#i still kind of like it but only bc some of the extended universe actually gave them substance

[jakowskis]

LMFAO finally got my bestie to watch torchwood n shes been live reacting to me n shes on cyberwoman and she went "WAIT I ACTUALLY LIKE JANTO" and i went "ILL KILL YOU" and she went "NO BUT THE 'ONE DAY ILL WATCH U SUFFER AND DIE.' THATS HOT'" and i was like "oh honey thats not even followed through on 😭" n shes bummed HFDJKSF WELCOME TO MY WORLDDDD

[sketchingstars03]

aghfdsfd sry about the infodumping but i havr to get tgis out of my head hc that ink has a kind of a fixation on naming?? him naming his brush ,the doodlesphere and giving people nicknames kinda?? something something about his abandoned AU not havign a name... something about his last words being not watnting to b forgotten. wanting to be someone.. somethin about names n identity sjhjgf also uhm i just learned that it's actually like. confirmed that he's the one who put all those buckets in the doodlesphere. and also ink doesn't consider himself a Sans bc of his lack of a universe. uh mirror room. apparently its implied that the reason he doesnt liek that room is bc. Ink couldnt tell that they're the original or just one of the many reflections/imposters. since he's the only Ink who doesnt have a soul and doesnt remember jack shit ab his past.(kinda outdated but makes sense. that room was made official around that time where the fact that ink not having a soul is considered vry niche info iirc? somewhere around early 2017)

no Anon you’re onto something with the naming thing.

I think it’s fascinating that Ink, should this be true (which it seems very plausible to me), extends this need to be someone, to have an identity, to others. In a similar way to how they might subconsciously extend that feeling of no universe deserving to be left behind, in that both stem from themself, yet he can’t help but fulfil that desire through other people. Really shines a light on the side of Ink that “isn’t completely selfish”, to put it in words I remember from one post by Comyet.

I always had a feeling, like a headcanon, that Ink would feel separated from his Sans identity, or, well it would probably be more like a role or title to him, rather than a name or someone he is. They left “Sans” behind with _____tale (something he doesn’t even remember). Though, it’s interesting that he still carries over some sans-like traits, like puns/pranks (though more frequent and intense pranks than a regular Sans would pull), and the creation of their own personal Gaster Blaster companion and forming bones out of ink. And there was the sans-like sweater in their old design (something I like to think they still hold on to, even if he doesn’t wear it anymore)

I should check Comyet’s blog to see that lmao guess it probably wasn’t purely just a hc after all.

THE PART ABOUT THE MIRROR ROOM IS FASCINATING THOUGH! Now that you mention it I think I remember a post like that, again looks like I need another trip through the Inkechos tag 😅. But still!! I wonder how Ink would feel about the mirror room now, if his dislike was based around how all the other ���hims” had souls and he didn’t, now that that’s changed and it’s actually the Inks with souls who are the outliers (shout out to FTFO!Ink). Would they take joy in the fact that they’re not alone? Or would it still feel, weird and uncomfortable somehow? Perhaps serving as another reminder of his emptiness deep down, and so they still avoid it even though the circumstances in the fandom have changed. I know that whenever I RP my version of Ink meeting other variants, he’s always very interested to see new versions of himself, so maybe it would just be like that! Who knows! Well, Comyet does, but I’m not her 😅.

Either way thank you so much for this thought-provoking ask, Anon! I’m always happy to discuss my favourite chaotic-neutral-artist-skeleton guy like this!

[found-family-tournament]

Found Family Tournament Round 1 Part 9 Group 42

Propaganda and further pictures under the cut

Because You Made Me Smile (or Extended Tenma Household): Tsukasa Tenma, Toya Aoyagi (& Saki Tenma)

Aurinko Crime Family: Juno Steel, Buddy Aurinko, Vespa Ilkay, Peter Nureyev, Rita, Jet Sequliac & the Ruby 7

Submissions are still open!

Because You Made Me Smile (or Extended Tenma Household):

I would put saki here too but she's not as relevant to toya and tsukasa's relationship. Basically Toya's dad is a huge BITCH (his name is literally harumichi. who carries a child around in their womb for 9 months only to name it harumichi. I'd cry.) who has forced Toya to play classical music for since he was old enough to reach the piano i guess a d toya HATE classical music and he meets tsukasa at school and they become friends and toyer tells stew caca about his dad and kasa's like "well actually u should do what you want. fuck what he says." toya then latches onto him as if he were his big brother

let me explain a little thing real quick before i say this next thing; project sekai has 3 sets of 2 biological siblings, those are the Shinonomes, the Hinomoris, and the Tenmas. Each family got events exploring their dynamic with their siblings.

I think it's worth mentioning that in the Hinomoris' and Shinonomes' events, any other characters that weren't virtual singers got 3* or 2* cards, while in the Tenmas' event, Toya also got a 4* just like Tsukasa and Saki.

okay so there's this boy named tsukasa tenma right. worlds #1 big brother and also universal big brother this guy cannot stop gaining siblings it's crazy he's a wonderful funny loud and optimistic guy. and there's also his little sister saki tenma. very cheerful and always tries to smile and wants to live her life to the fullest bc she was hospitalized for most of her younger years. they both love each other very much. then there's this boy named toya aoyagi who the siblings meet sometime as children and they all connect due to all three of their connections to playing piano. toya's very polite and serious and kind of oblivious but very kind. toya grows to despise classical music and playing piano & violin due to his father's very strict and harsh nature. at some point tsukasa tells toya that it's okay for him to do what he wants even if others disapprove. this gives toya the courage to quit doing classical music and do something for himself and due to this he is able to meet his partner and start doing street music which he ACTUALLY enjoys doing. toya looks up to tsukasa very much and tsukasa canonically thinks of him as a little brother. he also lends saki the plushies he wins from claw machines and worries and cares about her condition very much and while they're not as close as toya is with tsukasa due to how often she was hospitalized as a child they still care about each other deeply.

basically tsukasa and saki are a better family for toya than his actual family and. and. i'm inconsolable about them <//3

Aurinko Crime Family:

Queer! Space! Pirates!! It's kinda your typical "it started as a heist but along the way we became family" story, but in space. And not a single person is cishet. An ex private investigator and sharpshooter with only one eye, his very cool and smart hacker assistant and ex lover thief who he ran away from, because he has problems basically get adopted by a cool crimeboss lady with a metal stomach, her wife, who is a doctor and also generally pro stabbing people, and a big dude, who gives great, but often cryptic advice. Oh, also a car that isn't a car. All of their dynamics are awesome. Buddy definitely has mom vibes. Juno and Vespa definitely have a sibling dynamic. The movie nights. Aaaaaaaahhh!

[charms-cat]

Thoughts on TBOSAS Pt. 2

Disclaimer: I did skim certain scenes but I'm still mostly basing my theory on what I can remember (from both the book and the movie), so feel free to correct me if I got something wrong

So in Part 1 of my analysis, I wondered -

why did they make it so that the Academy kids didn’t know that they were going to be mentors? They already knew that they were going to be assigned a tribute. iirc Coryo was worried since he wanted a ‘good’ tribute and, when all the ‘good ones’ were gone, he hoped that Dean Highbottom forgot him instead of assigning him a tribute from District 12.

I was thinking about it again and honestly? I can only guess that this was another ploy to make Coryo seem more sympathetic than he actually is

My main evidence is the fact that they switched the mentorship with the Plinth Prize

1. The Mentorship

Book!Mentorship: Coryo tells us that the final project before graduation is a newly-implemented mentorship for the Hunger Games (the kids from the districts will be paired with the best/top students from the Academy); it'll be up to the mentors to make a spectacle of their assigned tribute, to make the Games more entertaining to watch; whoever has the tribute with the best performance will win a substantial amount of money, which Coryo planned on using to pay for his University tuition

from the start, Coryo knows what to expect. but, more importantly, it's made clear that he never views the tributes as anything more than a means to an end. iirc he was quite... factual(?) about what the Games entailed; he doesn't express any form of remorse towards the tributes' fate and condemns Sejanus for feeling any sort of kinship with the kids from the district.

Coryo was worried when his name wasn't called when Dean Highbottom was assigning mentors. as a Snow, he never thought that he'd be assigned a "runt" from District 12. he was embarrassed/worried/humiliated that he was assigned to the district whose tributes died earliest; and not even to the (potentially) strong boy, but to the weak girl. it was only after the buzz created by Lucy Gray's performance that Coryo felt any kind of positive feeling for her; a sense of "I may have gotten the weakest tribute, but I can still win the award" "she's the only tribute who everyone had an interest beyond 'oh, they look like they could win'".

in short, Coryo's unsympathetic nature (esp towards the tributes) is practically highlighted since the start. his tribute is not a person, they are his project.

Movie!Mentorship: comes as a surprise to everyone since they were expecting a scholarship award (the Plinth Prize); Coryo has no time to think of what this means and, so, there's no time to even hint towards his contempt of the districts. this way, the audience doesn't realise that Coryo thinks lesser of the tributes

(I hope I can word this properly)

changing this scene into a surprise mentorship instead of a pr-established one changes the initial impression of Coryo's character.

book!Coryo, we can assume, knew of the mentorship days/weeks/months beforehand. the fact that he never develops any sort of empathy for his tribute (not thinking of them beyond how they can help him make a good impression and help him win the prize money) is telling of his callous nature towards the tributes. we should have some sort of negative impression of him bcs "this is not just a project, these are kids' lives on the line"

but for movie!Coryo, this mentorship is not an anticipated chance for making a good impression bcs he never knew about it. instead, he comes off as just a studious kid, hoping for a scholarship. we get a more positive impression of Coryo bcs "hey, he didn't know this was going to happen, he just rolled with it".

movie!Coryo is not the person who, for an extended period of time, viewed his tribute as a mere stepping stone to further his education. he was the person who got snubbed of (potentially) getting a prize so that the Academy/Capitol/Dean Highbottom can suddenly shove one more hurdle onto him before he can get the scholarship.

imo "suddenly" introducing a hurdle at the last minute is definitely a sympathetic device. it invokes the feeling of "what? but he was already so close to winning the scholarship, why would they suddenly change it? that's unfair! they never informed him beforehand!" now, the audience is more inclined to feel injustice and/or sympathy on behalf of Coryo

2. Sudden second point that I just thought of: the change doesn't make sense

in the book, we know of the mentorship. so it makes sense that we start on the day of the reaping since that's the day that Coryo will know whose mentor he'll be

but why would we start on the day of the reaping in the movie?

it's strange enough to imply that they apparently award scholarships on the same day that they reap the tributes. but why would they do that in the first place? the Games have always been a "reminder to the districts" (and the price of rebellion) so why would the Academy try to overshadow the Games by having a joyous celebration right after it? esp since the Academy themselves want to remedy the low viewership of the Games. + there's no doubt the wealthy Capitol citizens would brag about their children's achievements through some form of extravagance

(I'm assuming the scholarship ceremony would take place after the reaping, since the broadcast began not long after Coryo arrived to the hall; otherwise that'd be another plot hole)

3. the Plinth Prize

brief background: the Academy has a system in which, if you get three "demerits" (by violating Academy rules/conduct), you'll be expelled. Coryo gets his first demerit for "endangering a student (referring to himself)" by landing in the zoo with the tributes

so now Coryo only has two chances to not fuck up if he doesn't want to get kicked out of the Academy before he can win the prize. Dean Highbottom sorta threatens/mocks Coryo for this. Coryo can't refute bcs he could get another demerit for "insubordination". Coryo also worries that he might not get the prize after all bcs the Dean hates him

but then Strabo and Sejanus introduce the Plinth Prize! Coryo has new hope bcs the Prize is a personally-funded scholarship so the Academy can't interfere in any way. regardless of whether the Academy doesn't award him the money, he'll at least get to attend the University. the only condition is that the Prize will be awarded to the one "whose tribute wins the Games". so Coryo has an extra incentive for getting Lucy Gray to win

the change in the movies isn't so egregious. it does make sense that Strabo Plinth would fund a scholarship for the Academy. except for two things:

the removal/diminishing of the demerits subplot and Dean Highbottom dangling the potential loss of the prize money over Coryo's head also removes an extra layer of disdain that Coryo has towards the Dean + the reason why Coryo is always careful about what he does and is v secretive when he does things like sneaking food out of the Academy cafeteria

the Prize was Sejanus's idea. give my boy his credit!

4. unrelated Lysistrata appreciation

I already talked about how the movie removed Lyssie's kindness and gave some examples. but let me talk a lil more about how she reacted when it became highly likely that Jessup would die. specifically, the fact that Lyssie cried

Lysistrata only knew Jessup for two weeks. just by nature of class differences, it's unlikely that they developed the level of kinship that Coryo and Lucy Gray did. but there's just an obvious fondness that developed, definitely for Lysistrata at least -

she tried her best to repress her emotions, but couldn't stop the tears from escaping

she pleaded/hoped that Lucy Gray wouldn't let Jessup die alone (Coryo had the fuckin audacity to want to complain that Lucy Gray didn't want to leave Jessup alone either; the only reason he didn't was bcs Lyssie was obviously upset)

Lysistrata asserted that the rabies were the fault of the Capitol's raccoons; she didn't let Lepidus (the interviewer) blame Jessup or his district and redirected the interview to speak about Jessup

she makes it a point to tell the Capitol that Jessup was a good person, a protector, that Jessup probably would've never won the Games bcs he'd die to protect Lucy Gray

when Lepidus (that bitch) calls Jessup a dog (!!!) - "a really good one" - Lysistrata shuts that down immediately: "Not like a dog. Like a human being."

she couldn't bear to stay afterwards and headed home immediately

AND THEY CHANGED ALL THAT. I don't think movie!Lysistrata even reacted to Jessup's death, at least not to an equal degree

she was the only good Capitol-born person (other than Tigris). too bad the movie couldn't let the Capitol have any nuance, except for Dean Highbottom's remorseful confession in the second-last scene

[utilitycaster]

i've never had to 'curate my internet experience' with the speed i have today, blocking so many bad-faith takes on mercer and cr as a whole. When I saw one arguing cr fans shouldn't be surprised, because the 'big dog' is always hated, then actively compare CR to both the yankees and star wars in terms of size and vibe of the fans, i had to let it go. Apparently cr is made up 'wildly successful voice actors' like ah yes. the clout of the VO. Gonna silo myself for this damn show, too old for this!

Hey anon,

I completely support doing this if it's right for you but might I recommend laughing at the bad faith takes? Because here's the thing. The vast majority of what I've seen is from two specific places that are probably directly next to each other:

Former CR fans who are really mad that Beau got into a relationship with Yasha, and decided this meant Critical Role was homophobic, sexist, and racist for having an interracial lesbian relationship because [footage not found] and left for Dimension 20. Unfortunately, they forgot that Dimension 20, which had Matt in the very first sidequest as well as "Sidequest for which we need people who we know are talented, dependable and very comfortable with D&D Actual Play because it's our first remote filming", does not as an institution hate Matt Mercer in the slightest, and in fact likes him. Anyway they're throwing a hissy fit because in the end, this was always an extended hissy fit. Would you like some popcorn bc I personally prefer Chicago style with the mixed caramel and cheese.

Some absolutely bonkers tiny circle of people who are fixated on an unconfirmed ship between an NPC and the character she killed two decades before the narrative. Anyway they say they're mad because Matt isn't plugged into the fandom but the thing is most of the D20 fandom was also not plugged into this particular circle, which is but a speck of dust in an uncaring universe. So they're actually secretly DELIGHTED Matt is DM-ing because they can hide their entitlement behind the fact that they can call the DM of a very popular show an interloper, but they're also terrified because Brennan does still exist and is in fact playing the character most tied to the NPC in this ship, and like...if Matt contradicts their fanlore, that means Brennan did not confirm their fanlore, which means not only is it debunked now; it was never canon to the world in the first place. Which you'd think would be fine because fanlore has no need to be canon, right? It's fanwork! Go nuts! Except these people are kind of dumb.

Anyway for what it's worth I'm neither a Yankees nor Star Wars fan but also I acknowledge that most of the time when people are mad at the popular thing for being popular it really is kind of a "you want to fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid" sort of situation. They desperately want their thing to be the biggest fish in the pond except they'd also hate that. They are a big orange cat stuck in a cat flap and they're acting like it. And as with a big orange cat that doesn't belong to you stuck in a cat flap but ultimately unharmed and perfectly capable of getting out on its own, I recommend taking a picture of it and laughing about it on social media.

[neighboringheart]

hi I hope you're having a good day

may I inquire about yours ocs? c:

anon get out here get out here so I can hold your hand and know your face and leave a lil smooch on your cheek (I'm already giving one to @eclipsedmoon87 for replying to my other post asking about them lmao this is for the both of you)

okay so this is gonna get kinda long so just bear with me here

I've got a handful of different OCs but there's only two that I've really fleshed out and I will tell you about them now!

before I start telling you about them tho it's important to establish that they're a part of an AU that's an offshoot of the end of MTMTE/LL in which that the universe they end up in has a cybertron but every Cybertronian is a beastformer

and my OCs are two of these beastformers! they are twin turbofoxes named Turnpike and Trailhead

Trailhead is excitable but just as easily spooked and incredibly fucking smart. He loves experiments of all kinds (even if they're not the safest) and he causes Turn so so much fucking stress all the time from how reckless he can be. He's always carrying some type of blaster, but he's not really that good of a shot. Beware all who may be in the general direction of where he's aiming. He's also religious, but not in a way that was considered palatable back planet-side, as he believes that with the bodies and capabilities Primus gave them, they should use their longevity to find out the full potential of what they can do with their own bodies. Basically, he loves mods and loves his alt-mode dearly, which is frowned upon back home.

Turnpike is the more level headed of the two, they are very stoic, standoffish, and incredible with swords. I'm working on the worldbuilding for this AU still, but I've fully cemented that Turn used to be a fighter in the arena back on Cybertron. They're not religious per se, but like they believe in Primus and similarly to Trail believe that Primus gave them their ability to transform for a reason, and that their robot modes are not their "true form" but that both are equally true and ingrained into them. They have a hard time getting close to people due to how alienated they were before being recruited in the arena. Even after gaining mass popularity there, they still didn't like all that attention and were generally mistrustful of many people.

The two of them are sent out on a mission to gather energon from lifeless or abandoned planets since the naturally occurring energon that was provided by the fruits that grew on Primus' Hand (a giant ass cyber tree that basically spans over the entire planet in one giant system lol it looks like a forest but is actually all one organism) but those trees stopped growing at around the same time that the Blight appeared

The Blight is basically a neurodegenerative disease that causes any who contract it to gradually lose more and more of their memory and have lapses where they will transform into their beast mode for extended periods with little to no responsiveness where they may wander or become aggressive until one day they transform and never return to their robot mode. Their memories and ability to communicate disappear leaving them as seemingly nothing but a standard mechanimal if it weren't for their transformation seams remaining. Despite meticulous research, the cause and cure are still a mystery

luckily the Blight doesn't kill whoever contracts it, but they're not the same after. most who undergo a full regression end up escaping into the wilds never to be seen again beyond occasional glimpses

While on this mission, their ship is critically damaged and despite it being taboo for cybertronians to communicate with outsiders, Trailhead rigs a distress beacon that ends up being answered by the Lost Light

from there the two of them meet the crew and learn things about themselves and I have more plot ideas planned there but I'll leave that a mystery for now because that's more fun

instead I'll keep telling you some little things about my OCs bc that's what you came here for lmao

since they are turbofoxes, the two of them can be very mischievous especially when they team up and the Lost Light crew finds out very quickly just how wild the two of them can get when properly motivated which is quite often since Trailhead is usually the instigator and Turnpike gets bored a lot

other tidbits to note:

Turnpike is a bit of a lurker and loves to sneak around where they can't be seen. They've got some attention deflectors that Trail made specifically for them so they could avoid fans back home and they love to use them to spy on the crew even if Minimus has told them it's against regulation. They'll stop spying once they know they and Trailhead are actually safe aboard their ship. Before long, they learn just how much they love the simple things: music, arts and crafts, and even dancing. That's when they finally start to break out of their shell and really become close with the others

Trailhead has no such hang ups however. Within minutes of meeting and talking to Brainstorm he immediately dove into finding out everything he could from him and Perceptor. By that first night aboard he's already getting drunk at Swerve's with Brainstorm and Nautica and making friends with everyone he can. His biggest vice however is his vanity. With a life of working in a lab day after day and nothing else to do with his spare time, he became incredibly invested in his own appearance, and as such is very protective of it. One scratch in his finish and his mood is dashed for the rest of the day.

and here's some design concepts I've put together for them. The ones in color I originally traced from a panel of dominus bc I was just trying to figure out a direction and I can't draw for shit so like ignore that I'm working on it lol and the second one is a sketch where I'm just trying to figure out some more realism in the way they're put together like in terms of joints (been inspired after assembling a few model kits I guess lol) as well as playing with some shapes.

(the one with the pink is Trailhead as you could likely guess lol he likes his colors bright)

Anyway I'm still figuring that out and I'm way more of a writer than an artist so any work there is especially slow going forgive me but like hopefully you can see what I'm going for there

some other fun notes:

the two of them become obsessed with Minimus. They love to call him big brother to get on his nerves. For them, it was a term of endearment used with the other turbofoxformers in their skulk in the old days, but after everyone else caught the Blight, Minimus is the first other turbofox they've seen in centuries, so in addition to it being entertaining to call him that bc it irritates them, it's also comforting in a way. They also love how small he is since on their Cybertron turbofoxes are quite a bit larger than in the LL Cybertron. they're both a little over a head taller than Minimus when he's irreducible. Once they get comfortable with the crew, they're constantly plotting how they're gonna get Minimus into the nest they share so they can all sleep in a pile in their alts like Primus intended (according to Trailhead anyway Turnpike just likes it bc it's cozy)

but yeah I've got like a million random notes about this AU and these two scattered all over my docs and one day I'll have the motivation to actually write the whole damn thing lmao but for now I hope y'all enjoyed my ramble about them and please tell me what you think of my little guys

oh and I haven't gotten their sexualities set in stone yet since I'm still trying to figure out what kind of endgame would be the best narratively for them both I'm pretty set on Turnpike just not really giving af but being a total romantic who commits to one partner only and that Trailhead is somewhere in the ace and aro spectrums like he doesn't really give af about romance or interface but also isn't opposed to fucking around with his friends if he thinks it might be fun and he enjoys making other people feel good and hasn't figured out what he wants long term just yet

so like I know I wanna pair Turnpike up with someone (and already have someone in mind feel free to guess) and as for Trailhead I'm still not sure what his love life will look like just yet hell I might even leave that one open ended if it would serve the story better I just know that he'd be happy to find the friends he finds on the Lost Light they both are but I feel like he'd find satisfaction in that alone while Turnpike would want more if that makes sense

I also had an idea for him ending up in a sort of queerplatonic polycule situation with some of the other characters that I thought might be fun to explore but it would be a while before I'd get the logistics of that down well enough to be able to implement that so we'll see lol more people = more complexity and I can only handle so much of that before my brain starts to smoke but the image is in my mind and I want to make it real if I can

oh god I accidentally talked about this a lot longer than intended lol I hope anon and anybody else who might be reading this likes these dorks too bc I need the motivation to write this story and also would love people to bump ideas off of for potential side plots and such since I want to write something more long form and there's a lot of blanks still

at last my little guys are unleashed on the world uh T&T be upon ye

[vacantgodling]

I'm curious about Jafor 👀 also that's a cool name how/why did you pick it

thank you thank you for asking!

so honestly the reason i picked his name is super lame, i wanted to have a name similiar to 'jenna' (as in, starting with a j + he's in jenna the reaper) and i didn't want to just name him jafar cuz that was boring so i named him jafor LMAO. literally just changed a letter and called it a day.

but onto who he is: jafor is jenna's cousin -- essentially. so to explain him i have to explain jenna's birth which i think i have very briefly but here's the super short version:

yknow how in fairy tales (specifically stuff like rapunzel for instance) there's a whole "yeah these people asked a witch to help them conceive a child but then the witch asks for their firstborn in return" scenario. yeah that's literally how both jenna and jafor were technically "acquired." kashmira (jenna's mom who has foresight) saw that she and adunni would have a child but she wasn't sure how they would get the child bc in her vision neither of them were pregnant, and then 18 years prior to jenna the reaper starting (cuz jenna is 17 in the book lol) kashmira is approached by a couple who are having a hard time conceiving and after asking around they hear she's a witch and they're desperate. kashmira feels bad about asking for their firstborn but that's kind of the Law of that spell, and adunni reassures her that they can always say no. so she tells them, they agree, and then she gives them the spell (though with the caveat that whenever the two of them have sex the wifey will end up pregnant. it actually ends up breaking up their marriage despite kash telling them this upfront and she feels really bad about it lowkey) but that's how she and adunni ended up adopting jenna. then they moved to the small town of braebrooke to raise her.

the reason jenna and jafor are kind of cousins, is because witches (in this universe) don't usually have bio families (though they can its just kind of rare and even in bio families a lot of taking in friends and adopting and found family scenarios are a thing. also bc a lot of witches were hunted down by both humans and reapers alike TM) but their extended coven network kind of acts like a "family" of sorts. kash doesn't have formal coven ties, but adunni still interacts with many covens (which is why she travels so much-thinking about her and estel i realize randomly that i have a Thing for traveling partners LMAO that are still deeply in love despite the distance but moving on) and one of the members she's close to (idk this member's name yet unfortunately) similarly to kash offered a child bearing spell and received the child who is jafor in exchange.

part of the reason (in this universe) that the childbearing spell works like this where the witch Has To take the firstborn child is because basically the first born child is the one that has the most magic potential; as they are literally manifested from magic, and then after they're born it "cures" the blockage in the parents to have children. these children p much 100% of the time will become witches and while it's not the only way that witches come into being its pretty common. jenna and jafor by proxy also have Very strong innate magic because they were literally formed from magic-and in this universe no magic is "off limits" to learn but every witch has (1) power that essentially they were birthed with or that comes to them very naturally. jenna's is the power of manifestation and tbh i still have to figure out what jafor's power is.

but onto him specifically! jafor is older than jenna, by 2 years or so, so he's like 19-20-ish. he has the opposite form of autism than jenna-jenna is very socially inept (but not shy she just doesn't get social cues) and she's more quiet and flat affect; jafor is "literally always smiling to the point where its kind of creepy to some people" and he's an absolute chatterbox he will talk your fucking EAR off and then still keep going. he also tends to care more about social norms than jenna does-he also didn't really have a friend like carlos growing up that got him so he became really stressed about being socially accepted and he thinks its amazing how jenna literally does not give a shit about that.

he doesn't really show up in the narrative until jenna and yehna start sharing a body because he comes back with adunni from her visiting his branch of the coven. he and jenna know each other but they haven't hung out often and he's already kind of on his path to becoming a full witch. it makes jenna jelly cuz not only does she have to deal with this reaper shit but kash said she can't start looking for the witch king (how you become a witch) until she's at the bare minimum graduates high school LMAO. but overall jafor and jenna have a funny little relationship; he laughs at everything she says and kind of follows her around like a puppy whenever they hang out and while he's no carlos, jenna does enjoy hanging around him :)

[littlest-bugz]

current hyperfixation? (feel free to infodump!!)

YIPPEEE!!! This made my day FR!! Thank you, mutual <3

ANYWAYS

This is kind of embarrassing, but I’ve been deeply invested by my own OCverse for going on 8 years now. Its my Special Interest, which sucks because,,, im the only one who can make content of these stinkies,,,,,

I really find it hard to hyperfixate on anything else because of the fact Ive been invested for so long (except for Web Design and coding, which I wont infodump about, since its literally all for these stories, deadass).

It is not fun at times because 1) all the characters live rent free in my head and criticize how I write them in my novels [that DID life] and 2) its SO hard to make new projects and get attached to them. Ive been trying for 2 years to make a horror project out of one concept but I seriously cant get fully invested and it SUCKS. Let me make my silly little horror web series damnit!!!!! (@ my brain)

I have 3 novels and one fantasy series im working on so,,,, Infodump time >:3c

TWs: Terminal Illness + brief mentions of (mental institute) hospitalization, murder, war, and some others that I’m not 110% sure the exact tags for them (basically kind of cannibalism, but between nonhuman species). Other than terminal illness, they’re super brief mentions, but still proceed with caution.

Right now, I’m working on one of the books I’ve been writing for nearly my whole time writing. Ive been only working on it since feb 1st (it’s, like, the THIRD draft tho).

Blurb about book

Melissa is a bassist in a rock band she formed with her high school friends. Just as her, and her friends’, career begins takes off, she gets diagnosed with a terminal illness. With a month left to live, and a shit ton of unfinished business, she invokes her best friend’s patron deity who is capable of miracles, Flip. Melissa and Flip make a pact to keep her alive until her business is over, but oh no! Melissa has caught the eyes of another god, and a pretty shitty one at that. How is she going to make her last months peaceful if she’s being hunted down by a god?

The working title is called “Ensuring Your Spot In Hell” because Flip is, essentially, a demon in the universe (rules an infernal ring of hell- it means I would have to explain the worldbuilding around hell and its A LOT), but titles are!!! So hard for me!!!

A list of random facts about the book™️ because I don’t want to write full paragraphs bc I can go on forever if u ask me to:

Flip’s name is a shortened version of his actual name, Fli’pyek. Furthermore, the domain Flip rules over is that of Wrath and Violence

Trinity (Melissa’s childhood bestie, and the friend that worship’s Flip) is a hereditary witch and pagan. Her family has been worshipping Flip and practicing witchcraft for several generations! They literally have their own holy book (generational BoS/Grimoire/whatever u want to call it).

Melissa had been sick with the disease™️ since she was 16. She just neglected the shit out of her own health (me too bestie, me too). It easily could have been prevented if she went to the doctor back when she was, at least, 18 years old, max 24.

At the time Melissa is diagnosed with her terminal illness, she’s 26. By the time she was supposed to die, she would’ve been freshly 27. Has anyone heard of the 27 club theory before? Or is it just an obscure reference I made LMAO

Melissa has extended biological family that worships Flip! It gets super awkward when Melissa visits them with Flip lol

The other primordial god that Melissa finds herself in a predicament with is named Ama, the god of Cruelty and Torture. Not a swell guy to get mixed up with, that’s for sure!

Melissa has an orange and white cat named Cheddar!

Flip always smells like whiskey and freshly cut tobacco. At all times. It’s bc his blood smells like it (and tastes like it too, but why are you tasting it? /j)

Any other facts might be getting into spoiler territory, BUT!! Thats the one Im working on rn, in February. In January I worked on another book, but that one honest to gods might be too triggering for this acc for an indepth thingy like the book I just did. It’s being rewritten to not be so triggering, but bc it’s a throw up of some of our trauma, it’s not an easy task to censor it.

REGARDLESS, Here’s a rundown of ALL of my main novels (minus the one I already talked about)

The Case of Twin Woods [mystery, drama, crime] (the one i worked on January)

Chastity hates her life. She hates her shitty job, she hates her shitty friends, and she hates her shitty family. After opening up too much to an online friend about her chronic suicidality, Chastity gets taken to Twin Woods Mental Institute, the state’s mental institution. There she befriends an eccentric group of patients, then finding out something terrible might be going on with the head warden, Leon Bellamy. She takes it upon herself to find out and solve the mystery, but she may have bitten off more than she can chew.

Untitled One (but leaning towards the name of ‘Jealousy’ or somethin idk) [drama, romance, crime]

Mia has a quiet life. She works at a library, she fosters cats, and by all means, has what could be considered a ‘boring life’. One day, she gets laid off from her job under the excuse of “cutting costs”, leaving her without a job and severance. While scrambling for a job, she finds one at a local cafe, the most frequented one in the city. There she befriends one of the regulars, a cold, quiet man named Zander, and after she unknowingly helps Zander’s brother, she becomes significantly closer to him. However, her boss, a bitter ex of Zander’s, hears about their ensuing closeness and decides she doesn’t like what’s going on. One failed dinner party and murder attempt later, Mia is left scrambling to hide that she killed Angelina in self defense. Will she be successful in hiding the murder? Or will the justice system make quick work of her?

Untitled Fantasy Series (has about 2 actual novels and 3 novellas… a possible third novel too) [drama, romance]

book one

Since his birth, King Sunshine has known his fate. He is to be sacrificed for the greater good of the realm he resides, killing his oppressive father, but losing his life in the process. It’s a prophecy that has been laid out since the beginning of Racktokian history, one King Sunshine was never able to escape due to his father’s unspoken rage at his own murder. After meeting a Vurtock for the first time, a species his father only used as cattle, Sunshine finds himself quickly entangled in a plot to overthrow his own father to liberate the Vurtockian race. He knows what he has to do, but it isn’t easy.

book two

The great war tore apart the country King Sunshine called home. His father left no stone unturned from his rage, and public opinions split the people. In the rubble of his home, he builds a new country founded on the importance of the civilians, only to be elected as a King in place of his father. Living in the palace he always called home, but had tried to escape, he finds that his father keeps sending assassins to make attempts on his life. One assassin, a vurtock with nothing to lose, hits a soft spot in Sunshines heart. After deescalating the attempt on his life, he offers the vurtock to stay in his castle until they’re able to find the proper resources to help him build a life in the new country. Far away from the oppressive dictatorship of his father. Yet, as his guest begins to stay for longer than intended, he sees that yet another step in the prophecy will begin.

Despite how the second book blurb is written, it’s more from the vurtock’s point of view than Sunshine’s. I just had a total brain fart.

The novellas for the fantasy book follow the POV of other important characters, such as the ruler of the Vurtockian rebellion, the POV of other rulers. For a while I wanted to write one from Raphaël’s POV, but I decided it wouldn’t be worth writing a whole book about a piece of shit finding joy in the pain he causes. Like, no thanks, ill pass.

Theres a possible 3rd book that would essentially be an extended epilogue, since the prophecy doesn’t stop at Sunshine’s death. I just haven’t thought as far as the 2 books and 3 novellas, in terms of outlining the books and stuff.

I honestly could give TONS more info on the fantasy books because that part of my universe has been around nearly the whole time Ive been writing. I have maps of the world, maps of countries, maps of even just cities, house and castle layouts, moodboards, art. Visual references galore. Not to mention the playlists for each character + each book. I also made a document called “The Remian Bible” because it has everything about the world in it, including the alphabets of the languages, grammar structures for said languages and literally 5 holy books for the religions even tho they wont evEN BE TALKED ABOUT IN ENOUGH DEPTH (why did i do that to myself /lh j/. It doesn’t help that I still want the write the holy books in their native languages… oo,,, and imagine writing the actual novels in the native languages,,,,). It’s honestly kind of,,, surreal how much time Ive put into this world 🧍 Like??? Damn,,,,

BUT YEAH!!! Those are all the books that take place in my ocverse + some other info!!! The things that are my hyperfixation,,,, My own books and world LMAO— The books don’t include half of the ocs in my ocverse tho, so thats where the website im coding comes in. It’ll have short stories based on the backstories of various characters on it, and Yes, even the background characters will be on it bc Im fucking bonkers and fleshed them out, even though some of them are in one scene for 2 minutes.

That being said, if anyone, or u mutual (if u read this wall of text), found any of this interesting, or wants to read even just the prologue of any of these, DM me!! I’m always looking for beta readers!! Or people to talk to about it too, that’d be fantastic. I really need beta readers, so seriously. DM me if u want to read my cringey stories!! I can give better in depth tws too!!!

EDIT: I need to mention that I go through spurts of hyperfixating on only one book or series. Thats why its both my hyper fixation AND my Special Interest

[monsterkissed]

You said you liked to share BNGN trivia, so you got any tidbits?

some assorted trivialities (spoilers for a fanfic up to the latest chapter):

the fic was originally envisioned (and partly written) as a series of drabbles! if i had kept that going, it would currently be 5,376 drabbles long.

tiramisu was written into the outline entirely as bait/tribute to my partners, who are big siamese fans. she is now the most popular oc i have ever made for anything. i considered writing an origin story fic for her back when there was a jjba oc zine in the works, but it fell thru and now it only lives in my head. it involves multiple murders : )

bngn is not phf-compliant bc i did not want to read it. to make up for this i promise to find other horrible things for fugo to go through instead <3

probably not news to anyone by this point but here is some explicit confirmation: the first prologue that opens the fic is not about doppio

there are so many cases of foreshadowing in the form of jokes or joke-adjacent statements at this point that i cannot actually remember them all. if you see me make a silly comment in this fic there is at least a 20% chance it's actually a very sneaky mean comment hiding behind the linear progression of time

when i first drafted the outline act 3 was much much shorter and had a few drastic differences. one of these was that polnareff (or at least one of him) would have survived to support the gang much as he does in the original VA, but i could not think of anything fun for him to do that didn't detract from everything else, or at least nothing more fun than the inexplicable spectacle of two dead polnareffs after all of the build-up towards him. rip, rip.

speaking of fun: i wanted to have every major character get at least one really cool moment, regardless of how central they were to the story. i didn't want anyone to feel like you could cut them out completely and it wouldn't matter, i wanted to keep that ensemble feel of VA and give everyone room to affect the story in important ways, even if the fic still obviously has its focusses. of the ones i've published so far, i think i like mista's intervention in the Trish & Dop vs Fugo fight best out of those moments because i just had so much fun writing and visualising it and he felt like a natural fit to provoke fugo's own position in the story as a person fixated on the objective facts (which he was canonically Not Wrong about, in terms of sticking with bruno being a dubious plan for anyone fond of staying alive) to face off against someone who operates more on vibes and rolling the dice.

way back in the depths of drabble-draft the flashbacks were going to occur chronologically, followed by the present day stuff. but as i became aware that this was growing into something i realised that this would be stitching two pretty drastically different fics together back to back, and decided instead to use the current format. in theory this was purely going to allow me to show doppio's relationship with diavolo alongside his absence from him, so we can see simultaneously why he values and misses him so much and what he's becoming without him. in practice it led to a bunch of smaller changes that built up into, among other things, the premise of the entire canon divergence. technically, all of the flashbacks in act 1 and 2 "take place" during ch. 30. there is an implication to this that so far nobody has commented on ;)

i spent an amount of time researching macdonalds in italy that i will never ever get back

speaking of researching things that don't matter to anyone but me: everywhere a major scene happens is based on a specific spot i hand-picked on google maps. i roamed a lot of italian countryside via satellite trying to find the Exact kind of big, ugly, concrete-floored farm i had in mind for the first secco fight

technically this fic (or at least the extended universe around it) has sorbet and gelato VA-style origin stories to go with their fanstands (which i had a lot of fun with, workshopping around ideas for things that would make for excellent and suitably juicy assassination tools but vulnerable in a stand vs stand battle). much like tiramisu, so does my second stand-using oc brodo (who also cameos in 'I Think We're Alone Now', because skulking around trying not to be noticed is his speciality) the third, katarina, is only mostly goncharov-inspired, and Heart of Glass was originally going to be one of the chapter titles for this fic. another song with a very similar title still will be!

i had no intention of narancia being as big a presence in the fic as he was, but the longer i wrote the more i realised that he's just too fun to put in a room with doppio. the scene where he accepts the truth made me feel genuinely like a bit of a horrible person because i'd enjoyed building up their friendship so much and it was one of those chapters where i knew Exactly what the character would want to do and exactly why it would be the thing that would hurt them the most.

when i was hammering out the outline for what would become this fic an artist i had been following released a song that i put on in the background while i wrote, and then stopped writing and went back to listen to it properly twelve or thirteen times because it was eerily vibing perfectly with some of the themes i had been kicking around in my head trying to make something out of. it put a few seeds in my head in the way that some things serendipitously do, so much so that i almost named the whole fic after it. in the end, i decided to affix it to just one chapter where i felt it would best set the tone for the imminent descent to come. that chapter would be chapter thirty-eight.

[thewingedwolf]

like a quarter of the way through a clash of kings, this is just some random assortment of thoughts, pls remember that i do not remember jack shit about what happens later so no one can judge me if i wonder if a theme will hold throughout the series okay.

davos seaworth

i don’t have anything intelligent to say beyond that i love this man so much. can’t wait for him to completely crash into the northern storyline in the books. i highlighted this line from him because i loved it so much, because i love when peasantry get one over the lords: in time, my little black ship will fly as high as Velaryon’s seahorse or Celtigar’s red crabs.

i do love his chapters for a similar reason to arya’s - we get a glimpse of what the low born in this universe deal with. davos thinks a lot about his life before stannis & the way he’s treated in comparison to the other lords. he’s always keenly aware of how precarious his situation is & it not only gives him the unique ability to give stannis honest advice, it makes him more astute than a lot of the men around him.

tyrion i - iii

first of all, i love putting tyrion on like 2x the speed to get through his chapters quicker lmao

second - there’s just such a dissonance between his very clear headed way of understanding the precarious social roles of sex workers & the way he looks at shae (and tysha, since he still thinks she’s a sex worker atp). he can recognize, mourn, and attempt to get some semblance of justice for the woman and her baby that cersei has ordered murdered, and even when he’s being kind to slynt to put him at ease, there’s an undercurrent of disgust there at how callously slynt thinks about the young woman he had murdered. and yet, just moments later, he thinks about how he’s given shae a pretty house with pretty guards and pretty things, but when she makes moves to become closer to him emotionally, he thoroughly puts her back in her place as a low born sex worker. there’s a line at the very end of his chapter where he says “he wanted to laugh, he wanted to weep, most of all, he wanted shae” and it just boggles my mind that he can yearn for love, sensuality, & understanding so keenly, but can’t extend his belief that Women Are People Too to the woman who shares his bed, then descends into a “maybe all women are bitches, actually” as he continues down his path.

catelyn i

interesting how quickly robb turns on catelyn. he was a bit more amenable to listening to her in agot, but the moment he feels he’s “a man grown” he stops listening to her almost immediately and completely. part of it is youth, part of it is, ya know, the general violent patriarchy of westeros eating at his brain, and both of these imo combine to make this storm of extreme resentment towards cat, something she clocks almost immediately. “kings don’t have mothers” is how she puts its. i think atp she’s gotten the idea that he resents her calls for peace bc it makes him feel like he’s being brash & dismisses her on the word of the men around him - that she has a “woman’s heart” and is too gentle to understand how wars are won.

but imo he seems equally resentful that she’s right to chastise him at almost every turn. she’s right to think theon will turn, balon can’t be counted on, cersei will find his terms insulting, the lannisters would only trade sansa for jaime, rickard’s anger & grief will become a problem, the river lords shouldn’t have been sent home, he should have acted quicker in trading jaime, and she’s going to continue being correct! Catelyn is intelligent, she was raised as Hoster’s heir apparent for most of her childhoodl. She is a well of knowledge that Robb refuses to tap into because she will not tell him what he wants to hear. This might have been something he outgrew as he got older tbf; plenty of 15 year old boys are resentful of their mothers telling them they are wrong. But those other 15 year old boys aren’t kings waging wars, and they get the benefit of failing and learning better. Robb, uh, does not 💀💀

theon i

where’s that “theon gets so bold for being a misogynist” post, it’s always what i’m thinking about. he’s so mean to that poor sailor’s daughter even as he’s projecting his own daddy issues onto her, but in his projection of “all fathers are cruel to their children, that’s just life” he doesn’t offer her sympathy, he tells her to get over it. partially general lordly “you’re a peasant woman and i’ll use you how i like” but also clearly theon’s own issues with father figures & masculinity.

also theon has “a certain affection” for robb, okay you lying bitch lmao just a lil bit of feeling right, you basically don’t care at all about robb, he’s just a dumb kid. smh. also interesting how he asks after his mother & sister first, and how dismissive he is of balon, how he remembers nothing positive of his brothers. he walks onto Pyke clearly trying to emulate them yet well aware they are not men worthy of emulating.

dany i

idek what to say about dany lmao. i sort of wish she’d spent more time with the dothraki & more time focusing on her khalasar bc that’s the only culture she ever really accepts & wants to be part of. it kind of makes sense with her personality - i think there is something appealing to a girl who has been abused by a brother who is clearly less intelligent & less capable than she is, in a people who literally wear their capability in their hair. but grrm clearly isn’t interested in fleshing out the dothraki lmao and we move on from the dothraki sea quickly.

the other thing that sticks out to me is her relationship with jorah. it means something very different to her than it does to him & it’s just now that she’s started to realize that, but she still believes she can reconcile those two things for him. she doesn’t desire him, but she does love him, and she believes that giving him a gentle, happy ending to his story & giving him love as his queen will be enough for jorah. such a sweet little girl way of thinking about him, and it really reminds me how young she is at this time, which makes his whole existence so much worse.

arya & sansa

my main thoughts on arya are just how horrifically the war has spread to the small folk. so many of these chapters are arya’s pov; tyrion, robb, & cat are all involved in the politics but arya is right there witnessing what the cost of the war is. the scene with the woman who keeps saying please and her toddler in particular were really unsettling.

i think there’s also a lot of emphasis on how helpless sansa & arya are in their circumstances & how often they try to steal just a bit of agency. arya is always reaching out for some sort of emotional link - to yoren, when she’s scared by the wolves, to gendry, to hot pie, to jaquen. trying to find something to anchor her amongst her life spiraling out of control. sansa, meanwhile, asserts her independence at every turn - reaching out to tommen & myrcella when Joff clearly dislikes them, making smart comments even knowing joffrey will beat her for it, saving ser dontos, all to remind herself that she is still a person with a moral compass, still worthy of dignity. it’s depressing lol, they’re both really going thru it right now.

bran

bran’s chapters are a breather between everyone’s doom & gloom and jon being so involved in Important Plot Things rn. he’s such a sweet boy, willing to take criticism from Maester Luwin, doing his duty as a prince even as he’s struggling with how his life has been transformed by his disability. he’s kind and serious about dealing with manderly & hornwood, and he quickly realizes both that lady hornwood is lonely & in need of a husband to protect her claim, while also that her seat needs an heir & lord hornwood had a bastard - he thinks of jon, of how smart & skilled jon is, and thinks about giving the seat to a bastard. hes also funnier lmao - like the comment about how the marriage bed always involves a man sleeping on top of his wife aksjsjs. such an 8 year old thing to think.

there’s also more of bran’s selective amnesia - the moment the lannisters are mentioned, he starts having trouble breathing & has another green dream. something to be said - and none of it is good - about how closely intertwined bran’s trauma is with his abilities. i don’t want him to come back as an empty shell

(even though i maintains that he wasn’t an empty shell. but was that just the actor making decisions or did d&d just badly adapt something more complicated or completely axe a chunk of bran’s arc, i mean it’s clear they didn’t like him, they cut him out of a full season lmao. and i mean. look at my username. LOOK AT IT. this is my header on twitter and it’s been my header for a long time!!!!:

i love him, and if his ending is sad i’m going to lose my mind and i’m sure if it’s tragic, grrm will write it beautifully and i’ll just cope by reading fanfiction and changing my icon to him forever in mourning. but so far, the show and a lot of theories just make me wanna die aksjdj so every time there’s a vague implication of More Bad Things happening with bran, i’m getting paranoid).

but there’s a clear conflation between bran being traumatized and bran’s abilities, at least in the beginning.

varys

he gets his own bc he’s in tyrion’s chapters all the time but i am ALWAYS wondering what is the truth and what is a lie with this man lmao. he seems sincere in thinking that robert’s bastard & the mother would have been safe but surely he would realize that when lannisters are involved, babies are fair game bc of his Ditchwater Prince, right?? did he just underestimate cersei’s cruelty or did he just not care? did he figure gendry would be more useful in the future, if he needed one of robert’s bastards to get one up over Cersei? or did he simply not act fast enough? - because we know from arya that Varys hadn’t wanted the Lannisters & Starks to start fighting as quickly as they did, so did he simply not have the time bc Joff’s cruelty & Littlefucker’s scheming took him by surprise? Or is he framing it this way because he knows if he’s just like “yeah i didn’t care about the baby dying” he knows it would offend tyrion?? TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW VARYS.

[bl00dh0rs3]

My friend i Hear You but also you have missed an integral part of what i was trying to say. Humans Are Not Bad. That is Not the moral of the story. Capitalism and unrestrained "innovation" that profits off of the distruction of communities and environments is the problem.

The RDA is the problem. The Military's involvement in resource gatherment is the problem. The individual humans in the Avatar universe are Normal. People. Just Like You, and Me, and our primary vector Into this story, Jake Sully. They are people caught in predatory employment contracts (iirc. The RDA canonically used a form of indentured servitude?? Among other things, like the Recombinants -- bc i think its hilarious people Actually think blue!Quaritch still has... human rights. Like they actually think the big bad RDA is that nice to their lab grown super soldiers. LOL), people who are constantly being manipulated by their superiors into believing that Nature Is Always Only Dangerous (THE RDA NPC CHATTER IN AFOP IS... GOD. some of these people had Never seen a tree before. Thats how BAD of shape earth is in), people who are coming to Pandora from their dying home planet to try to carve out a space for what the RDA is Deliberately leading them to think of as "the Preservation of Humanity".

Some people fall for those manipulations, and some don't. Some people profit off of these manipulations and perpetrate them for immediate personal gain, and some with go "fuck this noise" and take ative steps towards Escaping that purposefully confining environment so that they can try to take it down from the outside, for the good of everyone, because its what they believe is right.

Believing that humanity is inherently bad can only ever lower morale. We all see good deeds every day, as many (if not More than) we see the bad ones. Those are what we need to focus on, to praise and to uphold and stand behind the notion of kindness towards all our extended family on this earth. Hope is integral to our survival. We have to hope and work hard to improve this world in every way we can -- especially when those of us who are too apathetic for that begin to intentionally wreak destruction on the lives of others, en masse.

James Cameron may not have intended his story to be this complicated -- but the thing about all of these tropes and ideas is that they are all intrinsically related to eachother. To look at a story that is based on chronicling the oppression, resistance of inhalation, and likely eventual liberation of a fictional allegory for Indigenous People of all kinds... and only come away with "humans Are bad" is completely missing the mark, man 😭

That said, i do believe the Third movie will do a lot to help get this point im trying to explain across Better to a wider audience, given that a major talking point for it in onterviews so far has been the fact that we are going to be meeting a wider cast of characters, including both a new antagonist clan of Na'vi (to showcase that, just like Us, no na'vi are a monolith -- they are capable of the same levels of violence and malice that we are), as well as a slew of new Human characters, and a quote saying that they deliberately Want to show the better side of humanity in the coming sequels.

Its really easy to forget that Avatar is an ongoing saga on par with the rise of Star Wars back in its heyday (with historical parallels in the treatment both creators were given by their hatefans in response to its "unprecedented" popularity lol) -- but its important to bc like... we just don't have the full story yet. The soup hasnt even been brough to a Boil man we gotta just let JamCam COOK before we make sweeping judgments on the "simplicity" of the narrative, ykwim?

Watching someone play afop and im so. Oh my god. Oh my GOD. It's literally just a fucking showcase of all the Exact type of shit that has been happening to indigenous people and people of color have been dealing with for Centuries at the hands of white supremacy and imperialism. Like its literally just Showing all that Shit from the perspective of a Na'vi in universe. So it "demonizes" the RDA accordingly. And uet so many fucking reviewers are joshing on it and calling it Boring and Slow and Uninspired and that it makes human's 'cartoonishly evil' LIKE YOU PEOPLE HAVENT LOOKED AT A SINGLE FUCKING CURRENT EVENT IN YOUR LIVES. Oh my god im so mad at all these fucking reviewers now. The fucking AUDACITY to look at something this fucking Honest about the cruelty humans are capable of, while living during the fucking day and age with all this Knowledge we have at our fingertips -- the fucking audacity to look at this game and what the character goes through and not being able to muster up ANY other fucking emotion besides "ubisoft never was great at story anyway so idc lol" fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you. Like actually. You can't even fucking ATTEMPT to connect to this story emotionally? Not even a fucking Smidge? Jesus fucking christ people need everything to be spoon fed to them these days. God forbid a piece of media actually ask you to meet it in the middle for once.

[aroaceconfessions]

So, I don't mean this in an entirely negative way, or in a universal way, since I love being aromantic.. but it can really fucking suck y'know?

Or, at least, people in my life, and our amatonormative society, has made it feel like it sucks, so cw this ... confession?... will be about how I've experienced my aro identity sucking lol

I, for the most part of my existence, longed/long for a relationship of literally any kind- romantic, queerplatonic, etc -and fantasize about said relationships- but I don't want to be in one in actuality and the thought of someone asking me out, or my family pushing me to date someone, causes me to nearly have anxiety attacks, and I hate that. I hate how I just can't "fAll iN lOvE" but feeling that way also makes me angry?

Like, it's evident to me that I'm going through some internalized arophobia, and that makes me want to bite someone. And I can remember a time where, before I allowed myself to ID as aro, since I was all, "noOooOo, I can feel crushes, I had them before, hnNng," I accepted how I wasn't comfortable with dating anyone of any gender, despite having not connected the pieces yet of why I felt that way? But now that I know The Why™ I've started all of this pining for shit I don't want.

Like literally before it was: "Damn, I don't know why I shudder at the thought of, and dread, dating anyone, but I guess I'll accept that. But I'm not aro though :)" to now: "Damn, I guess all of that shuddering and dread is because I'm aro..... 🤔 ............. I really want a relationship........"

And so along with feeling all of this internalized bullshit, and emotional tug-a-war, I also don't have anyone in real life to talk to about all of this (I know a lot of people in online queer spaces that are aro-spec, but there's that disconnect from being online causes n' stuff). I have come out to my brother about being aro, and he was accepting, along with everything else I've come out about that the rest of family also accepted.. but everyone else doesn't know I'm aro except him- but I don't vent to him about these feelings, because 1) he wouldn't get it since he's alloromantic, and 2) is it too much to ask that I want a in-real-life aro friend?!! And I have met someone who is aro-spec, in-person, but most of what I experience was foreign to them. Since yeah, aros won't experience what other aros experience, but the only thing we had in common was not having crushes and not wanting to be with anyone. But that was it.

I tried to tell them how I long for/fantasize about being with someone and how torn up emotionally I get when actually faced with that option, bc of the uncomfortable feelings I get from irl possibilities of relationships, but they couldn't relate. That's not their fault, but still sucked y'know?

The pining I get towards relationships also gets worse when it comes to past what-I-thought-were-'crushes' and how even though I felt strong meshes and squishes on them, I don't think they were strong enough to cause anything to happen, since I also treat relationships similarly to getting tired of a hobby.

And (sorry I keep saying "and" a lot)..... I feel bad about not wanting anything with another person? I feel bad for my family members who don't know -both immediate and extended- and who want me to be that pitch perfect person who'll marry n' have kids; I feel bad for the people who still, or will, like me romantically; I feel bad for my friends who don't know I'm aro and would think that I'm all sad for being alone, and who think that there's something wrong with me.

I feel bad for not fitting in, for not meeting the expectations that so many people I care about, have dedicated their hearts to. Sure, a part of me wants to think, It's their own faults, they shouldn't have expected that out of me anyway, but I feel shameful.. guilty even.. when romantic topics get brought up, and those feelings won't quell no matter what I do.

I don't know if any advice would help with all of these feelings, and this post is a mess anyway, but I had to jot down all of the shit I've been thinking since it was becoming too much as it is.

[redrobin-detective]

Ben 10 lore that exists in my heart regardless of canon

- Ben’s personality in his mid-late teens is a mix of his Alien Force and Omniverse self. On the surface, he’s very cheerful and kind even if he is a bit of arrogant showoff. He makes jokes and plays around and acts as if he isn’t bothered by the things in his life. Those who know him best understand a good portion of his outward confidence and cockiness is just a facade to cover up his insecurities and to project the ideal, effortless hero. While sometimes seen as immature, most beings know Ben 10 means business as he takes his unofficial job and people’s safety very seriously. He’s clever, adaptable, charismatic and empathetic which makes him a formidable opponent and a loyal friend. Doesn’t open up easily but if you get to him, he become so dearly attached. 

- Drinks smoothies so much for several reasons. Comfort food go brrr, reminds him of the good easy times with him Gwen and Kev. It’s also a light but generally nutritous food to give him energy for heroing. Anything too heavy and he’ll be puking (both from physical and emotional stress). Though he jokes about his mom’s health foods, his are a crazy concoction of add in proteins and vitamins/minerals bc he knows he’ll out and out collapse without it. (Still has on occasion bc boy still doesn’t eat right/enough)

- While Fame is exciting for him at first he soon begins to detest it. Not the fans, no, he can’t bring himself to hate the people who look up to him. But he hates the constant attention, that he can’t walk outside without being mobbed. the only place he feels safe is his hometown where most people are so used to him and his weirdness that they don’t react much anymore. Takes to wearing a cape and face shield when going out anywhere so he can actually get things done without being recognized and mobbed.

- Part of the reason Bellwood isn’t concerned with Ben is partially because ben’s been weird and alien for as long as they can remember but also many don’t realize how famous/powerful he is. Yeah that’s just Ben Tennyson over there, sometimes he turns into funny creatures- wait what do you MEAN he’s the savior of the universe?? He cried over a spilled smoothie the other day.

- Does mostly online schooling by the time he’s 15. At first he tries to do half day things to maintain something of a normal life but it quickly becomes overwhelming and dangerous him/the school. Finishes his GED early but the Plumbers and Azmuth make him take additional college level and alien courses to prepare him for his future role. Ben gripes but really does love learning all these things, especially on his terms (ADHD and stress + the public school system do not always go hand in hand). He’s a quick learner when he deems the information important and is made accessible to his learning needs.

- Ben definitely has ADHD speaking of which, it was nearly uncontrollable as a child bc his free-spirited parents didn’t believe in medicating. Ben convinced them he needed it and after some trial and error, found meds that worked. As he became more involved in heroics/growing up he had to change his medicine regimen (resulting in him being a bit more off the rails in OV) and needed antidepressants and therapy to manage it better. As an adult he has a whole litany of coping mechanisms (good and bad yes) and regularly checks in with his therapist and doctors to keep things under control. 

- Has a complicated relationship with his necrofriggian children. Considers himself their mother and worries after them. They too feel a connection to their parent despite this being unusual for their species. A few visit (some more than others) while they grow while others maintain distance. Ben never breathes a word of them to the media for fear of them being targeted. Still he keeps an eye on them and ensures all 14 mature to adulthood (another rarity for the species). Checks in every now and again with the ones who don’t want to see him and those that do. Two join the Plumbers and Ben is both proud and worried. His youngest becomes partners with Rook Ben.

- Just in general loves kids, they’re his favorite fans and while he’ll grumble at pushy adult fans he always smiles and kneels down for the little ones. Not so secretly wanted to have children of his own but knew it was a risk overall and used a lot of that energy with mentoring and teaching. Eventually had Kenny later in life (late 30s-40s) and was over the moon, becoming such a loving and doing parent or as much as he could be with his hectic schedule. 

- Omnitrix can’t come off, never has at any point since it first latched onto Ben’s arm. Azmuth tried and failed to get the device off, doesn’t let Ben know for many years as he feared the consequences. The watch loves and protects Ben even beyond it’s programming making him much more durable to damage and releasing energy charges when he’s threatened. Not even removing Ben’s arm would separate them. They’re stuck for life.

- Ben does have Anodite heritage but the Omnitrix actively suppresses it and uses the built up energy to power the transformations which is why ben is mostly unaffected by what should cause a massive energy drain on him. Theoretically if Ben learned to harness and safely use his Mana at an early age like Gwen he would have been fine but letting it build up without safe outlet meant activation would have killed him. Omnitrix Ben, however, went his whole life not knowing of his latent abilities and how the watch saved his life.

- Ben’s eyes get more green and glowy as time passes from the Omnitrix. At first they think its a trick of the light but by the time he’s an adult his eyes are pretty much glow in the dark. His veins light up too after long stretches of using the Omnitrix. Its vaguely unsettling to people who aren’t used to Ben.

- Max and the Earth Plumbers work so, so hard to keep teen Ben on Earth when half the universe is blowing up their comm lines asking for The Ben 10 to help with whatever problem of the day. Ben himself doesn’t quite understand when he’s younger the prestige and expectations on his shoulders. Max throws up a million and one roadblocks so Ben can live as normal a life as possible while he still can. Still, while doing that he Still overloads Ben with expectations and responsibilities on earth and beyond. He becomes a soldier again with Ben as their greatest weapon. He never forgave himself of losing sight of his grandson underneath the hero esp after Ben’s breakdown. 

- Rook partnership with Ben ends not long after Omniverse with his promotion to Magister. Ben tries to play it cool but the thought of another loved one/teammate leaving his tears him apart. Max revealing that Ben most likely wouldn’t get a new Plumber assigned partner since he’s almost an adult and won’t need it and Rook accidentally missing their last smoothie run due to a scheduling mishap causes Ben to snap and have the nervous breakdown that had been building for almost a decade. He completely loses it for a little while and needs to take an extended leave of absence from school and heroics that lasts about a year. Spends time recovering both on Earth and Galvan Prime, does some diplomatic training, learns about aliens, actually confronts the stress and loneliness of his life. He comes out the other side stronger but still fragile and exhausted.

- Ben’s above mentioned breakdown brings him closer to all his friends who didn’t quite realize the extent of Ben’s burden. Rook had been under the impression Ben didn’t like him all that much so the knowledge that his departure was the final straw for friend/hero’s collapse was shocking. Ben and Azmuth also become closer, the Galvan becoming fiercely protective of the boy seeing as his Earth family didn’t do well to keep him safe. It takes years for him to get over his anger at Max for putting so much on his grandchild. Ben makes more friends, in and out of the hero business, finally gets a therapist and gets some of his burdens eased a bit. It’s not a sure fire fix and Ben has several smaller breakdowns the rest of his life but its something.

- Azmuth was straight up suicidal before he met Ben for the first time. Ben gave him back hope for the universe and his ability to create items for peace not weapons. The boy infuriates him, frightens him, frustrates him but Azmuth cannot deny in his heart of hearts that he loves Ben dearly. He’s very upset at Ben’s breakdown and doesn’t know how to handle the worst of the initail outbursts. Azmuth talks Ben down from a suicide attempt. He reaches out to Ben that he Too felt overwhelmed by pressure, thought himself only good for war. Ben’s arrival in his life saved him and now he will do the same for Ben. It’s the first positive step forward in Ben’s recovery.

- For no other reason than I like it, Azmuth primarily refers to Ben as Benjamin (mostly to annoy the kid but he likes the way it sounds too) and Ben in softer, more serious moments. 

- Professor Paradox continues to flit in and out of Ben’s life. He says its because Ben is the most equipped to handle universal peril (true) but he’s also just very fond of the boy. Ben, existing in so many forms and having such importance also exists a beat outside of normal reality which Paradox identifies with. Ben is naturally attuned to time related problems because of this (instantly IDing Spanner as from the future before being told later deducing him to be his unborn son). Plus Ben named him, way back when. He’s just drawn to Ben.

- Adult Ben, while being seen as an impressively skilled fighter and champion, really has his strength as a universal diplomat of sorts. Based out of Earth, he helps mediate and defuse conflicts, advocate against tyranny and overall preserve peace and balance. He’s not perfect, he makes mistakes and sometimes is forced to become violent (and yes kill) but overall is regarded as a peacekeeper, something younger ben simply couldn’t understand. 

- Gwen gets her degree and primarily does work with advocacy and teaching about magic/alien culture. While she and Ben are still close, there’s a bit of a frustrated divide in that she isn’t helping him share the burden of the universe. Gwen never wanted to be a hero and has enough worth to not shackle herself to a job that’ll burn her out. Ben loves heroing but gives too much of himself away trying to fix everything. They get into screaming arguments that it wouldn’t be so bad out there if she just helped him but she refuses to budge and says he shouldn’t make himself do so much. They always make up and thy still are each other’s closest relationships.

- Ben marries Kai in a political move, Kai is Asexual and Ben Aromantic. They didn’t love each other but they got on well enough and Ben was really feeling the stress of carrying the hero burden so Kai also being involved made him feel like he wasn’t alone. Both were also so tired of the universe constantly asking about their love life and said ‘fuck it we’re married leave us alone’. Gwen was always mad about it feeling Ben deserved better but the two of them were happy with it. They had separate rooms, mostly separate lives but they became strong friends and supports with their strictly platonic marriage. They had Ken via Invitro in an incubator and were loving if extremely busy parents. 

- Also from the moment he appeared, Ben knew that Spanner was his future son, Kenny. He played ignorant and then was kind of deliberately teasing him in future encounters. He knew the rules of time and didn’t want to disrupt things further even if he was angry and worried as heck about why Ken felt the need to time travel. When future Ben catches up in the timeline, Kenny gets SUCH a lecture. 

- Ben isn’t quite immortal but he’s also not entirely human anymore either. The Omnitrix not only keeps him safe from most harm but it lightens the effect of aging. Ben 10 is active many, many years when most humans would have been forced to retire. He’s not sure how long the watch will keep him alive and it terrifies him. Gwen too is functionally immortal however she ages like a normal human, then when her natural death came, shed her skin and became a fulltime Anodite. So in the end, it was her and Ben together wondering which of them will die first. Gwen has trouble retaining her humanity as pure energy and swears she’ll let herself fizzle out when Ben goes. When that’ll be however...

[hopeswriting]

What I enjoy about your writing? Messy af essay incoming lol

Ok ok ok ok. So I will say right off the bat that you write every other character amazing too, of course, holy hsit I love everything you do, hashtag my idol fr. BUT ARCOBALENO wfgjjjkr! Ok so basically the arco are side characters except for Reborn. This means that you have to fill in a lot of info if you want to write extensively about them, and the source material hasn’t got a ton of info to start off with (moreso with some, like especially Fon gets jack shit lol). and even Reborn remains extremely enigmatic and chaotic in the way he acts no matter how much he shows so he is hard to nail in the first place imo. Well, basiclly this is my longass way of saying how amazing i find the way you retained just enough vibes of their OG, so it does feel like this could be exactly what we’d find if we got more of them in canon y’know, except that you managed to do all of that while ALSO sorta making it less gag-manga series but ALSO still be super funny, just the way that all of the serious moments still have this tension and all of that emotional impact and you add some really amazing depth in ways that just flew into their characters SO NATURALLY and yeah just. WOW.

And ALSO can I just say that I am so in love with the way you don’t shy away from their flaws. Like of course the temptation seems to be that when you’re adding to the personalities bc you want to extend the universe with the little arco we get to see, most want to sorta gloss over it a lot but you DONT and you're just SO EPIC for it. Like for example bc it’s the easiest lol, yes Skull really is That Obnoxious ™ and honestly he is so distinctive and funny for it and like YES, you do that. And you balance the glaring flaws with really really making them so funny and chaotic and likable and it all just serves to make an incredibly interesting characterisation that is so so enjoyable and feels super duper natural. (and ofc I said skull here but this goes for every single one of them!!)

And also Luce!!! SHE! she  deserves a part of her own ok? Justice for my homegirl. I love you, the Luce apologist we all need. You just do her so well! Luce is just this person who has always been expected to carry the world and she could have been bitter and sharp for it but NO she CHOOSES to be as soft as she will ever be allowed to and it’s actually so so strong of her to wake up every morning and still WANT to be kind when she knows that one day it won’t ever matter how kind she has been. She has so little time and she still wants to GIVE it all to the world that will take everything from her in the end. And she is still SO RESOLUTE. She’s got all of this love she doesn’t know what to do with, and she just wants the best for everyone but she wants the best for Everyone with a capital E yaknow.

And also like ofc I barge in screaming about these specific things but literally all of your writing is so so good ok!?

I just love your stuff hopeeee T_T (and you. ily you're always so sweet and a pleasure to share fandom with!!!)

BAWLING MY FUCKING EYES OUT THANK YOU I LOVE YOU. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[SCREAMS SOME MORE] zfsrdgchgfd??!!??!!!!??? i absolutely did not expect this holy shit, you always spoil me so much with your kind words, ily. okay okay, sorry but i just had to gush over this for a bit, but i'm functional again now (< bald-faced lie).

okay so, i AM an arco writer, and like, i know that of course, but precisely because of that it means everything to me to know i’m doing it right. and it’s also very relieving because it’s like, 80% of what i write lol. i do think there’s still some of them i have yet to get the hang of (verde STILL comes to mind first 😭), but i do try to keep them in character, so i’m glad it comes through.

you know what i never realized it before but i DO tend to tone down the gag-side of their characters, that’s so interesting!! and not only theirs, but i think unless i’m expressly going for it like with my crack fics, i tend to do that with every khr character i write? that’s probably because i’m all about characters and their Feelings (tm), and as much as i love the gag side of khr too, well, you can’t just have it there too much when you’re trying for emotional impact lol.

also you said you don’t think i shy away from their flaws, and you have no idea how glad i am to hear it because i actually really think i do the opposite? well, not entirely the opposite, because i love their flaws too and they wouldn’t be half as interesting as they are without them, but again unless i’m expressly going for it like with my angst fics, i feel like i do always shy away from fully leaning into the conflict bits of my stories. from really letting them blow out to their worst. i feel like i do anyway? because ultimately i’m a big softie and i want the characters i love to get along with and kiss and be happy with each other lololol, but yeah, thank you for saying that.

AND I AM A LUCE APOLOGIST LMAO YES I AM!!!! no but for real, i LOVE this, and i’m bound to use it as my blog title eventually!! it’s like, i’ve been called a luce apologist, this is it, this is the peak of me writing luce and the superior compliment letting me know i’m writing her RIGHT. as she deserves because yes, JUSTICE FOR HER GODDAMMIT!!!!!!

and i love the way you put it too, about her loving Everyone with a capital E, because i really feel like this is the thing most people don’t get which makes her easy to dislike/hate in their eyes. and it’s so sad because they get it all wrong!! it’s not that she didn’t care about the arco, that she didn’t want to save them, that she didn’t feel guilty she couldn’t save them for the rest of her life, but she cared about them AND literally everyone else!!! she cared about the whole world too!!! and even if she had chosen the arco instead, because she would have still cared about both it would still have been just as bitter and painful a story, and that’s the tragedy of this all!!!! WHATS NOT CLICKING PEOPLE!!!!!!!!

🥺🥺🥺🥺 thank you so much. 😭😭😭🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 (and right back at you!!!! you really make my day every time you pop up in my notifs, and i’m just so grateful and happy we’re in the same fandom.

also irrelevant, but how should i call you? sorry but it’s been bugging me lol. tho tbh i always read your url wrong so i’ve been calling you scrip in my head zefsdgdws but like???)

thank you for the ask, it really means a lot! 💕💕💕

[ask games]

[peaches-writes]

penalty kick

description: maybe you got off on the wrong foot...actually, jisung did actually pushed you off the wrong foot.  member: jisung / han  genre: fluff, slice of life, coming of age, childhood frenemies / rivals to lovers au, idiots to lovers au, neighbor au, high school au, college au, lil dashes of soccer baseball musician & campus dj au bc jisung ace, female reader, off-season universe (mc from naturally is jeoyeon, mc from tumbles & turns is bora, and mc from off-season is kira hek)  word count: 12k warnings: explicit language, alcohol (a tiny mention of underage drinking pls drink responsibly!), mentions of injuries, jisung issa lil dumb & a lil shit but issokay hes an adorable lil shit note: @crscendoforsung so i scraped the witch jisung au (but i’ll come back to it in the future maybe it’s still in my drafts lol) so here is dumbass jisung for now + im away on christmas day so here’s my gift a day in advanced lmao

Age four. Your neighbor and favorite playmate, Han Jisung, pushed you so hard on the swings at your neighbourhood playground that you literally flew out of your plastic curved seat and bruised your knees, elbows, and chin. 

Maybe you did had it coming from continuously complaining that he ‘pushed like a sissy’ and even standing up on the swing set just to brag that you can balance all of your body weight on such flimsy material. Maybe your neighbor has always had a secret grudge on you finally enacted through this incident. Either way, the next thing you knew, a wide-eyed Jisung was on your side alternating between calling for adult help, crying over your bruises, and muttering curses he probably heard from his older brother under his breath. 

“Shit, shit shit...” He squeaked out frantically in his tiny voice, gently moving you to a sitting position on the stone pavement and dusting the dirt off of your bleeding injuries despite your loud complaints that your entire body was hurting. Looking around your surroundings, his breath then got caught up in his throat at seeing your mother fast-approaching with a mix of furious and worried in her expression. “Auntie! Help!” 

Your mother was hovering over you in an instant, examining your bruises with furrowed brows and clenched teeth. “Ah, dear God, what happened here?!” She exclaimed in a scolding tone, piercing gaze darting between your tearful eyes and Jisung’s panicked ones. “Jisung, did you do this?” 

“It was an accident auntie!” The boy in question answered immediately as he shook his head nervously and scooted away with his hands up in defense. “It was an accident, I promise!” 

However, with your back turned to him then, you naturally had a different impression of the incident as you quickly retorted, “He pushed me, mommy! He pushed me off of the swing!” 

Your mother never made any clear indication that she believed you as she simply shook your head and lifted you by your shoulders and knees, carrying you to a nearby bench to treat your wounds. 

Angered by your outburst, Jisung reluctantly followed you and your mother to the bench then glared at you until your injuries were cleaned and bandaged. With his arms crossed and a permanent frown bordering a pout on his lips, he stood next to you in his attempt at looking visibly angry for a puny five-year-old while you hissed and whined in pain the entire time. 

What’s worse is that his own mother made him apologize by sending him off to the nearest convenience store to buy you apple juice and steamed buns. Because of this, you’ve been mortal enemies, rivals, each other’s designated future potential killer, whatever you want to call it ever since.

Age seven. Han Jisung helped perpetuate a wild rumour that you and the rest of the class’ female population had ‘cooties.’ 

It’s only natural for boys at this age to gravitate to similar actions, of course. After all, you’ve heard worse from boys in the other classes (read: Hwang Hyunjin crying and demanding to get sent home because a girl kissed him on the cheek on the first day of classes). It’s the fact that Jisung actually seemed to have to believed it for a brief period of time in your first grade, however, that completely threw you off. 

He pulled on your braids during the time he sat behind you and kicked your shins while in line for P.E. class to ‘test your anger patience’ that was apparently fueled by cooties and occasionally stole your snacks for actual ‘DNA evidence’ of said cooties among other petty little things. It was nothing short of annoying and the very bane of your existence then. 

“Han Jisung cut it out!” You yelled at him one day, hitting him on the shoulder with the curved end of your wooden broom during after-class cleaning time. In this particular incident, the boy managed to swiftly take one of your pigtails out while wiping the windows in an attempt to ‘examine’ the DNA in your hair. 

“What?!” He snickered, taking a big step away from you and lifting up the blue scrunchie to examine it for miniscule strands of loose hair. “It’s for research!” 

You groaned in annoyance, reaching forward to retrieve the scrunchie with one hand while the other instinctively ran through the messed up half of your hair. “Jisung, give it back, you weirdo!” You scolded through gritted teeth, rolling your eyes when he shakes his head stubbornly and takes another step back from your reach. 

“Tell me the secret first!” 

“Secret of what?!” 

“Do you girls actually have cooties?” He quirked a genuinely suspicious eyebrow at you, raising the scrunchie above your heads after when you proceed lunge forward at him. “Does it actually make you guys this irritable all the time?” 

Somehow, the questions struck some kind of nerve in you. You were tired from classes, cleaning, and having to put up with Jisung’s childish antics. Maybe 1st grade girls did have cooties but for tapping into unbridled anger. “I’m going to kill you!” With the broom in your hands and the dust pan you snatched from his in retaliation, you then proceeded on repeatedly hitting Jisung in the forearms and shoulders until he surrendered with his arms protectively over his head and your scrunchie finally within reach. 

He also offered to fix your pigtail back for you but given the amount of distrust you already had for him, you simply smacked him one last time and went to the other end of the room to fix your hair. 

Age nine. Maturing a little bit through summer camps and classes, you and Jisung redirected all of your energy from physical violence to outsmarting each other in class. 

It started in English class when Mrs. Lee introduced the idea of recitations garnering students points and a fancy award at the end of the school year. Coming from the same piano class in the summer prior wherein you and Jisung also competed for your instructor’s attention, the two of you were quick to consider this as another one of your competitions. 

You devoted most of your time to studying the lesson from the what’s, who’s, when’s, and where’s while Jisung thought that focusing more on the deeper why’s and how’s would somehow garner him better points no matter how many times Mrs. Lee reiterated that all recitation points are given in 1 point’s. 

As the school year progressed, especially after the first semester report cards came out and the two of you were tied to first place in English to the very third decimal, the academic rivalry immediately extended to competing for the most amount of extra-curricular activities. You were more favored with the way you handled baby animals at the local shelter and competed in debates and quiz bees while Jisung was mainly noticed by the soccer and baseball coaches and the school choir’s moderator for his skills in sports and music. 

Jisung’s mom, who always picked the two of you up from school in her minivan, obliviously thought it was cute. 

“You know, instead of competing over everything all the time, you guys can take some notes from each other.” She pointed out one time after hearing your comment on Jisung ‘smelling like a polluted Pacific Ocean’ as he climbed in the backseat of the car. The sentiment almost went in one ear and came out of the other with the two of you, however, as Jisung proceeded on complaining that you smelled like ‘Cruella de Vil’s fake fur coat’ then hitting you on the head with his soccer ball. “Especially you, Sungie. You can learn a thing or two of keeping a goldfish alive for more than a week from Y/N.” 

You laughed at Jisung’s immediate shocked reaction of wide eyes and gaping mouth at this, slapping his arm in amusement and toppling over the backseat in laughter. “Yeah, Sungie, you really need help from that department.” You stuck your tongue out at him teasingly, laughing even more when he groans and hits you back with a light punch to your own arm. 

“Stop it.” He hissed at you before turning to his mother again, meeting her gaze through the rear view mirror. “Mom! You’re supposed to be on my side!” 

Mrs. Han was also stifling her own laughs then, forcing herself to focus on the road ahead instead of checking for her son’s pouting expression and crossed arms through the mirror. “Okay, okay.” She chuckled playfully with a dismissive hand, catching your eye after with a giggle. “Y/N, you should learn how to commit to exercise more with Jisung, then. There? Happy?” 

Satisfied, Jisung stuck his tongue out childishly at you as if completely forgetting the fact that he was attacked by his own mother first. “Bleh!” 

You rolled your eyes at him with a light-hearted scoff of your own, laughing away the way he proceeded to exaggeratedly tease you. “You’re so childish, Sung.” 

When your moms did seriously consider this idea later on, you were then forced to dedicated one weekend to taking each other to your respective extra-curricular activities. It was right before your final examinations and Jisung ended up getting scared over a golden retriever giving birth while you received severe cramps from the elementary soccer team’s rigorous conditioning training. 

It was a recipe of disaster, basically, and it ultimately led you and Jisung to cram knowledge for your exams on Sunday night in his bedroom. When you stubbornly didn’t learn anything from going to each other’s favorite extra-curriculars, you unconsciously ended up learning from each other in the six hours you both stayed up trying to review your notes. Miraculously (as in the miracle of hot brewed Milo-induced sugar rushes), it went well and the two of you tied or were close in grades at the second release of report cards.  

The only downside of it all was just the fact that the fancy recitation award in your English class that started it all somehow went to Hyunjin. 

“Ah, this is so frustrating!” You exclaimed on the ride home from school. You had your report card in your hands like Jisung, looking back on it all the while stressing out about Hyunjin winning the award the two of you spent a whole school year competing for. 

On the other side of his mom’s backseats, Jisung then turned to you and suggested, “Want to prank him? We’re playing soccer next week, you can swap his Cola for soy sauce.” 

You glanced over at Jisung, your pout slowly turning into a mischievous grin at his raised brows. “You’re onto something...” 

Age ten. You went on your first class field trip with a stuffed purple lunch bag of snacks.

Your mother specifically suggested that you share it with Jisung, thinking that the two of you would sit next to each other on the bus since he’s your only classmate she’s actually familiar with. But of course, when Jisung didn’t bring up any hints that he knew of this while waiting for the school bus to arrive, you immediately thought against it and planned out how you were going to hide your seemingly endless supply of snacks from him on the back-and-forth rides to Namsan Tower.

It was a well thought-out plan involving sitting near to the front and as far away from him as possible with your own group of friends then hiding the lunch bag under your seat until you caught Hyunjin not-so-discreetly trying to steal from you while he re-checked attendance after a stop-over.

“Jisung put you up to this, didn’t he?” You frowned, candy successfully retrieved from Hyunjin’s prying hands and popped into your mouth as the lanky boy scratched the back of his head in shame. “It’s okay, Hyunjin, I won’t kill you. It’s Jisung’s corpse I’m planning to roll down Namsan if he’s actually behind this.”

After a few more coaxing, Hyunjin eventually nodded sheepishly and admitted to Jisung convincing him to take a candy bar from you.

“Ya! Hyunjin!” Jisung whined from across the bus, peeking his head up from the identical red seats with balled up fists. “I told you not to rat me out!”

“Y/N was being scary!” Hyunjin argues back, sprinting back to his seat as soon as the the bus stopped at a streetlight. Hiding under the sea of seats, he then exclaimed, “You two take me out of your fights! Geez!”

Jisung pouted at you as soon as you lifted your own head up from your seat and turned around to face him, holding his hands out in front of him and then asking, “Can’t I really have candy?”

You shook your head stubbornly. “If I give you one, everyone’s going to ask me for it too.”

“But everyone’s basically asleep!”

“They could be fake-sleeping for all I know!” You hissed, popping another ball of candy in your mouth. “I don’t trust anyone in this class with food but myself.” 

“Y/N!” He whined, only to get pulled down by force when the bus abruptly begins moving again. Scrambling up right after, he then continued pleading, “Please?”

“No.” You firmly concluded, sitting back down on your seat. 

Jisung even tried staying behind to try and steal candy off of you while the entire class was piling outside to enter Namsan Tower, only to trip in surprise when you jumped on him from crouching under the seats. Poor boy almost hit his head on the seats in shock.

“I knew you’d pull this kind of shit.” You tsked in disapproval with a slight stutter towards cursing at such an age, smacking him over the head anyway before throwing the smallest piece of chocolate candy you had from your bag. Moving past him to the bus exit, you then added, “You don’t even do nice things for me.”

You only meant it half-heartedly, though. Whether Jisung actually wanted more candy or he did sincerely felt bad over what you said, either way, he paid for the expensive pink lock you and your friend wanted to hang at the very top of the tower later on but only if you promised to share your snacks.

Jisung received three packets of gummy bears and a bottle of banana milk from you in the end on the ride home.

Age twelve. The Hans temporarily moved to Malaysia in the summer before the seventh grade because of an assignment for Jisung’s father at work.

On the day before their flight, Mr. and Mrs. Han organized a farewell party in their house at the other end of the block and invited your entire class. Jisung tricked you into getting him a farewell present by telling you that everyone was planning to do the same thing as a surprise but he secretly found out thing.

He didn’t actually expect you to get him something, not with the way the two of you have always been at each other’s necks since you were kids, but you ended up surprising him in the middle of the lunch party by giving him a small notebook of useful Malaysian phrases you wrote down yourself. You don’t always agree with Jisung but you think of yourself as thoughtful and civil enough to buy something practical. Also, your parents insisted. 

“O-Oh, you actually got me something?” He fumbled through an intense blush that matched the redness of his Supreme cap, almost tripping over nothing as you both stood on the steps leading down to the back of his house. It didn’t help that a few classmate passersby were glancing your way as well, either cooing or snickering at the awkward sight in the corner of all the socialization. “L-Like—like, this is actually for me?”

You raised a brow in confusion and reluctantly shrugged, releasing the red phrasebook from your grip as he held onto it by the other end. “Yeah, you said you’re getting presents so I...got you one.”

“I actually lied—“

“What?!” You exclaimed a little too loudly for your taste, earning you a sharp glare from your mother all the way across the backyard. Mouthing a quick apology to your her, you then quickly averted your glare back to Jisung who instinctively resorted to looking at anywhere but you. “But you said—“

“I thought for sure that no one would give me any farewell presents since it’s not a birthday or anything but I know you would if you’re like forced to or something so I thought...hehe...” He mustered up a sheepish grin, pressing his index fingers together in a comical shy gesture. When your glare intensifies, he then immediately held his hands up in defense and visibly winced, “Ya, don’t hit me!”

Every fiber in your being really wanted to hit him with the notebook then, maybe even push him down the stairs while no one was looking, but after a moment of thinking your way out of such violent thoughts, you resorted to exhaling a sigh and saying, “Whatever, just keep the notebook or something. I don’t care. It’s not expensive, anyway.”

You chanted to yourself that you’re mature, especially as Jisung’s eyes lit up and he immediately thanked you for both the gift and sparing his life that day.

Though he didn’t hear the end of the other teasing from Hyunjin after that, Jisung kept the notebook around anyway throughout his entire two-year stay in Malaysia. It was helpful but he’ll never admit that to your face.

“You kept it.” You pointed out one day, more as a statement than a question as you realized that the notebook he was using for exam reviewer notes was in the same color as the phrasebook you gave him. When Jisung came back in the summer before the ninth grade, the two of you met again in the same cram school wherein mostly everyone but you and the transfer student, Kim Seungmin, refused to help him keep up with the heavier than usual workload. “The phrasebook...”

“Yeah—well, I didn’t want to waste any of the pages you didn’t write on.” He pouted stubbornly as he flipped through the older pages to compare the amount of pages you used to the empty sheets. His tone actually sounded like he was convincing himself much more than he was trying with you but you missed it complete in the moment. “Be more eco-friendly, Y/N.”

You simply rolled your eyes at him. “Glad to know I kept you alive in another country somehow, then.”

Age fourteen. You went to a soccer game to see Jisung but only because one of your friends, Eunha, developed a crush on the striker and eventually hatched a plan to confess on the game before Valentine’s Day. Fortunately, Jisung barely noticed and didn’t tease you for it since it’s already an established fact that you’re always at his games with either Yang Jeongin or Seungmin to cheer on Hyunjin instead.

You really didn’t get it. Of course, fifteen was the time when some, if not all, parts of your day were starting to become dedicated to vanity and all the artificial things in life to attract kind of puppy love in school but at this point Jisung always wore the same green hoodie, red Supreme cap, and white ‘Eyez on You’ shirt to every school function that didn’t require wearing a uniform.

You understood how your classmates suddenly began fawning over Hyunjin right after the summer when he got his braces removed and then Seungmin for bringing a suit and tie one time for an inter-school debate but the hype over Jisung suddenly bringing in his guitar to class breaks everyday and re-emerging as a star soccer and baseball player throughout the school year is an absolute mystery to you. That or, maybe compared to your junior high peers, you’re just as used to him at this point than they all are. In your perspective, the only legitimate thing he has going on is how he always seems to beat you in most Arts subjects and how annoying it is that he always makes sure to rub that in your face. 

“I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t shower properly right after training.” You shook your head disapprovingly at Eunha during the game. Soccer is an interesting sport for surprisingly bringing you up to stand and cheer at some moments, you’ll give it that, but watching Jisung get cocky and interact to the crowd whenever his team scored a point was somehow cringe-worthy to watch. “And I’m so sure he still doesn’t clean that soccer ball of his right after practice. You deserve better, sis.”

But no matter how much you talked shit about him throughout the entire game, Eunha still held onto the box of handmade candies she coerced you into picking up from Jisung’s favorite candy shop on the weekend prior and cheering him on with the slogan she made herself. It would’ve looked cute and sweet to you if it was some other guy but it’s Jisung—the guy who pushed you off a swing, pulled your hair, stole candy from you, and made all of your elementary after-school rides home an actual rollercoaster—and you would never wish his treatment of you to any other person ever.

“You said that was in elementary, Y/N.” Eunha chuckled softly, nudging your elbow before a sour expression could completely overtake your face. “Surely he’s outgrown that girls have cooties phase every boy had then.”

“No, it’s Jisung and I refuse to believe it.”

You really didn’t want to believe it with your natural instinct to see Jisung as the bane of your existence. What’s worse is that Eunha was right and Jisung shyly accepted the Saturday movie date at the mall that she came up with on the spot when he surprisingly received the candies well, a complete stretch from the Jisung who would’ve lied about being busy or tricked your friend into doing something else altogether. Suddenly, it was selfishly annoying that you’re the only one he actually tortures the life out of.

“Told you.” Eunha giggled throughout the drive back to your house. Your mother picked you up from school right after the soccer game for a sleepover you insisted was a must whether or not your friend scored her Valentine’s Day date. “Ah, I’m glad he accepted. I was a nervous wreck there! You don’t happen to know what kind of movie he likes, do you?”

You never heard the end of it from her for the remainder of the semester. The two were never official—middle school just didn’t have that solid idea of significant others, then—but they did went on numerous ‘dates’ almost every weekend that followed Valentine’s Day. Naturally, Eunha would tell you all about it. 

“He’s so sweet and caring and thoughtful!” The girl endlessly gushed out to you so genuinely you would’ve been happy had you not been sincerely expecting a major fuck-up from Jisung. Nothing romantic really did come out of these dates, even Jisung surprisingly swears by it, but they did become really close friends after and as Jisung’s only other female friend at the time, you can clearly see a point of comparison between his different treatment of you. “Though, I’m gonna give it to you that he is annoying sometimes but he does know a lot of good places to hang out around town for someone who’s been away for two years!” 

“He does the bare minimum for everything, Eunha. I could barely call it sweet.” You scoffed unamused. 

Age sixteen. In the summer after the tenth grade, an upperclassman from school by the name of Lee Minho started volunteering at the same local shelter you’ve been under since elementary after surrendering a lost cat to you while he and Jisung were playing baseball at the nearby park. 

He adopted Dori in the end but prior to finalizing the adoption papers, he actually made the effort to come in at your MWF schedule to help around and see the dark grey kitten. To you, it was endearing and thoughtful since you didn’t have much active co-workers at the shelter your age but to Jisung, it was slightly inconveniencing how Minho would cut off their play-time to see the cat. He even thought Minho had a crush on you and vice versa but you knew that Minho liked one of his own closer friends. 

“Jeoyeon?” Minho scoffed, crouching down next to you one time as you watched over the new litterbox of kittens eating with Dori on your feet. Crossing his arms over his knees, he shook his head and chuckled, “They’re cool and we’ve been friends for a long time but I’m sure they have a big fat crush on Bang Chan. Something happened after their McDonald’s date after our prom, I’m telling you!” 

“No, not Jeoyeon! I meant Bora!” You argued back with a laugh, picking up a white kitten that wanders off to your feet and lifts its body up cutely for a lift. Gingerly pressing the kitten to your shoulder, you then turned to Minho and continued, “The one who came by the other day to see Dori with you. Aren’t you guys rooming together in college?” 

Minho clutched his chest dramatically at this, shaking his head with a comical conviction. “What?! How could you accuse me of that, Y/N? Bora’s from a different cheerdance team! That would be like sleeping with the enemy!” 

You rolled your eyes, knocking him off of his balance by elbowing his sides. “Ya, I didn’t say that, you did!” You scoffed at him, sighing when he laughs off landing on his butt before sitting up in a crisscross position. “Anyway, don’t you like her?” 

“If I don’t like her, we wouldn’t be making all these plans to move in together for college, stupid.” Minho snickered, earning him another elbow jab from you. “Well, what do you want me to say? You asked me if I like her, you didn’t ask me how exactly I like her.” 

"Okay then, you wise wise person: how do you like Bora?” You sighed dryly, plopping down on the ground at feeling your ankles starting to ache from crouching. The kitten on your arm then jumped down to your lap, circling your legs a few times before finding a comfortable position to sleep in. “You know, the more you visit here with this kind of sarcasm, the more I’m starting to understand where Seungmin and Jisung are suddenly getting all of their newfound sassiness from.” 

Minho chuckled next to you, picking up Dori for himself once he saw him finish eating before hugging the kitten gently to his cheek. “Bora’s...someone I’d probably punch a guy in the team for if they ever disrespect her. I mean, I’d punch a guy for Dahyun, Jeoyeon, and Jihyo, too, of course, but Bora’s in the same sport where she’s always getting lifted in the air and touched by who knows who and now that we won’t be in the same team, I feel even more responsible for keeping an eye out for her.” He shrugged casually, ignoring the way your jaw just dropped at how naturally he explained himself. “Plus, it took a lot of convincing to get her to be my roommate so I can’t really have her dying under my care in the next four years.” 

“I—” You furrowed your brows in thought, pursing your lips in a pout. “Wow, I’m jealous.” 

“Then get on my good side, Y/N.” Minho winked with a laugh, holding Dori in front of you. “Let me take this baby home at the end of the summer.” 

You rolled your eyes again at this, shaking your head. “No, I mean...I hang out with Jeongin, Hyunjin, Seungmin, and Jisung and they aren’t really the most well-versed boys on treating girls properly.” 

“That’s why you hang out with me. We all know that Hyunjin just can’t say no to anyone who offers him a slightly more expensive bouquet of flowers, Seungmin’s in a relationship with baseball and academics, and Jisung...Jisung’s just dumb in general.” Minho then pointed out with a somehow knowing tone, smirking when a familiar figure passes by the hallways right behind you. “Speaking of...” 

Jisung joined you and Minho after, making sure to sit in between the two of you and drowning himself in as many kittens who wanted to sit on his lap as much as he can. “Dude, you shouldn’t have left early!” He scolded Minho with a pout and a slightly breathless tone from running all the way from the park. “Seungmin joined us today and he completely wiped out Sunwoo’s team!” 

“Then even more reasons to come here early so you guys could play with Seungmin on your team.” Minho laughed, gently handing Dori over to you from across Jisung before standing up and dusting the lint off of his jeans. “Y/N needed help with feeding the cats and puppies today, anyway.” 

Jisung frowned, turning to you after and asking, “Don’t you have any other co-workers around here?”

“Jeno has allergies so I don’t let him in here on most days.” You shrugged, handing Minho the empty pet bowls nearest to you as he proceeded to clean and collect them. “I can do it myself, you know. It’s just that Minho comes over and insists.” 

“Then you should’ve just told him that so we can play longer.” 

“Why is it a big deal? Do you like Minho?” 

“Do you?” Jisung’s eyes widened, almost getting scratched by a random cat in the process. “Because...because that’d be gross, to be honest...”

At this moment, your eyes accidentally met Minho’s right behind Jisung and the older boy had the audacity to wink at you before sprinting out of the room with a thumbs up above his head. 

In the end, you shrugged and answered, “I like him.” 

“What?!” Jisung sat up so quickly he almost scared a bunch of kittens walking all over his chest into jumping away.

“I’d be a psychopath if I don’t like him but let him volunteer around here, dumbass.” You deadpanned, moving the kittens around him to a safer space on the floor. “Besides, you asked me if I like him, not how I like him.” 

“What the fuck does that even mean?” 

Minho had a whole laugh out of eavesdropping from this conversation that he felt bad and actually adjusted his schedule for volunteering and playing soccer better so ‘Jisung would have one less thing to whine about all the time.’ 

Age seventeen. You and Jisung tried convincing your respective parents that going to prom as a group is the more practical and actually trendy thing to do but your mothers wouldn’t have it. Ultimately, the two of you ended up lying that you’re going as each other’s dates. 

You initially planned on begging to Seungmin until he pulled up balloons, roses, and a song number to his lab partner right on the lunch break that you planned on doing it and, of course, you had enough dignity to not fall in line with the countless of students that basically worshipped Hyunjin’s locker as if it were a shrine. 

Jisung, with Eunha already set on going with someone else she started dating at the beginning of the 11th grade school year, was the convenient choice. Your parents knew each other, he knows someone (his older brother) who can drive, and he’s recently gotten over his Emo-Hypebeast wardrobe phase after joining the school’s radio club with Chan and Changbin. With some convincing (read: an elaborate PowerPoint Presentation he made you do on the spot during one of your lunch breaks), the two of you decided that you would take all the photos your respective mothers wanted, carpool to the hotel, then go on your separate ways until his brother picks the two of you up at the end of the night. 

It was a simple and fool-proof plan, one that you almost forgot when you rented an emerald green and gold prom attire then Jisung’s mother told you right after about hearing her son trying to order a purple callalily boutonniere that clearly did not match your taste nor your colors (you sorted this out by cancelling the order and taking matters into your own hands). Then, the most awkward photo op at your house happened. 

“Sungie, put your arm around Y/N!” 

“Y/N, stop slouching, you’re going to wrinkle your outfit!” 

You were never serious-looking in any photos that had Jisung in it as well, preferring to pose like the two of you planned on murdering each other right after the photos instead, but your respective moms were holding your Instax camera and the family film cameras across the living room in this particular situation and so you reluctantly kept it inside. Straightening up your shoulders and elbowing Jisung to at least wrap an arm over your shoulder, you held up smiles right next to your red rose corsage and boutonniere set until the two women were eventually satisfied with their photos. 

“Aah, you two really make a cute couple!”

“Mom, we’re not a couple!” Jisung whined, glaring at you after which you immediately returned with the same expression.

“God, I’d sell all my limbs first before we actually become a couple.” You deadpanned back at him.

Fortunately, Jisung’s older brother allowed the two of you to basically try and throw each other out of the car windows on the thirty-minute ride to the hotel venue in compensation. You almost had him by the neck and he almost ruined your hair that you spent hours curling until Hyunjin pulled you back with a smack to your head and dragged the two of you away to help in the Prom Committee’s final preparations since Jisung was going to perform with Changbin and you were a part of the Prom’s Logistics team. 

You mostly stayed out of each other’s hairs for most of the first part of the program as you were busy pulling everything together while Jisung was having the time of his life with the soccer and basebal teams. The next time you bumped into each other, you scolded him for running late to his and Changbin’s set after dinner. 

“Where were you?!” You mostly hit him in the back with your clipboard, frantically passing him his already set up electric guitar and a microphone. First, one of your peers got drunk too early in the dinner to help out in the program, then one of the event’s award sashes briefly went missing and, not to mention, a lot of the people from the other committees somehow forgot about their event tasks when you asked in the main groupchat. You really weren’t having anyone’s antics at this point. “Geez, we already practiced this!” 

“Ow, ow, ow! Stop hitting me! Why are you so on edge?” Appropriately, he whined in complaint and took a step back after receiving his equipment, holding his hands up in defense as he always does. “Cut me some slack, Y/N! It’s prom!” 

“You’re so late when your table is literally right next to the side of the stage!” 

“I was dancing with everyone else! You wouldn’t know since you wouldn’t even take a break!” 

“Because I’m busy!” 

“No, you’re just being more irritable than usual!” 

“Fuck you, Han Jisung.” You rolled your eyes with an exasperated sigh, coldly directing him to the stage. “You’re on, get on the stage.” 

You knew he didn’t mean it cruelly, especially when his pupils started to shake and his shoulders instinctively slumped as he glanced back at you right before reluctantly stepping up the star-filled stage, but you were too tired of having to run around and making the event perfect for most of the night to process anything, much less his usual jabs at you. Being in such a tired headspace, you couldn’t enjoy his songs no matter how undeniably great they were, much less meet his eyes when you knew how he kept glancing at you throughout the entire set. 

He even covered your favorite song on the spot (which surprised Changbin and had Hyunjin running around backstage to inform everyone of the sudden extension) but you already sat down on your shared table with Hyunjin, Seungmin, Eunha, and their dates before he could even begin singing the chorus.  

“Hey, you good?” Minjung, Eunha’s date, asked you with an offering of an extra shawl to cover your exposed shoulders from the nearby air-conditioning unit. Eunha had previously left to go to the bathroom after stopping by your shared table. “Y/N, I told you if you needed extra help with the program, you could’ve just told us. We just planned on dancing tonight, anyway.” 

“I’m good.” You grumbled in a half-lie, resting your chin on your propped up hand tiredly, mumbling a small ‘thank you’ for the shawl as you fought away your tiredness. “I think I’ll just sit the rest of Prom out. Hyunjin can run the program on his own.” 

Minjung frowned, sitting down next to you and fixing the loose strands on the haphazard ponytail you managed to pull up in the middle of the program. “Are you sure? Eunha and I can stay with you until you’re feeling better. Besides, the program’s still long, you deserve to enjoy your hard work later at least.” 

Stubbornly, you simply scrunched up your nose and shook your head. “I think I’ve had enough of prom for one night. You should go and dance more, though. I’m okay as long as you guys are having fun.” 

But equally as headstrong as you are, Minjung got Eunha in on convincing you to agreeing to one dance with them as soon as she came back from the bathroom, reasoning out that, “We can stay in the back and just dance silly! It’s prom!” 

The pair proved themselves to be unstoppable in their joint persuasiveness when they got you to stand up and actually join them at the next set, right as Jisung was about to approach you to apologize. The poor boy ended up waiting the entire night until the two of you were alone instead, shivering right next to each other at the lobby while waiting for his brother to pick you two up. 

“Why did you even pick out something off-shoulder? I get that it’s trendy these days but you picked the venue knowing it’s cold and didn’t even connect a few dots there.” He hissed lowly, contemplating on teasing you further or keeping it quiet until he can muster up a ‘sorry’ to you. Shrugging off his jacket, he then gently draped it over your shoulder and added, “Don’t catch a cold or something...your mom’s going to kill me.” 

“Shut up.” You hissed back, crossing your arms further in over your chest as you spotted his brother’s car approaching the lobby’s driveway. You didn’t remove his coat from your back, though, clutching it tightly instead while convincing yourself that he willingly gave it to you so there’s no reason for you to throw it back at him when you really needed it. “ You don’t even do nice things for me.”

The familiar words visibly caught him off-guard, almost foiling his plan of opening the door for you as he freezes in his steps but he regains composure in time and almost trips ahead to swat your hand away from the car’s door handle. “I’m sorry.” He mumbled in the awkward silence, gulping down his fears of your death glare as he briefly averted his gaze away from you. With this, he missed the way your gaze softened. “There’s candies in the pockets.”

And there was, coincidentally enough the same brand he tried stealing from you on your school field trip.

“These aren’t expired, right?” You chuckled, popping a chocolate in your mouth anyway. 

That was enough for Jisung to relax his shoulders and laugh along. “No, promise.” He held a hand up as if he was swearing by his words, easing you into another fit of laughs. “I ran all the way to the convenience store down the block to get you those tonight! I felt really bad...I didn’t mean it.”

He could be sweet if he wanted, you’d give him that. 

“I’m sorry too.” You whispered to him at the end of the night, right after scoffing at him for insisting to walk you all the way to your doorstep of course. “I was so stressed with managing everything that I took it out on you.” 

Standing awkwardly with you right in front of your house’s front door, the sheepish boy rubbed the nape of his neck and shrugged. “Nah, I think I deserve it. I do annoy you a lot, don’t I?” He chuckled, eyes trained to the ground. “I didn’t even ask you to one dance.” 

“Not like you actually had to, we’re no—” 

“But you were still technically my date and I don’t want to be a bad prom date, even to you!” He insisted anyway, only then looking up at you. “I’ll make it up to you in the distant future, okay? Reserve me your next dance in the distant future, no matter where it is!”  

Before you could even retort, he was already running back to his brother’s car. 

Age eighteen and a half. Jisung began dating a girl named Haneul whom he met in one of his general classes and didn’t have one single clue about baseball or soccer. Naturally, his entire friend group was concerned. 

Though you’re much civil friends now, you still didn’t really care. Or maybe you didn’t want to out of spite (or a really really weird and displaced feeling of jealousy?), you weren’t sure. You just thought that Jisung can do whatever he wants even when it’s something that’s generally not advisable when you’re a freshman in college, but it seemed as if it was all Jeongin talked to you about whenever the two of you met up to study for one of your shared classes so naturally you forced yourself to take in all of the gossip. What’s worse is that Hyunjin would come over often to loiter around the library and gawk at the cute student librarian, ultimately encouraging the younger boy to talk about it more. 

“You’re being unfair to her.” You always reminded the two, sometimes Seungmin when he would sit quietly in the middle of the topic and say nothing to defend Haneul. In this particular time, Jeongin took you to watch the baseball team’s Wednesday scrimmage after hours of studying your nursing notes together at the nearby library. “Like, look, I don’t even do any sports myself but you guys hang out with me.” 

“But you’re different, you’re not dating any one of us.” Hyunjin snickered, hugging his helmet to his chest as he sat a step below you on the bleaches. When a thought then crossed his mind, he dramatically gasped over his gloves and added, “Wait, does that mean you have a crush on someone? Is it me?” 

You smacked him in the head with your hand, rolling your eyes after. “You know what I mean.” 

Next to you, Jeongin mustered up a shrug as he tried getting an injured Kira to sit back down on her seat. Your stubborn best friend, after playing at an underground derby game on the weekend prior, kept on moving around because sitting down with her injuries made her uncomfortable. “But at least you make an effort for us even if it’s just small.” He reasoned out, huffing tiredly when Kira finally sits down and promises not to move for the next five minutes. You would’ve helped him but personally you thought he deserved to suffer alone after letting her go out despite her injuries today. “Haneul got dragged by Jisung to watch last week’s scrimmage and didn’t even last a set. She just left in the middle of the game—literally!”

“He made Jisung skip on my derby game to too!” Kira pouted, waving her bandaged hands frantically in the air. “I’m personally offended, Y/N!”

“And she doesn’t seem to like talking to us in general.” Hyunjin shrugged in conclusion. “Like, sports aside, she’s a bit rude and nonchalant when she talks to us in general especially when Sung isn’t around. It’s a bit sus to me.” 

“To be fair, Kira, I wouldn’t be going too if you and Yeji aren’t so insistent on it. It’s so worrying seeing the two of you get hurt.” You pointed out before averting your attention to Jeongin once more. “And Jeongin, you know the only reason I can’t leave baseball and soccer games these days is because you and Seungmin are usually my ride home.” You scoffed. “If I could, I’d be hanging out with Felix more and only going to Kira’s games. Ya, why is he even allowed to skip games and I’m not, anyway?”

“Because he’s taking classes and training with the cheerdance squad until 8 PM and as far as I’m concerned, you’re free after 12 noon like me!” Jeongin simply grinned at you, earning himself a glare. “Also, I need you here with me as the medic team. You know I’ll panic alone!” 

Fortunately, no one ever actually gets injured at any of the games regardless if they were formal or not. By the time the game has finished, you were reminding Kira to rest more at her dorms and sprinting out of the baseball field to the samgyeopsal place the team promised to treating dinner at. You completely missed the boys’ conversation on Haneul in the process but you did get free food.

You really didn’t get it. The one time you met Haneul by chance, when you and Felix bumped into the two at the mall near the supermarket, she seemed a bit distant but she could be polite when she wanted to. Of course, it rubbed you the wrong way but you and Felix thought that it was none of your business anyway, given that neither of you are dating her. 

“When the guys walked me out of the baseball field last Wednesday, they did mention something about Jisung aiming for the soccer national team but who knows if they’re exaggerating again or something.” Kira confided in you later that week when the two of you met up over lunch. “Either way, I’d understand. If I were in Jisung’s shoes, I’d feel a little disheartened if someone I really like doesn’t appreciate the things I’m passionate about!”

Still, you simply let your friends sort it out for themselves. “Jisung’s a grown-up, he can figure things out on his own at the end of the day.” You reasoned out. 

Age eighteen and three-fourths. Jisung asked—practically begged—you to go to the movies with him because he and Haneul broke up the week before his birthday after opening up his worries to her. The other ticket was meant to be a surprise for his ex-girlfriend.

From what Jeongin and Felix have gossiped to you on two separate occasions, Haneul apparently didn’t like you and the rest of Jisung’s immediate friend group no matter how many times the boys tried warming up to her and getting to know her over the summer. She didn’t really support Jisung’s passion for sports, too, and mostly just stuck around for the ‘clout of it all’ or however Felix worded it to you. 

“I’d ask Hyunjin but he has a date with that librarian!” Jisung frowned over the phone on the night before the scheduled screening of Weathering with You. Reminiscent of a similar time long ago, he sounded more like he was convincing himself than you. “And Seungmin’s taking care of Kira, Minho and Felix are training, Changbin’s doing God knows what with his finals, Chan has swim training and—and yeah, you know where I’m going with this!” 

You sighed, rolling over on your back in your bed after submitting your online work. “You can ask the baseball team, the soccer team, your Introduction to Musical Theory class, the campus radio club, and—and yeah, you also know where I’m going with this.” 

“Yeah but—but it’d be weird if I just went with anyone or something!” He mumbled under his breath, pausing on the other line to scratch his head in thought. “Come on, it’s not your midterms week yet, right? Can’t you come over and go to the movies with me?”

“You’ll probably strangle me in the dark or something.” You argued next. 

“But it’s free tickets! At least you’re going to die with free tickets!” 

“So you are planning to kill me! I knew it!” You snorted dryly, rolling your eyes. “Seriously, don’t you have anyone else to go with? Why me?” 

Jisung took in a sharp breath in the longest pause you’ve ever heard from the usually rowdy boy. At that moment, only then did you notice the faint sounds of pre-recorded dialogues for soccer arcade games. He must’ve been at the one near his dorm then as he usually was when he was contemplating on something. “I just—honestly, I’m still processing all of this and I don’t want to open up to the guys...and Eunha’s abroad and I’m not that close to Kira or Bora so I thought of you.” 

Now, it was your turn to be speechless. 

“It’s silly, I know.” Jisung continued with an awkward laugh when he didn’t hear anything on your end. “But even when you’re annoying sometimes and you always get angry at me because you always misunderstand, you’ve known me the longest and I know you listen well and you’re always open-minded about things so I thought I’d vent to you, if it’s okay...” 

You finally released a defeated sigh, sitting up properly on your bed as if he was actually in the same room as you. “God, you’re too good at making me feel guilty.” You mused out loud. “Fine, just text me the place and time and no funny business!” 

You met up with Jisung at the nearest shopping center the following night, surprise paper bags of take-out and a mini cake for two to eat at the cinema. 

“I’m only going to be nice to you this time because you just got dumped and it’s your birthday later.” You explained as serious as you can to a giggling and blushing Jisung, handing him the take-out paper bags. Once the dinner meals are in his hands, you then take out the blueberry mini cheesecake from its separate paper bag and set up the candle you brought along with it. “Now, make a wish and get it over with.” 

Jisung’s eyes widened at the pink candle suddenly being pushed up to his face, distracting him from the passersby cooing and making comments at the two of you. “Really?” 

You nodded impatiently, thrusting the cake further up his face. “Yes! Now, blow on your candles or I’ll do it myself and eat the whole thing!” 

Jisung wasted no time blowing the single candle and taking the cake from you as well, jumping up and down in place as he closed the lid carefully and returned it to its paper bag. “Thank you!” He exclaimed gleefully, pulling you to a side hug. “Now, I feel a bit better.” 

“You better.” You frowned back at him, biting down a small smile when his hug lingered on a second longer. “Now, let’s go or we’ll be late to the screening.” 

Fortunately, Jisung didn’t actually tried strangling you in the dark while the movie played since he became busy with eating his dinner and cake as well as crying over the plot. 

Age nineteen. Jisung took you to the arcade inside the shopping center after to vent while scoring kicks at the mini soccer game. 

“Basically, she said—” Score. “—that she felt annoyed that Hyunjin, Minho, Jeongin, and Seungmin were mostly onto her for ‘seeming off’ whenever they met or interacted.” Another score. Standing outside the protective fence, your gaze darted quickly between Jisung and the small net across the long room. “So I said that’s just how those guys are: they’re very curious of new people and make a lot of effort over it so when they feel that the other person’s energy seems off or doesn’t match theirs in any way, they’d worry.”

You nodded along whenever he glanced over to you, agreeing halfheartedly. “Hm, those guys don’t take bullshit, of course...”

“Yeah, right...” Jisung kicked another ball, barely missing the goal as he thinks of what to say next. “Then she started accusing the guys that they don’t like her because she doesn’t do sports which doesn’t even make sense because I know it’s not superficial like that.” He sighed, scoring again. After this particular kick, he then stopped altogether and turned to you. “The guys just feel off that, as someone I’m dating, she doesn’t make enough effort to watch my games or be familiar with the sports I love. It’s not the same thing.”  

“But does she make an effort to listen to your music?” You blurted out of nowhere, surprising not only Jisung but also yourself. 

It just occurred you to on the spot. All this talk about Jisung’s passion for sports had you thinking if Haneul also disliked the one other thing that Jisung was absolutely passionate about: his music. 

And it seemed to have caught him off-guard as it took the boy longer to contemplate on the question. “I—n-no? No...” He furrowed his brows in thought, walking over to you on his side of the chain link fence. “Come to think of it, she never told me what she thought of the songs I used to send her for feedback...”

You nodded, mumbling under your breath, “So much for defending her from everyone last summer...” 

“Hm?” 

“Like, I’d get it if your friends don’t immediately warm up to her because that really does happen in some relationships and it can be remedied over time but not appreciating the things you, the person she’s dating, are passionate about is another thing. If she doesn’t like the things you’re passionate about, then maybe she really isn’t the one you should be with.” You shrugged nonchalantly. “She could be all things nice but if she doesn’t support your own ambitions, other things that make you really happy, then everything else doesn’t mean anything.”

When he doesn’t speak, you allow yourself to continue. “Kira told me that you’re aiming for the national team in either baseball or soccer which is a bit surprising since I know you’re already being sought after for your music even at university so clearly those things are very important to you. Having someone around that doesn’t see that importance enough to make efforts is a bit meaningless in the long run, if you think about it. You...you deserve better, it’s what I’m trying to get at.” 

Still, he wouldn’t speak after everything you said. Instead, the boy just gaped at you from the fence. It definitely unnerved you as time dragged on longer. 

“I let you vent and made my own input on it like you wanted me here to and you just gape?” You tsked through your nervousness, crossing your arms teasingly and leaning over the fence on your side. “Ji, say something.” 

“...thank you.” He finally breathed out before you could complain further, catching you off-guard this time. “I needed that.” 

“What?” 

“This whole thing just made me feel really conflicting feelings.” He confessed, voice lower than usual now as he mirrored your position. “Thank you for listening and telling me what you thought. They definitely made a lot of things clearer.” 

You smiled, shoving him slightly through the fence separating the two of you. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it birthday boy?” You teased, laughing even more when he pouted at your teasing tone. “So? Feel better, then?” 

“A bit, yeah.” He nodded, grinning widely now. “Thanks for tonight, Y/N.” 

“You won’t admit it to my face but I know you’d do the same for me if I annoyed you into it enough.” You shrugged, standing up properly now and walking over to the entrance. “Now, would you let me play? You’ve been at it for twenty minutes, it’s getting tiring watching you.” 

He laughed at this as you joined him in the arcade space, kicking a soccer ball towards you as soon as you came in through the chain entrance. “What? You think you can do better?” 

“I had to watch you all the time after school back then because you were my ride home and Mrs. Han always picked us up late. I’m sure that could amount to something.” 

Age nineteen and a half. For a mandatory community service class, all of your friends signed up to volunteer at an orphanage. 

The majority vote was actually at the shelter you used to volunteer at but your old neighbourhood was too far from the university you were attending and so the most practical option, the orphanage just two blocks away, was the natural next best thing. And from this one semester’s worth of experience, you definitely learned a lot about your friends. 

For one, Hyunjin, Felix, and Jeongin were only popular with kids but only for their looks (additionally, his baking skills for Felix). Whenever you passed by them during volunteer hours, you would often find the three buried underneath a pile of toddlers hitting them with all kinds of toys. Feeling bad, you actually got the orphanage’s matron to assign them to the older kids after a while. 

Seungmin and Kira, on the other hand, were so awkward at first but naturally got into the groove of it. Maybe it’s because they only started dating then and everything was flustering but they surprised you the most with how much they got along with almost all of the kids regardless of age. 

Then, there was Jisung whom almost all of the younger kids practically fought over to play with at the playground. As if it was an inside joke of some sort, it made you laugh the most how the kids would often ask him to push them at the swings. 

“Careful now,” You reminded him once jokingly, elbowing his side as the two of you approached the swing set where the kids were already waiting to get pushed on their respective seats. “don’t want their knees to get scraped or something.”

He simply scoffed at you, shaking his head in disbelief. “I won’t let that happen, not at this age.” 

“So if I asked you to push me on the swings later, you won’t try and kill me this time?” You asked next, waving hello to the children before going around the swing set to gently push them to momentum. Jisung followed suit, making a beeline to his favorite, a toddler named Ara who always asked to be pushed higher on the swings. 

“That’s a trick question because we’re not actually allowed to play here.” He answered matter-of-factly, turning to Ara right after. “Isn’t that right, Ara? Y/N isn’t allowed to play here because she’s an adult, right?” 

The two of you would sit on the swing set and take turns pushing each other when the orphanage staff weren’t looking anyway, giggling amongst yourselves while watching the kids migrate to the jungle gym. 

“You were so annoying when we were kids!” You mostly complained, letting yourself laugh about it now as it was all in the distant past. “You had the ‘girls had cooties’ phase and everything.” 

“Because the boys all said it was true!” Jisung was quick to say in his defense, twisting the chains on his swing around to make himself spin. “And I was seven so of course I’d believe them that easily!” 

“What about when you pushed me from the swings?” 

“We both know that was an accident.” 

“You could’ve secretly held a grudge against me as early as that time! You were so mad when your mom made you buy me snacks!” 

“Because you told your mom that I did it on purpose! I thought you hated me even before that too.” 

“Well, I never hated you before that, just to set the record straight.” You shook your head immediately, turning your swings to the side to face him briefly. “You? Did you ever hate me?”

“Never.” He shook his head back at you in response, equally serious now. “You were annoying at times but that was because I was kinda annoying to you too.”

“What about now?” You asked next, voice unexpectedly wavering at asking such a question and even more when he chuckled at this. 

“You were with me on my what was almost my worst birthday ever just three months ago. What do you think?” He scoffed playfully, returning to his spinning to ease his flustered face. “Besides, we’re like better less-trying to kill each other all the time friends now! We’re even studying together again these days.” 

“We both know you’re only at the library since you’ve been trying to wingman Hyunjin with the librarian and dote on Jeongin like he’s your baby.” 

“What? No, I’m there for you too! Moral support!” 

Age nineteen and three-fourths. Jisung’s older brother invited you along with your parents to his wedding during the Spring break and Jisung immediately jumped on the chance to redeem himself as ‘the best dance partner you ever had.’ 

You didn’t even think he’d remember something he said himself back then. Personally, you thought it was just his guilt from pissing you off or sleepiness from dancing too much at prom that was talking then. But the moment the dance floor was opened at the rather extravagant cherry blossoms-themed wedding, the best man was by your side within seconds after sprinting from his table across the wedding hall. 

“Y/N!” He called to you as he ran to your table shared with all of your friends, your parents, and a few people from your childhood neighbourhood; his obnoxiously loud voice against the jazz music and his hand raised up above his head to wave at you catching a few guests’ attention. “Y/N!” 

Felix was about to ask you to dance after Seungmin and Kira as well as Hyunjin and Jeongin paired up, your hand already up in the air to accept his, but Jisung was quick to swat your hand away from the other boy as soon as he arrived. “Sorry, Lix, I’m afraid I’ll have to steal Y/N away!” He dramatically interrupted in between tired pants, flashing the confused Felix with a sheepish grin. “I owe Y/N a very important dance!” 

“What dance?” You raised a brow, bringing your hand away from his and back to your lap. 

“The one—t-the one I promised you that night a-at prom.” He sighed, finally catching his breath after. “I promised you then, remember?” 

From the corner of your eye, Felix’s eyes lightened up in excitement as he clasped his hands together and cooed. “Aww!” He giggled, making you and Jisung turn to him after. “If that’s the case, then why should I stop you two? I’ll just see if Chan or Changbin aren’t dancing yet!” 

“But Lix!” 

The other boy’s quick to wave his hands to you snappily, shaking his head. “No buts, Y/N! You two go and do that cute promised dance thing you have going on! I’ll be fine!” He assured, much to your protests. “I knew something was going on!” 

“Nothing’s going o—“

“Thanks, Lix! I owe you, dude.” Jisung pats Felix’s shoulder appreciatively, turning to you after and taking your hand once more to pull you up into a stand. “Now, come on! My brother said he has my songs on queue!” 

He whisked you away before you could protest further, taking you to the dance floor just as the music slows down to his own song. “Right on time!” He even exclaimed happily before placing his other hand on your waist. You’ve heard this one before as the one he would always sing at the Open Mic Nights at university. “Now, to make it up to you...” 

Jisung didn’t dance so bad. He was still playful, making it a game between the two of you on who can step on the other’s feet the most when the next songs became more upbeat, but he was serious when he wanted to, sheepishly apologizing that it took him long to make it up to you. 

“I didn’t even remember it until you brought it up tonight.” You assured with a laugh as the song slowed down once more. Without even realizing it, you’ve danced all of the songs in the two-hour setlist with him. “I didn’t think it was important.” 

“Well, it is to me.” He shrugged as nonchalantly as he can, visibly looking nervous towards the end. When you quietly asked him why, his only response was, “Because that night I really realized that even when I liked annoying you, I don’t like pissing you off so much to the point that you hate me.” 

And at that moment you realized that Jisung has some way of catching you off-guard so randomly. “W-What? I mean—” You wanted to joke something along the lines of ‘wow, took you long enough,’ but the words ultimately never came out as Jisung chuckled at your baffled expression. 

“I mean, trying to piss each other off, joking around, competing over studies—those are our things.” He confessed sincerely, unconsciously tightening his grip on your hand as the song progressed. “But I said something that night thinking of it as a joke and not really considering the thought that it would piss you off so much because you were so stressed already. I didn’t like pushing you on edge like that—” 

“You already apologized and everything, it’s all g—” 

“—But most importantly, I really wanted to dance with you then, regardless of the incident.” He breathed out before you could even finish your thought, rendering you speechless for the second time. “Maybe I’ve always liked you then, maybe even before that; either way, I really wanted to have one moment where we weren’t fighting or anything—and, surprisingly, even when we’ve started hanging out better, I still want one. I still like you.” 

You immediately stopped dancing, bumping shoulders with a stranger behind you which Jisung instinctively responded to by pulling your frozen form to the side of the dance floor. You pursed your lips once to speak, only managing to fumble out, “Y-You...you liked me?” 

“I said I like you. Present tense.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, hands dropping to his sides immediately at sensing how tense and awkward the atmosphere suddenly became. “And I like you the way Seungmin dotes on Kira and Minho’s always protective of Bora and Jeoyeon’s been helplessly pining over Chan, those kinds in case you’re going to pull that how exactly do I like you bullshit you learned from Minho before again.”  

“I—r-really?” Was your only response as you tried your best to process this revelation. “You like me? W-Why—why me?” 

He chuckled awkwardly, rubbing the nape of his neck. “Yes, Y/N, how many times do I have to repeat myself?” He teased as casually as he could muster with his growing nervousness. “And why you? I don’t know, either, but I think I can start remembering as far back as the time you teased me at the playground that I push like a sissy but didn’t look for another playmate anyway. I’ve always liked you...just a little bit more now that I’m much more sure of a lot of things.” 

It was all so overwhelming, honestly, but you belatedly muster up a laugh as he recalled such a distant memory from you. “Y-You...God, Han Jisung, you’re insufferable!” You mumbled under your breath, hitting him by his arm with one hand while the other covered your mouth. “Why didn’t you say so?” 

“So, does that mean you like me too?” 

“I let you dance with me the entire night. What do you think?” You scoffed playfully, gaze softening as you looked up at his relieved smile and bright eyes. “You did push like a sissy at the playground when we were kids, though.” 

Age twenty. When Minho bought his roommate flowers to their last cheerdance competition and asked her to be his girlfriend, Hyunjin dared you to one-up the upperclassman and wear Jisung’s jersey to his own final game of the year.

“Well, you did give him that talk over dating someone who appreciates the things he loves.” Eunha told you over video call with the rest of your friend group on the day Hyunjin brought up the idea. Before you could even protest and repeatedly assure that you do support everything Jisung does, she was quick to add, “Yeah, I know you do appreciate them but I just think it’s fitting now! He’s been making a lot of effort for you lately and didn’t you say you wanted to do something in return? Maybe you can finally ask him what you’ve been wanting to ask for a while now too...” 

You hated how she was right and very convincing about it. Since the wedding earlier in the year, Jisung has been nothing short of nicer to you. From actually hanging out with you at the library now (and not just to wingman Hyunjin or dote on Jeongin), buying you food randomly, to letting you vent your own worries and unwind from school by playing soccer with you or playing you music with his guitar, he’s been ‘making it up to you’ with quality time and sweet gestures; the only catch is that he hasn’t officially asked you out like he would. 

The two of you aren’t exactly the direct words type of people but it’s still nice to have some sort of affirmation. 

With a few more coaxing on her part combined with Seungmin’s own persuasiveness nagging at you in real time, your friends eventually got Jeongin to steal one of Jisung’s spare soccer jerseys later that day to give to you for his game on the following Saturday. 

To say that Jisung was flustered is an understatement to say the least. Quickly catching you at the very front of the bleachers before the game started, he waved at you and the rest of your cheering friend group shyly, approaching only when the coach gave him permission to. 

“Hey, that’s mine.” He snickered with even more sheepishness at seeing you up close, holding the jersey he wears by its shoulders before gesturing to the identical one you wear. The two of you stand by the stairs leading down to the field, on the side where you aren’t in the way of passing players and staff. “The jersey—maybe the one wearing it too.” 

You held up the bouquet of daisies in your hands close to your face, effectively hiding the heat rising up to your neck. “I bought your favorite flowers too.” You pointed out next before gesturing to your friends sitting around you. “Those smartasses dared me to outdo Minho’s stunt at the cheerdance competition which I still think is dumb since you were in on that one but, hey, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?” 

“Just seeing you is already enough.” He added with a flirty wink, making you cringe teasingly. “The jersey’s a really big bonus, though. I think I can score everything on this one because of you.” 

“You better or else this jerseys’ going to be mine now.” 

“I don’t mind.” He shook his head immediately, pulling you closer by the waist in his now ritual good luck hug from you and placing the flowers back on your sides. “I don’t mind calling you mine too.” 

The cheesy pick-up line makes the two of you laugh. Either way, you push yourself to not let go of him too soon. “...ew, Jisung!” You hit his back instead, heaving a sigh of relief anyway before finally pulling away from his hug to send him off. That’s enough confirmation now. “Now, go win this game and get it over with. We’re still on for movies later, right?” 

“Yep.” He assured, patting your head affectionately before boldly leaning closer again for a kiss. “I’m looking forward to it!” 

[ac-liveblogs]

Im assuming the quests selling the characters are Intended to be the Ayatos character quest. (the archon quest is hyping up dainslief in ten years ig lol.) I haven't progressed much through the chasm quest (i explored the entire exterior tho), but so far some of the minor npcs are ok.

Yanbo, Old Chou, and Wang have actually put together a surprisingly good (by genshin standards) web of quests discussing visions and gods. Sure, most of the discussion is backloaded into the final paragraphs of dialogue but its there (and not in the main goddamn quest)!

As an enjou appreciator its weird to me how some of genshins npcs are straight up better than the pcs. Im happy they exist but some of these characters are languishing MHY. kokomi is dead in a ditch still!

So far the most positive thing for me is definitely venti abyss. it couldnt be more transparent how theyre temporarily buffing him for a sell but god if his black hole isnt fun. First n only 36 star.

Oh yeah, there are the 5star character quests and, theoretically, the Hangouts. But this is a gacha game, so that means any character-driven event or quest should be an opportunity to extend on the purchasable units. To clarify, in FGO, there are no events that aren't focusing on at least one rate-up character. This is kind of a win/win because we get more content for our units, and FGO makes more money.

There is never any point in FGO where NPCs are given more time and attention than units they want you to roll for. There have been NPCs people got attached to, but this seems more incidental than intentional... which bit them in the ass with the Takasugi Scandal last year, but I fully expect he'll end up in the pool eventually given the outcry. Given what happened with Muramasa....

The idea that NPCs like Kazari and Enjou have better writing than playable units? FGO would never let that happen. The only time FGO wants you to get attached to NPCs is when it's about to brutally murder them and make you feel like it was your fault, and then rub in that you can't save them.

We shouldn't be spending extended periods of time with NPCs over playable characters we're never going to see again. This isn't a traditional RPG, we're supposed to be paying money for these units. As it is, HYV just ends up with a huge backlog of characters that barely show up. I wonder why it happens too?

I've noticed characterization tends to differ between events, so at first I wondered if it was just too hard to keep writing them in-character. I was also wondering if these characters have very specific character arcs MHY wants to follow, and doesn't want to risk going off-script or revealing things early by letting us learn any more about them (to which I go ??????? write better if either of these are correct). Maybe they also have problems booking voice actors or animating things, to which I say 'maybe you should've thought about that before making the game so ambitious'.

I also think Genshin runs into problems when it makes its characters either too exciting or too mundane, bc it's hard to design events around them. Characters that do cool stuff off-screen like Xiao and Beidou would require a lot of new resources to create events that actually keep pace with what they're capable of doing - thus the perpetually off-screen evil god ghosts. Meanwhile, Liyue's endless parade of politicians and business owners aren't going to lend very well to exciting storylines - except Hu Tao; but see the 'new resources' issue. Much easier to just make a simple new game mechanic and have you run around the overworld, I guess.

And then they can't even make playable rival/enemy characters because they want to ensure that these characters have at least a flimsy in universe justification for why they would drop everything and travel with you i.e. everyone loves the Traveller...

you ever feel they didn't think this game through very well on a foundational level?