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just-a-ghost00 · 24 days ago

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Who is your future spouse?

I'll be trying to get significant details about your spouse using 3 different decks. I'm not asking any specific question about looks or personality but rather just letting spirit guide us towards any detail they deem worthy of our attention. As this is a general reading, you may not resonate with every single detail but the general picture or overall vibe may speak to you to some level. For once, I decided to do 4 groups instead of 3.

Group 1

"I see grace and possibility in all of life's challenges." "There's no such thing as mistakes. Everything happens in divine order. I am being guided to learn and grow." "I accept the gifts I've been given as a high service to the world."

White Numen tarot : Queen of cups, 5 of swords, The Fool, knight of pentacles, 6 of cups

I don't care oracle : Take care of yourself, Close your curtains close your eyes sleep, Got a drink? Cheers! , Box with the pillow

Starting with the image you picked, I'm getting a strong message of using music and art in general as a form of escapism but also a mean of harmless self expression. Your FS may be struggling with a sense of loneliness that they are fighting off through a strong interest in any form of artistic expression. The bunny makes me think of innocence and creativity. The fact that it's a plushy makes me think of childhood and frailty. This passion that they have is something that stems from childhood and that has allowed them to hold on through hard times. I can't help but to be reminded of Stray Kids Lee Know when I look at this image. So maybe your FS has a similar personality or background to Lee Know's. Your FS could be a Kpop enthusiast. They could be an artist or enjoy doing art as their hobby. They are a rather sensitive and soft individual. They have a very comforting presence. There's a sadness to them that feels a little bittersweet.

They've been through a lot, not only romantic wise but also just on a personal level. Despite everything they've been through, they still have a lot of faith in the Universe and in mankind. With time, they've chosen to see their struggles as opportunities for growth and to cherish every experience that they get to live, even though some of them are uncomfortable because they're aware that in everything lies a blessing in disguise. They are very spiritual and they have a strong mindset gained through years of pain and struggle. They're an old soul and chances are that they have a lot of interesting stories to tell about their past.

Speaking of the past, you may share several past lives with this person. If you don't believe in this concept, you just may feel like you've known this person before when you've just barely met because they are so genuine and empathetic that it feels like they know you at your very core. For some of you, they could be a childhood friend. This person could also work with children or just be very popular with babies and kids. Another thing I am picking up on is that though this person is very mature and has gone through a lot, they look very innocent and youthful. Many people underestimate this person's age because of how childlike they may appear physically. Like, their skin is very soft and supple, they have no grey hair nor do they have wrinkles, they may be quite petite compared to other people of their age.

They've struggled with their mental health quite a lot. They're constantly thinking and bickering with their own self. They may be neurodivergent or struggle with a form of mental disorder. Another thing is that they have a very striking effect on people because they're hard to grasp. Their personality and the way they show up is so unique that they can't be categorized, "put into a box". This person just takes pride in not fitting, not conforming to any standard or norm. They don't like to be trapped in outdated perceptions of life and society. They are very protective of their freedom of expression. So chances are they have a very particular sense of style, a very specific way of expressing themselves in public, a particular posture that makes them stand out from other people. Like for example, they're the only person in their family that doesn't conform to gender norms. Actually I feel like the notion of gender isn't relevent to this person. However, they appear as quite feminine in their energy.

One thing that is very striking about them is how detached about material life they are. They do not care about possessions, wealth. This person is very generous and humble. They could give away their own clothes on a whim just to help someone else, buy a random person a meal just for the sake of making a good deed. They do random acts of kindness, not just with people they know but with anyone they come across. They give to charities, they leave food on the street for the homeless or for stray animals,they share important information on their socials in case it may be useful to someone. They're just really selfless. The reason behind that is because this person comes from a rather "poor" background. They know what it's like to be lacking something and they believe that any good deed done will come back to them. They have this mentality of not doing to others what they wouldn't appreciate themselves. So they're definitely not the kind to look down on other people or to hate on others.

This generosity can also be shown in their emotions and how they express themselves. They do not shy away from telling people they love them. They are very demonstrative and openly communicate their feelings, even though it makes them vulnerable. They wear their heart on their sleeve. They're incapable of lying. In connections, this person pours their heart out and they give their all. They're incredibly loving, kind, compassionate and patient. They show a lot of empathy and understanding towards others but they tend to be extremely harsh on themselves.

They struggle with a lot of anger issues as well as overthinking. They tend to burn themselves out thinking and worrying about others, helping other people to the detriment of their own health. They're in desperate need of love and rest and they have a hard time slowing down to focus on themselves. This person is not used to receiving and giving themselves the love that they willingly and selflessly give to others.

They're a cat lover. They may or may not own a pet cat. They have a cat like personality. They're more of an introvert but they tend to put on an extrovert façade to please others, especially their family and friends.

This person can be quite easily sociable with people however there aren't many people that they feel close to. In social settings, they tend to stay aside and only interact with the crowd here and there, out of politeness. They may struggle with the feeling of not belonging. They may feel like they do not fit in because of their unique sense of self and their strong morals. Again, I get strong neurodivergent vibes from this person but I also get a theme of cultural differences. This person may have grown in an environment where only a specific demographic was represented and they were the only source of diversity. Now that could mean all kinds of things but to give you an example maybe they grew up in a city where most people had fair skin and they were the only child with a different skin color. Or like maybe when they were a kid they were the only boy/girl when all the other kids were of the opposite biological sex.

Speaking of cultural differences, at the beginning of your reading, I had the impression that they lived in a different country than yours and that feeling is further confirmed with the spread. They could possibly have a similar background to yours but the only difference is that they grew up in a different setting. Like for instance, imagine two people that are both of European descent but one of them grew up in Spain while the other spent on the other side of the globe for some reason. Another thing I was picking up on was two people being born from two different ethnicities. So I feel like you and your future spouse will have a lot in common in the sense that you may have been through similar hardships in your life though you come from completely different areas of the globe. You could bond over things like : being the "black sheep" of the family, being the "generational curse breaker", being the "weird child" or the "rebellious child", being bullied in school because of your looks/sexual preferences/culture/religion or any form of difference that made you stand out, feeling like you don't belong, wanting to be someone else or somewhere else, feeling like you're not from this planet, having a weird interest in astrology and space facts, believing in ghosts and/or UFOs.

Group 2

"I communicate with ease and grace. People are willing to embrace what I have to say." "I welcome healthy, loving relationships." "I celebrate my progress. Awareness, not perfection, is the goal."

White Numen tarot : The Magician, 8 of wands, Queen of cups, King of wands, Ace of cups

I don't care oracle : Sorry not sorry, Spread the love, Yes! , Smile smile more even more!, You are not your emotions

This person is very chatty and an excellent communicator. They have a very eloquent speech and a beautiful voice that may be envied by many. They enjoy singing and whistling. They can easily talk anyone through anything. They have a bit of a snake charmer vibe. They're a smooth talker and many times got out of trouble because of that. They have a fascination for birds and/or their nickname revolves around a bird. I'm thinking of Woody Woodpecker, Tweety, Daffy and Donald Duck, Zazu, Iago. Like either that or they are named after a bird or compared to a specific bird. Specifically, there are peacock feathers depicted on the relationships card from the Spirit Junkie oracle. So peacocks could be relevant to this connection somehow. Either they get compared to a peacock because they tend to show off around potential partners or because they have a really flamboyant nature and attidude. They also could be compared to parots or phoenix.

This person exudes a lot of masculine energy. They may be depicted by other people as a playboy/playgirl, as a macho if they're perceived as a man or if they're perceived as a woman their feminism may not be well perceived by their peers. I feel like they get a lot of backlash from others and get wrongly accused of being so many things because of how unapologetically themselves they are. This person has a lot of self confidence and they have strong values. They draw a lot of attention but also a lot of envy and jealousy. They may be in the public eye.

They are extremely harsh with themselves and have perfectionist tendencies. They're a workaholic. They're extremely prideful and take a lot of pride in their accomplishments, especially on a professional level. They are the type to never regret a choice they make, even though people do not share their opinion on the matter because once they've set their mind on something it is very hard for them to change their perspective. They are incredibly stubborn but also incredibly resilient.

They are very popular and sociable, however they just don't let anybody in their close circle. This person has strong boundaries and they do not hold their tongue. They've put themselves in trouble more times than they can count because of their blunt approach. People around them may say that they are haughty or that they have no respect for their elders, that they do not take criticism well or that they are full of themselves. But the truth is this person is just very protective of their own space and they were raised in a background that taught them to always speak their mind when something doesn't feel right. They cannot stand injustice and you can be sure that this person will always stand up for what is right, no matter their differences with the people involved.

They have climbed the ladders of society through their hard work. They "came from nothing" and "became somebody" because of how dedicated they were to their craft. This earned them a lot of respect but also a lot of advantages and money. This person is now wealthy and leaving very comfortably but this wasn't the case when they were a child. They became so succesful that they may now be their own boss. They earned enough money to be able to open their own business or work independantly. If this person is an artist for instance, they fund their own work with their own money. They may own their own label or they're just a solo artist because they've gained enough of an audience and enough resources to be able to do so. This is just one example among many. They could be working freelance on different projects or own a brand of some sort. It could be anything really. If not that, then they have a higher status within their work environment compared to when they started.

For most of you, I feel like your FS is older than you. There's a stark contrast between you not only because of your age but also because of your maturity and life experience. I feel like you would be very intimidated by this person at first but also, because of everything I mentioned before, you may start off with a bad impression of them because of how other people depict them or gossip you may have heard. You could start off as rivals or "ennemies" so to speak. Also, I get the feeling that when you first meet them, you will think that they are disinterested in you or that they don't like you.

Despite their intimidating façade, this person is actually incredibly kind and loving. They are very sweet and sensitive, but they don't show that aspect of themselves to a lot of people. They have huge trust issues and they struggle with intimacy. They are hyper independant and they tend to repress their emotions, especially their sadness, through humor. They're the type of person that will act like a clown and make jokes to distract themselves and others from the fact that they are not okay. If you talk with this person and start to get deep by bringing up intimate subjects, they are likely to swiftly change the subject or disguise the truth by joking around. They may exagerate certain traits to make themselves appear stronger or cooler and take away the vulnerable aspects of the story. Let's say this person got into a fight and was hurt in the process. Maybe the true reason why they got into this fight was because they were drunk after breaking up with their past lover and a person's attitude didn't sit right with them in that specific setting. When they tell you the story, they may omit the fact they were at their lowest and emphasize how brave they were to stand up and interfere because a person twice their size was bothering another customer. That kind of thing.

This person has a problem with expressing their feminine side and showing emotion. They do not talk about themselves much or if they do, they always make sure it isn't too personal. They tend to mask a lot of their pain, a lot of their fears. They hide behind a mask to cover up for the fact that they are in truth really sensitive and insecure about themselves. I get the message that this person struggles with their feminine side because of a masculine figure in their life. Growing up, they were taught that they shouldn't cry or let people see their "weakness". They were taught that showing affection wasn't safe. They were criticized for their soft nature and had to become tougher with time to be able to make it through. Again, I get a neurodivergent vibe from this person, which is similar to group 1. Maybe you felt drawn to that group as well.

They are very passionate and invested in whatever is going on around them. I feel like they are very active political wise and that ties down to their issues with injustice. This person either does a lot of community work or advocates for a lot of causes. They may use their influence and means of communication to raise awareness around certain subjects. I'm specifically picking up on mental health issues and struggles surrounding one's body image, speaking up against racism, bullying, sexual harassment at work. They have a lot of love to give and a sensitive side to them that they don't get to express very often but when they are in such setting that is when they can truly be themselves and wear their heart on their sleeve. You may see this person's gaze light up when they talk about subjects that interest them, things that are dear to their heart. I see this person doing a lot of random acts of kindness but on the lowkey. Things that would go unnoticed or that wouldn't seem that grand but that actually matters. Like putting flowers on someone's grave even though they didn't know them as a proof that someone cares about their passing. Leaving anonymous positive notes in books that they borrow from the library so that the next person is comforted and knows that they matter. Silently watching over children on the streets to ensure that they are safe and no one bothers them. Taking away an object that may be a source of danger for others. Giving away personal belongings by living them in random spots for other people to find them. Pretending like they're clumsy to get two people that like each other to be physically closer in the hopes that it will get things started.

I feel like this person's main love language is acts of services but sometimes they may also express their love in funny/quirky ways or unusual ways. Here are some specific things I am picking up on : making a list of all the things you like so that they know what to do when you feel down or how to surprise you on a specific event, using your go-to words or catch phrases on you to make you smile or laugh, taking interest in the things you like and trying them out to the point of being very specific about it and knowing every detail of it so you don't feel like you're alone and they can better understand you even if it makes them uncomfortable, including you in the things they do by leaving very specific tasks up to you even though they are perfectly capable of doing it on their own because they know it makes you happy, anticipating your needs in ways you wouldn't expect by keeping certain tools or products in close vicinity just in case, mimicking your stance/ your walking pace or any trait that you may be feeling insecure about so that you feel less insecure about it, making sure that you are not being left out during any social interaction and bringing the focus back to you in case you were interupted, countering your every self criticism with a reason why that exact thing is actually a good thing, expressing their opinion of you and how they feel for you in indirect ways by talking about things you remind them of (characters in movies, songs, things that are meaningful to them like a loved one for instance).

Looking at the picture you picked, I get the message that this person values beauty and the aesthetic of things and people. They give a lot of importance to appearances. They could be into home decor and interior design. They could also be into fashion. They may collect a lot of objects because of their aspect. Especially statues, paintings, traditional objects from different countries, floral ornaments. They like scented candles and incense. There is a specific flower that this person likes or they could have been named after a flower. Or they could be born on Flower Day (May 20), Rose Day (February 7), Valentine's Day (February 14), Yellow rose day (May 14 in Korea). Or overall as most flowers bloom during Spring, this season may be their favorite or may have some significance to your connection. I'm not sure what the flower on the picture is, but its shape and color reminded me of blue Hydrangeas.

Group 3

"I release my need to be right. I am defenseless and at peace." "When I lead from a place of love people respect me." " I bring peace wherever I go." White Numen Tarot : Magician, queen of wands, Judgement, Sun, 3 of swords

I don't care oracle : Close your curtains close your eyes sleep, Stop doing so much, Infinity x Infinity , I'm not okay, I am always a child

This person loves animals. They are very popular with animals. They may want to own a pet but they may be allergic to pet fur or they just don't have the opportunity to have one because of their lifestyle. They can both embody a cat like and a puppy like energy. They are very balanced and can both embody feminine and masculine energy very well because they've done a lot of shadow work.

They grew up in an abusive household and/or have dealt with a lot of abuse in their life. This lead them to becoming "mature" too soon for their age. They had to parent themselves and now as an adult they may be described as immature by others because they didn't have the opportunity to do what other children usually do growing up. They had to deal with many responsibilities very early on in their life, either because their parents didn't show up the way they should have or because they left home pretty early on for various reasons. Because of that, they have a hard time letting go of the need to control and asking for help.

One of the ways this person copes with whatever issues they have is by being active. They have a lot of various interests and they look like they never rest. This person's schedule is packed and timed perfectly. They always got something to do, someone to talk to, something to work on. They may struggle with insomnia. One of the reasons why they keep themselves so busy is to cover up for the fact that they feel lonely and scared on their own.

This person looks for meaningful and deep connections. When they feel comfortable with people, they can rant for days about the things that they like and be very quirky but if they do not have a good impression of you they'll remain as cold as an iceberg and you'll never get to see their depth. One of the ways you will be able to tell that your FS likes you is that they will act differently depending on whether they're with you or someone else. They'll do things with you that they wouldn't do with others. Show you sides of themselves that no one has seen. This person including you in their bubble will be a huge sign of their affection and trust. Especially, you meeting their family will be a huge thing because I feel like no one has gotten that opportunity before.

They are very confident in themselves, especially when it comes to their work and studies. They can ace anything you leave up to them as long as they know they've got your trust and things are explicit. However, if they feel like you're being shady or that you doubt them, this person's productivity will be affected dramatically. They struggle with impostor syndrom. They're also very quick to judge characters and they tend to have a strong intuition. So whenever this person tells you that they have a bad feeling about something, they are likely to be right.

They do not realize it bu they hold more power than they think and they are more popular than what they expect. This person is so humble that it would never cross their mind to put themselves forward and talk about their accomplishments. This is because of their upbringing. This person was lead to believe that they were not important and that no matter their achievements or efforts, they would never be enough to be taken seriously. Honestly this person has been through so much in their life that it's a miracle they still find the drive to carry on with a smile on their face. They are incredibly strong and admirable but they would never think that of themselves. They are their own worst enemy and critic. They don't like to be the center of attention but no matter what they do they just cannot escape it.

I feel like right away in your connection, you will intuitively feel very drawn to this person and very early on realize that they are your FS. Their will be something about their eyes that will immediately spark your interest. And everytime you will look into this person's eyes, you will not be able to hold their gaze because of the intensity of what you feel when looking at them. This may be something that they tease you about later on in your connection. I also pick up on a setting or an action that is unusual when you meet them. There will be something that will set you off about this person or maybe you will do something that they are not used to. And that will be the spark that ignites the whole thing. The reason I am saying that is because on the "I am always a child" card, the character depicted is walking barefoot on the street and one of their foot is in the mud. They are very neetly dressed and yet, without a care in the world, they are risking getting all dirty and being laughed at. It looks a bit out of place or out of the ordinary. Here are some things I am picking up on that maybe will speak to you : being the only person that didn't follow the dresscode at a party, walking up the stairs with a bunch of heavy grocery bags when you could have used the elevator, being the only person in the gym that sings to their workout playlist and gets hyped up while everyone else is just quietly sweating it out, being the only person that dares to talk back to the other or makes a comment about a specific touchy subject, being the only person to actually be educated about a specific topic that they're interested into while the others just have a surface level understanding of it, not showing them any sign of interest when other people are desperately trying to get their attention.

Looking at the picture you chose, this person could live by an important body of water. This could also be a sign that they are a very emotional individual. They may be into water sports like surfing, swimming, scuba diving. They could enjoy fishing. They may eat a lot of sea food. When travelling, they may prefer warm places such as islands over the country side or places like mountains. They may prefer Summer over other seasons.

Group 4

"My high vibe thoughts create health in my body, peace in my mind and love in my heart." "Let me be still today and listen to the truth in silence." "The more I honor my inner light the more I brighten the world. I choose to shine."

White Numen tarot : King of wands, 9 of wands, 7 of wands, knight of pentacles, 5 of pentacles

Sorry not sorry, Turn your tongue 7 times in your mouth before you speak, I've got super powers, Tomorrow is another day, Don't be fooled by my appearance my soul is resplendent

Based on your picture, the first thing I pick up on is that you may firstly interact with this person at a distance, either being penpals or through social media/dating apps. The picture also gives me a feeling of nostalgia. This may be someone that you reconnect with after a long time being a part. Daisies is the birth flower of people born in April. So it could be your or their birth month, or you could meet during this month. This person could be a childhood friend or your relationship could start of as friends and evolve into something more over time. I also can't help but to think of Disney's Daisy and Princess Daisy from the Mario lore. So your person gives off a very innocent vibe upon first glance but they turn out to be stronger and smarter than they appear. Though people may think of them as superficial, frail or shallow they are actually have a lot more depth and are very sensitive. This person may tend to be underestimated or overlooked, people may wrongly assume their character because of the way they look. Which feels a bit similar to group 2's person's energy so maybe you felt drawn to that group as well.

Your FS is a very spiritual person and they developped that spirituality through hardships and adversity. They possibly dealt with bullying as a child. This person was lead to believe that they didn't deserve affection, care, help. They spent most of their life being on their own and having to protect themselves because the adults around them where not creating a safe space for them. They have huge trust issues and are hyper independent. They do not know how to ask for help and do everything by themselves. They're the type of person that wants to be recognized solely for their skills and hard work. If someone were to help them or gift them something, they would think that they are not worthy of it because they haven't worked for it or earned it. Their notion of value is distorted because of the way they were raised as a child.

They are originally a very bright and cheerful person but life turned them into a bitter and cold person. Many times in their life, they were shown aspects of humanity that made them lose faith and hope. They were constantly lied to, disregarded, manipulated. People abused their kindness and generosity, treated them badly under the disguise of friendship or love. This person grew to believe that love wasn't meant for them. So when you meet them, they'll likely avoid you and run away from you at first. They'll have a hard time believing that your feelings for them are genuine and they may keep you at arms length for quite a while.

They fear intimacy. This will show in their distate for physical touch and public displays of affection. In their constant need for space and independance, for control within the relationship. Ironically, though they need a lot of space and free range of action, they will show a lot of possessiveness and jealousy especially if you are separated. This connection really gives me ennemies to lovers vibe. They will hate to love you and love to hate you. The beginning stages of your relationship may be quite rocky because of this person's fears and issues. However, because they will be very attached to you and protective over you they will understand the need for them to heal those aspects of their personality for you connection to be healthy and lasting. This is also because they have a strong sense of responsibility and want to be perceived in a good light by their loved ones.

This person is very charismatic and sensual. Chances are that a lot of eyes will be on them and a lot of people will want to pursue them, even while you are dating. They face a lot of envy and jealousy generally speaking but they will face even more adversity once they are with you. Which could interfere in your connection. There will be a lot of gossip about you, especially career wise. People in their work sphere specifically will not understand why your dynamic is working when you seem so different from one another. This will stem mostly from a lack mindset. Even their family could get involved in the drama. Since this person is very popular and likely succesful in their work, people may say things like you could be a threat to their reputation or question your motives for dating this person.

Even though their attraction for you will be very clear and obvious, this person will do everything in their power to ignore it and resist the pull to the point where it may look completely crazy to you and ridiculous. You may think "why is such a mature person acting in such a childish way, this is so unlike them". They'll make choices and actions that you will not understand and could attempt to sabotage the connection. But the more they will try to run away from you the closer they're gonna get because the Universe will not be having any of their BS and you won't either. Every time they will try to ignore or avoid you, they will be reminded of you or forced to face you in some type of way. This person could be trying to flirt with other people to forget about you, they may even straight up date another person thinking that you would disappear from their life. But the people they will interact with will be very similar to you or coincidentally they will be in your circle. If this person is working in a similar occupation, circumstances will have them working with you. They could choose to move out in a new location thinking they would avoid you but it turns out that you frequently go to that place because a family member lives nearby or your doctor's office is located in the same street. If you are a parent, maybe their kid goes to the same school as yours. And so on and so forth. Every time they turn on the radio, they'll hear songs that remind them of you. They'll see or hear your name quite often or will be confronted with something you like every day.

Specifically, I pick up that this person could be a coffee addict but maybe the way they like their coffee is very different to yours and this may be something you passionately debated on. They also have a thing for plants and flowers. They wear glasses or they have a bad eyesight. You could have "argued" about being too blunt and not knowing how to read the room. I don't know why I keep writing in past tense. Maybe for some of you that's a confirmation you already know this person. If that isn't your case, maybe this will be something that happens later on in your connection. I really get the feeling that something about this person will just get on your nerves when you first meet. Like the way they talk or how they dress. Maybe the setting in which you meet will give you a wrong impression of this person. Especially if a lot of people are badmouthing them and spreading false rumors about them.

This person is a loner. They spend most of their time alone, either at work or in their personal life. They are very guarded and introverted. They barely leave their home unless it's very important. They may have a fear of crowds and enclosed spaces. However, when they are able to trust someone they are very kind and giving, a total opposite of what people may depict them as. They have a very healing presence that stems from all the hardships they faced over time. This person uses their own experience to help people heal and expand. They could be a therapist, a reiki practitioner, someone that uses alternative medicine like herbology, crystal healing and such.

They have a lot on their plate. They struggle with mental health issues and it isn't something they openly talk about with anyone. However, if this person sees someone going through hardships, they will be the first one to reach out and provide help and support. This person believes in the law of attraction and also in fate. They know when to pay attention to the details which could also explain why they are so succesful in life but people may not see that side of them and just belive that your FS has it easy because of their wealth, their background, their looks. When in reality, this person is the most hardworking individual you'll ever know. And when you get to see that side of them, you will really admire and respect them.

#just-a-ghost #pick a card #pac reading #tarot reading #spiritual pac #love pac #oracle cards #future spouse series #future spouse reading

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neowinestainedress · 7 months ago

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wave | lee donghyuck

pairing: lee donghyuck x fem reader genre: college au, academics rivals to lovers, kinda fake dating, forced to work together on a project, smut, fluff, humor (idk), music major!haechan, music major!mc | not really requested but thank you 💌 anon for the inspo summary: your indifference toward Lee Donghyuck, also known as Haechan, becomes rivalry when he decides to sabotage you. The battle turns into a war, the war turns into a plan, and the plan, well, the plan fails miserably... or succeeds wonderfully. After all, it’s all about points of view. Or, Haechan thinks he found a way to distract you and be better than you, but doesn’t think it thoroughly and screws it up. warnings: smut, mentioned weed consumption, alcohol use, fingering, oral (receiving), unprotected sex, public sex, jealous sex, bickering, teasing, etc | inclusivity notes: reader wears different hairstyles (no mention of texture, type and color), no mention of body type (but haechan lifts her a few times), no mention of skin color, no use of y/n wc: 22.4k (out of 42k)

a/n: finally i’m back! i started this fic more than a year ago so seeing it finally come to life means everything to me. i had so much fun writing it, so i hope you’ll love it too. please, let me know with comments, reblogs (that also help reach more people), or anon. i love knowing what you think. enjoy! also if there are formatting mistakes please let me know cause i’ve been having problems posting this and i copied it without editing it once again.

masterpost (with visuals and playlist) (i can’t post the link or else the post doesn’t show up in the tags, but you can find it on my profile)

Being number one in your academy isn’t a want, but a need.

You didn’t spend your entire life crafting your skills and splitting yourself between the books and the training room for all of that to be swept under the rug when you finally made it to your dream university; Neo Arts Academy.

Surely, with the prizes promised to those on top, you aren’t the only one with that racing passion to drive you through each day. Tons of people try their best, and even put their health at risk to reach the biggest success, but you manage to focus on yourself and keep your life in a pretty healthy balance.

You managed to focus on you… until something, well, somebody, started to come into your way.

Lee Donghyuck, also known as Haechan, his stage name —if he ever made it big in the industry he wanted to be already known.

You never paid him much attention. Honestly, you never paid attention to anybody, your only goal was to take care of your small garden and top everybody else, but when his competitiveness got the best of him, you just couldn’t push him in the back of your mind.

Apparently, his goals are the same as yours, and that isn’t a nice thing considering how competitive your world is. You first truly glanced at him during a songwriting lesson, when he huffed a bit too loudly behind you while he announced to his friend, probably named Mark, that he sucked at writing songs. However, you only chuckled mindlessly that time and went on with your day.

That was your first year there and everything went fine. Then the second year arrived and you applied for your minor degree in dance and that was when Donghyuck’s presence started to be louder. You had nothing against him, but you quickly learned he couldn’t stand you for some reason. Rumours were quick at flying around, being passed from mouth to ear and you knew them.

You simply couldn’t care.

Yet.

Haechan doesn’t hate you. He could never do that. After all, he doesn’t even know you. But he does know something about you. He knows your name, and how it is always on top of his in any ranking. He knows you will always win the contests he wants to win so badly. He knows you are good at theory and practice. He knows he just can’t win with you.

He also knows nothing can touch you. Not because you are unreachable and believe you’re superior to others. Actually, you are very modest about all your academic success, but you always walk straight on your road with the goal perfectly in the line of view.

Haechan doesn’t hate you. Though, lately, he has a strange feeling in his body every time he sits at his desk to study and his only motivation is to surpass you. Nothing different than the first months there, he got pretty soon you were going to be a tough but nice competitor, but fuck he never imagined you would be so hard to beat. Now that after a year he never won or got the top grade and always came second after you, you aren’t motivating him, you are driving him insane.

He doesn’t have many distractions, but he has friends, some hobbies outside of university, and even a part-time job. But you? Is there something that is distracting you? Is there anything that could distract you? He has no idea, not now that he is watching you walk into the room, ready for the classical ballet history class —yes, of course out of all the minors, you had to choose his— and sit a few rows in front of him, all alone as always, taking out your lilac book note and your pen.

Haechan has no idea, but he is going to find out something that can easily distract you and push out of your path.

You know people think of university as a moment to socialise, but being on your own has never been a problem for you. You have contacts with some of your hometown friends, and most importantly, you don’t mind doing things alone; you can go to the cinema when you want, you can pick whatever restaurant you like, you can take a walk, or stay at home.

You’ve always been comfortable in your bubble, and you’d like to keep it that way, but life has strange plans.

“Damn, always on a rush.” You recognize Haechan’s voice, but you don’t bother turning around because you’re sure he’s not addressing you. You think it’s weird he’s sitting next to you, but you blink the surprise away and grab your tablet from your bag. “Whoever put music theory at 8:30 in the morning on a Monday needs to go to jail.”

You chuckle at his comment, subtly rolling your eyes before opening the note app to go where you left it in the previous lesson.

“You write a lot.” This time you’re quite sure he’s talking to you, so your neck turns to look at him and you find him closer than you’d like him to be.

“I annotate, it’s just the essentials.”

He scans the notes quickly before scoffing. “The essentials? I don’t write as half as that.”

“Well, I think this is essential, but we all work differently,” while you’re answering him, you don’t even notice that his friend is not beside him, and you get lost in him for a second, mostly in the scent that’s filling your nostrils now that his brown jacket is so close to you.

“The professor talks too fast, how the fu— how do you get everything?” He stops himself from cursing and backs away, finally making you breathe some air that is not filled with his intoxicating perfume.

“I rewrite phrases. And, to be sure, I record the lessons, so I can re-listen to them in case something doesn’t make sense when I study them. And then I also re-write the not—”

“You record the lessons?” He almost snarls with his eyes bulging out of his skull as he, once again, stands too close to you.

“Is it illegal?” Your head tilts to the side as genuine curiosity blooms on your face.

“No, it’s… it’s…” he sighs, throwing his head back and cursing something under his breath in a tight dialect you don’t recognize. “I never thought about it.”

“Oh, well, it helps me a lot. Sometimes when I’m too tired to read I just play the lessons and memorize stuff while I do other things,” you smile, moving your hair to one side of your neck before grabbing the pen when the professor walks in. “You should try.”

“Oh, you can be sure I will.”

Haechan can’t be so stupid. He can’t believe he can be so stupid. Why didn’t he ever, ever, think about that? That’s a smart idea, better than crying and cursing when he tries to understand what he wrote down on paper when he revisits the notes, or asking Mark if he wrote some phrases he had marked down with several question marks or dots to fill —dots that he never fills.

But he’s still sure he can’t be a terrible student, he had always been on top of his classes, always aced them and his study method worked… but what if yours worked better? Given the results of the past year, and the start of this one, the answer is clear: yours do work better.

But he doesn’t think that it’s the only reason you are beating him in everything. What if you have other tricks?

Haechan is going to find out.

You always believed your only competition was yourself. You never liked to engage with other people and fight them or fear them. But Haechan had given you no choice.

It was an open threat at you when he purposefully told you a different day to turn in an assignment when you were sick, you had no choice but to fight back.

That was when Haechan truly became your rival. He had always been, you two were always at the top, fighting for the first place and the big prizes, but now it was a matter of pride.

Haechan had officially made it on top of your blacklist, at least he could arrive number one in something, not like there was a big competition to be in there, in fact, you didn’t even have one before he pushed your last nerve.

Fucking it up with you wasn’t Haechan’s plan, he wanted to befriend you and trick you into giving him some magic tricks, but things went… wrong. With Mark by his side, it was impossible to sit next to you. During songwriting you got up and sat on another seat in the middle of the lesson with the excuse of ‘not seeing from afar’, and he couldn’t approach you in any other circumstances. So, when you got sick for three days, he thought he could, for once, steal your spotlight.

He wasn’t sure you were sick, but he was sure enough you weren’t going to miss lessons days to study or work on projects; you never needed extra time, unfortunately, he knew it well. So the only thing that could lock you in your place was an illness of some kind. He did feel bad when you came back four days later and asked him if you missed something, he could see you still weren’t at your best, and he could’ve tried his luck by telling you the truth, hoping that the precarious state you were in was going to make you come up with a terrible essay on an instrument of the 18th century, but his eagerness got the best of him, and he lied.

So he had officially screwed his plan of getting closer to you.

“You are an asshole,” you scream, slamming the books in front of him on the table in the garden, not caring about his friends staring at you in shock. “And don’t look at me with that face of ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ because you know what I’m referring to.”

“I don’t, though…” he whispers, trying to keep a distance between you because you look scary —half bent on the table, furrowed forehead, pointing finger— and he thinks you are very motivated to reach over his neckline and strangle him.

You roll your eyes, groaning in annoyance. “You told me Professor Kim left an essay for Monday, I thought I could use the weekend to do an amazing job and he called me to his office because I was three days late.”

Haechan gulps, and the table goes silent, you feel his friends’ gazes on you but they are the last thing in your mind.

“Mind to explain?”

“I… I didn’t do it on purpose?”

“You have to ask me if you are an asshole because your mother didn’t put a brain in your skull?”

“Hey, take it back!” He warns with a pointing finger, glaring at you.

“No,” you retort, crossing your arms on your chest and standing up straight. “You sabotaged me.”

“You are making things up. Maybe you should be in the creative writing major,” Haechan taunts, a shit-eating grin on his face.

You gasp offended, clenching your fists to avoid wrapping your hands around his neck. “You — you — ugh,” you huff. “This paper was graded! And you knew it, it’s part of the mid-course work he adds to our final grade. Why would you do that to me?”

“You think I did that on purpose?”

“When did you turn it in?” You ask and when his eyes widen you scream at his face. “See! You turned it on time. I fucking hate you!”

“I didn’t answer,” he tries to defend, a challenging edge in his voice, getting to your nerves more than the look on his face.

“First of all, I can see it in your face. You’re trying to look surprised and even scared, but you’re having the time of your life because, guess what, you can’t surpass me if you don’t play your stupid games.”

He snorts offended, gulping before leaning closer. “You think I can’t beat you?”

“It’s not what I think, it’s what the rankings say, it’s what our professors say, and it’s what all the external opportunities I’ve got say. But if you want to try to prove facts wrong, bring it on,” you shrug, grabbing your things and taking a step back. “No more dirty games from now on, Lee Donghyuck. Trust me, you don’t want me to start playing them too, you might not even see the top three if I do.”

The months to come are fire. You should keep minding your business but as soon as he opens his mouth in class you can’t press your lips together and fake it. You try, every time, but you fail.

“I just mean that the melody is what attracts people,” he argues during a discussion in the songwriting class.

You huff, shaking your head. “People care about the lyrics more.”

He scoffs loudly and the professor glares at him for the reaction but he still goes on. “People won’t listen to a song if the production sucks.”

You turn around, eyebrows pressed in a furrow. “And they won’t listen to a song if the lyrics are dumb, or tell a bad message.”

“Really? Catchy pop music is a thing even if you want so badly to maintain the purity of the art of music with only lyrical depth.”

“I love catchy pop songs, but there’s something objective in music and something subjective, if you paid attention to any of our classes you should know, right?”

The class holds back a laugh and the professor coughs, making you utter an apologize, more addressed to her than your enemy.

“Oh, trust me, I paid attention to class,” he retorts, mockingly smiling at you. “And we’re not talking about the quality but the appeal. People remember the rhythm of the song or the tune more than they remember the words.”

“And words can hold so much meaning for someone they will stick to them forever. Also, lyrics can have different interpretations and if you’re a good writer you can make one song fit for more occasions.”

“That’s dumb,” he says, looking at you up and down after scoffing. “Notes can transfer different emotions, what you said just doesn’t make sense, please.”

“Can we tone it down?” Professor Park warns, glaring at the both of you.

You nod and mutter another apology before speaking up again, “I believe that a good melody can easily attract people at first listen, but if we talk about the long run, a memorable song also needs good lyrics. And Mariah Carey herself said how being a songwriter makes your career last more, so I think it’s telling coming from one of the best voices ever.”

“I think you both make a great point,” the professor cuts the conversation off before you can jump at each other’s throat again. “It would be interesting to make a deeper analysis and maybe break down songs and compare data over time. If it was possible to keep the decorum…” she whispers the last word and you want to disappear because you hate the scene you gave. “But we need to move on with our lesson, so, as I was saying…”

Out of all the heated discussions you had in class, the one about the importance of production and lyrics, led to your worst nightmare, working on a project with him. Professor Park was so nice to pair you together because she wanted to see how your different points of view would’ve worked in the song you had to write and produce and even if you smiled and said, ‘it will be really motivating,�� to avoid yelling at her face, now you want to die.

You’re sure the first two knocks on the door don’t even reach the other side; your hits are too weak and the small apartment in that complex is too loud for anyone to hear. Is this the environment you have to work in today?

You roll your eyes and knock again, this time making sure it’s impossible for them not to hear you. You wait there only for a few seconds and then the door opens, revealing a boy your age you can’t remember.

“Oh, hi,” he cheers, big toothy smile beaming at you. “You must be here for Hyuck, right?”

You hum, nodding and murmuring, “Yes, I have to work on a project with Haechan.”

“Come in.”

You step inside the house and look around briefly before your eyes fall on the table in the small living room; there are books everywhere, headphones on the ground, boxes of food and empty water bottles, and most importantly talks too loud for four boys that were supposedly studying.

“Mark, can you lower the music?”

“Music is what I’m studying, I can’t,” the man you know well replies. “Why don’t you keep your pencil close to you? Jesus, there’s graphite everywhere.”

“You’re so annoying, I can’t go in my room, Jeno still didn’t take down the light boxes,” the brown-haired replies, sending a death glare to the boy at his side who quickly replies to his defence.

“Hey, I finished shooting half an hour ago and now I have an essay to write, leave me alone.”

“They’re entertaining, aren’t they?” Haechan’s voice brings you out of the haze of his bickering friends, their conversation fades in the background while your anger level rises just seeing his face when you turn around.

“Surely more entertaining than you,” you retort before taking a step forward, pretending to know where to go in that house.

Haechan rolls his eyes, thanking his friend who opened the door —Jaemin— and coming next to you. “You don’t know where my room is yet, so if you’d like to follow me.”

You trail behind him, waving at the men around the table but it’s clear that none of them even noticed your presence. Luckily for you, Donghyuck’s room is at the end of the corridor and the mess that goes down in the other room is not hearable enough to make your day a living hell.

“So, do you have anything in mind?” He asks after you sit at one of the chairs at his desk.

You shake your head, fixing your skirt and pulling out some things you might need from your bag. “Wanted to hear from you first. Since the melody is so crucial, we should start from that,” you mock in a fake-sweet tone, and you feel his glare on your skin.

“You truly are a pain in the ass, you know?” He scoffs, moving his hair out of his face, gaze fixed on you.

“And for what? Because I agreed with your theory?”

“If you have a melody in mind it’s easier to make the words flow.”

“If the melody has nothing to do with the idea, you only have some notes and not a song.”

Now that there aren’t rows of chairs dividing you, the heated argument has led you face to face, literally. And you feel your heart pound in your chest from the anger and, also because it’s weird to be this close to a stranger you can’t stand.

“Okay, Miss Taylor Swift, why don’t you enlighten me and show me what you got?”

You glare at him but he’s unfazed, holding the eye contact proudly. “My lyrics will be better than your production.”

“And are those lyrics in the room with us?”

“God,” you groan, throwing your hands in the air and your head back. “You drive me insane.”

“And you are pretentious and still never prove all the things that that little, bratty, annoying mouth of yours says.”

Deep creases show on your forehead, and you have to turn around because if you see his face for a second more you will slap him. But you want this project done, you have four weeks to turn it in, but you want this torture to be over as soon as possible, so you know you have to put the pettiness aside.

“If we want a great result and good grades, we need good lyrics and a good melody,” you say, calmly facing him again, slowly watching as his face softens. “My words and your production. I don’t care what comes to us first, if you think it can be useful, we could even brainstorm some tunes and catchphrases and then build it around it.”

“Now you’re making some sense,” he exclaims, smiling widely before patting the top of your head. “So that head is not empty.”

“Oh, seriously? I’m trying to have a truce, and you fuck it all up again?”

“No, sorry, I just think you’re really smart when it comes to college but a bit annoying when it comes to life.”

“You’re just mad you can’t beat me.”

“I can,” he retorts smugly.

“Then why don’t you do it?” You tease, cocking your head to the side.

Haechan scoffs, lips twitching in a quick smirk before he wets them. “I didn’t yet, but are you so sure I won’t?” He whispers, breath colliding with your lips and nose brushing yours, your brain doesn’t even register his hands on your legs right away, only when his fingers caress your bare skin right above the hem you wake up from the haze of having him so close.

“Time will — time will prove us,” you say, turning to the desk and scratching your neck. “Time will tell us, not prove us.”

Haechan snickers, moving closer to see on your tablet where you opened the notes, and smiles smugly. He thinks he found a way to distract you.

The project isn’t done in the first week, and to put a cherry on top, Professor Park decides to make it the big project for the end of the class, adding a cover for the single, a plan to sponsor it, and, if someone feels brave enough, even to record it. Even if you wanted to, a thing this big, and now with so much weight on the final grade, can’t be done in one week.

Yet, you think you’ll have to deal with Haechan only on your weekly meet-ups for that project and during lessons, you never imagined you would have to deal with him even during your library study on Wednesday.

“Why are you studying in the middle of the week?”

“You know, if I had to replicate a sound every time we start a conversation it would be ‘and now, I just want to sit back and relax and enjoy my evening, when all of a sudden I hear this agitating grating voice,’ and that is the sound that plays in my mind, actually.”

“Grating? Really?”

“Well, it’s the quote but it fits,” you reply sternly, bringing your attention back to the book. “Also, the question is not, why am I studying, but why aren’t you? How will you beat me if you don’t?” You wink, laughing under your breath. You don’t even need to see his reaction; you know his jaw tenses and his nostrils flare for a brief second every time you tease him.

You hear the chair in front of you scratch on the floor, and deeply hope he’s not sitting on it. But Haechan is sitting on it, staring at you as if he could steal the information from your brain and pass it to his.

“I am studying.”

“No, you’re not,” you reply, eyes widening when he rips a page from your notebook and a pen from your case. “So, what have you learned since now?”

You fight the urge to roll your eyes to the sky and instead run a hand on your face while sighing deeply. There’s just no way to get rid of him, right?

“You don’t even know what I’m studying.”

“Sound design,” he replies promptly, and you look down to see if he could’ve gotten a grasp from your books but there’s a paper on it and there’s not much written on it. Haechan smiles and moves to the chair next to you. “It’s because I started it too, there are too many notions, it would be a suicide to wait for the finals.”

“Oh, so you do something else other than think about me,” you tease, nudging him with your leg.

“Hey! I don’t think about you,” he replies firmly, frowning.

“Sure,” you huff, waving him off. “So, what do you know?”

“Well, all the basis we learnt last year, so the definition of sound, the path it follows, how it’s perceived based on the medium and how fast it travels through them, slowest through gases, faster through liquids, and fastest through solids, and that temperature effects it as well.”

You smile, content with the reply but you want to test him more. “What about the five characteristics of sound?”

“You think that’s a difficult one?” He asks, almost disappointed at the easiness of your question.

“Well, if you want to impress me so bad, I could ask you to list all the types of compressors?”

“You already know that?” He questions, quirking a brow, trying to think why he doesn’t remember them. “Wait, we didn’t do that in class.”

You laugh. “See, you’re witty. No, we haven’t done that yet, but since you love producing so much, I thought you knew it as personal knowledge.”

“Why do you talk as if you don’t want to do the same job as mine?” There’s a bit of annoyance in his tone, but there’s genuine curiosity in his eyes.

You shrug, pressing your lips together before diverting your gaze.

Haechan gasps. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what you want to do, yet, because I won’t believe it.”

“It’s not that I don’t know,” you reply, a low huff leaving your lips. “I’d like to try different things out, being a PR manager sounds interesting too. And I’m also pretty good at dancing, so that could be a career path.”

“It’s a shame we didn’t start practical courses, I would love to see you dance.”

“Yeah, sure, so you can mock me some more,” you groan.

He shakes his head. “No, you wouldn’t enroll in a program if you weren’t absolutely perfect at it, so I can’t come at your skills.”

“You’re so kind, I think I might love you,” you mock, moving closer to him and pouting before pushing him away with a light push on his chest and focusing on your papers again.

“And by the way, I know the characteristics of sound,” he says, right next to your face.

You smile and think to yourself that this might be fun. “Good, go on and tell me.”

You don’t get why Haechan’s roommate bicker so much. Not that you could lecture them when, as soon as you walk inside his room, your talks won’t be much different than theirs (worse, probably). But you think you and Haechan, at least, have a reason to fight so much. His roommates are… weird. They are close. They all are, in an annoying way almost, always moving in packs and breaking their back to meet up even if their institutes are scattered around in the Academy. Yet, they get heated pretty easily when they sit in the living room, and you can only blame it on stress as you chuckle, standing against the countertop with a glass of water in hand.

“Donghyuck left you all alone?” Jeno enters the kitchen, distracting you from Renjun screaming at his painting and Mark cursing while he tries to come up with a melody for a small assignment you decided to not worry about —you have Haechan to worry about now.

“Yep, told me to be here at 2 pm just to be in the shower instead,” you reply with a tight smile on your face that makes him laugh and scroll the black hair out of his face.

“My fault,” he explains while pouring himself a glass. “I convinced him to stay at the basketball field when we finished and he couldn’t meet up with you smelling like rotten leftovers forgotten under the august sun.”

“Creative writing?” You ask after you chuckle at his description.

“Nope, photography, Renjun’s worst nightmare.”

You laugh. “It’s because you leave all those big things around his room, right?”

“Our room,” he says, empathising on the first word.

“Okay, communism king, your room but I don’t think your comrade is happy about it.”

Jeno laughs, and hums before gulping down a sip of water. “I’m not rich yet to afford a studio so he’ll have to deal with his bestie working, sweating, and crying his way to the top.”

“You could’ve been a nepo baby and have everything handed to you.”

“Sucks not to be one. I wouldn’t even bother being in Uni, just leaving my best life with my camera and daddy’s money.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Haechan says entering the kitchen, hair still damp and casual housewear on.

“None of your business,” you reply, placing the glass in the sink and walking to the door. “Come on, we have a song to create. It could be our first Billboard number one.”

Haechan sighs, snatching the bottle of water from Jeno’s hand, briefly confused at his grinning face, and then follows you quickly.

“Are you trying to hit on my friends?” He asks, closing the door behind.

“Would you mind?”

“Yes, I’d hate having to deal with you in our group hangouts.”

“You already deal with me. More than you should since you always come to me even when we could not be together,” you say, tilting your head to the side, and sitting on your assigned chair. “Are you perhaps jealous? Do you want me all to yourself?”

“Nah, you can go and fuck all of them right no—”

“Okay,” you don’t even let him finish and you’re at the door, but he springs after you and stops you.

“What are you doing? I was kidding!”

“Why? Since when you can tell me what to do?”

Haechan groans and drags you back to your place, but he doesn’t sit just yet, he’s bent over to be close to you. “I need you here with me to work on this goddam song, and then you can go and have a gangbang in the living room, I don’t care.”

“You’d be mad you won’t be part of it,” you joke, having the time of your life watching his pissed-off expression as he stomps loudly back at his place. “Accept that you will never win with me, and maybe you won’t be so triggered every time we talk.”

“Shit, it’s late,” you murmur, lifting your head from the lyrics you’re trying to write down. Now you got the theme —it’s a love song that you hope won’t turn lame— and even a faint idea of a tune, and while Haechan tried to get inspired by other songs and tried instruments he wants to add to the track, you worked on the words.

“Don’t you think we’re trying too hard?” He whispers, placing the guitar on his bed before standing up and stretching.

“What do you mean?” You ask, lifting your neck so you can look at him after you turn around on the rotating chair.

“Music should come to you, it should be… spontaneous.”

You’d want to roll your eyes, mostly for the spontaneous part, but he’s right. Most artists don’t think about the songs they make, the song comes to their mind when they’re not thinking about it.

“Yes, but do you think we’re doing such a shitty job with this?”

He shakes his head, walking closer to you. “Not totally, I just think that if we want to be on top, we have to work around it differently.”

You gulp when he hovers over you and grips the side of the chair tightly. “Like?”

“We should… relax. Take our mind off of it and just wait for it to come,” he glances at the desk, studying the crumpled tries you gave up on and the only three phrases you were happy with written on the tablet. “We should get inspired,” he whispers, and you’re once again so focused on his face that you don’t feel his hand on your thigh, under the long black skirt you’re wearing, it surely must’ve been on you for a while if the fabric was already crumpled up and his fingers teased the hem of your panties between your hips and stomach.

“Is — is this how you inspire people?” You ask, glancing down with a rising chest but for some reason not pulling away.

“Don’t know, I’ve never done it before,” he chuckles, slowly moving closer to your core, observing the small signs of your body. “Should we see if it works?”

You hate him. You should be working on that lyric for the last half hour you have left. You hate him. He’s making it impossible for you to stick to your ‘minding my business’ plan that had worked through all your school years. You hate him, you do, and yet you nod, humming a feeble ‘yes,’ in response.

“Good,” rolls out of his lips, and it sounds so different from his usual tone, you can’t help but feel hot.

Your nails sink in the chair when his fingers slip right against your clit after he had your consent and starts teasing it.

“So, it’s a love song…” he says, and you frown, heart pumping louder as for a second you think he led you on and you looked like a pathetic horny loser, but his hand is still playing with your pussy and his face is still close to yours. “Chose that because you have somebody in mind?”

“We literally picked it for a reason last week, you —”

“God,” he shushes you up, pushing the panties to the side and teasing your entrance, it’s already damp, but not enough how he wants it. “Can you stop being so rational for once? I know why we picked it; remember I’m trying to inspire you.”

“Wait, you really think some fingering can inspire me to write a love so—” your words shut down when he places a hand on your mouth, eyes widening but pussy leaking an embarrassing amount of cum.

He quirks a brow in surprise and, shortly after, a smug smirk curls his lips. “Oh, so you’re into that?”

You can’t reply, but even if you could’ve, you’re not sure you would’ve said anything.

“So, anybody in mind?”

You shake your head. Your love life has been anything but exciting, and after a few tries, you were sure it wasn’t what you needed to focus on, especially because nobody sparked your interest. Nobody was worth moving your focus from your studies.

“Great, so I guess that’ll have to be me.”

“What?” You mutter muffled, closing your legs and moving on the chair.

Haechan rolls his eyes in his skull, keeping you in place. “Oh, come on, you can fake it for a few minutes. Don’t act disgusted, I’m knuckle-deep inside you,” he says.

“Not yet.”

“I’m knuckle-deep inside you,” he retorts after he pushes into you with two fingers, staring right into your eyes.

You bite back a moan and a curse under your breath. “Fine, but I don’t want to think,” you say. “Just, prove it to me. If you’re good, I’ll be inspired and I’ll come up with the lyrics, if you suck, we’ll go back to our original method.”

Haechan hates that he constantly has to prove things to you, and he hates even more that he does it, almost as if he’s your dog and he has to follow your orders while you keep him on a leash. But if this will work to come up with a great song, and in his outer-songwriting-course-plan to distract you, he won’t complain.

Honestly, he couldn’t complain even if it only meant to finger you. He might want to fight you every time he sees your face but, damn, what a face.

“Shit,” you moan. You don’t want to give him too much satisfaction, but he knows what he’s doing and it’s been way too long since someone touched you like that. Damn, even since you touched yourself like that. Maybe the whole ‘staring at your goals’ was taking some funny things away from you.

“Do you want to turn the song into a Hozier song?”

You huff, you just asked him one thing and his mouth is running again doing the opposite. “You wish you were this good to inspire a Hozier type of song.”

“Really?” He taunts, pressing his thumb on your clit, starting to tease the throbbing nub in circles.

“Yes,” your voice trembles, but your face shows confidence.

Haechan snickers, quickening the pace of his fingers, watching you fight against yourself to not show how much you’re loving it. “One second of this mouth on your pussy and I’d make you change your mind,” he whispers right against your ears, hot breath fanning your skin. “It’s a shame you don’t deserve it.”

You groan, head rolling back in disappointment, and that makes him laugh.

“You have to think twice before running that mouth, babe. Especially with me.”

“Never,” you talk back, opening your eyes and regretting as soon as they meet his. His gaze is too intense, and your brain is too far gone to keep it up.

Haechan only grins, enjoying your wrecked face and the sounds your pussy is making as his fingers keep working on you. You might try to deny him, but your body is speaking to him, and deeply so are you. It’s in your eyes, and your lips trembling, and in the beautiful moans that are rolling out of your tongue.

“Are you close, brat?”

You don’t have it in you to complain, or retort, the orgasm is right around the corner and you fear he would ruin the experience if you said something out of line.

“Answer me,” he orders, lightly slapping your thigh.

“Yes,” you breathe out, biting your lower lip to prevent the whole house from hearing you.

“Good,” he replies, smiling proudly and starting to move faster in and out of you, hitting your sweet spot every time he reaches the base, and torturing your clit with his thumb. And when it’s too much for you, you come. Body trembling against the chair, and legs pushing up as the shocks of pleasure run through you.

“Acid when you talk but sweet to taste,” he hums after pulling out his fingers from his mouth and you only glare at him as you quickly try to get yourself together again.

“It’s late,” he says, staring at the clock. “Go home and let me know if this was useful somehow. And not by replaying it in your mind at night wishing I was there with you.” He winks and you slap his shoulder hard. “What the hell!”

“I won’t come up with anything on purpose, and I swear if you keep being so annoying, I’ll be terrible at this.”

“You would never, this makes up like 80% of our final grade.” He challenges you with a glare.

“If I go down, you go down with me,” you retort, face to face, fiercely looking into his eyes.

“It’s not smart of you.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” you smile sweetly before it drops from your face. “It’s a threat.”

It’s not like you’re trying to avoid him after what happened, but that’s exactly what’s going on. You don’t regret the act per se, you just can’t believe it was so easy for you to agree to do that with him. And you know he will use it against you for eternity.

A very dumb move from your side to give him the possibility to tease you even more and about something you couldn’t defend yourself from.

But if you try your best to change corridors when you see him from afar, walk quickly back to your dorm room, and sit on the opposite side in class (you fail at keeping your mouth quiet, but you need to discuss with him during lessons), it seems like he’s doing everything he can to be on your path.

“I’m starting to believe you’re a stalker,” you huff, clearly scaring him when you stop abruptly in the middle of the library and make him stop in his tracks.

“I’m not.”

You raise a brow, staring at him until he huffs and throws his hands up in the air. “Fine, fine, I was following you but only because I wanted to know what you will study.”

“Why do you care so much about what I study?”

“So I know how to beat you?”

“Isn’t it more exciting if you beat me only using your brain by putting some knowledge in it without seeing my cards?” You say, pushing a finger on his chest and making him walk backwards until his back hits the bookshelf behind him.

“I think sneaky games are funnier, though,” he whispers, hand moving to rest on your side. “Especially with you.”

You scoff, rolling your eyes, and taking a step back, freeing yourself from his hold. “The games you’re playing are not sneaky. Why are you always in my business?”

He shrugs. “Why not? So, what are we studying today?”

“We are not studying together.”

“Why? Isn’t it funny? The same study method, same hours, but one of us will be better than the other. That’s a truly equal comparison.”

You run a hand on your face and keep walking to find what you need. “If you didn’t distract me every two seconds, I would’ve already been like five pages into my studying session.”

“Oh, please, you are wondering around the library anyway. I’m just keeping you company.” His body follows yours like a shadow, his heat radiating so close to your skin that you think you might go insane.

“I don’t want your company,” you say, moving your eyes swiftly over the books in front of you as you try to find what you are looking for in the sociology section. When you finally find it, reminding yourself you have to buy it so you can annotate directly on yours, you walk back to your table, but Haechan is still beside you like a puppy on a string. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I could, and I’d want to, but I can’t,” he says, sitting at your side, smiling widely when you glare at him.

“This is a useless lesson for you,” you try to dismiss him.

“Is it? Because we have the same ones.”

“Jesus, okay, fine,” you give up, throwing your head back and raising your voice enough to make some heads turn in your direction. His biggest talent is to exasperate you. “But we give ourselves a timing, and then when we’re done, we’ll have to answer five questions.”

“And who answers to them all?” He asks, there’s a taunting edge in his voice, and a grin on his face.

“Is the best,” you reply as if it’s obvious.

“Yeah, but there should be a prize.”

“Being better than you is the prize.”

Haechan scoffs, and he hates to admit in his mind that he finds your snarky remarks so fucking hot, if you weren’t in a public library and if his job on earth wasn’t to detest you, he would’ve already had you bent on the table.

“I love how you’re always so sure of being better than me.”

You snicker and send him a flying kiss. “Honey, I am better than you.”

“Wait, I just left out a detail!” You almost scream when you compare your answers for the nth time because you can’t believe he has done slightly better than you.

“That detail is important,” Haechan replies unfazed by your indignation.

“No, it’s not. We would have the same score if this was graded,” you insist, feeling more angered than you should. It’s nothing serious, it shouldn’t be serious, but with him, there’s your pride on the line.

“But this is between me and you, so I win. Also, my phrasing in the second answer is better than yours.”

“Shut up, it’s not.”

“It is, and you just have to admit you lost,” he insists, leaning over, staring at you with a challenging raised brow.

You swallow, eyebrows furrowing, and then you sigh. “Your advantage is minimal. And you only won a battle, because I’m winning a war.”

“Fine, Napoleon, I still won and you’re coming to my place even Saturday so we can do this some more.”

“Hey, Napoleon sucked! He lost the most important battles, the only ones he should’ve won.”

“That’s why I called you that,” he winks, clicking his tongue mockingly.

“Oh, you think you will win the war? You’re wrong, honey, Waterloo is yours.”

Haechan laughs, standing up after putting his things in his bag. “I’m waiting for you on Saturday…” he says and before you can complain he starts singing, “Waterloo, I was defeated, you won the war…”

“Oh, shut up!” You say, hitting his arm as you push him away, but he giggles and walks away continuing with the tune.

“Waterloo, promise to love you forevermore. Waterloo, couldn’t escape if I wanted to…”

And you think that if only he didn’t try to sabotage your final grades in Music History, you might even find him funny.

Haechan hates you.

If he was sure he didn’t before, he is sure that he does now.

He can’t wrap his head around the fact that you, Miss zero social skills, and negative 100 friends, can be so good at debating. On every fucking topic. You’re well-spoken, witty, smart, somehow it looks like you know everything about everything. And even when you don’t know (and you always specify it — which he shouldn’t find so hot, but he does) you always come up with perfectly thought theories and analyses coming from the small knowledge you have on the topic. The thing he also hates is that you never sound like you’re showing off your skills, it’s just really nice to listen to you and —when he’s not the one intervening against you— you’re the sweetest person ever and everybody in every class absolutely adores you.

He wonders if you’re a robot. Maybe you’re some sort of artificial intelligence sent there to conduct studies on humans’ stupidity, and he was unlucky enough to start a fight with you. You just don’t seem real. And he’d love to dig deeper but he doubts he will find anything relevant.

You might be smart, but you also look incredibly boring. He tried to find out if you had interests, or anything that could distract you, but his research led nowhere. The biggest problem is that he hates you, but not to the point that he wants to get you suspended from University, so he has to find another way to make you slip.

Apparently, you’re playing the same game, but even at this, you are thinking faster and smarter.

“Where the fuck are all my anthropology notes?” Haechan mutters as he looks through his library, moving books and notebooks around, thinking he has gone insane. “Mark!” He screams, rushing to the desk to search again but he knows where he left everything; on the second shelf of the small library in his room, on top of the music theory book that hasn’t moved since a week.

“Yes?” His housemate peaks from the door only with his head.

“Did you mistake our notes?”

“What notes?” Mark furrows, backing away from his friend who looks out of his mind.

“The anthropology notes,” he says, voice full of annoyance because, why does Mark never know anything? He’s in the same course and, yet, he’s always somewhere else with his head.

“Man, I don’t even take notes during that lesson.”

“What do you mean you don’t? Ugh, never mind,” Haechan groans, rolling his eyes because he can’t believe he can’t count on anybody. “Have you seen them somewhere?”

“Nope,” Mark replies, entering the room. “I mean, I don’t know what they look like.”

“You know right we have a test tomorrow? The winter break is close, and some courses have it. You are studying, right?”

“Yeah, just not every…thing…”

Haechan rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “Why don’t you like it? I mean, I know it’s not really music related but it teaches you so much about other cultures and there’s a whole part about how music is different from culture to culture.”

“Next semester, we didn’t get there, yet. It’s a bunch of complicated terminology and theories I just don’t get,” Mark defends. He never understood why Haechan loved studying so much. He is only there for the music, and a few other theoretical lessons, but some courses don’t make any sense to him.

“So you plan on being terrible tomorrow?”

“I just want a decent result; I don’t strive for perfection like you and your girlie.”

Haechan almost chokes on his saliva. “My girlie? Who’s my girlie?”

“That girl in class you always get into heated arguments with, and then she comes here and I’m pretty sure you make out when no one’s watching,” Mark says so calmly it infuriates Haechan more than if he was teasing him.

“Shut the hell up! She’s my mortal enemy and while you have been paired with Yangyang for the song project, Professor Park thought it was nice putting her and me together.”

“Yeah, you can still make out with your mortal enemy,” he snorts, hitting his friend with a playful elbow hit.

“Mark, shut up and leave, I have to study,” he tries to cut short, pushing his friend out of the room.

“With what notes?”

“I don’t know. I left them on the shelf, and nobody entered my room since Saturday when she — Oh, my God.”

When your name resonates in the empty classroom after you’ve taken the anthropology test, your blood freezes for a second.

“Haechannie,” you cheer cheekily, turning around and pushing your tote bag far up your shoulders.

“Don’t,” he warns, lifting a finger to stop you from starting anything. “I have to talk to you.”

“Sure, the test was easy, right? You might have beaten me this time,” you say but you have to hold back a laugh when you scan his furious, pissed-off expression.

“Yeah, if you studied, it was,” he retorts venously.

“And you surely studied,” you say, faking innocence.

“You can study when you have something to study on,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Yes, and you do,” you still play dumb, but when he calls your surname, you know he’s not joking anymore. “Yes?”

“Do you, perhaps, know where the fuck my notes are?”

You look around, shrugging. “Where are your notes, Donghyuck?”

“I don’t know, I’m asking you for a reason,” he retorts, plastering a fake smile that doesn’t reflect in the darkness of his pupils.

“They might’ve mixed up with my stuff when you invited me over Saturday?” You sing-song, tilting your head to the side and shrugging.

“Might’ve,” he repeats, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “It was just a coincidence.”

You shrug again, pushing your lower lip in a pout. “Sometimes… things happen.”

“And if it wasn’t on purpose, why couldn’t you just text me?”

“Because I didn’t notice,” you reply innocently, batting your lashes, knowing it will get on his nerves even more.

He groans, closing his eyes to calm himself down before he speaks again, “then how do you know?”

“Don’t know, just making assumptions,” you say. “It turns out I’m really good at it.”

“I swear, I — I want to… I want to —”

“To what? Choke me because I got my revenge? Oh, it turns out it’s really not that funny when someone plays with you?” You mock, and in doing so you get closer to him.

“Goddamn,” he groans before your back meets the hard wall of the room and his lips meet yours in a heated kiss, his hands on your body and yours limp at your side as you’re too shocked to react. “I want to — I want to kill you, actually.”

You smirk, chuckling straight at his face. “Filled the space with the wrong letter, ‘cause you’re kissing me.”

“Maybe my kiss is lethal, maybe there’s poison on my lips.”

“Oh, you’re so romantic you’d die for me?” You coo, placing a hand on your heart.

Haechan groans, throwing his head back. “Why are you always so, so, so, God,” he curses, running his fingers in his hair. “I want my notes back, now.”

“I don’t have them,” you say, grinning because he looks wrecked. You know it wasn’t very morally mature for you, but it was only fair. Also, you know he doesn’t arrive last minute with anything, he had already studied everything and you’re sure he had answered everything on that paper, he just couldn’t revisit.

“My notes back when you pass by for the project or it’s war.”

“It’s already war,” you retort when he walks past you to leave.

Haechan turns around, locking his gaze with yours. “Oh, honey, it can get so much worse than this.”

You felt like testing your luck when his notes weren’t back on his desk, but you had no idea it could get worse than that, until it got.

When he deleted an essay from your computer and you had to remake and finish the work of five days in five hours, so you cancelled a project he was working on for another assignment you had. And then he erased the recording of a course from your phone, so you ripped his notebook in front of his eyes (and his roommates too). The list of petty things is long, and you’re not really proud (you’re sure not even Haechan is) of what you did, especially when things started becoming personal. You two want to destroy each other, but you are honestly just killing yourselves in the meantime.

Your book slams closed so hard that you almost zip your hands in it, and by protecting your fingers you lose track of where you’ve been. “Get lost,” you whisper bitterly as soon as you recognize the hand that did that.

“No thanks,” he replies, sitting next to you.

“I’m trying to read a book in the quiet of the library, so can you leave me alone?”

“It’s a public space, I can sit wherever I want,” he replies, leaning back into the chair, and widening his legs under the table. You know ‘cause you feel his knee push against yours and you have to retract your leg to avoid the contact.

You glare at him, breathing deeply through your nose because you can’t make a scene here. You two almost got kicked out of a class two days ago, and that was humiliating enough. So, you think that ignoring him is the best thing you can do.

“Wow, so you have a bit of self-control and don’t talk back. Never thought I’d see that day,” he replies sarcastically to your silence with an amused grin that curls his lips.

You hold back a scream and huff loudly, “I truly need you to get fucked right now.”

“Nevermind,” he jokes, pulling a tight forced smile and you close the book again, now too annoyed to even focus on the words on the paper. “I came here in peace, by the way.”

“Yeah, your peace is war in my country,” you reply bitterly, trying to shift away but those damn chairs make the loudest sounds at the smallest movements.

“That’s because you’re full of prejudices.”

You inhale deeply, rubbing your temple to soothe the headache you know is about to arrive. “Haechan, tell me what you want and then leave me alone.”

He smiles, happy you are finally willing to listen, before he clears his throat. “Okay so, I have to say that some of this is funny. I mean, only the debates and these random talks, but I’m not the biggest fan of all the other stuff we’re doing, so why don’t we bring it back?”

“Bring it back? As in?” You question, raising a brow in confusion.

“I liked it better when we would just compete without tearing ourselves down. If you cancel, ruin, or save one of my projects with the word boobs in it before sending it to the professor another time, I will go insane.”

You hold back a chuckle. You have to admit it was your lowest move, but it was quite funny when Professor Choi had a whole talk in class about being careful before sending out finished projects and exposed him in front of the class.

“No, it wasn’t funny,” he mutters sternly, watching you fight with all the muscles of your face to don’t break into a laugh.

“No, sorry, it was,” you defend, voice trembling, threatening a chuckle to come out. “Like Iloveboobsdemo1 is the best thing I’ve ever come up with. That could be the title of our song.”

“If you want to get expelled from all the academies in the world that would be a perfect idea,” he says, trying to be serious because seriously it wasn’t funny, but when you stare into each other’s eyes for too long none of you two can hold back the laughter anymore. “Okay, fine. It was funny, but I don’t want that to happen again.”

“So? Do you give up?” You taunt, tilting your head after placing it on your palms.

“I’m not giving up, we are changing strategies of our combat.”

“Oh, okay. You will lose anyway in the end, so if this can be more beneficial for me in the meantime, it’s fine.”

He sighs, rubbing his temples, and you chuckle. “Don’t laugh,” he whispers distraught. “I… could you sometimes at least pretend to give me some kind of chance of winning with you and not feeling like you’ll always have the last laugh?”

“I just replied.”

“No, a reply would’ve been ‘Yes, Haechan, don’t worry, we can change it.”

“Too wordy,” you comment, waving him off with a movement of hand.

“You said like ten words more,” he replies, voice breaking in his throat in a whine, but you decide to act as if you don’t notice.

“It still flowed better. See, that’s why the lyrics are in my hands. You’re really not good with words.”

“You keep doing that,” he groans, slamming a hand on the table, attracting some curious eyes on you before you glare them away. “But it’s fine, okay, so… no more dirty games? No more sabotaging?”

“Yes, no more. Well, not like this, but we can still play a bit, right?” You ask, retracting your hand right when you’re about to hold his to seal the deal.

“Yes, but nothing weird, or you know what I mean.”

You hum, reaching out again and shaking his hand. “It’s a deal, then?”

“It’s a deal.”

The deal somehow turns into Haechan always being next to you. He’s like a shadow, sitting next to you in class, studying with you in the library, and so on. You don’t mind him when he minds his business, but he rarely does. Especially during lessons when you need to focus on what the professors are saying.

You roll your eyes when Haechan sneaks a paper next to your notebook and you read ‘how would a dog wear pants’ with two badly drawn different options on it.

“Does it look like the right moment?” You whisper under your breath, side-eyeing him, and trying to keep your focus on the lesson. You see him nod and decide to mark the second option, thinking that he’d be happy with it, but he has the urge to hear a whole dissertation on something that will never happen, right now.

“Why?” He asks as if you’re not in the middle of a lecture.

“Not now.”

“But this lesson is boring,” he whines, poking your side with his elbow.

You huff, covering it with a cough when you realize it is too loud, and then take a sip from your bottle of water.

“You didn’t answer,” Haechan insists, this time poking your arm with the cap of the pencil.

“I picked one,” you mutter, pointing at the paper with your head.

“Elaborate and change my mind.”

“You think it’s the first one?” You say in disbelief, the utter shock causing the tone of your voice to be louder than you expected.

“Any problems there?” The Professor asks, and you feel your blood freeze.

“Mh, no, nothing, my pen has no more ink, I was asking for another one,” you lie, thanking God you two are sitting far in the back of the class and the Professor can’t hear and can’t see that your pen isn’t dead at all. So, with a suspicious nod, the middle-aged man goes on with the lecture while Haechan giggles beside you.

You glare at him, and he shrugs raising his hands. “If you kept quiet, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“If you let me concentrate on the lesson instead of asking dumb questions, it wouldn’t have happened,” you retort, and he laughs under his breath again, but doesn’t ask more questions. He still ruins your notes with ugly flowers and other drabbles and you let him be because at least he’s being silent and paying attention.

“So, you really are giving up,” you say when the bell rings and the class starts emptying.

“What makes you think that?” He asks, putting his things in his bag, just like you.

“You didn’t write anything down.”

Haechan shrugs. “Why would I? I have your notes.”

“No, you don’t,” you say but before you can realize he rips the notebook from your hands and snaps a picture of the two pages you wrote. “Hey! That’s not fair. That’s my work.”

“Your amazing summarizing skills and my artistic skills. I don’t gift beautiful sunflowers to just anybody.”

“Beautiful sunflowers?” You snicker, starting to walk down the stairs, pushing the notebook into your bag as Haechan follows at your side. “If Renjun saw them he would have a heart attack.”

“Can’t compare Vang Gogh to Picasso.”

“Keep Picasso out of your mouth,” you say threateningly.

“Still, aren’t you happy you will think of me while studying?” He bats his lashes, and you hold back an entertained grin.

“Can’t wait to go through the absolute most painful ulcers every time I glance down on those things.”

He gasps offended, bringing a hand on his chest. “See, this is what happens when you spend all your days on socials and your brain doesn’t know how to appreciate real art anymore.”

“You are so annoying, and distracting. Next time if you sit next to me, I’ll push you off the chair,” you warn, and only when a colder blow of wind hits you, you realize you’re walking back to your places together.

“Right!” He says and you think it’s the good time he leaves you alone, but no, he’s not done. “You didn’t explain why the dog would wear it only on its hind legs.”

“Is it really that serious? Why do you want to know so badly?”

“It’s funny. I’m sick and tired of hearing you only discuss music, sociology, and the media and other stuff.”

You sigh. But you still have a bit to walk, so you might as well have to deal with him and his hypothesis about dogs. “Because pants have to cover your lower body, so legs, and ass and everything else. If you wear them like the first option, half of the ass is out. And also, the back limbs correspond to our legs, we’re divided in half horizontally, not vertically.”

He doesn’t reply right away, processing your answer. And you think you broke him.

“Oh!” You exclaim. “Zootopia, animals wear clothes like the second picture.”

“Really? You had a whole statement that made perfect sense and then you added a cartoon to your thesis?”

“But it still makes sense,” you argue back. “And, most importantly, I made you agree with me,” you wink before stopping when you reach your complex.

“Fine, fine, you’re right,” he gives up before looking behind you. “You live here?”

You nod, searching for the keys in the tote bag, and you think it’s time to stop pretending that’s Mary Poppins’ bag and throw away some useless stuff.

“I thought there were only rooms here,” he states, looking at the big complex a few meters away from the university.

“There are common dormitories, and then there are some one-room flats. I got one with a scholarship when I graduated. It’s less expensive than an apartment and I get a small place all to myself.”

“Oh,” he whispers. He doesn’t know why he thought you had roommates. “So, you’re alone, alone?”

“No, you can’t come in,” you say.

“I didn’t ask that,” he frowns, offended you would even imply that. “I thought you… well, oh, never mind.”

“Yes, I’m alone, so I can do whatever the hell I want. If I want to cook, I cook. If I want to stay up all night to study, I do that. If I want to dry the clothes in the middle of the living room, that is also the bedroom and the kitchen, I do that.”

“Is it really that small?”

“It’s decent, I guess. It’s spacious enough to live in it comfortably but not big to the point I have to waste days cleaning it.”

“Maybe we could study there, no loud roommates screaming in the living room.”

“I like the mess of your place, and I’ll be there Friday.”

Haechan rolls his eyes. “Come on, I hate the library. Can’t we for once study at your place?”

“I never invited you to my studying sessions,” you groan.

“But you love it.”

“No.”

“Yes, you have an orgasm every time you know something better than me.”

“Please, shut up,” you wave him off, starting to walk away.

“I don’t care, I’ll be here tomorrow,” he screams when you’re too far, clearly running away from him.

“And I’ll be at the library!”

You never go to the library, to be honest, you were just unlucky enough that the washing machine thought it was the right moment to leak all over the floor and Haechan found you at home with your coat on the couch, the tote bag next to the door and your jeans half soaked as you tried to fix the mess on the pavement.

From that moment, your meet-ups become more and more periodic, whether it’s at your place, his or at the library. You hate to admit it, but the competition drives you forward, and you love seeing his face every time you defeat him somehow.

“Are you busy this Saturday?” He asks while he strums with the guitar to come up with a chord progression for your song.

“Yeah, why?” You reply, poking the cap of the pen to your cheeks, drifting your eyes on him.

“Want to go out with me?”

“What? Saturday is my day to study and do my things like I want to,” you say. It was the only day, along with Sunday, you had to fix all your notes without being wrecked from the lessons of the day, or listen to lessons while cleaning the house, and so on. You tried to squeeze everything there so Sunday could be your free day and you could dedicate it to your hobbies and to write for the magazine you worked for, nothing too serious, just some money to add to the survival costs that your parents would send you, and the monthly entrance you had when you would get called to help a dance studio downtown.

“Great, we’re going out tomorrow.”

You huff, slumping back on the chair. “No, we’re not. I’m busy.”

“You can take one afternoon for me,” he replies, placing the instrument next to him. “Come on, it will be fun.”

“Where would you even take me?”

Haechan smirks. “It’s a surprise.”

When Saturday afternoon arrives, you don’t know how to feel. You spent the whole night trying to find a positive thing about it, and the good thing is that for once you are leaving the house to do something funny —you hoped so— not all by yourself. The bad thing is that the person you are going to do this thing with is Haechan.

You try not to worry about it too much, he’s not that bad when he wants to, and he’s funnier than you’d like to admit, so maybe taking a small break from the obsessive studying and tidying, will do you some good.

When you hear the knocks on the door, you grab your coat and your bag and head to open it.

“Hi,” he says. “Anything to fix before we leave?”

“Don’t say that, they will hear you and break all together.”

Haechan laughs, briefly looking at your body, mostly covered because it’s still cold outside and you have way too many layers on you. “Toy Story for home appliances?”

“Yeah, that would be my life,” you reply, closing the door behind you and walking outside of the complex. “So, where are you taking me?”

“I told you, it’s a surprise,” he says. “Don’t expect anything big, I just don’t want to hear you nag about it.”

“Hey, I appreciate almost everything.”

“Yeah, it’s the almost that worries me,” he says. “Hop in the car.”

“You have a car?”

“Yeah, it’s right in front of your eyes,” he answers, gesturing to the space next to you.

You turn around, holding back a laugh when you see the old blue car, it’s surely a Hyundai, you have no idea about the model, but you know for sure it’s falling apart. “This is the car?”

“Yes, I’m sorry I’m poor.”

“It will get us killed,” you say opening the door, letting out a breath of relief when the handle doesn’t stay in your hold.

Haechan rolls his eyes and sits in. “Can you don’t be overdramatic for one second?”

“I’m stating facts. Are the airbags still working? Is the oil level high enough? The battery? And the water for —” Your eyes widen when his lips crash on yours. At first, it’s a harsh attempt to shut you up, but then his lips shily go for more, moving along yours with a small flame of need.

“I won’t kill you, but please shut up,” he begs when he pulls away, sooner than you want to, later than he should’ve.

You gulp, trying to shake the dizziness and the way his kiss made you feel lightweight. You might occasionally still want to wrap your hand around his neck but he’s quite good at being a charmer.

“I’m giving you the privilege to pick the music,” he says once you’re on the open road, the lights of the city shine against the windows and the other cars pass beside you.

“Yeah, can I connect my Spotify to the car? Oh, wait, this model from the future directly brings the singers into your backseats so you can have a live concert,” you joke after seeing the car radio.

“Wanted to take the metro?”

You laugh. “No, I’m just… why did you say that as if I could connect the aux or the Bluetooth? It was funny.”

“Fine, you’re forgiven,” he says. “Just play it through your phone.”

You hum, already deep into the scrolling of your music catalogue. “Can I put my driving playlist?”

“You have a car?”

“No, I have a driving playlist.”

“Why would you have a driving playlist if you don’t have a car?”

“Because right now it comes useful,” you wink, pressing play without waiting for his answer.

Haechan smiles, quickly glancing at you before his attention is fully on the road. “Baekhyun?” He asks with surprise when the second song starts. “You listen to Baekhyun?”

“Everybody should listen to him,” you reply, already getting defensive because his next words could be the last straw of your ‘relationship.’

“Oh God,” he whispers.

“If you tell me you’re a hater I’m jumping out of the running car and changing the trajectory of your life forever,” you warn, turning to the side to have a better view of him.

“Me? A Baekhyun hater? He’s my father! I just can’t believe you have some sort of sense and taste.”

You slap his shoulder, making the both of you break into a light-hearted laugh.

“You scared me for a second,” you say, placing your hand on your beating heart.

“Sorry. So, it turns out we have one thing in common,” he jokes, creases creating at the corner of his eyes as his features soften and a genuine smile blooms on his face.

You shrug. “I mean, we have many things in common, actually. That’s why we get along so badly. Maybe it’s true, opposite attracts and that’s why we don’t attract.”

“I think we do attract… proved it a few times.”

“Once,” you reply immediately.

“Twice, with the kiss…”

“You did that to shut me up.”

“I don’t shut up just…” anybody… “I felt like kissing you.”

You smirk, loving watching him struggle. “Nothing wrong to admit you find me attractive,” you tease.

“Unfortunately, your mouth ruins everything.”

“My mouth is the thing that attracts you the most about me, or else you wouldn’t keep lingering around me like bees on honey.”

“Bees make honey, they’re not attracted to it. Bears are.”

“Yeah, you look like a bear, you know?”

He glares at you, and you laugh. “Bears are cute.”

“And attracted to honey.”

“And do I look like honey?” You ask teasingly. “Wait! You always call me honey!”

“It’s a mockery honey, not a sweet honey. You’re not my honey.”

You think about it. “You’re not my honey… could be a line of our song.”

“No academy talking today. It’s forbidden. You have to forget about uni.”

“Fine, I’ll forget about it just for today.”

The dates with Haechan, you can call them dates, right? Well, anyway, whatever they are, they become more common. At first, you tried to reject his weird, most of the time, last minute, proposal, because they would throw in the air all of your plans, but after a while, you somehow still found a way to go back on track without screwing up your academic goals.

“Why don’t you stay?” Haechan asks. It’s another Friday afternoon, and you two met up to go on with the song’s project. Much to your dismay, you have to admit you are the one who’s holding you two back. It’s like words can’t come out of you, not like you want to, at least. But Haechan’s not mad at you. Actually, you like the atmosphere around you when you lock in his room for those sessions. One time, he even made you try edibles to see if you could come up with something, but you ended up making out on the floor instead, so you stopped going for that path.

“I don’t know,” you say, huffing when you glance at the words in front of you and remind yourself that they don’t make sense. “I was thinking of going home and maybe listening to your tracks and…”

“Come up with something?” He drags the chair closer to you and steals your papers to read them. “It’s not as bad as you made it to be.”

“Yeah, it’s a good song, but it’s basic. And I feel like it’s a bit… cliché.”

“You do know that everything has already been written?” He jokes, but it’s not a teasing remark, it’s the truth, and he’s genuinely trying to lift your spirit.

“I know, but it’s not my style, this is not how I usually write, I —”

“You write?” He stops you and only then you realize what you said. “Like, you have written songs before?”

You nod, shame pervading you when he stares at you with an expression you can’t comprehend. “Are you going to make fun of me?”

“No, I just thought you preferred lyrics over production, but I had no idea you were a lyricist.”

“Now, lyricist… I try, sometimes…”

Haechan smirks, poking your tummy making you cover it with your arms. “So there is something you’re insecure about.”

“Oh, I knew you were going to have a ball about this,” you groan, rolling your head back.

“No, hey, it’s just… I’ve never seen you like this about something you do. You are confident, usually,” he explains with no hint of mockery in his voice.

You sigh, looking at your feet tapping the ground and then look back at him. “It’s just… very personal,” you confess. “I think it’s clear I don’t have lots of friends. I used to, back at home, but here I’m alone. But even back then I’ve always felt like there was something I couldn’t completely let out. That’s why I love dancing, I can express myself in a different way, but I found out it still wasn’t enough and when I started playing the piano again I… started writing. It started almost as a joke, and it was a cheesy break-up song when my ex cheated on me, like the cheap version of drivers license,” you joke and he laughs with you.

“But it was still better than this, I guess?”

You hum, shaking your head. “Nah, my first song was a mess, but then it was like I just couldn’t stop writing, so my songs became my diary. Every time something happens, I write about it.”

He hums, moving the chair closer until your legs intertwine. “So, to write a love song you would need to fall in love?”

You’re taken aback by his question, and don’t reply right away. “No, I just need to be inspired. I’ll watch some movies, and it will come to me.”

His face twists in mild disgust as he shakes his head. “Movies are fake, it’s better to live things on your skin.”

“I don’t have time to date, and I can’t just find someone that easily,” you say laughing. “But don’t worry, I won’t make us fail. I’ll try to edit this and make it work if I really can’t come up with anything else.”

Haechan is not convinced, it’s clear in his face and the way his leg is bouncing nervously, but he doesn’t get back on the conversation. “Are you staying?”

“I have some notes to edit and —”

“You have tomorrow,” he cuts you off. “Come on, I have to do it too.”

You groan, hating the way you can’t say no to his big eyes staring at you. “Fine, but not too much.”

It’s useless to say that none of you get those notes written better.

“God, are you fucking Professor Kim?” Haechan growls, grabbing your wrist and stopping you in the college corridors right out of Music History class, the last lesson of Tuesday.

“What?” You babble out, surprised by his angry tone and his speculation.

“No cause you’re his favourite and it’s driving me insane,” he utters under his breath, glaring at you.

“I’m his favourite?” You tease, tilting your head to the side, loving the fire that turned on between you two. It had been three calm months, the bickerings were too intellectual and you missed this.

“Yeah, I gave him the exact same answer and he found the tiniest thing to say I wasn’t right, just so he could hear yours instead and praise you.”

“Oh, poor baby boy, Professor Kim didn’t give you head pats and now you’re mad?” You pout, patting his head in a mockery gesture.

Haechan groans, throwing his head back, and pushing you into the nearest empty class, closing the door behind.

“Haechan, what are y—”

“Shh,” he says, shushing you with a stern gaze and a squeeze of your wrist. “You passed by his office the other day, didn’t you? Needed extracurricular help ‘cause you didn’t understand something,” he mocks with a high-pitched voice. “Taught you how to play his flute in a historically accurate way?”

You’d love to laugh at his terrible blowjob-music reference but when his gaze darkens, you only chuckle, and that’s enough to drive him mad.

“God, for you is just a game, isn’t it?”

“You really think I fucked Professor Kim?”

“No, but I’m pretty sure he fantasizes about having you bent over his desk and, fuck, it drives me mad.”

“You wish he fantasized about having you bent on his desk?” You joke, smirking.

He groans. “No, I hate the way he looks at you, and talks to you, the last thing he had to do today was to call you a good girl in front of the whole class.”

Your lips curl in an amused grin, but your heart —and something else— flutter at the way he says ‘good girl,’ you try not to show it and go on with your teasing. “Not my fault I’m good, and I’m interested in his subject.”

“Your fault you lick his boots,” he groans, pushing you flat against the door, standing so close to your nose. “I know you’re smart and you don’t need to ride a dick to be first in class but…” he stops, inhaling your scent, and leaning against your forehead.

You lift his head with two fingers under his chin, and lean in, whispering, “you still want to see me bent over a desk, and you want to be the one railing me, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t reply, not verbally at least. The only answer is a guttural moan and two arms lifting you, making your legs wrap around his waist as he kisses you roughly.

“Hyuck,” you moan into the kiss when he starts walking toward the desk, sitting you on the edge.

“Yeah?”

“We can’t — we — this is, we can get expelled…”

He snickers. “Be quiet and nobody will even hear us.”

“What if they lock us inside?”

“Shut up,” he groans again, kissing you another time as his bag drops on the floor. “You drive me so fucking mad, you have no idea.”

You snicker under your breath, but your heart loses a beat when his hands roam on your thighs, moving closer and closer to your heat. “Wait,” you whisper.

“Wait, what?” He hums, cupping your chin and lowering your head, staring straight into your eyes. Haechan scoffs when your thighs squeeze against each other and he can see you gulping. “Don’t act like you don’t want this,” he whispers, leaning closer to your lips, making you believe he’ll kiss you, but you only get a taste of his thumb rubbing over your full lips, “don’t act like you don’t want me.”

“Haechan!” You scream when he rips off your tights, the tear of the fabric resonating in the room as you look down in shock. “I’m gonna kill you,” you groan but he’s not bothered in the slightest.

“They were getting in the way, and I get rid of everything that gets in my way,” he says with a smirk.

You laugh mockingly. “Then why am I still here?”

His brows furrow and a small pout forms on his face but he shrugs it off. “I’m taking care of you, I told you,” he groans, kissing you harshly. “You’re not winning the war.”

“Oh, and your military strategy is to fuck me?”

“Yeah, until you forget everything.”

You huff loudly when he finishes ripping the tights from your legs, the only pieces left the ones trapped in your shoes, and you’re glad the skirt is long enough to don’t make you freeze on the way back home.

“So much better,” he says proudly, staring at his work of art, letting his hands wander on your now bare skin. “And, now, let’s find out if there’s a way to shut you up.”

You look at him in anticipation, waiting for his next move as if your life depends on it. And you hate to be so eager, you hate you fantasized on it more than you should’ve, but you want to know what his lips feel like. And it’s almost as if Haechan hears your secret thoughts.

“What do you want, sweetheart?” He taunts, kneading his fingers on your flesh.

“Nothing,” you mutter, trying to sound more confident than what you are.

Haechan laughs at you, shaking his head as he slowly gets on his knees, looking up at you. “You are always so fucking proud and annoying.” His hands rest on your knees before he pushes them far apart, forcing you in place as you uselessly try to close your legs. He tsk, shaking his head. “Don’t act ashamed, I’ve already felt you, and tasted you.”

You don’t reply. It’s hard to keep eye contact but this is bigger than sex, this is a game between you two and, he might not beat you in class, but he’s beating you right now.

His laugh brings you back to earth and you hate the smug smirk that’s sitting on his face. “So you do get quiet, thought I needed to give you a taste of my mouth to shut you up.”

You open your mouth to retort but the stern glare that flashes on his face is enough to put you back in your place.

“Good girl,” he says and your body trembles before you can even try to hide it. “Should I get a better taste of you?” He stares at you, waiting for an answer that doesn’t come, not like he wants to at least. “Use your words, babe. You know how to run that mouth when you want to, so, beg for it.”

“Fuck, no,” you retort, trying to move away but his hold on you doesn’t give any signs of loosening up.

“Okay, then,” he says, slowly standing up, and grabbing his bag. “See you around.”

“What?” You squeal, grabbing his wrist. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving,” he replies, shrugging.

“That’s not fair,” you reply, and he snickers.

“What? Are you wet? Do you want me?”

You don’t expect that reply and struggle to find the words, even more now that he’s standing between your open legs, keeping them apart, and his eyes are staring down at you, pinning you down in place. “I don’t want you,” you lie, swallowing the gulp in your throat when his right hand sits on your waist. “I just… I want to fuck.”

“Oh, do you? Well, there are plenty of people here, I’m sure many of them would want you. You know, even if you don’t pay attention to anybody, people look at you,” he whispers, caressing your jaw with his other hand. “First on the list is Professor Kim. Don’t you want to feel the thrill? Come on, go to his office now, so I can have something to hold against you forever.”

You chuckle. “Yeah? Want to blackmail me so I can do all the essays for you? Maybe you’ll get the best grades like this,” you tease, pulling him closer by the collar of his shirt and making him groan.

He licks his lips, staring at yours, and you smirk. “I don’t need you to be first, and you know it.”

“Do I?” you tease. “Want to be first at something?”

“Don’t,” Haechan warns, eyes darkening even more while the tent in his tight pants becomes even more evident.

“What? You can be the first one who fucks me on a desk if you quit playing hard to get.”

“I’m not playing hard to get,” he replies, leaning even closer, your bodies are pressed together and you can feel his hard dick press against you. “I won’t be the one begging, especially to eat you out,” he groans, cupping your chin unexpectedly. “Don’t act as if you didn’t think of this before. I’ve seen the way you get lost in my fingers when we study together. You see me twirl a pen in my hand and you wish I was inside you, don’t you? And when we argue? There’s always a small fragment where you lose focus and stare at my lips. Where do you want them, honey?”

Your brows furrow but your entire body reacts differently, a small shake, while wetness pools down your panties, soaking them even more, and your eyes close because you can’t bear his smug glare.

“I said,” he urges, giving a quick squeeze to your chin, “where do you want my lips?”

“On — on me,” you breathe out, voice muffled by the firm hold on your face.

His lips twitch as he leans closer and kisses your cheek. “Here,” he says, holding back a laugh when your eyes widen. “That was where you wanted them, right?”

“Oh, fuck off, you know what I meant,” you huff.

“No, I’m the dumb one, remember? You are smarter than me, you know everything. I’m always a step behind, I need you to guide me step by step,” he mocks in a condescending tone, pouting.

You take a deep breath. “I hate you.”

“Oh, I know,” he laughs. “But if you use just three magic words I’m sure you’re going to love me for a while.”

You don’t want to give up but you’re on fire, and you fear that the more time passes by the more someone could find you out.

“I’ll ask nicely one last time,” he whispers against your lips. “Then I’ll ask you to do something for me and you’ll lose my lips for the second time. Where do you want them?”

“On my pussy,” you whisper, not meeting his eyes.

“Fucking finally,” he laughs. “Was it so hard Miss big brain?”

“Stop mocking me!”

“Mocking you?” He asks, getting on his knees again before grabbing your panties to pull them down. “I might hate you but it would be dumb to not recognize your qualities, right?”

You don’t reply, you have other things to worry about. For example, your mortal enemies kneeled between your legs in an empty class of your Academy, staring into your soul, ready to eat you out.

“So, since you’re so good with words, here we go again. Beg.” Haechan craves putting his lips on you just as you do, but this is the only moment he can have some power over you. And after the humiliation of today’s class, he has to make you pay for it a bit. Or maybe he just wants to hear that even if you’d choke him and slap him, you still want him.

“Please, Donghyuck, please,” you plead, looking into his eyes.

He’d love to hear you beg for him more, but the way your cunt is dripping on the desk is already enough to tell him how much you want him, and for now, it’s enough.

When his lips come in contact with your skin your legs immediately hook around his shoulders and you can feel the chuckle on your wet folds.

“Eager, honey?”

“Just, please, eat me out already,” you barely have time to finish that he stops playing around and starts moving his mouth on you. Your head falls behind while your thighs squeeze tighter around his face. Your hands clench on the edge of the desk as you try to keep your balance, but it gets harder with every lick of his tongue.

“Keep quiet, the door is closed not locked,” he reminds you, pulling away from you just to pick up again.

You try to don’t be too loud, but he’s better than you expected and maybe this was the wrong time to try this out. You should’ve simply begged him to fuck you, but now that you’re in the middle of this, the last thing you want is to stop him.

One of your hands is brave enough to let go of the hold on the desk and reach his hair to push him closer to your body, surprising him.

Haechan always thought you were much more shy than this, honestly, he didn’t even hope much for this to happen. But you surprise him, not only you let him have you in a random class at your university but you are also pushing him closer.

“You are eager,” he muffles against you, he can’t pull away when you’re pressing him down with so much force, but the way you’re acting is setting him on fire. He loves hearing you moan and whimper, not a word coming out of your pretty lips to confront him, just bliss on your face and voice. And that pushes him to give you even more, putting his entire self into eating you out until he almost drags screams out of you, making both of you forget where you are.

You’re not sure how many minutes pass by but when the orgasm rushes in your body you feel it’s too close. You’d probably force him down for another round if you were in any other place but you don’t feel brave enough.

“So? Disappointed?” He asks, cleaning his chin as he stands up, reaching you again. “Don’t lie, you’re still dripping down the desk, you’re even more turned on than last time.”

“I’m not,” you lie. You know you are, and Haechan knows it too.

“What is it? The thrill of being caught? My skills? Just me, or something else?”

You don’t know why you reply with what you reply, but you do. “Maybe someone else,” you tease, not even sure he’ll take the bait, but he’s too caught up in you to see the games you’re playing.

“Yeah? And who’s that?”

“See, I always believed you were perspicacious and could catch details, I can’t believe you didn’t get it. You’re so sure Professor Kim wants to fuck me, ever thought I want him too?” You bat your lashes and Haechan tries to silence a groan, but you feel his fists clench at your sides.

“Don’t play with me, I’m not falling for this.”

You shrug. “Fine, I’ll still think about him while you fuck m—” he shuts you up with a rough kiss, pushing you down the desk with a quick movement that makes your heart jump to your throat.

“He’s not even that hot,” he groans, turning you around before bending you on the desk, and pulling your skirt up around your waist. “And he’s not even that old, there’s not even the charm of the dilf.”

“He’s smart,” you talk back, not sure how much you can pull your luck.

Haechan scoffs, slapping your ass. “Not smarter than me.”

“You’re not the professor so…”

“A degree means nothing,” he says, his chest pressing against your back. “What’s that you like so much about him?”

You chuckle. You’re not sure if he’s playing into your game or is just so easy to fool, but either way, you decide to keep going. “Everything. Don’t you see him?”

Haechan groans. Out of all the people, out of all the professors, he has a very personal beef with him that started at the start of the year and the way you just praise him so much —even outside of this specific situation where he got you’re messing up with him— drives him insane.

“Because he’s the best at everything? Isn’t he?”

You nod, expecting him to talk back but the only answer you get is the sharp sound of his belt being pulled away from his pants and smacked against your ass. “Fuck,” you curse, hating the way your body buzzes with pleasure at the impact.

Haechan chuckles. “I wonder what he would think of you if he saw you like this.”

“He wouldn’t think,” you say. “He’d act, fucking me like I deserve instead of wasting time like you.”

When his cock fills you up with no warning you almost scream but his hand is quicker at reaching your mouth.

“Yeah, would he fuck you better?”

You groan in his hand, but your brain goes blank with each thrust into you, pulling his hips back before he snaps them forward, so forcefully that you slide upward on the desk and he has to pull you down so that your hips don’t hit the wood.

“Answer me,” he urges, making a makeshift ponytail with your hair to force you up. “Would he?”

“I… I don’t know,” you cry out, feeling him deep inside of you, filling you perfectly.

“You just have to test me until I snap, don’t you?”

“He seems —fuck— fitter than you.”

Haechan snickers mockingly. “Yes? You want to be thrown around? Like you’re worth nothing? Do I have to do that to make you feel good?”

You shake your head, ass perking up, your feet on their tips as you try to keep balance.

“No? Is being fucked in a class enough for you? Does it satisfy your needs?” He hisses, eyes rolling back when he focuses them where your bodies meet, your cum dripping down his length and balls. He can’t believe how turned on you are. “Thought you were innocent but look at you.”

“Not my fault you don’t catch details,” you retort with a small bit of sanity —not really— you have in you.

“Details? Or maybe you’re just an actress. Making everyone believe you only think about grades and studies and here you are, drooling while I fuck you over a desk. Begging for my dick.”

You don’t even realize you are drooling down the desk and when you’re about to clean your chin, Haechan grabs your hands and pins them in place behind your back.

“No,” you whimper, falling flat with your chest pressing down the wooden table.

“Yes, honey,” he mocks. “I want to see you become a mess for me. Should I take a snap of you like this? Send it to Professor Kim so he can see he will never have you like this?” He whispers against your ear. “Think I don’t know it was all a play? Not only you don’t like him, but you wouldn’t risk your reputation for a terrible fuck when you have a brain like yours.”

Your pussy clenches. It’s the way his voice sounds like velvet, it’s how deep it’s hitting you, it’s in his words, and the way it turns you on that your number one rival, the one that despises you, still knows your value.

“Still, I’m pretty sure he wishes he could see you like this,” he adds, biting your earlobe. “A shame he can’t, right?”

“Y-yes,” you mumble in a pathetic wail.

“But maybe I could still keep it to myself,” his hips start moving with more force and you can’t hold back your moans as you clench around him. “Yeah? Want me to take a photo of you like this?”

You wish you could reply but words just don’t come out of your lips, brain emptying and eyes rolled back in your skull.

“Maybe another time,” he says, breath getting ragged as he keeps fucking into you with determination. “Don’t really want to pull away to take a pic of us.”

“There — there won’t be —fuck— another time,” you reply, forcing yourself to speak.

Haechan snickers. “The mess between your legs tells me otherwise,” he mocks, reaching in front of you to play with your clit, making you shake. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, you deserve good things, even a good fuck from me.”

“Too much,” you cry out, feeling your eyes getting wetter as the orgasm starts choking you.

“No, you just haven’t had a decent orgasm in ages,” he retorts.

“Shut up! You know —shit— you know nothing.”

“Honey, I can only imagine you playing with yourself, but your hands or toys don’t come close to me,” he says, so smugly you can feel the smirk on his face. And you can’t even retort because —as much as you hate it— he’s right.

“Come here,” he says, putting a hand over your shoulders to pull you closer to him. “Are you close?”

You nod, biting your lower lip until it bleeds because you’re sure the sound of your ass slamming against his hips is already a giveaway of what’s going on inside this room. You clench around him when he bites down your shoulder to muffle a louder groan as his hips start moving faster as he chases his climax.

You feel your legs give up as the second orgasm hits you and you hold against the desk again because you don’t know where else to hold on to. Haechan tries to keep his curses low, sticking his face in the crook of your neck and you feel you could come again just by his voice alone; his moans the pretties sounds you’ve ever heard.

“Oh god,” you breathe out when he gently lets go of your body and you can relax on the hard surface again, squirming in discomfort when he pulls out of you.

“I hope you didn’t tear my panties apart, too,” you say, rolling on your back, making him laugh.

“Don’t move, you’ll stain the skirt, it’s the only clean thing on the table,” he says, grabbing a napkin to prevent you from making even more of a mess.

“And who’s fault is that?” You ask, glaring at him.

“You should just thank me for the orgasm, better, two orgasms, I gave you.”

You huff, rolling your eyes, but still letting him clean you up, after all, the cum was his, so it’s his place to clean it. After you’re sure you won’t ruin the last untouched piece of clothes you have, you sit up, taking your —uncomfortably— wet panties to put them on.

“So…” he whispers as he cleans up the rest of the mess on the table and shoves your broken tights in his bag, “it was just for fun, right? You have no intentions with Mr…”

You break down laughing. “You’re so easy to fool. You seriously think I’ll ever let him see me like this?”

Haechan scoffs, finishing fixing his clothes before walking to the door. “It’s not about what you would do, is if you think of him.”

“I don’t,” you reply, following him even if you feel like your legs could give up any second. “I wonder if your jealousy was also a play,” you tease, nudging him as you two walk down the corridor to leave.

“It wasn’t jealousy, you would just have terrible taste if you truly liked him, and I have beef with him.”

You chuckle, deciding to believe him.

“Wait,” he says, stopping to search for something in his bag.

“I’ll go for the door, reach me,” you say, starting to head on, you’re not even sure you two could be there at that time. “Lee Donghyuck,” you curse when you try to push open the front door. “What did I say?”

He walks toward you nonchalantly and shrugs. “Yeah?”

“They locked us in!”

He smiles, shaking his head, and grabbing your hand. “Can you run?”

“What?” You blink a few times, trying to understand how his question fits the situation.

“After I fucked you like that, can you run?”

“Shush,” you scold, fearful someone might hear, you’re not sure who since you seem to be completely alone, but better safe than sorry. “And no, I don’t know, I… why would we run?”

“Do you trust me?” He asks, reaching out his hand for you to take.

“No,” you say resolutely.

“Good,” he smirks before he starts running into the corridors, giving you no chance but to follow him, cursing and damming every life decision that led you here, with cum threatening to leak out of you after you finished having sex in the class of your Academy and are now running to go God knows where, locked inside the institute.

“Hyuck!” You scream when he runs up the stairs and you swear you never felt so much adrenaline rush in your blood but when he looks back for a second and shows you his big bright smile with his hair falling in his face perfectly, you swear the world stops and all your worries are lifted from your shoulders. Maybe you trust him. Maybe you need to be this carefree sometimes.

Your heart jumps in your throat when he pushes open an emergency door and the mild breeze of March runs over you. You breathe in deeply, pushing into your lungs the air and the first early spring scent, letting the wind play with your hair and your clothes while your hand never lets go of his.

And then you both start laughing. Never looking back, and terribly looking forward, watching your steps as you run down the emergency stairs. You laugh, and you’re happy and you can’t believe your fingers are still intertwined with the ones of your mortal enemy.

When you reach the ground floor, hidden in the back of the palace where the sun doesn’t shine, there are still some tears spilling out of your eyes. You two pant, trying to catch your breath, and look at each other before you have to look away or else you will start laughing again.

You can’t believe you followed him blindly.

Your hands are still intertwined.

With each passing day, Haechan is convinced he has a perfect plan. It’s all part of the original plan, but if he gets you to try out romantic things, not only will he distract you from your perfect grades but he will also make you come up with a song that will give him a perfect score.

There are some small details that Haechan didn’t even consider. Detail number 1: where this could lead you two and your relationship. Detail number 2: that while distracting you, he will inevitably distract himself. But he doesn’t get it until it’s too late.

Haechan can’t remember when you started to dress up so much every time you hang out. You always dress well, or maybe he is biased for thinking that even the most basic white turtleneck shirt and cargo pants when you are too done with life to put up your skirts, dresses, or cutely styled other types of outfits, look amazing on you. Yet, during these last few dates, you started doing more, playing more with your hairstyles, trying different make-up, and always looking perfect in whatever clothes you put on your body.

Haechan hates you. Now more than ever because this was supposed to be your silly little race to the top of your second academic year and yet here he is, feeling his heart pound in his throat as you walk toward him. With your hair in a slicked-back ponytail, a freaking heart-shaped side part, your short red dress, while the white cardigan covers your arms and shields you from the light breeze, and your red short heels tap on the asphalt and bring his attention to the white socks that reach you right below your knees, while your hand clench around a heart-shaped bag.

He hates you because he wants you too badly and he’s terrified this is crossing the lines of bland and stupid physical attraction.

You smile, calling him Hyuck and he’d love to scream because he can’t be so smart and yet so dumb at the same time. But he tries to ignore it, and smiles back at you, addressing you with your surname so he can put some distance between you. You don’t even get mad anymore, it makes you smile tenderly as you lower your face to the ground and tangle your arm with his to walk to the car. Now he hopes that the old sardine can will make you two blow up, not to kill you, but to don’t make you accept a date from him anymore.

But that old car struggles but doesn’t crash, and drives you to the restaurant safely.

“This place is so pretty,” your voice rings in his ears, bringing him out of the thought he’s struggling with since you walked out of your apartment.

“Yeah, it’s musically themed, thought it was a good idea.”

“And the dishes also have song names? That’s the best thing I’ve ever seen,” your face lightens up when you scan the menu and in reflection, he does too.

What the fuck are you doing? He curses when he catches himself lost on you, too focused giggling like a child as you catch the references between the songs and the plates. You look like a cliché embodiment of love, and he thinks you’ve done it on purpose. It’s way past Valentine’s Day, but he feels that Cupid is flying right above you, ready to play him a dirty trick.

“So? You picked?” You ask, bringing him out of his thoughts, and he shakes his head, coughing while glueing his eyes on the menu.

“Nope, I’m a bit uncertain,” he says, pretending he wasn’t just too busy staring at you a few moments ago.

You laugh, humming. “Oh, I know.”

“What did you get?” He asks, meeting your eyes above the paper in his hand.

“I wanted to get the Summer 69’ appetizer first,” you reply and he smirks.

“Are you hinting at something?”

“Oh, shut up, you perv! It just looks tasty, there are different appetizers from different parts of the world and it’s a cold start.”

“Then we can take the big one so we can share?”

“Sure,” you reply, smiling at him. “Oh, and then ‘I wanna dance with somebody’ as the main dish.”

“Do you?” He winks.

“I’m not sending you signals, I’m just starving,” you reply, rolling your eyes, but he hears the low giggle that you try to hold back.

“Fine,” he smiles. “I’ll take ‘Maneater’ in your honour.”

“I’m a maneater? Oh, thanks, the best compliment ever actually,” you say playfully.

He smiles, stopping for a second after he hands you his menu. “You look beautiful tonight, by the way.” And when your mouth parts and no sound come out of it, he thinks he screwed it up. It’s not the first time he compliments you but well, the other times didn’t sound so serious.

But then your face breaks in a smile, and your eyes light up, shily diverting the gaze as you thank him before the waitress saves you both from the embarrassment that’s tangible in the air.

“Karaoke? Are you being extremely nice, borderline perfect, tonight so you can show me the biggest twist ever?” You gasp when the karaoke downtown enters your line of view. You’ve been walking for a while now since he couldn’t find a spot nearby, but he never mentioned where your next stop would be.

“I’m always nice to you when we go out on da— like this,” Haechan replies, opening the door of the place for you to get in first. “Also, since we’ll have to record the song soon, I think it’s time to test our vocal abilities.”

You giggle, waiting for him before you start walking to the desk to book a room.

“Karaoke is for fun, never to show off you’re like Celine Dion.”

Haechan chuckles, nodding in agreement while you reach the booth that the lady at the counter assigned you.

“Right, I’m more like Ailee, actually,” he jokes, closing the door behind you.

“Prove it to me, I always hear your mouth run to talk shit but never to sing melodies, so…”

“Should we go for a duet?” He asks, starting the TV to scroll down the songs listed.

“Nope,” you say, sitting on the couch. “A solo song first.”

“Fine,” he says, humming as the titles pass in front of your vision. “Mhh, what about Dean?”

“Love him, would love him more if he came back from the death and dropped another album of the year,” you say, sitting back to fully enjoy Haechan’s performance.

He chuckles at your comment. “This one was a painful reminder,” he says before clicking on “Instagram,” making the logo of the place appear before the countdown, signalling the beat was about to start.

You never thought you would find yourself so caught up in him but when he opens his mouth, you feel like you’re being taken to another world.

His voice sounds like honey, so raw yet so lovely. And as he keeps singing, you think that he would be wasted as a producer, a voice like his deserves to be heard by everyone. But when he finishes, you don’t show any of the emotions you felt.

“Your performance was very touching,” you say while standing up to grab your mic, “but I’m a performer, so I’ll go with Queen Britney.”

“Can’t wait to see your Superbowl worth it performance,” he snickers, sitting back against the small couch in the room as he watches you getting ready.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” you start, winking at him and swinging your hips to follow the rhythm of the music.

Haechan would love to find it as funny as he does at the start, but when you start singing for real, and moving around in the small boot, he gulps, feeling the air around him starting to dim. And it only gets worse when you turn around and start to perform for him. Of course, you know the song by heart, you don’t need to read the words, and you don’t need them to change colour to know when each verse, chorus and bridge starts.

“Oops, I did it again, I played with your heart,” you wink, tilting your head to the side, still moving your body to the beat. He can’t tell, not right at the moment, but he thinks you’re replicating the choreography. That’s the last worry in his mind.

I played with your heart.

And Haechan thinks you really did that. This doesn’t feel like a game anymore, and not even like sex. He looks at you, even right now, that you’re sensually singing a Britney Spears song, and he can only fucking smile like an idiot.

“Wow,” you exhale when the song ends, fanning yourself with your hand, “it’s really hot in here.”

“It definitely is,” he whispers, drifting his gaze from you.

“So? How was I?” You ask, head tilted to the side, and a big, bright smile on your face.

“Good,” Haechan mutters, catching himself staring at you for too long again, shaking his head, the red blush on his face is humiliating. “You were good.”

“Yes,” you cheer, clapping your hands. “Should we duet, now?”

He hums, grabbing the remote again and searching ‘duets’ in the search bar. “Sad, sexy or silly?”

You roll your eyes. “Really?”

“What? I’m trying to understand the vibe we want to go with.”

“I’ll let you pick,” you say just to regret it when you see the song choice on the screen. “Seriously? Anything you can do?”

“What? It’s fitting for how relationship,” he says nonchalantly.

“That’s a crazy choice.”

“Worried you can’t actually do better than me?” He winks, passing you the mic as the song loads on the screen.

“You’ll see,” you challenge with a glare.

One minute into the song you regret having agreed to that, not remembering the last time you sang like this, but the look on his face when it’s time for you to hold a long note for 15 seconds is worth it. And it keeps going until the end, as you both surprise each other with all the skills that this song requires.

“Wow, you’re good,” you both say when the song ends and you break down laughing, a sound that grows bigger when the screen lights up to show a perfect score.

“Maybe we make a great couple together,” you say, laying back on the couch, tired from the singing.

Haechan turns to you, smirking and nodding. “I guess we do.”

You sit up, resting your chin on his arm. “Can you take another one?”

“Oh, don’t test me, baby.”

“So, ice cream is good for vocal cords?” You giggle as you walk to the side of the Han River with the ice cream in hand. It seemed like Haechan didn’t want to end the night anytime soon, but you don’t feel like complaining.

“Yeah,” he hums with conviction, licking another stripe of chocolate.

“On which book you’ve read this scientific fact?”

“The ice cream ghost came to me one night and whispered the secret to my ear,” he jokes, making you laugh.

“Uhm, yeah, I think that ghosts are much more reliable than old men in white coats in a lab,” you joke, but then you remember something you wanted to talk about since you’ve walked out of the karaoke. “Mhh, you know what I was thinking?”

Haechan shakes his head, waiting for you to talk.

“I think we’re going down the wrong path with our song,” you voice out. “Especially me. A warmer, darker, I dare to say more sensual vibe, fits us better.”

Haechan chuckles and you glare at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he giggles, but he can’t lose against you so he goes on. “That’s the production, you know?”

You huff, rolling your eyes, and jumping on the handrail to sit. “I never said it wasn’t important.”

“Whatever,” he snickers. “So I have to scrap everything I’m working on?”

You shake your head, cleaning your hands after swallowing the last bite of the cone. “No, I was thinking about the second base you were working on, the one with the guitars and violins, remember?”

He hums, but he’s dangerously close to you, and you don’t understand why his hands wrap around your waist.

“I think we could use that and —�� you gulp when he places his feet on the handrail under you and reaches your height, “and then I can change small things of my — my writing to fit more. What do you think?”

He smiles before it turns into his usual smirk. “I still think you’re worrying too much and you’re not letting it come to you,” he whispers, and the air of his breaths puffs on your lips before he erases the space between you and kisses you.

You feel your breath taken away as you feel like you’re falling behind in the river as the wind blows harder and your hands immediately leave the handrail to reach for him.

You’re not sure that wasn’t an attempted murder from him, but you can’t care when you feel your heart flutter and your legs give up as he deepens the kiss.

“Let it flow,” he whispers, kissing you again, whispering against your lips, “and the song will come at you.”

You know it’s not what he’s talking about, but you kiss him again, this time pushing him down so your feet are on the ground again. Your hands are holding tight on his sweatshirt as you pull him even closer and he does the same wrapping his arms around your frame tighter.

You find yourself in the same position in the living room of his apartment, struggling to make it to his bedroom without waking some of the others up. Not that you care much, it would be fair payback for all the chaos they make when you and Haechan are studying together.

The clothes fall on the floor as quickly as he’s on top of you on the bed.

“I hate that I have to ruin your pretty face,” he whispers, fingers deep inside your sopping wet cunt, pumping in and out painfully slowly as he stares at your face, a cute mix between ecstasy and annoyance because he’s giving you something but not enough. “The red eyeshadow looks really good on you, you know?”

You groan, rolling your head back. “It’s not time for compliments.”

“I’ve been complimenting you all night,” he says, teasing your clit with flicks of his thumb but without giving you much. “It is a shame you will look like a mess once I’m done with you.”

“We can’t be loud,” you say, hating that, for one reason or another, you two always have to keep quiet.

“Nah, Jeno has his headphones on playing games with Yangyang. Renjun has headphones on with music to don’t listen to Jeno. Mark’s not home and not even bombs wake Jaemin up.” The explanation is particularly non-sexy now that he has his fingers inside of you and it doesn’t make you relax much, but you hum nonetheless and beg him to keep going.

“Patience, honey. We’ve got all night,” he smirks.

“Yeah but —”

“Ah, ah,” he says, clicking his tongue and silencing you with a finger on your lips. “What did I tell you before? Let it flow.”

“It was different it was —ugh,” you mumble when he covers your mouth with his hand, eyes widening before they narrow to send him a deadly glare, but he only smirks. He has control now. He always does when he has you underneath him, he still has to fight with you a bit, but you both know this is the only time he can ever win against you. And tonight is special, he wants you to let go of the reins completely, he wants you brainless, because even if your brain is the sexiest thing of you —yeah, yeah, and the thing that is making his college years hell on earth— your brain is also the thing that makes you obsess over the smallest thing and doesn’t make you follow your heart so freely.

Yeah, tonight Donghyuck wants you free, but for the sake of the dirty talking later —and to fool himself he doesn’t care about you that much— he’s going to say he wants you dumb.

And he’s starting strong tonight, his beautiful, long fingers reaching deep inside you, hitting right against your sweet spot, causing so much cum to pool around them and drip down while your pussy clenches hard and your hips buck up to ride the pleasure with him. And you don’t have it in you to fight; it feels too good, especially when he starts rubbing your clit and whispers dirty talk about how well you’re taking him.

Your eyes flutter open, just in time to catch the proud smirk on his face as he stares at your body, you dare to say, in awe. It shouldn’t warm your heart, but it does. You don’t even care if he sees you like a prize he won, right now, because even if he does, you know he only fights hard to win the trophies he cares about. He wants you, he likes you, even. Between the hate and the tension, something about what attracts you two together makes this work. And it’s fine.

“Hyuck,” you breathe out, chest panting and toes curling as you feel the familiar knot in your stomach. But you don’t expect the next words that come out of your mouth. “Kiss me.” When you realize what you said, you anticipate him mocking you, your ears already hear the snicker you know, oh so well, but it never arrives. What arrives are his lips on yours as he leans down, pressing his chest against yours while his fingers keep working wonder inside you.

The kiss is passionate, but not rough like the ones you’re so used to sharing. There’s no anger in it, just need and greed, and chemistry. So much chemistry, your hands have to run in his hair and tug them, making him moan and his dick throb against your thigh.

“I want you so bad,” he slurs against your lips. “I will do some dumb shit one day for you.”

You don’t get what he means. You don’t even know what he could mean by that given the nature of your bond, but his words, mixed with the sultry tone of his voice, are enough to make you come. You barely register the orgasm, hitting you like a singular explosion of a firework, leaving you gasping, exploding as quickly as it came yet slowly running through your bones as the feeling tones down.

Haechan snickers softly. “You love it when I get in trouble for you, don’t you? Even when it’s just a promise.”

Your lips part to reply but he shuts you with a kiss. “No talking, not unless I tell you to. I know everything I need to know, your body tells me that,” he says, grinning like an idiot when he shows you his cum coated fingers, tapping them against your lips, silently ordering you to taste yourself. You would never do that, but tonight it’s like he’s commanding you like a puppet on a string, and you obey. Closing your lips around him and sucking hard.

He smirks, feeling his dick get even harder as he stares at your lips. “That’s what I do to you, pretty girl. And I’m not even started.”

Your pussy throbs in anticipation while he pulls his fingers out. You know he’s one to keep promise, and you can’t wait for what’s to come. But he’s taking too long, and you can feel his hard dick against your leg, so your hand creeps down to touch it.

“You’re not in command tonight, angel,” he says, grabbing your wrist to stop you from moving your hand on him.

“But I want you,” you whine, trying to win him with a pouty look on your face.

It doesn’t work as he pushes your hand over your head and leans in. “Patience, princess. Keep quiet, don’t be greedy and just trust me. Can you do that? Or is it too hard for you?” He groans against your ear, making your hips buck up.

“I — I can,” you whisper but he stops with a glare and your brain replays his words ‘quiet, no words from you tonight,’ and he means it. So you nod, breathing in deeply as you feel weak in the knees for the way he looks at you.

“Good girl,” he says, pushing up to stand between your legs, pushing them open.

When he slips inside you, you gasp, dragging your nails on his back. “Are you alright?”

You nod, forcing yourself to look into his eyes.

“Good, and now,” he whispers, kissing your lips, and dragging out of you, “I want you to give into me and completely turn your brain off. You have me, that’s all you need right now.”

When he starts moving in and out, your body succumbs to the pleasure. Your muscles relax as you let him take care of you. His lips trace over your sensitive skin, leaving kisses on your neck and chest. His hands run over your body, touching and squeezing every inch. And he reaches so deep inside of you that you feel you can barely breathe.

“Just like this,” Haechan whispers close to your ear, gently biting the skin on your jaw. “Don’t think about anything,” he groans, hitting you deep after pulling out of you completely. “Not a single worry in that pretty brain of yours.”

You rarely let him win, but you have to admit that the way he makes you feel, the way he can lift all the stress off your shoulders, is a talent. He knows what he’s doing, and the scary thing is that he knows how to get you. So easily wrapped around his fingers, crumbling into nothing at his tiniest touch.

You whimper loudly when his fingers press against your clit, seeing stars at the new stimulation.

“You can take it,” he groans. You’re about to talk but he traps your lips in a messy, wet kiss as he pulls you closer by your waist, hitting even deeper. “You’re a good girl, right? You can take it.”

You’re doubtful, but you do take it, over and over again. You lose track of time and stop counting your orgasms after the third. There’s no need for that. All you need is the pleasure Donghyuck gives you, fucking you until both of you can’t do it anymore.

There’s nothing left once it’s over, no strength to talk or clean up the mess, just the warmth of your bodies cuddled against each other.

“Good morning, I will kill Lee Je — what the hell,” Renjun exclaims, entering the kitchen, making you turn around as if you’ve been caught stealing, holding the mug full of coffee in your hands and giving him a shy smile. “What are you doing here?”

You gulp, pushing your hair out of your face before coming up with a lie. “We studied too late.”

Renjun steps further into the room, staring at you with a raised brow before he tilts his head and studies how you’re dressed. You’re wearing Donghyuck’s sweater and pants.

“Oh, now they call it studying? Last time I checked you’re not med students, didn’t know music had anatomy in the program,” he taunts, grinning at you as he comes to your side.

You choke on your saliva and don’t have time to come up with a reply because he strikes again.

“Oh, no, maybe you were exercising vocalization, it’s better when it’s done together, right?” He winks and you glare at him.

“It’s not what you think,” you lie, but honestly you feel so embarrassed about everything. You didn’t think anybody else would be up this early on a Sunday, but it’s clear you don’t know Renjun well. You could’ve left, but you didn’t want to. It was slowly starting to sink in that you didn’t like the solitude of your life anymore.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody,” he says, sitting in front of you. “Come here, don’t stay up.”

You do as told, and smile when he offers you a pack of biscuits. “I would’ve cooked something usually, but Jeno kept me up all night.”

You chuckle. “It’s fine, normally I don’t even have breakfast.”

“You don’t?” He gasps, and you nod.

“Yeah, just coffee.”

He looks down at you, shaking his head in disappointment. “It’s not healthy.”

“I know, I know, I’ll try to eat more, okay? For you.” You reach out your hand and he takes it.

A fit of cough brings both of your gazes to the door and you see Haechan stand against the frame. “Once it’s Jeno, another time it’s Renjun. I bring you home to study and you flirt with my friends.”

“Drop the bullshit, Hyuck. He knows,” you say, rolling your eyes.

Haechan’s eyes widen, but he slowly fakes indifference. “Knows what? That you don’t have time for a relationship so you can’t date him?”

“That you two fuck,” Renjun answers instead, making him cough.

“That’s not true,” he defends. “I hate her,” he says, laughing, but when he meets your eyes and sees them sadden, he feels pain in his heart. “No, no, I don’t hate her, but we’re… you know our relationship, why would we fuck?”

“Who’s fucking?”

“Not you, Jeno. Not you for sure,” Renjun says, rolling his eyes.

“Hey! Why do you always gotta be so rude,” Jeno whines.

“I doubt he’s not getting laid,” you chuckle, and Jeno winks playfully.

“See, words of a wise woman,” he brags, walking to the fridge to grab something.

Renjun sighs loudly. “A woman that doesn’t know you.”

“Would you fuck him?” Haechan asks out of nowhere and you glare at him.

“I just said that he’s hot and smart, I don’t see how he can have a hard time finding somebody,”

“’Cause he’s annoying,” Renjun answers, but Haechan’s not listening.

“I didn’t ask that,” Donghyuck says instead, his attention is all on you as if there’s nobody else in the room.

“I don’t answer stupid questions,” you reply before sipping from your cup and drifting your gaze away.

“Wait, why are you here?” Jeno asks, only now realizing you’re not supposed to be at their place, not in the morning at least… wait… “Wait! Are you two fuck—”

“No,” Haechan answers sternly, glaring at him. “We’re studying. And it got late, so since we were closer to my place, I let her stay the night.”

“I thought you left yesterday saying you had a date, though,” Jeno says confused.

You chuckle under your breath before you feel Haechan’s hand wrap around your writs to pull you out of the room, not even giving you time to finish your coffee. “A studying date, and now drop it.”

When you reach his room, he groans loudly, walking to the closet to pick something to wear. You watch him move for a while, but then you can’t keep your thoughts inside your head anymore.

“Are you ashamed of me?” You ask and he turns around with wide eyes.

“What?”

“Am I something to be ashamed of? Do I don’t fit in the standard of the people you would usually fuck?”

He sighs, shaking his head. “No, I don’t want them to get invasive, they don’t let me live once they know something. And with you, it’s more embarrassing because of our history…”

You giggle, trying not to show the relief you’re feeling because, for a moment, you thought he was one of those types of men.

“Why can’t you ever make things easy for me?” He asks, annoyance in his voice. You have so much power over him, more than he likes to admit, and he feels like he can’t even be too mad at you about it.

“Sorry, it’s just, it’s funny having a history with you,” you explain. “My mortal enemy, always ready to steal my number ones, and my good grades.”

“You’re so annoying, you’re never sleeping over ever again.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I won’t let you fuck me ever again.”

“Liar,” he says. “And now move, I’ll drop you home.”

you can find part two on my account on the story masterlist or haechan’s masterlist (i can’t link it because if i do the post won’t appear in the tags)

general taglist: @froggyforhyuck, @wingsss45, @tddyhyck, @technologyculturedneo

fic taglist: @hcluvie, @gusgus0517, @multifandomania, @413cl, @odgsuji,

@hey-hey-heybitch, @nctrawberries, @n0hyuck, @haechoshi,

@girlwholoveslpreppyattire, @viciousdarlings, @hyuckmoon,

@jaeymark, @hqech, @xntlax, @milkyway-vxm, @fullsunahceah,

@beomgyusonlywife, @toroufriteh, @yesohhsehun @shxnz

@haecastor, @hyucksaint, @sk8ermark, @midnightrained

@maiteeeeesstuff, @smwhrinthehaze, @yoursyuno

#nct fanfiction #haechan smut #lee haechan smut #donghyuck smut #lee donghyuck smut #haechan fluff #lee haechan fluff #donghyuck fluff #nct smut #nct 127 smut #nct dream smut #haechan scenarios

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tarre-was-right · 5 months ago

Text

ROUND ONE: MATCH-UP EIGHT

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

Explanation post

Seeding

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

ALPHA-17

@ihuntmonsters: He’s uhhh super badass and sexy and kicks ass and is really awesome and I’m in love with him Perfect propaganda yes. He shall lead Mandalore

Anon: He's pretty good with training children! He is very good at inspiring loyalty! He is very willing to go after sith lords with just his teeth if he has to!

Anon: Vote for Alpha he’s got Cody’s thighs, Fox’s tits and Wolffe’s ass. He’s also a DILF, if you consider the shebse squad/command batch headcanons. And who wouldn’t want a Mand'alor like that?

Anon: Alpha-17 would be a great mandolorian leader I mean look at those Pecs! What else do u need in a leader?

Anon: HERES WHY ALPHA-17 FOR THE WIN: HE WILL ASSASSINATE ALL OF THE OTHER POLITICAL FIGURES WHICH MEANS DEAD SKEVY SHEEVY PALPATINE AND WHO DOESNT WANT THAT?

Anon: What a guy. I love him so much. He's such an asshole. Alpha-17 was part of the second test batch of clones of Jango Fett, one of a group of 100, and as such he was trained directly by Jango Fett in the art of war; these early batches who had more contact with their Mandalorian trainers are commonly considered to have a stronger claim to 'Mandalorian-ness' because of this exposure and learning experience than clones from the later, larger batches

Anon: Propaganda for Alpha 17: tall

Anon: Alpha-17 should rule Mandalore because a good king doesn’t want the power of the throne and he does not want that at all. also he’s the funniest choice. might have the skills to not get killed by maul

JANGO FETT

Anon: Jango became Mand'alor (according to Legends) at the tender age of 15 immediately after the death of his adopted father Jaster Mereel. While another of Mereel's men (Montross) made a grab for the position Jango brought up the betrayal Montross had done to Mereel causing the older man's death. The other Haat Mando'ade fell in behind Jango as he had become Jaster's Legacy. He led the Haat Mando'ade for 8 years and seemed prosperous. - And then Galidraan happened, between poisoned information and tensions being high between the Jedi and Mandalorians it only took a spark for it all to be blown to hell.

Anon: Jango was trained to be Jaster's successor to the title of Mand'alor from the time he was adopted at about 8 years of age, following the death of his blood family - when Jaster was killed, Jango was chosen by their people to step into the role despite being a young teenager at the time, suggesting that he was already known to be a good leader, and one who had earned their loyalty and trust over even Jaster's formerly-trusted second-in-command - while his time in the position was short, he did seem to command great loyalty and respect from his followers, although his focus seemed to have been more on their faction's mercenary work than on serving as a ruler or even cultural figurehead for the people of Mandalore at large - regardless, Tor Vizsla saw him as enough of a threat to his own claim to the throne to seek his swift removal from the political field - even after having disappeared from the field of politics for years following the incident at Galidraan, many Mandalorians still answered his call to come and serve as trainers for the GAR, suggesting that they took his claim seriously as well

Anon: Jango Fett, while a man of many mistakes, inherited the role of Mando'alor from Jaster and tried to do the same as he did: honour their past, move forward and provide for their people - He took care of Montross and tried his best to protect the people who followed him, to make sure they had a future and didn't fall apart and get scattered to the winds again.

@lightsaberwieldingdalek: I mean. Jango’s got the best brand recognition? Absolutely everyone for centuries with recognise the Jango Fett look, and that army that Jango was kinda sort of responsible for did conquer at least half the galaxy, just…. Not in the name of mandalore

#Alpha 17 #Alpha-17 #Jango Fett #Jango #star wars #the clone wars #the mandalorian #mandalore #tumblr tournaments #tumblr brackets #sw events #tcw #sw tcw #star wars tcw #sw legends #star wars legends #sw rebels #polls #sw comics

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librarycards · 8 months ago

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pls ignore this is its too weird or too much labor, but i was wondering if you maybe had any tips or resources for ppl who have creative desires like writing but brain fog and fatigue tends to get in the way?

i do! it may not work for you bc people have very random/unexpected ways of dealing with this, but it's *very* common and there is hope :) [i think a lot of this is applicable across form, but i'm using "writing" here because it's what i'm familiar with]

one way is to be strategic about timing: this includes thinking about when you're least foggy/have the most energy, and/or the most "downtime" where there isn't anything in particular you need to do. many people wake up early so that they have alone time before their responsibilities. some people stay up late to write. i tend to do my daily writing (which I elucidate on below) in the evenings, around 7-10pm. whatever works, works!

relatedly: scheduling/routine is, for me, critical. i think it is for a lot of creative ppl. I write every day, in multiple ways: i keep a journal - i've done this since i was like 12, so it's as ingrained as brushing my teeth and i don't really think about it - and also work on some aspect of my current longest project [so, for the last 4 years, it's been the aforementioned second novel; for the 4ish years before that, it was Failure to Comply. i write other stuff during the daytime, of course, because writing is also my job(s). but if you're looking to establish a consistent creative practice, you don't need to be aiming for a certain hour or word count.

Instead: Aim for consistency and progress. Not perfection, not a "muse," not magic. There is no shame in making something that doesn't seem good, or that you end up deleting. in this particular instance, "perfect is the enemy of good" is 10000% true, and i think especially applicable to people who already experience external + internalized ableist ideologies on a daily basis. your art, regardless of what it is, should be a space where you get to make mistakes, change your mind, and learn new things. it should be something you can come to when you're tired, unsure, confused, scared, etc, even if it means just keysmashing and then closing your notes app for the day.

for me, having a daily practice, regardless of anything, means embracing the days where i write only one word and then despair, as well as the days i write pages. when i feel most depressed, in a very clinicized sense, i try to move from "everything i make now is going to be shitty :(" to "everything i make now is going to be shitty :)", not because i'm happy about it, but because....that's simply part of creating. everything is a bodily function. if you're not feeling good, maybe your poop will look weird. so too with writing. but you still do it. it can be mechanical. but it'll happen, and by doing it consistently, you give yourself the *opportunity* to locate insight hitherto buried, to have an idea creep up on your tiredself.

i guess in sum I'd say that the healthiest thing i ever did for my writing is something tantamount to body neutrality, which has also been an immensely positive addition to my set of frameworks for physical embodimindment. creative neutrality, i guess. this doesn't mean i don't tie my ego and personhood to work/productivity/quality. i mean, i totally do, and it sucks, but there we are. but it also means that i place that in a corner that does not touch my desire to chip away at something big, regularly. i make time every day to summon the urgency of whatever i'm working on, not because i'm proud of it at that moment, but because i want to give it another opportunity to give me something cool.

tl:dr: give yourself the gift of consistency and time, and don't be scared of making stuff that isn't good, or gets deleted, or doesn't make sense. write from wherever you want, physically, mentally, spiritually. give it the opportunity & even the expectation to happen and then work from there.

#routine is EVERYTHING !! it's hard to start but inertia works in good ways too.#i believe in you.#ask #anonymous #writing

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hellspawnmotel · 5 months ago

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the way you've used color for years has inspired me beyond what I can explain. I remember trying to pallet like you when I was 14 or something...I'm 22 now and I still look at your art across multiple different years to study how you've used color and try to understand like you do

oh man. well, I'm pretty terrible at responding to big compliments like this other than.... thank you!! I'm very flattered and it means a lot that you think so. make no mistake though I think I still have a LOT to learn about color and I'm always trying to improve myself and be smarter about it all.... a ton of trial and error goes on behind the scenes, I owe my life to the tonal correction and select color gamut functions lol. a huge part of it is being willing to experiment with colors that you dont even think will work together, or that arent even close to the color you were originally going to pick, but you have to try just in case.

personally I've found that I end up happiest with the colors in pieces where I stuck to fairly limited palettes, not necessarily very strict ones but the same general areas of color, yknow? like this

I also basically taught myself to color good as a teenager by drawing small and simple pieces with pre-made palettes, such as...

I would've been?? 16??? when I did these I think. not that I even said I was using pre-made palettes or credited the people who made them lmao. how times change

and I've also learned a lot from studying how color is used in older anime, especially ones from the 90s. evangelion in particular was a HUGE influence on my coloring and what colors I use the most (red and orange, lol).

I know you didnt exactly ask for advice but I wanted to give it anyway! I want everyone to use exciting colors and have fun doing it. just like, watch and look at a lot of stuff. not just my stuff. watch metropolis (2001) that movie has INSANE color blocking. watch the tatami galaxy as well. play mother 3. work until you get better at it than I am, that's what I want. and thank you again!

#asks

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tinolqa · 25 days ago

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god I haven't mentioned it enough here. Myths of the Realm is my enemy. easily my least favorite 24-man- or rather it's my least favorite raid series of either type.

probably made worse by pandaemonium being genuinely very good? the contrast was stark.

weak answer to the question of the twelve's nature, very unambitious and mediocre visual designs that were largely too married to visual fidelity to boring statues and card designs. some real disney's hercules shit. there were some innovative or appealing elements here and there: nald'thal was genuinely great visually and conceptually, I actually respect the concept of making menphina a magical girl instead of a generically hotsexy love goddess, byregot's halo of nails, uh... the models for thalaos and perykos looked good? but overall they were a bunch of very boring idealized humans.

and my god eulogia is the ugliest thing. eulogia might actually be the most hideous execution of a concept in the game yet, you might as well just clip all of the models of the twelve into each other and play their animations at once and get the same effect. zero elegance, zero thoughtful design. it's actually shocking to see in a game where we got perfect omega as a raid boss once upon a time. even eden's promise, while superficially a hot mess, is a hot mess because it pays homage to extant depictions of artemis! art history is why it looks like that! eulogia looks like the artists were asked to recreate knife dad from monster factory using ffxiv assets.

and you might ask, well, are the mechanics of the fights better than the boss designs? absolutely not. week one aglaia was a little fun, because there being a chance of failure to people not knowing the trick of the meteors in the rhalgr fight or panicking during the nald'thal scales instead of just deliberately failing the mechanic to waste everyone's time. gear creep destroyed any chance of interacting with most of the fun bits of aglaia, and they didn't repeat that "mistake" in the other two, which were boring and easy from the jump. just an absolute void of challenge or chaos. why even bother putting mechanics into your raid at that point, apparently that's only for savage.

and the rewards... boy I hope you like ugly yellow-gold saint seiya armor and generic draping faux-hellenistic robes and vague suggestions of togas. I hope you fucking gluttons for endless less-problematic rehashes of ancient greek mythology like gaudy costume jewelry and sandals and meaningless neoclassical flourishes. did you want gear that might look like something your character would wear in a city they've visited or that has a connection to a historical aesthetic? I guess if you make believe you can stretch a tenuous bond from this tacky armor to the uniform robes and masks of the ancients. ostensibly. since we all know the ancients didn't have a societal taboo about ornamentation or making your clothes individualized or anything.

so what did we achieve? did we learn anything? turns out the twelve were real all along, but also powerless except in the specific context of having flashy anime duels with the warrior of light. it's VERY important that we say they aren't primals, because primals are only summoned by primitive subhumans like the ixal and the garleans. but we do need you to fight them to return their aether to the star because... they're definitely not primals! no. not primals. primals are fake gods, and the twelve are *aetheric constructs* based on *real people* made by *hydaelyn*, which means they're good and Not Primals. the mechanic by which they visually reflect the beliefs of their followers? definitely not the same as the one that does that for primals. their nebulous dependence on the faith of eorzeans? totally unrelated to primals, because it's apparently important for the ego of the players that *their* god is real and not fake, which makes them ontologically good and righteous.

and it's definitely satisfying to find out that the goddess whose name gave weight and gravity to the reveal of the warrior of light's past incarnation and their name... is called that because she was a failed candidate for that role? she's a consolation prize sun goddess?

for that matter it's definitely satisfying to find out that the twelve are just recreations of venat's boring ancient friends, who are largely nameless and have no significance to you or your interaction with the past aside from a mediocre sidequest. oh it's so thrilling to know that the god of crafting used to be hytholdaeus's coworker. this would mean so much to me if he had any role in the setting beyond a skill name and a rock sitting in an overworld zone.

admittedly it would also suck for the reveal to be "actually eorzea's gods did create the world and are all-powerful, boy it sure is silly that those delusional foreigners are out here worshipping kami and manusya and mrga and primals which are all FAKE, as opposed to us (non-beastman) eorzeans who have the literal mandate of heaven"

but surely there's a more elegant solution (ambiguity, leaving questions instead of a glut of answers, not making this raid series at all). was this really the best they could come up with?

#being a hater on main

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hxrukii · 6 months ago

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Heyy! Thanks for doing my request of Pinkie Pie! I loved it 😭 can i request another one? May i request Vil, Rook, Floyd, Azul and Lilia with a female Rarity reader? Again, thank you for the request 💞

❝I simply cannot let such a crime against fabulosity go uncorrected.❞

╭・๑ 𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲︰ʚ Some of NRC student with a Rarity!Reader.‧₊˚✦

‧₊˚↷ 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫(𝐬)┊❝ Vil Schoenheit, Rook Hunt, Floyd Leech, Azul Ashengrotto, Lilia Vanrouge. ❞ ⸜⸜*

↷︰ʚ 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞 ‧₊˚✦ Reader is female and is implied to be Yuu. Sorry if this took some time! There will be a part 2 of this because I made a mistake. Also I'm so sorry this took so long, Floyd and Azul's part troubled me so much, and it's probably shorter than the rest :')

╰・𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠(𝐬) ‧₊˚꒰ Spoiler for book 3. ɞ‧✦

Vil and Rarity!Reader will get along like two peas in a pod.

Vil absolutely loves talking about fashion with Rarity!Reader.

Would ask Rarity!Reader to make his clothes from time to time, and is very impressed with her talent and thinks that the clothes she makes are beautiful.

Thinks that Rarity!Reader's generosity is a great trait of hers but often reminds her to not be too generous, since most people at NRC could probably take advantage of that generosity.

Rarity!Reader helps Vil with giving advice to the rest of Pomefiore when he's to busy, Epel probably likes her very much since she's definitely less strict then Vil, and better at showing that she's doing this because she cares.

Since telekinesis isn't very known in Twisted Wonderland, most people don't know how to use it so Vil is very impressed by how Rarity!Reader is able to use sewing and cutting tools with ease through telekinesis.

Is also impressed by how Rairity!Reader is able to find gems very easily using her magic.

When Rarity!Reader gets carried away with other things instead of what she was working on, Vil is often the one to convince her to get back to work, to which she is grateful for.

Whenever Rarity!Reader gets stressed and starts eating buckets of ice cream, Vil usually gets her to take a break and eat healthier food while scolding her for eating to much ice cream and saying how it's not good for her health, Rarity!Reader knows he mean well though.

When Rarity!Reader mentioned that she used to work as a fashion designer back in her world, Vil proposed to help her start a business in Twisted Wonderland too, even proposed to help her promote her work.

Rarity!Reader is most likely to refuse saying that she wants to make a name for herself using her own hard work. And when she does, needless to say that Vil is very proud of her and will support her all the way.

"Darling? You need to take a break now, to much stress is not good for your health."

Rook would absolutely love Rarity!Reader.

The two of them would probably go on and on about everything that they find beautiful for hours on end. Vil will have to drag Rook away.

The two of them were probably talking about how inner beauty was just as important as what's on the outside.

When Rook learns that Rarity!Reader can also speak French? It's over, he's fallen in love all over again. Now most of your conversations will be in French, and the rest of NRC (- Vil probably) will be extremely confused on what the heck are those two saying.

When Rarity!Reader ask him to try on a clothing she made for him, he will be absolutely delighted and over the moon.

Rook probably feel in,ove with Rarity!Reader with how generous she is ngl. Will stop anyone who even tries to take advantage of her, not that Rarity!Reader can't defend herself since he once saw her punch someone in the face when they tried to hurt Grim, that's when he learned that Rarity!Reader was also skilled in martial art.

Probably admires Rarity!Reader's control on her magic a lot, often ask her questions on how telekinesis works and tips on how to be precise while using telekinesis.

When Rarity!Reader mentions that she used to be a fashion designer and used to have her own shop, Rook would probably be the first to encourage her to open a shop in Twisted Wonderland as well.

Rook is 100% Rarity!Reader's number one fan, there's no competition.

If Rarity!Reader were to consider the idea of opening a shop, Rook would probably convince Vil to help or something.

Whenever Rarity!Reader get stressed, Rook will be the first to know and the first to be there to calm her down.

"Ma chère! You look tout simplement magnifique today as well!"

Floyd is said to show some interest in fashion, in particular for shoes but still in fashion so he's most likely to talk about fashion with Rarity!Reader. When he's interested that is.

Sometimes even Rarity!Reader is shocked about how insightful Floyd can be about fashion when he wants too, sometimes even picking up things that catches her eyes and giving it to them.

Sometimes ask Rarity!Reader to design shoes (does Rarity even make shoes? I forgor) or clothes for him, will probably complain if she takes longer than she promised.

If Floyd ever were to let Rarity!Reader I to his and Floyd's shared room, I think that Rarity!Reader would have a stroke seeing how messy his room was.

Floyd would just half heartedly encourage Rarity!Reader while she's cleaning up his mess (she really is his cleaner-shrimp) until he is bored.

If Rarity!Reader were to open her clothing store in Twisted Wonderland, Floyd will basically become a bodyguard at this point, squeezing any rude customer till they can't breathe anymore. Who needs a bodyguards when you have Floyd as your s/o.

Depending on his mood, Floyd will either be willing and very very happy to be a model for Rarity!Reader clothes or straight up refuse. At least he's honest you know.

Now if Rarity!Reader were to get stressed, Floyd will have to ways to deal with it depending on his mood. If he's in a good mood then he'll probably just drag Rarity!Reader out to do something but if he's in a bad mood then he'll probably join Rarity!Reader in eating ice cream.

There's a great amount of chance that Floyd would ask Rarity!Reader if she can carry him using either her strength, since she is skilled in martial arts she must be able to carry some weight right? Or will just ask if she can carry him using telekinesis.

If Floyd is feeling a lil silly, he might as well try to eat one of Rarity!Reader's gems tbh.

"Shrimpy! Look at what I found! Wouldn't this look great on that new outfit you were working on?"

Azul thinks that Rarity!Reader would fit in perfectly in Octavinelle, after all, benevolence and generosity are the same right?

Whenever Mostro Lounge is having a special event, he would often invite Rarity!Reader and ask about her opinion on the decoration. He wants everything to be perfect after all.

If Azul found out about Rarity!Reader's magical abilities (telekinesis and finding gem) before his overblot, he will most definitely try to get them, with a contract of course. But I feel like Rarity is the type of person to have her lawyer on speed dial whenever there's a contract to sign so he'll probably fail. (How does she even have a lawyer in Twisted Wonderland when she's from another world? We will never know.)

If he found out after his overblot since he did say he would be be trying to change his ways of doing things, he will probably just ask Rarity!Reader for how her gem-finding ability works and how can she be so precise with telekinesis.

Will blackmail anyone who insults Rarity!Reader's work.

Will probably also be the one to suggest that Rarity!Reader should open her own clothing shop in Twisted Wonderland, doesn't having a inter-dimensional branch sounds amazing? What about the paperwork? Don't worry, Azul will take care of it. For a price of course :)

What would the price be you ask? Azul would probably just ask Rarity!Reader to promote Mostro Lounge or something. A fair deal wouldn't you say?

Would also offer to take care of any work contract and things like that for Rarity!Reader, he wouldn't want her to get taken advantage of after all.

Would be kind off embarrassed if Rarity!Reader proposed that Azul try on one of the clothing she made for him, would try to play it cool though. Rarity!Reader would probably see right through him, but wouldn't mention it.

"Dear, what do you think about this new decoration for the Mostro Lounge's next event? I think it's quite good no?"

Now Lilia is 700 years old and likes to travel all around the world, so even though telekinesis isn't usual in Twisted Wonderland, he's probably seen one person or two use it, so he sin's very shocked, but still impressed nonetheless by Rarity!Reader's magical ability.

Is also fairly impressed by Rarity!Reader's combat skills, has probably seen her punch Sebek in the face because he scared her or something. Wonders if she would be willing to train with both Sebek and Silver.

Lilia likes being cute so he would probably ask Rarity!Reader for fashion tips on how to look even cuter, not necessarily asking her to make him an outfit, just some tips.

Not that he would mind if she actually made him an outfit, on the contrary, he would be quite happy, showing it off without any hesitation when he can.

I don't think anybody at NRC would mess with Rarity!Reader since being close with Lilia means being close with other Diasomnia students, and well, most student from other dorms are scared of Diasomnia, especially Malleus.

I feel like Lilia also knows how to speak French so he and Rarity!Reader could also discuss about things in French together!

If Rarity!Reader wanted to start a business in Twisted Wonderland, Lilia could probably help with choosing a place, since he probably knows where fashion design will be extremely popular etc..

Lilia along with Silver and Sebek could probably help set up the place and carry more heavy things, even if Rarity!Reader could probably carry them with telekinesis. They just want to help!

Whenever Rarity!Reader get stressed, Lilia will help by distracting her with other things and get her to take a break. Once Rarity!Reader does calm down, Lilia will most definitely proceed with stealing the ice cream bucket she was eating and eating it himself. Might share if Rarity!Reader ask nicely.

"Hm? This would look cute on me you say? Kufufu, it's no surprise. After all, aren't adorable in anything I wear?"

꒰ ◁ ꒱┊❝Back to Vil, Rook, Floyd, Azul, Lilia's Masterlist❞

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venomous-qwille · 1 month ago

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Hi Qwille!

So I was wondering because I’m struggling with this myself- how did you continuously improve with art when you were first still building upon your skills? Like to get to a level that could be professional?

And I think I mean this in more of a mental capacity way. I tend to get angry at the fact that I’m not better by now and feel like I struggle by the skin of my teeth to improve from where I’m at every time, even if objectively speaking I’m already better than people would expect me to be.

I just feel like there’s a better way to go about it than being fueled by anger or spite. I enjoy art, and I’m proud of my work, but I don’t know how to *not* be angry at myself for not being better at it. How do you accept self criticism with grace when it comes to your work? Or how did you, when you were younger? If that’s a question you’re willing to ask, of course! Thank you <3

Hiya! So, I'll start out by saying that this is absolutely the hardest part about learning to draw/paint. The continuous failure and discontent with the work we produce is a constant struggle that is, I believe, the main reason people stop trying to learn at all.

It's okay to get angry and sad, it's okay to be dissatisfied. It's a very cruel joke that, as artists, our eye will improve faster than our ability to draw. We are constantly chasing a carrot that is being pulled further away from us. For me: my improvement was not constant. There were several points where I didn't draw for years, because of other life factors and because the art I was creating brought me no joy.

Things had to change when I decided that I wanted to do art professionally. I needed to improve and improve fast, so I bent a lot of time towards studies. I found that the things I got better at the fastest were the ones where I found studying to be really fun. I really enjoy copying master paintings- especially the nineteenth and twentieth century realists. Finding fun in doing them for the sake of doing them really helped me improve fast because it wasn't stressful- I was just creating art I liked, even if they were copies.

I think accepting that the main joy of art is in the creating, not the result, really helped me be at peace with my artwork. Also, becoming a professional artist and realising that I didnt own what I created- and that I was subject to the (often questionable) tastes of my commissioners/art directors/stakeholders really allowed me to unlatch my emotional self from my work.

Every piece is a step, sometimes you will hit your bellcurve, make the best thing you are currently capable of making- and fuck that feels good- but often you wont, and you wont know why you dont like it. Learning to enjoy the push towards those small moments, the slow improvement as you gradually grasp new skills, learning to love learning, that is the most curative thing. Once I started to enjoy failing, because it meant I was learning- and once I started forgiving myself for not picking everything up straight away- I was much, much happier.

It's okay for it to be hard and your emotions are valid. Forgive yourself for having them and try to find something you enjoy about the process. Recontextualise your mistakes as what they are: not a failure, but just another step up the giant mountain of your art journey. There is always a higher peak. The journey never ends. Stop looking at the top and just enjoy the view and the mountain air. (And for fucks sake don't compare yourself to other people. They're not even climbing the same landmass.)

#idk how to explain it #art is hard #but its okay for it to be hard #asks answered #qwillechatter

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howtofightwrite · 11 months ago

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Is it possible for a character who is 18cm shorter and not as muscled as their opponent to pin said opponent to the ground in a few calculated moves? Both characters are fit and exercise regularly, but the shorter character has trained in various martial arts (with and without weapons) and the taller one is more proficient in sword duelling. My intent is to write a sparring scene where the shorter character humbles the (overconfident) taller one. Any specific martial arts I should look at?

So... being shorter doesn't matter. In fact, in this situation, it is an advantage.

I'm going to point out here that if you're not careful, your character that you want to have a badass moment is going to look like an complete asshole because they are humiliating another character who they actually are better than. If they haven't been trading off humiliations to build tension (safely so no one gets hurt) then you're going to have a lopsided “sparring” session. Or, you will, if you haven't been building up your narrative to support the humbling. (And there is a lot that goes into these scenes to make them work, which, if you're not familiar with how martial arts training works then you'll approach it from the wrong mindset and hit Starke's pet peeve.)

Let's hit the ground running with the high points:

Sparring is not dueling.

Sparring is not play fighting.

Sparring is not so you can humiliate your opponent.

Sparring is not about fighting anyone or anything.

Sparring is a training exercise so that both of you can work on improving specific techniques.

Do people in real life get carried away sparring? Yes, they do. Are they complete competitive idiots about it? Yes, they are. Do they get punished for it? Absolutely, they do. This is especially true where they'll be expected to put their lives on the line. Treating violence like a game is detrimental, and leaves the trainee ill-prepared for dealing with real danger when in the field. Make no mistake, that is exactly the mindset you are describing in this question. Your characters (at least your minor ones, the trainers in this situation if your leads are too young or too dumb to comprehend their reality) should care about stomping this attitude out. And you as the author should to. Why? Because if you don't take the violence in your narrative seriously neither will your audience.

There are rules, as a writer it's imperative you establish the rules (and there no rules means you haven't established them for violence in your setting and therefore won't be able to establish the baseline that can be built upon later) and one of the rules is that you're not going to spar someone with a weapon (wood or otherwise) unless you both have weapons. There's not a lot of value in having one character spar with a weapon and one spar without one unless it's a knife, and the point is learning the dangers of knife fighting. And knives make sense because they are in the same distance range as fists. Swords are in a completely separate distance category. They are mid-range weapons.

You don't practice disarms by sparring, you practice disarms by practicing disarms in a controlled setting where you're repeating the motion over and over. Can you humiliate a person by being good at practice disarms? Yes. You do it by being a complete dick. It also requires the character in question to be better at the moves in question than the other character performing them because they need to be able to confidently, or at least believe they can, counter the other person's growing anger while taking the move a step further or two than they're supposed to. It also means they can get away with it without arousing the suspicions of their instructor (or act with their instructors approval) and no one gets hurt. (We hope.) For a character to do this is a sign of overconfidence, FYI. As is trying to humiliate someone in a sparring session. The characters that are good enough? They don't do it.

In fiction, good sparring scenes serve one real purpose. They establish a baseline of skill in safe setting so the audience becomes comfortable only for that to be disrupted and thrown into chaos when the characters encounter real violence. There's two paths for this. Either the character is a big winner only to be brutally beaten later, or they get dumped on their ass to find that they're actually much better prepared than they thought later when it matters. That's why so many stories with these scenes dump their MC on their ass, especially in any Wuxia or Shounen manga. This is because the authors of these stories understand that sparring has no reflection on how well a person will do when they're allowed out of the training safe space. If your baseline is: my character is awesome. Then it's all downhill from that point on.

Say it with me, Losses Create Tension. If your character is winning all the time, you have no tension and your fight scenes will be boring. The goal when it comes to creating a character who is good at fighting is to make other characters look better. Or, from an antagonistic/mentor point they exist to establish the height our MCs must eventually reach/how much further they have to go in their journey. Kakashi's fight with Zabuza or the first fight between Itachi and Sasuke in Naruto are both great examples of how to do this well.

I'm not saying you can't write a sparring scene like the one you intend. I can't tell you to do anything, what I want to you to start doing is considering the implications of the scene, what it may say about your world and characters that you didn't intend, and it's overall impact on the whole of your narrative. Narrative gratification here is work you'll need to do to build back your tension later. Is it a win your MC can afford?

Now, you can look at any martial art that has a ground fighting component for what you want to do unless you're planning on having the duelist spar with their sword. If you want that, you're going to have to do a lot more work with a smaller pool. This will be doubly true if your characters are of European descent and you want to avoid the East Asian martial art styles.

Type: “how do you knock your opponent off balance?” into Google and you'll find a lot of variations.

The basic concept behind putting someone on the ground isn't strength, it's balance. The key is disrupting your opponent's balance. If you're skilled enough or your opponent's footwork is bad enough, it can be done in a single move. In fact, it can be done a variety of different ways from a variety of different moves from countless different martial arts. The question isn't can it be done, the question is how does your character want to do it? The fact they are short only helps them because their center of gravity will be lower than their opponent's, they don't have to work as hard to maintain their balance, their stance doesn't have to be as deep, and they will have an easier time knocking a taller person over. Most people who've never practiced martial arts have no idea how foundational the footwork is or how important the feet are to staying upright.

I personally like reviewing Silat for studying balance, not necessarily for techniques, but because I find their instruction on the concept easy to grasp/digest. They do the string on the top of the head and the balance triangle, which if you can wrap your mind around that you'll be able to conceptualize fight scenes where the character focuses on knocking an opponent off balance better.

The above is a more advanced video, but if you have no martial arts background or even a sports background whatsoever then you want to aim for instructional videos that focus on concepts over techniques. The advice is always write what you know and if you don't know learn. Copying techniques onto the page won't create a great fight scene. Understanding the concept, philosophy, and basic body mechanics behind the techniques will get you much further. None of them are stand ins for real experience or doing it yourself. If you really want to be good at it, find a martial art you like, find a school nearby, and invest the time.

All of your characters' martial arts moves (whether they are dueling with a sword or fighting hand to hand) function around the body's center of gravity. Your center of gravity is slightly above your hips and in your core muscles i.e your abdominal muscles. They will be trained so maintaining their balance is second nature. When martial artists talk about overextending, they're talking about putting your weight past your balance point which puts you in danger of losing your balance/falling over or being grabbed, kicked, etc and getting thrown, tripped, or forced into a fall. This can happen when you're throwing a punch, doing a kick, lunging with your sword, or doing any other sort of movement. You end up in a position where your balance between your front and back leg is destabilized, which creates the opening for your opponent to throw you. Or when you fall over on the ice, because that happens too.

Some other martial arts to turn to:

Judo

Jiu Jutsu

Aikido

Baguazhang (Seen in Avatar the Last Airbender as the basis for Air Bending)

Tai Chi Chuan

Northern Shaolin

Taekwondo (if you want to do it via kicks, all kicking martial arts innately focus on balance)

Krav Maga

Ninjutsu

The list goes on.

I also recommend dipping your toes into live action martial arts flicks to start getting yourself accustomed to more complex choreography. This is getting yourself out of the animated space (like in anime) and into the space where you have to watch a live person perform the techniques. Asian cinema has a different choreography style than the US does, because there are different cultural expectations. Overall, the choreography is more intricate and they break the action down a lot more (as opposed to American media where they zoom out to cover for the stunt double.) It's easier to see how the bodies are working and they put a lot more focus on destabilizing balance as part of the fight sequences. Hollywood doesn't get into the weird martial arts shit unless it's an actual martial arts action film. You can also do an Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra deep dive because the action there is also usually on point, but I'm a proponent of going to the source when you want to learn something. So, you know watch Alchemy of Souls instead.

-Michi

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#writing reference #writing advice #writing tips #how to fight write #michi answers #martial arts #sparring

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 8 months ago

Note

Am I the Asshole for ruining a person's life?

This is an old story from when I was in high school. I was a quiet nerdy kid, but I was well liked. No one messed with me and I was on good terms with most of the popular kids. I just tended to like to read and learn. I did academic decathlon, I spent my breaks in the library, I was in the top of the class etc.

My junior year of high school, there were these two sisters that moved into the school. They weren’t twins, but they were in the same grade. The Older (We'll call her Lina) was held back one year. We'll call the younger one Wendy. Lina and Wendy were both painfully awkward little nerds, so we tended to be in the same circles. We were in the same classes and they also joined the Academic Decathlon. I spent a lotttttt of time around them.

Lina was a cunt.

Seriously an absolute cunt. She went out of her way to absolutely DESTROY any confidence Wendy had. Wendy was SO SMART. Way smarter than me. And Wendy didn't have a mean bone in her body. A very kind person. But Lina felt the need to point out EVERY small mistake or blamed everything that went wrong on Wendy. I once saw Lina SLAP Wendy and then demand Wendy apologize for it. Lina called her names, belittled her, etc. And it pissed me off.

It pissed me off even more when I met their Mom and it was SO OBVIOUS that their Mom favored Lina. She even said that "Lina is definitely the prettier one. She could be a model" when Wendy was RIGHT THERE. It pissed me off SO MUCH.

So, I might have reacted in a way that could be an asshole move.

Like I said, I was a quiet nerdy kid. But I was also pretty well liked and I used that to my advantage.

I became a little whisper in people's ears. I spent an ENORMOUS amount of time and effort turning everyone against Lina. I spread rumors that were just baaarely exaggerating the truth. I encouraged people to shit talk Lina and talk kindly about Wendy. I basically changed Wendy's reputation into a glowing saint in the eyes of the school (not difficult, Wendy was great) and I turned Lina's reputation into garbage. Like, actual garbage.

It got to the point where Lina had no friends. No one DARED to risk being seen with her. Everyone loved to shit talk her. She couldn't keep a secret for anything. If she tried to confide in someone, the news would come out immediately. No one was on her side. I even had her boyfriend spilling embarrassing intimate secrets. He kept dating her just so he could make fun of her.

Well, she did have one friend. Lina had me. I was such a kind and faithful friend, who would NEVER gossip about her or be mean. She could tell me anything.

She even drew this REALLY pretty portrait of me. Just a pencil drawing on sketchbook paper. Whatever else Lina was, she was a good artist. It looked just like me.

I still have it, btw, it really good piece of art.

(I didn't have to worry about it staining my reputation, I was already known as being too kind for my own good. It's really not that hard to get a nice girl reputation.)

Anyways, I have been told that this was an asshole move when I tell this story. I don't think it was and I don't regret it, but other people seem to think it was excessive. When I think back to how much more CONFIDENT Wendy was by the time we graduated, and how she went on to an Ivy League college, I'm glad I ruined her sister's social life. Lina was so stressed out that she couldn't even TRY to harrass Wendy. And if she HAD tried, Lina would have had the student body at her throat. I didn't just ruin Lina, I also helped Wendy gain her footing in a new school.

Anyways, WAS I the asshole for ruining her? Or were my actions just?

#aita #am i the asshole

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corellianhounds · 3 months ago

Text

Redrafting The Phantom Menace

This is an informal essay/pitch meeting restructuring and changing The Phantom Menace to better utilize its characters and to make it a more compelling sequence of events.

Word Count: 5k

Art Credit: Doug Chiang

I think The Phantom Menace needs some of the biggest revisions of the prequels to set these characters up to be used better not just in the trilogy but in the film itself because not only is Obi-Wan mostly absent for all of Act II and nothing he does in that time affects the main plot on Tatooine, but Amidala’s presence doesn’t really add anything to it either. She learns a little about the culture on Tatooine and she meets Anakin and Shmi (which will be relevant in the next movie), but nothing she says or does affects the plot. Any of her protests against Qui-Gon don’t amount to anything since he’s the adult calling the shots, nothing in Act III is affected by their regard of one another, and she honestly could have just met Anakin on the ship on their return to Coruscant. Qui-Gon ends up being the main character of the movie, which I think was a mistake when Kenobi should have been the lens through which we saw the story unfold.

I don’t especially care for the slavery plot point to begin with because it doesn’t compel me as much as if Anakin and Shmi were just dirt poor. The slavery scenario feels like a way for the plot to keep Anakin and Shmi apart and for Shmi to remain destitute and it takes any real choice of the matter out of their situation. Of course she’s going to let Anakin go the second an opportunity like the one Qui-Gon’s offering falls out of the sky, who wouldn’t?

If she’s stuck in the cycle of poverty and had a choice in the matter of sending her extra set of hands away while she stays behind, that gives a little more meat to her character. Have her indebted to the Hutts or something, give her some astronomical loans she’s struggling to pay off, meaning everything they can spare just gets funneled directly into that debt so they have very little money or means to escape to a better life. What that sets up is Shmi being given the agency and genuine choice of either sending Anakin to be a Jedi because she wants him to have a better life, or keeping him there to help her work off the debt. The control chip won’t be keeping them tethered to that location and it keeps both Amidala and Qui-Gon from being complacent in leaving Shmi to be a slave.

If you wanted for Shmi and Anakin to be slaves, but wanted to solve some of the moral quandaries and give all of the characters more active roles in driving the story (and not just tell the audience “These are the circumstances, the Jedi can’t get involved with local matters, their hands are tied”) what you could have done was have Obi-Wan join Qui-Gon and Amidala on their trip instead of Jar Jar. Shmi explains the circumstances keeping them slaves, Obi-Wan can see Qui-Gon leaning towards doing something to help them, but because he’s more inclined towards following the rules than Qui-Gon is, Kenobi tells them honestly that they don’t have enough people to fight for the freedom of the slaves, and they’re already short on funds and already on a mission trying to save people on Naboo.

Kenobi’s also the one to also bring up a logical part of the Jedi Code: instead of saying they can’t interfere with local politics, he points out an obvious rule they would have in saying “The Jedi aren’t allowed to buy slaves either,” because yeah obviously the Jedi wouldn’t be allowed to do that. Even if that’s the easiest way to free somebody, the Jedi can’t do anything that would compromise other people’s faith in them, because yeah maybe you freed that person, but now that person either has to remain on the planet where that practice still exists and they could easily end up there again once you leave, OR you as the Jedi have to take them with you and hmmmmmmm seems pretty suspicious if you ask me, sounds like you just bought yourself your own slave.

Even dropping that person on a safe planet isn’t a great option because they would likely have no understanding of or foundation on that planet, and they especially wouldn’t have a support network of any kind. How much money, time, and resources do you have to devote to setting them up for success, now that you’ve gotten them out of a life of bondage? Completely uprooting yourself and starting from nothing in a completely new country alone is bad enough— Imagine an entirely separate planet. The alternative is obviously keeping that person with you and placing them under your own care and protection, but that’s exactly what makes you look like you bought a person to begin with and now we’re back to square one.

But, Amidala is there, and she’s a queen. She would likely have oodles of money at her disposal. Ignore the whole “Republic credits don’t spend out here” and say SHE offers to buy both Anakin and Shmi’s freedom, extending the offer by saying Anakin could train at the temple and Shmi could become a ladies maid or a consultant to the queen on Outer Rim territories, something Amidala even says she’s not familiar with. Both of them would be taken care of, Shmi would have a support network and a means of income and the freedom to leave at any time if she wished, nothing wrong with that.

In the end, however it happens, Shmi could be freed from being a slave (since that happens between this movie and Attack of the Clones anyway), but she makes the choice for herself to decline Amidala’s offer. Tatooine, though a harsh planet, is still her home and all she’s ever known. Being taken out of that environment and thrust into one of courtly nobility isn’t one a lot of people would be able to adapt to. Amidala finds a way to maintain communication so if there’s ever any trouble, Shmi has a contact who cares about her wellbeing, and she chooses for herself to remain behind and let Anakin go because that’s what is best for him. The characters are the ones making choices with their own objectives and reasonable enough justification for what they do instead of the circumstances moving them around.

There’s plenty of other ways the story would change by giving them those more active roles and choices. Obi-Wan and Anakin and Qui-Gon would all obviously have more of a relationship to build off of if they’re all there together, which will make Qui-Gon’s death more meaningful for the both of them and will introduce history that will carry over into Attack of the Clones whenever Anakin thinks Shmi might be in trouble. Amidala would have a more grounded interest and stronger connection to Shmi herself, and Anakin’s frustration with Obi-Wan concerning the rule about one’s personal attachments creates more effective interpersonal conflict when Anakin argues that she’s in danger. “Master, if you had the chance to prevent Qui-Gon’s death— If you’d known ahead of time that it would happen— Wouldn’t you have done whatever you could to stop it?”

If you cut down Act I enough (because you don’t really need the entire underwater sequence, Jar Jar was in exile up on land and you could have just had him lead them to the palace, which would have given us the chance to see the invasion affecting the citizens and common folk), Tatooine could have been the majority of Act I with the race being the climax. Make the Separatists more of an enemy force that’s actually intimidating and isn’t just mad about taxation of trade routes. Say they’ve been doing their own thing independent of the Republic for some time and don’t care about the legality of what they’re doing and have the Jedi discover the droid armies and the plot to take over Naboo because it’s a pacifist planet rich in whatever resources the Separatists want to take for themselves.

Cut out the Gungans and the underwater sequence and have whoever Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan meet on land take them to the Theed palace as a navigator directly. I don’t care for Jar Jar’s character and he doesn’t add anything to the film besides (weak) comic relief and a connection to the Gungan army at the end, which can easily be altered if you give Ahmed Best a better character just as himself, leading the Jedi through the forest to Theed. On the way there we see the recent havoc wreaked by the droid army and the effects the invasion is having on the people of Naboo, making the war feel a lot more real and immediate. Make Best’s people like the people of Rohan in Lord of the Rings who have survived as independent nomads and mounted woodland riders for centuries, not given as much support by the city-states and the capital but otherwise left to their own devices (setting them up to become the main cavalry/fighters at the end). They don’t have to be enemies of Theed, but they're not on great terms. They're the first people we see affected by the war, the destruction a lot more down to earth, showing us the severity of the Separatist’s actions and giving us a legitimate sense of danger and despair.

The three of them make it to Theed and manage to save the queen and her entourage. Amidala is introduced desperately trying to make contact with Palpatine in the Senate, the circumstances conveyed much more urgently than before, and she tells the Jedi that she’d been trying to contact them before the invasion even started. In the midst of the fighting Amidala makes a pointed effort to save Best’s character, the two of them making a connection as they move and showing both him and the audience that the queen does care about what happens to people who live beyond the city and palace walls. Qui-Gon convinces Amidala that they need to get her to Coruscant to plead their case on behalf of her people to the Senate. Amidala pleads for Best’s character to call upon the peoples living in the woods and to tell them that the capital city has been invaded and taken over too but that help is on the way. Amidala may be a pacifist, but this invasion shows her that her ideology won’t save her people because it doesn’t matter to the invaders whether you’ve done anything to “deserve” that oppression or not. Those who don’t live by the sword can still die by them.

If the Senate is too far removed from their corner of the galaxy to see that innocent people are being slaughtered and that the Separatists have waged a war that has isolated Naboo by severing their communications network, then she’s going to plead their case by taking it directly to Coruscant herself. Who’s to say theirs is the first planet the Separatists have done this to? What other occupations might they be unaware of?

The ship is still damaged upon their escape, forcing them to make an emergency landing on Tatooine. Amidala has some money with her, but her accounts have been frozen by the Separatists and she won’t be able to acquire more unless they manage to save Naboo and she’s restored as queen. The Jedi also have some money with them, but even together it’s not enough to buy the hyperdrive piece.

In this timeline we go with Kenobi being present with Qui-Gon and Padmé (still disguising herself as a handmaiden, Qui-Gon having a hunch as to who she is though Kenobi doesn’t know) and we cut out Watto and change the slavery circumstances to the Skywalkers being impoverished and indebted instead. City boy Kenobi, unfamiliar with the terrain or locals, accidentally bumps into whoever it is who tries to start a fight and Anakin jumps in and mediates for them. Qui-Gon thanks him and Anakin points out there’s a storm coming and takes them all back to his and his mom’s place, despite Kenobi’s protests that the mission takes precedence and the ‘queen’ has only her personal guard at the moment, they really should be finding the parts and getting back to the ship.

Over dinner the group discusses their prospects. Anakin was already planning to race in the Boonta Eve Classic to put the prize money towards finally paying off his mother’s debt. He and Shmi exchange a look, and he decides he wants to help them out of the goodness of his heart or whatever and in exchange for part of the money, Qui-Gon also offers him the chance to become a Jedi because he senses there’s something different about this kid. Kenobi protests, citing the fact the boy’s too old and they don’t have a solid reason to think he’s sensitive to the Force (regardless of what Shmi tells them about the circumstances of his birth). Have him be the skeptic providing the opinion the council would give, giving the conflict that will spur conversation between himself and Qui-Gon in order to provide exposition for the audience and prompt tension between himself and Anakin that’ll evolve as their relationship and reliance on one another in this movie progresses.

Now.

The consequence of Kenobi being present for all of this is that his and Anakin’s and Qui-Gon’s relationships are given focus and development, but it also means the ship is left without a Jedi guard.

Now let’s say Darth Maul finds the ship sooner while the main characters are occupied: Maul kidnaps Sabé, kills the rest of the guard, destroys the ship, and then he leaves. Qui-Gon, Kenobi, and Padmé hear what happens from R2, the only one who survives. Cut out whatever extraneous Watto junk happens and have this be what ups the stakes for the race because now they end up needing all of the winnings to buy a whole ship, not just to get a part. Amidala does the whole handmaiden reveal here and they realize that buys them a little time since Sabé signing the treaty will mean nothing when it comes out that she wasn’t actually the queen, but that will only be a possibility if they can provide Coruscant with further evidence of the Separatists’ plot and subjugation of the people.

Kenobi by now has figured out that the disturbance he’s been feeling in the force must have been the dark warrior who tracked their ship and stole the ‘queen,’ R2’s security footage getting them a good look of Maul. Kenobi and Qui-Gon confer and realize that if this guy is a Sith Lord, they HAVE to get back to Naboo to stop him at any cost. If he’s been the real power behind the Separatists this whole time, then losing Naboo to their control must be part of a larger scheme that will lead the Republic to war.

Now it comes back down to Anakin and Shmi. Either Anakin doesn’t want to give them the rest of the money, having wanted to provide for his mom too, and Shmi has to reassure him that she’ll be fine before he agrees to still participate in the race and give them the money, or Anakin’s unaware of the change in circumstances at all and Shmi’s the one to say they can have all of the winnings provided Qui-Gon gives her his word that Anakin will be guaranteed a better life being trained as a Jedi. Either way, Shmi’s the one in control of her decision to let Anakin go while she chooses to remain behind. Despite Amidala’s offer for Shmi to just come with them as part of her court or entourage, Shmi declines, knowing Anakin needs a clean break in order to dedicate himself to this new life and that her place was still there on Tatooine, and the Skywalkers are able to part ways with Anakin still missing his mom.

During the whole Tatooine sequence Kenobi has his doubts about Anakin, but during the race we see Anakin finally do some incredible feat that defies all logic, bringing down a rockslide to his advantage or controlling a dust storm or standing out on the bow of his speeder holding the now-damaged, motley assembly together with the invisible hold of the Force itself as he crosses the finish line. There needs to be a clear show of something unexplainable for both the audience and the other characters to see (Kenobi especially) that convinces us this kid has an exceptional command over the Force even untrained, not just that he’s a child prodigy when it comes to racing and mechanical ingenuity. Kenobi needs to be convinced that taking the kid is a good idea here because it provides the basis for their relationship moving forward and it gives ample reason for Anakin to be included in all of the further peril without any of the responsible characters logically being worried for his safety. (As it is in the movies, we never actually see Anakin do enough to warrant being considered “the Chosen One” since nothing he does isn’t something other trained experts of that skill could feasibly do. He needs to be visibly, uniquely powerful even for a Force-user.)

After the race they have to scramble to get transportation and head back to Naboo. Keep their communications interrupted so they can’t contact the Jedi council back on Coruscant to tell them about the invasion, the handmaiden switch, OR Anakin possibly being the Chosen One.

In this interim we see Maul on his ship discussing his success with Sidious over a holocall, along with the next steps of the plan. Sabé is locked in a holding cell, unbeknownst to Maul acting as a spy and gathering information, reading his lips and figuring out what conversation is being had though she can’t hear the voice of the person in the hood (because logically she’d be able to deduce that it’s Palpatine on the other end of the call). It’s obvious this mysterious agent doesn’t know she’s one of the handmaidens because otherwise she suspects she’d be dead, and it’s clear they need ‘the queen’ alive for something. Depending on how you want to play the scene and the characters, she could either remain stoically silent after he’s done talking to Sidious, taking everything in and observing serenely while environmental storytelling gives us the clues and info she’s picking up on, or Maul could monologue/antagonize her, or she could try to negotiate with him under the guise of the queen, subtly trying to figure out his motives, or she could just outright question him, reasoning that he’s not going to do anything to her since she’s needed alive (to which Maul could refuse to give up anything and instead easily threaten her once he decides she’s gotten too comfortable, maybe even giving us some visual foreshadowing/parallels to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith by using the Force to hold her by the throat and remind her that she need only arrive to Naboo alive, not unscathed.).

Have the Theed city battle happen as Act II, show more of the Separatists’ effect on the people they’re subjugating, and have Anakin involved on the ground instead of in the gunship. He ends up seeing/being involved in the Duel of the Fates, exhibiting an impressive display of the Force and throwing up a force field that blocks what would have been a fatal hit from Maul against the two Jedi. Anakin uses the Force to fling Darth Maul back, though it’s not enough to get him off his feet. Maul’s distracted for just a moment as his boots gain traction and he skids to a halt, locking eyes with the kid before he uses the Force to throw Anakin into the path of danger as Qui-Gon approaches. Obi-Wan diverts course to save Anakin and gets him out of the way, telling him to stay back as Maul continues to fight Qui-Gon. Anakin ends up separated when Obi-Wan jams the control for the force field corridor, cutting him off from the fight as Kenobi and Qui-Gon back Maul towards the reactor shaft together.

Anakin surveys the hangar and starts to climb up to the access catwalks overhead, trying to get to the Jedi to help, but as he finally reaches a position overlooking the room he realizes he’s too late. Darth Maul hits Qui-Gon and stabs him through the chest as Kenobi screams. This time however, Kenobi isn’t fast enough in the aftermath to do anything beyond wounding Maul, and when Maul is nearly hit by Anakin doing the equivalent of throwing a ship at him, he escapes.

Kenobi’s and Anakin’s shared story with Qui-Gon comes to a close as Qui-Gon dies and Kenobi tells Anakin he’ll apprentice him instead, and that he has strong evidence for the council that Anakin is the Chosen One. Cut back to Sabé relaying to Amidala through covert means that the dark warrior isn’t acting alone; he’s taking orders from somebody he calls Master, and even if he is killed, it’s likely he’s not the only one directing the war from the shadows. Have the Separatists win the battle and Naboo seemingly come under their control, the treaty signed by Sabé (the Separatists still unaware she’s a decoy).

Maul makes a break for it to head back to Coruscant, for the moment incapacitated and in no condition to fight Kenobi and Anakin together. Kenobi may be alive, but Maul’s mission to make sure the Separatists took Naboo and that the queen signed the treaty is complete, and he tells Sidious over a holocall that there’s a child with Kenobi who is strong in the Force and could be a threat to them…. Unless he can be turned to the dark side.

Kenobi and Anakin sneak around and meet up with Amidala and her remaining entourage and tell her that she has to come back to Coruscant with them because only her presence there while Sabé remains behind (never leaving the Separatists’ watch) will be what shows the Senate that the treaty is void. They scheme to go back to Coruscant with the still-undiscovered true queen; Amidala uses the handmaidens to disperse the message and ready an ambush with the help of Ahmed Best’s character and countrymen, telling those who remain behind not to fight back yet but to comply with the Separatists until she can provide the Senate with the proof of the truth.

The three of them with Amidala’s retinue return in stealth to Coruscant. Keep Amidala from telling Palpatine anything because maybe he was just as complacent as the rest of the senators who didn’t believe her when she voiced concerns of the Separatists setting up an invasion of the planet prior to the movie. Kenobi enlists the help of the council members, telling them what truly happened and that a Sith is behind the Separatists’ machinations, and they also provide video footage of the carnage they saw levied against the people of Theed. The council prompts Senator Organa to bring up the Naboo treaty during the Senate session. The Senate pulls up a holovid conference call with the Separatists and remaining Naboo politicians, Sabé among them, the Separatists showing their “proof” of being able to reach a “peaceful accord.”

And THEN Padmé Amidala steps forward in the Senate to reveal her true identity and the plot the Separatists had the whole time forcing who they thought was the queen to sign the treaty under extreme duress while their people died in the streets and countryside. There’s a collective gasp as her witnesses, including Obi-Wan, come forward with evidence to the veracity of that statement, and the Senate erupts in an uproar as the Separatists flounder on the call, having been caught in the act in front of an audience of thousands.

The holocall is cut short as we the audience see the handmaidens, the remaining guards, and Ahmed Best’s character and his people back on Naboo spring the ambush on the Separatists in the palace, and we see the tide change as the people of Naboo fight back together. Valorum tries to keep order but the longer he goes without taking decisive action the worse he starts to look, and Palpatine quickly steps in to propose a vote of no confidence against him— If Valorum isn’t willing to send arms and support to a pacifist planet clearly under military attack right now, what’s to say he’ll ever do it for anybody else there among them? At what point is it considered an act of war against the Republic, if not now? The people of the Senate begin to concur and Republic forces quickly rally support for Naboo, senators from neighboring planets ordering their fleets to converge on Naboo to lend aid and route the fleeing Separatists as an emergency meeting is called to force Chancellor Valorum to step down.

(Palpatine meanwhile is absolutely seething behind his fake shock and horror, and as soon as he’s able to reconvene out of the Senate chamber he comms Darth Maul like “YOU ABSOLUTE #!$%*&@ IDIOT YOU GOT THE WRONG GIRL”)

Maul’s coming to several conclusions at once with a metric ton of dread flash-fried by anger and they both know they can’t do anything to Amidala OR the politicians back home on Naboo while all eyes are turned that way, BUT Maul realizes that this was all Kenobi’s fault and— probably knowing Palpatine's going to wring his neck if he ever gets his hands on him— he goes rogue in order to get his revenge against Kenobi and try to preserve his standing with his master. The climax of Act III comes down to a much more publicly visible and hard-hitting fight between Darth Maul and Kenobi before Anakin (who’s been with Obi-Wan the whole time and was supposed to be in hiding) uses the Force again to shield Obi-Wan right as it looks like Darth Maul is about to strike the killing blow. Maul’s saber bounces off the shield and in shock he turns to see Anakin, who he recognizes as the kid from the Theed palace who thwarted him then too. Obi-Wan shouts “No!” as Maul charges, and Anakin scrambles away and throws up a shield in front of himself that Maul strikes once, twice, a third time before it shatters, each side of the Force colliding, causing an explosive blast that takes out half of the tower floor with it and renders Anakin unconscious.

Just as Maul rears back to kill Anakin, his saber meets that of Obi-Wan’s, and Obi-Wan pushes him back, determined and revitalized.

The fight ends dramatically on top of one of the skywalks of Coruscant, Jedi and Sith locked in battle as word quickly starts to travel and people start racing up to the tower. Obi-Wan succeeds in cutting Maul’s saber apart before ultimately stabbing him just as Maul had done to Qui-Gon, sending him off the overbridge to his death.

Naboo is shown winning against the invasion thanks to help from the Republic, and the people of Theed and the surrounding forests are saved. Ahmed Best’s character and Sabé are both hailed as victors, the two of them standing united with their people together after a successful ambush and reclamation of Naboo. Kenobi’s a veritable hero, receiving praise from both politicians and Jedi for discovering and eliminating the Sith. The Jedi council manages to frame Maul’s presence as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan “mission” this whole time, and Kenobi’s valor and strategy award him the rank of Knight. The council is still wary of Anakin, but he’s been shown to have had a surprising awareness and command of the Force, and if he’s capable of that without training, they can’t let him continue to live as a civilian with that amount of power unchecked, agreeing that the boy needs supervision, guidance, and accountability. It doesn’t help that Obi-Wan’s determined to keep Anakin as his Padawan now, especially since training him was Qui-Gon’s dying wish.

Sidious manages to frame Maul for the loss of Naboo to the Separatists, telling them that he has been “dealt with.” Though Darth Maul is defeated and the public’s faith in the Jedi remains intact, the Jedi council is deeply troubled by the apparent return of the Sith, and they confer with Kenobi, Anakin, Sabé and Amidala (who are unfortunately accompanied by Senator Palpatine) about what knowledge they have, knowing they need to keep word of a potential second Sith under wraps for the public’s well-being and peace of mind. The fact the Separatists have been revealed to have massive covert operations taking over smaller planets with the aid of droid armies for a while now is shocking enough as it is; they can’t afford widespread panic over the possibility of this being orchestrated by a Sith, let alone more than one.

The result of those decisions, as well as the very public fight Kenobi had with Maul, means that the Jedi are now inextricably bound to serve in the war, still unsure of how they couldn’t have sensed the Sith to begin with, and it sets up Kenobi to wonder if perhaps the Jedi involvement in the war and their deaths at the end of it are his fault for being too rash and ready to fight. It’ll drive his character to mature and become more of a negotiator, and try to keep Anakin from choosing to act without thinking moving forward. Though both Kenobi and Amidala have saved people in this movie, it was done through actions that forced them to compromise their anti-war ideologies, and those irreversible actions will directly lead people who were once pacifists and protectors into war.

That plotline forces the characters together more organically and still covers the same amount of ground and achieves the same result, but utilizes the characters better and creates more of a sense of urgency than before. The consequence of these changes is that Palpatine will later ascend as Supreme Chancellor with sympathy from a majority of the Senate, meaning the Grand Army of the Republic is formed between this movie and the next, setting up Attack of the Clones to be happening in the midst of the war. Sidious has contingency plans upon contingency plans; he still has Count Dooku in his back pocket, still has the Separatists on his side, and now he has his sights set on the young prodigy from Tatooine who seems verrrrrryy interesting to him. He can misdirect the Jedi’s suspicions of Sith towards Dooku and General Grievous, should they end up being discovered, still keeping all eyes off of himself. Palpatine also has a much stronger motivation to assassinate Amidala after this since she’s proven to be more capable than he realized and isn’t just a political pawn he can manipulate. She’s unpredictable, and she needs to be eliminated.

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littlemoondarlingarts · 10 months ago

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Did an artstyle study of the gorgeous art of @iliothermia and I genuinely learned alot so I'm very thankful that he gave me permission to do this 🙏🏻🙏🏻

As usual, rambles and process pics under the cut, be warned that I talk alot because this drawing was a true labor of love both for his art and Rouge

I wanted to use elements from his art but at the same time i know how deeply personal his art is to his own life and struggles and culture so i tried to be as respectful as possible (and if I failed at that please tell me I have no problem in deleting this) and tried to minimize my use of direct elements from his art to keep it to the skull which was heavily inspired by a drawing he has done, the waves which are such a beautiful staple of his art that I just couldn't not put it and the use of candles and small floral patterns and the style of the mold, but I tried to keep the rest to things that are symbolic to the character.

While he may have restraint to not explain everything, I'm not famous for that lol, so I will be explaining the symbolism behind my choices.

Part 1: the symbolism:

The red rose is Rouge's flower and it is heavily associated with him. The meaning of it being romantic desire and passion mixed with the thorns of it perfectly sum up his position as a beautiful black widow.

Voyeurism is a big part of this drawing and it is first noticed with the eyes motif on the roses' leaves, this symbolises his response to his trauma which left him feeling like an unwanted pervert on his own self. I can talk about this aspect of his story for hours but I'll spare you lol.

The X-ray cutouts are his complicated relationship with his own body and death, it is a thing that is constantly on his mind as he suffers from suicidal thoughts but at the same time he is always running away from it in fear, but he knows that eventually, he will have to stop running.

The candles melting represent him being only wanted when he is useful, when he is giving parts of himself up for others to use and abuse, when he is lighting their lives by slowly draining his own.

The piano is one of the rare things that bring him happiness and peace, but he needs to be heavily dissociated to be able to enjoy it which is represented by the hands being disconnected from the rest of the drawing and just floating in their own reality.

The snake represents two things, one is him being venomous to those around him, the mistakes he's made, the promises he's broken, the pain he's caused etc. But it also represents those who slowly wrap themselves around him in a warm embrace, presenting themselves as a saviour in his most dire times only to end up being the ones who will hurt him the most.

The book is about his obsession with keeping track of everything and of studying people, accidentally turning himself into an unwanted voyeur on their lives to the point where he has written the life stories of many people who would never want to be remembered through his eyes in his little books.

The butterflies are him, both in the way they are seen as "the good insects" and the beautiful delicate ones despite the fact that they eat flesh sometimes, it is also related to the way his simple presence for a few minutes in someone's life can create a whirlwind of change that will leave it unrecognizable, or he can simply be another body in their bed.

The hair turning into waves is meant to reflect the way he is always drowning in his own thoughts, a hand crafted constant state of misery.

The beta fish are some of the most beautiful and colourful fish out there, yet they are seen as cheap and easy first pets, leading to them being neglected and given environments that are too small and crammed, making their beautifully slow death the only thing they can offer to their owner. I don't think I need to explain more..

The skull is probably someone he's loved, or someone he's killed, or both.

The heart is his, it is rotten and covered in mold, any love he offers is tainted by his inability to heal and it is spreading to infect every aspect of his life.

Part 2: the inspirations:

The roses are a homage to the way Rachamim always places flowers in his art, either in the background or as a focal point of the illustration, most of the flowers he uses are cultural in nature, so I opted to not reuse any of them and changed it to a flower related to my oc.

Eyes are a repeated theme in his art, whether it be angel eyes, the evil eye or anything else, and as you can tell both of these are cultural and religious and while the evil eye exists in my culture, it does not in my oc's so I didn't use it. Instead I opted to pay homage to one of his beautiful merman drawings in which he used the plants to make an eye-like shape that stares at the viewer.

I thought I was being real smart in turning the hair into waves but yesterday I saw an illustration where he did the same so rip to me thinking i was being original lol.

The snake and butterflies are my way of replicating his use of animals while trying to not directly copy any animals that have a connection to himself or his culture/religion.

The beta fish is just to reference the ever present fishies in his art. I know he uses them because they represent friendship for him and they are the only animals safe from the evil eye (thanks for the fun fact) so I uh... I don't really know if this was disrespectful or not to be honest but I tried to use a different type of fish, idk this might still be slightly problematic and again I'm always ready to delete this if it makes anyone uncomfortable.

The waves are a direct copy of how he draws the gorgeous waves in his art, another case of something I fear may be crossing the line because the waves are drawn in the style of cultural jewelry 😭

The tiny flowers are an obvious reference to his own tiny flowers that decorate his art and characters.

The skull with the candles is heavily inspired by a specific drawing of his.

The cutouts are my way of paying my respects to my absolute favourite piece of art he's done without directly copying its concept because as far as I can tell, it is a very personal and emotional piece.

The mold style is a reference to his mold man (I forgot his name I'm sorry).

And the candles are another repeated motif in his art as well as the pillars and the pant style.

And ouf I sure do talk alot don't I? I just really love the amount of things I was able to cram into this piece and I haven't even mentioned everything😭😭 I will NOT be doing this again because I'm simply not as patient as he is and as proud as I am of the result, this was torture. I hope I didn't disrespect him, his art or his culture and I genuinely tried my best to be as respectful as possible but I might have some blind spots due to our experiences being so vastly different so again, please don't hesitate to inform me if you want this deleted!

#my art #art #artists on tumblr #oc #my oc #rouge #original characters #oc artist #oc artwork #oc art #lineart illustration #artsyle study #art style study #art study #idk how to tag this #anyway #hii #ty for reading #i hope you like it

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guxciestone · 2 years ago

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— pursuing your dream career. ❞

(pick a card reading)

‎🪷✧

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

hi! i hope you’re having a good day. if you have any tarot or astrology post recommendations, i’ll be willing to considering it. thank you and god bless <3

‎

✧ pile 1 ✧

what is your dream career?

- The main goal for almost everyone in this pile is to achieve a career that gives you financial security, recognition, and success. You aspire to be one of the greats at what you do and gain respect for it. I feel like these are the people who want to become doctors, surgeons, architects, engineers, or lawyers—much more serious and important careers that guarantees a prominent status in society and financial stability. A small group of you may want to pursue a business and become a CEO. Other careers that come to mind are accountants, real estate agents, financial advisors. For a few of you, you want to become a florist or gardener—something with flowers or gardens.

‎

how can you get there?

- There’s two different energies coming through. For the first group, it seems to be that you focus a lot on validation and attention from others in regards to your career success, maybe even the financial stability that comes with it. You view your desired career as a means to get some type of recognition, status, class, or appreciation from other people. I feel for some of you in this group, you probably want to do your current career path only for the financial or status success. There’s too much focus on this part. In order to get to your desired career, you need to focus less on the superficial results and focus on your actual passion for the career. Passion and determination is what really gets you to where you want to be in life. Reconsider it if that’s the case. The results will be worth it, but only focusing on the results will take you away from doing the actual work that comes with it. For the second group, in order to get to your desired career, you need to put yourself and your brand out there. This is especially if you are a business owner or real estate agent. Build connections with others and gain more attention to pet others know about your work.

‎

what qualities do you bring to the table?

- One of the qualities that you bring to the table is your ability to create something beautiful. You are a very creative person who has a sense of art, beauty, and pleasure. This is particularly for the entrepreneurs, florists, and gardeners. Additionally, you are charming and know how to handle people. This is useful if your career requires socialization and gaining connections. You are also very likable and a good communicator.

‎

where can you find assistance?

- You are significantly blessed because I feel you can find assistance almost everywhere. Your spirit guides or higher self could be working behind the scenes to give you advice or help in the most casual ways; whether that be through the internet or conversations with family members. However, I believe it might be hard for you to find assistance is due to your ego or stubbornness. You might refuse to get help because you believe everything you do is right. It is okay to accept help. You’re not going to be perfect at everything you do on the first try. I feel there’s a particular older masculine energy in your life who may be pursuing the same career who can help.

‎

what needs attention?

- The thing that needs attention is, again, your stubbornness. There’s this refusal to learn from your mistakes as well as accept advice from other people. This may get in the way your potential and dream career success. For a particular group of you, you are also losing track of your workings and goals. It is important to get right back on track if any personal problems is what got in your way.

‎ ‎ ‎

‎ ‎

✧ pile 2 ✧

what is your dream career?

- Your dream career may be unconventional or a career that is doesn’t promise success most of the time. This pile is for the people who are desiring out of the usual career choices. Career such as a musician, rapper, business owner are appearing. For a significant group of you, I feel like you want to step into the adult industry. Perhaps your family or loved ones may not approve of what career you’re going after. They may think it’s not a reliable career or a career that is respectable enough. I highly believe whatever you want to do it is solely because of passion. Passion is all you really need.

‎ ‎

how can you get there?

- It is important to be regular with your efforts. I feel like consistency and constantly working on your effort is what will guarantee you success. This is especially if you are pursuing a music career or building up your agility to be a good dancer. There’s also the need for funding as well, there’s monetary importance coming through. If you are especially trying to run a business or pursue a music career, make sure to be more deliberate with your spendings. Save up your money in a special account just for your career efforts. Perhaps find investors or supporters in your personal life who are willing to fund your passions.

‎ ‎

what qualities do you bring to the table?

- You aren’t afraid to go against the grain, no matter if you are seen as a rebel or devil’s advocate to people. You are going to stay being a trailblazer and building your own path. You may have a unique look for a few of you. You also do not mind standing for other rebels or people who are scrutinized on for being different and standing out. Whether that be people who are pursuing the same career as you, or people who are trying to go against the grain in some way as well. You are an amazing supporter, and you get along with others. You know how to lift other’s up. Your confidence is definite.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

where can you find assistance?

- It is possible that you are used to being criticized or scrutinized for the things you choose to do with your life, so not to mention, you might have tons of haters. However, you might have a close knit group of loved ones whom you trust—maybe even friends. It seems to me what you need most is motivation apart from this scrutiny you receive. Stick around the people who supported you the most and you’re guaranteed to reach higher levels. You are someone who thrives better when you are around people who want the best for you.

‎ ‎

what needs attention?

- The thing that needs attention is where you spend your energy. You may be someone who strives to look after others or spend much time around certain energies or activities that aren’t necessarily good for you in the long run. However, it is important to savor your energy for your endeavors as well. For a few of you, there could be substance abuse problems, a toxic friend, etc. Whatever this energy may be, it is time to cut it off to go further in pursuing your dream career.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

✧ pile 3 ✧

what is your dream career?

- These are the natural born leaders, you are born to inspire or handle others. I’m getting this energy that you are someone who is well-rounded; you are talented in multiple areas and there are multiple careers you want to excel in. You are a jack-of-all-trades. Freelancing and job hopping might be something you are doing or considering right now. You might love the thought of curating your ideas into something physical and gaining success from it. Careers appearing is CEO, business person, ambassadors, marketing and advertisement. I’m also seeing a few of you have an interest in sports and want to become an athlete! Some of you might want to create and sell literal art such as paintings, digital drawings, etc. Most definitely what you are striving to become, you are 100% passionate about it. I am hearing you have lots of charisma.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

how can you get there?

- I feel like you need to allow yourself to think big. There is never a dream too unrealistic or impossible. It is okay to have huge goals for yourself. In order to get there, you need to learn how stop dimming your light in an effort to “humble yourself”—If you want to dream big and do great things, then go for it with no shame and apologies. Most importantly, connect with your inner child and make sure you are genuinely enjoying that process of creating art or perfecting your art. Do not take it too serious and have fun while improving. This is especially if you want to become an athlete or a literal artist.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

what qualities do you bring to the table?

- A special quality you bring to the table is your persistence and undeniable resilience. No matter what others say or what happens, you always pick yourself back up go after what is meant for you. For some of you, whatever you are going for in terms of your career, you may have been striving towards it for years. People wonder how you haven’t given up yet. You are also more afraid to try different routes even if it is not what you are accustomed to. There is this fearlessness and unapologetic courage that helps you with pursuing your dreams.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

where can you find assistance?

- There seems to be a need for balance in your life; this could be a balance between profession and pleasure. Some of you may be taking too much of a serious approach towards your success, and the other group might be lacking around too much. I feel there could be a female figure or feminine energy in your life who could accompany you and give you some pointers and motivation. This could be a mother, auntie, or grandma. For some of you, there could be a feminine energy that is no longer with you trying to communicate with you about pursuing your passion. They are trying to motivate and comfort you. They are trying to get you back on track or tell you to relax.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

what needs attention?

- Once again, there is a strong need to balance profession and pleasure. Most of you may be too serious in your approaches to your dreams to the point where you are ruining your love for it. It is possible you have only made the time to take on your passion during a time when you are trying to go after your career. It is important to make sure to enjoy your passion from personal moments as well. Enjoy your passion just for the sole purpose of being happy and getting in touch with who you are again. It doesn’t have to always be for your goals.

‎ ‎

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

✧ pile 4 ✧

what is your dream career?

- Your dream career is a career you most likely had dreams about being ever since you were a little kid. You are definitely passionate about it. Your career has themes related to traveling, airplanes, or being in the air. Career that are appearing is the military—(perhaps the air force), a travel/home nurse, or a pilot. I’m also getting that some of you loves exploring new cultures and traveling to different places and may want to become a tourist or travel/food blogger. There is the sense of freedom and happiness when it comes to this career you desire. You’d feel on the top of the world, figuratively or literally, if you pursued it. Others might want to become a therapist, regular nurse, psychologist, or something in the nursing area.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

how can you get there?

- Some of you may struggle with social anxiety and the fear of being far from home and your loved ones. One huge step you can take to get there is to break out of this fear or anxiety you have. This is most notable if you are definitely pursuing a career such as the military or travel because you are more than likely going to far from home and have to meet different types of people every day. If it helps, try to take small steps out of your comfort zone such as going to small parties, saying hi to people walking down the street, or being more active in social activities at work or school.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

what qualities do you bring to the table?

- You have this ability to soothe and comfort others, especially individuals who are grieving or going through deep troubles in life. This quality is beneficial if some of you want to become therapists. You have this talent of knowing how to analyze others and how they feel and find an exact way that can help them, and you might be a good communicator and know exactly what to say to calm others. Even if you are far away from your loved ones, you know how to make them you are right with them.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

where can you find assistance?

- There is particularly a younger person coming through. This may be a friend, sibling, cousin, or even a child in your family like a nephew or niece. This person has the power to inspire you to take leaps and go into the unknown with no fear and worry. This person is jovial and enthusiastic about life. They have the ability to change your morals and thought patterns entirely. They will truly uplift and encourage you when you communicate with them. They try to push you to step out of your shell and not be afraid of the consequences. They are a bit of a rebel though.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

what needs attention?

- The thing that needs attention is your guilty mindset and imposter syndrome. There is to be ashamed of in wanting to travel the world, explore your choices, or be far from where you came from. If you feel this is what is right for you, go for it. You might have a very supportive family who instead wants you to leave where you came from to grow and find yourself. It is important to battle that part of yourself that stops you from doing so because that may be gorilla greatest enemy. For another few of you, there may a certain person in your life who is guilt tripping you into not going for those dreams because you’ll be far away. Do not care for what they say, do what makes you happy. They do not control you. You cannot let them get in the way of what you you want to do. Some of you may even find a partnership while traveling or distancing from your hometown.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

#tarot #pick a card #career #have a nice day

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shalom-iamcominghome · 15 days ago

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I don't want this to come off as offensive, because I'm totally don't mean it that way and am really just curious about this.... why are you converting to Judaism as a trans person? Judaism has a firm belief that you can be a good person and still go to shomayim, even without being a Jew. Part of being Jewish is understanding that Ha'Shem made you the way He did for a reason, whereas the whole notion of trans (to my non-trans understanding) is that you were "put in the wrong body," which just doesn't align. Either you were a "mistake" or God doesn't make mistakes. How do you reconcile those two things? I also don't understand the whole converting to conservative thing. Being conservative is going to the "cheap" sect of Judaism, so to speak, which means not accepting the full 613 mitzvot, which is the whole thing with being Jewish - having to carry the burden of all 613 commandments. If it's not a "full" conversion, why do it at all? Because, again, it's not mandatory to be Jewish to be considered a good person according to the Torah or Ha'Shem. We will love you as b'tzelem elokim either way. <3

The questions you're asking me are so layered in intricacy that I don't think I will be able to convey through text. I'm only answering these questions once because I am not here to defend myself, and I want to make this clear.

I'm dissatisfied with the narrative of "born in the wrong body." It's verbiage that often exists to convey to cis people what it feels like to be trans because cis people are (often) unable to even imagine anything else but being cis. It's largely for your benefit to help you understand.

I was not put in the wrong body. Being trans is an identity, not a preset determiner of how you view yourself. There are certainly people out there who may feel they were literally put into the wrong body, but that is not a prerequisite to being trans and it is by no means a reality for all of us. Because we aren't a monolith. We both acknowledge g-d made me (and all people!) the way He did for a reason. And I'm trans. I remember first coming to the realization that I'm trans and I fell into this idea that being cis is the default, the only option - g-d would never make people like me. And it only alienated me from g-d and made me miserable. If I never embraced my transness and accepted it as something g-d made me to be, I never would have come back to g-d. I think I vastly prefer this reality.

Secondly, I'm trying hard not to be offended at the idea that I'm converting to conservative judaism. I'm converting through the conservative movement, but the conservative movement is not where I place my allegiance. It's to the jewish people. If the movement didn't matter to others, I wouldn't even specify it precisely because people will sometimes use it as a yardstick to gauge "how much" a person does or does not do. There is nothing 'cheap' about any judaism. I am in love with every part of judaism - the culture, the music, the art, the history, the people. I'm not just converting for religious reasons, either, and it feels devaluing when people are only willing to acknowledge how religion plays into a convert's journey. Judaism will always be that and more to me.

I really do want to approach this in good faith, to assume that you are also coming from good faith. However, the only reason I'm answering this is for a potential learning experience. I'm only interested in proving myself to my beit din. Any further asks such as this will not be regarded.

#ask #jumblr #jew by choice #jewish conversion #personal thoughts tag #long post

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ct-multifandom · 24 days ago

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S6 ep speculation

Get ready to hear my 80% wrong predictions even though I’m like, super not caught up on this show! It’s still fun to guess. Also this post will be generally leak-free so don’t go replying to it with “uhhh actually from the leaks we know this and that”. Not the place. Warning, this post is incredibly long.

1) Climatiqueen

I lean into the microphone and say, “Aurore”. The crowd erupts into cheers and fervent applause. Everyone shouts and whistles and pumps their arms in the air.

Interesting that they went with the French name for both translations, and she clearly seems to be a powered up version of stormy weather. It’s so fitting to circle around and start this new arc and new butterfly user off with the OG… I just hope we’ll get to learn a little about her character this time (doubtful). She’s gone to the main cast’s school this whole time and was Marc and Zoe’s classmate. It’d be great if they made her an actual recurring character instead of a special NPC. The children yearn for a character who acts like a cunty Mean Girl but isn’t actually a bad person.

I’m guessing this episode will serve as a general intro to the new world, showing us a typical day in the life of LB & CN kind of like the original pilot without dropping any important main plot developments.

2) Dessinatriste/The Illustrhater

Why is nobody talking about how funny the English name is, that’s hilarious. The haterrr. I’m getting very different vibes from both translations emotions-wise. The English title makes it sound like they’re petty or angry rather than sad.

My first thought was Nath because the name follows similar conventions as Dessinateur/Evillustrator in both languages and as one of the earliest and most iconic akumas it might continue this idea of Lila following in Gabriel’s footsteps while first learning how to butterfly.

In early s1, Gabriel was still experimenting with his powers while figuring out what does and doesn’t work when making an akuma. Well actually, since it was Gabriel, he learned absolutely nothing and was shocked when making the same mistakes over and over didn’t give him different results.

I think putting Lila through that same test drive phase would show her being much more analytical and actually develop her skills based on what she learns. In s1, Gabriel had a hard time making The Evillustrator do what he wanted, going so far as to like bloodbend him, then never targeted him again. If Lila was in that situation, she might figure out how to be more persuasive/manipulative/motivational or just learn that she has to choose akumas who will align with her goals in the first place.

Nath is also majorly due for character development. And he might be a pro level hater. It’s odd and a shame that we’ve only seen him once while every other class character has been akumatized like a hundred times atp. I think it’s most likely him.

I’ve seen people bring up that the French name sounds like a pun on the feminine form of the word. While Nath might be a diva, my counter argument is that this might be referring to Kagami, who is also interested in illustration and a girl. <- LMAO [insert Kagaminette joke], I mean “and is a girl”.

We haven’t heard much about her artistic journey in a long time even though it was important enough to mention in that trading card game where they said she secretly wants to make her own manga but lacks the confidence to start even though she has it planned out (super paraphrased).

Since Tomoe will become a greater villain, this could be the opportunity to show it since she’s the reason Kagami is self-conscious about her art. Maybe Tomoe will provoke Kagami into getting akumatized on purpose to test out Lila’s abilities or use her somehow. I’m not sure what her motivations are. Kagami does have, what, four different akuma forms already not counting powered-up ones? Crazy evolution tree, why not add more.

This might be an episode where Kagami becomes more comfortable pursuing what she wants and finding support among Marinette and friends instead of looking for Tomoe’s validation, continuing the plot line from Perfection. Once again, I don’t think it’s likely to be her tho.

3) Sublimation

I’ve seen the leaks and I believe everything I’ve seen has been from this episode. I feel comfortable saying this since it was already released in the official trailer, but the villain here is the coach woman. This episode seems to mostly be focused on this new runner girl character. I won’t elaborate because I don’t think any of the other stuff I know about this ep was in official material, but yeah, very much a new character situation.

You’d think this episode would have something to do with the power of the rooster miraculous, but there is absolutely no indication of that. I like to imagine the writers have a “word of the day” calendar at the office, and when they learned the word sublimation they were like, “hollllyyyy shit you guys, we need more people to know about this”.

4) Daddycop

I expect this to be a Sabrina-centric development episode and would be shocked if it’s not. Her relationship with Roger is pretty interesting since they seem to be on good, loving terms, yet he’s okay with all the Chloe bs and seems apathetic or ignorant to how Sabrina was being treated. Maybe we’ll see some rebellion from her now that she hangs out with other people.

The akuma’s name, to me, implies that Sabrina will be responsible for Roger’s akumatization or at least the main focus of it. Maybe he will become overly protective of her and target anyone who fucks with her or worry that she’s straying from the right path and exaggeratedly try to correct her behavior.

Sabrina’s behavior up to around Penalteam was likely informed by Roger’s influence, possibly more-so than Chloe’s. He had this “doing what you’re told is right” mindset that he instilled in his daughter, so in this episode, she might help him unlearn it. As a cop, he was always mindlessly bossed around by Mayor Bourgeois, so since Andre is gone, Roger will have to think for himself more.

5) Papys Garous/Werepapas

Continuing the theme of dramatic dads, the consensus seems to be that this will be Tom and probably Rolland. I’m not sure why, but Marinette’s always getting up to some silly billy antics, so. Tom doesn’t seem to have any issue with Adrien and idk what type of beef is gonna start for the grandpa to get involved. It might be some misunderstanding situation or another “Chat Noir is on our fucking balcony again, get the broom” moment.

It might very well be the mom and dad though, not the dad and grandpa. People have been talking about how it’s unrealistic that Marinette has been able to keep huge secrets from her parents for so long, so they might snap this time, not because of Adrien, but because she’s been acting shady herself. They might assume she’s getting into trouble. People have been long speculating that Sabine will learn Ladybug’s identity soon, so maybe she will finally have to tell her parents in a situation similar to gang of secrets.

6) Princesse Syren/Sleeping Syren

Ondine yayyyy! Yay! Ondine. Possibly a Kimdine episode to redeem Kim after they ruined his character for no reason and everyone got really mad because it didn’t even make sense. Remember when the instas were still a thing Alya had a post like “hanging out at the pool! Ondine is so awesome idk what she sees in Kim” or something. Yeah. How’d he pull a baddie like her if he’s been acting the way they’ve been showing him to act? Makes no cents luv. I’m dying to see more of their relationship, more of her, and some repair of what they’ve done to Kim.

It sounds like they might be doing some kind of sleeping beauty retelling? Idk how that would make Syren a threat if she’s asleep the whole time, but maybe she’ll still be doing the whole flooding the city with tears thing while she’s sleeping.

I also really hope Ondine will be attending their school now. I want to see her interact with other characters and become more relevant. Please give The People (me) what they want (official Ondine street clothes design). Also they’ve been introducing too many lamely designed girl characters with average heights and athletic-skinny body types. We need the 6ft swole girl to balance them out.

7) El Toro de Piedra

This name is so Ivan-coded that I’m tempted to just say that it’s not him, but why would they make an intentionally misleading Ivan clone. The name is concerning because it sounds like a mix of stoneheart and his hero persona. That makes me think maybe he’ll get akumatized AS Minotaurox. His arc has been about how he’s scared to accidentally harm others because being the first akuma bothered him so deeply. If he’s in a situation where he has to act tough or use force as a hero, he might become upset, worrying that he’s going overboard. I can see him cracking if his fight against an akuma ends up getting a civilian hurt in the crossfire or with someone being scared of him afterwards. Having his regular/akuma and hero forms mix together could compromise his identity.

Also I guess he’s Hispanic? *sonic voice* I didn’t know that. I remember a long while ago they said in an interview to look forward to Ivan lore which is one of the things I am most excited for this season. He is probably THE most underrated character in the show and most overdue for development.

8) Vampigami

Guys I hate to say it. I really hate to say it. My heart wants this to be vampire Kagami sooooo bad but my brain says we aren’t allowed to have nice things. I already suggested a Kagami akuma earlier, and she can totally get akumatized several times a season again because her mom hates her, but I’m not ready to be disappointed like this. I want her to become a badass evil vampire and acquire a Ben 10 arsenal of villain forms, but Vampigami is probably gonna be some stupid shit like Optigami except it looks like a bat instead of a butterfly this time.

I really don’t know what to seriously expect. I can’t imagine vamp referring to anything other than vampire, although it can also mean patching/editing like the word revamp. Gami has only been used in a senti name before to mean oragami. Idk man vampire Kagami is so engrained in my mind that I can’t come up with anything else. Like to charge reblog to cast. Let’s manifest that the writers have finally tuned in to what the people want.

9) Monsieur/Mister Agreste

This has got to be the episode that introduces Adrien’s grandparents, right? Meaning his grandpa is gonna be Gabriel’s dad and the title could stand for three generations of Mr. Agrestes. I’m surprised we haven’t heard much about them yet, but since Gabriel’s dead, it makes sense they’d come around to get his affairs in order or attend the funeral etc etc.

We got a big movie about Emilie’s history and her noble family, but all we know about the Agrestes is that they weren’t rich, and they sold fries. But there’s the weird part: wouldn’t Gabriel’s parents be the Grassettes? How much do they know about his life after he moved out? This episode might show us more about where it all went wrong for the Gabriel of this timeline. Maybe his dad will get akumatized because Gabriel abandoned their family, and he’ll become Mr. Agreste instead of Mr. Grassette to try to fit himself back into Gabriel’s fake narrative. He’ll turn into a rich asshole old guy because he thinks that’s the type of dad Gabriel would have wanted instead of his real self. Dang that’s sad.

10) Le Chateau Noir/The Dark Castle

My first reaction was Chat Noir, but I saw someone say Darkblade which makes so much more sense. I mean Chat Noir getting akumatized is an avengers-level threat, and last time it happened he blew up like everything, plus the episode was pretty late into the season.

Darkblade fits pretty well with the castle thing since he’s a knight. He lost yet another mayoral election, unable to even blame it on corruption this time. On top of it all, the new, fairly elected mayor is his old coworker from school who also didn’t have much political experience. Ouch.

11) Revelator

I’m getting Reverser from the name but only vaguely. This sounds like a similar type of villain to Gold Record who forces people to reveal something about themselves. Maybe this episode will go into how suddenly having secret identities is affecting the other characters’ relationships like Gang of Secrets again or Truth/Lies. If the akuma’s power has to do with revealing secrets, someone may get their identity exposed on accident like in Wishmaker. By that I mean a reveal between characters other than the akuma and the secret they want to find out.

12) Psyconductrice/Wreckless Driver

My first thought here was Max’s mom because she’s a train engineer, but the name seems to imply cars specifically. Totally unrelated, but remember that one poll on here about who’s the hottest MILF in miraculous, and Claudie Kante was in dead last by a lot, even way behind Audrey with her fuckass Anna Wintour bob and horrible child abusing bitter personality? Yeah you all have horrible taste. Democracy is dead and I hope everyone is happy being so goddamn ignorant and wrong. /hj.

On the topic of moms this could still be someone’s mom. I’ve brought up the pattern before: many moms are associated with a mode of transportation that are connected to their villain form. Car: Tomoe, boat: Anarka, train: Claudie, motorcycle: Gina. We could get a bus driver mom, or a trucker or taxi or racecar driver. Imagine. I’ve been saying we need a pilot mom.

Even if this isn’t anyone’s mom, it might be a new character. Idk who else it could be of existing characters.

13) Yaksi Gozen

This bitch again. Boo. I mean she IS super badass actually, but can we comically pull her offstage with a long hooked cane and let someone else have the screentime? I gotta say I am interested in her as a major villain but. Her akuma was cool the first two times and it’s time to calm down.

Clearly there’s something new about her this time. When looking up what yaksi means, it brings up yakshi, a type of nature spirit, but nothing that actually matches with “yaksi”. Maybe she’ll run a greenwashing campaign with her company? That reminds me of Mega Leech and how she wasn’t held accountable for her involvement in that scenario. If she comes under fire, she might get herself akumatized on purpose Collector-style to save face. Does anyone know if yaksi means something else? I’m not convinced it’s supposed to be yakshi without the h.

14) Couchorak/Grendiaper

Gigantitan vibes, possibly a powered-up version of him. When Hawkmoth first akumatized the baby, it was by mistake, and he ended up regretting it because he was hard to control and useless to his cause. Would Lila akumatize a baby on purpose, or is this an accident too? Since there’s a time skip, baby August would be a year older as well, so he’d actually be a toddler now, which might make him less unpredictable.

A shot in the dark I’m gonna make is that this might be Ivan’s younger sister. We know he has one, and while we don’t know her age, it sounds like she’s probably a toddler. We also know that he’s interested in childcare as a career. If I had to guess, I’d say he probably takes care of her often, which might be what gave him the idea. If she gets akumatized, it would be a great setup for his superhero focus episode.

15) La Redresseuse/The Ruler

My hottest take on this whole post is that this one is Mendeleev. Isn’t she the principal now or something? Idk but she’s a strict teacher who needs order, so I think the name matches her because 1: rulers are school supplies, especially for a science teacher who needs everything to be measured exactly, 2: ruler meaning leader with a totalitarian connotation, 3: the French title means straightener which connects to disciplining students or controlling how the school is run.

I think she’ll get akumatized because her students lack respect for her, and her strictness makes them dislike her which actually hurts her feelings as seen in the NY special. She might have a hard time adjusting to this new school system and her new role, not seeing the same positive relationships Bustier and Damocles held with the kids. She’ll go way overboard and turn into an evil school-themed dictator to try and regain control, but then learn her own lesson.

16) Noe

This is most likely a new character or something, but I love the idea that it’s just like, evil Zoe. Zoen’t. Noe.

OR imagine if it’s a more powerful version of Nino’s brother because it’s Noel but without the L, meaning this time, he won’t be taking the L. Coincidence? I think not. He is Lila’s pawn or whatever after all.

In all seriousness I have no idea what this is and the name could mean a lot of things, so I’m gonna just go with a completely new character.

17) La Fee De Beaux Reves/A Fairy Good Night

This is so Pigella energy. Not Rose, Pigella. In Jubilation, we saw how terrifying her power is when used for evil, trapping people in their own daydreams. Maybe she’ll struggle with nightmares or sleep problems and turn into an akuma that forces everyone to get stuck in imagined utopian illusions so they can “rest”. This idea is kind of the opposite of Sandboy and Nightormentor. I’d love to see more of her power and how it can be used for both good and evil, especially since a lot of people seem to think it’s useless or too situational.

18) Les Crassetastrophes/The Dirtifiers

This might be the little kids in another obligatory babysitting episode. The villain name is plural, so it could be a comic relief moment where the kids get mad because they don’t want to clean up or something silly. Otherwise maybe this is another pollution situation? I’m leaning more towards children, though. Another possibility is that we might be getting our first animal akumas.

19) Riginarazione

So I’m pretty set on this being Lila herself. Italian words? Check. Villain name having “queen” (rigina) in it because they can’t be too creative? Check. I’m guessing the pun is supposed to be regeneration rather than “queen ration” so maybe she’s gonna make herself some sort of nearly invincible self-healing villain.

20) Renverse-cœurs/Heartfixer

This sounds like that monstrosity Andre and Audrey turned into. Heart Hunter. I had to Google the name because I erased it from my mind. Out of all the old villains, I’m surprised this is one they’d choose to revamp since it was such a jumpscare, but I can see how they’d want to revisit it in the context of the Bourgeois’s messed up relationship since they were more of a temporary joke villain the first time. Maybe we’ll get some backstory on Chloe and Zoe as kids and who this Lee guy is who’s supposed to be Zoe’s American Dad (goooood morning, USA!). Based on the akuma name… maybe they’re gonna get less divorced. Wouldn’t that be a shocker? Audrey character development? Or maybe they’ll feel the need to keep it together for the kids.

21) Les Titans Chaines/The Chained Titans

I have no idea but it sounds awesome. Clearly more than one person. My first thought was s5 finale energy with the miraculized, like a whole mob of people sharing the same negative emotions. The metal vibes make me think maybe Couffaine family just because they’re so dramatic, and Jagged was a titan in the music industry who didn’t want to feel chained down? Kind of a stretch perhaps. Of course, it could be something new.

22) Lady Chaos

I’m saying Marinette akuma idc. I know people have been making this prediction for the past couple seasons and the writers were saying no but. Episode 22 is the one where shit goes down. Now that Bunnyx is active full time and there’s an entire team of other superheroes, there’s finally a chance to beat her if she does turn evil. I’m guessing it’s gonna be a bad timeline one like the Adrien akumas.

My concern with this type of ep is that they’d Mary Sue her and be like “her power levels are so high that nobody stands a chance against her, the best ladybug ever” even with like 20 heroes fighting her. I don’t think it’d be too bad though, because thinking about Chat Blanc, if she instantly blows up the whole world and the goal is just to undo that timeline, it’d probably be about equivalent.

23) Tristanansi

Using triste in two of the French akuma names is uh… we couldn’t come up with anything more creative? Anyway obv Nora so this could once again be a Nino episode like the first, but it could also (more likely imo) be an Alya one. Nora has a fiery personality and strong opinions so maybe Lila could’ve taken advantage of that to manipulate her kind of like what happened with Jalil. We were briefly introduced to a character who is her friend or boyfriend last season, and he may be more relevant this time, like maybe they have a fight. Similar to Sentibubbler, maybe Lila is targeting Alya’s family to try and get information out of her or steal the fox miraculous.

24) La Reine de Frayeurville/Queen of the Dreadzone

Other people have been saying this could be a Halloween special but… I want to say this might be a powered up Horrificator. This might be one of those episodes where they make it more lighthearted before the finale, and we haven’t seen her act on her own since s1 which is like the whole point of her akuma. She isn’t effective at all in groups and everyone’s been kinda desensitized to what’s supposed to be scary about her. Maybe they’re bringing her back scarier. Mylene has come far with her phobias, so they’d need something to really scare her.

I remember something about a proposed Halloween special taking place in the catacombs, which is coincidentally where Lila’s lair is. There might be a connection where the gang figures out she’s there, and something spooky goes wrong while investigating. The Paris catacombs are an understandable place to get scared in and a great setting for horror.

25) Protocole Secret/Secret Protocol

26) Nemesis

^^^ Ok I don’t know what specifically to say about the finale except that they’re probably gonna fight self-akumatized Lila since they tend to be kind of unpredictable.

What I do want to do is bring everything together and point out that Lila knows the identities of like half the heroes from the beginning because she stole Nathalie’s iPad or whatever happened. In Miracle Queen: Alya, Nino, Luka, Kagami, Kim, and Max had their identities revealed, which was relevant again in Optigami. Alix didn’t even try to keep a secret. Lila can easily connect that five of these people are her former classmates and all of them are friends, so she must have figured out that the rest of the heroes are also from their group. In the London special, it didn’t take a lot of hard work to uncover Marinette’s identity. She also targeted Kagami last season on a personal level. Side note, I have no clue if she knows Felix is Argos or not. That point is unclear to me, but I’m gonna assume she does since Gabriel knew.

We have Marinette, Adrien, Juleka, Rose, Mylene, Ivan, Zoe, Marc, Nath, and Sabrina left in the safe zone. I predicted most of these characters will get akumatized, and I believe Lila will be targeting them on an individual level under the suspicion that they’re on the team. It’s likely that she will even expose some if not a lot of them. In fact, she might have gone after Ondine as a red herring because she’s friends with them and King Monkey’s gf. From her perspective, Marinette could be one of the superheroes just as easily as anyone else could.

I’m not too worried about Adrien since he’s been the best at staying secretive, and Lila might not even suspect him because of the idealized yet untrue preconceived notions she has about him.

She may also be going down the list to see who does and doesn’t show up to each fight, making ladybug feel the need to call the minimum number of people to help her, which would solve the narrative problem of “why can’t ladybug sic the whole team on every akuma”. Discounting any Mirage tricks, having a certain hero help fight an akuma would tell Lila that the akuma is for sure not that hero. And obviously if every hero except one shows up that’s uh… suspicious.

Something very interesting is that out of all these characters, the episode I predicted to focus on Sabrina is one where the akuma is not her. Perhaps Lila will overlook her because she only recently made new friends, thinking she’d never be trusted with a miraculous. This same mistake of underestimating Sabrina is what led to her downfall the first time, so it’d be poetic if Sabrina managed to play the spy twice.

I did not predict any of these episodes to potentially be a Juleka akuma, but you know this girl will never in her life catch a break, especially with the rest of the pattern I’ve laid out above. Which episode do you think is secretly gonna be Reflekta? I guarantee you it’s one of them.

As a final note, I think Nathalie will be instrumental in helping the team identify Lila as the villain. They’re very unlikely to defeat her this season for good, but Nathalie knew about Lila’s little internship with Gabriel, and she was the one who originally had all the grimoire pages and Optigami identity data digitalized. She may recognize that information has been stolen or connect that Lila may have had the opportunity to physically take the butterfly miraculous by entering the lair. She’s in a unique spot because she’s the only one who knows this much about Lila’s villain plans, but also knows Ladybug’s identity now. I’m interested to see her role as a redeemed ally to the team.

Aaaaand that’s my novel length essay. Thanks for making it to the end. As always, I’m interested in hearing what other people think! (I feel like a YouTuber doing an outro lol) I’m excited to see the first episode soon which is actually gonna be the second episode I guess. So close! Off to an incredible start. I want to hear other theories!

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