

You dragged a stool nearby and sat at the same spot where you stood from Sohee. You started munching on the small packet of jellies as you waited for him to start again. He looked at you for a moment, but you had your head down, focused on getting the lemon flavored jellies in the mix. He chuckled, hearing this, your fingers would stop digging for a while and his voice would fill the room, strong like a big symphony, but as beautiful as the moon shining against the river. 

It was your first time actually hearing him sing, no other sounds, just his pure voice drowning out the song playing out of his phone speakers that he sang along to. You were mesmerized —but this would be the first time you'd be enticed by someone you barely knew or shared any interactions or memories with. This was for sure something you will carry in your pocket for a long time. 

By the end of it, everyone gave him a round of applause, including you. You admired, not only the sound of his angelic voice, but the way he closed his eyes, deep in song. The song itself was not that deep, but he somehow made it sound like it was. It's the opening song for the sportsfest and it's really just a generic song about being passionate and aiming high for your dreams— yada-yada and all that stuff.

You were relieved to see that he was truly the performer as he made out to be in his application form. “That. Was. Incredible.” 

“Thank you.” he would say in a chuckle as his hand made its way to his nape. 

You two would give each other a small smile, and Keeho would give you a suspecting look from the other side of the room.

Throughout the rest of practice, things would proceed as they normally would —if you ignored the fact that Keeho, who sat right beside you, kept nudging you and asking, “What was that all about?” and you tried to ignore him by almost hitting the corner of his eye with your bow as you fixed your posture, preparing yourself to play. You were successful with keeping him off your back, but best believe he would bombard you with messages later on.

At the end of practice, when everyone started to leave one by one, you noticed that Sohee was still sitting on the sofa with earplugs on, presumably listening to the song he was practicing, and he just listened, tapping the ground with his foot in the same rhythm as the song.

You sat yourself next to him. His muscles would stiffen when it sensed your presence next to him a lot closer than the previous times. He hurriedly turned off the music that blocked off his ears and turned his attention to you, with not much as facing your general direction.

“We're about to close off the music room, if it's possible, you should walk with Keeho and I on the way home, it'll only be a few more minutes until the sky's completely dark.” Sohee could only briskly nod. “Alrighty, I'll just go get my stuff.”

Sohee watched you almost hop off the sofa as you went to grab your belongings urging himself to get his things fixed as well. 

The three of you walked to the bus stop together, as promised. Keeho would be the first to depart from the three of you, and you who sat on the seat in front of Sohee's, would move next to him where Keeho had sat before he left.

He was startled at first, but would assuage his jitters when he saw that you had your headphones on —assuming you didn't hear him mumble a little “shit.” when you sat down. 

You just sat, tapping on your thighs to the music you were listening to. Sohee caught a glimpse of what you were listening to, Locked Out of Heaven by Bruno Mars. He smiled to himself. He loves Bruno Mars, maybe, so did you. 

He started thinking of ways to converse with you, even just for a short time before any of you got out of the bus. You saw him take a deep breath, and when he faced you, he'd be flustered to see your winsome image —the corners of your lips rising up to your cheeks to form soft, little punctures at each end, and your eyes that smiled along at him as your lashes bounced with every tenuous blink. This little moment poked into the walls of his consciousness. 

“I love Bruno Mars.” —was all he could exude as he gazed down your enchanting aura. 

“Me too!” he felt like exploding when he heard your giggle, loud and clear tickling his ears. 

He gulped and looked down on his shoes for a brief moment, before facing you again, his smile a lot less prominent but maintaining the softness in his eyes. “I know you hear this a lot, but you're a very awesome person.”

You perked up from your seat, the gleam in your eyes shining its light onto him. “Thank you, Sohee.” you mellowly utter.

You two would talk more about your music preferences, some things about school, and he would tell you how and when he met Eza, it was short but sweet. He would get off the bus before you and he'd leave you a cheeky smile and a small wave as he got off. 

Enthused, he walked the rest of the way home, trying his best to abate his glee. Anyone who saw him might've thought he just won the lottery. Well, he truly just can't wait to go back to school.

That school is not bad after all, not at all. 

───── ⑅ ♡ ⑅  ─────

There was something about Sohee that made his eventual friends stick to him. It was probably because he is just how you would expect him to be, bubbly on some occasions, he's quite the humorous guy and would subject you to some light teasing —or worse— when he knows you're comfortable with him, and most of all, he was just an excellent listener.

“Dude, Anton, you should just confess to Eza, it's been what —two years now?” Sohee's focus was with the basketball game in the arcade that only he and his friends occupied at that time.

“I don't know.” you heard Anton reply faintly.

“Well you should do something, anyways, how about you Sohee? Are you into anyone? or are you already seeing someone?” Seunghan jested at Sohee, poking him lightly as he tried to get an answer from him.

“Xen. I like Xen.” your name fell off his mouth and left such an ardent scent, and the smile only you could grant him, he wore it like a lip balm.

“Who doesn't honestly?” Seunghan's chuckle would be followed by a cough. “Well, I heard she and Sungchan had a thing and a bald eagle told me that Sungchan had come to visit the school.”

“Wow, could've just said 'Anton told me' and not call me a bald eagle.” Seunghan laughed at Anton, but Sohee was still focused, this time, not at his noticeably high score or the timer daring to run out, 

“Who even is that guy?” he mumbles in a volume he thought his friends wouldn't be able to hear.

“Oh, well, he only used to be the star athlete of this school, could've been Anton— Ow!” Seunghan would hit Anton back before he got to continue. “He's a great guy. Everybody loves him, the teachers, the students, probably Xen —and probably to a degree we have no business of knowing.”

Seunghan talked about this guy like how he would talk about his idols or one of his favorite superheroes. It would take him some time before realizing that Sohee had gone completely silent.

“Hey dude, I don't actually know if they're together, but, you're great too bro, just in a different way.” Sohee spaced out, he could still explicitly hear for his friends' yapping and feel Seunghan's arm over his shoulder, but all he could think about is you and this guy.

It was true that Sohee had joined the performing arts club to perform, showcase his singing. His love for singing was yet to be matched, but his motivations lie with you. 

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Your school would hold an orientation program every first day of school, for the freshmen and for the transferees. Since Sohee was a transferee, he was required to be there. He asked Eza to accompany him throughout the program, and the rest of the day so he could hopefully know the building a little better, know the right staircases and the right turns and where the cleanest restrooms are. The program was all 'blah, blah, blah' to him and he was sure he didn't miss much at all, but then you showed up. 

His eyes were locked on you when he saw your hair flowing with the wind as you walked to the center stage. Your singing was just as beautiful as your face and your delicate movements. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, the sight of you is something he thought he would only see on TV or envision in his mind whenever he read a book about fictional but utterly sensational things. Sensational, that's what you were. Everyone had adoring eyes, and Sohee was no exception —maybe that his adoration was particularly a lot stronger than everyone else's. 

He would hear your name out of one of the seniors who mc'd the program, it was beautiful that he'd subconsciously repeat it for himself, “Xen…”

Eza nudged at him, “That's my best friend. I've told you about her before.” she says, almost as if she was bragging.

When he had first heard about you, he didn't believe it. A singer who plays the violin, is an active student leader and graduated valedictorian in her elementary school, while also being one of the top students in her highschool? Impossible —he thought. But he was seeing you right there, with that smile that he wished he could see up close. 

He would see you again the next week, taking a peep in the music room. He saw you with your violin, you were only playing around, but nonetheless, the sound was beautiful, you are beautiful. Sohee would walk off sooner than he wanted, but he wouldn't forget to snatch an application form from the small table right next to the door of the music room.

He thought before that maybe you and Keeho might've had something going on since you two seemed to be together often, “She and Keeho are president and vice president of the club, and yeah, they're two pretty best friends.” —Eza refutes his thoughts as soon as he brings them up. “You don't have much to worry about, Xen doesn't like anyone from what she's told me.”

⋆｡ ﾟ ︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ ﾟ ｡ ⋆⋆｡ ﾟ ︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ ﾟ ｡ ⋆⋆｡ ﾟ ︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ ﾟ ｡ ⋆⋆｡ ﾟ ︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ ﾟ ｡ ⋆

Now he was starting to doubt Eza's words. Who is Sungchan? why's he never heard of him before? and if he truly was coming back, even if just for a while, what would he want with you then?

“Xen's birthday is up—”

“What does she like? What should I get her?” Sohee cuts his friend off through his phone's microphone.

Him and Eza got into a call that Friday night after he had hung out with his friends in the arcade.

“Damn girl, chill. We're going out, you should definitely come along —and before you cut me off again, the best gift would be something… sentimental? you can't really give her anything grand or expensive, she doesn't like those things.” Eza was still eating her dinner, but her spoon remained still as she waited for Sohee to respond.

“How do I even…” he was lost, trying to think of the many things he could give you.

“How about a song?”

“Huh?”

“A song. I don't know, maybe you can give her a handmade card with a qr code or something and put the song in there —but like, it would be you singing her favorite song.” Sohee had his eyes on the empty space on his bed beside him. 

His fingers toyed with the fabric, thinking about your favorite song. Maybe it's Locked Out of Heaven, no? —he questioned himself.

“It's Talking to the Moon, her favorite song.” Sohee would immediately snap out of his trance once he heard Eza. 

“Oh, thanks.” he was mumbling again, still deep in his thoughts wondering how he would do it, and most of all, how you'd react to it. 

───── ⑅ ♡ ⑅  ─────

[hooked-on-elvis]

ELVIS FELT BETTER SINGING DIRECTLY TO SOMEONE ON HIS MOVIES 🎬🎠

— BEHIND THE SCENES: 'HAVE A HAPPY' PRODUCTION NUMBER IN 'CHANGE OF HABIT' (1969)

The above 'Have A Happy' production number was filmed on the Universal back lot park (between March and April, 1969).

The scene was in fact shot three times. The first shoot used a small old merry-go-round, which looked out of place. The second shoot had technical problems with the sync and the camera, (The playback system had just been used on 'Sweet Charity', another 1969 movie with, among others, Sammy Davis Jr. on the cast, using quarter inch tape) then after a third attempt, some pick ups were still needed because Amanda (Autistic child character played by Lorena Kirk) wasn't smiling at the end of the number.

About that 'no smile' issue, Cynnie Troup (assistant trainee script supervisor) said:

To get that little girl to smile, oh my god! They had a day of re-takes, after the whole movie was over, after the wrap party, which Elvis was certainly involved. It was not a very good song, that scene was awful. It was tough to match, who sitting on what horse, it wasn't fun scene at all.

I highly disagree with 'the scene was awful' thing, but possibly Cynnie Troup is talking about the production work behind the cameras and not the final cut properly, but even if those are her thoughts on the final scene, it's a matter of opinion, really. Even though the scene is perceived as 'silly' mainly by adult audience, to me it looks joyful and carefree and personally I enjoy the song very much. The merry-go-round scene is cute, except one of the final moments when Mary Tyler Moore arches her back so slowly while she's silly smiling, looking kinda horny even, and it looks the character is on a acid trip (something common back in the 60s, so it's funny watching her look like that on the movie but it's a just a brief moment). The only thing I say as a viewer that slightly bothers me on the scene is that I get a little dizzy while watching it because of the obvious - the camera work and the actors walking around in that gyrating thing. I can't even imagine how Elvis must have felt filming this, since he is the only actor moving around that merry-go-round the entire time - and they filmed it 3 times fully!

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On the same scene, Director William A. Graham recalled:

We were shooting this musical number on a merry-go-round where he's taken this little girl to the park. He takes her on the merry-go-round and she's riding around and Elvis is singing to her. Well, she was a very young girl and she could only work for a few hours a day with us getting into all kinds of penalties and overtime. So when it came time to do Elvis' close up the little girl wasn't available to do the offstage. Also, you know, her attention span was not that great. So Elvis said to me, 'I always feel better when I'm singing a song if I can look at somebody and if I can sing to somebody'. He says, 'I wonder if you would mind standing beside the camera and let me sing to you when I do my close ups'. So I had Elvis Presley sing a song directly to me in a movie, and that was quite a thrill.

Source: This article comes from the website www.elvis.com.au.

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Taking the opportunity since we're mentioning 'Change of Habit', there's one brief interview from elvis.com.au with another actor on the cast of the movie, you can find it in HERE: Interview with Ed Asner (below), who played a cop in 'Change of Habit'.

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I shared this article because, watching all the Elvis movies, I often wondered if Elvis felt even slightly shy while having to sing directly at one person over and over again while filming his movies. Yes, he was used to sing to people, obviously, but singing in a movie set while there's more actors in the scene with him is one thing, while singing looking directly at one person (normally his love interests in the movies, all attractive females) is another, so I wondered if he ever felt uncomfortable singing directly at the ladies in his movies but it turns out he probably didn't. He liked it better this way. Haha, funny. ♥

[steelcladbutterfly]

Yandere Apollo: Creep

This was the first halloween request I ended up finishing. It feels a bit finicky at certain points, but I definitely enjoyed writing this one. I feel like the ending could use some work, but I have no idea what else to write for it so I just gave up.

Prompts: Creep, Deserted, Hunted, Forest

Apollo is known for having a number of beings flee from his courting, either turning into a type of plant or dying. Many others go on to become oracles or prophets. In any case, the lesson seems to mostly be not to catch this god’s eye if you are not looking for something with him. Otherwise, it may end badly for you, especially if you can’t get away. 

When you first started hanging out with the man who shared three of your courses, despite the rocky beginning, you figured it would simply be to help each other study and maybe have a good drinking buddy. Adam was a smooth talker, enjoyed his daily runs, and never missed a note at the karaoke bar near the college that became a regular location for the two of you to meet at. Spending time with him was fun. It was easy. It was enjoyable. 

You had no idea it would end up being the worst decision of your life. 

~~~~~

Adam had first shown up on your radar when he burst into your required humanities class twenty minutes late and two weeks into the semester. Music history had been the only course that seemed like you would enjoy it and that would be an easier time than some of the others like philosophy or law. 

The class had started more or less the same as it always had; frantically taking notes, recording the examples of songs and tunes that the teacher played, and generally trying to avoid being picked to play an example. But, when the sound of rushing feet, followed by the door slamming open and startling everyone inside, you knew the day would only get weirder, especially when the professor sighed and simply pointed towards the empty seats available.

”I know this is your first day actually being on campus for the classes, Mr Sibley, but I would prefer if you actually showed up on time and didn’t interrupt my lessons. Now take a seat.” 

With that, the lesson continued even with everyone focused on the man now walking towards a seat. And, of course, with your luck he chose the one right next to you. There goes easy access to your bag. Banished to the floor like the rest of the class. You idly wondered if you should have taken a drama class instead of music history. But idle thoughts were soon abandoned as the man next to you, who immediately asked you to just call him Adam, began pestering you. 

“So, what did I miss in the last twenty minutes? Cause the rest I got from notes from the teacher. I was out of town for  a while, you know how it can be, right? Sometimes starting classes can be so stressful, you just want to be somewhere else for a while!” 

You give him a deadpan look as he smiled brightly at you, despite having basically just admitted to going on a vacation instead of attending classes. Of course, he would have to be one of those types. You sighed.

“Look, if you hadn’t been late, or didn’t leave town or whatever for the last two weeks, then maybe you would have gotten the notes. I don’t know you at all. What makes you think I would share my notes with you? Try someone else.” 

With that, you began ignoring him, even as he stared at you with an open mouth and confusion spread across his features, like he was unused to people ignoring him and refusing to do what he wanted.

But, trying to ignore him didn’t work even when he resorted to pulling out a notebook from the depths of an overstuffed messenger bag he brought in with him. 

He kept trying to get your attention, over and over, grating at your nerves. Despite your best efforts to ignore him and get him to leave you alone, even after the class ended he decided to follow you around campus, still bugging you for the notes he missed. By the end of the week, you had found out he shared two more classes with you, somehow always waiting for you outside the ones you didn’t share, and generally being a nuisance in spite of your best attempts to get him to leave you alone. 

He kept trying to strike up conversation, following you around campus and distracting you from your classes. The only times you had any peace was when you left campus or were in your apartment. Your roommate remained sympathetic to your plights, nodding and following along with your stories, offering possible actions to get the irritating man to leave you alone. 

But nothing worked, and soon you were close to boiling over. Adam kept distracting you, even after you finally gave in and let him copy the few pages of notes he had ended up missing, hoping that that would get him to finally leave you alone. The assignments that you usually finished on campus, soon became stuffed in your pack to finish at home, lectures you usually had no problem listening to and taking notes on soon turned to recordings to listen to at home, and soon, it felt like you were trapped at home to get any time to yourself. 

It was driving you mad as he kept poking and prodding, laughing and talking and distracting. Even worse was the fact that everyone else seemed to adore him and you kept getting looks of envy and hatred as he clung to you everywhere you seemed to go, even if he never actually hung out with any of them.

Eventually, even your apartment was invaded. 

~~~~~

It started with the apartment next door finally having someone new move in. It had been vacant for a couple months, the previous tenets having gone to the same college as you and graduated. The three had been fun to hang out with when they had still lived there, in the largest apartment in the building, having pooled their money to finally rent it. 

But all good things must end, and as such when they left, there hadn’t been anyone who could afford it or were interested in it. Until, of course, the Adam decided to be the next tenet to move in. You had been out for the day, having been in charge of shopping for the week and arrived in the hallway to a mountain of boxes blocking your way in. As you stared, befuddled and slightly exasperated, your roommate popped their head up from the other side of the pile. 

“Oh, hey! You’re finally back. We have a new neighbor now. He’s still moving in and is definitely not used to all of this. It’s honestly pretty funny.” 

They laughed even as an oddly familiar voice squawked in outrage at that, before suddenly falling silent when you finally sighed and just asked them to clear you a path since your arms were getting tired from the weight. You now regretted giving in to the urge to carry them all up at the same time. By the time a path was actually cleared, you were too focused on your now shaking arms to pay any mind to who the mysterious new neighbor was even as they paused in pushing an overly large box through their door to gape at your quickly moving form. 

You exhaled in relief as you put everything on the counter, shaking out your arms and flexing your now bright red fingers. The day had actually helped relax you, as it was one of the few days you didn’t have to be on campus and have Adam bug you.

Until, of course, he decided to do just that by bursting through your door in a way similar to your first meeting and decided to greet you with an unwanted hug. So, being a normal human being, you screeched, stomped on his foot, and elbowed him in the gut, before ripping yourself out of his clutches. 

At which point, you got a good look at his face as he squinted at you in what seemed to be genuine confusion. Naturally, having the creep that follows you everywhere and annoys you, now being your next door neighbor, your cheeks heat up in anger as you screamed and stormed off to your room. 

~~~~~ 

Apollo groaned, stuck staring in confusion after (Y/n) as he slowly slumped to the floor as the throbbing in his foot and gut became too much. The one he had been chatting with, and who had been laughing at him as he had tried to move all his items by himself, sauntered into the room with a serious expression on their face. 

“What’s your name anyways?” 

Apollo leaned back to look at them cautiously. 

“It’s Adam. Adam Sibley. Why?” 

They groaned and buried their face in their hands for a moment, before staring him down with a frown.

“Look man, you’ve really freaked them out. They feel like you show up everywhere they go on campus and it leaves them stressed out. This was one of the only places they felt calm, so seeing you here? I doubt they’re coming out of their room anytime soon unless you have a really good reason for what you’ve been doing.” 

Apollo winced, only now realizing how he had been treating (Y/n). There wasn’t really a good reason for his actions beyond the fact that he found them fascinating, but hanging out with Hermes had taught him enough on how to make up a believable lie; you put enough truth into it to fool even yourself. Besides, if this doesn’t work, there was little reason to keep at it with someone who would just reject him at every turn. He had enough of heartbreak already. 

“Well, honestly, I just found them fascinating. They never try to cling to me or follow me around, I don’t have to worry about getting my feelings hurt hanging out with them since I knew what to expect from them. I guess I just wanted to hang out with someone who I know wouldn’t try to get with me or at me for something beyond my control. It was… refreshing to find someone who couldn’t care less about me.” 

Apollo looked at them, earnest and slightly scared. It was true, many of his ‘lovers’ fled him simply for who he was, and many others flocked to him only in hopes of getting a blessing without having to continue to work for it. He had grown tired of it all, always stuck as the easygoing one who had terrible luck with lovers, always the butt of the joke. Even his sister messed with him on occasions. It was why he left in the first place and decided on a whim to join this college. 

Something new and unknown, he had thought, would be able to help him get over his funk and decide what exactly he wanted to do after that. He hadn’t realized classes had started two weeks before he joined until he had already charmed his way in and messed with the records enough to seem like he had already been there if anyone took a passing glance. But then he had to fall back into bad habits, chasing after the first interesting face he saw, nearly losing what he could still hold on to. He was going to fix it though, have someone to be with rather than be alone for the rest of the year. So, with determination, he continued his sad plea, looking straight at the now suspicious face of (Y/n)’s roommate the entire time, finishing with a desperate plea to at least save face if they didn’t believe his white lie.

“I swear, that was the only reason. I didn’t mean to freak them out, I mean it! I’ll leave them alone if they truly don’t want me around.”

They sighed, briefly looking over his shoulder, down the hallway to where the door had been slammed so many minutes ago, before their shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Honestly, I’m not the one you should be explaining your actions to and even if I was I still don’t trust you. But since you were loud enough to be heard, I guess that doesn’t really matter now. You really do have a bleeding heart to forgive him this easily, (Y/n).” 

At that, Apollo looked over his shoulder, before finally standing up and whirling around to see the now embarrassed form of (Y/n) slinking out of their room. 

“You really didn’t need to call me out like that, you know. But I guess you are right. Adam, I’ll give you one chance. Prove to me you can actually leave me alone for a week, and maybe, maybe, I’ll actually hang out with you.” 

Apollo brightened, witnessing the sincerity of their words in their body language and thankful that all his pleas had finally gained him some ground. So, of course, he agreed. What was one week without them when he could spend the whole rest of the year in interesting company. 

~~~~~ 

You didn’t actually think Adam would go through with his end of the bargain, but he did. He quickly left your apartment and finished setting up next door. Then, he left you alone. You were finally able to get through your work without having to dart off back to your apartment or worry about him prattling in your ear for the entirety of the classes you spent together. 

You were feeling good by the end of the week, humming under your breath as you headed home, only to come up short at the sight of Adam pacing back and forth in front of your door and muttering under his breath. 

You looked at him in confusion for a while before he finally looked up and spotted you, eyes widening and pace faltering as he grasped for words. It was quite cute actually, as you chuckled, watching his face redden in embarrassment as he stammered out about a week having passed and wondering about your thoughts now.

The time you finally had to yourself let you put your thoughts into order. As much as he had irritated you and followed you around, finding out why he did it actually helped. You still couldn’t really forgive him for what he had done, but you could at least start over with a new, if cautious, mindset and relationship with him. 

“There’s a karaoke bar near the campus. They have really good food and drinks, if you wanted to try it out with me and my roommate? We usually go together, but I’m sure they won’t mind a third person.” 

Adam swiftly agreed and soon the three of you were heading over to the bar, even if your roommate was still suspicious of Adam. It was rather fun with a third person, especially since your roommate always got drunk and insisted on duets. You laughed at the contrast between their off tune drunk singing and Adam’s perfectly pitched tunes, especially as they clung to him to stay standing. 

That ended up leading to a long lasting tradition between the three of you, heading out to sing and eat and drink at the bar before ambling back home for the night. Adam relaxed and stopped bothering you as much, even if you now felt like he was still following you even when you knew he wasn’t. 

You figured it was just leftover from when he was still following you like a creep. But, your roommate was more concerned, always protective of you even when you insisted you were fine. 

Adam had redeemed himself in your eyes, but your roommate always kept an eye on him just in case, even if the help they gave ended up coming too late for you. 

~~~~~ 

Near the end of the second semester, sharing only a single class with Adam now, you learned that he was leaving at the end of it. 

“Good riddance, if you ask me, you always were weird to me! Though I guess that means (Y/n) and I will have to have fun doing karaoke by ourselves again.” 

Your roommate laughed, grin firmly in place, confident in the way only alcohol can make them. You shook your head, smiling slightly. You had been friends with them even before you moved in together, so it explained their protectiveness, but it had been nearly a full year now and they still didn’t fully trust Adam. 

The only time they seemed remotely comfortable around him was before you had arrived with the groceries the day he moved in and while drunk. They said it was something about his demeanor around you that worried them. You tried not to pay it any mind even if the feeling of being watched hadn’t gone away. 

You chuckled as they got up to sing the new song starting, now noticing the frown fixed firmly on Adam’s face. 

“What’s wrong? I thought you enjoyed these sessions? Is it all the accusations, because I’m fairly certain they don’t mean most of it.” 

Adam looked up, only now seeming to notice you, focusing intently on you with an unreadable expression. 

“I just didn’t think about the fact that you would be staying here. I’m so used to your presence now.” 

You chuckled nervously, eyes darting around the room, before focusing back on Adam. 

“Well, it’s not like I can go with you or anything. I do have a life here after all.” 

Adam turned pensive, seeming to focus on what you were saying before his expression changed to determination. 

“That doesn’t have to be true though, right?” 

“…What exactly do you mean, Adam?” 

“Well, can’t you come with me? You have a life here, but surely you can form a life anywhere?” 

You tried to laugh it off, but his unchanging expression sent a sudden shiver of dread down your spine. The song was starting to wind down, so you knew the best thing was to sort this out before beating a hasty exit. 

“Adam, I can’t just start a new life out of the blue! This is my life, and I chose to be here. Just because you’re leaving doesn’t mean we’re suddenly going to lose touch, right? We could text, or call, arrange meetings, or something.” 

“It’s not the same! It won’t be the same if you’re not with me, where I can see you and touch you! Make sure that you’re actually here with me!” 

You gulped, the song having faded out, leaving you with a heaving Adam standing over you, staring at you with a darkly desperate look in his eyes. You were frozen, scared, and concerned, not sure what move to make before your roommate announced their presence by shoving him out of the way and pulling you towards the door. 

“Yeah, alright! I think that’s enough. You need to figure that whole thing out by yourself dude! Leave (Y/n) alone!” 

You looked over your shoulder at Adam, standing in the middle of the room, eyes glued to your retreating form, but making no move to follow you. Despite that, his eyes seemed to pin you in place, even long after you left the weight of them behind. 

Your roommate found the whole incident concerning enough to ensure you no longer ran into Adam unless you had to, rambling on about their gut feeling being right and wondering where he even came from to begin with. The only times you really saw him now was in the single class you two shared, but he never made a move to do anything until the final day. 

As you packed up, a sudden shadow caused you to look up, meeting the scarily determined eyes of Adam. You blinked, unsure what to do before he handed you a single piece of paper. 

“I know you probably don’t want anything to do with me, but I can at least explain to you why I did it. I doubt your roommate will let me explain myself around them, so, please, tomorrow evening, around 9, just show up here and I promise I’ll tell you everything.” 

With that, he left, walking out the door without a backwards glance. He had already moved out of the apartment two days ago, so you knew if you didn’t show up tomorrow, this would be the last time you saw him. Unfolding the paper and looking up the location, you found out that the place he wanted to meet at was a diner right on the edge of town, close to the forest. It was busy in the mornings; open only for breakfast and lunch, so meeting there in the evening would leave the place deserted. 

You know you shouldn’t go, you shouldn’t even be thinking about it, should just throw the paper away and tell your roommate, forget about Adam and the eyes that you always feel on you and the strange sense of caution even in the most crowded of places whenever you were with him. But he was fun to hang around, sweet when he wanted to be, always considered your needs after the rocky first few weeks. You liked Adam. 

So, despite every instinct screaming at you not to, you still decided to go, slipping out and into the street, catching a bus to the closest stop, and shivering at the cool evening breeze as you walked ever closer to your last meeting with Adam. 

~~~~~ 

Walking down the sidewalk, you finally found the small parking lot for the diner. A shout alerted you farther in, looking up to see Adam waving at you from the other side of the lot, close to the tree line. You looked around, but didn’t find anything really out of place other than the fact that it was completely deserted, just like you thought. 

Cautiously walking over, you found Adam smiling happily, waving you closer than you cared to go. The smile faded slightly, but he still moved forward, slowing only when you seemed ready to bolt off, instead deciding to slowly circle around you until he was facing the forest. 

“I’m so glad you decided to come. And, like I said, I did tell you I’d explain everything.” 

“Yes, well honestly I only really came because I felt like you leaving without a proper goodbye isn’t the right thing to do.” 

Adam stared at you for a moment before chuckling. You felt a sudden buzzing in your pocket, but focused on Adam for the moment. 

“Of course you would say something like that. Oh (Y/n), a proper goodbye will be unneeded! You’ll be coming home with me after all, to the peaks of Mount Olympus!” 

He smiled brightly at you as if he hadn’t just confessed to plans to kidnap you to a mountain and national park in Greece. You blinked before awkwardly laughing while looking for the best place to bolt to. 

“You must be joking right? Olympus is a mountain, not a home, the only place it’s a home is in myths! You would live closer to the foot if you live in Greece at all! Where are you from anyways? You did show up more or less without warning anyways….” 

You trailed off, finally pulling out your phone to see your roommate’s name over a deluge of texts. Before Adam pulled your attention back to him.

“Darling, I just told you. The very peaks of Mount Olympus. At least that’s where it inevitably ends up. Nobody but the gods and those they let in can reach it though. But I’m sure you’ll love it there with me. We can spend all our days and nights together, nobody to get between us anymore, just us. But, you still don’t believe me fully do you? Why don’t you answer your phone? I’m sure that will help clear a few things up before we depart.”

Just then, your phone rang. You looked at Adam, who only smiled, gesturing for you to answer the phone. Slowly, you answered the call, holding the phone to your ear as the frantic voice of your roommate filled your ears. 

“(Y/n)! Thank goodness you answered! You need to get back here soon, there is so much about Adam that makes no sense. He wasn’t on vacation or whatever two weeks into the semester! He doesn’t even seem to exist before that! I know this was his last semester, so I decided to dig a little deeper into his records. I know it’s illegal or whatever, but I’m serious here! There is literally no record about him before his name suddenly appeared on the roster two weeks in! I talked to all the teachers you guys shared and they seemed to be messed with, saying they had no knowledge of anyone with his name or face ever being in their classes! In fact, they said they didn’t remember you either. Everyone seems to have forgotten both you and Adam. And then when I went back to the records the two of you were just gone from it! Like magic! Seriously (Y/n), you need to get back here, he could be after you right now!” 

You inhaled shakily, staring at Adam across from you. His smile had turned into a smirk and you knew, despite it not being on speaker mode, he had heard everything they just said. You tried to answer, but no words came out. Your roommate started shouting the longer your silence went on before Adam was suddenly right in front of you, pulling the phone from your grasp and speaking. 

“Oh, don’t worry so much. They will be much happier with me in their life. I’ll take good care of them and you can just go ahead and let the magic take you too. You’ll be able to continue your stupid little life without precious, darling (Y/n) even a faint memory in the back of your mind. And even if you do remember them, there is no way you will ever take them from me. Now, goodbye forever.” 

With that, he hung up and crushed the phone in a suddenly powerful hand. You flinched back, but that just drew his attention back solely to you. He smiled at you, taking in your quivering form. 

“Do you believe me now?” 

Knowing your roommate would never lie to you, you were forced to believe him. 

“Who even are you?” 

“I’m yours beloved. And you are mine. But, you can call me Apollo if that would suit your needs.” 

You gulped, backing up further as his form began to shift, no longer in casual wear, but instead he had on a chiton with a dark cloak flung over it, glowing faintly. Your eyes were drawn to the dangerous looking bow and quiver now slung over his shoulder where his messenger bag strap would normally lie. There was no denying it now, Adam was dangerous, and you had no idea how you were going to get out of this as he drew ever closer before holding out a hand to you. 

“Oh (Y/n). Your roommate was right. You really do have a bleeding heart. That’s why I knew you would come, why I knew I could finally have you come with me. No one to stop me now, especially since they have all already forgotten you, it’s best you just come with me.” 

Fear began to overtake you, your blood rushing through your ears as you looked at the hand Adam- no, Apollo- held out to you. You continued to back up, cursing yourself for letting him turn you around, the forest was now the only option to feasibly get away from the crazed god before you. So, as you fled, you had no time to notice the sudden glee that appeared in Apollo’s eyes. But you definitely heard it in his voice as you bounded away. 

“You’re no nymph (Y/n), and you certainly don’t have the favor of any other god but me! You can’t get away from me by turning into a plant or evading me! My sister may be the goddess of the hunt, but I’ll have no problem tracking down a precious little mortal like you in these woods. So run as fast as you like, I’ll catch up to you soon!” 

You tried to ignore him, even as you stumbled over roots as tears began to blur your vision, but you knew the hunt was on as an arrow pierced a tree close by, right near ankle level. 

~~~~~ 

Apollo followed at a leisurely pace, ready and waiting for the perfect opportunity. There was little hope of them getting away, so he knew he could take his time. They may even give up before he has to shoot them. 

However, he did send off a warning shot, aiming for a tree close to their heels, as a warning. (Y/n) will give in one way or another, it was just a matter of time and patience. 

However, the farther they ran, the more they tripped and scraped themselves trying to get away. They were hurting themselves trying to get away and if they weren’t careful, he’d end up with another lover dead in his arms. Apollo had gone through too much to lose another. He refused to lose (Y/n) not even to their own actions. He would keep them safe and with him, even if it meant hurting them himself to get them there.

Apollo pulled back the bowstring and let an arrow fly straight and true at (Y/n)’s retreating form. 

~~~~~

You screamed at the sudden pain piercing your leg, finding yourself falling before flipping onto your back as you quickly discovered an arrow piercing your calf, already beginning to leave two bloody smears running down to your ankle. You whimpered, heart pounding in your ears and fear and stress taking over as you heard the light footsteps of someone who could only be the crazed Apollo bounding ever closer to you. 

You flipped yourself over again, crying out at the pain as you tried to desperately crawl away from the threat, animal instincts taking over despite the fruitless endeavor as Apollo was on you almost immediately. 

As he hefted your form into his arms, whispering assurances as if it would help with the arrow sticking straight through your calf, you began to focus on the dark spots beginning to dot your vision. He caressed your quickly weakening form, promises and reassurances spilling from his lips about how much you would enjoy your new home, with him helping to put this whole incident out of your mind, healing you and providing all the care you could ever want or need. 

Apollo clutched you to him like you would vanish if he loosened his grip even slightly, muttering under his breath as he peppered kisses over your now limp face, beginning the trek further into the woods and farther from any possible salvation that could help you. Apollo was all you needed now, and he was all you would ever need again. He had had enough heartbreak after all, he wasn’t going to let you slip from his grasp like all the others had.

[slifarianhawk]

Chapter 5: Transfer

The weeks following my first Pankration match were tantalizingly busy. I had Roussimoff scheduling me for a fight every few days. The number of coupons I was raking in was far more substantial than my days working long hours on the production floor. However, the crowd still seemed to hate my guts. While some warmed up to me more often than not, people placed higher bets on my opponent. Not that I cared. It just meant I could afford a minuscule upgrade in my way of life.

I was walking through the admin area on my way to see if wosley had any more Fonta available for purchase when Sam ran up to me. He seemed to be in quite the rush.

"Ah! Sam, care to share a Fonta with me? I have quite a few coupons left over from my winnings." I said, smiling.

He panted as he placed his hands on his knees, "Silva! His grace would like to see you in his office."

"Well, I'm sure his grace would understand if I'm a little late. You look like you were sprinting a mile. Let me get you that Fonta." I smiled, wondering why Wriothesley wanted to see me.

I helped Sam over to the tables. Wolsey walked over to Sam and handed him a bottle of pure water. That was probably a better move than a Fonta.

"I have to go see his grace. Keep an eye on him, Wosley." I said as I walked away.

Once again, I'd only seen him in passing glances. He always seemed so busy. But he was there at each of my Pankration matches. I always saw him for a brief second out of the corner of my eye during the final moments of the bout.

It was oddly comforting. I heard from Roussimoff that his grace still participates in Pankration matches. That he was a champion Pankration fighter numerous times. Maybe I should ask for some tips or something.

I opened the massive metal door. I could faintly hear jazz playing in the background. I walked in and slowly ascended the stairs. The music gradually increased in volume as I climbed. I stopped at the top of the stairs and noticed his back turned towards me.

"You wished to see me your grace?" I asked as I approached him.

"Ah, Silva, thank you for coming. Please have a seat. I just put a fresh pot of tea on." He said back still towards me, his hand gesturing to the sofa.

"Thank you, Wriothesley." I said, walking over towards the couch.

"It seems I owe you a set of thanks. I just received a letter with a contract and an order sheet from Bubu pharmacy." He said, turning towards me a package in his hand.

"A promise is a promise, your grace. I am a woman of my word. I may not be a prideful person. However, I do hold myself to that standard." I said as he sat the package and two letters on the coffee table.

"That package came from Liyue Harbor addressed to you. It came with three letters, one addressed to the Duke of Meropide, the those are addresses to you." He said, walking over to the now whistling tea kettle.

"Thank you, Wriothesley. I don't know if you noticed, but there are those here who aren't my biggest fans." I smiled as I picked up the letters. One was a light blue envelope with a green wax seal with a snake on it. Baizhu, I'm glad he replied. The other one was just like the last letter his grace handed me.

"Care for any sugar or cream?" He asked, pouring the tea into their respective cups.

"Depends. What blend are we drinking today?" I asked, slowly opening Baizhu's letter.

"I'm using your blend, seeing as we haven't shared tea in the past month and a half. Not to mention the reports I've been getting from Sigewinne about a certain inmate with a migraine every few days. I figured it would be the best course of action." He said, placing a cube in his tea.

I felt a blush graze my cheeks, "Just one then, your grace. I must apologize  about my actions. They seem to have made you worry about my well-being. I just didn't want there to be any call to arms against you. As I said earlier, there aren't very many here who look kindly upon me."

"I figured that was the case. Tell me how long have you been receiving those threatening notes on your workstation in the production zone?" He asked, sitting next to me on the couch.

I must have had a shocked look on my face because Wriothesley let out a small chuckle. He took a sip of his tea.  I gazed at the scars under he eyes lift as he did. Did my heart just flutter at that... nope, that couldn't have been it.

"How long have you known? I haven't told anyone about them." I said, trying to hide my expression by taking a drink of my tea.

"Sam... He reported it. He noticed the random slips of paper appearing at your work bench seemingly overnight when no one was around. He read one and was horrified. He brought it to my attention later that shift." He said, glancing at me.

"Sam..." I said, looking at my hands shaking.

"I decided to investigate, and I can tell you that they are dropped off between my early morning rounds and start of your shift. Being that I only started this investigation about three days ago, I'd say your package arrived with perfect timing,  paper trail, and all." He said with a smug tone in his voice.

"Thank you, Wriothesley. If I weren't so stubborn about not feeling like a burden, I would have brought it to your attention. It's been happening since my third day here." I sigh, setting my cup down.

"You should have brought this to my attention." He said, turning towards me, "I know a lot of gaurdes and prisoners are still used to my predecessors' rules and policies. My new policies instill the main rule of rehabilitation and consistency. I want Meropide to be a place where people learn from their wrongs and grow in a place free from the constant threat of violence. That's why I kept the Pankration ring."

His tone was like he was scolding an inmate, and in the truest sense of the thought, he was. However, there was something else there, it seemed. I shook my head, I was just thinking too much into it.

"Would you like me to read the letters to you, Wriothesley?" I asked, flustered quickly, trying to change the subject.

"Oh ahem, yes, that was the main reason I did call you here. Monsieur Nuevillette wants to know if you were in contact with the people who matter to you." Wriothesley said, pouring more tea into both mine and his cups.

"He is a very kind man." I said, placing a single cube of sugar in my cup.

"You've only seen him in a decent mood. He has a temperament that is to be minded." Wriothesley said.

I opened the letter and started to read. Baizhus voice playing in my head, Changshengs as well.

"Silva, I am glad to have received your letter. When Mr. Zhongli informed me of your circumstances. I was sure it would be quite a while before I heard from you again. It brings comfort to me and Changsheng to hear you are well. To think you'd make a deal to bring me more mora while so far away. I'm glad to see you haven't changed from the kind girl who volunteered to help Qiqi and Gui dry herbs in her free time. I sent you some more of the tea that I provided you with before your trip, as well as something special. Mr. Zhongli asked me to provide it to you, even covered the costs of the shipping. I think he figured part of the mystery of your mother. He wouldn't talk to me much about it, so I'm not exactly sure about the details. He had me send a letter from him in this parcel. Have the lovely head nurse reach out with any needs of your medication. I'll be glad to cover the expenses until you return to Liyue.

On one last note, however, Changsheng wants you to be careful. Goodness knows what will happen if you come in contact with that drug again. Dendro energy can be very volatile when not properly controlled. She doesn't want to see you hurt. Nor do I, for that matter. Take care of yourself since I'm not there to treat your wounds. Please write to me when you can. Take care, Baizhu and Changsheng."  I said, wiping tears from my eyes.

"He seems like a very good man and an even better doctor. Who is Changsheng? His wife?" Wriothesley asked, and I simply laughed.

"No, nothing like that. Changsheng is his familiar he inherented from his master." I smiled.

"Oh..." He coughed a bit of an embarrassed blush on his cheeks, "Ehem... I won't have you read that letter from your other friend. It seems the information is strictly meant for you. I understand the importance of finding out where you came from. It isn't talked about much, but I was raised in a foster home."

I noticed something in his expression, a forlorn darkness. There was something he clearly needed to unpack. But I don't feel like I should dig. We were just becoming more familiar with each other. But something compelled me to say something.

"You okay, Wriothesley? You seem a bit sullen all of a sudden." I say instinctively, placing my hand on his back.

He stiffened for a brief second at the touch but quickly relaxed, "Yeah, just lost in thought."

He stood up and stretched. Walking over to his desk, he pulled out a couple of papers and a quill. He motioned me to come to over to him.

"I need you to sign a couple of things. Would you come over here?" He said.

I simply nodded and walked over to the desk.

"What do you need me to sign?" I asked curiously.

"Well one I need you to sign without a doubt before you leave. In all honesty, I'd feel safer with it in place. The other is a contract between you and me if you are interested." He said, staring into my eyes.

This piqued my interest. What kind of contract would I'd be signing, and what was the first paper about. I stopped in front of his desk, and he handed me the first paper he pulled out. It had notice of work transfer in bold on top.

"I discussed this with Nuevillette. I told him about the notes on your workstation as soon as i heard about it as he wants updates and all. He believes this will at least lessen the chance of someone taking their version of justice out on you." Wriothesley said, interlocking his fingers together.

I read the document and confusion spring up in my mind.

"To the kitchens, are you sure? Wosley normally doesn't trust violent offenders in his kitchens." I asked.

Wriothesley chuckled, "He welcomed the thought with open arms. I distinctly remember him saying he finds you pleasant for conversation and would love to learn more about the cuisine you've picked up through your travels. He said that the hours are longer than the production zones but is willing to give you time off for your Pankration matches."

I felt a shock run through my system. Wosley even describes himself as a person who doesn't trust very easily. I felt an ease of tension flood my body. Then, a saddened thought dripped into my  thoughts. How would I train for my matches. Even though I was still new in the ring. The release it gave me from my frustrations was almost euphoric.

I heard another chuckle from his grace.

"I know that look. Debating between the transfer and the ring, huh?" He said, handing me the second paper.

"Am i that easy to read?" I asked, taking the supposed contract.

"No, I was in your position at one point during my stay. That's why I had this drawn up. I think you'd find it quite beneficial for us both." He said.

I felt drawn to the contract. What was it? What did it entail? I picked it up and started to read through it. I must have looked incredibly flustered.

"It doesn't involve anything of a personal nature. If that's what got you looking like that." He assured me.

I felt my cheeks redden, and i stopped reading, not even getting past the secondline. That wasn't what I thought! Was it? No, definitely not. Ayato always told me to wait to find someone I cared about to do anything like that. I barely have known Wriothesley for a couple of months, archons. This is only the second time we have even actually spoken.

"I promise Wriothesley! it's not that!" I exclaimed.

He let out a laugh that clearly built from his stomach, "Oh relax, sweetheart. I was just pulling your leg. If I had five mora for every time a  female inmate offered herself to me, I'd be able to afford the kitchen overhaul Wosley has been asking for."

Sweetheart? That word rang in my ears. I shook my head at my stupidity. He was the administrator. Of course, he wouldn't do that.

"This is simply a sparring and training  contract." He said as I set it down and walked up behind me.

"Training?" I asked, turning my head to look at him.

"I've been at each of your matches, and I know you know that. You're good with your weapon and alchemy. However, your martial arts is sloppy, to say the least. At the same time, i find your combat interesting. I want to train you to be able to use your abilities to their fullest. I could even help you make some improvements on your weapons. " He said, placing his hand on the contract.

"You want to train me?" I asked, noticing his scarred hands hidden behind black bandages.

"It's just an offer. It would allow you to be up after lights out and be able to not allow the other inmates to watch you train. I'd even have Sam escort you back to your bunk." He said.

"You sure about all this, even the weapons your grace. All I use are wires? How can that even be modified?" I asked my mind racing.

I felt something heavy on my opposite shoulder. I quickly turned my head and saw a black and brass gauntlet resting on it. Where the hell did that come from.

"It surprises most people what a little knowledge of mechanics can do. I was able to perfect these during my time here. They resonate very well with my catalyst." He said, pulling his gauntlet away from me as he walked back to his chair, "in the end, this decision is completely up to you."

"I know, I've made up my mind." I said, setting down the contract, "I'm tired of doing the same old thing. Be it combat or work. It's been getting harder each match in the ring. Not to mention, I have a feeling that the asshole who stabbed me is still out there."

"Well then, the dotted line is right there, sweetheart." Wriothesley said, handing me the inked quill.

I took the pen and signed the documents. Sliding them over to him, I noticed his face seemed contemplative. I wondered what was going on behind those lovely blue grey eyes. I sighed at my thoughts. I felt as if I should start my job for the day.

"Wriothesley, when would you like to have our first training session?" I asked curiously.

"How about tomorrow? You have a match tonight, right? That way, I can finish off what regimen to build off of." He said, standing up looking at the time, "speaking of which you should probably head to the kitchen. Don't worry, I'll bring the crate brought to your bunk later."

"Thank you, Wriothesley." I said, heading towards the stairs.

"No problem. Here, let me at least walk you out." He said, catching up to me.

"Thanks," I said, stopping at the stairs and trying to turn towards him.

Unfortunately, my balance didn't want to stay stable. I felt the air of the office rush past my ears. Well fuck... I awaited the pain to strike only to feel a strong pull. The next thing I felt was warmth and my face pressed against fabric.

I looked up only to see myself pulled into Wriothesley's chest, his hand on my wrist, and his other arm wrapped around my back. I saw concern on his face, but his cheeks were slightly pink.

"Hey now, be careful. I can tell you from experience those metal stairs hurt." He said his gaze off to the side, a slightly snarky tone in his voice.

"Of course, I'm sorry." I said as he released me.

"No need for apologies. Can't let you be at a disadvantage in your bout later, right?" He said.

"Yeah, guess you right. I guess I'll see you at the match?" I asked.

"Wouldn't miss it." He said as I walked down the stairs.

As I walked out the doors, I heard a deep clicking noise after they closed. The guardes looked confused.

"Wonder why he locked the door?" I heard one guarde ask the other.

The other just shrugged and resumed guarding the door. My mind wandered as I made my way to the kitchen. Why would Wriothesley lock the door behind him? Did I do something wrong?

When I arrived at the kitchen, I shoved all those thoughts aside. I just knew that today was the start of something for me.

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from Return of the Obra Dinn

Game from the same creator of “Papers, Please”. This alone speaks a lot in my opinion: we are expecting an unconventional and interesting game despite their visual.

This is an adventure, puzzle game which doesn’t have puzzles in the sense of contraptions or codes or following patterns. The “puzzle” is to reconstruct the story of what happened in the ship by using logic and deductions.

Despite looking like a difficult game, its core is basic deduction that we use every day, making assumptions, testing them, and remaking new ones if they were incorrect. For this I highly recommend it even for those who always are afraid of puzzle/detective games.

The story starts with an empty ship that drifts into the port of Falmouth with damaged sails and no visible crew.

You play as an insurance investigator who has been dispatched immediately to Falmouth, and has to make an assessment of the damages it suffered, this implies to understand what events happened on the ship, how many people were there, how they died, and their names.

The only tools you have is a book with some drawings of the crew, a list of the crew, a map of the ship, and a magical pocket-watch that allows you to see the last minutes of a corpse. This will provide us images, dialogues, and situations that will give us small bits of information to determine who is who and how they died. 

I highly recommend this game even for those who are not much into mystery games, because the skills used in this game are not the typical intricate and sometimes artificial tricks you need to “see” to solve puzzles. Most of the clues are given by noticing accents, listening dialogues, making assumptions that come from these bits, and observations of situations frozen in time.

The story of the travel of this ship since it sailed until the last crew member was alive starts simple but unfolds beautifully, trapping you in the mystery that is slowly built up with dialogues and the progression of death scenes.

The journal that the game gives you is beautifully organised and really useful for your deductions. The game truly provides all what you need to work on this at your own pace.

The mechanics are simple, the story is epic and surprising [you are not going to get bored trying to figure it out what happened] and the mystery keeps building up all along the game until the last moment, where the last pages of the journal are available, and you can discover a last, final secret. 

Wonderful music, excellent voice acting, and unique visual style that work all together, providing a pleasing environment to play and keep engaged. 

The only two small cons that sometimes I found out is that because the lack of detail in the images due to its style, sometimes it’s a bit complicated to understand the cause of death of a character. But the game is quite forgiving on that matter [for example, you may assume different ways to describe a death that are similar and all of them are correct for the game]. The other con is that you lose some clues if you are not too good to spot accents in the dialogues. However, it’s not impossible since I’m completely unable to determine English accents and I didn’t feel it was a terrible barrier to play this game.

As a warning, it’s a game about deaths, so it’s a bit morbid, violent, and graphical at times, but I would not qualify it as “gore”. I suppose this is the reason why the game has picked this art style: it helps a lot to reduce the roughness of the death situations you will see. Even though it’s explicit, it’s not detailed. 

——- Plot? ——-

In 1802, the merchant ship Obra Dinn set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn't met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea. In 1807, the Obra Dinn returns, drifting to the port Falmouth with damaged sails and no visible crew. As  an insurance investigator, you need to board the abandoned ship and determine what happened with its crew. 

——- Gameplay? ——- 

You walks around the ship, exploring, seeking corpses/skeleonts over which you activate the pocket-watch, and see the memory of the last minutes of that person. Sometimes, inside these memories, you can find new corpses that the pocket-watch will allow you to explore. These second corpses will appear like holograms in the real ship later. This allows an easy access to revisit some deaths.

——- Characters? ——- 

60 crew members that you need to name and discover.

 ——- LGBT? ——-

None.

——- Sadness level? ——- 

There is some sadness since this is a story about deaths, but the mystery overrides any sentiment. You just want to know what happened.

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

The game ends when you discover all what can be discovered, and a new secret is available. It’s not happy nor sad, since as I said before, it’s a story about death and how rough life can be on a ship. Some deaths are tragic events, others are product of human greed, but the game hooks you so much with the mystery, that there is no much space for sadness even though it’s truly a tragic story. The ending is satisfying because everything ends up fitting adequately.