#im partially convinced it isn’t real

[hella1975]

im simultaneously terrified and excited out of my mind for june

[highvern]

Work Me Out II

Pairing: Kim Mingyu x fem!reader

Genre: Smut, 18+

Warnings: simp gyu, car sex, protected sex, dom!gyu, brat!reader, spitting, choking, minor cock warming

Length: 2.5k

Note: happy 1k! i almost deleted this bc i hated it so y'all have to be extra nice to me about it (im joking) (not really) everyone say thank u @cheolism for beta-ing!

Remember: Tumblr runs on reblogs and I run on validation in the tags and comments :)

read part I

read more here

This blog is intended for 18+ only! Minors/blank blogs will be blocked!

“Hi!” 

“Hi,” Mingyu grins, dropping a kiss to your cheek before stepping back. “You look…”

He lifts your hand, encouraging a spin so he can fully appreciate the black slip dress gliding over your curves.

“Wow.”

“Wow?” You laugh as he pulls you closer, goosebumps rising under the palm at your bare spine.

“Beautiful,” he sighs into your lips. 

He kisses you deeper; crowing you against his chest with a hand at your back. The lull of Mingyu’s lips and cologne lower your defenses, mouth opening to welcome his tongue. But he pulls away just when things breach on the edge of more.

“We’re gonna miss our reservation.” He coos through a smile, dropping a consolatory peck to your nose.

“So?”

You try to bring him back but he dodges you easily, tipping his chin up until your only option is to leave a trail of kisses along his Adam's apple.

“I’d like to take you on at least one real date.” Mingyu argues.

He’d be more convincing if he wasn’t leaving fingerprints on your hips. But you think it's cute how he wants to wine and dine you. When you step back, you notice how his eyes glow the way they always do when met with approval. It’s cute, toes on the border of innocence; and it makes your knees crave the feeling of the hardwood floors so you can give him all the validation he can handle with his cock in your mouth.

But there will be more than enough time for that later.

“Wow, so eating Captain Crunch in our underwear after you defiled me wasn’t a date?” You gasp. “Okay. I see how it is.”

Mingyu snorts but plucks your jacket off the coat rack and holds it open to help you in. “Alright, drama queen. Let’s go.”

The drive is filled with chatter. Over the past week, the initial spark of attraction only grew between you; through chats at the gym, texting, or the one night he came to your apartment and ended up passing out on the couch while the movie continued to play in the background. Somehow it was more intimate waking up fully clothed, big spooning him with your face buried between his shoulder blades than having him drill your guts until tears streaked your face.

Since you slept over that first night, you’ve noticed a plethora of things that make you more fond of Mingyu. How he slurs his words when he’s excited, talking so fast you can barely decipher what he’s saying. If you throw a wink his way while walking across the gym his eyes go wide like he’s completely taken aback by your interest; as if he didn’t have a front seat to how much you liked him. Or if he notices you looking he’ll not so subtly flex or make a face that has you laughing so hard you nearly tumble off the treadmill. Or the way Mingyu prides himself on being a gentleman; pausing his workout and walking you to your car, insisting it's too dark out for him to be comfortable letting you go alone (partially because it's his fault your gym visits became a two hour endeavor since the night in the car, he just can’t stop distracting you in the name of getting to know you better).

It’s the same at the restaurant. Mingyu takes your coat and pulls out your chair. He asks for more details on the book you mentioned on the way over, asking if he can borrow your copy once you finish. He feeds you some of his entree off his fork, splits dessert to satisfy your sweet tooth, and nabs the check from the waiter before you can even think of offering to split the bill.

It’s almost too perfect; like he is running a checklist in his head. But Mingyu isn’t that kind of guy. His enthusiasm is just that, enthusiasm for spending time with you, getting to know you, picking your brain like you’re the most interesting person he’s ever met and he can’t wait to know more.

“How did you not know it was a couples class?” You ask, laughing into the curve of his arm as he walks you back to the car.

“It didn’t say it on the flier! It just said ‘portions for two’ and I thought that meant I’d leave with leftovers.”

“Wow. So Wonwoo got you banned and ate your food?”

“Wonwoo got me banned and neither of us gotta eat the food.”

The collar of Mingyu’s shirt flitters when his chest shakes with laughter, watching you down the slope of his nose. Like a flame in a vacuum, all the oxygen in your lungs is sucked up when you notice how good he looks even under the sterile overhead light. The glass of wine you sipped through dinner doesn’t help; turning your insides to mush and your blood to a boil.

Mingyu is so genuinely sweet you almost feel guilty for crowding him against his car and palming the zipper of his jeans. The taste of whiskey clings to his tongue, sucked away by your own until he opens the door and ushers you into the back seat.

“Mingyu,” you gasp, plucking the foil package from his grip. “Did you expect to fuck me tonight?”

“No,” he groans into the side of your tit, thanking whatever power in the universe exists that you hadn’t worn a bra. “But a man should always be prepared.”

You snort, “Okay, ‘Mr. I don’t sleep with girls I don’t date.’”

“I think that's former ‘Mr. I don’t’ whatever the fuck,” he moans as he finds your mouth.

Fishing his cock out from his underwear, you lazily jerk him to full mast. Mingyu’s hip buck into the swipe of your thumb. You’d drop your mouth to suck away the mess  collecting there but the back seat of his car doesn’t provide much room since your date claims most of the space already. Instead, you settle for tracing your tongue across the raised veins webbing across his neck and nipping at the sensitive lobe of his ear.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

Mingyu paws at your ass, fingers digging into the flesh and dragging your covered core closer to his cock. His other hand dips beneath your skirt, thumb swiping at your clit and two thick fingers pushing aside the scrap of fabric posing as underwear to stretch you open without preamble.

“Fuck, you’re so wet.” Mingyu pants.

You meet every curl of his fingers with a whine, face falling into the cradle of his jaw as he works you up. He’s everywhere; all you can feel, touch, taste. Even his cologne floods your nose; the scent of powdery spice and something intrinsically him that you can’t name.

Whether intentional or not, the match of pace isn’t lost on your mind as your fist sinks over Mingyu’s length the same time he stuffs you with his digits; fucking you by proxy while his tongue licks away every sound of satisfaction before it can make its way between your lips.

Before long, Mingyu bats away your hand to use his own. The second the latex is rolled down he holds himself for you, offering his cock like a prize you can’t refuse.

And he’s right.

The initial discomfort trickles up your spine. Eyes closed, chest caved, you take every inch as Mingyu whispers praise after praise into your neck. Twitching in each other’s hold, each clench of your cunt dips his stomach until you pull him back to your mouth and goad him with a demanding draw against his tongue with your own; a wet suckle more obscene than the way he splits you has him returning the gesture with fervor.

Hips finding a jilted rhythm, Mingyu manages to latch to one of your nipples, teeth razing along the sensitive skin until you nearly collapse from the delightful pain.

Arching into his chest so hard it hurts, your voice cracks, “Oh, Gyu.”

“Good girl,” he groans into your chest.

The hand on your ass pulls you across his cock, forcing you down with each of his thrusts up. Mingyu’s loud but you’re louder and the abandoned top floor of the parking deck doesn’t provide any disguise from what’s happening behind the foggy windows of his SUV. 

As sexy as you are with your head thrown back, desperately moaning his name, the fear of getting caught is starting to suffocate him.

You beat against his chest when Mingyu pins you in place. He crushes you flat against him, pelvis to pelvis, so deep you feel him in your throat. Tight around the stretch, he nearly loses his train of thought but finds it when an involuntary rush of his thighs makes you squeak.

He brushes his thumb across the apple of your cheek in an effort to quell the bubbling tantrum behind your eyes. “Shhh,” he whispers. “We can't get caught.” 

Time stops as you come to a crossroads. Eye to eye, you can see him waiting for a signal. If you want to stop, drive thirty minutes back to either of your apartments, and then go at it like rabbits, Mingyu will do it. If you want him to stop, drop you off at your doorstep, and send him home with the worst hard on of his life, he’ll smile through the tears. But if you want to finish what you’ve both started in the discomfort of the back seat, Mingyu needs you to be quiet.

So you can listen without complaint, bury your face in the column of his neck and bite your lip until it bleeds from strain. Or you can let Mingyu decide the best course of action.

“Then shut me up.” 

A beat of absolute silence rattles your shaking confidence. Mingyu’s eyes widen, jumping back like he’s been burned but you fake courage until you spot the way he licks his teeth at the idea.

Whatever permission he’s looking for he finds in the slight dip of your chin. You watch Mingyu’s mood shift in an instant. The playful tilt of his lips melt away, the corners of his eyes freeze over their usual humor. And the arm around the dip of your waist squeezes so tight you fear he’ll leave a bruise in the shape of his palm.

The hand on your face falls to your jaw, pinching your cheek between his pointer finger and thumb as he tsks, forcing your head back and forth mockingly before he forces his thumb between your teeth.

“Shut. Up.” 

He punctuates his command with a bruising thrust of his cock; thrilled at the way his thumb digging into your tongue chokes any sound. The hand on your ass nearly rips your underwear as Mingyu uses it to guide your hips, keeping you bouncing in his lap until you're drooling.

Mingyu’s teeth rake against your jaw, “Touch yourself.”

You clumsily snake a hand down, hips jerking under the blind swipe of fingers at your core. Eyes unfocused, ears filled with the rush of blood, you don’t resist the urge to bite his thumb just to see what he’ll do next.

The sting of his palm against your ass isn’t a shock.

But the wet of his fingers on your throat is.

And when Mingyu squeezes, cutting off the blood to your brain for a second in a show of possessive strength, your choked wail is music to his ears.

“Fuck, you like that?”

Nodding like a bobble head, more pathetic whimpers fill the car. 

With a shift of weight, he makes you grind against his lap, the metal of his belt buckle cutting into the back of your thighs. But you’re full to the brink of shredding apart you can’t bring yourself to care. Heat in the pit of your stomach blooms, used and deep.

Mingyu fans his hand along your throat, fingers digging into the jut of your jaw to make you look at his face. His hair is a mess, cheeks rosy with sweat at his hairline. A low rumble in his throat is all the warning you get before he spits on your lips and it glides down your chin; slipping under his palm while he squeezes until stars dance in your vision.

Hips stuttering, everything draws tight; every muscle, every vein, each individual cell contracts and detonates until Mingyu fucks into your so hard your head hits the roof as he flails. Thighs firm against the top of his, you feel each sputter into the condom.

“Mingyu,” you croak, throat wrecked.

Everything feels heavy and worn when he brings you into the warmth of his chest. Somehow, you hadn’t managed to undo a single button beyond the four that let you peek at the dip between his pecs; but the friction of his shirt against your sensitive chest makes you shiver. Sweat and spit leave the fabric clinging uncomfortably but you don’t have the energy to change it.

“Jesus Christ.” Mingyu draws in a heavy breath, and the motion has your legs twitching again. “You okay?”

Nodding into his neck, your eyes slip shut. If he keeps tracing shapes on your back, you’re in serious trouble of falling asleep right there in the back of his car with his softening length still inside you. Attempting to prevent the momentum from taking over, you rise on your knees, only for Mingyu to bring you back down.

“Just…just let me hold you for a second.” he sighs, sounding as exhausted as you feel. “Please.”

Peppering languid kisses across his face, down the curve of his cheek, up the bridge of his nose, you smile when he pouts at the lack of attention to his lips. But when you meet them with your own, it's nearly impossible to call it a kiss from the sleepy grins splitting your faces.

“Wanna come back to mine?” Mingyu whispers into your cheek, leaving his own series of kisses. “We can watch that new horror movie you were talking about.”

“You hate scary movies.”

“Oh no, I guess you’ll have to stay the night in case I can’t sleep.”

“How awful!” You mock. “Did you buy more cereal?”

“Mhm.”

With a monumental sigh, “Then I guess I can come over.”

It takes nearly fifteen minutes to find the courage to unwind from each other. Mingyu distracts you by tracing shapes between your shoulder blades and making you guess his artistic interpretation. Each time you're wrong he demands a kiss. Each time you're right he gives you one back.

When you make him guess what your finger burns into his shoulder he nearly faints before deciding it's time to head home, hands intertwined over the center console the entire way.

Taglist: @tomodachiii @cvpidyunho @miniseokminnies @ddaengpotate @arycutie @gaebestie @primoppang @gyuguys @mine-gyu @doremifasire @missminhoe @toplinehyunjin @crvs4vldtn @prettygyuuu

© highvern. copying/reuploading/translating my work anywhere is strictly prohibited.

[howtofightwrite]

The Self-Delusion of "Good in a 'Real Fight'"

Hii how are you both? I like your blog’s tips as a fan of fantasy fiction, but I thought you could answer a real-life question. I do HEMA (im not good at it but its good fun!) and something comes up every now and then that i thought you could weigh in on with more authority.

Theres a big guy who isnt the best, but whose refrain is that he would win in a real fight since he wouldnt be holding back. He says its not a gender thing, just a size thing.

Since everyone has to hold back so we dont injure each other (and we still get plenty of bruises) he’s right, it’s an artificial environment.

Does he have a point that everyone’s restraint disadvantages big guys more, or is he being a bit of a poor sport?

Thanks!

rub-the-rest-with-yellow

He’s deluding himself, in a variety of ways.

Generally speaking, size doesn’t help, especially not in armed combat. It just means you’re a larger target for your foe’s weapon. Sword combat isn’t about being bigger and stronger than your opponent, it’s about opening your foe up and filleting them.

It’s important to remember that being bigger does not make you tougher, and no theoretical biological advantage makes you tougher than steel.

The entire point of using a blade is cutting your foe, not bludgeoning them. The emphasis here is to point out that you do not mindlessly hack away with a sword, trying to brute force your way through your foe’s armor, you look for openings and either slice through them, or thrust through them.

Now, if you’re using blunted edges, it is true that he could cause some misery if he didn’t hold back. However, that’s true for pretty much anyone in your group. You’re not competing to hurt one another.

Even with blunt weapons, like warhammers, maces, or mauls, you’re not relying on your strength, you’re using the inertia of the weapon to cause harm, so being a big guy still doesn’t offer any real advantage there.

Guys like this aren’t uncommon. They’re convinced that they’d be good in “a real fight.” In actual combat they would, inevitably, go down with the first hit, and then whine about how the fight wasn’t fair (if they survive.)

This is may be a bitter pill, and I’m not judging you for this, but there isn’t a single member of your group that would be okay in a real swordfight. The defect is in HEMA, not in you. HEMA, like many martial arts, is a revived art. This means, at some point in the past, the last person who was properly trained in your combat style died without passing that knowledge on. Someone in the 20th Century found surviving training manuals and manuscripts and did their best to rebuild the martial art from scratch.

This isn’t a case where the best techniques survived and have been codified, instead the only filter on which techniques survived is which texts survived the following centuries.

More than that, we know our reconstruction is wrong (or at least, incomplete.) We know this because of Polish Crosscutting. Unlike HEMA, this is not a revived art. It was (at least partially) preserved. It does a number of things that HEMA preaches against, and it decimates HEMA practitioners in competitive bouts. To be clear, Polish Crosscutting is not some incredibly effective set of sword techniques, it’s just better preserved than HEMA.

The end result is, our understanding of Historical European Martial Arts is extremely limited, with serious gaps. Against someone who actually knew what they were doing, any one of you would be screwed. And that’s not the point of the exercise.

This is going to somewhat duplicate the previous point, but, as you said, you’re training recreationally. This is for fun, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, if you’re training recreationally, or for sport, you are not training to use your skills in, “real,” combat. Again, you’ll find guys who are studying other recreational or sports martial arts and hold that up as their ability to handle themselves in “a real fight,” and they’re also deluding themselves.

If you want to train for combat, you train to kill people, not to, “fight.” It’s not fun, it’s not recreational, you’re not doing it to prove you can fight. It’s about ending another person’s life as efficiently as possible.

The idea of, “a fair fight,” (or in this case, “a real fight,”) is an illusion. It’s actively dangerous to both participants. In a real life or death, situation you’d want to take him out in as few strikes as possible. Realistically, we’re talking about ending his life in less than a second. Ideally, before his brain even realizes he’s in combat, and can react, though that’s bit harder to do reliably. If he is aware he’s in danger, neutralize his weapon, then end him. Again, the goal is for combat to be over in under five seconds. That probably won’t happen, but it should give you an idea of just how fast this would need to be. The longer you’re in combat, the greater the risk of you taking a hit, and in real combat, that’s a risk you cannot afford to take. Any injury means you’re at a disadvantage when you’re facing your next foe.

Killing someone is an entirely different discipline from recreational martial arts (and even from competitive sport combat.) If you train to kill people, you’re ready to kill people. If you train to have fun, you are not. If you’re in a real fight with real weapons, you’re not fighting to, “win,” you’re looking to end your foe.

To be fair, he may not be a poor sport about this. He probably, genuinely believes he can take any one of you. But, if he believes it’s because, “he’s holding back,” and he’s not one of the better duelists, yeah, he would not survive.

-Starke

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The Self-Delusion of “Good in a ‘Real Fight'” was originally published on How to Fight Write.

[ruby-whistler]

Ayo curious anon here- im gonna rewatch rewatch the vod and take note of every single punch and why it appears to have happened then we can compare notes. Also i am interested in your opinion on relaxx's post :0 also if u want a vid rec i know a cool vid where someone replied to a dream apologist who;;; excused exile but it also brings up some interesting points :0

alright, well good luck! my focus was more on the fact that c!dream didn't start punching first until the very end (he did punch back a few times but that's not what i was tracking), and c!tommy was punching him the entire time beforehand, so if you count more "first punches" for the very ending i don't think that would matter that much, but if you have something beforehand that's a discrepancy on my part feel free to tell me :]

i'm not going to watch it for myself because i'm afraid they'd generalize dream apologists based on that one person and make a lot of assumptions that don't apply to me + use possibly insulting, emotionally charged language as a result, but if there are good points you'd like to debate about feel free to send those!

as for relaxx post ( link to the original ) i have a reply written up with my opinions, so yeah;

/dsmp /rp

i was going to put in a first part saying how this is biasedly worded and insinuating that c!tommy was somehow protecting his family by standing up against c!dream during the negotiation (which really was the other way around, him being reckless and endangering them) but i don’t wanna seem aggressive or condescending so i just deleted that. they have emotions about c!tommy and they see him in a certain light thanks to that and i respect that enough not to bother them.

the majority of this is about c!dream anyway, which is more my playing field.

“it didn’t even work because dream didn’t care about spirit”

basic misinterpretation by someone not knowledgeable about the character besides watching c!tommy’s pov. obviously this is not true in the slightest, c!dream has proven time and time again that spirit’s leather is what he cares about the most right after his friends - he traded one of the discs for it, and he had sentimental attachment to the horse. him saying later that he doesn’t is not him revealing anything, or maybe even lying (there’s different interpretations of that scene - in my opinion it’s more of a decision than anything).

of course i do agree that c!dream is manipulative. the reasons for that can be debated, but he is. i wouldn’t call him a “master manipulator” - that’s reserved for people who not even the audience notices are being manipulative despite the obvious red flags, but c!dream is very much manipulative - he’s just the only one people notice, which isn’t really pro of him /j

“dream tells tommy he cut off all attachments, he abandons and stops talking to his friends”

he did stop talking to them… after they abandoned him. small mistake, big difference in the way we see the character.

“he tells tommy among other things that he “does it all because it’s fun and he’s playing with his food” “no, i just like to cause chaos” “i’m doing this so you can have an origin story. the perfect hero origin” “i can make us immortal together!” we don’t have a way to confirm or deny these as true/false since we don’t know what dream’s thinking, but. sadly they appear to line up with his actions.”

no, it doesn’t. it doesn’t line up at all with the way he talks to… anyone else, or with his character in general. it’s an intimidation tactic to cover up his true intentions and make himself out to be more of a threat because he wants people to be afraid of him - that’s what gives him power, basically. threats and ultimatums are what gives him the most control over others even if he has no real power, so it’s important people fear what he could do or what he would be willing to do, rather than what he actually will.

“sapnap actually visited dream in prison and dream seemed to care more about using sapnap to get to ranboo then sapnap himself. ouch.”

have they. have they not watched the video where c!dream spends the first like 98% writing in a book about how he wants c!sapnap and c!george to come visit him again and trying to convince c!sapnap he can get better and be let out and meet again? where he only asks for c!sapnap to deliver the message like half a minute before the end? where are they getting this info from? because this is outrageously incorrect, i’m sorry but what even lead you to that conclusion?

“i am actually fully on board with the idea that dream lied, and that he does still miss and care about his friends! i consider often (because i like angst lol)! when dream finally gets his pov, we might learn about this. because we don’t know what he’s thinking. he could be missing them every second for all we know! it could all be one master plan to make them like him, or save them, or something. dream is innocent until proven guilty. as far as we can tell, he wasn’t lying. and he did cut off his friends.”

i think from everything that’s happened before and after the scene it is obvious he does in fact care about them. he did emotionally isolate himself, he did “cut himself off” (moreso by not reaching out than actually doing anything for himself), yes, but that doesn’t mean he wanted to or that it didn’t hurt him.

“even if it turns out he actually loves them, he still treated them awfully by abandoning them as he did”

i… don’t remember that happening, i’ll be honest. they left him and they never came back, so it’s much more on them than it is on c!dream that their relationship fell apart, although he technically could’ve tried harder. however, that’s only c!sapnap and c!george - he still proved to care about c!punz during before the finale, and even during the prison he still shows attachment to c!techno.

i could give examples of him caring about his friends, and will if asked (that’d take a while because there is a lot of canon evidence but honestly it’d just make me very happy so i wouldn’t mind), but in general it’s not that difficult to see that he… does care about people, as hard as that is to believe, and yes, he did hurt them indirectly because it hurts to see people who used to be important to you spiral to the point of doing terrible things, but i wouldn’t say he made c!sapnap feel terrible, especially during the prison visit when c!dream is very obviously Going Through It.

also i highly dislike the anon’s attitude. there’s no need to be that aggressive, like what the hell dude. everyone can have their own interpretations and opinions. in my eyes, this is sort of biased and partially incorrect, but maybe let people exist on the internet.

[tepkunset]

@avatarfandompolice​​​ is a blog that likes to misuse progressive language in attempt to make ignorant, racist posts sound more intelligent than they are. While most of their blog consists of arguing about ‘zutara,’ (which I recently learned is a ship name for Zuko and Katara from an anon), there is also a large number of posts and reblogs under the premise of being “hot takes” on how unfair it is to address racism in fandom and in media.

Avatarfandompolice is very sensitive about people pointing out that Avatar: The Last Airbender is not, in fact, flawless. That a show made by two white men featuring Asian and Indigenous characters and influences is fully capable of getting things wrong. That their western colonial views are influences all on their own, and it shows. Rather than listen to fans of colour point out things like these posts for example: [Link] [Link] [Link], avatarfandompolice has decided that such things must simply be fake, and has made multiple posts complaining it. This is not just regular ignorance, this is wilful ignorance. The dismissal of critique simply because they cannot fathom not everyone being able to handle the amount of issues they are freely educating others on, or people holding the ability to like something overall while also pointing out where it could be better.

It is my firm belief that you should never absorb media with an uncritical eye. If this was the case, if people just accepted everything given to them, then we would never see any progress. We need to be able to look back at something and say here’s what we did right, and here’s what we need to do better with.

The argument that A:TLA was made in 2012 and therefore should not be analyzed with a modern understanding of the world is downright hilarious, too. As if we aren’t taught to write literature analysis on books and plays that are centuries old in school. In particular regards to the whole cop thing... if anyone reading this seriously thinks that hate and fear of the police is just a 2020 trend, you can meet me in the pit. I was four years old when I learned how terrifying cops are. If your experiences differ, let me tell you that does not make them universal. And as for all the 20-somethings talking about it today, well, gentle reminder that as said by avatarfandompolice right here, the show aired in 2012. Little 10-year-old kids don’t have social media, (at least I hope they don’t,) and unless they grew up experiencing first-hand police terror, probably were not aware of it at that age. I do not know why avatarfandompolice insults people's ability to grow and learn. I can only guess it’s jealously from their lack of ability to do so.

Now let’s address their defences of whitewashing, which is easily the most backwards reaching I’ve seen on this issue in a while. Primarily their defence relies on four repetitive “points” —

Fake minuscule percentages to downplay the high prevalence and extremity of whitewashing in the fandom

Deflecting the addressing of whitewashing with rapid-fire fake scenarios and claims of “reverse racism” / “blackwashing”

Claiming whitewashing isn’t real because people only care about it with Katara

Claiming that calling out whitewashing in fandom is wrong because it hurts artists

I have only so much as dipped my toes into the A:TLA fandom, and even I have seen a lot of whitewashed fan art. If you do an image search for fan art, I guarantee within the first couple rows of results, there will be in the absolute least, a few examples. The idea of these artworks not substantially lightening skin is also just plain inaccurate. Just from a quick Google search, this is literally the first result for ‘Avatar The Last Airbender Katara fan art’:

Avatarfandompolice is also hyper-focused on the lightening of skin, and seems to be under the impression that this is the only component of whitewashing. I come to this conclusion because when someone pointed out the equal prevalence of depicting these characters of colour with Western European features instead of their actual eyes, noses, etc., they rip a giant turd out of their ass and scrawl the words “but stereotyping” over it. No, not all Asian peoples and Indigenous peoples look the same. The original poster made no such claim of this at all. Avatarfandompolice jumped to this conclusion all on their own... (which really says a lot in itself). It is entirely unrelated to the point. The point being the erasure of how these characters look, in favour of giving them whiter features. And guess what? This does hurt. But I’ll get to that below.

The lack of understanding of whitewashing is on full display when avatarfandompolice talks about “blackwashing”; the idea that colouring characters with darker skin is just like whitewashing. Firstly, there is no such thing as “blackwashing.” “Blackwashing,” “brownwashing,” etc. does not exist because it is a false equivalency to whitewashing. It is a false equivalency to whitewashing because white people are not even in the slightest loosing representation when a white character is re-imagined as a racial minority, whereas when racial minorities are re-imagined as white people, they are taking away from what is already very little representation for us. If we lived in a world where the statistics of representation were not so drastically disproportionate, then there would be something to talk about. But if you are really wanting to support equality, you should focus on equitably supporting those who actually need it, not white people. As for specifically depicting characters like Sokka and Katara with darker skin than what they have in the show, the same applies, (so long as it’s not racebending them as we really shouldn’t be taking representation away from each other, and the artist avatarfandompolice ridicules above has done no such thing,) because colourism also exists within nonwhite communities as well.

As for the fake questions about cosplaying, the answer is really simple: Cosplay however you want, but don’t make pretending to be a different race part of your cosplay. If you want to cosplay Katara, you can do it without painting your skin darker, aka brownface. If you want to cosplay Zuko, you can do it without editing yourself to look East Asian, aka digital yellowface. The racist history behind this is an internet search away, but I suppose that is too difficult for avatarfandompolice to do.

Avatarfandompolice has made multiple claims that people must not really care about whitewashing if they only call it out for Katara. It is laughable at best, and sad at worst, that this is the conclusion they come to, and not the fact that unfortunately Katara just happens to be subjected to more whitewashing than other characters. I assume this is from a mix of her popularity as well as being a WOC and not MOC. This is not to say that whitewashing does not exist with male characters—not in the slightest. Half the images on this “10 fan art pictures of Sokka that are just the best” list from CBR are whitewashed. Only that across fandoms, whitewashing is more prevalent in female characters, by my observations at least.

Finally—and this one pisses me off the most—avatarfandompolice claims that whitewashing is no big deal, but calling out whitewashing is too harmful to justify. How fucking dare you put the feelings of artists who can’t handle critique of their work (that they publicly share) over fans of colour, who are constantly subjected to seeing our identities and looks not being worth respecting. As if it doesn’t imprint on your mind from a very young age how only villains ever have your facial features, because they’re ugly and I guess that means you’re ugly. As if there is something wrong with you. As if respecting you is regarded as extra effort, and not just common courtesy.

Whitewashing is a form of colourism, which is a form of racism. It is the favouritism, unconscious or not, of white features and the erasure of visible characters of colour. It is not fandom drama. It is not being too lazy to focus on “real issues” because it is part of a real issue. It is yet another part of why fandom spaces are so uninviting to POC. We live in a society that favours lighter skin. Corporations make fortunes from selling products to bleach your skin, products to contour your features away or go as far as surgery, all to meet beauty standards set by and influenced by white colonizers. That does not exist in A:TLA, and that’s called refreshing escapism. But it’s hard to escape that when the fandom constantly reminds you otherwise. It is a perfect example of how the classic “just let people enjoy things” complaint is nothing but disguised racism, because it’s only ever said regarding white fans’ enjoyment, at the expense of fans of colour.

None of the characters in A:TLA are white. Redesigning them and recolouring them as if they are, be it out of accident or intent is wrong. If you get called out for it, apologize, learn from the experience and do better going forward. You’ll also improve your art this way.

Beyond excusing whitewashing, avatarfandompolice has overt racist posts as well. A Black fan said they like to headcanon Katara as being partially Black; “I swear Katara was a sister. Im convinced there ain't no way she didn't have some black in her.” Avatarfandompolice jumps in saying “She's literally an Inuit but ok” as if being an Inuk person means Katara can’t possibly also be Black. The OP never claimed Katara was not Indigenous, simply that they also saw her as Black. Black Indigenous peoples exist. Black Inuk peoples exist. It is overtly anti-Black to say otherwise. But what even is the point of talking to avatarfandompolice about that? You know, you would think in trying to put such a front up of caring about the Inuit, they would do the most basic learning of the proper grammatical use of Inuit and Inuk. (As is the case with a great many Indigenous Nations, Inuit is both the Nation and plural. Inuk is singular. “An Inuit” / “Inuits” as avatarfandompolice has used just makes their dressed-up racism all the more pathetic. It’s similar to as if you said “Chinas” instead of “Chinese”.)

But all this is nothing, nothing compared to the worst post I had the displeasure of seeing. In a single post, avatarfandompolice manages to squeeze in insult against low income people, Mexican people, Jewish people, and Black people in a mockery of financial help posts. Absolutely disgusting, childish behaviour from a place of privilege. As someone who has had no option but to make such a post before, more than once, let me fucking tell you that the embarrassment and desperation when in that situation is unparalleled. It is not done lightly. It is done when you are at the last resort of having nothing but hope that the combined generosity of others will be enough to save you and your family. And what adds a whole other level to the odiousness of avatarfandompolice’s post is that they specifically targeting low income minorities to boot. Because we’re all poor beggars, right?

All in all, for someone who prides themselves in calling others ignorant, avatarfandompolice has to be one of the most obtuse fandom blogs I have ever scrolled through. They are as vile as they are pathetic, and my sincere sympathy for anyone who has been unfortunate enough to interact with them. It has been a while since I so strongly recommend blocking someone.

[petrosapian]

as a rom-com connoisseur, what does your ideal chapgone confession/getting together scene look like?

oh ho ho now that’s a question

So I think we all agree that it is Chapman who would have to make a move and confess, we the audience do not know what goes on in his head. Madeline is isn’t an omniscient narrator but she does have way more insight into pretty much every character except for Chapman. All we know about him is what he says and we all know he’s untrustworthy. I will take him at his word that for most of the show he was not attracted to Antigone. Dumb? yes but unfortunately the truth.

BUT Antigone has not done anything explicit on her part which I think is a bit of a flaw? The reason I refuse to believe Antigone’s crush won’t be a part of s4 is because she didnt confess and get any real closure and it was alluded to for the rest of the season bc she has moved on because she respects herself but it doesnt mean that’s it, feelings are gone bc that’s not how feelings work. She is over it, but if given the right circumstances where she is being recognized for the important person that she is, then it is not a waste of time anymore.

MY dream chapgone confession scene is a lil pie in the sky, im not a very good predictor but this would my personal fun time not necessarily good ask: fake dating

I want a fake dating episode. We are long over due for someone from Chapman’s past. Family. Former Co-worker. Ex. Someone he needs to impress so desperately. Cliche yes that the perfect man in a small town gets shown up by someone from his past but I trust the WO team to do it right. But that couldn’t even necessarily be the reason bitch could just need to be in a relationship to get money in a will. 

So Chapman needs someone to play his beloved significant other. Georgie finds him repulsive and isn’t single anyways. Rudyard could not convincingly play “In Love” if his life depended on it. Antigone is the only one left because Chapman does not want to go outside of Funn Funerals because of course not, Antigone to be a good playwright you really should venture a big part of acting

Alternatively it could also be a classic 90s romcom dare “Bet you can’t date the weird girl and make her prom queen material” except Chapman may be an ass but not in that way, he would approach Antigone and be like lets prove these people wrong and swindle Sid Marlow in the same move.

Naturally being in cahoots leads to love, it’s a hat trick, hiding a dead body, surviving a mine explosion, fake dating, the plots these two have had they are in it now. Chapman bring back his idiot lets join funeral home again, Antigone moves to reject, but he clarifies, it;snot for business, it’s for love, they’ve been through so much already, would it be so odd if they continue? Antigone hesitates, then vents her pining frustration and he gives some bizarre rousing speech, partially in french no less,she is still not so convinced but her feelings are stirred up again. Beth Eyre gets some insane soliloquy about how she has grown she is important and this fall back crux would be a misake(performed for Madeline) that fuels my personal anxiety spirals for years to come. She considers going to Rudyard and Georgie but she’s embarrassed. Who does does she turn to as her inner subconscious? The village hoodlums. she’s also considering leaving the island. They go on about how the notion of romance is nothing but a heteropatriarchal capitalism con sold to us by the industrial card and diamond complex. Antigone has a personal revelation that if she ever wants to at least try for a romance then she’ll have to grab for it when the opportunity presents itself and if it fails then it fails thats life

Chapman on the other hand turns to Rudyard and Georgie, why? because he’s a glutton for punishment Rudyard muses it wouldn’t be so bad to have Chapman to be a part of the family, they’ve softened up even more over the course of the season and Georgie is hesitant but does care for Antigone and doesn’t think it’s the end of the world. Jennifer is also there, offers to allow him to make another impassioned speech on the radio, this time he has had the added sensible touch of georgie and rudyard’s awful funn sensisbilities, Antigone hears it on the radio, knows this is (especially bc he uses a bunch of weird morbid references) she comes home and then they kiss :)

this really got away from me ihave no idea if itsin character i havent read this over but this is what ive got :)

[reefartandwriting]

Running out of Time Pt 1

When Luz had announced that she only had two weeks left until she had to return home, Amity felt her world shatter. She heard Luz assuring everyone she wouldn't be gone forever, she'd visit, and come back next summer… but Amity didn't pay much attention.

Luz was leaving.

That single thought was tearing her apart. This past few months had changed her. Luz had changed her. But despite that her fear of losing Luz was becoming a partial reality. And she hadn't even said anything about her feelings. Luz was just as clueless and dense as she had been during Grom, and their match of grudgby against boscha.

She wandered away from the group gathered. More than she had even expected. So many lives that Luz had affected, for the better. All smiling and wishing her the best and for a safe return when she could.

"It was stupid anyway…" she muttered, blushing at the whole situation. "Luz isn't going to like you back, and all it does is hurt."

All the memories of that insufferable dork came rushing through her mind. The library, their book club meetings, grudgby, Grom, and beyond. How close Luz seemed to get without even realizing. The effect it had on her. 

Amity couldn't take it. She couldn't take two weeks of pretending to be okay with Luz leaving.

So she didn't.

For the next week at school, Amity avoided Luz at all costs. It minimized her panicked lovestruck thoughts, and any danger the human girl would get her into. It hurt, but by not looking at the disappointment she could imagine on Luz's face, she managed. It felt helpful. It created a distance. Distance was good. The pain wouldn't be as bad.

Or atleast, is what Amity told herself.

It was another half week, just about three days before Luz had said she was leaving, when Amity broke.

The final school bell rang, and she gathered her books and made her way outside, ready for the walk home, when a familiar voice came from behind her, as well as audible footsteps.

"Amity!" It sounded mixed between happy and searching, like Luz had been looking forward to seeing Amity but for a specific reason. 

She almost stopped, swallowing thickly her nerves, but kept walking, the footsteps stopping. But they began again, and suddenly the face she had ignored was in front of her, and she was forced to stop in her tracks. She wanted to run away, but she was frozen.

Luz looked so sad, her brown eyes searching Amity's guarded face for emotion. "You've… been avoiding me." 

Amity tightened the grip on her books and looked down, hoping that was it, Luz would let her go in peace, and not trouble her again. And once Luz left she could try to forget…

"Did I do something?" Luz asked quietly, making Amity look up to meet her face again. She looked genuinely worried. She had purposefully kept close to a whisper, and reached for Amity's hand to grip it between both of hers. "Look, I know I mess up, and I'm oblivious and stupid. So if I did something to upset you, I want to make it right." She looked up with a smile. "And I know I can't just fix everything, but I want to try. I don't want to leave the Boiling Isles on bad terms with you…" her smile faded, and she squeezed Amity's hand.

"I- have to go-" The girl squeaked, blushing and trying to form the will to pull her hand away. But it remained, and she started shaking with nerves. 

"I'm sorry, for whatever it was… I affect people when i'm not even aware of sometimes. Please Amity, You're one of my best friends, I want to make it right." She squeezed again. "Talk to me."

Amity's facade crumbled, and she let out a defeated sigh. This wasn't how to deal with emotions. And looking into Luz's sweet, stupid face… she couldn't let her go. Not like this. 

And she couldn't let her go without being honest.

She squeezed her hand back, and spoke quickly and quietly. "Meet me at sunset. At the cliff close to the Owl House. I… need to talk to you. I've been putting it off. I've been afraid."

Luz released Amity's hand, smiling. "I'll be there. But you're okay? You're more important than me feeling good when I leave. You mean more than that to me."

Amity turned away, drawing a sharp inhale. "I think I will be… after we talk. But I really have to go- my parents will be upset if I don't get home for my study time. I'll see you at sunset, Luz…" she slid past the girl, a blush overtaking her face. She covered it halfway with the hand Luz had held so gently, conveying such a soft message while she spoke. How had she managed to ignore her for so long? Why had she thought it was how to handle things?

The hurt expression alone on the humans face nearly destroyed her. But that smile… that cursed smile… built her up all over again. Her heart was beating fast, and an unconscious smile took her over as she speed walked home.

Her study time at least soothed her, but she was fairly distracted, trying to find the perfect way to confess. She was determined to tell her now, even if it hurt. Luz was too sweet to not let her down easy, at least. The convincing and thinking took up almost two hours, and before she knew it she had to get ready to leave. She grabbed nothing but a piece of paper and a pencil, Incase words failed her.

It was such a quiet walk, that nerves set in. All the stores were packing up for the night, people were on their way home, and she was on her way to do one of the hardest things she'd ever done. 

All the magic, death defying, pressure to be better… it didn't hold a candle to this. Her stomach squirmed in nervous anticipation as she drew closer to her destination. She just focused on breathing, the sound her feet as she moved, looking forward and not letting herself overthink. 

But she came around the corner and paused, her heart beating again when she saw Luz sitting and looking upwards at the stars, seemingly tracing them with her finger and facing away. Amity could only imagine the small smile plastered to her face. Absent-mindedly adorable.

She closed her eyes and took a breath, approaching slowly and carefully sitting next to her, the paper in her hand laid gently at her side. "Hey, Luz."

"It's crazy how clear the stars are here in the Boiling Isles." The human murmured, turning only slightly to show a smile. "it really shows how it's a whole different world from mine. And I get to experience it."

Amity huffed, a hand tugging on her own tunic nervously. "Yeah, and all the near death experiences."

"Well- you got me there. But that's what gives this place charm." She smiled wider, turning fully, meeting Amity's golden eyes. "Just like all the people I've met."

"I think you're the one with the most charm." Amity answered, taking a breath. "And that's why I was avoiding you." She looked up with a guilty face. 

"Because I'm charming?" Luz asked, confused. "Is it a bad thing?"

"No! Not at all! I just- you're so likable. And after you said you were leaving… I didn't know how to handle it." She shrunk into herself a bit. "Luz, I've had a hard time being super honest with you… you came crashing into my life and I was so confused on why you acted the way you did. You were so determined to be my friend even when I was awful to you because you made a few mistakes. You're so happy and hopeful and stubborn…" she covered her face with both her hands. "...You were my first real friend in a long time. And you've wanted to do nothing but help me and Willow and Gus, and because of that Im actually happy."

Luz put a hand on her forearm, giving a soft caring look that Amity couldn't see. "And you want me to stay." She smiled a bit. "Amity, I know how scary it is. And I'm gonna miss you so much! But I can't stay… I have to go home. To my Mom. I was only supposed to be gone for the summer."

[baeddel]

@nitrosplicer i wrote a response which would be impolite to stuff into your reply box, so... [some thoughts on teachers, students and class struggle]

following the disccsion here

yeah right, i get that. yeah graduate students also having to teach is kind of a weird situation where you're doubly exploited, as a student in debt bondage and a teacher in wage bondage (but you're making almost nothing). and yeah i definitely had experiences of teachers who were able to get out of that kind of exercise of coercive authority as much as possible (partially this is because it was a drastically underfunded proletarian school where the mystification could not totally apply itself)

as a non-teacher and (thank god) non-student im a little less concerned with the practical ethics of everyday instruction (grading, detention, etc.) as much as measuring the class struggle on campus; while teachers are sensitive to their own class issues (they fight for more stable forms of employment, less unpaid overtime, some protections from being fired, etc.), its obvious that the teachers struggle is not also the students struggle. teachers tend to see the students and the faculty as one enemy, owing to the 'commercialization of education', where the university is reliant on students acting as customers & therefore tries to appeal to them. greater authority over the students with less faculty oversight is actually (in less explicit terms) one of the demands of the teacher's union. students, conversely, tend to see the teachers and the faculty as one enemy, because both exercise coercive power over them, and this is what is most immediately impressive. professor and dean are both 'sir' (or were in geargadem).

There is one argument for example, which comes from a teacher's labour perspective, that student evaluations shouldn't play a role in the teacher’s employment, tenure, inspections etc. The argument goes like this: students dont evaluate based on teaching effectiveness, they evaluate based on ... such and such extra-academic considerations ... and don't tell us anything about teaching effectivess, so it's not fair that teachers are judged on that basis. What is being obfuscated here is that the extra-academic evaluations the student is making are things like 'not being molested & being unable to tell anyone incase they get expelled.'

at the same time the pedagogical situation constantly re-presents the tensions between the student and teacher and, as it is with soldiers occupying a foreign country, the mystification becomes more and more attractive. students asking for accomodations start to look more and more like layabouts. you'll begin to feel that your students have an astounding lack of work ethic. isn't it interesting that they all wait until the last minute and then have an emergency and need an extension? etc. 'empathy fatigue' takes its toll and very soon one does not want to fight so hard against the coercive discipline they're expected to enforce.

what I mean is: when anon says 'gosh, you're a teacher, how do you live with yourself?' your answer really has to be 'well I do what I can but at the end of the day I have to do my job', and asking you not to do your job seems delerious, in fact impossible, and it is impossible, because you're being strung along by your own debt bondage and your own wage bondage. it is the very *real* need to, in the end, do one's job that is at stake, & this is why its so hard for us to imagine what role teachers might play other than an explicitly counter-revolutionary one. this is why we tend to triage teachers as the enemy and show suspicion, which is right and necessary. but for those who are already teachers the question may not be only to quit and find another job in order to rejoin humanity (as we tell cops to do), but to 'demand the impossible', to calculate one's real means and say, are there any points where these relations can be transversed, what is the potential of taking up an ear within pedagogy, what levers can i get my terrible little hands on? and to 'hurry, now, before a new police prevent you ... before a new repression convinces you its pointless'

[memoriashell]

seashells and shores ( and something a bit more )

Characters /  Pairing: Fukawa Touko / Naegi Komaru, ensemble class 78; varyingly background / implied ships are sakuraoi / ishimondo / celeschi / naeleogami

crossposted on ao3

Notes: a very late day 3 for @tokomaruweek​. beach prompt! yesterday i was feeling a little burnt out so i decided to not write since i didn’t want to put out something half assed. hopefully this being a bit longer helps make up for it! ( and by a bit, i mean i basically doubled the word count compared to what i’ve done for this week so far lmao rip so much for hoping i’d catch up tonight )

rated t for touko's trauma. and also for junko having her tits out. thanks junko.

anyways tw for like trauma, the general self-depricating / self-concious stuff for toko but also like. her trauma w/ water is brought up since it's. beach? and also drowning doesn't actually happen but it is brought up. and touko mentions claustrophobia in relation to her trauma offhandedly once, and again, just generally feeling insecure.

also it's kinda implied that chihiro and celes are both trans thank you!!!

Summary:  going to the beach isn't exactly an exciting thought for her, given the fact she has no desire getting in the water.

komaru seems dead set on making sure she makes some memories anyways.

Do you want to come to the beach with us? That is the first text of the morning that she receives, courtesy of Makoto Naegi. Touko considers asking who he means by us, gathers that he probably means some assortment of their classmates, and ( while it is very tempting to say yes ) concludes that she can safely say no. And she intends to do exactly that, but she gets a set of texts that stops her from being able to do so.

touko-chan!!!!

ur coming with us, right?

you should come with us!

itll be fun!

So Komaru would be there too— their...friendship is odd, all things considered. Not that the knowledge of knowing she’d be there makes the offer any more tempting, but she bites her lip and considers what to say. Not that there’s really much of a question, just keep it blunt and to the point as per usual. No point in sugar coating things.

I’m busy. Maybe next time. She’s not that busy, current manuscript aside. Not that Touko intended on ever not being busy. It’s not her fault that Komaru is too dense to take a hint.

awww :(

pls?

if u don’t wanna get in the water, ill make sure they’ll leave you alone. im sure you won’t be the only one that doesnt want to!!

Ah. She might have to ( partially ) retract her statement on Komaru being dense. Had she figured out her reluctance without her even mentioning it, or had that just been a lucky guess? Maybe it was just Makoto’s luck rubbing off on her...

i understand if you don’t want to come

and i’ll leave u alone if u rlly dont wanna come.

but it wont be as much fun without you there :(

Urgh. Yeah, this girl doesn’t understand a thing, does she? She’s probably not even realized the impact her words have on her. Touko grumbles under her breath, but figures she should respond before Komaru sends another text begging trying to convince her.

Fine.

I’m not going in the water, though.

If this goes horribly wrong, I’m blaming you.

That is a lie. Even if worst comes to worst and Syo feels the need to front for her, she won’t hold it against her. She’s the one who agreed, after all. It’s just one last attempt at offering her an out. To change her mind. Like she should. But Komaru is nothing if not stubborn, so she doesn’t really expect that offer to be taken up on. She starts making a mental checklist of what she probably needs to take with her, doesn’t get very far into that list because Komaru’s response is nearly instantaneous.

yayayayay tnk u touko-chan ily!!!!!! :D

we’ll pick u up k????

ur staying @ the place near the dorms right? see u soon!! ♡♡

Touko grimaces at the butchering of language that is Komaru’s texting ( and ignores her own fluttering heart upon seeing the casual hearts sprinkled in at the end ), and sends back, If you love me, fix your grammar.

The car ride over is mostly uneventful. In that she means she feels like she’s going to have a headache before they even get there and Makoto keeps giving her a sympathetic look. In other words, she’s learned that Komaru and both Asahina siblings should not be left to entertain themselves for the hour-long car ride, but the only silver lining here is that it was only an hour-long ride and hopefully they would be tired out for the ride back.

The highlight of the hour was that even if it’d been a tight squeeze in the backseat, that meant she’d been ( somewhat ) uncomfortably sandwiched between the door and Komaru herself. She’s a little surprised that it doesn’t set off her claustrophobia, but reckons that might just be because it’s too bright to remind her of being locked in a closet. And also because Komaru is generally distracting in close proximity, from the way she’d been halfway sitting on her lap, to the faint scent of what Touko figures to be her shampoo.

She also considers it a victory that she did not dissociate in the midst of that, but probably only because Komaru kept checking on her and apologizing for how close they are: she’d had to bite her tongue several times from saying something harsher than she’d really mean. She doesn't hate Syo, but probably counterintuitive to let them front today: whether they are aware of this, or simply just disinterested in trying to front right now, she is thankful. If nothing else, she would consider this some kind of learning moment. Maybe. Something to draw inspiration from?

Still, once she’s free from the confines of the car, she can actually relax a little— or does for all of two seconds before Komaru has grabbed onto her free hand and started dragging her towards the loud group that she recognizes as her class. Yuta and Aoi had bolted out of the car the moment they’d come to a stop to race to the waters ( she can’t imagine being that athletic and feels tired watching them ). Touko gazes back longingly at the confines of the car and the consideration that she might’ve been able to isolate herself there, but her grip’s pretty tight on her hand. Which is nice, and distracts her from thinking about escaping until it's way too late, and she’s forced to look at the group before her, and—

Slaps a hand over Komaru’s eyes with a groan. “Enoshima, wh-what the fuck, you—” She holds off on the ( derogatory ) word she wants to say, and just scowls at the sight before her. “This isn’t a...a nude beach? Are you t-t-trying to get us in trouble or something?” Granted she’s not technically completely nude, but also more revealing than she should be. Seriously, she would’ve figured that Ishimaru would’ve already told Enoshima off already because what else is he good for ( then again, he is single-handedly the only person who would probably take no real issue with it, or be naively convinced by her that it wasn’t really a problem, so maybe she really shouldn’t be that surprised ).

Enoshima cackles at her. “Don’t be a prude, Fukawa! Or are you jealous? I’m just trying to get a sick tan.” While she’s at it, where the hell is Ikusaba to keep her sister in check? Whatever, that’s not really important, and she refuses to dignify that with a response given that Enoshima probably only wants to get a rise out of her.

Instead, she makes sure to put a decent distance between them before removing her hand from over Komaru’s eyes with a huff. “Urgh, honestly...what on earth m-made her think that was a, a good idea?” She grumbles, glancing around now that she doesn’t have to stare directly at...that.

Actually, now that she looks around, the only seemingly responsible person from their class currently present was Oogami— and honestly, she seems too busy being in love with her girlfriend to count ( if it wasn’t kind of heartwarming, she’d probably be disgusted. Not in a homophobic way, in a general ew PDA sort of way ). As for any else viably responsible: Kirigiri being absent wasn’t a surprise, Fujisaki’s too soft to really keep people in check, Byakuya is...his own entirely separate category, and she would rather die than count Hagakure as responsible in any capacity. And Makoto might be a voice of reason, but she’s pretty sure he’s utterly useless here. Which is probably a horrible sign of things to come, but what else did she expect from anything involving her peers?

“You don’t want to go in the water, right?” Komaru’s voice cuts in through her thoughts, watching her closely before taking her hand to start pulling her along then. “We should set up somewhere to sit, then!”

We? She thinks, but instead attempts to free her hand from her grip and voices, “...Don’t you want to go in th-the water with the rest of them? You don’t have to, uh, to stay with me, you know. I’m not a k-k-kid.”

Her expression looks conflicted. “Well, yeah, of course I do want to! But only for a bit, probably? I mean, it’d be kind of rude to leave you alone since I asked you to come?”

She ignores the way her stomach twists at that, and purses her lips. “Technically s-speaking, Makoto asked first. You aren’t— it’s not rude of you to want...to want to have some fun without me. I know I’m n-n-not fun to stick around.” She knows she wouldn’t want to stick around herself if she had the choice. “It’s not like, like I wasn’t prepared for th-that.”

“Yeah, but— that’s the thing. You shouldn’t be! And I want to spend time with everyone, and that includes you too.” And now she’s sulking. God. Fukawa is about to growl back something she’ll probably regret saying, but is saved from doing so by a much calmer voice interrupting, having overheard their argument.

“Why don’t you go join your brother for a bit? Fukawa-san can join us if she would like to. We have an extra seat.”

Celes looks hot— and she means that in a very literal sense ( mostly ), decked out in one of her usual frilly black dresses. She looks out of place in the hot summer heat. Touko is also not sure where and how she managed to get a table out here ( and tea, apparently, and you know what she’s just not going to question it ), but Fujisaki is already pulling out the extra seat in offering, and she sighs reluctantly. Better this than feeling like she’s holding Komaru back.

“G-G-Go. Or...or I’ll let Syo toss you in the water.” Not really a threat - if anything, Syo would dive bomb into the water with her. Argh, maybe she should’ve just let them front today...

( No, no she shouldn’t have. The only person currently present that Syo would’ve mostly listened to would be Komaru— and maybe Makoto or Fujisaki if they were feeling generous— which is an entirely different set of issues she doesn’t want to linger on. Needless to say, she doesn’t particularly want Syo to cause chaos today )

Touko is saved from having to argue further with her on this because as Komaru opens her mouth to protest, Yuta comes to steal her away, blabbering on about something about a game they should play: and while he’s definitely as oblivious as his sister, she’ll consider that a good thing, just this once. The only words Komaru manages to get in is to ask Toko to keep her bag for her, which she would’ve done anyways, picking it up from where she’d dropped it. She watches them wander off ( and only looks away when Komaru starts discarding the clothes she’d been wearing over her swimsuit ) before trudging over to sit next to Fujisaki, who flashes her a small smile as she types away on her laptop.

“I am surprised you came, Fukawa-san. You do not seem like the type for these activities. You are usually quite disinterested in participating in these kinds of things, in fact. Did something change?” Ugh. This is why Touko hates being around Ludenberg. Because she’s observant, generally only bested by Kirigiri in that regard, and is generally good at picking people apart when it comes to lies and acts and fronts ( though Touko would argue this is from personal experience, and not from being a gambler ). And this fact would have irritated her, quite honestly, if she had not self-sabatoged herself by taking it as an insult, instead.

“I-I-I get it. No one really wants...wants me here. That’s what you meant, right...? You don’t have to r-remind me.” She grits her teeth. If nothing else, when she isn’t busy lying, Touko can appreciate her honesty. The tiny hand that wraps around her wrist stops her from saying anything further, even if it doesn’t take much to wrench her arm out of Fujisaki’s grasp: but she gets the feeling she is only able to do so because she isn’t actually trying to hold on too tightly.

“I’m sure th-that’s not what she meant, Fukawa-san...” Ever quick to play peacekeeper, she supposes. Touko simply grumbles at her and rolls her eyes. “...Especially since not everyone was available today, it’s nice that you were able to join us!”

“Yes, it is a shame. I would have liked for Yamada-kun to have been able to help with my tea, today.” Celes sighs as if disappointed— really? That’s what she’s on about?

Touko does a second look at who is not currently gathered, and denotes, “Is Maizono st-still out on tour...?” She thinks Komaru had mentioned something like that in passing.

“Yes! Maizono-san is on tour, Yamada-kun is at an important convention, Ikusaba-san, she’s...doing some kind of training...? I think Kirigiri-san is supposed to be on the tail end of a rough case, and...” Here Fujisaki pauses to giggle into her hand. “I sh-shouldn’t really laugh at this really, but Ishimaru-kun got sick. Oowada-kun had to force him to rest since he had been trying to work through it and made it worse for himself... or so that’s what I was told.”

Oh, so that’s the reason she hasn’t heard the loudmouths today? She might take back her sentiments on Ishimaru being useless, but he’s on thin fucking ice. Of course the overachiever would get sick during the summer holidays— apparently, she’s not alone in that thought.

“Only Ishimaru-kun would get sick during vacation and still manage to find a reason to not take a break.” Celes rolls her eyes, but Touko gets the feeling she’s amused too.

“So wh-what you’re saying is, uh, is that Oowada’s going to get sick next...right? I guess— we’ll find out if idiots get s-s-sick or not.” Touko quips— which earns a softer laugh from Fujisaki, so that’s pretty good.

Of course, it wouldn’t be like her if she didn’t put her foot in her mouth almost immediately afterwards by asking why they aren’t going in the water: she’s not really surprised because Celes rarely participates in gym ( and coming from Touko that says a lot ), but she was pretty sure Fujisaki wasn’t that self-conscious of herself. Not as much? Not that she really has any place to talk in that regard.

“Well, we already went to the beach at the start of the summer holidays! I’m not really missing out on anything, and it’s probably not my last opportunity to go during this break anyways.” And then, a little more sheepishly. “...Also I’m close to making a breakthrough on this code, I think. I wanted the fresh air, but I don’t really think I can afford to take much of a break right now.”

“She would have stayed on the train if I did not warn her we were approaching our stop, I believe. And not all of us can be like Enoshima. The brazenness of that woman is truly something else.” Touko is not sure if she says that from a place of respect or fear, and honestly she relates. And also doesn’t say any further on the subject because Celes gives her a dirty look.

Her gaze goes back out to their peers— she is pointedly avoiding needing to look at where Enoshima is— and spots Komaru and Yuta splashing around with Aoi and Oogami. Well, it looks like just splashing at least, from where she’s at. And Hagakure, who really just looks like an out-of-place sea cretin with the way his hair floats on the water’s surface, so. There’s that?

( No, she’s not at all envious of the fact that all of them get to have fun because they don’t have crippling fears: the ocean does not instill the same fear of confinement that a cramped bathtub does, but fear— there is still the fear that something will tug her down and her body will simply let herself dragged underneath out of instinct, a fear of something worse if she tries to fight for survival— )

Focus. She can feel the way her breath catches a little, the uneasy way her heart beats and concentrates on calming down. She doesn’t seem to have gotten Syo’s attention yet, nor anyone else’s, thankfully. She’ll just...watch Komaru for now, yeah. It takes a moment to relocate her, head breaching from underneath the water and surfacing like...like one of the sea’s legendary enchantresses. She means that in a wholly respectful way, of course, watching the way she shakes the water from her hair, mouth open in a wide grin while she laughs. Touko doesn’t need to hear her to know that on the sole basis of her appearance— the bright look in her eyes is enough to say she is happily enjoying herself without her.

On that note, hm. Maybe she can use some of that for the basis of her next novel— something about a siren and a lady visiting the sea? Tragic romances are always a hit, aren’t they? Okay maybe a tragic lesbian romance is more self-projection, but that's besides the point. No one has to know its self-projection if people eat it up like anything else that has her name on it.

Or maybe you need to talk to a therapist more often? Syo contributes helpfully, apparently having become more conscious at some point. Maybe her panic hadn’t gone as unnoticed as she thought. Not that they’re wrong, but talking to a therapist isn’t exactly going to help with her gay pining ( unfortunately, she wishes it were that simple ).

Yeah, that’s not something she really wants to linger on, and as if Celes can read her mind, says, “How do you ladies feel about a bet?”

“Pass.” Touko says immediately, because she is arguably far from a smart person, but she is smart enough to know to not take her chances against the ultimate gambler. Celes ignores her.

“You see, I would bet that Komaru—”

“No. We’re leaving h-her out of it.” Toko interrupts, and Fujisaki ( thankfully, like the god sent angel she is, even if she seems too good to be real ) nods her agreement.

“I don’t think Naegi-kun would be really happy if he heard us talking about his little sister like that...” Her reasoning is fair, if nothing else.

“Fine. Do you think Naegi-kun is going to interfere on Togami-kun’s behalf, or help Kuwata-kun?” A painted fingernail points out the trio by the sea. Kuwata seems pretty intent on forcing Togami into the sea, suit and all, much to his disdain. The duo is yelling, probably. On the other hand, Makoto just looks like he doesn’t know whose side he’s supposed to be on here.

In the end, it doesn’t matter because by some luck ( or lack thereof ) Togami manages to trip on a washed up stone and ends up taking the other two boys down with him. The heir doesn’t even look all that mad, really, as Kuwata dunks him back under the water in retaliation: she knows what his angry face is, and that is not it, even if it looks kind of like he’s swallowing a lemon.

Or maybe that’s just her and her sour mood feeling like she’s swallowed several lemons raw because Touko doesn’t know how to make lemonade out of all the citrus life has handed her.

“By the way Fukawa-san, about Komaru—” Celes starts, but is interrupted by Komaru’s sharp yelling, which is followed by the wet feeling of her arms wrapping around her. Touko frowns, pushing her away.

“You’re w-wet.” She states the obvious as she makes a face, not that that seems to stop her. “Are you...you're done going in the water f-f-for now?”

“Mhm! It’s too cold in the water, honestly. You’re nice and warm.” Komaru hums happily, and she grabs a towel from her bag to wrap her up in it before she ends up being the next sick kid. “I was thinking we could maybe spilt a snack...? And then we could make a sandcastle! Asahina-san was telling me about shells she saw earlier that we could use?” Touko bites back a small snort at how childish she sounds.

“Yeah, yeah— let go of me, s-so I can get up...” She agrees, ignoring the curious way Celes’ watches their interactions. She mutters something that passes for a thanks before she leaves ( not that she thinks Fujisaki notices at that point, full enraptured by her laptop screen ).

By snack, Touko realizes that this is more of a way of making sure she eats lunch— Syo had not so accidentally let it slip once that when she gets caught up on things, she has the tendency to skip meals. She bites her tongue on saying that it wasn’t necessary and instead pays for their meal because she can do that, she has the money to spare for that kind of thing: and she knows she doesn’t need to, but sometimes she feels like she needs to make it up to her before Komaru gets sick of their friendship.

And if it comes off like a date, that’s simply just coincidence.

When they return to the shore, Komaru drags her off to an area a little more secluded— she doesn’t really realize this at first, simply accepting her fate to follow along, but notices she can’t really hear anyone else. It helps her relax, feel like she doesn’t need to be so guarded.

( It doesn’t stop Touko from briefly complaining about how sandy she’s going to get because of this, which is annoying. And then immediately shuts up because Komaru offers to let her borrow her clothes, and she has nothing coherent that she can say to that. She eventually manages to spit out a no when it becomes obvious Komaru is waiting for her to say something )

“Well, okay then. You can always let me know if you change your mind.” She says, then, “Oooh, Touko-chan! It looks like there are tide pools over here!”

Komaru leaves her to pick out shells for them to use while she does the dirty work of constructing a sand castle. “So you won’t end up too sandy,” she explains. “And I trust your eyes to pick out nice shells.” She can’t really complain— although she almost makes a scathing comment about the fact that her eyes can't really be trusted when she wears glasses— and just keeps away from the waves for the most part. The water laps at her feet while she lingers around the tide pool, and then returns with the fruits of her search.

It’s...not an awfully constructed sand castle. Well, that’s probably more than a little generous to say. You know, if she was going to compare it to something kids made. As it stands ( or doesn’t, if Touko is being honest ), it’s probably not the most...concretely built and looks like part of the base might fall apart at any moment, but doesn’t say anything as she dumps an assortment of shells at her feet. And then pulls out a towel, so she can sit and watch her work. It feels like there’s another problem with this, but she can’t quite place what it is; it’s probably not important enough to point out.

Going back to the novel idea: maybe it’s not about a siren after all. Maybe it’s about a sea princess instead. A lonely girl drowning in the waters called home, in a lonely castle, and—

“Here you go!” Komaru plops a shell into her hand with no warning and beams at her. “It’s nice and pretty just like you, Touko-chan. So you should keep it!”

She definitely doesn’t almost tear up upon hearing that, swallowing thickly as she bites back a self-deprecating, Are you sure it’s not just ugly like me? Instead, she picks out a small shell from the pile and holds it out to her.

“...H-H-Here. Completely plain and, and average like you.” And cute, but that’s not important. Still, Komaru looks like she’s actually said something of worth as she throws her arms around her neck.

“Thank you! I’ll take good care of it.” She acts like she’s given her a houseplant or something of actual value, and not a shell.

Stiffly— because she still really doesn’t know how to respond in these kinds of moments, despite being friends for a few odd months now— Touko pats her back and mutters, “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It is!” Komaru pouts at her. “It is to me. Isn’t that enough?”

She opens her mouth to point out that she’d really just been reciprocating a gesture, but the wave crashing over them interrupts the conversation— oh yeah, she thinks absently. That’d been the other problem that she’d noticed when Komaru had started building, but hadn’t thought it was a big enough issue to point out.

Once she processes that yes, that happens, her first thought is how cold she is now, soaked to the bone. Touko represses a shudder and tries to ignore the fact that she will need to shower later because salt water gets itchy. The second thing that occurs to her, in the midst of this, is that now Komaru is wailing into her shoulder.

“I should’ve been more careful, I’m sorry Touko-chan! You’re okay? You aren’t upset, are you? I thought th—” Touko leans forward to cut her off. Her lips taste like salt, and vaguely reminiscent of the sweet snack Komaru had coaxed her into splitting. She wants to bite down on her lip, a nervous habit, and pulls back before she can accidentally manage to bite the other’s lips instead. The implications of that are a lot more than she’s willing to handle right now, and averts her gaze as soon as she leans back, so she does not have to acknowledge her actions.

That doesn’t stop Komaru from throwing her arms around her a little too eagerly, a grunt at the impact of their bodies colliding. “Too m-much.” Touko manages to wheeze out, and before she can start apologizing again, follows with, “I’m not upset. I should probably just...just buy something overpriced from one of th-the nearby shops since our clothes are soaked now...”

She takes this in fairly good stride, jumping to her feet and pulling her up by her hands. “Can I pick out an outfit for you? It’ll be fun!”

Their ideas of fun are very different quite frankly, but considering Komaru won’t overthink her appearance like she does, thus meaning it’ll be more time efficient. And quite frankly, she’s tired, so she just agrees. On the condition they can just go take a nap in the car afterwards.

Touko doesn’t quite agree with Komaru’s fashion choices, but she picks out clothes that cover up everything that needs to be hidden, so she can’t exactly complain. Nor does she complain when they do less napping and more snuggling in the backseat. Which means on the ride back, Komaru ends up falling asleep on her shoulder. She thinks about how pretty she looks in the light of the sunset.

Maybe she can rethink her next novel being a romantic tragedy.

[tauforged]

some ref pics of my baby boy laz (and some friends)! i’ve been working on fleshing him out a bit, so i’ll slap some of what i’ve got for lore thus far under a cut. post sacrifice/new war leadup spoilers ahead, ye have been warned!!! - his main deal is that he tried to retreat into a kind of void cocoon after being attacked and gravely injured by a sentient but accidentally pulled it in with him— killing it and saving himself, but now it is permanently fused with him because when he tried to heal himself in the void, pieces of the sentient got pulled into the mix and are now functionally keeping him alive. basically a tenno amalgam. -blind due to void scarring. before his void coma incident, the scars only affected his vision slightly, but because he spent so long in limbo the damage progressed to the point where he lost his vision altogether. transference into a frame with good optics allows him to see a little bit, but no detail - mostly movement and blurry outlines of shapes, so he relies on his squadmates a lot to deal with details. he still likes to go on missions, regardless - he likes to feel like he’s helping, and his friends and clanmates don’t mind keeping an eye out for him. - when he DOES go solo, his cephalon and equipped pet (usually masha because she’s my favorite, but he’s got a couple predasites too now that deimos rolled around that im working on building) will act as guides. masha handles enemies and generally just keeps guard to alert him to what’s happening, although she can seek out objectives or resources if so commanded. audri is his mission control, letting him know what he needs to be doing, how he needs to do it, and informing him of enemy movements in advance if she can. she’s not perfect, a lot of the time just warning him of a ‘projectile incoming’ without giving him a where when how or what, but they make it work. - audri is somewhere between a twitch TTS bot and glados. in orbiter she functions as a screen reader, which leads to his friends constantly sending him absurd messages knowing she’ll read it aloud and it will be funny. she cares about him and tries to be helpful, but doesn’t quite ‘get’ humans very much. she’s a little broken and glitchy but otherwise very nice :) i love her - the sentient he absorbed is still like…. sentient, i guess? its core is intact, so it’s become like an annoying little voice in the back of laz’s head that tries to convince him to kill and maim. really angry mental backseat driver. it has no real control over him and is pretty much harmless, just a pain in the ass. laz doesn’t have the heart to try to get rid of it, partially cuz he feels bad and kind of enjoys the company, but partially cuz he knows if they separate they both die. i’d imagine they grow on eachother and maybe even start working together a bit after natah’s betrayal at the end of the sacrifice and in the lead up to the new war, since it would hurt them both so deeply. generally tho i just think it’s funny if it was just there trying to be edgy but laz ignores it - the sentient limb he uses as a cane is completely unrelated. he just like ripped it off during a mission one time, decided to hold onto it so he could find his way around to get to extraction, and then decided he liked it and kept it. - the ‘void echolocation’ i originally had him doing is still there, but it doesn’t really substitute his actual guides. in a pinch he can get a decent idea of his surroundings by bouncing energy pulses off of them, but against a moving target it doesn’t do the job because it’s pretty taxing and with his current grasp on his power, there’s a long gap between pulses that isn’t conducive to combat scenarios. - he didn’t go into stasis like the other tenno - but because he was in a void pocket, he pretty much did the same thing. one of his clanmates found him and managed to pull him out, and the rest, as they say, is history. he doesn’t have a very close relationship to the lotus because she never ‘woke him up’ - as far as her connection to the tenno goes, he technically died in combat with the sentient, which broke that link off, even after he was revived. he doesn’t trust her much, but most of his information about her comes from his friends who are pretty torn up about her turning on them, since she doesn’t really… talk to him at all. because he’s technically dead. - he really likes animals. conservation is his passion. born to tranq world is a fuck 5000000000 floofs

[itachi-uchiha-deserved-better]

For the Uchihas won AU, I feel like all the clans would have such different reactions. Wonder what would happen to the Hyuga specifically. Genocide? All sealed? Exiled? Secret resistance? Hmmm 🤔

Wondering about the eventual downfall too. Fugaku just goes off the rails and Itachi steps in with backup? Hmmm very interesting to noodle over.

Oh absolutely. It's basically civil war in the hidden leaf. I feel like most of the clans would either side against the Uchiha or maybe would be convinced enough by the revelations about Danzo and Hiruzen to remain mostly neutral until the fighting is over. I think the Jonin and other Shinobi that don't come from a specific clan would be more likely to side with the Uchiha because they're the ones who would have been treated differently and discriminated against in a way that is most similar to the Uchiha. I think that they're the easiest ones for Itachi and Mikoto (because lets be real, Fugaku isn't convincing anyone without those two) are able to turn.

I don't see the Uchiha genociding the other clans. That was never the intent of the coup. As much of an ass as Fugaku was, I really do believe his intentions were at least partially good. Partially selfish because he feels wronged for being passed over for Hokage, but partially good because he really believes that the leaf should be better than segregating the clans and discriminating against them for one person's misdeeds. And any support the Uchiha had would disappear the moment that kind of aggression was even suggested. I do think that clans who support Hiruzen or who refuse to follow Fugaku and the Uchiha would be given a chance to leave Konoha with the knowledge that they would become enemies of the hidden leaf. Ultimately, I think it would be each person's choice, and Fugaku would offer refuge to members of clans who want to stay.

Im sure some clans leave, but I think most of the older clans stay, possibly forming an underground resistance. I think the main family of the Hyuga probably leave, but I could see a number of the branch families staying.

As for the downfall, There are plenty of ways I could see it happening. Maybe Fugaku bungles the handling of the fourth shinobi war. All the other villages come together to face the akatsuki threat, but the moment someone tries to insinuate that it may be an Uchiha behind them (be it Madara or not) Fugaku's paranoia takes over and he refuses to cooperate with the other villages, maybe going so far as to insinuate that the Akatsuki is an attempt by the other Villages to overthrow the leaf and destroy the land of fire. Tobi uses that to his advantage to take his revenge against the Uchiha clan and the Pein attack happens. The village is alone, with no allies and they're completely unprepared when it comes. The whole village is decimated. If we want a bit of a redemption, Fugaku realizes his mistake as he watches people fall around him and he gets to die protecting as many people as he can. If his corruption is complete, then maybe he tries to flee the village while Itachi and Mikoto fight to protect people. When Itachi finally finds him, he shames his father, telling him that he was no better than Hiruzen leaving Minato and Kushina to die when he could have done something to save them before he captures him and brings him back to the hidden leaf to face justice. Then it becomes Itachi's job to unite the clans and to repair relations with the other villages to defeat the Akatsuki and Madara.

[angrylizardjacket]

mouth full of white lies {Machine Gun Kelly} 2

2. i been fronting that it’s just for the summer

Summary: So you’re together, sort of, and it’s great! Everyone seems to be convinced, that’s not the issue. The issue comes when you fly to LA for filming, and you decide to stay with Colson, but the room only has one bed. And the paparazzi crash your first “date”. And he kisses you and your heart feels like it’s going to burst out of your chest, which is not supposed to happen because this isn’t a real relationship! But it’s fine. Probably. 

A/N: So bare with me, it’s a very long chapter. Also, pretend the Tunnel of Love remix by haroinfather came out before 2018 and not in 2019. Enjoy. 

the brainstrust: @sataninsatin @silvertonguedserpent @juliarose21 @kellysimagines @estxxbritt @machine-gun-casie @harringtonstudios @misscharlottelee @narcvissa @hiworlditishumbleme @angelwarner28 @nevilles-insinuations @rumoured-whispers @mgkobsessed @edwardtriggerhandzz @suckerforbarnes @wastelcve @bakerkells @local-troubled-writer @freddiessmallnipples @oopsiedoopsie23

----

It feels like you’re braced for impact when you walk into rehearsals the day after you release the video. Douglas has already seen it, of course he has, he messages you minutes after it’s posted.

[Dig Doug: Not gonna say I Told You So, but im glad you’re happy. 🦆🦆]

It gets you to smile, despite your anxiety surrounding the whole situation.

“Now what?” Colson asked after the video was posted, sitting next to you on his bed. The duvet is so soft, and somehow the whole situation is so inherently soft. Maybe it’s that you’re both in hoodies and sweat pants. Maybe it’s that you’d just told the world that you’re dating. His eyes are so blue.

You phone goes off. 

His phone goes off. 

Both of you have Twitter muted, but even so, it needed to let you both know that you were getting a lot of mentions.

“Now we’re dating,” you say, flipping your phone over, while Colson picks his up, opening Twitter and beginning to scroll through his mentions. Where in the Hell were you meant to go from here.

“Alright, cool; you wanna get pizza or something?” He asks, simple as that, and it’s now you seem to realise that you’ve been so stressed from everything that had been happening that you hadn’t been remembering to feed yourself.

“Honestly, I’d love to.”

The next day, however, it’s the elephant in the room; the others don’t say anything, but everyone, even Douglas to some extent, was wondering how in the hell they had missed your apparent relationship. But it’s not awkward; you and Colson act the same as always, you take notes for Josy, and get coffee, and type away on your laptop. 

They break for lunch, and you look up from your work only to see Josy making a beeline for you, an intimidating look of determination written all over her face. Ah, here’s where the interrogation begins. Glancing over your shoulder you see Colson shoot you an amused, if concerned look, glancing to Josy. In response, you shrug; it can’t be helped.

“We need to talk,” Josy tells you, steers you from the room, across the parking lot, into a whole new building, where she paces for about three minutes, unable to look at you, hands basically pulling out her hair, all of which amuses you greatly. When she comes to a stop in front of you, it’s as if you can see the cogs of her brain turning, her fingers steepled in front of her mouth as she tries to order her thoughts.

“You know you’re my favourite assistant in the world and I treasure our friendship, right?” She asks, and you fix her with a fondly exasperated stare.

“Of course, you see fit to remind me every time I bring you coffee -”

“Then why, my little duck, my little goose, apple of my eye, enchilada of my bosom,” she says with an almost poisonous sweetness, looking you directly in the eye, “would you date one of my actors?” And you have to hold back your laughter in the face of her sincere and rather angry confusion.

“Josy, please,” you start, and she already looks like she wants to interrupt, “I like him is all, okay? I won’t be a distraction -” you can already see her trying to protest, but you hold up your hand to stop her, “and he won’t distract me; if anything, it means there’ll be no outside distractions, hopefully.”

“[Y/N] you test me,” Josy sighs deeply, scrubbing at her face, “how long?”

This gives you cause for hesitation, because neither you nor Colson had thought to get your whole story straight the night before. He had ordered room service and you’d just talked about music until you finally went back to your own room. An oversight, sure, but you had been glad to have a plan, and were happy to figure out the details later.

“A few weeks -” when you say this, Josy makes a choked, wheezing noise, and you pause, “since... uh, since he took us around the city at the end of the first week.”

“Does Douglas know?”

“He’s not my handler,” you fire off reflexively, and Josy winces, a little sheepish, “but yes.” You paused. “Now.”

Josy lets the whole conversation slide with some reluctance, and she asks you to get her lunch from the deli a few blocks away. You agree, partially because it’s your job, but mostly because you’re just glad to get out of the building and away from her exasperated, judgmental stares.

He’s corrupting you. It’s what the media thinks. It’s what Josy thinks. And something about the assumption is already starting to get under your skin. But right as you start to get truly annoyed by the subtext she had been blasting you with, you hear your phone chime.

[Colson: am i gonna get The Talk from my AD later on? Ducky: wot Colson: like u no... if you hurt my daughter im gonna hurt you Ducky: Josys not my mom??? shes like 3 years older than me???? Colson: its a joke. chill ducky. everything alright tho? Ducky: told her wed been dating since that night i filmed a few weeks ago Colson: smart. everyone thinks weve been together since then nyways Ducky: you want anything from the deli? Colson: what Ducky: im at the deli. u want a sandwich? Colson: yeh sure. surprise me. maybe chicken idk. webber wants a chocolate milk Ducky: milks bad for vocal cords Colson: he doesnt care 😈]

It makes you laugh. He makes you laugh. It’s as easy as that; you’re still friends, it’s just that you spend more time together, are closer, when you go out for dinner with the cast, he’s invariably beside you. You’re both always on time to rehearsals, and he keeps sending you selfies from costume and makeup tests, and it’s going fine, great even, despite all the nasty DMs you were still receiving. Of course the supportive ones always outweighed the negative, and even the negative didn’t really bother you, because it’s not as if there was a real relationship in jeopardy, so it actually took a lot of weight off your shoulders.

Filming is set to start on location in LA after about a month and a half of rehearsals, and while the first month had primarily been working on scenes, the extra fortnight you’d been there had been almost consistently rehearsing as a band for eight hours a day, six days a week. The day before you’re due to fly off, the whole cast looks exhausted at brunch. 

“Pass me the salt,” Colson yawns, half asleep with his head against the window of the cafe.

“It’s right in front of you,” you counter, knocking his knee with yours beneath the table.

“My arms don’t work,” he groaned, but he was smiling now, just a little. You look to the other cast members all enjoying their own respective breakfasts. Daniel’s on voice rest, despite the fact that they’re going to be using recordings of Motley Crue themselves for the actual film, they still want him able to perform covers for when they’re filming; currently he’s nursing a lemon and ginger tea with enough honey to drown a bee. Actually, Colson was the only one out of the four of them not to be drinking tea; both Iwan and Douglas both having ordered a cup with their breakfasts. Iwan was the only one who looked ready for the day, with the rest of them all slumped over in various states of exhaustion.

“Ducky, come on, please?” Colson actually whined, and you rolled your eyes, passing him the salt.

“You’re so needy,” you tell him, but your smile is enough to let him know that you’re joking.

“Why’re you called Duck, if I may ask?” Iwan asks, and you heave a sigh, knowing Douglas was already smiling before you even turn to look at him.

“Because when our parents first brought her home, all she did was follow me around like a duckling,” his tone is all fond, and he wraps his arm around your shoulders, pulling you in for a side hug despite your indignant noise of protest.

“Adorable,” Iwan grins over the lip of his cup. You just groan, and steal a bite of Douglas’ pancakes, though he doesn’t seem to mind, “have you worked much in the industry?” Iwan’s accent sounds like home, and despite how quiet and bitter he is in character, he’s rather bright and talkative as a person.

“Here and there; I actually spent quite a few of my teenage years as Doug’s assistant when he would be filming in London,” you say with a half-smile, “still a bit of a duck I suppose, but it looks good on my CV. I do odd-jobs on sets here and there back home, have been a runner for a few TV shows, but I don’t really go out of my way to be on camera, you know,” you shrug, before hearing your mistake. Both Colson and Douglas are already laughing, while Daniel and Iwan just seem confused. “Apart from, like, my actual job, you know? Like I’m on camera for YouTube, but not for a real movie or anything.”

“Well you seem very good at your job, we’re glad to have you onboard,” Iwan nods with a surprisingly sincere smile. Beneath the table, Colson’s hand is on your knee, and he gives you a small squeeze.

“I thought your hands didn’t work?” You raise an eyebrow at him, and Douglas almost spits his drink all over Daniel at the implication.

“Excuse me?” His eyes are wide as saucers and Colson’s quickly turning red.

“I said my arms don’t work but damn, call me out why don’t you?” He splutters, raising his hands in the air in mock surrender, with only mild wincing. It’s about now that you realise the assumption that your brother had jumped to.

“His hand was on my knee, Doug, I was trying to make a joke,” you explain, flustered, though Daniel and Iwan on the other side of the booth have collapsed on top of each other with laughter. You, Douglas, and Colson, however, are all equally mortified, and make a point to move so neither of you are touching as you finish your breakfast quickly.

“I just appreciate,” Daniel was still chuckling as you all left the cafe, as was Iwan, “that Doug genuinely thought Colson was getting busy with his sister at brunch, like, right next to him under the table.

“Nah,” Iwan actually laughs, his smile sharp, “they’re just really in character.”

“Hello! Hello and welcome back, ducklings! Today we’re flying all the way to sunny L.A, which honestly isn’t that far from Portland, but the production company was nice enough to not make us road trip it.” 

The video starts in your hotel room, and follows you as you pack your things, and cuts to a montage set to some royalty-free music, of you heading to the airport, of the cast yawning. Your brother buys you breakfast at a fast-food restaurant in the airport, and you check your bags; a panning shot in the waiting area, of every single member of the cast and crew that are taking this flight on their phones.

“You look cute,” you mutter very quietly to Colson, who’s sitting next to you, scrolling through Twitter with a travel pillow squished up around his neck. He gives you a toothy smile, leans his cheek against the pillow, and winks at the camera. 

The hotel you’re staying at is beautiful, all marble pillars in the foyer and beige and cream counters, and it feels like it might be too much. This is where the stars stay, and you? You know you’re absolutely not a star.

“Duck?” And there’s Josy’s voice, hesitant, about to tell you the jig is up, hand you keys to a water stained motel room a few blocks away. When you turn to her, she’s got two separate key cards in her hands.

“Yes, Josy?” You ask sweetly; it’s not her fault, after all, that you’re not a top-billed star. 

“So corporate wanted to put you with some of the other crew, they’re staying in a place down the road - it’s really lovely, trust me, and if you want it we can still get you a room - but,” Josy glanced to the cards in her hand, before holding them out, one in each hand, “if you’d like to stay here, both your brother and Colson are happy to share with you.” And at this, your brain stalls, looking at the key cards being offered to you.

“Why didn’t they tell me this?”

“Because they’re already heading up, but they wanted me to let you know that the offer’s there.”

So it seems that in the three minutes that you were mooning over the architecture, and giving the guys their space, since you’d assumed you’d be staying elsewhere, both your brother and your fake boyfriend happened to mention that you’re able to stay with them if you want. Douglas is not a surprise; Colson is. 

“How big are the rooms, I don’t want to -” you start, but Josy’s quick to cut you off.

“The size isn’t the matter; they’re big enough rooms, got really comfortable sofas from what I could see, but...”

“But?” You prompt, and Josy gives a smile. 

“Of course, it’s all about what you’re comfortable with; you know Doug’s more than happy to take the sofa, I just know you and Colson haven’t been together that long -” And here it all starts to make sense, and you hope the smile you give isn’t nervous as you ask which key is which. You take Colson’s.

The elevator ride up to the cast’s floor has you wracked with nerves, which you think is ridiculous; you can sleep on the sofa, it’s no trouble, and he wouldn’t have offered the room if he hadn’t meant it. So why does the idea of staying in a room with him, with only one bed, have your heart beating so fast? You’d been teasing each other, flirting and being cute together, in front of other people, that was easy, but since the night you’d released the video, you hadn’t really been alone together. You hadn’t needed to be. It seems like all you can think about as you walk down the beige hallway to your room, on auto-pilot as you scan your key card and enter the room.

It’s quiet.

There’s the gentle whistling of wind that comes from the balcony, the overhead sun beating down on the pristine, Hollywood beaches. He sits on the balcony, plush armchair, smoking a joint with his shirt off. Inside, it’s all white walls and gold accents, his suitcase on the bed, already open the contents inside surprisingly neatly folded. There’s a door beside you that you’re pretty sure leads to the bathroom, and the room itself is spacious, with a gorgeous, gray sofa sitting off to one side, and a wall-mounted television on the other. Just for the moment, all the fears and anxieties in your mind vanish at the sight of this pristine serenity.

Quietly, you wheel your own suitcase to the sofa, and pull out your phone. 

He’s stunning, like that, his feet up on the coffee table on the balcony, free hand tapping a lazy beat on the arm of his chair. You take a candid photo of him as he exhales smoke, and it catches the sunlight beautifully, with the water out of focus in the background. 

“Can I post this?” You ask, and he jumps a little, not having heard you come in, before his concerned expression morphs to a genuine smile when he realises that it’s you. Turning the phone to him, you show him the photo you took, and he lowers his sunglasses to get a proper look at it. After a beat, his gaze flicks to yours.

“’course, it’s a nice photo.”

“You’re very photogenic,” you brush of his compliment with a smile, and he pushes his glasses back up his nose, looking out from the balcony.

“You crashing here?” 

“If it’s not too much trouble,” you respond, and he actually laughs, though the sound is kind.

“Wouldn’t have offered if it was.”

Easy. Like everything else about him, it seemed, this was easy.

You caption the photo ‘the view from my balcony 😍’ and post it on both Twitter, and your Instagram story, tagging him in both, and you set about checking out the room’s facilities. It’s a normal, if fancy hotel room. Little bottles of soaps and shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom, TV with a bunch of standard channels, and a whole ton more that you could pay for if you wanted, it even had a set of cables so you could charge your phone, either side of the bed. The singular bed. Which Colson has clearly already claimed.

Maybe it had been a mistake to not board with your brother. 

“I’m getting lunch, you want anything?” You call, needing to get out of your own head for a bit, wanting to explore the city a little. He’s quiet for a moment, then you hear a strained ‘yeah’.

“Gimme a moment, let me put on a shirt and I’ll come with you,” he tells you through a lung full of smoke, putting the joint out in the ash tray provided, tucking the other half in his pocket for later.

“You not gonna vlog this?” He asks, half smiling in the elevator, hands tucked into his pockets. 

“Oh, shit, knew I forgot something,” you mutter, and you go to punch in the number of your floor again, but his hand catches yours. 

“We’re coming back after, don’t worry about it.”

And, well, you don’t.

It’s easy to talk to him, you swap stories about life in the entertainment industry from two wildly different perspectives, and you find a cute and overpriced restaurant to have lunch in. All the while, you’re so aware of where you are, how there could be any number of people snapping photos of the pair of you. It’s not like you’re being overtly couple-y, you’d only been putting on this ruse for three weeks at this point, but he pays for your lunch.

“Oh, I didn’t realise this was a date,” you admit, a little surprised, a little flustered. He shrugs, eats the last bite of his burger, and smiles.

“Why not? We haven’t had the chance to go on one yet, let’s take it for a test drive. Do they- are boardwalks still a thing? Is a boardwalk carnival still a thing or was that just the nineties?” You’re actually rather taken aback by his suggestion, and can’t help but grin, picking up your mostly empty glass to swirl the ice at the bottom.

“Pretty sure boardwalks are a thing, not sure about carnivals on them, but we can check it out.”

You each finish your drinks and leave, setting off for the waterfront. Feeling bold, you tuck your arm in his, and enjoy the Spring-time sunshine. The boardwalk, as it turns out, is still definitely a thing, as are the kitschy carnival rides along it. 

“I feel like a fuckin’ teenager,” Colson mutters under his breath, knowing you’ll hear it, “if we see a couple where they’re both wearing braces, looking like they just got out of school, I’m throwing myself straight into the ocean.” He informs quietly, and you snort at that.

“Not a fan of traditional cute date shit?” You ask, as the pair of you approach the ticket booth. 

“Not in the slightest,” Colson admits through his teeth while trying to smile at the attendant. The attendant, who obviously recognizes at least one of you, is doing her best not to look like she’s staring. You each buy a ride pass and head in, and the girl tells you to have a good afternoon, with a nervous sort of excitement. 

“This feels like somewhere I’d go with my daughter,” Colson looks doubtfully up at the ferris wheel that sat ahead of you at the end of the pier, looking more than a little perturbed, but his words struck you in a way that you hadn’t expected.

“Have you told her about us?” You asked, and he casts an unreadable glance at you.

“Listen, if we’re going to talk about... stuff like this, let’s at least do it somewhere a little more private?” It seems he, just like you, is acutely aware of how busy the little set of attractions is, and having already been recognized once, it’s almost certainly not going to be the last time today.

The gangly-limbed teenager working the ferris-wheel doesn’t even hide that he’s staring at Colson with hero-worship in his eyes, and he gives you a look over, followed by an approving, rather smug nod, before closing the door of the carriage. It makes your skin crawl.

“Why does everyone get to decide if I’m good enough for you based on my looks?” You hear yourself mutter, but Colson’s slinging his arm around your shoulders as the pair of you are raised steadily into the air. 

“Who gives a shit? They’re jealous, and it doesn’t matter because we’re not really together anyways,” he’s got a point, but your expression is still downcast, and there’s a strange sadness settling in the pit of your stomach. 

“I suppose.”

Once you’re high enough in the air that no-one from the ground should be able to hear either of you even a little bit, Colson sits back, lets his gaze drift across the horizon.

“I told Cassie about us, told her the truth.” He doesn’t sugar coat it, doesn’t try and explain his way out of it, when instead he looks tense, like he’s read to defend himself. You, however, nod, giving him an understanding smile.

“Of course, she’s your daughter,” you pause, and he finally looks back at you, and you think you see some hint of relief in his eyes, “I never expected for you to lie to her.”

“She’s a good kid,” he assures softly, “got a good head on her shoulders.” And now he’s turning fond, giving your shoulder a squeeze, “fuckin’ who knows where she got it, ‘cos it ain’t me.” Laughing a little, he’s surprised when you answer, voice soft and sincere.

“You’ve gotta give yourself more credit,” you tell him matter-of-factly, “you wouldn’t be half as successful as you are if you didn’t have a good bit of sense.”

“I knew there was a reason I was dating you,” he teases, pulling you in close, but you play along.

“Yeah, it’s that good sense of yours,” you returned, and he gave you a gentle shove. “Am I going to meet her at all?” You ask finally, and Colson gives another shrug.

“Yeah, I mean sure, she wants to come to set, so if you’re around you’re welcome to meet her,” his fingers are drumming lightly against your shoulder, “I should warn you though, she tends to vet any girls I’m getting serious about pretty hard, fake or not.” And yeah, you’re laughter’s a bit disbelieving, and though he sees the humour in it, he doesn’t seem to be joking, “she’s a good judge of character, and I’ll tell you now, I’m mad protective of her, but she’s mad protective of me too.” The thought of it is actually endearing, and you lean into him, letting yourself heave a sigh of contentment, glad to have talked this through.

“This would have been real nice to film,” he muttered, a teasing edge to his voice as the two of you stared out at the glittering ocean.

“Don’t even start,” you gave his ribs a shove, which only made him laugh, the sound warm and easy in the afternoon air, the sun moving slowly to the horizon.

Slowly but surely Colson was warming to the little boardwalk carnival. The two of you play obviously rigged games, and ride the rollercoaster that creaks ominously, and he even convinces you to share some fairy floss. He snaps a picture of you grinning wide and genuine as you offer him the treat, and posts it to Twitter with the caption ‘sweet’. 

There’s a Tunnel of Love ride that Colson had adamantly refused to go on at first, but as sunset was drawing closer, he relented. 

“I’m not a cliche! I’m not a fucking cliche!” He huffs, sitting beside you with his arms crossed, his legs so long that his knees came up almost comically. You’re filming on your phone for your Instagram story, and will later add at least two heart gifs, but for now you’re just obnoxiously singing the Tunnel of Love remix, thankful that you’re the only two on the ride at the moment.

“You so fucking cute, when I see you, I uwu, can you be my fucking boo? Can you be my sailor moon?” Hearing the smile in your voice, he turns to you, something about his expression softening as he sees the joy written all over your face that the camera can’t see, “and I don't wanna fight, I just wanna treat you right; I was aiming at your heart and I don't wanna say goodbye.” 

He just laughs, and shakes his head as the ride takes off, fond adoration written all over his face.

The sun’s setting by the time you’ve ridden all the rides you wanted to, eaten all the candy you could possibly stomach, and failed at enough rigged games that you were about ready to call it quits. 

“Hey I didn’t just wanna come here for the carnival shit,” he said, and you’ve got your arm tucked into his again as he steers you both to the edge of the boardwalk, where there was a set of steps down to the beach. 

“Under the boardwalk,” you nod knowingly, which he parrots back with a smile. Beneath the boardwalk there was a gaggle of youth, looking slightly older than teenagers, some still in uniforms from boardwalk rides, some smoking, most looking intimidating, but when Colson asks them for a light, they seem to get much less hostile.

“Hey are you MGK?” One asks, and when Colson lights the half a joint he had from earlier, he nods. “Sick.” The kid nods sagely, before his gaze turns on you. “And you’re that Booth chick, aren’t you? I’ve seen you on Twitter.” It’s not hostile, it’s genuinely curious.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Eddie, that’s [Y/N], do you live under a rock?” One of the girls pipes up, decked out in black, with a thick piercing through her septum, and an intimidating amount of eyeliner. The boy, Eddie, flushes scarlet, and snaps that not everyone watches the same shit as her. “I’m Samara,” the girl offers with a grin, offering her hand to you, which you shake, more than a little pleased with their various reactions.

“I heard yous was boinking -” a third girl interrupts, wearing a boardwalk uniform and hitting a vape pen pretty hard. 

“Emma!” More than one of them shout, though Samara is the loudest.

“Is boinking still the term?” Colson snorts, taking it all in stride, though he’s got an arm around you now, “Jesus fuck I feel ancient.”

“You are -” Emma interrupts, much to the rest of the group’s chagrin, but Colson just laughs.

“I’m twenty-seven you fucker!” He crows, and Emma cracks a smile, and takes another hit off of her vape pen. “Whatever,” he shrugs, “just tryin’ to show my girl everything LA has to offer.” 

“So you come under the boardwalk?” Eddie asks, with a skepticism that made you all flustered at his insinuations.

“Can you blame us for wanting a bit of privacy?” Colson smirks, to which the group of youths all collectively ‘ooh’ at, and he gives your hip a squeeze. 

“Try the one a quarter of a mile that way,” Samara points further down the beach, “less carnival, less people.” She winks, before adding, surprisingly hopefully, “but could we get like, a photo or something first?” 

Of course you both agree, and among the group photos, you learn that they’re all working around town during winter break for college. Samara specifically asks for a photo with you, where she plants a kiss on your cheek, looking a little flustered herself, muttering a quiet thanks. You follow her back on Instagram, and she gives you this starry-eyed look.

“She’s got a crush on you,” Colson snickers as the two of you head down the beach, well and truly out of earshot of the others, and you smile, finally looking up from your phone, a little endeared at the young woman’s antics. 

“Jealous?” You ask, loftily, and you expect him to laugh, but he goes quiet. When you turn to him, he’s regarding you with amusement, and something else you can’t quite identify. “Colson?” And you slow, now near enough to the next section of the boardwalk. As promised, it was rather secluded. 

After a beat, he leans in and kisses you, soft and unexpected, but his lips fit against yours like you were made for each other. Leaning into him, you wrap your arms around him, letting him pull you close. Not exactly sure what triggered this, you’re just happy to lean into it, enjoying the moment. And then he’s pulling back, forehead resting against yours.

“You see the guy to our left who’s just left the group of kids under the boardwalk? Hawaiian shirt and expensive camera?” He asks quietly, and you glance out of the corner of eye, only to spot the exact person he’s talking about, you make a quiet noise of confirmation, and you keep up the ruse, hand coming up to cup his jaw, butterflies going ballistic in your stomach despite now knowing that it was obviously for show, “been following us for the past hour.”

“Fucking paps,” you hiss, but before your expression can sour, he kisses you again, gives you a squeeze, as if to remind you to put on a show of not noticing him. Much to your surprise, he bites gently at your bottom lip, and you let out a quiet but pleased noise that neither of you had expected, and when he leans back, he looks both surprised and kind of into it, what’s more unexpected is that the exact same expression is written all over your face too.

“Back to the boardwalk, uber back to the hotel?” You ask, resolutely not talking about what had happened, but still smiling and all up in his personal space.

“Love it, let’s get out of here,” and he takes your hand, and leads you back to the safety of the street. It’s the first time the two of you had kissed, not that you’d realised it in the morning, but it was good, you reflect, it felt like it made sense. If you’re a little more giddy than you probably should be on the way back, Colson doesn’t seem to notice, in fact, he’s grinning too, humming to himself.

There’s two posts, one right after the other on Samara’s Instagram story when you check it that night, after having briefly seen it in the uber on the way back to the hotel. 

The first is a video captioned [gross thats my mom and dad] The video was pixelated as hell, and she hadn’t tagged either you or Colson, but you knew it was the two of you, wrapped up in each other, half a mile down the beach. In the background, her friends are arguing about something much closer, though one voice cuts through louder than the rest.

“Hey, Hawaiian shirt hipster paparazzi fuck! Yeah you! Give ‘em some fucking privacy!” And as the voice, who you think is Emma, shouts, Samara turns to focus the camera on the paparazzi Colson had spotted earlier, still incredibly zoomed in, capturing his sheepish, angry expression in all it’s rather pixelated glory.

“Fuck you kids!” He shouts back. Someone throws a can at him.

“Piss off!” Samara shouts, “we know you’re not taking photos of seagulls, cunt!” He goes to respond, but the group just starts chucking things at him. In the background, you can see yourself and Colson heading back up to street level, oblivious to what was going on.

The second post is a screenshot of a set of DMs between yourself and Samara.

@yourinstagramhandle mentioned you in their story

6:28pm

@yourinstagramhandle responded 😍 to your story @yourinstagramhandle: god i fucking love you guys, it was so great to meet you @unholy-samara-tin: 😅😅😅 it was the right thing to do lmao no stress he was a creepy fucker

It’s captioned [HOLY SHIT I’VE DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN].

You get dinner with Douglas and tell him about your day, and he gives you this sweet, if a little smug smile.

“You seem very happy.” He says, knowingly.

“I am, it was a good day!” You tell him, and he hums, but won’t say anything else on the matter. The conversation is taken up mostly by excitement regarding the makeup and costume fittings that they have over the next week and a half before filming starts, and then it’s back to your own rooms. At your door, Douglas calls out to you, three rooms away.

“It’s strange to see you so grown up, duckling,” he hasn’t called you that in so long, not since you were children, even your mother had abandoned that nickname for the mildly less embarrassing ‘Duck’ in the past few years, and while it warmed your heart, you couldn’t help but tense in anticipation for some sort of gentle, sibling embarrassment, probably to do with you sharing a room with your ‘boyfriend’. 

“And?”

“And nothing,” he shrugged, “never thought you’d become cool is all, a star in your own right, aren’t you?” 

“Of course I’m cool, would you like me to give you some pointers?” You asked sweetly, and Douglas couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“I walked into that one, didn’t I? Anyways, have a good rest of your night, Colson and Dan have gone out drinking.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” you tell him, and the two of you finally go into your separate bedrooms. He’s right, of course, there’s clothes strewn all over the bed, and the shower’s been recently used, and the whole little place has a warm, clean smell, like the last mist of some spiced cologne was still lingering in the air. The only light on is one of the bedside lights, and the lights of the city outside twinkle brightly, though you can’t see many stars for the light pollution. You crack the screen door to the balcony open, and shiver a little, though you tell yourself it’s from the cold, and not because the rather comforting and clean smells were quickly dissipating. 

You are alone when you try to fall asleep on the plush but desperately uncomfortable sofa, alone and struggling to pass out with the bedside light still on, not wanting Colson to have to stumble around in the dark when he gets back. You spend almost a full hour on your phone blocking people who send you nasty DMs, and responding to a few kind ones, and you post a photo of the roof just captioned ‘cant sleep’.

It’s just gone one when the door clicks open, and Colson steps in, pretty well coordinated, and trying to keep quiet. But then there’s you, staring back at him in the lamp light.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” 

Awkward silence.

“Why are you on the sofa?” He asks, hauling his bag from the bed, shoving his loose clothes in haphazardly, before patting down his pockets. “Sorry if I woke you,” it’s almost an afterthought, and he pulls out a box of cigarettes.

“You didn’t,” you tell him with a yawn that says otherwise, but you power through it, “and I didn’t want to intrude.”

He casts a dubious glance at how you’re angled on the sofa, but doesn’t say anything, and opens the sliding door wider to sit on the porch and have his cigarette. Without even hesitating, you join him, and your spine thanks you the moment you stand.

“Nice night?” You ask, sitting out on the balcony with him.

“Nice night,” he agrees, adding, “nice day all around.” And something about it makes your heart flutter. “You know you can take the bed; I’d rather sleep on the floor than have you get scoliosis.”

“I don’t think that’s how scoliosis works,” you say with a huff of laughter, but he just hums, “and you don’t need to do that, I’m fine,” you try to insist.

“You know you’re welcome to just share the bed, it’s fucking massive, I feel like I’ll get lost in it,” he actually yawns, takes another drag of his cigarette. 

“So you want me to, what, ground you somehow?”

“I just wanna know that if I roll over in the night and there’s something solid there, that it’s your arm and not like, the lightpost in fuckin’ Narnia,” he tells you, and breathes out a lung full of smoke. You watch it hang in the air, pale and silver in the light of the moon. 

“We’re gonna be in the tabloids tomorrow,” you tell him quietly.

“No-one reads tabloids anymore, we’re gonna be on like, those snapchat news things,” he says, and laughs but it doesn’t sound very amused. “Have you been getting less shit?”

“Actually,” you consider, “yeah, most of your fans are mad supportive when you ask them to be. What about you?”

“Your fans are cute, you know that? I was scrolling through twitter and I saw a whole bunch of photos of us like, photoshopped together,” he paused to chuckle, “some had flower crowns.” You can hear the smile in his words, and he seems quite enamored by the phenomenon. It’s a nice moment; he’s drunk and a little high and you’re exhausted, and you fall into bed like it’s a sitcom.

“Tell your spine I said ‘you’re fucking welcome’,” he tells you, and it’s so absurd that you laugh, even as you pull the covers up over you and snuggle in, comfortable as all hell, before turning the light off.

Then, there’s movement, and a loud ‘thwap’ as Colson’s hand comes to knock your shoulder, landing on top of the duvet. 

“Narnia?” He asks, and you give a small smile in the dark.

“Just me.”

You wake in the morning to the sound of Colson’s alarm, or more accurately, his groaning at his alarm. And swearing. And muttered ‘fucking makeup tests’. 

He’s dragging himself into the shower while you relish your days off, nose and eyes peaking out from the covers when he comes out of the shower wrapped in a towel. The two of you make direct eye contact before you mutter a flustered apology and flip away from him, though he doesn’t seem to know how to react, just quietly getting dressed. The rest of his morning routine passes mostly in silence, before you hear him open the door.

“If you wanna get like, lunch or dinner or something, lemme know, or I’ll let you know if the boys are organising something,” he tells you, and you call out a sleepy thanks in response. The door closes. Silence. You could go back to sleep, but you’re curious about the turn around time for paparazzi media, and you were not disappointed.

MTV’s snapchat story posted “MGK and New Boo [Y/N] Booth Caught Getting Steamy Under the Boardwalk” the headline.

The self-proclaimed ‘Rap Devil’ Machine Gun Kelly, best known for his album bloom, has managed to find himself locking lips with YouTube’s darling [Y/N] Booth, though you may know her best as the vlogger, and entertainment industry insider, DuckDuckBooth.

It seems new media’s hottest couple have finally landed in LA after their surprising hookup in Louisiana, set to continue working on some mysterious project that they keep hinting at, and they seem to still be going strong!

The pair were caught after a cute date along the Hollywood seaside - 

[And here they’d entered your Instagram story, from the Tunnel of Love, as well as Colson’s Twitter picture of you with the fairy floss.]

- after meeting a group of fans, they found somewhere a little more private to get a little bit romantic in a way that 90s kids truly will appreciate; making out under a boardwalk. It feels like it should be ripped straight from a John Hughes movie set in Hollywood.

However unlikely this pair may be, you can’t deny that they’re cute together.

[And here’s those traitorous, and almost painfully HD photos of yourself and Colson, wrapped up in each other, that the paparazzi had taken the day before, though with the legs of the boardwalk, as well as the ocean and the sunset as your backdrop, the photos themselves are surprisingly stunning.]

“Fucking paps,” you mutter under your breath, and screenshot the photo anyways. If it’s your lock screen, well, it’s what any real girlfriend would do, right?

[b0ttl3d-up-st4rs]

Well I'm gonna do what I do best and self reflect to an insane amount. This is probably gonna be a long post so buckle up.

To be honest my behavior for nearly the past year now is concerning to say the least. There's this little voice in my head that just desperately wants to get more and more hurt, more and more traumatized. Why is that? At first glance the negative approach could be to say its some sort of masochistic behavior and any negative repercussions as a result of this behavior is deserved, but I don't really think thats the case.

Self sabotage is a characteristic that can be exhibited in many mentally ill people and I am no exception. I think this behavior, of seeking to be hurt by grown men on the internet is partially self sabotage.

And I remember when I first started this shit show, I just wanted attention. Sounds mean to say, but craving attention is something the human soul desperately wants. And I was starting to feel some sense of self beauty but I didn't feel as though anyone around me was appreciating it so I tried to get attention from grown men because being showered in compliments and attention felt so good when my whole life I've never gotten any of that.

I think there's more too it, though. Looking back my whole life it's almost as if I've wanted to get hurt. In books I liked to sit around with the pain the characters felt. And its almost like I wanted to get traumatized. I've heard that people with trauma that they don't acknowledge is trauma or think its bad enough to be traumatizing seek put worse forms of trauma, in order to feel that pain is valid. And I think that's part of my issue too.

I do have unaddressed and repressed childhood trauma. I was given unrestricted internet at a young age and was exposed to the horrors of the internet. Nothing like straight up porn, but a lot of suggestive content. And in general being exposed to that caused me a lot of catholic guilt as I was raised catholic. I remember feeling like knowing these things were my fault. Many days I felt so guilty that I would pray to god to let me not wake up in the morning.

As a child I also questioned my religion a lot, which i think was traumatic in itself. Religion is a big thing. And as a kid I had a big issue knowing reality from fiction. Heck I still do. I remember as a kid my friend telling me that we were all demigods and one day we were going to run away to camp half blood. That the percy jackson books were real. It sounds stupid now, but I processed that as real and it was so stressful for me.

And I remember being 12 coming out as trans and as a part of the lgbtq community to my parents. They didnt react well. They said I was confused. My mom said I was both too young and too old to know. I fought a lot with my mom. And in general have a lot of unhappy memories from then. I was outed multiple times in my life.

My relationship with my parents still isnt good. My mom has a tendency to be toxic. I hate that I have to stay in the closet around my family its so painful. Like a month ago I mentioned the lgbtq community for the first time in years, asking my mom her opinions on it and if it changed since 2017, and it turned into her yelling at me and making herself a victim. It really hurt. I forgot how much it hurt.

I don't really have much of a relationship with my dad. We barely talk. Hes very emotionally distant. When I'm at my dad's house I sort of fend for myself. Its the exact opposite at my moms house. She's overbearing and never leaves you alone. It's like going between to extremes.

And honestly I can't wait to move out. My mom and I have arguments a lot. But hey at least I have some relationship with her, I don't really have a relationship with my dad.

I remember one time this year, I was during the end of a school semester. I needed to catch up on work because after talking to my abuser for like 5 months and then unlocking him I was left in shambles and fell into a really bad depression to where my motivation for school just disapeared. Im still dealing with that tbh. Anyways I had to go to a online meeting to choose my classes and I didn't get to choose the classes I thought I would be able to, and that made me really upset. But after the meeting I had to go to do am act of kindness (I chose picking up litter at a graveyard cause i like graveyards) for my school project but I was still distraught. If I was given some time to myself I probably wouldve been able to go without issue, but my mom wanted to go immediately. We argued. And when I got there I refused to leave the car because I felt so much like shit. We argued more. It was the worst argument I ever had. She even swore at me. Which she's never done before. And she ended up playing victim again. She does that a lot I guess. And doesn't really listen to my feelings. Whenever I try to communicate about my feelings with her it turns into an argument and she makes it about herself. So yeah our relationship isn't the greatest. And I think having mommy and daddy issues is a trauma in itself. Ppl deserve to have happy healthy supportive families.

Oh right and another trauma I completely forgot (funny how that happens) is when I was 14 and admitted to a mental hospital because I tried to off myself. It was so surreal and they forced me to learn how to make eye contact with people cause apparently thats "how they know im doing ok". Which is kinda fucked considering the fact I recently realized I might be autistic. And eye contact is literally so painful for me. It especially was back then. Anyways the place itself wasnt too bad but the feeling of being trapped overall sucks and being disconnected from the rest of the world isnt fun either. Also I dissociate all the time but I especially dissociated hard thru the whole experience. And sort of made myself into the perfect patient, repeating all their bs and literally lying to myself to convince myself that I was ok so they would let me go. So that was kind of weird.

Anyways I know I have it better than others. And honestly sometimes it's hard to tell what exactly was traumatic in my childhood. I probably forgot and repressed other parts of it too and am forgetting things. But needless to say these unaddressed traumas didn't help my mental state. And i do think that's a big part of the voice in my head begging me to just get hurt more.

Overall my mental state is fucked, It's been really hard for me not to be taken advantage of by another internet pedo. Heck the only reason that isn't happening rn is because no ones dmed me yet. Also I unblocked my old abuser and we are talking again now so thats fun. It definitely doesnt help the cognitive dissonance in my brain of him being actually a nice and supportive dude. I think thats also a part of me wanting to get more traumatized. Since my abuser is a nice person that should counteract all the fucked up sexual things he said to me in the past right? I mean others have it worse, had worse abusers that were actively cruel. That's part of the bitch in my subconscious brain talking. It sucks tbh.

Anyways yeah I probably need therapy but I don't feel comfortable talking about this to my current counselor and honestly its really hard to say out loud. I can talk forever about it by writing it down but the moment I speak words from my dumbass mouth I break down in tears and can't do it. Plus idk, I'm scared if I say anything she'll have to tell my parents and that my phone might be taken away or I'll have less privacy and for a closeted queer where my only current life line is the internet and my online friends: that is a terrifying idea. Idk. I'm fucked basically.

[lizzy-frizzle]

Bragging Rights

Lizzy and Sadu discuss recent events

(There’s one instance of implied transphobia)

Sadu and Lizzy sits at the dining table eating a meal, as normal. Lizzy shifts her eyes away from Sadu anytime she tries to look at her.

“You’re hiding something.” Sadu says accusingly. She squints her eyes, and stops chewing mid bite.

Lizzy retorts, “Nuh-uh! I...Just….Ok, so, promise not to be mad.”

Sadu’s eyes narrow further. She chomps down hard on the animal’s cooked leg, nearly biting through bone.

Lizzy sighs, “So, you know how you told me to not fight any more inter-dimensional immortal beings? Especially if it could kill me?”

Sadu slowly puts the food down, and slowly responds, “...Yes...”

“Well, I kinda...” Lizzy pauses as she senses the aether gathering around Sadu, “I’m fine now! It’s ok! Nothing bad happened!” “Elizabeth.” Sadu starts, “What did you fight?”

“I may have fought another ascian.” Lizzy admits, looking downcast at her plate, “He may have tried to send me to an eternal gaol of darkness.”

Sadu starts to reach for her staff.

“But I got out! I’m here anyway.” Sadu remains unchanged, “Anyway, I mention this because I learned something about myself.”

Sadu tilts her head, shoulders relaxing slightly, “Go on.”

“So, I told you about Emet-Selch, the convocation, right?” Lizzy continues, “I was one of them. Apparently, I was the Shepherd to the stars, uh, named ‘Azem’, an-” “Azim?! Like the God that Magnai believes himself to be?” Sadu stands up hurriedly, “NO WAY. I HAVE TO RUB IT IN HIS FACE THAT NOT ONLY IS HE NOT, BUT THAT I MARRIED THE REAL REINCARNATION OF HER.”

Sadu rushes out the door, muttering about the Dusk Mother not liking men. Lizzy follows her, eventually catching up and offers to fly her there.

“You’re pregnant Sadu, please try to take it easy.” Lizzy gently reminds her.

Sadu’s hand instinctively reaches for her child, “I know, but I HAVE to do this to HIM.” she pauses, “I will allow you to fly me there.”

Lizzy allows her wife to do this slight on her mortal enemy.

~~The Dawn Throne~~

It’s late into the afternoon when they arrive.

Lizzy attempts to dissuade her wife again, “You know I said ‘Az-em’ not ‘Az-im’ right?”

Sadu waves off the clarification, “You would have me believe that The Dawn Father, the representation of the Sun, named Azim, and this Azem, a traveler and shepherd to the stars, are different people?” she continues, “One could argue that the Sun does indeed shepherd the stars, and travels across the sky.” she punctuates this thought with shaking her head, “No, I believe these two people are one in the same, and that the Dawn Father is actually the Dawn mother.”

She laughs, “At any rate, it’s better.”

Her confidence astounds everyone at the Dawn Throne as Sadu Dotharl marches straight up to Magnai on his throne.

The large auri man rolls his eyes at the intrusion, and begins, “You taunt my grace wi-” “-I CARE NOT!” Sadu shouts, “Khagan, tell this False Little Sun the truth!”

The room grows dead silent in the wake of the announcement. The Oronir waiting for Magnai’s reaction.

[Oh jeez, she must be serious if she’s invoking my official title.] Lizzy squirms under the intense scrutiny.

Sadu gestures to Lizzy, forcing Lizzy to announce to all of these warriors something she would really rather not say, “A-As per Dotharl believe in the soul inhabiting life after life,” Lizzy tries her best Leader Voice, which is to say, not all that intimidating, “And through recent events involving preventing a calamity. It has been revealed that the soul that lies in me is none other than Azem, the Traveler and Shepherd to the Stars.”

Some light murmurs occur among the Oronir. Lizzy decides to put her hands on her hips, partially to remind everyone of her daggers, another in preparation to defend her and her wife if the worst happens.

Magnai stands up, angry, “Do the Dotharl then claim that not only am I not the Dawn Father incarnate, but also that this...this OUTSIDER is? And that SHE is HE?”

Sadu interprets the statement differently than Magnai probably intended, and immediately begins casting a fire related spell, “EXCUSE. ME?!”

Her temper flared, with a spell to match, explodes next to Magnai, causing everyone to draw their weapons. Lizzy included.

“Calm down, Sadu,” Lizzy calls out, “I’M SURE HE DIDN’T MEAN IT.” she loudly hints to Magnai.

But Sadu is already in the middle of casting another spell.

Magnai puts his axe away, and starts, in a calm manner, “I did not mean to imply any disrespect.”

Sadu launches the spell. Lizzy uses shukuchi to position herself in front of her and blocks the hit with a dagger. She looks into Sadu’s eyes, seething rage swirling inside.

“Sadu...” Lizzy tries again.

Sadu’s eyes flicker for a moment, then her brow furrows again, “Tell. HER. You. Are. Sorry.” Lizzy senses aether swirling around her staff, “Or. I. Will. Make. You. Sorry.”

Magnai must sense it too, cause he immediately puts his hand in the air, “Enough. You’ll have your way Dotharl. Khagan, I’m sorry.”

Sadu calms down. Not a lot, but she’s not going to kill anyone at this point. She puts her staff back, and everyone relaxes slightly, “Anyway. It’s important for you to know. The REAL Azim got me pregnant.”

The shock on Magnai’s face is no doubt what Sadu came here for. However Lizzy feels her face become flushed, “SADU. WHY?”

Mortified, Lizzy begs the gods above to end this day.

Magnai sits on his throne, too shocked to respond.

Sadu grins wickedly, and begins laughing, “How does it feel Little Sun?!”

Lizzy pleads with Sadu in her mind, [Sadu...please...I’m dying...stop]

With Lizzy as red as a tomato, she picks up Sadu, and walks out of the throne chamber. Sadu not sparing a chance to make a taunting face at Magnai as she gets carried out.

~~In the sky above the steppe~~ “You didn’t HAVE to do that.” Lizzy says sternly.

Sadu’s smile refuses to leave her face, “But did you SEE his face?? I wouldn’t trade the world to be able to do that again!”

Lizzy shakes her head.

Sadu continues, “Anyway, I love seeing how flustered you get too, so it was a 2-for-1.” she wraps her arms tightly around Lizzy’s stomach, and nuzzles her head into her back. She can’t see, but she knows this flusters her further.

“A-ah, Anyway!” Lizzy fumbles her words through the surprise hug, “We should tell Meeps about the pregnancy.”

Sadu picks her head up, “The miqo’te that was at our wedding?”

“Yes, She’s...probably not doing too hot I imagine. She could use some good news.” Lizzy frowns, “When I saw her, figured it wasn’t the BEST time to bring it up.”

Sadu rests her head back on her wife’s back, “Alright, Operation Cheer Up Meeps-y”

~~Meeps’ House~~

Lizzy knocked twice, and waited. Sadu shifts anxiously behind her.

“Are...you nervous?” Lizzy asks.

Sadu nods, “I’m a bit far from what I consider home, meeting one of your god-killing friends. Surely you can understand the apprehension.”

“It’s just unusual for you.” Lizzy responds, then she smiles, “is the pregnancy starting to affect you?”

Offended, Sadu lightly jabs Lizzy’s shoulder, “I’m the Mighty Khatun of the Dotharl. A little pregnancy won’t impact me!” her voice doesn’t sound quite as rock solid.

Lizzy just sighs, and holds Sadu’s hand, “It’s ok, hun.”

With her free hand, she knocks again.

Sadu takes a deep breath.

Asahi opens the door, “Hell-oh! Lizzy, and Sadu, welcome. Meeps...isn’t accepting compan-”

“Can I talk to her please?” Lizzy gives her best puppy dog eyes, “It’s super important, and I think it’ll cheer her up!”

Lizzy laces her words with her a chipperness that Sadu swears leaves her with a cavity.

Asahi stares at the couple. He shrugs, and sighs as he gestures for them to come in, “You can try.”

Lizzy let’s out a happy, “Thank you!” and walks inside, Sadu in tow.

He closes the door behind them, and points to the stairs, “She’s up in the bedroom, good luck...”

The two climb the stairs, and knock on the presumed bedroom door. Lizzy doesn’t wait for a response before opening it, however.

“Meeps?” Lizzy squeaks out.

The bedroom is dark, lit by a pair of candles on the bedside tables

The figure under the blankets remains silent.

Lizzy moves to the side of the bed, and sits down. She gestures for Sadu to do the same, “Hey, you know, Sadu is here with me.” She gives Sadu a look.

“Hey,” Sadu utters, feeling wholly uncomfortable with the situation.

Lizzy speaks again, “I’m sorry, I know it hurts. I don’t know what it’s like, or what you’re going through. But we’re here.”

Meeps doesn’t react.

Lizzy continues, “We have some really fantastic news.”

Instead of saying anything further, Lizzy gently lowers the covers from Meeps, and grabs her hand. The hand feels damp from endless tears. She moves the hand to Sadu’s stomach.

“What?” Meeps says, then her eyes widen, “O-OH!” She sits up and faces the couple.

Lizzy notices how red her eyes look. She lets a face of empathy reflect and tries to switch to a happy face, “Sadu’s pregnant,” she says with finality.

A weak smile spreads across her face, “That’s awesome.” she tries to muster. Her voice sounds more ragged this time, “Have you decided on a name?”

Sadu answers, “We don’t decide on a name until after they’re born.”

Meeps reflects on the information after a nod, “Ah, right, I forgot for a moment. I hope a brave warrior’s soul finds its way then.”

Sadu smiles back at her.

“Though, I did convince Sadu that if they’re a Raen, we’ll be naming her Alice.” Lizzy adds, “After my mom that adopted me.”

The sentiment makes Meeps tear up once more. Lizzy hugs her, rubbing her back in an effort to comfort her.

Meeps chokes back the tears, for a moment, “I think that’s a great name.”

Lizzy takes the moment, “Hey, I’m sure you haven’t eaten in a while.” she gets off the bed, “Why don’t we go downstairs, and have Asahi cook some dinner.”

Sadu chimes in, “Lizzy, it’s near midnight.”

Defensively, Lizzy responds, “So? Dinner is when you say it is, and I’m hungry.”

Meeps stays silent for a moment, then gets out of bed, “Ok, let’s go eat.”

“Thank you,” Lizzy says, “I know it’s hard.”

[cryptocism]

ive been scrolling through ur blog for a while (cuz ur dc opinions are Top Fucking Notch) and i saw what you said abt bart in tt 03 and f:fma and while i totally agree (it killed tt 03 for me lol) im super curious abt how youd do his development if given the opportunity?

I’ve been thinking about this one like A Lot so buckle up this is long: 

it would kind of depend? On whether or not he’d be in an ensemble team like Teen Titans or with his own solo series. 

I understand metatextually why he became Kid Flash in TT, since they needed him to be more mature and a more recognizable character and having him upgrade costumes/codenames is a good shortcut for both. But I’ve already talked about why it didn’t sit right with me. 

So, lets flip the script a little bit - the start of TT would be largely the same. Our boy Bart is on the new Titans team, and things are kind of awkward after YJ disbanded, also Max is gone and Bart’s relationship with Wally is still not doing great. Things are rough, Bart has newfound doubts to deal with, especially now that the world seems to have gotten harsher and everyone seems to have a lot less patience to deal with him. The pressure to be more mature and a recognizable character is coming from other characters now rather than an authorial need: he’s reminded to take things seriously, or that he should know better by now, that he needs to slow down and think more. So Bart decides a change is necessary, and we get the library scene. He reads all the books, he reappears as Kid Flash, saves Tim via bullet catch, disassembles a gun, takes down Slade, etc. etc. Here’s my departure from canon though: it doesn’t work. 

Kid Flash is not a solution, or a magical cure for immaturity. Reading a whole library so he’s miraculously smarter and more mature and capable is, at its core, a pretty naive conclusion. And it makes sense he would think that. But it doesn’t work. He’s still impulsive, distractible, hasty. He can’t put a lid on his own sense of humor. People still think he’s annoying or lazy or careless. And he keeps trying - he knows all this stuff now, he read a whole library! - but he’s still apparently too much the same person as he's always been. And even though he’s trying very hard to live up to the Kid Flash name, it still doesn’t feel like him. Wally doesn’t like it, since Bart is literally just imitating him now, which makes things between the two even worse. And Bart keeps worrying about what’s supposed to come afterwards, since “Kid Flash” is inherently temporary, and while Impulse was only peripherally related to the flash legacy, Kid Flash comes with expectations. 

Bart is trying very very hard to be ‘grown up’ and ‘mature’, but he hasn’t actually learned anything other than a bunch of facts (which are still useful, but) he’s just trying to be who everyone expects him to be. 

And this is what i mean about the ensemble thing, because this arc would be in conversation with the rest of the core four, who are also trying very hard to be people they’re not, but all in different ways. Bart obviously with the codename change, but Cassie, Tim, and Kon all have similar issues, they’re all trying to imitate people. 

Tim is doing his Batman jr. routine, reverting back to the persona he had at the start of YJ. He’s cagey and mysterious and does questionable things without telling anybody, because he’s de-facto leader of the team again, and he has to be better than he is. No more kid stuff, the Titans are serious, he has to treat it like a job, not like a sleepover. And this whole act is putting distance between him and his friends. 

Cassie is trying her hardest to put herself in a support role. Donna’s gone and she has some big shoes to fill (she and Tim could probably bond about that if he weren’t stubbornly trying to brood at all hours of the day) and she’s doing her best to just Be Donna. Cassie and Tim would work better with their team roles swapped, and they both sort of know this - Cassie is naturally charismatic, thinks on her feet, can maintain good PR, and when she’s confident in herself is great at leading. Tim is partial to planning ahead, secrets, and keeping in the shadows, and is better at being a confidant and emotional problem solver among the team (when he allows himself to be open among friends, that is). 

But they’re both trying to fit themselves into what they see as pre-ordained roles: Robin is leader, Wondergirl is a supportive mediator. But Cassie’s got a temper and little patience for people being idiots, and Tim’s not predisposed to spotlights. 

Kon on the other hand has a story that’s less about who he should be and more who he shouldn’t be. The Lex Luthor dad storyline is here (minus the mind control shit, although the threat of it is still brought up) and Kon is doing his level best to do nothing that could be interpreted as something Lex might do. While everyone is doing their best to Not be their own person, Kon has no idea if he ever was his own person. He’s questioning everything he does, wondering if it’s some kind of evil gene showing through when he’s angry or petty or selfish. He’s going through lots of clone angst. 

So they’re all dealing with expectations and who they are or aren’t supposed to be, trying to fit themselves into boxes that don’t suit them and then convincing themselves that this is how it ought to be. Kon ought to avoid feeling or acting in any negative light because any sign of Luthor is a sign of evil, Cassie ought to tone herself down and act like Donna, Tim ought to step up and lead the team and act like Dick, and Bart ought to listen better and be smarter and slow down and grow up and do his level best to just Be Wally. 

Throughout the issues they’d all get a spotlight on their various crises, taking them through complimenting character arcs. Kon would realize through a couple close encounters and chats with ma and pa and talks with his friends and citizens of metropolis that nobody is all good or all bad. Clark can be a real asshole sometimes and Luthor’s actually done a fair bit of good (usually in his own interests, but still we’re gunning for nuance). Turns out he doesn’t have a dark side to be tempted by, he was made from 50% complex person and 50% complex person, just like everyone else. Which means he isn’t destined to be the next Superman, or Superman’s next supervillain. He’s just like, a person. With his own thoughts and feelings that have nothing to do with genetics. 

Tim would wear himself out and hide it from everybody until he killed himself, but it’s only when he sees Cassie also wearing herself out too that his ‘somebody needs somebody’ instincts kick in and they’re actually able to talk about how miserable they both are. Through some trial and error they’re able to figure out a good co-leader system for leading the team, having each other’s backs along the way, which allows for them both being able to help out the other members of their team with their own shit i.e. Kon and Bart’s identity issues. 

Bart is, like Cassie and Tim, wearing himself out trying to be this perfect version of Wally that never actually existed. He actually hates the recognition the new name gives him, because people have expectations for him now, ones he can never seem to live up to. He’s bad at following orders still, which makes him a pretty shit sidekick for Wally, in fact he’s just pretty shit at being a sidekick in general. But, he reasons, he’s supposed to be grown up and responsible now, and responsibility is all about doing shit you hate until you die, so he’s probably on the right track. 

It’s only later, once he gets some support from his friends, who help him deal with things like Max and YJ disbanding and stuff that he’s able to actually sit down and have a heart-to-heart with Wally. Wally confesses that he understands the pressure to live up to a legacy, and how he did his best to just Be Barry when he became the flash. In fact while Bart was trying to live up to Wally and be a good sidekick, Wally was trying to live up to Barry and be a good mentor. Wally’s the one to tell him that Bart’s always done his own thing, and is at his best when he does. They both agree they suck as partners, but maybe they should’ve tried to be family first. And there’s probably a racing metaphor in there somewhere because speedsters love their racing metaphors. 

ANyway Bart returns to Impulse, forging a new path, getting along better with Wally now and hanging out with him just as civilians with no pretense. He learns some valuable lessons about how maturity can’t be learned in a book, and that he’ll get it himself the more he lives and learns from experience. The Titans all get along better now that they’re all sure of their places in the group, and they can all go on just being themselves without worrying about expectations or roles to fill or whatever. 

...If Bart still had his solo series instead though, id actually want it to go in a sort of different direction? The thing about living up to predecessors and trying to be some ideal version of another person works well for the Titans because they can all deal with a similar issue in different ways, but I think it would also be interesting to do the complete opposite. 

Lots of shitty things happened in very quick succession in Bart’s life that he had no control over: Max’s disappearance, having to move in with Jay and Joan (who are nice, but whom he barely knows,) leaving his friends in Alabama, Young Justice breaking up… Basically, things kind of suck for Bart, and all he wants is for them to go back to the way they were. Instead of trying to be grown up or mature or whatever, Bart is resisting every single encroaching thing about coming adulthood. Because all growing up ever seems to mean is that everything changes and either you have to leave the people you love or they have to leave you. 

So this series would focus mostly on that, both in his civilian life; going into high school, not knowing anybody, the few friends he does make are less interested in ‘kid stuff’ and more focused on dating and interpersonal drama, high school itself seems to be geared entirely toward the “what are you going to do with your life” question, when he visits his old friends back in manchester, they’ve all kind of grown up without him. And in hero life; everyone from Young Justice is trying to move on and not talking to each other, his father figure and mentor is gone and he's not really jiving well with the rest of the flash family, and people just seem to have less patience for Impulse now that he’s older. 

Growing up is hard. It’s hard and no one understands. Especially not when you’re also a superhero and have dealt with some quality trauma like losing loved ones and feeling yourself die. So it makes sense that Bart would resist that in every way possible, do his best to pretend like everything is still how it used to be, for once in his life just trying to make everything stay put. He refuses to get rid of his old stuff, he doesn’t want to treat any villainous threats seriously, people in school keep talking about college and jobs and tuition fees and Bart wants none of that, he acts out, refuses responsibility, gets reckless under the pretense that he never used to have to be cautious. 

And this is the part where I’d bring in Inertia, cause Thad was robbed and I want him to have an actual arc that doesn’t end with infant-splosion. Also he can have a good ol companion arc to Bart. Welcome to foils everybody, where two identical boys with opposing life experiences get to thematically compare and contrast with each other as they deal with the trials and tribulations of growing up. 

So, I’m ignoring every appearance Thad ever made after Impulse 1995, picking up instead where his story left off where he swore vengeance on his creators and disappeared into the speed force. And he’s off to do exactly what he said; Thad Thawne II is going to kill his namesake/grandfather/creator - the president of Earthgov. 

But, turns out assassinating the president of a whole fucking planet is a lot harder than he thought - Thad has planned extensively for every moment of his life, so once he starts going off script things predictably go a little off the fuckin rails. Thad fails, obviously. For one because despite how much President Thawne might deserve to die, Thad at this point hasn’t done anything worse than attempted murder, and making him a killer would put a wrench in any kind of redemption arc he could have. Also he’s acting on rage, in a highly emotional state, basically going up against the entire government. Of course he’s going to get caught by the science police and brought into custody. 

Bart, meanwhile is jumping with both feet into any kind of escapism he can find, which involves various time travel shenanigans and lands him in the 30th century. He gets to reunite however briefly with his mom, but the mission he had gets derailed by the appearance of Inertia. 

Every time Bart and President Thawne interact, the president always seems to make a bid to sway Bart to the Thawne side. This never works, which is part of the reason Inertia exists in the first place; a version of Bart that the president could control. When Inertia landed in the 30th century, hell bent on assassinating his creator, the President subdued him and eventually coerced him back over to the Thawne side of the family feud. No longer a rogue agent, Inertia is back to his old self, all about destroying Bart and the rest of the Allens. 

They have a battle, taking place all over the 30th century city, and Bart does his best but Inertia has the entire Earthgov police force on his side, and Bart eventually gets captured. He gets taken to some kind of holding facility, meets with the President who monologues as him while Inertia stands beside him like a good lackey. Then suddenly the speed-inhibiting cuffs or whatever Inertia had put on Bart to stop his speed malfunctions, and Inertia drops the act, now Impulse and Inertia working together to take down the Earthgov people holding them there. 

Turns out as soon as Inertia knew he couldn’t take out the president, what with all the military force President Thawne had on his side, he bided his time until he could. He uses Bart’s help to finally get President Thawne cornered, and the assassination plan is back on track. Except now Bart is the thing stopping him. He makes the argument about how murder bad. Heroes don’t kill, etc. Inertia insists he isn’t a hero. But Bart reminds him that that’s not how Max saw him. 

Inertia hesitates just enough that President Thawne is able to get away, and now the two of them have to make an escape attempt back to the past. Bart insists on trying to take Meloni with them, and they try but ultimately fail somehow (maybe someone has to stay behind to make sure they can make the trip safely, idk. At first Thad is willing to stay behind, since there’s nothing really for him in the past. But Meloni knows that President Thawne would destroy him if he did, and she can’t let harm come to either of her sons - and she does consider Thad her son, just like Bart. She’s had far too little time with either of them, but she loves them all the same. She tells them to take care of each other, and is the first to encourage them to be like, actual brothers.) 

After yet another tearful goodbye, Bart swearing he’ll find a way for them to all be together again, Bart and Thad go back. And they do end up having to lean on each other, because shit’s tough for the both of them. Thad initially wants to apologize and possibly reunite with Max and Helen, and then finds out Max is gone. And Bart has someone who understands exactly what he’s going through. 

Things get a little more lighthearted from here. Bart and Thad don’t get along well at first, since they’re both going through rough times and lots of changes and their first instincts are to lash out at each other. But eventually they form a sort of camaraderie through shared grief, then shared fish-out-of-water experiences. Which evolves into shared inside jokes and video games and comic books and they become slow but steady friends. 

They upgrade into brothers when Bart defends Thad against the repeated (and not entirely undeserved) suspicion he receives from the rest of the Flash family. Jay and Joan take him in, but it’s clear they don’t trust him, and neither does Wally. Bart stands up for Thad, arguing that he’s as much of a Thawne as Thad is, and treating Thad like he’s the next Cobalt Blue is just going to ensure that history never changes and stupid family feuds are forever. After this, Thad starts trusting Bart a little more, and kind of solves Bart’s problems regarding encroaching adulthood with his friendship. Neither of them really had a childhood, and Thad hasn’t experienced 21st century life at all, much less the societal expectations to grow up. So Bart gets to have fun again, and Thad won't judge any of his games or his books or his attitude or interests for being childish or lame because he’s fascinated by the experience of anything regardless of the target audience. 

And from there it's a series about these two becoming brothers and growing up and the different lessons they learn and wacky characters they meet along the way. Thad ironically also puts Bart in a position where he has to take on more responsibility, since even though Thad can imitate heroic actions and is actually pretty good at it, he doesn’t understand what makes them heroic. Bart has to draw on a lot of the things Max taught him and now has to teach them to Thad. 

There’s crossover comics with Superboy, where Bart laments about having to deal with grown up stuff, and Kon gives him a new perspective on the whole “being young forever” thing, since that was a reality Kon actually had to deal with and it sucked. 

Through various misadventures they meet new and familiar characters to give them different perspectives on the whole passage of time thing. Villains who despise children or childish things, villains who embrace it but probably too much. People who talk about growing up as the worst time of their lives, others talking about it like it was the best. Kids and adults alike trying to force Bart and Thad to act a certain way while treating them another. 

The two of them come to opposing conclusions about this; Thad wants to embrace change completely, partly because he wants to experience firsthand all that life has to offer, but also his worldview depends on believing that anyone can change, and anyone can be better, because he has to believe he can be redeemed for all the shitty stuff he did. Bart, on the other hand, knows his life isn’t perfect but thinks, based on recent events, that it’s all just going to get worse from here, and so resists change as much as possible. 

Thad, in his haste to experience everything, sometimes ends up going too far, either burning both of them out, or pushing them into situations that they’re not ready for or are ill-equipped to handle. Bart, on the other hand is so resistant to change or responsibility that he stops them from doing actual necessary things like planning their futures or doing chores or making new friends. This acts as the crux for their main conflict that slowly builds throughout the series, and then in a finale to the arc, they both figure out a way to get Meloni back to the past, and to raise some stakes they have a falling out in the middle of the mission about it. 

Bart accuses Thad of trying to leave him behind, or trying to be the better version of him again, and that old insecurity about Thad replacing him crops up. Thad thinks Bart just can’t handle anything outside his personal bubble and wants to force him to live in the real world. Plus he also feels kind of abandoned by Bart, who often would leave Thad to do the scary adult things on his own. 

Tensions still high, there's suddenly an external threat to deal with - probably president thawne and the science police - and they attempt to continue arguing even while fighting the president. I’m making this up as I go so lets say yada yada big climactic moment it's looking like the two might fail to get Meloni back and they’re both still angry with each other and Bart just… can’t take it anymore. 

He keeps losing people, and the ones he keeps he always seems to screw up with. And at the end of the day he’s just a kid who wants his mom. Is that really so much to ask? So there’s a reversal, a parallel, if you will, of the assassination attempt from the beginning of the series, this time with Bart. Or, because I don’t think many people would buy that Bart would actually ever for real kill someone, maybe he’s finally about to get his mom back, but she doesn’t want to go (since she made that deal with the president that he wouldn’t harm anyone of the Allen family so long as she stayed with him) so he’s trying to force her, risking the lives/well-being of the entire Allen bloodline across all of time. 

This time it’s Thad who has to talk him down, who has to remind him about being a hero, who has to remind him that trying to go back to some magical time in the past where things were better is just going to stop him from learning and growing as a person, and that doing anything and everything possible to get there is just going to lead to Bart doing something he Actually Can’t walk back from. 

Alright but here’s the thing because having Bart be forced to leave his mom again for like the billionth time is tired and overdone, and personally the whole message about heroics involving extreme and damaging amounts of sacrifice can only go so far. So here; Thad and Bart are both right. 

Like on the one hand, yeah, it’s childish and selfish for Bart to want to be with his mom at the expense of literally everyone else in his family. On the other hand, the fact that they can’t be together because some asshole is upholding a stupid grudge is bad and unfair and wrong. The issue needing to be fixed is not the kid who wants his mom, it’s the jackass keeping them apart (and who also wants to kill/imprison people). So Bart convinces Thad that they have to save Meloni, and Thad convinces Bart that there has to be another way - one where they get their mom back and the Allens don’t have to be hunted. 

The whole story would be leading up to the two of them coming to this conclusion; the healthy middle between the two extremes. Where they have the maturity to plan ahead and sort through their differences and figure out the best course of action with the least amount of collateral, but they don’t let go of that adolescent need for justice and fairness - that thing that makes you dig in your heels and say “no. That’s not fair, that’s not right.” 

SO here’s where I’d put the title card: “Bartholomew and Thaddeus Take Down The Government”. How do they do it? No idea! I’m flyin by the seat of my pants here! Do they run for office? Do they publicize the president’s crimes in such a way he gotta go to jail? Do they somehow turn public opinion against him enough to get him out of office? idk!!! And I don’t remember enough about Earthgov’s political situation to put an accurate read on what exactly they might do to disrupt it. 

Either way they don’t kill him, manage to free their mom, and they all go back to the past together. And a new arc would involve the three of them getting settled in the past; Meloni would be a main character now, and hers is a two-pronged fish out of water story where she’s trying to figure out how shit works in the past, with overtones of the struggles of being a single parent. 

And... I’m not going to say any more about that because this is long enough already oof. 

TL;DR I think a coming of age story would be cool for Bart, and having to deal with growing up when he never really had a childhood. Also the comic itself would be aimed at younger audiences, who can probably relate to having a Bad Time in the Teens and wacky hijinks with friends and siblings.

[cherryeol04]

Ghost House

Genre: Horror, Romance, Fluff Pairing: MarkBeom Word Count: 1.8K Summary: Mark and Jaebeom learn the hard way that you should always pay your respects.

Opening the door to the hotel room, Mark didn’t even bother to marvel at the lavish expanse before him. He took no note of the decent-sized kitchen off to the left, the large living quarters before him with the balcony that overlooked the city of Bangkok or the spacious bathroom that was decorated with rose petals. All of it would have amazed Mark if he hadn’t been so damn tired. The flight to get to Bangkok from Los Angeles had been a long one and not just because of the time difference. They had experienced such delays with their plane getting ready and taking off on time. And during the entire ordeal, all Mark could do was tell himself it would be worth it. It was worth it.

And it was. It was very much worth it as he made his way into the bedroom, dropping two of his bags near the edge of the bed and flopping himself down onto his stomach on the bed. The bed was firm, but not too firm that it would be too hard to sleep on. There was just the right amount of softness that had Mark’s entire body screaming in happiness as he relaxed and buried his face into one of the many pillows. The sound of feet shuffling behind him caught his attention, but it wasn’t enough for him to even bother to move at that point. He just wanted to go to sleep and pretend the hell they just went through didn’t happen.

The bed shifted around him, dipping in specific areas as a weight was pressed down on him. He groaned, head shaking slightly as he was trapped underneath a larger body. “No.” he muttered.

“But we just got here.” Jaebum chuckled as he lowered his head and pressed a light kiss to Mark’s head. “Come on baby, don’t you want to head out and see this beautiful city?” he asked.

“No,” Mark said almost instantly. “All I want to do is see sweet dreams.” he muttered, voice obstructed from the pillow. Jaebum’s laughter only grew as the other wrapped his arms around Mark’s waist, slipping under the other’s body. He pulled lightly, rolling the two of them over on the bed. Mark pressed back against him, a disgruntled groan leaving him as he was pulled from his comfy spot. “Jaebum.” he whined out.

Jaebum lifted his hand to take Mark’s left one, thumb running over the gold band that rested on his ring finger. A small smile played against his lips as he was reminded of the ceremony that took place nearly 24 hours prior. An amazing ceremony filled with love, laughter, and happiness. It turned out to be even more amazing than he could have ever imagined and only made better by the fact he was now married to his best friend and the love of his life. “Mr. Im.” he whispered. “We need to do some cute, newlywed things.”

“Mr. Im.” Mark started and looked back at the other with a laugh. “I am completely tired and I want to sleep. Must we do something today?” he asked, brows furrowing together in light concentration as he tried to force himself to stay awake. It would be so easy for him to simply close his eyes and go to sleep. It didn’t help that Jaebum was so warm and smelt so good. He smelt like home. Safety.

“But Markkie~”

Mark hated when Jaebum whined and the other didn’t whine often. It was something he only did if he really wanted to do something and someone was denying him the pleasure of doing that activity. Mark never wanted to deny Jaebum something he wanted, but he was extremely tired and he was afraid this was going to be the one time he was going to have to say no. “Bummie, no.” he said and he could see Jaebum’s face falling. “I’m sorry baby. I love you, and I want to do things with you, but I want to sleep. Please? Let me sleep for a few hours?” He tried his best to give off a soft expression to the other. An apologetic look to make up for the denial. It seemed to work.

“Okay, okay.” A heavy sigh fell from Jaebum’s lips as he removed himself from Mark, tenderly laying the other down on the bed with a small smile. “Then sleep well for me okay babe?” He pressed a gentle kiss to Mark’s head and stroked his cheek lovingly. “I love you.” he whispered.

“I love you more.” Mark responded with a smile, his eyes already lidded and fluttering as he struggled to stay awake. “See you later.”

“Sleep well, baby.”

~*~

Mark woke up with a jump, looking around the room he felt his skin grow chills.  He didn’t know what had woken him up but his heart was beating fast and he felt a deep pit of worry in his stomach.

“Jaebum?”  He called out gently, feet dangling over the edge of the bed as he moved to stand. The thought of the other being in bed with him was cast out of his mind because he was sure he heard noises coming from out in the living space. While he enjoyed the fact this was a large, honeymoon suite, he hated that it was also so big. The large spacious area, covered in darkness reminded him so much of every horror movie he had ever seen before. And like every horror movie he had seen before, Mark knew that what he thought he heard most likely wasn’t Jaebum.

So he turned, looking to the bed, and sure enough, Jaebum was sleeping peacefully beside him. His eyes focused past his husband and on the red numbers of the alarm clock on the nightstand.

3:03 am

A glass-shattering had Mark jerking back towards the bedroom door, breath caught in his throat as he waited. There was definitely someone out there and he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to go out there and find out who it was. Only idiots did that and they were usually the first to die.

Rushing back to the edge of the bed Mark shook Jaebum’s body harshly until the other opened his eyes with a groan.

“There is someone in our room.” He whispered aggressively to his husband.

“What- Mark..”  Jaebum whispered, shaking the sleep out his head and sitting up. “Honey you’ve seen too many movies, it’s okay. It’s just us.” Jaebum said calmly. Not seconds after the words left his lips another glass shattered in the other room.  Mark jerked at the noise, body tensing as he turned and glared at the other.

“That isn’t a movie!”  He complained, tugging the other out of bed and hastily pushing him to the door.

“Check it out.”  He whined. Jaebum threw him a confused look, to which Mark responded with another whine. “You always say you’re the man in the relationship. So go be a man.” He huffed and pushed him towards the door again. Jaebum stumbled forward slightly, body turning to stare at Mark, mouth agape at the response he just gave.

“You want to send me to my death?!” He whispered heatedly.

“You won’t die!”

“You don’t know that!”

“Oh, now look at who is scared. ‘Oh Mark, you’re so silly. It’s just us.’ Bullshit. Go out there!”

“Excuse me! I thought it was all in your head. You’re always hearing things. This is real, I can actually die!”

“Oh please, don’t be a baby!”

“Don’t be a ba- Then you go out there!”

They locked eyes, narrowed and heated. Arguments like this were normal between them; an everyday aspect of their lives. It’s what helped build their relationship and keep it working. The bickering was something that they loved between each other and it was during a small bickering fest that Jaebum actually proposed to Mark. It was just their life. And Mark honestly didn’t want Jaebum to get hurt in any capacity. But he also didn’t want to risk his life and be killed either. It was a lose-lose situation they were in and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.

But before they could even try to work this out and figure out who was going to go out there, the bedroom door slowly began to open, the creaking of the hinges gave away what was happening. They both visibly tensed, Mark’s eyes trained on the door over Jaebum’s shoulder as the older male turned slowly around. The door stopped halfway and left the two standing in silence. Neither one dared to move, or even breath, afraid they would break whatever spell was cast over them currently.

Seconds ticked by and nothing happened. There was nothing in the darkness outside the door; pure, black darkness.

Sighing, Jaebum turned back around and raised a brow. “See, there’s nothing there.” He spoke with true conviction. Yet Mark wasn’t convinced because who opened the door? He was getting ready to point out this flaw in Jaebum’s logic when the other suddenly went flying through the partially open door. It happened so fast that Mark’s brain wasn’t even able to process the fact that Jaebum was sent flying. Just that one-minute Jaebum was there and the next he was gone. His screams echoing out in the living room.

“JAEBUM!” Mark’s legs carried him towards the door, running as fast as he could, but the door slammed shut in his face before he could reach it. His hand reached out, grabbing the knob and turning it but it was locked. “Jaebum!!” he shouted again, putting all his weight against the door as he tried to get it to open, but to no avail.

It was stuck.

Mark backed away from the door slowly, mind racing with thoughts of what to do. His husband was on the other side of the door, possibly dead and he couldn’t get out. He ran his fingers through his hair frantically as he tried to formulate some sort of plan to escape. But everything came to a screeching halt as he heard a soft giggle from behind him. Instinct was telling him to turn around and see who was in the room with him. It was also telling him to run, even though he knew there was no place for him to hide. In the end, he just stood there, frozen in fear as he felt a hot breath on the back of his neck and a ghastly voice whispering in his ear.

“Pay your respects.”

~*~

On your next vacation to Thailand, take note of the ghost houses on every property. The size, color, and pillars all matter. You may think they are just decoration or just some superstitious toy building. But take heed in knowing that while you may not believe in the ghosts housed within them, they believe in you. And always pay your respects.

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