#like i actually remember how when i was a kid i memorized the different brands of The Fucking Toilets

[caffeinatedopossum]

Wow I just heard another autistic person talk about how much they hated automatic flushing toilets and I completely forgot but I HATE them with a passion. It was one of the main things I would get bullied about growing up (mostly by my family, but still). Like I considered that it was an autism thing (because the reasons I hated them were all sensory related issues) but idk just hearing that it's not just me was nice

[inbarfink]

I think a lot about the Concept of ‘choices that matter’ in video games. Like, in terms of what it is that makes a choice ‘really matter’, what do we perceive as a choice that matters or has a consequence, how do different games with different amounts of branching or non-branching storylines play with those ideas…  Especially because Undertale is one of my favorite games of all time, and it has often been hyped as ‘a game where your choices REALLY matter’ and… honestly, I dunno if all of this hype was fully conducive to Undertale.  Because the way it handles the concept of Video Game Choices is actually a lot more interesting and complex than that simplistic descriptor makes it seem.

Because Undertale actually has a lot of choices that ‘don’t really matter’! Lots of dialogue choices and silly little decisions that on a first playthrough seem like they’re some sort of moral choice or a branching plotline but end up always leading to basically the same result regardless of what you do!

And the game doesn’t really try to hide the fact that these choices are kinda 'Fake'. I mean, on a first playthrough a player might assume there’s gonna be some Massive Consequences for picking the ‘wrong’ drink on Undyne’s date, but the game’s narrative expects for there to be multiple playthroughs and pretty much every Choice that Doesn’t Matter is peppered with that Undertale brand of wacky character-focused humor that inherently makes the moment memorable. Papyrus leading Undyne straight to you no matter what you do is basically a cross-timeline running gag.

On some level I see this as a sort of gag that serves as meta-commentary about the expectations around Choices That Matter in Video Games. As in, a lot of games have their Moral Choices happen in clearly easily marked ‘this is a Moral Choice!’ moments within the story, while the actual gameplay (and any violence the player might cause as part of said gameplay) is basically entirely divorced from any element of narrative-branching and doesn't effect the story at all. Undertale basically entirely inverts this dynamic; the most important factor for which Route you’re own is how you handle your FIGHTs, and what seems like clearly-marked and obvious Moral Choices are just goofy insubstantial minor changes in dialogue. 

But also… there is also a level where you must ask yourself ‘what does it mean when we say that these choices Don’t Matter’. I mean, it’s not like they didn't change anything about the game, the Player still made the character say that other thing, the choice probably led to an alternate piece of dialogue, probably a joke with a call-back at the end of the game… The line between a one-off joke and an actual story-changing moment can be a little blurry if you look at it too deeply.

For example, near the end of the Waterfall part of the game, the Player is given the choice to save Monster Kid even at the risk of having to face down Undyne.

Pretty much anyone who isn’t deliberately trying to be an asshole is going to rush to save them and obviously that includes the Pacifist Route Players. But you can actually leave Monster Kid to die without it 'mattering' in the sense that it wouldn't divert you from the Pacifist Route. Undyne saves them instead of you, and ends up with slightly less HP for her battle (which might Matter for Runs when you try and FIGHT her but obviously not in Pacifist Runs) and… by the end of the game, during the extremely happy True Pacifist Ending, they still clearly remember that you abandoned them and are upset by it.

So… does saving Monster Kid ‘matter’ or not? On one hand, choosing not to save them mostly just changes a few lines of dialogue but… these lines of dialogue kinda recontextualize this happy ending and the Player’s actions in general. Despite the True Pacifist Ending otherwise portraying the Player/Frisk as a kind-hearted and brave hero... they still did this undeniably cowardly (and perhaps even cruel) act to one of their friends .

Was running away and leaving Monster Kid to die a brief but significant moment of weakness that the Player regrets and has cost them what could’ve been the start of a lovely friendship? Or is that simply that being a True Pacifist was always more of a matter of pragmatism rather than ideals? Were they only acting as a Pacifist to get that promised 'Best Ending', and only Monster Kid has an inkling they are not as heroic or kind as everyone thinks they are?

And then there’s the Snowman ‘quest’.

A free healing item given early in the game, with your mission being to carry it along in your inventory for as long as you can without ever consuming it. The only reward you will ever see from it is a few lines of dialogue…

But for many, it is more than enough of an incentive to preserve the Snowman’s Piece. You can do whatever you want with the Snowman without it ‘mattering’ in terms of Ending or consequences. You could carry it through all of your adventures with care and kindness... or you could eat it while he can’t see you and then go back to him and tell him that you ‘lost’ it and then get another piece and eat that as well, you could eat it right in front of his face, horrifying him. 

And much like with Monster Kid, you can STILL get the True Pacifist Ending after doing that, all that would change is a few optional pieces of dialogue from the Snowman… 

And a total recontextualization of the Player’s behavior and the ending. The Snowman sees the Player as a cruel and heartless person who is just pretending to be good so they can be liked - the way they acted with this immobile, powerless Snowman who could do nothing for them and their reputation reveals their true self. And he says their friends will realize that too one day...

Doing a True Reset on the Pacifist Ending is, by definition, a (almost) consequence-free action and yet it changes future Pacifist Routes immeasurably. Turning the Player into a Hypocrite doing the exact same thing they were trying to stop Flowey/Asriel from doing - trapping all of their friends into a time-loop so they can play with them forever while never actually letting them to enjoy freedom on the surface, simply because they are not willing to move on or put their friends' wishes and agency above their own. Nothing in the game actually changes, not one character can even suspect that you did something like that, and yet for the Player - this choice makes the entire Meaning of the game flip on its head. 

Even the most famous and heavily-toted Big Consequence in the whole game - selling your soul to Chara after completing a Murder Route… mostly what it does is just… recontextualize the ending of the Game.

As a game, ‘Undertale’ is very much about the ways in which a Player engages with a game can radically recontextualize it. The huge chasm of difference between the Pacifist and Muder Routes is just the most literal example of it. But, in a way, even the tiny little Dialogue Options - where the lack of real choice and consequences is Obviously a Joke - matter. Because of the way they can recontextualize the Player Character’s behavior.

(Okay, maybe not this one, but hear me out…)

Do you trust Papyrus to not betray you, even after you spied on him with Undyne?

Do you have the integrity to admit you forgot something or got it wrong even when there’s no consequences for just lying about it?

Are you a hypocrite for trying to get Alphys to be truthful with Undyne only to then immediately turn around and lie to Undyne yourself?  

None of these choices matter for the ending, some of them don’t even get, like, a call-back joke or anything, but… if you are engaged in this story as a narrative, if you are invested in these characters as if they were people, if you are honestly trying to be the best person you can be, if you are trying to self-reflect at the way you approach this game… even the silliest little dialogue option can suddenly be imbued with deep implications and you can make them matter. 

Undertale is one of the best demonstrations of this concept, but this is absolutely not exclusive to it. For example….

‘Ace Attorney’ is pretty much as far away as you can get from a ‘branching narrative’ within the video game sphere. It is a heavily-linear Visual Novel where 70% of the time it won’t even let you talk to random characters at anything but the exact order it expects you to and any ‘Bad Endings’ are basically just glorified Game Over Screens. (... because this is the Internet and something something piss on the poor, I should probably specify that I am talking about ‘Ace Attorney’ because I love Ace Attorney and these are neutral descriptions of the game and not complaints. There’s nothing wrong with a game being linear.) 

If there’s any Dialogue Choice in AA, it’s generally a very basic ‘right answer-wrong answer’ choice between Progress and a Penalty, or a total non-choice that just gets you to the same final result regardless. Except… Well… as we just talked about, getting to the same final result doesn’t necessarily mean a choice is ‘meaningless’, does it?

There’s actually a lot of great storytelling moments where Ace Attorney, despite its otherwise strict linearity, uses this exact sort of recontextualizing mindset I’ve talked about with Undertale to make choices with some really powerful emotional impact…. Even if technically, the ending is the same ending. It can be something as basic as ‘even if picking this Wrong Answer doesn’t get me a penalty, it still embarrassed my character and disappointed my friends/rivals and thus I feel bad for picking it’. Consequences as recontextualizing your character as more incompetent than they should’ve come across at that moment.

And then there’s moments like the iconic ending of ‘Justice for All’. That moment before Franziska bursts into the Courtroom with the case-making evidence and saves the day. The moment where it seems like Phoenix really is gonna have to pick between protecting his best friend and carrying out a rightful sentence.

The player gets to pick between the two options, but Phoenix never gets to say his choice out loud before Franziska comes running in... and yet… he, and the player, still made that choice. Even if no one ever has to experience the consequences of your choice, even if the rest of the world has no idea what Phoenix Wright would’ve chosen if the Miracle hadn’t happened, we know what we picked and that knowledge of the choice matters. Because of how we feel about this choice and what it says about our interpretation of Phoenix… and about us.

There’s also a bit of this ludonarrative device in ‘The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures’. During “The Adventures of the Runaway Room”, when you investigate the Omnibus for the second time and start finding things that… don’t quite fit together. When you’re finally starting to make progress with proving McGilded’s innocence, while also maybe starting to notice that something is… wrong with these pieces of evidence. 

The unchanging linear narrative of the game is that Ryunosuke does eventually realizes McGilded's trickery, puts truth ahead of victory in court and yet, despite his effort and good intentions - the case still ends with a false Not Guilty verdict. And yet, the Player has the choice to... tweak the details.

There are several points where Ryunosuke can object, where he can call out the inconsistencies even though they help his case, where he can support Van Zieks in his accusations of tempered evidence... or he can not. Not necessarily intentionally misleading the Court as much as subconsciously trying to ignore the inconsistencies in the name of trusting his client.

And yet… in the end it doesn’t matter. Maybe Susato calls out the inconsistency instead of him, maybe Van Zieks does, maybe it remains uncontested but... no matter what you do, the case will end with a Not Guilty verdict (I mean, I guess you can deliberately fail the game but that will not progress the plot), McGilded doesn’t seem like he held a grudge (in the few minutes he had left to live), and a few cases later - Ryunosuke would always be punished for his part at this false verdict.

So it doesn’t really matter what Ryunosuke did back then? Does it matter if he did his best and called out every single inconsistencies or if he kinda half-assed it until he (and the Player) had to? He’s still going to suffer the same consequences down the line. And yet….

And yet, I think there’s something so powerful about giving us that option. About knowing that Ryunosuke, and we, did try and do something about McGilded's dirty tricks- even if it didn’t work. Or alternative, knowing that there was more that Ryunosuke and us could’ve done even if it was not nearly enough. Even if in the eyes of the game and the British Justice system there is no difference, the fact that we know what did and what we could’ve done can radically change the way the player feels about all of the later scenes concerning the truth about McGilded’s trial. It can radically change the way the player interpret Ryunosuke’s feelings about it as well.

Because even though the game itself keeps playing along with the same script regardless, that trial had irrevocable consequences for the Player.

[papercutie]

Strawberry shortcake...!

This is a review of many different Strawberry Shortcake character design iterations over the years!! Long post beneath the cut!!

1980's: 10/10

Not the very first design, but definitely the one from when Strawberry Shortcake first gained traction as a brand and character. Absolute instant classic. Has that Raggedy Ann charm, I like that the hair seems to be yarn to really get across that she is a plush doll. She looks very squishy! Not the design I grew up with, but I've always been fond of it.

1990's: 5/10

I'm actually not very familiar with the 90's design, so maybe it's the fact that I don't have nostalgia for it, but I'm not really a fan! She needs a big hat. There is a reason that every other iteration of the design has a big hat: the big hat is good. It's iconic. Without her dumpling-shaped face I think this design would be very bland, there's not much memorable about it.

2000-2003: 16/10

These designs were used briefly before the 2003 revival TV series and were exclusively used in things like greeting cards, gift paper, and stickers. You can see with the second image that this is the introduction of the design they ended up keeping for 2003- but we can get further into that soon. The design in the first image is probably my favorite design for Strawberry, I think I had the sticker set these were from. If so then there's a good chance I either ate them or put them somewhere they were never removed from (this was long before removable/reusable stickers). I love the introduction of more green into the outfit here, I think it's a much needed addition to really evoke 'strawberries'. More importantly, we get Big Hat. The hat is never quite this big again after this, which is a shame. I've always considered it a landmark of her design, so the bigger the better. Everything about this design is delightful.

2003-2007ish: 10/10

This is the design I grew up with! Although I don't find it as aesthetically pleasing, I appreciate the casual denim and the depiction of her that was less "princess". You didn't see a lot of this kind of design at this time- she was kind of a black sheep compared to Bratz and Barbie and other dolls from the same years. The proportions and dumpling head were so so so important. As a kid with a fat little face I never really saw myself in Polly Pocket, but Strawberry was so attainable. The whole outfit is 100% something I would have and could have worn as a kid, and it never really made me feel like I was perpetually underdressed by simply being a child. I didn't watch the TV show, which the more easily animated design in the second image is from, but did read the pictures books that used the design from the first image. I still have 'Strawberry Shortcake and The Friendship Party'.

2007-2009: ???/10

2007 through 2009 really act as an artifact of how designs were in a state of flux in the world of children's properties (especially for dolls). Different contexts and purposes and lines of dolls came with their own design variations- and I will not be reviewing each one, but here are three examples. I was a bit old for Strawberry Shortcake at this time and had moved on to Polly Pocket- as such I'm not very familiar with these designs, although I do vaguely remember the first image. Common factors between designs are the longer hair, the pitifully small bow on the hat, and the smoothing out of the dumpling chin. These aren't horrible but they are an unfortunate sign of things to come.

2009-2021: 7/10

I don't hate this one! It's not as good as previous designs but it's very solid, which I have to imagine is why it lasted for over a decade. My only familiarity with this design is seeing the occasional doll when getting gifts for my young cousins or roaming aimlessly down the toy aisle of a store. I really can't say I approve of how she's been slimmed down in the face, and the eyes aren't huge but they're definitely starting to lean towards the "big-eyes-tiny-nose" trend that boomed in popularity with disney-pixar princesses a few years after this design came out (sure she's always had a small nose but at least she used to have the decency of tiny little doll eyes to match). I like the versatility of switching between a skirt and shorts, and her hat is just fine. It's not huge but at least it's a strawberry.

Honorable Mention: Lost Media 2017 Press Release Design: 2/10

You may have seen this design in posts and articles meant to stir up engagement or clicks, but this design was never actually used! When WildBrain (formerly DHX) bought the brand in 2016/2017, they introduced this design in the form of a press release. There's only a few images of this design in circulation on the internet, as nothing ever came of it, and anything that wasn't in an article about it has been basically scrubbed, so any "then vs now" images or videos that use it are either from a short time after the announcement, or are clickbait. You may have noticed I haven't said anything about the design itself. This is because I don't like it.

2021-current: 5/10

I actually hadn't seen this design until making this post! The design itself is actually okay, but it loses a lot of points for style. -1 point for bigass disney eyes. I've also deducted an extra point for bringing us to a design with completely straight long hair. Every other doll on the market already has straight hair. Bring back her curly short hair. I'm also not a fan of giving her full lipstick. It could be worse but it really doesn't add anything except making elementary schoolers feel like they need to wear makeup. Beanie is back from the abandoned 2017 design, and I don't hate it , but it's a downgrade in my opinion. Like would I buy and wear this hat if i saw it at a thrift store? Yeah. But the big hat was so important. Maybe this is more relatable with the kids. I have literally no way of knowing. One other note I have is that the animation style from the shorts is definitely trying to emulate MLP, specifically Equestria Girls. A quick look at any of the animations in motion make this extremely obvious, especially the way they draw hair and eyes (it's much much much more obvious on other characters).

[el-im]

Ooh different anon here, I did a sci-fi class in college and I think we read 3 works by Le Guin in total (Omelas, Coming of Age in Karhide, and Lathe of Heaven). I thought those works at least were actually pretty good (especially compared to some other stuff like the Heinlein book we read - the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I could rant about that for awhile tbh).

I thought it was interesting you said you didn’t like Lathe of Heaven because I thought it was really interesting! I’d be curious to know more of your thoughts on that one in particular (if you want to share)

i'm envious of you!! i certainly like the sound of a sci fi lit class, though i so often find that the courses i think sound interesting get caught up in the rigamarole of college/my particular school's awful curriculum and just like that--the most marvelous things come out dull. something about working for a grade, i guess, lol. or maybe it's the instructors... bloodsuckers.

and oh my! well. I read it five months ago. i have a particularly awful memory so this year, i started a library tag/book log to help me recall the things i found interesting/memorable/likeable about what i read. i pulled up what i had on the lathe of heaven and... was disappointed--because it doesn't give me a whole lot to work with in responding to this--but unsurprised--because i really didn't enjoy it--to find that there was only a single passage i made the effort to scan and upload: this one. though without the context i'm struggling to remember why i found that impressive... lovely. i'm my own worst enemy--hah!

from what i recall, i found it very, very slow. lover of long classics though i am (i spent the last two years of high school writing an essay on the russian golden era of literature that was a comparison between tolstoy, dostoevsky and nabokov), and huge fan of world building (my affinity for sci fi i think speaks for itself!), i'd object to the notion of my being adverse to slowness! but this--god--just seemed to crawl... and, though it's hard for me to recall the plot, i do remember specifically that i read it in less than a day--stayed up into the night just to finish it (partly because i didn't want to continue reading it later, i believe). i just remember thinking that every new detail i uncovered about the reality le guin was attempting to build up was uninteresting to me. the discoveries about how this society functioned seemed lifeless, but not deliberate. the little details of the book seemed overused to me. the pharm cards as a means of distracting the population--huxley did better with soma in brave new worlds, bradbury did better with the walls in fahrenheit. i felt the devices she was relying on were overused, and that they didn't contribute as much to her work as they did comparatively in these other stories.

the funny thing is--i'm personally very enraptured by dreams/their significance/the idea that they have some bearing on our lives, especially as a reflection of our desires/ideology/feelings. as a kid, my father prided himself on being an "amateur oneirologist" and would frequently read about REM sleep, tell me about his dreams/ask about mine, and try to discover if they meant something in particular. i think one of my "gripes" with the book would be that it just wasn't... dreamy. to me. it seemed so cut and dry and literal, when i felt it inherently should have had a hazy quality to it. i disliked how plain everything seemed, how straightforward. i wished there was a little more ambiguity to it.

i do remember feeling moved by the image/scene of mount hood--the painting being there, then disappearing, and the conversation the patient and his doctor had about it. there was something that intrigued me about the desperation--the willingness to make another person believe what you did, what you understood to be the truth, and their resistance to you, but i felt that fervor and determination diminished over the course of the book, fading into a particular brand of apathy i just detest in writing.

[nat-without-a-g]

When I was little I was really into reading and books and stuff, right? And around 4th to 5th grade, I got into Percy Jackson and the Olympians (I can not tell you when I started it but I know Son of Neptune was out when I was in 4th and I had to wait for House of Hades. The cliffhanger….). Anyways. I was a kid who struggled in a lot of subjects but exceeded in a lot of other stuff, so I really wanted to be known as smart. I really liked the concept of the Athena cabin and a lot of Annabeth’s character lowkey because of it. This is not going where you think it’s going.

So, I got really into Greek myths as well, I started reading about the mythology and how different things were supposed to have happened and where Rick was inaccurate. I was really good at memorizing every single aspect of the things I was interested in and consumed myths like it was candy— Learned about the more depressing or bloody aspects of the stories early on and worked backwards from there tbh. Because I liked the “smart person” and “wise” stuff, I went heck yeah I’d be a child of Athena and never looked back, that got doubled when I realized Minerva was in-part the goddess of crafts (mostly weaving), because I loved art. This is still not going where you might think it’s going.

Athena has a plethora of things in the world associated with her, right? Since she was negatively associated with spiders and snakes, I faked being afraid of both of them so my friends would agree with me on the child of Athena front (it’s really easy to fake being afraid tbh. I once pretended I was afraid of palm trees and my entire family believed that was real for years). I clung onto how my hair used to be blond, I checked my eyes for any signs of gray (they are hazel, almost the opposite of gray), and I was motivated to go out of my way to make people think I was smart (at least I was a “joy to have in the classroom”). We’re still not there yet I’m so sorry

Now. Owls. BIG sign of Athena. For some reason I never got obsessed with olives, but I was Big into Owls and everything about them. Cited them as my favorite bird for years, went out of my way to learn owl facts, saved pictures of them, all that good stuff. Because of that, I also got Really into any brand that included an owl in its logo, which wasn’t actually a lot (hi Duolingo). I was warned about the dangers of the internet a million times and didn’t get a phone until I was in middle school, so I didn’t google things often, most the information I got was from books and stuff (I barely knew looking things up any time I wanted was an OPTION even AFTER i got a phone)… So at some point in my life when I was in this mindset, every so often (very frequently if I remember right) we’d drive either past or through a city. And every time I could, I pointed out the Hooters sign and go “Can We Eat There?” And no one ever explained why they kept saying no. When we moved I actually said to my mom that I was disappointed I never got to eat there the last time we passed it.

See, I have to clarify because if I tell this story to people who don’t know this, the first assumption will be that I wanted to eat there because I was gay (because I am gay and am very vocal about it) and wanted to be a womanizer for an hour on a Tuesday. No, I just thought the restaurant was based entirely around owls and I liked owls because I wanted to be a child of Athena and I wanted to be a child of Athena because I valued intellect over all else.

I have still never been inside a Hooters.

… Oh my God i was surprised when I found out it wasn’t a country owl-themed fast food restaurant.

[tsukishumai]

pairing: miya osamu x gn!reader genre: fluff, strangers to lovers, slow burn word count: 3.2k summary: In which Osamu finds that the stranger lurking outside his store window has a connection to his restaurant that he could have never expected.

Osamu remembers every single face that has walked through the doors of Onigiri Miya since the day they’ve opened. He has yet to hire another worker, manning all stations of his business himself. The rush hours always provided him with a bit of a heavy work load, but Osamu has learned a lot about diligence and patience. Business had been good enough; traffic was steady throughout the day, and he had his fair share of regulars whose orders he had already memorized.

The stuffy, salt-and-pepper haired man in the pressed three-piece suit always ordered two umeboshi onigiri and a medium iced green tea. The kind old woman that ran the shop across the street would come in for his salted salmon, and if he had extra, Osamu would throw in an extra tuna mayo. She’d always smile and give him a pat on the shoulder, her eyes crinkling in a way that reminded Osamu of his grandmother.

It was when the shopkeeper had slowly walked out of his establishment and back to her own that Osamu noticed you standing a few feet away from his storefront. You had been wearing a face mask, but Osamu could see that you were staring at his sign. Your eyes squinted at the block letters that looked down at you, before they trailed down to land directly on Osamu. You seemed a little startled at the fact that his eyes were already staring at you, but you were standing outside his restaurant, weren’t you?

Before he could lift a hand to wave you in, you quickly turned and walked away.

Every few days, either during the dinner or lunch rush, Osamu would catch a glimpse of you outside of his restaurant. You’d stare at his sign for a few seconds; maybe glance at the menu board that stood a few feet away from his entrance, or look at the pictures of his full menu taped to the restaurant window. he would see the way you studied each item, yet you always walked the opposite direction.

It bothered Osamu. Why didn’t you want to come in? Did his menu look boring? Was his sign uninviting? Is his decoration too traditional? Should he have made it look a little more modern? He grumbled to himself about it each time you peeked in, and walked away. Why do you bother coming so often if you didn’t want to try his food? Osamu huffed.

It wasn’t until four weeks later, when Osamu had posted three brand new flavors on his menu board that you finally deemed his restaurant worthy enough to step in.

You had stopped by a little bit later than usual today, the dinner rush had come and gone, and the only ones left in the restaurant were you and Osamu. He stood patiently waiting behind his counter, desperately trying to look busy and as if he hasn’t been waiting for this moment for weeks. 

He waited until you were close enough to his counter to say his greetings. You nodded at him in acknowledgment, taking a seat at the bar in front of him. He handed you a menu, and your eyes roved over the words as if they hadn’t done so dozens of times prior. 

“Can I get ya anything to drink?” He asked, and you took off the baseball cap you had been wearing, setting it down on the counter beside you. Your finger hooks along the ear loop of your face mask and Osamu realizes he’s seeing your face for the first time. You place the piece of cloth in your pocket, and Osamu fights the heat across his cheeks. 

“Just water,” you said, and Osamu was quick to set a fresh glass down in front of you. 

“What’ll it be?” He asked after a few moments, adjusting the bill of his hat and settling his hand on his hip. 

You hum a little, tapping your finger against your lips before you reply. “I’ll have the combo #2 with the gyoza.” 

Osamu nodded, “What two flavors onigiri would you like?” 

“For the first one, I’ll have your most popular flavor,” you say, before closing the menu and handing it back to him, “I’ll let you choose the second one.” 

Osamu raised an eyebrow at your odd request, but nods anyway, putting the menu away and walking back to give his hands a quick wash. 

He begins to gather his ingredients when he noticed you take out a notepad and a pen from your bag, placing it on the counter in front of your water. 

“So,” he says, starting the process of making his number one seller (salted salmon), “What was it?” 

“Excuse me?” You asked, pausing the drink that was half way to your lips. “What was what?”

“Well, ya stood outside for weeks, so I gotta know,” Osamu said, placing the delicate filling into the ball of rice he was kneading in his palm, “What made ya decide to finally come in?” 

You tightened your lips, awkwardly setting the cup back down on the counter and placing a palm on your forehead. 

“I was that obvious?”

“Were ya trying not to be?” He laughed, looking at you expectantly. 

“It was the flavors on your board,” you finally replied, leaning back in your seat, “There was one that my grandfather used to make.”

Osamu smiled to himself, wrapping his first finished onigiri in the seaweed he had roasted earlier that day, placing it gently on a serving platter and moving over to make the next rice ball. 

“That’s a coincidence,” Osamu said, “Your grandfather must have had great taste.”

“He used to own a restaurant,” you blurted out, and Osamu hummed. 

“You’re kidding,” he said, “Whereabouts?”

You nibbled on your bottom lip, shifting your eyes side to side as if debating on whether you wanted to divulge him in your greatest secret. Eventually, you leaned forward, resting your elbow on the counter and placing your chin in your palm. “Actually, it was this one.”

Osamu’s fingers froze. “Ya don’t mean—?”

You nodded excitedly. Osamu lets out a scoff. “Now you’re just messin’ with me.”

“No, I swear!” A bright smile erupted across your cheeks as you jumped a little in your seat, “My grandparents used to own this restaurant.”

“I thought this was a boutique before I bought it?” Osamu questioned, putting his final touches on the second rice ball. 

“It was,” you agreed, taking a sip from your water, “They owned this place until I was in high school, and sold it before they retired somewhere in the mountains. It’s been a few different stores since, but this is the first time it’s become a restaurant again. I was pretty surprised when I first saw it.”

Osamu felt an odd sensation of pride began to brew in his chest, shown in the way he sprinkled his sesame seeds a little extra forcefully. 

“Well,” he said, placing the plate of two perfect onigiri right on the counter in front of you, “I hope I do this place some justice.” 

You smiled, and Osamu found himself smiling with you. He pointed out the shake on the left, and the surprise flavor on the right. You nodded, intrigued, picking up the onigiri lying on the left side. 

Osamu makes the gyoza while you take your first bite, nearly pumping his fist in victory when he sees you close your eyes in satisfaction, the tension he didn’t even know you carried slowly melting from your shoulders. He sees you quickly jot down comments on the notepad next to you, and Osamu tries to peek at what you wrote when he gives you the gyoza. 

“Ya jottin’ down comments about my food?” He joked, and you jumped a little at his voice, “Got any suggestions, then?”

You smile sheepishly, “It’s just a little hobby of mine.”

He nods, grabbing a towel and wiping down the counter that he had just used. “Well, ya let me know if ya need anything else.” 

“It’s just you working tonight?” You ask, grabbing your chopsticks and picking up a piece of gyoza. 

“It’s just me every night,��� he chuckled. 

Your eyes widened as you chewed on your food, swallowing with a loud gulp. 

“Doesn’t that get exhausting?” You ask, quickly jotting down your notes before diverting your attention back to him. 

Osamu just shrugged. “I poured my everything into something I didn’t love half as much as cooking. This is just how I know how to do things.” 

You tilted your head to the side, “What did you do before this?”

Osamu takes a deep breath as he lifts his hat up a little bit to ruffle his fingers through his hair. He flips the cap around and puts it on backwards, his vision no longer half covered by the bill of his hat and he can now look at you fully. He almost wants to laugh because no one has ever asked him that version of this question before. It was always, ‘What are you going to be doing after volleyball?’

He hated the fact that any answer other than ‘I’m going to play professionally’ was deemed a shame, or a waste. For Osamu, he didn’t want to waste another second not pursuing his passion.

So it was refreshing to tell you about volleyball as if it was just a footnote in his food journey; something that he had done prior to finally recognizing his actual potential.

You gawked at him in disbelief, “Volleyball? Were you even any good?”

Osamu actually recoiled in offense, “I’ll have ya know I was on a team that went to nationals three years in a row.”

You raised your eyebrows appreciatively, and Osamu straightened a little.

“So why food?” You question him again, and Osamu wonders if you’re always this inquisitive. He’s answered this question hundreds of times, swore up and down that he would shoot the next person that even dared to say ‘Why food?’ in front of him. Yet for some reason, he felt more than happy to divulge you. 

“Because food is more than just something ya eat when you’re hungry. It’s coming back from a long trip, and it’s the warmth that spreads through your body when ya eat your mom’s cooking for the first time. That taste of victory that spreads across your tongue when ya go out for a meal with your pals after a game. The sensation of closing your eyes in satisfaction when ya take a bite out of a fresh onigiri after a long day,” you pause your scribbles at that moment, looking up to shoot him a playful glare. Osamu chuckled and continued, “It’s laughter shared around the table, and memories made over a plate that makes food more than just nourishment for our body, but also for our soul.” 

Osamu feels his cheeks heat up as he finishes his speech, embarrassment beginning to sink in at the end of his long tangent. You looked at him with a soft look on your face as you finished the last bite of your first onigiri, and dusted your fingers from any stray grains of rice.

“Words to live by,” you commented, lifting your glass of water up in agreement before tilting it back for a drink.

He let out a breath of relief that lasted only a second when he saw you reach over to pick up the onigiri with toppings he picked out for you. He held his breath as you took a bite, not expecting to see your eyes widen so fast, snapping your head down to the innocent rice ball that now sported a bite mark.

“Shio kombu cheese?” you say hurriedly, holding the onigiri closer to your face.

Osamu steps forward, “Do ya like it?”

You take another bite, chewing slowly, savoring the flavors as they melded in your mouth, and your eyes nearly begin to water.

“I never thought someone other than my grandfather would be weird enough to come up with this,” you laughed, scarfing down the rice ball in less than two seconds. “Yet here it is.”

“It’s not weird,” he defended, “It’s refined.”

You laugh as you dive into a story from your childhood spent sitting in this exact restaurant. Osamu listens intently as you recount how many different failed recipes your grandfather had forced you to ty and review, helping him decide what to put on the menu, or which combinations would bring in the businessmen that always seemed to just walk passed the restaurant.

He tells you of the tantrum his brother threw when he told him he was quitting volleyball, but still, Atsumu was his first sale. You pester him about his secret ingredient, and give him an incredulous look when he says it’s the rice. (“My old volleyball captain is a rice farmer.” “… what an interesting volleyball team.”)

The furniture was different, and the lay out was unfamiliar, but the atmosphere around Osamu’s counter had brought you right back into your childhood, reminding you of all the reasons why you loved what you did in the first place.

Long after your plates had been emptied, and the hour hand on the clock had extended way passed closing time, you finally paid for your meal, stood up from your seat and prepared to take your leave.

“Thank you for the meal, and the conversation,” you lean forward to read his name tag, “Miya-san.”

“Osamu,” he corrects, and raises an eyebrow at you.

You tell him your name, and Osamu repeats it in his mind over and over again.

“Come back soon,” he calls out his usual greeting as you walked out the door, but it felt different when he said it to you.

“I will,” you smile, waving a hand before stepping into the night, leaving Osamu with a dizzy head and fluttering stomach.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

In the following weeks since his late night encounter with you, Onigiri Miya had ceased to be a simple stop along someone’s route to work, or an afterthought on the way home.

One could imagine Osamu’s surprise when he arrived an hour and half before he was due to open, and already a line began to form down the sidewalk. He thought, perhaps it was a fluke, or maybe there was some sort of business convention in town nearby – something to explain the sudden spike in popularity.

Yet day after day, the crowds of people came to him by the dozens, climbing over each other to get a taste of his cooking. He couldn’t stop to wonder how long this was going to last, barely having the time to stop and give himself a break.

He finally realizes it’s not merely coincidence when the lines get longer, yet the faces he sees stay the same. Osamu remembers every single face that walks through the doors of Onigiri Miya, and it’s the ones that he sees over and over that truly give his restaurant its meaning. 

The last customer of the dinner rush left thirty minutes ago when Osamu’s phone rang.

“‘llo,” he greets, sandwiching the phone between his ear and shoulder as he sweeps the floor, thinking about how he needed to start looking for someone to hire.

“Hey, asshole,” the voice of his twin comes through loud and clear, “When were ya gonna tell me ya invited that food blogger to your restaurant? And how the hell did ya get them to like your garbage cooking?”

Osamu stops in confusion, grabbing the phone and holding it up himself. “Did ya finally get hit in the head a little too hard at practice? What the hell are ya talking about?”

Atsumu curses at Osamu, telling him to hold on a second as he sends him the link.

Osamu pulls the phone away from his ear for a second, quickly pressing on the blue url that popped up from Atsumu’s chat bubble.

It took a second for it to load, but when it did, Osamu’s jaw dropped

ONIGIRI MIYA IS AN ONIGIRI MUST HAVE by L/N Y/N

Beneath the obnoxious title was a photo of his sign, shining brightly against the wooden panels of his building, looking very much like a beacon for those searching for the perfect plate.

“Your shop is all over the internet and I had to find out about it on my news feed?! What the hell kinda brother are ya...”

Atsumu’s voice faded into the background as Osamu read the flattering words you had written about his restaurant. You complimented the decoration he had been insecure about, and he chuckled at the way you had described the fluffiness of his rice. He was captivated by your use of prose, painting the perfect picture of exactly everything he wanted his food to convey.

It wasn’t until he got to the last paragraph when he felt his breath hitch in his throat.

Though the years have passed, and the season have changed, the sentimentality of this particular shop had never lost its meaning for me. For the first time in years, I felt the soul of my grandfather, the curator of my inspiration and passion, all around the atmosphere of what is now Onigiri Miya. I have every faith that the new owner has already done him justice.

“Excuse me, are you still open?”

Osamu tore his eyes away from the screen, the very author of the only review that will ever matter to him stood a mere few feet away from his counter.

“Call you later, Tsumu,” he said hurriedly.

“Hey, wh—“

Osamu slips his phone back into his pocket, turning his attention back to you. You had a cheeky smile on your face as you waited patiently.

“Welcome to Onigiri Miya,” he says dryly, and you laugh at his tone.

“Should you be on your phone while you’re on the clock?” You joke as you settle in the same seat you occupied the last time you paid him a visit.

“I don’t know,” Osamu crosses his arms, “Should ya be writing articles about people without telling em?”

You winced a little at his words, holding your hands up in surrender. “You saw it then?”

Osamu nodded.

You looked to the side, rubbing the side of your arm. “Did you like what I wrote?”

Osamu smiled, uncrossing his arms and walking to the back to wash his hands. You watch him curiously as he walked back to you, and pointed to a spot on the wall directly to your right.

“That’s where I’m gonna put it,” he said, “when I print it out and frame it.”

You laughed at the seriousness of his face, and he smirked in satisfaction.

You ordered the combo #2 with a side of gyoza, letting Osamu pick the two flavors. You mentioned how you tried to visit a couple of times, but the line was always so far out the door. He realizes that he has you to thank for that, and you blush deeply when he sincerely tells you so.

“So,” you say as you munch on the honey garlic pork onigiri he prepared, “Aren’t you glad you did this instead of boring, old volleyball?”

Osamu nearly chokes at the insult. “Volleyball is not boring.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat, “Let me take you to a game some time. We can eat something other than rice balls.”

You look up from the half eaten onigiri at the chef who made it so carefully, looking so bashful and nervous you couldn’t help but smile.

“Yeah. I would love that.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

thank you for reading! reblogs are highly appreciated <33

[soobasaur]

「 jisung as your skater boyfriend 」

i used to see you on the sidewalk, standing in your high tops

han!jisung x gender!neutral reader

a/n: i saw this photoshoot of jisung with a skateboard and my mind just shortcircuited and now i have a pinterest board full of skater boy jisung so here we are,,,if u see any skater fics tAG ME

« masterlist similar work »

you didn’t think you’d ever take up skating, after falling the moment you put on roller skates when you were younger you thought it was hopeless to even try

but that was before you saw him.

it all started when your friend jeongin took on a new obsession with skateboarding and you took on a new obsession with the boy at the skate park

you only tagged along to hang out with jeongin and for the ice cream stand that was right next to the skate park

and jeongin always offered to buy you some so why would you say no to that (n˘v˘•)¬

but your obsession started when you watched jeongin start talking to some boys you didn’t recognize, when you later asked he said he met them from the park

one of them in particular caught your eye

he almost always had on a some sort of hat and band tee on, his hat usually falling off when he was halfway through with his tricks

you had been trying to build up some courage to talk to him but didn’t know what to say since you didn’t skate yourself :((

cute boys made you nervous !!!

especially ones who could do cool tricks on their boards !!!

jeongin picked up on your little crush since whenever he asked you to watch him do a new trick your eyes always wandered off to him

he teased you about it but ended up telling you his name and a bit about him

han jisung, he was around your age and went to a campus not far from you, which is why you had never seen him around

one day, when you were actually paying attention to jeongin for once, you saw a hat lying forgotten in the middle of the park and immediately recognized it as jisungs

you were to the point where you could recognize what brands he wore shjdjf

you rushed over to pick it up, dodging jeongin’s board as you did so, and made your way back to your table, clutching it protecting in your fists

after scouring the park for a tuft of his brownish hair you came up empty, deciding to pocket the hat until the next time you visited

when you offered to come to the park the next day without jeongin begging you to do so, your best friend knew something was up

he pestered you until you finally surrendered and showed him the hat, your ticket to starting a conversation with jisung

“i could just introduce you two,” jeongin chastised, rolling his eyes playfully

“that wouldn’t be memorable though! i want him to remember me as the person who saved his hat!”

“....imma just pretend i don’t know you.”

〴⋋_⋌〵 “jeongin !!”

you eventually spotted him waiting in the shade for his friends to skate and mustered up enough courage to walk up to him

“...hey?”

why did that come out like a question (;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`)

he turned to you after realizing you were talking to him, “hi?” he sounded startled, but you didn’t miss the way he quietly checked you out

“uhm so i’m y/n and you dropped your hat the other day? this is yours right? i notice you wear this brand a lot and uh, anyways! i just wanted to return it to you—,” you held out the hat and shut up before you started rambling and embarrassing yourself even more

you say his eyes flash in recognition as he reached out to grab the hat, then took his hand back just as quick

“actually...you can have it. keep it as a gift! i’d rather you give me your number instead,” he winked, before taking out his phone to hand to you

( ･_･) snkdkfkfkgovkovijskd wHAT

you somehow managed to grab the phone with shaky hands as you typed in your number, saving yourself as “y/n ❤️” and handing it back before you could stop yourself

you saw him smile at the contact name, pocketing it before looking back at you

“i’m jisung by the way...do you wanna get some ice cream?”

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) was this perhaps...a date?

“sure...oh! what about your friend?” you asked, gesturing to the boy he seemed to be waiting for

he waved them off, “we can join them later, come on, my treat...i’ll race you there.” and he threw his board down and skated off towards the nearby ice cream stand as you ran off after him, yelling at how that was unfair

true to his words, jisung bought you ice cream and you guys sat down at a worn down bench

unfortunately, it was right out in the sunlight so you kept squinting to lick your ice cream

after seeing your suffering he took the hat he gave you from where you placed it on the table and plopped it on your head, adjusting the straps to fit you

“there, now the sun won’t bother you and we can twin!” jisung smiled, pointing to his current hat which was the one you were wearing in a different color

your little date was soon interrupted with his friend running over along with jeongin, who kept giving you suggestive faces as he stood behind jisung

“cant belive you buy your new partner ice cream and not your friends!! removing you from your best friend position!” his friend whined, he had long blond hair and you didn’t miss how jeongin eyed him discreetly

“shut up hyunjin,” jisung glared, a fond smile on his face as he handed over his friend some bills from his wallet and ruffled jeongin’s hair, “i might as well be your guy’s sugar daddy.”

you couldn’t help but notice how he didn’t deny the part where hyunjin called you jisung’s new partner (ᗒ//ᗕ)

hyunjin and jeongin took the table behind you guys as you continued to talk to jisung

you found out where he went to college and his current major (music production ?/$:&:&) and how he minored in dance so he could have a class with hyunjin, who begged him to join

that made him ten times more attractive and you felt a little shy telling him you were an art major, and the only instrument you could play was the piano due to lessons as a kid

but he thought it was cool and let you rant about your annoying professors and dumb projects you had to complete

in return, he showed you some of his songs and let you watch a couple of his performances before getting bashful and hiding his phone away

jisung rapping made you feel butterflies shkddndj

you two hit it off and bounced off of each other as the conversation went on

after a while jeongin pestered you to go home with him to help him on the project he procrastinated on

it was getting late though so you agreed

jisung asked where you guys were heading and offered to walk you both, since hyunjin didn’t seem keen on leaving jeongin either

hyunjin and jisung instantly put down their boards to start skating to you guys’ dorms before you admitted you didn’t skate

jisung looked pretty shocked at the revelation before kicking his board back up

“hmm, why do you come to the park then?” he asked as you guys ended up walking back, hyunjin and jeongin ahead of you as they decided to skate back

“jeongin bothered me to come with him before he met you guys, then i just started tagging along to see you—, to just hang out.”

he waggled his eyebrows at you as you jogged ahead of him, “to come see me?- hey get back here!”

the four of you finally ended up home, hyunjin walking jeongin to his place a little further from yours as jisung took you to your dorm building to send you in

“oh, before you go, take this.” he mumbled, handing you his board

?????????

why was he handing you his board ಠ_ಠ

“isn’t this yours? why are you giving it to me?” you asked all confused

“i have a ton at my apartment, and this one has a cute design on the back,” he turned the board around and pointed at the art, “you said you like this style of art so i thought you’d enjoy it, and next time you come to the park bring it with you so i can teach you how to ride it”

he shyly scratched the back of his neck as he handed it to you, “take care of it, yeah? i’ll call you later y/n, bye~,” he shot you some finger guns before lamely moonwalking off your porch and running off towards where hyunjin was waiting for him

you carefully clutched the board and made your way inside, your heart beating at the thought of jisung remembering something so minuscule like your favorite art style

you and jeongin didn’t end up finishing his project that night and ending up screaming about your new crushes

true to his word, the next time you went to the park you brought the board with you and he taught you how to ride it

he took you to some smaller ramps in the back and placed the board down, holding out his hands for you to step onto it after noticing your hesitancy

you grabbed ahold of his palm and stepped onto the board, the wheel skidding as you felt like you were gonna tumble off

jisung kept you steady though by placing his free hand on your lower back as he let you find your balance

“make sure to angle your feet a little more that way—yeah like that! keep the board near you at all times.”

he watched as you pulled the board towards you and adjusted your stance a little, looking towards him for guidance

he gave you a big smile in return

“okay now imma pull you around a bit so you get comfortable,” he removed his hand from your lower back, (which you were a little sad about) and started to slowly pull you around

you started to death grip on jisungs hand and screamed how you were gonna die when jisung started pulling a little faster

“i got you,” jisung said fondly, as he pulled you in a little circle

“great, now imma let go for a second,” he let go of your palm before grabbing his other board and stepping his right foot on it

“now your gonna put your dominant foot on the board and push off, like this, and just let it take you to the end of the park.”

he pushed his board away before gesturing for you to push

you gulped before letting loose and pushing your foot off, you stumbled a bit before you felt jisung straighten you up, and then you were off

jisung started to jog beside you as you skated towards the other end of the park >///<

he stayed alongside you until you slowed to a stop and you jumped off, a little shaken from the experience

“you did so well!” jisung cheered, hopping over to give you a short hug, before pulling away with flushed cheeks

“thank you,” you mumbled, your own cheeks dusted pink

you guys walked over to where jisung dropped his bag and he tossed you a water bottle, before plopping onto the curb

“you did so much better then me when i first started, i fell off and twisted my ankle, i’m surprised i decided to get back on the board after that...”

“if you never went back to skateboarding, we never would’ve met.” you joked, downing half of the bottle before handing it back to jisung “and i’m only doing good cus i have a great teacher,” you winked as you adjusted your hat

“us never meeting is a sad thought,” jisung mused before drinking from the same bottle, “hey we just indirectly kissed.” he laughed, before looking down sheepishly

why was he so confident and shy at the same time shdjkkffk

“what if we directly kissed?” you asked before you lost all confidence, which you didn’t have much to start with anyways

you saw jisung shortcircuit before turning back towards you, and after getting a nod from you he leaned forward and captured your lips with his own

he tasted like chocolate ice cream and it made your heart go beserk

when you pulled back to breathe he chased after your lips and brought you back in again

your brain rn: sbjdkfklck

after a little make out session he took you back out until you were able to skate a little by yourself and even do some turns with jisung’s help

and if he gave you little kisses for every time you didn’t fall off that was for the two of you to know

bonus headcanons:

it didn’t take long for jeongin and hyunjin to get together after the both of you set them up

which meant double dates at the skate park!!

jisung made it his new life goal to teach you how to skate enough to go a long time without his assistance

:(( he wanted to go on skate dates with you in the nearby city

your favorite thing was to watch jisung do cool tricks you didn’t know the name of on his board, you were scared he was gonna crack his skull open with the stungs he was pulling (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞

jisung mentioned in passing how he wanted a board with this specific design but he couldn’t find one anywhere and gave up

so for his birthday you painted a custom design for him and got it printed onto a skateboard

to say he cried was an understatement he started bawling when he unwrapped it

he almost didn’t wanna use it cus he was scared of scratching it, but you assured him it could be repaired and he took it out for a spin

you eventually got the hang of skating, (you couldn’t do any tricks and had a trouble coming to a stop but hey it was progress)

which meant skating through the city dates !!!!

jisung would give you his other airpod and you guys would skate around the city at night listening to your shared playlist

you loved it when he gave you an enamoured look whenever a girl group somg came on and you started belting out to a loona song

jisung could play almost any instrument and he often sang to you whenever you came over

you could just be lying in bed half asleep and he’d sing to you

you even started to pretend to fall asleep just to hear him softly sing to you and play with your hair

you ended up just using his old skateboard for the time being until jisung bought you a new one

he said he wanted to paint you one but wasn’t sure of his abilities so he got one that matched the design with your old one but was brand new

you also cried <//3

he couldn’t paint, but he could write songs!

he would write songs after you all the time and sing you cheesy love songs to embarass you

you would even draw him if he stood still long enough, and seeing the happy expression on his face whenever he took a look at your sketches was worth it

he gave you a lot of his hats so you guys could match together

he liked being the cliche matching couple !! so sue him !!

it was just the cutest relationship and jisung took good care of you and vice versa <33

jisung best boyfriend !!

thanks for reading ⁂

(gif by user hyunjins)

[panic-at-the-fiction]

1973 pt2

Summary: (y/n) life hasn’t been the same since the school closed down and neither has her father. But there seems to be a sign of hope of the man he used to be returning with this new mission.

Warnings: I’m not doing this word for word with the movie ok. You’ve seen the movie you know how it goes.

a/n: I hope y’all like this. I know it’s going slow but I want build relationships with the characters around her not just with Peter. You got Logan who’s like the big bro everyone needs and Hank the fun uncle obviously and even Charles who right now is the absent father figure she cant even call dad. Hope you like that touch, her just referring to him as Charles other than in sarcastic context. @whyiswhatahow @willalaufeyson

We had been in the car for a few hours now with no breaks. We needed to get to Washington, DC as quickly as we could. After we found Logan’s friend, who was luckily living in Virginia only an hour away from the pentagon, we packed our things and left really early in the morning. We should be at the pentagon by 11:00.

Charles had insisted on driving. Which is bad considering he drives like an absolute madman. Hank looked like he would puke. When you're like Charles Xavier and you give up all hope, you too might drive like a madman. Logan and I, we’re in the back seat.

I’m still on the fence about believing him. Hank and Charles jumped right into helping him break a criminal out of high security prison in the hopes of helping Raven, but for all we know, she’s not in any trouble and this guy is actually working for Eric.

I turn to face him, “So Logan, tell me more about the future?”

“I already told you, kid, it’s too dangerous for you to know more than you need to. You had a good life in the future. I don't wanna mess it up.”

“Who’s to say you telling me about my life isn’t the reason I have that life.”

“That’s not how this works. Once I do what I do here, and I go back. It will be like the last 50 years I know never happened.”

“Sounds to me like no matter what you tell me, it’s going to be different anyways.” He scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“Fine, don't tell me about the future. Tell me about this friend or yours. Why do we even need him of all mutants?”

“He’s name is Peter, when I met him he was much older. Let’s just say he has some personal stakes in this, just as you do. Even if he may not know it yet.”

“Can we even trust him? If you don’t meet him until years from now, who says he’ll be the same guy you knew?”

“I don’t know much about his life as a teenager but from what I heard he liked breaking into things just to prove he could do it.” Logan smiled like he remembered something, but shook his head and continued. “Don’t worry about him, though, I’m sure you’ll trust him once you meet him.”

After that, we sat in silence. He wasn’t going to answer my questions about the future, and there wasn’t much to ask about this Peter anymore. Even if I did have a feeling that there was something Logan wasn’t telling me about him. I kept reaching into his emotions and on the surface he felt like a smartalec who’s making inside jokes that we can’t understand, but when I looked any deeper it was pain, grief and regret all twisted inside him. I liked Logan, but I didn’t like being around him and his deep emotions.

After 4 hours on the road, we finally pulled up to this boy's house. It was fairly normal looking except for the burnt out welcome mat. Charles knocked on the door and only a few seconds later an exasperated looking woman opened the door. “What has he done now? Whatever it is, I'll pay for it.” I smiled, I could feel the emotions of a little girl inside the house. She was having a blast playing dress up, and it was one of the better feelings I’ve gotten in a while.

“We aren’t cops, ma’am, we just need to talk to Peter.”

She sighed and moved to let us in and pointed to where the stairs were to the basement. It was packed with dozens of boxes which looked to have been stolen. Off to the left there was a brand-new Pac-Man machine and a pull-out couch. Right in front of the stairs, tho, was a ping pong table with a blur of silver running back and forth fast enough to play a game without a partner.

I couldn’t get a clear view of it at all, but it still spoke up. “Whatever it is, I didn't do it.”

“Of course you didn't.” Charles said sarcastically, scanning the room of all its stolen objects.

“Listen, Peter, we’re not cops.” Logan said, taking a step toward the table. Before he could take one more, the blur was gone.

“What is he? A teleporter?” Hank asked,

“I think he’s just fast.” I said. This Peter was definitely something. I couldn’t even see him for how fast he was going.

“Of course you’re not cops. If you were cops, why would you be driving a rental car?”

We all turned toward the voice. He was now sitting stretched out on the couch with a popsicle in hand. He had an arrogant smile and oddly enough silver hair that looked as if he may have stuck his head out a window of a moving car.

“Are you FBI?” I chuckled at the silly accusation, and I caught his eyes. For a moment, I felt a burst of nervousness that I wasn’t sure was mine. Then a gust of wind flew by me, and before I knew it the boy was standing only a few feet from us. “Nope, not FBI. Hey, what’s this gifted youngster place?” I looked in his hand and sure enough he had dear old dad's wallet.

“It’s an old card.” He said grumpily as he reached for his wallet. Peter only dropped the wallet and moved onto his Pac-Man game.

“He’s fascinating.” I said.

“He’s a pain in the ass.” Charles didn’t seem too pleased with this peter.

I just laughed at my dad’s irritation. I walked over to the arcade game next to where he was sitting. “You have to go left first if you're going to get around in time to beat the ghost.” I said getting absorbed deep into the game.

“How do you know that?”

“I memorized the levels.” I could see him give me a shocked look out of the corner of my eye, but I just kept staring at the screen. He felt nervous but impressed, and I was trying to not let it get to my head. “I have an eidetic memory.”

He turned back to his game. “Listen, Peter, we need your help to break someone out of prison.”

I pulled away from the game and took a few steps back over to the group. “You know that's illegal.” He said sarcastically. I laughed this time, and I felt Peter's emotions tense up.

“Only if you get caught.” I whipped back. Charles was giving me the dad side eye.

“What’s in it for me?”

I could tell Charles was getting annoyed. Mainly Because he was beginning to sober up from his hangover, but also because of the new kid peter being a quoted pain in the ass. “You, you kleptomaniac, get to break into the pentagon.”

Peter turned around, his eyes wide with excitement. For a moment he looked at me, questioning something. “How do I know I can trust you guys?”

“Because we’re just like you.” Hank said.

“Show him.” Charles almost smiled. Logan kept a straight but intense face as he let the bone-like claws rise from his knuckles.

Peter's face went white at the site. “That’s gross but… I’m in.”

[ilikekidsshows]

One thing that pisses me off not just about the miraculous fandom but modern fandoms is fans inability to consume long overarching stories.

Like so many people are complaining about how long the reveal is taking or why haven't certain characters outgrown this trait yet or why is this character arc botched or abandoned. Like guys we just got the confirmation this show will be 7 seasons long PLUS like 3 tv specials. We're only roughly halfway through the series.

Once the reveal happens half the tension in the show is gone! I'm not saying leave the reveal till season 7 and make us wait 9 years this isn't HIMYM but miraculous is not a fast paced story. It's a long haul story. I just wish more fans would be patient. Miraculous is in the extremely fortunate and rare position that it will have a conclusive end and not be suddenly cancelled. That was and still is a huge problem for shows and cartoons with dedicated fans but networks pull the plug for stupid ass reasons.

So miraculous fans please chill the fuck out on things not resolving right away. We still have 78+ episodes plus the tv specials. If we get the end to certain things now it'll be so boring.

I think the concept of Instant Gratification describes the issue with many modern fandoms today. I hate to sound like I'm anti-technology, but the constant stream of quick and short bursts of entertainment allowed by the information age has made people more impatient. It's not about waiting for the climax to get a deeper sense of satisfaction, it's about getting that instant gratification right this instant. It's why one-shot fanfics are all over the place, when multi-chapter stories used to be just as common and popular, if not even more so, and it’s also why people are less willing to read a fic that’s still a work in progress. It's why people refuse to watch Youtube video essays even as they leave comments on the topic based on the title and thumbnail alone because, while they couldn't be assed to watch a 20-minute video (let alone an hour long one), they sure can spend that time calling the Youtuber names and making arguments the video actually already refutes. It's why a lot of online arguments happen only because one party read nothing but the first and maybe the last paragraph of someone's post and skipped all the explanation for their point of view (if I've ignored an counter argument for one of my posts, it was either because I missed it or because said counter argument did this. I have attention deficit issues so I do genuinely forget responses sometimes, but I'm also not writing a second essay for someone who's proven to me they won't read it).

Of course, it's only by constantly consuming only fast-paced content that you can become this impatient. People have different ideas about stories based on what stories they have encountered in the past.

Another thing that influences the Miraculous fandom in particular is that, while I love to show off exactly how much Miraculous has done to build up the overarching plotlines, Miraculous isn't really a show that's about a single story. It's easy to understand why people think it is one though: there's one main villain, we keep discovering more about the mythology, one of the main plot threads is the romantic relationship between the leads and singular episodes and plot elements tend to get payoff later. What is the purpose of a show if not to progress the story? Because the heroes aren't getting closer to defeating Gabriel or getting together, people think that the story isn't accomplishing anything.

I'll do a comparison to illustrate why these things aren't as clear-cut signs of a continuous storyline as people think. In the Spider-Man comics, you can pick any issue up and the chances are that the villain will be a part of Spider-Man's already established Rogues Gallery, who's back for more after who knows how many defeats, and those past defeats might even get referenced in callbacks to previous issues. It's also very possible that Peter and Mary Jane's relationship is the central focus with them not being together yet, having relationship problems or even having broken up (in really old issues the girl might be Gwen Stacy and short-term options have also always been available for romantic entanglements). Does this mean Spider-Man is a continuous story where the only point is that all the villains get put away for good and Peter and MJ live happily ever after? No, it doesn't. Spider-Man is designed to go on indefinitely, so there's no clear ending point. So, what is the point of Spider-Man then, if there is no Ending?

It used to be the single issue, because comic books used to have every issue be a stand-alone story about the hero and their supportive cast. These days it's more every three-to-six issues, because superhero comics are written to have short story arcs that can then be collected into trade paperbacks. A superhero series is not a single story; it's a series that functions as a story engine, meaning the series can generate several shorter stories where the hero helps fix a problem or solve a mystery.

In the superhero genre a villain will never get killed off or removed from stories permanently as long as the writers think they can still come up with stories to tell about them. The hero's romantic life will never be completely smooth sailing unless the writer is using other things to ramp up the stakes. Everything always allows for there to be another adventure.

I think the huge success of Avatar: the Last Airbender made people think that a series that is a single story is always superior to a series with multiple shorter plots. When I was liveblogging Sailor Moon, a viewer offered to give me a list of all the non-filler episodes because they genuinely thought I'd feel like I was wasting time on the show otherwise. This attitude is simply not based on fact. It's not fair to compare Miraculous Ladybug to Avatar, because they're both setting up to do completely different things. Miraculous Ladybug is trying to become a brand, like Batman or Spider-Man. It is part of the "Zag Heroes" lineup, a series of French-created superhero franchises to compete in the America-centric superhero market. This challenge is good for the genre, because Marvel and DC have started resembling each other more and more as these companies stew in their old ideas and copy everything that worked for the other one. The superhero genre needs new blood.

Also, Avatar: the Last Airbender first became popular by doing episodic plots for almost the entirety of the first season because it's actually not a wise choice to expect the audience to be willing to commit to a story that'll only give payoff later when working with an untested IP. Very often shows with longer story arcs start with the episodic format to hook people first, and sometimes the more linear plot is introduced specifically because the audience for the show is now expected to be both dedicated enough and older and capable of keeping up. Because, here's the thing: you can't expect little kids to remember every episode or even every character you've introduced in your show. I'm not sure if people are ready to hear that but I'm throwing it out there anyway. Kids are not dumb, they can understand more complex storylines, but many kids are still training their memory, so they might not remember the details of complex storylines that go on for too long.

This is why the news that Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season was going to have a recommended viewing order originally had me concerned. Miraculous is being branded for kids. The plot requiring too much skill in memorizing story details will make it less accessible to kids and might put those two additional seasons at risk. However, it seems that the "constantly changing status quo" concept of Truth, Lies and Gang of Secrets was a fluke and the evolution of the show is more subtle, so they might not be cutting the amount of episodes for those final seasons because the show is getting too complicated for kids to follow all the important details.

Regardless, Miraculous Ladybug being an adventure cartoon TV show instead of a comic book or a more cheaper-to-produce TV drama does mean that Miraculous Ladybug isn’t expected to go on for decades like a superhero comic or a soap opera. Because of this, it can have evolution and changes and even a planned ending. The show is expected to end at some point, even by the people making money off of it, mostly because making a cartoon like this indefinitely costs a lot of money, and kids’ adventure shows tend to see a decrease in returns if they go on for too long.

[ot3]

i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey. 

anyway. here you have it. 

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith.  I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it. 

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene. 

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department  as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land. 

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass. 

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area.  In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.  

[dennou-translations]

Violet Evergarden: Booklet 2

Please feel free to message me about possible corrections. If you can, consider supporting the creators by purchasing the official releases. In case anyone is feeling generous, please consider donating to my Ko-fi or PayPal. ( ╹◡╹)っ’･*

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I wanted that star. I wanted to be the person who would piece through that star.

   Leon Stephanotis and the First Star

   I had once seen a comet that only came around every two hundred years together with a girl.

It had happened years ago. That was one beautiful evening. Even now, I can still vividly recall the twinkling of the stars we watched on that day while our bodies shivered at the coldness of the nightly wind. Like jewels scattered over a dark canopy, the starry sky was enough to make one forget to even breathe. As it passed by, dragging its white tail, the meteor looked just like a fairy in flight with insect scales scattering about from her wings.

Whenever I looked at a beautiful night sky, I would think many times over, “Aah, now that I’ve branded this moment into my heart, I’d have no regrets if someone reaped my life away”. Should I lose my life, I wanted it to be on a starry night like that. I wanted to die with the memory of witnessing something stunning.

“May the night sky be a beautiful starry one on the day I die,” I wished.

But that one evening was a little bit different. Maybe because I had someone to watch the stars with me. Maybe because that was my first love.

She was a gorgeous person. Even more than the stars. Her hair looked like the Sun when shining under the moonlight and her blue eyes were like gemstones created from a mix of the sea and the sky. With her porcelain skin and skylark voice, the way she walked was just as that of a well-cared maiden. In reality, she was an orphaned ex-soldier, as well as an Auto-Memories Doll from a far-away southern country, so the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” was pertinent when it came to her.

She was most likely an once-in-a-lifetime kind of person, one that you couldn’t know if you would ever get to meet.

My chest throbbed even at the sigh that leaked from her when she was peeking at the telescope. When she looked my way and smiled faintly, I experienced an impact as if I had been hit in the head, giving in to a love that made me feel like my whole body would melt and crumble down.

“Master, astronomical observations are quite a wonderful thing.”

If, by any chance, my body were to be crushed by a star in that moment, only on that day did I want to keep looking at something, even if for just one second more. I wanted to keep looking at her. Forever and ever, I wished. That was what I thought.

This encounter had changed my life and decided my fate. I didn’t mind if people laughed at that, calling me a romanticist. I, Leon Stephanotis, whose destiny had been altered, would always look back on it.

On the day that I had watched the stars with Violet Evergarden.

   “There was a sea of gold in his land” – who was it again that had sung the praises of a desert like this?

“I’m beat.”

When bookworms read too much, their head’s capacity would exceed the limit, so they would automatically forget the things they had read in their early phases. I had confidence in my memorization abilities and yet I couldn’t remember this, so it was surely a passage from an adventure novel or something of the sort that I had read in my childhood.

——What a beautiful comparison.

When I actually stood in the middle of a desert, my impressions were drawn to the temperatures, sunlight and other such things regarding the environment instead, so this poetic expression hadn’t crossed my mind. In the destinations of my travels, I often reminisced to a certain someone who was somewhere in this world, as well as the things she, who spoke words as beautiful as that, used to say, as if borrowing them.

“So pretty...”

I liked the color of gold. I could observe the grains of sand moving smoothly for all eternity.

“Everyone, you did well; the books we excavated will be brought back by another group. Meaning that we from the starting line-up are finally off for the first time in months.”

As I was spacing out, I didn’t hear the commander’s words very well. I was only staring at the ground, missing out on everything. When I raised my head, the happy-looking faces of my bearded and somewhat dirty colleagues entered my eyes. All I understood right away was that we would get a vacation.

“After we get twenty days off, we’ll regroup in Iustitia, at Shaher’s headquarters. After that, we’ll go to that place in the south where the reconnaissance team was sent. Next will be our turn to bring back the luggage. Don’t let your bodies get weak.”

“Roger that.” Once everybody gave an agreeable reply in unison, we disbanded from the spot.

Iustitia, Shaher’s headquarters. The main office of my occupation. I was previously in a section called the codex department, devotedly working on the deciphering of documents and copying manuscripts, but now I had been transferred to a completely different section. It sounded good when we were called the leading actors, but it was actually a group of reeking adventure rascals, the literature collecting department.

I put my heavy baggage sack on the ground and heaved a breath. Wiping the white folk clothes that I had been provided with on-site, I dusted the sand off them. This clothing called dola – a long robe secured by a waist belt – looked flappy and inflexible at first glance, but it was surprisingly easy to move around in. It was made of a rather velvety silk material, so there would normally not be so much sand sticking to it, but since I was caught in a sandstorm until just a moment ago, there was no helping it.

We had returned from a thorough search in the ruins of an abandoned castle, once the dominion of a royal clan whose name was eminent in the past. A book burning movement had taken place in this land at a certain point, but we had received information that a scholar from those times, out of fear towards the situation, had hidden valuable books in the forsaken palace. The information was apparently right, so after wandering around all over the deserted castle, we had found dozens of books. The books that would be taken to Shaher’s headquarters were to be made into written copies and spread to the world.

Made for protection purposes, Shaher’s literature collection was also well-reputed in other countries. It was difficult to negotiate with the locals responsible for the abandoned castle, but we were allowed entrance this time as well thanks to our achievements thus far. Just like that, someone’s story, studies and feelings, which were supposed to have disappeared, would breathe once again. The books we had been looking for would be delivered to other people and comfort them during long nights.

——What a wonderful thing.

The working environment was awful, but I was proud of my job.

I sat down on my luggage and gazed at the cityscape while drinking water from my canteen. In this desert-zone city, everyone’s clothes seemed harmonized no matter what color they wore.

“Senior Leon, what will you do on your days off?”

As a junior who had not yet left the spot called to me, I furrowed my brows and looked at his face. He was a young man of masculine facial traits, which was enviable to someone as baby-faced as me.

“Hey, Sir.”

A rarity amongst the members of our unit, the man had not been born in Iustitia. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was a rich kid who had been born in a southern country and entered Shaher through connections with the foundation executives.

Getting a job at the Shaher Observatory was a daunting task even for those who had studied astronomy. It was hard to make it without learning in a good environment from an early age. Since Iustitia, the capital of stargazing, was the best place to study in, it was natural that the ones hired were mostly the locals.

——Well, this guy had connections, so this has nothing to do with him.

I pondered an answer. “Nothing in particular.” For the time being, I decided to be cold, acting as nonchalant as ever.

And this was also the same as always, but the junior took no offense in my crude response – rather, he laughed at me, looking happy. “Then that means you’ve got no plans. I was thinking of going home. If you’d like, how about we go together? We have a villa by the lake... If I go now, the schedule will allow my family to join in.”

“No, why do I—”

“Last time we had a break, I told my little sisters about your cool adventure story and they wouldn’t shut up about how much they wanted to meet you. Hey, hey, how about it?”

I was baffled. I had no idea what was good about me to this junior but he would oddly flock to me. The reason why I hadn’t told him about my plans right away was that I felt he would follow me if I did so. Honestly, he was a bother. Up to now, we had acted as a group. I wanted to be alone even if a second sooner.

“I’m not going.”

“No way... My family’s all pretty boys and girls! Sir, you like beautiful things, don’t you?”

“Do they look like you?”

“They do.”

“Then they might be pretty, but won’t be my type.”

“Sir! You’re horrible!”

“So loud. If your family’s waiting for you, hurry and go.”

While I gestured with my hand as if shooing a dog, the junior made a puppy-like sad face. Even though he had a big body, he was amicable and his display of emotions was richer than most people, making him look all the more like a dog.

“Then, if you ever feel like coming to see me during your break...”

“I won’t.”

“...could you contact a hotel called Varona in Leidenschaftlich?”

“I won... uh?”

“It’s a first-class accommodation establishment. It’s under my uncle’s administration, so you can get a stay there immediately, and I can pick you up as soon as you give me my name. Oh, you’re making an interested face, huh? Want to come with me right now?”

What piqued my interest was the word “Leidenschaftlich” – that was all.

——That’s where the CH Postal Company is.

And it was also where my first love worked at.

“You were from Leidenschaftlich...?”

“That’s right. I did say it in my self-introduction when I joined the department.”

“Well, I don’t listen to people I have no interest in...”

As expected, my junior gave a happy-looking smile with his whole face. “Sir, I like that you’re equally unfriendly to everyone. People only got close to me because of my title... and my family’s social standing... but Sir, you’re cold, and that feels nice.”

“Your suffocating actions are a pain in the ass to me. Besides, hum...”

“What is it, Sir?”

“Hum, say... is the CH Postal Company well-known?”

“Do you know Violet Evergarden?” – the reason why I couldn’t ask this was a literal embodiment of how much I lacked guts, I thought.

With an “aah”, my junior immediately made a face like the name rang a bell. “I know them. It’s the company of that businessman, Claudia Hodgins, right? They’re popular. Shocking that the name of a company would come from you.”

“I’m an adult, after all. I’d know the name of one or two renowned businesses at least.”

“That’s a lie, ain’t it? I already know you don’t have interest in anything but stars. Erm... if I’m not wrong, all the postal companies of Leiden got sucked into it. They also succeeded in company split-ups. Their president is a celebrity too. The newspaper series where he talks to other entrepreneurs is a trend... It got adapted into a book just recently. There’s a chapter in the extra edition where he talks to his secretary and the president of an affiliated company, and it’s so fun. The book’s in my room at the headquarters, so you can take it with you and read it all you want.”

“Is there nothing about business in that book? Like, about the Auto-Memories Doll field... Hum, according to my research, there should be a rather famous Auto-Memories Doll in it... Don’t know if she’s still there, though.”

I timidly attempted to ask, yet it seemed my junior didn’t know the details. That was expected. The number of people who could hire Auto-Memories Dolls was limited, so hardly anybody would know even the name of a famed Doll unless it was someone marginally acquainted with them.

“I wonder. I do sorta know that they apparently have one real beauty of a Doll. But I also have a good-looking face... so I don’t yield to beauties from here and there.”

“Got it. Thanks for the info. And for the nice conversation. Go home.”

“Sir...! If you get bored of being alone, please remember me!”

Leaving behind my clingy junior, I took off from that place. I strutted with a hand in my pocket.

My junior wasn’t a bad guy. He had a high-handed personality but fit into the category of good person. He must have talked to me like that because he knew about my background as an orphan who had lost his parents and got a job at the astronomical observatory by way of assistance from Shaher. Meaning he was worried about his senior, who would be spending his vacation alone with no lover or family. The reason why he had invited me to a house where his family would be was probably that he was exposing his intentions in his own way.

——But to hell with that.

I wanted to be alone. To say that the people who thought I was pitiful were the actual pitiful ones was my essence. I had always enjoyed watching the stars by myself anyway, and I enjoyed books about stars too. Book reading wasn’t meant to be done with two people, right? I liked being alone. This was also because I had lived a life of accepting solitude for a long time, but if anything, it was harder for me to settle down when I was in someone’s company.

When I turned the street corner and confirmed that he finally wasn’t following me anymore, I let out a relieved sigh.

——Alone at last. Time and space just for me.

The times when I was by myself like this were the ones I felt most comfortable in, and while I did have some things to reflect upon in that regard, unfortunately, I didn’t have a family to pester me about having children, unlike the rest of society. Because I was alone.

——I get that it isn’t a good thing.

There were things that you couldn’t get used to or change, despite understanding why you should. I was equal parts as obstinate as I felt inferior to those who had families. Only one person had ever made me want to be with her for a little longer when I was in her company.

——Only one.

Our circumstances were similar and we were also alike in that we were burdened with loneliness, but it wasn’t as if I liked her because of the similarity. It was because she seemed like she would be all right even if she were on her own, so I had wished to stay by her side. To get close to her. I “liked” her in that way. It wasn’t as if I wanted her to do something for me. I was the one who wanted to do something for her. It was that kind of “like”.

It had happened a long time ago.

After we had spent a little time together, she left. When we were bidding our farewells, I stopped her and confessed.

“Violet.”

I told her I was in love with her. I didn’t ask her, “I like you, so what do you wanna do?” – I simply told her I liked her.

“I’m... I’m... in the codex department now, but... I actually wanted to be in the literature collecting department like my father.”

She gave me this answer: the way that she cherished me was different.

“I had my hopes up that maybe my mother would come home one day if I waited here, bringing my father back with her... so I kept shutting myself in until this age, without ever stepping off into the outside world. That was possible in this place and I wanted it myself. But... just now...”

But if we ever happened to meet again, she wanted to spend time with me.

“I’ve just made up my mind. I’ll go around the world like you.”

In that moment, the woman who had said that she couldn’t feel emotions...

“I might face danger. I might lose my life without anyone ever finding my body, just like my parents. But—But that’s okay. I’m thinking of choosing that path.”

...smiled at me like a normal girl, looking happy, and told me something.

“If I do that, I’m sure we might get to meet someday, somewhere, under a starry sky. We’re both gypsies. And if that happens, will you...”

——...watch the stars with me again?

“Yes, Master.”

She told me that. She said it. This alone was already enough for me. This alone gave me the courage to come out of the world that I had been secluding myself in. Even if my love wasn’t requited, even if we never saw each other again, I was so happy.

She.

Violet.

Violet Evergarden.

Just that – just the fact that she had promised to watch the stars with me – had made me happy to the point of changing my life.

I kept making transfer requests ever since that day, finally earned approval and ventured myself into the outside world. The world other than Iustitia that I saw for the first time was bustling with a dizzying variety of things, which made me regret secluding myself. But surely, if I hadn’t met her, I would have taken a lot longer to go outside. No, I might have never left that bird cage to begin with.

That environment where I was allowed to wallow was terribly indulgent. After all, everyone was awfully nice to me for not being able to stand up, just because I was sad.

I didn’t simply think that I would definitely get to see her at least once. The probability of an astronomer and an Auto-Memories Doll, who had spent time together at work, meeting even once was surely the same as the meteor we had seen that day – once every two hundred years.

I was being ridiculous. If I really wanted to see her, I should just go visit her postal company in Leiden. The reason why I didn’t do it was that I was scared. That maybe her words were just out of friendliness, and that, if we did meet, she wouldn’t even remember me and I would be rejected. On top of being terrified of this, I also had a dream.

That if we ever happened to reunite, I wanted us to meet again truly by coincidence, under a starry sky.

If something like that really were to happen, just what would I do? Would I smile? Cry? Or ask for her love again?

I nodded at a passerby who had almost collided with me and started walking again. I had no particular destination. I could also go back to the headquarters just like this and be an idle bookworm in my own room, but going sightseeing around this city for at least a little bit was also good.

——I won’t get to see Violet if I stay in that place.

I had no free time to spend money, so I could afford the luxury of staying at a remotely nice hotel. Having made up my mind, I went into the main street and began looking for accommodation in the desert capital.

   Local idioms were honestly my weak point. Even though it was a common language, it was hard to catch because of the many dialects. When I talked to elders, I was done for.

However, I could perfectly understand that the inn’s owner, an old gentleman, had treated me like a “young lady”. Of course, I told him he was mistaken, but he didn’t hear it. He led me to my room with a hand around my hips.

The room was quite a high-class one, so I let it slide. If it were my old self, I would have been as furious as a raging fire. But I had grown up. By holding back my anger, I would manage to spend the night in a proper bed, where it didn’t seem like bugs would show up, so becoming an adult was for the best. Even if my self-respect decreased a little.

While I was chilling in the room and writing my diary, the sun went down in a blink of eye and it was getting late into the evening.

   “Heave-ho.”

It was the dead of night. I put on warm clothes and prepared myself to go out.

I wanted to observe the desert’s starry sky at my own leisure. As our activities had been limited to daytime ever since we had arrived here, I was now finally getting to do the things that I actually felt like doing. I had watched it together with everyone else from the windows of the cheap inn that the literature collecting department’s personnel had stayed at, but as expected, I wanted to see it from a spacious place with no noise or anything of the sort. As a scholar born in the so-called “capital of stargazing”, I obviously was going to have my fill of the desert’s night sky.

Unable to contain my feelings of excitement, I left the room after my lips relaxed a bit. For the heck of it, I greeted the innkeeper and told him I was going to see the stars. When I did so, he made a worried-looking face.

Apparently, women were forbidden of wandering outside at night in these lands. He couldn’t stop me from going out since I wasn’t a local, but warned me not to get too close to men. It wasn’t as if there were many ruffians among the people who walked around at night, but simply that this city had this kind of culture, so if the men suddenly spotted a woman, they might think badly of it. I had grown up in a men’s dormitory watching a bunch of idiots, so I understood what he was trying to say.

I showed him the retractable cane I was holding, and while I was at it, I also demonstrated with one swing that a blade came out from the tip as well. It was not for killing anyone, but it sufficed for making the other party recoil and holding them back.

Receiving the innkeeper’s applause from behind, I ventured myself outside.

The temperature gaps between nighttime and daytime was extreme in the desert. Having been raised in a mountaintop astronomical observatory, I was used to areas where there was a discrepancy in temperatures between day and night, but even then, I could bring myself to deem it as comfortable due to differences in humidity. The instant I stepped outside, I shuddered with a “brr”.

However, I forgot the cold as soon as I saw the sight spreading overhead. Surely, God must have dropped His jewel box. The starry sky unfolded in a way that made even someone like me come up with such a poetic saying.

Due to the fact that it was nighttime, there were few people out, but it wasn’t as if nobody was wandering about the city. Just as the innkeeper had said, it seemed that someone with a womanly appearance (I wasn’t a woman at all, though) walking around did catch people’s eyes, as they called to me countless times. I put myself on guard in each of those instances, and everyone withdrew with the same caution as the innkeeper.

Not letting the women walk around late at night was also meant for protecting them.

I had heard that there was a place for stargazing aimed at tourists somewhere a little far from the city, so I headed there, for safety as well. Several tents were erected around the sparse green area. In addition to privately built tents, there were also merchant tents selling drinks and food.

After looking through the signboards with the prices of the alcohol and warm soups that people of this region consumed and were familiar with, I picked the alcohol. I was an adult now and on vacation, so I told myself that it was okay to drink today and gave myself permission.

I went for a cloudy-colored alcoholic drink simmered in a large pot called the witch’s cauldron. It was warm and sweet, with a slightly spicy aftertaste. It warmed your body when you drank it and was the best delicacy to savor in cold weather.

Some people invited me to enter their tents, but I refused and steadily began setting up by arranging the astronomical observation tools that I had prepared. I assembled a demountable astronomical telescope over the sheets.

Even though this was said to be a place for stargazing, not everyone seemed to be astronomy freaks like in Iustitia – most of them were lying on the ground, enjoying a conversation with their companions while relishing in the jewels of the night. Everyone other than myself had simple handheld telescopes, so a few locals started appearing fussily around me, looking greatly interested. If anything, there weren’t just tourists.

A young father who had a child with him shyly came to ask me, “How much is it for you to let us take a look?” Apparently, he had mistaken me for a merchant.

“I don’t take money for it. It’s something for me to enjoy myself.”

The young parent made a bewildered face at my blunt reply, but nervously stepped in front of the kid and said, “It’s okay even if it’s just for a little bit, couldn’t you let this child take a peek?”

“Sure, it’s fine.”

He was also surprised at my ready consent. As he asked one more time if I really wasn’t going to charge for it, I declared that I wasn’t, swearing by this land’s god.

I beckoned the child. Our heights didn’t match since he was too small, so I lifted him by the hips.

“Can you see them?”

“Just a tad higher.”

“This much?”

“Amaziiing.”

At the child’s delighted look, the father and I locked eyes with each other and laughed. Then, other people who had been surrounding us at a distance came over one after another, asking me to let them see next. Whenever I said that I wasn’t charging any fee, they would ask me back, “Are you a saint or what?”.

In a land where you could see such beautiful stars, astronomical telescopes weren’t wild-spread among locals, enjoyed only by tourists and outsiders. That was probably the case. For them, this was an expensive item brought by outsiders. The stars were beautiful enough at naked eye, so if I had to say it, telescopes weren’t necessary. But if there was something that would help them see better, there would obviously be people saying that they want to take a look.

——Guess I’m gonna contact Shaher’s donors and indicate this place as a potential donation site.

If this pleased so many people, maybe it would be nice to have a telescope that everyone could look into, just as there were benches where everyone could sit on along the streets. I liked stars, so it made me happy even if just one more person fell in love with them.

“Having fun?”

“We are! You’re so generous!”

The figure of an elderly man much older than myself smiling like a boy, looking extremely happy, struck home pretty hard. It wasn’t like I wanted to hang out with anyone or that I had a preference for getting along with everybody. That wasn’t the case at all.

“This thing’s pricey, ain’t it? You okay with people touchin’ it without a care?”

“It’s not made for decoration; it’s something to look at.”

But these kinds of moments were nice.

——Very nice.

If these once-in-a-lifetime encounters would increase the proportion of stargazing in someone’s life, nothing could make me happier.

——When I get old, I guess I’m gonna run a rent-a-telescope or something like that somewhere.

I decided to take a few steps back and let everyone enjoy themselves.

This sensation that the joy of the surroundings was becoming more and more contagious. This feeling that people were gathering there only out of curiosity and adventurous spirit, not for profit. It didn’t seem fitting of my usual self, but something like this was also conceivable every once in a while.

With nothing to do, I naturally started looking around. Wonderful night, wonderful atmosphere.

The figure of someone standing still amongst it all entered my field of vision even without me wanting to. Everyone else had a companion.

The person was clad in dola like me and had a veil covering her face. From her physique, I could somehow presume that she was probably a woman.

Hoping that no weirdos would go talk to her, I worried about and kept watch over the woman, just like people had done for me. If she got caught up by anybody, should I intervene?

I used to hate women, yet here I was, concerning myself with one. I might have a misconstrued sense of justice, but I at least had to care.

I was just looking at her for a little while simply for that reason, but the instant that the wind blew strongly, all of my nerves became her captive. Her veil came off. It came off just slightly and I could see her face.

Her golden hair fluttered leniently. Her shapely profile was exposed under the starry sky. This beauty that could be discerned even in the nightly darkness was breathtaking.

It was really just a few seconds’ time and she immediately fixed the veil back on tight, but I had already seen her, so I knew. I knew.

I knew who that was.

Distancing myself from the telescope, I walked unsteadily towards her. Like winged bugs that gathered up to light.

This person literally shone like a lantern in my life. It was fire that wouldn’t disappear, no matter how much time passed. Time only strengthened the flame’s vigor.

That was why, aah, I... I...

“Violet Evergarden... is that you?”

That was why I called to her at that moment, with a shrill voice. As she looked at me, her eyes slowly crinkled, the corners of her lips went up and she smiled at me.

I felt like tearing up at that.

“It has been a while, Master.”

I had dreamed of this.

“Is it really you?”

I had dreamed of this day.

“Yes, Master.”

Always had been.

“Stupid, I’m not your master anymore... I have a name too... You’ve probably forgotten about it, but I... My name is...”

I had dreamed of this day and had always been thinking about what to say if we ever got to meet again.

“Mr. Leon Stephanotis. Is ‘Mr. Leon’ all right?”

If it were under a starry sky with not a single cloud, we could talk about its bare beauty. If it were on a rainy day, we could discuss the mythology related to the constellations.

“Did I mistake it? I have confidence in my memorization skills, but...”

If it were on a night where a once-in-every-two-centuries meteor were to pass by, we could share stories of the past in which we had observed the sky together.

“No... you got it right. You got it... Just ‘Leon’ is fine... Violet, the time you spent with me was so long ago, and yet, you sure... managed to...”

I had dreamed of this. You had no idea, did you, Violet Evergarden?

“You sure managed to remember.”

You were my first love. The first person I fell for. That day was the first time I confessed to someone.

“Leon, do you recall the promise we made?”

I opened the door to courage. I opened it thinking it would be okay even if I got hurt. But instead of hurting me, you accepted it. You broke my love to pieces, but still acknowledged it.

“Yeah.”

I had dreamed of this. Of this moment. You didn’t have to remember it. You could have forgotten what you had said to me. But if nothing else, I wanted to have one more look at you before I died.

“Have you memorized...”

One more time.

“...the names of a few stars?”

I wanted to see you one more time.

Violet Evergarden. I – the sixteen-year-old Leon Stephanotis – was in love with you.

He was in love with you. So was my current self. Now that you were in front of me, I could tell as much, even if I didn’t want to.

The flame inside my chest was saying, “This woman is the one who started the fire.” It told me that you were the woman who burned me up. You had burned me, and you still were. You melted everything that I had locked up within ice. It told me that you were the woman of my fate.

Violet wordlessly nodded in agreement. She nodded like a child. She was happy that I remembered what she had told me – I could tell by the facial expression she was making.

——You used to be so expressionless and doll-like – who was it that changed you so much?

You weren’t a doll anymore now. More like a girl who had someone’s love. You didn’t look like anything but that in my eyes ever since you were with me, though. But now, surely you had someone. This someone had changed you to that point, right?

“Violet,” I said, suppressing the pain of my sweltering chest. “If you have some time, won’t you spend it with me?” I asked.

I was attempting to open the door to courage again. Regardless of what awaited me beyond it, even if I regretted opening it. I asked nevertheless.

You changed me. You made me who I was. You probably didn’t know that. You didn’t have to.

“Yes, by all means.”

And this beautiful woman in front of me, too.

“I had been waiting for a day to come when I inform you about the fruits of my studies.”

Surely, she had also been made by someone.

“Should we ever meet, I had wanted to report them to you, even if you did not remember.”

Envy, affection and attachment ran through my body.

“That is what I was thinking.”

My sixteen-year-old self was screaming. “I was in love with you. I was in love with you. I was in love with you. I’m in love with you. Even now, I still like you,” he shouted.

I no longer had any of the youth and recklessness of those days. However, regarding my love for her, the me from back when I confessed to her was still here.

“I’m sure what I’m gonna say now will trouble you. But would you listen?”

I was still here. That version of me was still inside me.

Violet Evergarden, you...

“You can laugh if you want; you see...”

...to me, you... a woman like you was...

“You were my first love.”

Violet Evergarden, you...

“I still like you. Forgive me.”

To me, you were a woman of the stars.

[libsterslobsters]

Whole Lotta Love

Synopsis: For some people, Valentine’s Day is another word for "stress", especially when you don't know what the other person is expecting. Several years into their relationship, Bucky’s pretty sure he has a good understanding of the Reader, until a word from Sam makes him question everything he thinks he knows. The race is on to make their first Valentine’s Day since saying their vows a special one, but as per usual, fate has it's own ideas about what will make the holiday truly memorable

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem! Enhanced! Super-soldier Reader

(Reader can see bits and pieces of the future in visions as well as speak every language)

Warnings: Smut, Fluff

Author's note: This fic contains references to earlier stories. For more information, click the series masterlist link. As always, the reader is unnamed so that this can be read as a self-insert, but at this point, I think of her as an OC.

The song referenced is Hearts Don't Break Around Here by Ed Sheeran

Series Masterlist

A The Song Remains The Same Fic

---------‐-----------------------------------

“So, Valentine’s Day.”

Bucky doesn’t look up from his laptop (or more specifically, the field report he’s typing) at Sam’s words. Despite his concentration, he can tell that his partner is staring at him, boring holes into his back with his gaze.

“Uh-huh.” He’s listening, but so far, he doesn’t care.

“What are you doing for it?” For Valentine’s day? Um…

“Not much.” It’s a Tuesday this year, right? Then probably working, like most other people, he’d imagine.

The room is silent as he types, so Bucky assumes that settles the matter. That is, until Sam mutters a quiet, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“About what?” How many paragraphs does he have to type before he can pass this off as a full report? When he joined the Avengers, he thought the hardest part of his job would be the bad guy of the week, not doing paperwork!

“You’re really not doing anything for Valentine’s Day? Seriously?” He nods absentmindedly and clicks the save icon. He’ll finish this tomorrow. It’s five o’clock. Time to head home. Home to-

“What’s your wife gonna think about that?” He shrugs and cuts the power to the laptop.

“She thinks that the whole holiday is a rip-off. See you Monday?” He turns around for confirmation, only to catch Sam staring at him, mouth hanging wide open. “What?”

“A rip-off?” Is he just going to be stuck repeating himself?

“Yep.” Told him that the first February 14th they spent together.

“And you actually believed her?”

He nods. “She’s not one to lie.”

Sam nods incredulously. “Uh-huh. And are you planning to ever have sex again?”

He’s not going to dignify that with an answer (because really, isn’t it obvious?).

“Fine.” Sam shrugs. “You do you, man. All I’m saying is, if I had a wife who looked like that-” he indicates the lock screen of Bucky’s phone (a picture of her laughing, telling him to put away the damn camera after wrestling the dog for the tie to her favorite robe). “-I’d have my V-day plans set up a month in advance.”

Normally Bucky would take what Sam says with a grain of salt, but he is after all a man out of time, so maybe it’s worth considering that his partner may be right.

“What would you suggest I do?”

“Outside of the bedroom?” He narrows his eyes at the Falcon. “Okay, bad joke.” Sam scratches at the back of his head, thinking. “I don’t know, man. That’s your girl. You know her best, but flowers are always a good place to start.” Good to know that hasn’t changed since the 1940s. Although, last time he brought her flowers, she spent the afternoon sneezing until he eventually convinced her that it was okay, he wouldn’t be offended, she should throw the damn things out. Then again, that was before she was a super soldier.

“Flowers.” He repeats, earning a nod from Sam.

“You can get creative. Do a little research. But I’m just saying, when a woman waits five years for you to reappear, the least she deserves is a few flowers.” On that, they can agree.

He must bid Sam some sort of goodbye and make his way through the Avengers compound, but he’s unaware of anything until he’s in the parking lot, sitting behind the wheel of his car, googling “What to do for your wife on Valentine’s Day.” There’s a web page that boasts twenty different selections. Might as well give it a look.

___________________________________________________________________________________

She’s nearly home when her phone dings with a text from Barnes. “Just got in. Forgot to get milk. Can you swing by on your way, or should I go to the gas station and pick up a gallon?” A frown forms on her face. It’s pretty rare that Bucky forgets things. Must’ve been a hell of a day at work, then. Either that, or his brain has completely turned to mush thanks to typing out field reports. Either way-

“I got it. See you in twenty.” She thinks about tacking on a “love you”, but the light turns green before she can.

The grocery store is packed thanks to so many people getting off work. There’s only three carts left, all with bad wheels. She chooses the least squeaky option and, grabbing an add on her way, heads into the grocery store. Milk, and if she remembers right from this morning, they’re running dangerously low on coffee and tea. Despite caffeine having absolutely no effect on their enhanced bodies, both of them are nightmares to be around in the mornings without their beverages of choice. Force of habit and all.

She’s halfway to the checkout when she sees it. A sign, decorated in garish shades of red, pink, and purple. “All Valentine’s Day chocolates 10% off.” Shit. Yeah, that is coming up. To tell the truth, she’d completely forgot all about that day halfway through February. For most of her life, it only meant giving homemade cards at school when most kids had store-bought. Then, once she reached adulthood, it was a reminder that she was destined to be alone. Who would want someone who’s on the run, and what’s more, sees the future? Once she and Barnes got together, it didn’t change much. That first Valentine’s Day, he mentioned the holiday, and she shut it down immediately. They were both broke (or at least, he had no legitimate way of making money while she was broke), and celebrating a mostly commercial holiday seemed like a waste. Plus, she didn’t want to put a strain on a new relationship. Over the years, the subject never came up again, and she’s content for it to stay a non-starter, thank you very much. In her opinion, you should show your partner you love them every day of the year, not shoe-horn it into one twenty-four hour period. Call her unromantic if you must.

She’s completely immune to the various displays of cheap chocolate in heart-shaped boxes and overly sentimental cards as she approaches the register and starts to unload her items. Milk. Tea. That one specific brand of coffee that he likes because, “It tastes like what we drank in basic training. Terrible, but I kinda got used to it, so now everything else tastes like it’s trying too hard.” whatever that means. He’s right; she’s tasted it, and it’s fucking awful. Still, every morning, he drinks at least three cups while she drains her pot of tea.

“You got a hot date for Valentine’s Day, hun?” The cashier asks her, never breaking her rhythm as she rings up the items.

She chuckles. “As a matter of fact, yes.” The cashier’s eye go wide, and she holds up her left hand. “And every other day.”

“Ooh, nice. How long have you been together?”

“Nine years.” Wait… “Or four years, depending on which of us you ask. He blipped, I stayed.”

The cashier nods. “So are you older than him now?”

Physically? They’re not completely sure, but if you calculate the times he was off the ice with HYDRA and add that to the age he was before the serum, then they’re not far off. But chronologically- “No, he’s still older.” And yes, it will always be funny that Sam responds with “Okay, boomer” whenever Bucky makes an outdated reference (even if he’s off by a good twenty years).

With a little more light chatter, she pays for her items and leaves. Now, for home.

As soon as she opens the front door, she’s greeted by their dog, Sarge, barking excitedly and hopping around like he’s on a trampoline despite missing a leg. Bucky’s not far behind, placing a quick peck on her forehead before taking the bags from her and unloading them in the kitchen. Tonight’s his night to cook, but unless her nose has suddenly decided to give out, he hasn’t started dinner yet. She doesn’t mind taking over tonight, and when he sheepishly apologizes while she begins her preparations, she brushes it off. Although, for the second time in an hour, she’s seen proof of his unusual absentmindedness. Oh well. She’ll ask him about it later.

Despite being relieved from tonight’s chef duties, Bucky stays in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar scrolling through his phone as she cooks. His expression is neutral, which can mean one of two things; a) he’s just killing time and there aren’t any interesting posts or articles vying for his attention, or at the opposite end of the spectrum, b) he’s deep in thought, possibly angry, sad, or even frightened, but he’s gone into Winter Soldier mode and shut down so that she won’t pick up on his mood. Damn the man and his poker face.

Eventually dinner is served and she sends him off toward the fridge in search of two beers while she serves their plates. Just as she’s spooning a generous helping of salad into her bowl, it happens. A vision, but a limited one. All she’s seeing is a phone. Well, that and the hand holding it. She’s not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed that she immediately recognizes the hand as Bucky’s, but that goes by the wayside as she takes in the article he’s reading. “Should you do something for Valentine’s Day even is she says no?” It’s a thread on some anonymous discussion board. The reply that has his attention is in reference to a now divorced individual who “was dumb enough to believe that, on our first V-Day as a married couple, she didn’t want anything.” Oh boy. Not good. This will be their first Valentine’s Day since exchanging vows, and if the fact that he’s read this reply (if not already read, will read soon) means that it’s at least crossed his radar that she might be feeding him bullshit. That’s not the case, but after his research, she knows from experience that no matter how much she tries to convince him otherwise, a small part of his mind will be stuck on, “But what if this is a big deal?” Which means-

“Doll, are you just gonna stand there with the salad tongs in your hand?” That snaps her out of it.

“No. Just a vision.” He frowns as she passes him his plate.

“Anything important happen?” Should she say?

“No.” She’s not sure if the smile or not, so she takes a bite from her roll to cover it. “Random sneak peek.” It’s not a lie. What she saw really isn’t important. Still, if he’s in that mindset, she should probably go on and do something for him just in case. After all, why should it only be the ladies who reap this holiday’s benefits?

___________________________________________________________________________________

Not flowers. That’s the one thing that, after copious amounts of research Bucky is one hundred percent certain about. They may still be a common romantic gift, but since they were also a go-to back when he was courting girls in the 1940s, it’s safe to say they’ve been overdone. Plus, he doesn’t really want to remind her of that time she had such a severe allergic reaction to the flowers he picked her on a walk through the park in Bucharest that her eyes nearly swelled shut and she sneezed herself sick. That doesn’t exactly seem like prime romance.

Chocolates or other candies have the same issues as flowers. Contrived and predictable. A bottle of wine is nice, but neither of them can so much as get mildly tipsy thanks to the super serum. The fourteenth is his day to cook, so he guesses he could do some reading and try to create something a little more special than spaghetti (he thought about going to a nice restaurant for dinner, but there’s a few issues with that, not the least of which is they’re likely to be recognized without their disguises, and he’d rather not look at his wife through sunglasses on Valentine’s day), but that seems a little underwhelming.

As he loads the dishwasher (she fell asleep half-way through the third episode of whichever nonsensical comedy they’re watching this week, so he sneaked back downstairs to clean up the dinner dishes), he thinks back to the dozen separate articles he read on the subject of Valentine’s Day gifts. Jewelry was a common theme, but that’s out. She’ll say thank you to his face, but worry about the cost behind his back. Plus, he has absolutely no idea what she’d like, and there’s no sense in purchasing something only for her to hate it.

Another common one was lingerie. Bucky almost choked on his tongue when he saw some of the examples given with that option. None of it looked comfortable (in fact, he’s still scratching his head about how you even put on one of the pieces that popped up on the web page) and he doesn’t want to give her the impression that she has to dress up for him. Even putting all that aside, he has no idea what size she’d even wear. He likes to think that he knows his wife pretty well, but somehow, in all their years together, it never occurred to him to ask her for her clothing sizes. That, and have you even seen the bra sizing system? Does it make sense to anyone, because to Bucky, it’s all gibberish. 32 B? 36 DD? What the hell? Somehow, when HYDRA was training him to extract information, they failed to go over the translation of a woman’s bra size. He supposes he could ask, but he’s not sure there’s a non-suspicious way to work, “Hey, sweetheart. What size are your breasts?” into casual conversation.

Sam said to get creative, so he tried to think outside the box. What’s something she really needs? A new vacuum cleaner is the first thing to come to mind, but he’s not stupid enough to think that would make a good gift. He knows she’s had her eye on a set of throwing stars, but that doesn’t seem to correlate well with what this holiday is all about. That’ll keep until her birthday.

He’s still wracking his brain for anything at all that might work when he feels a wet nose poking at his hand. Sarge. “Hey, boy. Has your mom gone to bed?” The response is a quiet “woof” and lick to his palm. He scratches the mutt behind the ears, smiling to himself as Sarge’s back leg thumps at the treatment.

“What do you think we should get our girl? Huh?” There’s no reply (of course not, he’s talking to a dog), but he nods, pretending all the same that Sarge has offered up a suggestion. “A bone. Yeah, somehow I don’t think that’s her thing. Try again.” The dog blinks at him lazily. “No, you’re the one who wants new tennis balls. Not Mom. Although you’re right about her liking peanut butter.” At this rate, he might as well get her a bone and some tennis balls, because he’s sure not coming up with any ideas.

She likes music. The thought pops into his head while he’s brushing his teeth. All sorts of music. Over the years, he’s tried to make sense of the songs he’s heard her listen to, but has yet to find a discernible pattern in her listening habits. She doesn’t seem to stick to just one genre or era. More like she picks songs by how they relate to what she’s feeling at the moment. Wait a second-

“A mixtape.” His reflection mouths the words back at him. Despite technology having moved on from the days of burning CDs, she still has a thick stack of the disks stored in a cabinet and plays them on the regular. He’s even seen a few that she made herself, pasting together the songs she likes to make a “Cleaning mix”, “Workout Mix” and “Pissed off Mix”. Bucky’s sure he could figure out how to burn a CD, but it’s not like she’d be able to listen to that everywhere she went. That leaves a playlist. She uses one of those apps to listen to music on her phone, right? Surely he can put something together for her using that.

Quietly, he climbs into bed next to his sleeping wife and pulls her back against his chest, slinging one arm over her waist as usual. He closes his eyes, but his mind is alight with activity. A playlist. Of course. He’ll put some extra effort into whatever he cooks that night, stop by a bakery and pick up some sweet treats for dessert. Hell, maybe they’ll both dress up and act like they’re on a date. Then, once they’re sitting down to their meal, he’ll pull out his phone and hit play. It’s perfect. At least, he hopes it is.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Putting on a lacy bra and panties set underneath her regular work attire seemed like a brilliant idea this morning. Today’s a short day; she’s only got three classes to teach, and Rhodey called last night to tell Bucky that he’s suspending work hours at three pm “Since most people have holiday preparations to make.” Her plan was to be waiting on the sofa in the living room when he arrives home, professional button-down blouse open just enough for him to get a good look at what’s underneath, pencil skirt pushed up enough to reveal the stockings and garters she’s donned for the occasion. It’s fun, with just enough cheesiness to match this whole holiday. And, well, it’s a guarantee that by the end of the night they’ll be in bed together, both rumpled, sweaty, and satisfied. Perfect, right?

Wrong. On her drive to work, her skimpy underwear began to ride up, giving her a wedgie, and there was no way to adjust without running the risk of wrecking. She was so distracted by her discomfort that she missed her exit, and by the time she arrived at the college, she was running so behind that she didn’t get the chance to run to the bathroom and readjust. Her lecture on sentence diagrams was pure torture before the underwire from her bra decided to join in the fun and poke her directly in the ribs, but with that addition, she was especially impatient with her students’ tendency to joke around a little too much in class.

Luckily, she had just enough time to wrap the exposed metal bit in tissues before her next class, which eliminated the pain in her chest, but did nothing to alleviate the discomfort once her stockings began to slide down, having at some point disconnected themselves from the garters. She taught like that for the next two classes, but as soon as they were over, she pealed the whole ensemble off in the teacher’s restroom and changed into her gym clothes. Alright, screw the whole seduction routine. She needs to blow off some steam and fast, or else she’ll be in a bad mood all night.

That’s why, thirty minutes later, she finds herself in the training room of the Avengers compound, working over a punching bag. “Fuck-” Her fist connects, making the bag swing crazily from it’s hook. “-this- whole- day!” It goes sailing, and she feels a little better.

“Ouch!” The voice comes from behind her and she whirls around, gaze resting on-

“Sam.” The man in question holds up his hands in an “I surrender” gesture.

“Don’t shoot! I come in peace.” Rolling her eyes, she holds up her middle finger, receiving a snicker in acknowledgment.

“Just working off a little frustration before I head home.”

“Good.” Sam chuckles. “’cause otherwise, I’d be worried that when Barnes pulls out his dick tonight, you’ll bite it off.” She thinks about telling him that there’s no chance of that, but she might just cut off his if he crosses her. However, that jogs her memory.

“Has he left yet?” Sam nods.

“About an hour ago. Said he had to pick up groceries.” Shit. There goes her plan to shower, throw the damn lingerie back on and proceed as planned.

Bidding Sam a hasty reply, she makes tracks towards her car and, once inside, heads for home. Fine. New plan. She’ll shower once she arrives and then when the evening is drawing to a close, wait for him in bed. Nodding to herself, she puts the car in park and climbs out. Now, to psych herself up enough in the next few hours to put the damn lingerie back on.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Where did he go wrong? It takes all of Bucky’s self control not to spit out the spoonful of sauce he just tasted. This was supposed to be an easy recipe for Chicken Alfredo (or at least, that’s what the website boasted; he should’ve known better than to get his information from the internet and stuck to a good old-fashioned cookbook from the library). Not… whatever the hell this is. Maybe even if the sauce is nauseating, the chicken is okay?

He pulls open the oven door, and immediately smoke billows out, making his eyes water. Okay, chicken’s a little well-done. Who is he kidding? Black. The chicken is burned black. And the pasta… he lifts the pot lid and stirs, only to come to the realization that the pasta is completely stuck to the bottom of the pot. Wonderful.

It’s inevitable; over the years, he’s had his fair share of cooking disasters, but usually he does okay. Tonight though… who the hell up there did he piss off, because the only explanation for how badly this is going is his karma coming due.

Still holding the offending spoon, he looks over at Sarge, who’s staring at him, long pink tongue sticking out as he pants. “Trust me, boy. You don’t want any of this.” There has to be something else he can pull together on short notice. Normally he’d be worried that she’s running late without so much as a text, but today he’s relieved. At least if she’s running behind he’ll have time to… what? Maybe order takeout? Before she gets-

“I’m home.” Shit.

Sarge yips, shaking with excitement, and starts towards the kitchen door, then turns back, uncertain. “Go on. I know you’re dying to jump on her and lick her face.” Something they really should be training out of him because he’s getting too big for that sort of behaviour but, well… there’s a reason they call them “puppy dog eyes.”

Not needing to be coaxed, the dog takes off, tripping a little in the momentary lapse in his memory that he’s a tripod, but easily catches himself and goes on his merry way, leaving Bucky to clean up his mess. From the sound of things, a game of fetch is going on in the living room, so she should be distracted for a while.

He manages to pour the sauce down the drain and scrape most of the pasta into the trash while Sarge is acting as a decoy, but there’s absolutely no way he can dispose of the chicken without tipping her off (damn enhanced senses, it’s a wonder she hasn’t already smelled it). Finally, he decides to just go for it. She’s going to notice whether he throws it out now or two hours from now. Might as well get a head start on cleaning.

Sure enough, not ten seconds after he empties out the oven, he catches a movement in his peripheral vision, and the familiar sound of her breathing tips him off that he’s no longer alone.

“Hey, Doll.”

“Hey, Bucky. Did something burn in here, or-” He holds up the pan for her inspection before continuing his scraping.

“That’s one way to put it, yeah.” He slams the lid back on the trashcan and turns on the tap, intent on rinsing out the pan. “Another is whoever the god of culinary arts is has it in for me today.”

She chuckles. “You know, that would be funnier if we didn’t actually know a god.”

“Yeah, but he’s in control of thunder.” He meets her eyes, smirking slightly. “Although it did look like I electrocuted the bird.” Her lips quirk up into a smile, and he takes the opportunity to kiss her, cupping the back of her head gently to hold her in place when she tries to move away, muttering something about being sweaty.

He’s not entirely sure how it happened, but by the time they come up for air, her back his pressed against the wall and he’s got her pinned in place. Not that he’s complaining.

“Anyone ever tell you that the tip of your nose turns pink after you’ve been kissed?’ Her cheeks go rosey in response.

“I think so. One guy did. I told him it’s only when I’m kissed properly.”

He really would like to continue the playful banter, but there’s still the small matter of whatever it is they’re going to eat.

“What do you feel like for dinner tonight?”

“Apart from electrocuted chicken?” He responds with a swat to her ass, which earns him a snicker. “Let’s keep it simple. Pizza. Your choice of toppings.” Right, that’s easy enough. Plus, if they have to wait longer than thirty minutes, it’s free.

“Okay. I’ll order while you shower?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He’s just pulled up the menu on his phone when the sound of her clearing her throat attracts his attention. She’s standing in the doorway, combing through her freshly let down hair with her fingers, a playful look in her eyes.

“Or you could join me. Just a mild suggestion.”

Dinner can wait for a while.

___________________________________________________________________________________

The Brooklyn townhouse they live in has many nice features. There’s a functional if small screened in back porch, big enough to hold a table for two and a grill. Two bedrooms, on the off chance someone from work needs to crash for a night or two. A kitchen with a dishwasher. A working fireplace. Good closet space. And an en suite bathroom.

Maybe it’s a little ridiculous to call a bathroom luxurious, especially when, in comparison to what’s featured in many brownstones, it’s more than modest, but she can’t help but think of it as such. There’s a double sink so that in the morning rush to get ready, Bucky’s able to shave and brush his teeth without having to wait for her to finish applying her makeup. Shelving above the toilet makes certain that even if the last person to shower took the towel with them, another one is on hand. Speaking of the shower, it’s not the largest one in the world, but both of them can fit in comfortably at the same time, which is what’s lead to their current situation.

She’s just finished allowing the water to course over her body, easing the sweat from her skin, and is about to begin the process of washing her hair, scrubbing her body, but she hesitates. She might as well ask. It’s only practical after all.

“Do you want to start now or get cleaned up and have dinner beforehand?” It’s obvious what she’s referring to, so she doesn’t bother to spell it out.

His brown knits, and if she didn’t know him as… intimately… as she does, she’d actually believe he’s confused.

“Oh, so you’re just assuming there’s gonna be sex involved at some point tonight?”

She shrugs, wringing out her hair.

“Seemed like a safe enough bet.” She glances pointedly between the two of them. “After all, we’re already undressed. “

His laugh is a quiet huff, barely discernible over the sound of the water. “Then I’d say start now, have dinner, then go for round two. Sound about right to you?”

She nods. “Solid plan.”

“Then get over here.”

Unlike the welcome home kiss they shared not half an hour ago, this one is less tender, more electric. Hands twist in hair, bodies press together. Tongues begging for entrance quickly give way to teeth nipping at bottom lips, an unspoken sparring match for who’ll be in control this time around. Ultimately he wins, grasping her hips and lifting as she wraps her legs securely around his back.

There’s no need for prep; the teasing of their earlier words is foreplay enough. Back pressed against the wall, her body easily welcomes him in as she braces one arm against the glass shower doors for balance. Any concerns about slipping and falling wash away as they move together like so many times before. She’s sure her nails will leave marks on his back, fingertips digging in for purchase and it’s a guarantee her hips will be littered with fingerprints from his grip, but she can’t find it in her to care, and if the desperate, bruising kiss assaulting her lips is anything to judge from, neither can he.

“So damn good, Doll.” It’s panted against her neck. “Always. So damn perfect for me.” All she can manage is a moan in response.

She feels him twitch inside of her and knows he’s close. So is she, but she can’t quite get there without-

As if he’s read her mind, he reaches between them to touch her where she needs it most, and on instinct, she readjusts, locking her arm around his neck to stay in place. “Let go, sweetheart. Can you do that for me?” She couldn’t disobey if she wanted to.

“Fuck.” As her walls contract around him, he pulls out just in time to paint her middle with his release.

“That’s one word for it.” She’s still fighting to catch her breath, but she shoots him a shaky smirk, which he returns.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Mrs. Barnes.” Snickering, she releases him to stand on unsteady legs and pecks his legs.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Barnes.” Maybe there’s something to this holiday after all.

___________________________________________________________________________________

“You want the last slice?” Bucky considers it for a moment before deciding-

“Nah. You can have it.” It may not be exactly what he planned, but it’s been a good night. Between the two of them, they’ve gone through two large pizzas while watching the new version of Beauty and the Beast (she rolled her eyes when he asked if this was her way of saying he reminds her of a certain hairy, horned character) in their pajamas.

“No, really. You take it. I don’t want it.” She nudges the mostly-empty pizza box towards him. The noise makes Sarge lift his head from where he was snoozing beside her on the sofa. That gives him an idea.

“I don’t want it either, but I can think of someone who does.” He cocks his head towards the now-drooling dog. “How ‘bout it, boy? Wanna help us out?”

Snickering, she picks the pepperonis and pieces of sausage and ham from the pizza, forming a pile. “Here, Sarge. Catch.” She tosses a coveted treat in the air, and Sarge’s jaw snaps, swallowing it whole. “Good boy.”

They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes before she speaks again.

“You know, I actually did have something planned for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” She nods.

“Absolutely. Had a whole seduction plan laid out. Tiny underwear, lacy bra, and stockings with garters included.” Huh. Guess she wouldn’t have taken the “lingerie” option the wrong way. He’ll file that away for future use… along with a mental note to ask her bra size. “That is, until I tried wearing the damn things for longer than an hour. Turns out, hiding a dirty secret under your clothes is more itchy than sexy.”

He can’t help it. He laughs, producing a pout from her which quickly turns into her own quiet laughter.

“Well, that fits in perfectly with my fancy dinner going up in smoke.”

“We really do have shitty luck with the whole “romance” thing.” She’s joking, but he decides to respond anyway.

“I don’t know about that.” Entwining his fingers with hers, he lifts their hands, twin wedding bands catching the light. “You waited five years for me to reappear after the blip, and I convinced you to elope with me. Seems pretty romantic.” Although, that reminds him…

“Don’t move.” Releasing her hand, he stands and goes in search of his phone.

“Bucky, what-”

“Don’t move, Doll. Stay right where you are.” Ah. On the kitchen counter, just where he left it. Jogging back into the room, he resumes his place on the couch next to her. Ignoring her questioning gaze, he pulls up the app and, selecting the correct playlist, hits play.

Immediate recognition blooms on her face at the opening lyrics. “She is the sweetest thing that I know. Should see the way she holds me when the lights go low.” He’s not one for modern music, but when he was googling “songs for Valentine’s Day” and this one popped up, he couldn’t help but think that the lyrics were fitting.

“I didn’t know you’d heard this one.”

He chuckles. “Even old men have a few tricks up their sleeves. That, and a wifi connection.” She rolls her eyes but leans closer, which he takes advantage of to show her the playlist.

“This is the app you use, right?” Receiving a nod, he continues. “Feel free to scroll through and add whatever you want. I haven’t listened to all of them the whole way through, but they seemed to fit the mood.”

Her hand closes over his, covering the phone. “Thank you, Bucky. It’s perfect.”

As the singer goes on about how hearts don’t break around here, he presses his lips against hers.

“I love you, Doll.”

“Love you.”

Not bad for a disastrous Valentine’s Day. Not bad at all.

[faerynova]

KAITO HAS OCD

Okay, a breakdown of OCD behaviors let’s go:

COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR

He immediately fixates on finding pandora+getting vengeance, cannot be convinced to do anything else to get to this goal except be Kaitou Kid as soon as he decides that’s the path he’ll take. He’s already got his plan, he’s NOT gonna deviate from it.

And he goes after gems that he already knows aren’t Pandora because he’s compelled to complete Kaitou Kid’s MO/rise to challenges.

(from DC ch.965, I pasted the panels together for the relevant bits)

He also goes after targets when OTHER people send notices. (see: chapters 11 and 14 of Magic Kaito.) Yeah he wasn’t the one who started it, but he WILL finish it.

There’s absolutely no rule that says he has to go through with every single heist notice that he or someone else sends! It’s just his own compulsion.

OVER-PLANNING: BACKUP PLANS OF BACKUP PLANS

OCD makes you doubt yourself: what you do, your surroundings, so you have to over-plan to make sure everything goes Just Right, or else there will be consequences. And with heists, there really will be! But assuming he’s got OCD then he feels like *everything* he does has consequences if it doesn’t go the way he planned.

So he’s over-prepared always!

Even when going to school, have you seen all the tricks he keeps up his sleeves just for casual pranks with his classmates? He’s always *always* ready to toss confetti everywhere! To disappear with a smoke bomb! To put a mask of his own face on a classmate to get away! He just carries these things around In Case he needs it!

He just has an entire magic arsenal with him at all times for no good reason, school and other mundane situations.

WAY MORE EXAMPLES AND ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT:

So here’s some over-preparedness on heists:

(DC ch.1019)

He’s got calling cards made ahead of time to go along with whatever plan he ends up using-- and even though they say he “spontaneously” decided to act, having all those cards there means he DID have every single plan laid out for whichever he decided to do. He figured out which plan he needed to do, and acted accordingly.

(DC ch.963)

This is the one that really gets me. He brought enough disguises to be able to pick someone AT RANDOM to disguise as, and then he has an entire heist planned around the person he picked on a whim.

You could say he just improvises, but a lot of what Kaito does *has* to be planned out in advance. Yes he can knock someone out and steal their clothes for an impromptu disguise, but he still needs masks prepared-- and for disguising as Agasa which he does in this chapter, that’s a whole costume to get the body shape right! He just HAD THAT PREPARED. JUST IN CASE.

(MK ch.23)

Kaito for the love of God what on earth would you ever need to memorize this man’s driver’s license number for. This is a new level of over-prepared. Kaito how did you even memorize that number along with all the other nonsense you need to remember for heists and disguises.

And in the manga we see several times that when his plans go awry, his first reaction isn’t usually to improvise a new plan, but rather to yeet as fast as possible because his brain can’t deal with a plan being ruined. (like above)

AND OKAY MEMORIZING ALL THOSE NUMBERS ACTUALLY BRINGS ME TO MY NEXT POINT:

COUNTING

The above example isn’t technically counting, but it does lend to an obsession with numbers and being hardwired to just have them in the back of his mind without thinking about it.

Alternately, he may have just glanced at the drivers license while handing it over and memorized it on the spot! Counting it without even thinking about it! (Either way, holy shit.)

He can also quickly and accurately count how many people and objects are in a room-- or you know an entire building-- in a matter of seconds. And he remembers all of it!

(MK ch.28)

Okay I think that’s all of the canon examples I’ve got on hand?

So with all that, some OCD headcanons about the boy:

-He over-plans even in mundane situations like deciding what kind of ice cream to get at the store. He’s gotta think about what if his favorite and second favorite and third favorite flavors are out of stock, and how much each brand costs, and if he’s willing to go to another store to get his favorite flavor if they don’t have it, and how long it will take to go to another store and the different prices there-- he over-plans for everything *just in case*.

-He obsessively re-checks and over-checks plans. Gotta make sure everything is right for heists.

-Counts things repeatedly/on a loop when left alone with his thoughts, and often taps along with his counting which outwardly looks like fidgeting or boredom. (I also headcanon that he has ADHD as well, so the tapping looks like a stimmy adhd thing)

-Pretty bad anxiety about messing up/consequences/break in routine, but hey live and die by the poker face, so no one knows it.

-He’s got rituals/routines to calm himself down that he doesn’t even realize are rituals: mindlessly shuffling or counting cards; tracing the scars/creases/etc on his hands, tapping/counting. (more things that just look like stimming basically)

-He also has a rewriting/redrawing habit. Mostly with his Kaitou Kid doodle, but he’ll do it with words too. His school notes have a lot of repetition because sometimes a word feels wrong so he’ll just rewrite it (sometimes several times) before he moves on with the rest of his notes.

-He plans his entire days ahead of time with a list in his head down to really stupid details.

-Yes this includes branching possibilities for different things that might happen that day. Backup plans of backup plans!

-On days where he’s feeling bad or can’t get his thoughts in order, he’ll take the list to paper so he can double check it as the day goes on. He always feels better if he has a plan he can check back on, mental or physical.

-Most importantly, he has absolutely no idea he’s got OCD. He assumes all of this is just normal behavior for an entertainer and a thief. Of course he pays attention to how many people are in a room and how it’s laid out, he’s in the habit of casing places. Of course he’s got 143 plans laid out for the day, it’s only practical that he knows what he’s gonna do. Of course he checks his heist plans two dozen times in the same night, he can’t afford to mess this up!

Anyway that’s all I’ve got for now love y’all byyye.

[honeyjaez]

Y’all ready for my shitty opinion on the Introduction Kingdom performances that literally no one asked for?

I preface this by saying I love every single group equally and each of these groups (with the sad exception of iKON) I am a hard core fan of. But I also love practicing thinking subjectively and I pride myself on not being too biased when it comes to performances and Kpop, like I know how to understand sometimes my ult might not be the best vocally or whatnot. I like being unbiased with this. So without further ado.

This is not based on scores already known, just my own thoughts.

(And also like these ranking do not reflect my love for a group or if I think they are untalented because all these groups are so massively talented. but rankings have to happen right?  Like someones gotta be last but i don’t love them any less lol) 

6. Stray Kids (and this hurts as a Stray Kids Ult)

A group that I think really hurt with forced to having to perform the song that they did. (Their only other option was Back Door or levanter but it doesn’t really hit the same as Miroh so I understand why they chose it). The song is still my favorite title track by them (Also Im such a hoe for center Minho like....), but it’s SUCH a hard song to perform live. I remember all the issues they had during the era and still saw a lot of that here, more specifically with the insane rap parts. Its just not something easily done live (I say this like I know how to rap) but it doesn’t take a lot to realize that Changbin’s rap is so insanely fast (which props to him) that it can still be difficult for him. Also I think the backtrack of the song really hindered the performance. It was just too loud. Like you know those performances when you can really tell a group has some relying on the backtrack and others don’t? I have nothing wrong with lip synching, honestly, I could care less by it because I understand they are doing so much movement on stage that I couldn’t understand how to do both. But it takes away from the performance when you hear the difference in members performing live and those who are relying a bit more on it. Stray Kids are AMAZING performers and CAN sing/rap live. It was very cool though I guess with props but it was like they were trying to distract people from the lack of performance. I just think that having to perform Miroh (I know they didn’t get to pick really) was their downfall to me. But the outfits were cool! Regardless, they are still #1 in my heart and I look forward to the other performances!!!  But with more Seungmin!!!!!

6. ATEEZ

Next to The Boyz, I am most excited about seeing ATEEZ on Kingdom. One because Korea seriously needs to stop sleeping on them, but two because they are such intense and talented performers.  True to form they came in crashing! Unfortunately, the only reason they are so low is that there wasn’t anything that really made them stand out from the others to me. I do appreciate the classic ATEEZ intensity (but like also Hongjoong please don’t be all serious and death stare while suddenly saying Hakuna Matata, I couldn’t take it seriously). But the VOCALS win most intense which sells towards their performance. I appreciated Ateez so much for their intense singing (looking at you Seonghwa and Jongho). I do think that having to perform Wave didn’t really help them. (From my understanding is that MNET told them they had to perform a song that placed #1 which for them was only Wave, or Inception  which they already performed at MAMAs (we did Wonderland so dirty)) Not that I hate Wave (its actually my favorite title track by them) and I did enjoy the composition of this new darker Wave, but could you imagine if they had come in swinging with Pirate King or Wonderland? Hell fucking yes. Regardless, looking forward to see how they grow as the youngest group on there! I have nothing but high hopes for them!

4. SF9 

Now You guys know how much I love SF9. They are practically an unofficial ult group for me. But this is not based off song because I actually can’t stand Good Guy (I overplayed it when it came out and now I hate it (not really but ya know) ) I remember people saying SF9′s performance wasn’t really memorable, but I didn’t see that. I saw an idol group coming out for the first time to prove something and actually shocking me with how intense they were. They really looked like Gang Members (handsome ones at that) ready to rule the world with their performance. Their looks and their dancing was great. I love SF9 and they haven’t had a lot of opportunities to showcase their talents like this so I look forward to how they shock the other group (also if they don’t do the wheel from K.O in a single performance I will riot) but all in all I think this was a solid performance by them! I laughed at the beginning with Inseong holding the crystal diamond because I couldn’t help but think back to tbz and the crown on rtk. I hope they also do story driven performances on here because I haven’t seen that from them before and I think it would be great!

3. BTOB

Can I just say I appreciate the fact that they are staying true to their vocal roots? So much Kpop these days is intense and in your face with everything, and I worried about a vocally driving group like BTOB being on this program because they’ve never been about the choreography (though I’ll be your man was lit) but just like how everyone reacted, BTOB focusing on their vocals rather than dance was such a breath of fresh air in this round. They really are vocal kings in KPop and the chills that some of those idols felt were so important. Like Wooyoung said after their performance “Vocals are so powerful” (or something like that) and I sometimes feel that people forget that. Intense dancing is great and all, but to wow people with just your voice like they did is a feat not every group can do. The  acapella was such a nice tough too. Beautiful Pain is such a beautiful song (ha) and the remix they did for it was just so nice. My only complaint is that we didn’t get enough Minhyuk vocals :(((((

2. The Boyz

Aight, people might accuse me of being biased based on how whipped I was for The Boyz back during RTK, but I’m really not. Like the other groups agreed on, you can tell The Boyz were on RTK. You can tell they have been through a program like this and they came in swinging. They have a lot of pressure on them after the wonderful performances on RTK and I think the opening performance they did didn’t disappoint. They are such good storytellers when it comes to performances (something Ateez is also really good at as well). They just get you immersed in their performances and thats something unique to certain groups. They were just meant to perform. Regardless of scores, The Boyz are proving to be fierce competitor from the get go and not to name names, but Sunwoo is such an amazing rapper live like holy shit. He needs more credit. RTK was amazing for them and I am sure Kingdom will be just that as well!

1. iKON

God I hope Kingdom will turn me from a casual fan to a hardcore ikonic. What I loved about iKON’s performance is a lot like BTOB’s or even SF9′s. There was a sense of branding, like this style was their’s and theirs alone. Also their performance brought so many smiling and happy faces to the crowd. A lot of younger groups look up to iKON and you even heard how many idols there and evaluations to their songs or what not. They just had so much fun on stage and that reflected on the audience who in turn also had a blast. I wasn’t sure how I would feel watching them since out of all the groups I’m least attached to iKON, but just with that causal, fun, but intense performance of rytham-ta one could easily see them as Kings already.  I didn’t notice any thing out of place because I was just enjoying the performance completely. And to me, thats the most important part of a performance.

Again, these were just my opinions on this introduction stage. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the performances. Your rankings, and who you look forward to see more from! We will have a fun time with Kingdom on my blog! <3 :3

I look forward to future rounds and what other groups have to offer!

[peaches-writes]

super random prompts for today bc im feeling nostalgic~

tw // death

at 1100 years of you fulfilling your punishment as a human turned grim reaper, no one could blame you when you confess that you don’t really know yourself now if the promise you swore to chan before he died by your sword in his first life is still serious or holds meaning to you. it was a long long time ago, already muddled in your failing memories, when you swore to the joseon era prince that you would ‘find and torture him in every life he gets’ because he invaded your village and branded you as a criminal (which ultimately led to you doing the things that got you landed with your current spiritual punishment). at present, having already met different versions of him in his subsequent lives and delivering him to the afterlife each time without fail, you’re not sure anymore if you can still hold onto this promise and cause him trouble. after all, every version of him that pops up on your radar throughout the centuries never remembers what he did in his first life, let alone remember you. plus, the only time he sees you now as a grim reaper is on his death bed, when you come to fetch him and confess to causing some of the misfortunes he’s experienced in the life that he’s lived. 

so imagine your surprise when the gods inform you that chan only has one reincarnation left to spend and that he’ll spend it in the 21st century seoul, right where everything started. you’re then furthermore petrified when this version you meet not only has the ability to see and interact with ghosts by his 3rd eye but also finds the journal you unknowingly drop at his neighbor’s funeral: filled with notes on him and his previous lives as well as the confusing feelings you’ve unconsciously developed over the years. the final nail in the coffin, however, is that he’s not smug about it when he eventually finds you at the local graveyard, unlike how you expected of the chan from the joseon era. instead, he asks you all about his past lives, your punishment, and what he should expect in his next life if he has any. this time, with no means of escaping from his 3rd eye and his dangerously fast biking skills, you’re forced to confront the soul of the person you once called your enemy. 

more of the kids under the cut!

minho receives a google form link from you at the strike of midnight on your 1st anniversary as a couple, initially opening it on the assumption that it’s the survey form you previously coerced him into agreeing to answer for your senior thesis. the computer science major is then thoroughly surprised when the link opens to a red and pink-themed form titled, “y/n’s boyfriend application!” with questions ranging from, “full name so i can flames it with my name” to “rate my annoying habits from ‘i love them dw’ to ‘this is probably going to be one of the future reasons why we’ll break-up.’” he messages you first before anything else, asking you just exactly ‘what the fuck is this application for, babe?’ to which you only reply with a spam of winking emojis. actually, you only reply with winking emojis and actual winks when he decides to videocall you into answering him, leading minho to answer the form while you’re peeking over on a small browser on his laptop screen. your boyfriend mainly answers the questions lightheartedly, even reading his answers aloud to you after (”what number on the fan do i like? four, of course!” “minho, you’re a monster.”). that is until the last question which he only smiles at before spending the last five minutes of your videocall typing continuously then ending the call after submitting, preventing you from interrogating him and his sudden change in behavior. 

it’s only after the call that you see his answer to the last question (”why do you love me”), an entire eight paragraphs of him just mindlessly rambling about whatever comes at the top of his head to answer the question: ranging from his favourite and least favourite memories of you together, the things he loves about you coupled with the things he claims to not like about you (before shyly admitting towards the end that he still finds things to love about them), and an “overall there’s a lot of reasons why i love you: some i’ve mentioned, some i haven’t, some i’ve discovered, and some i will find out about in the future when we celebrate our 2nd year anniversary, 3rd, 4th, and the ones we’ll eventually forget what number they’re supposed to be because we’ll probably be married and busy with a lot of other things ;) there’s just no one definitive answer to this question, to be honest, but this is what comes at the top of my head. happy one year, baby <3″ 

when the fabric of reality that blankets seoul is reported to have been ripped at the seams, you start mysteriously losing some of your personal belongings to the parallel dimension’s version of your apartment. at first you blame it on your public enemy no. 1 and roommate, changbin, who does have a habit of borrowing things without permission and forgetting to return them. when you find a blue-haired and heavily tattooed changbin using your hair dryer in the bathroom one day (clearly looking very different from the roommate you’ve been living with for 6 months who has blonde hair and piercings only), however, only then do you realize that it’s been your roommate’s parallel version who’s been unknowingly receiving your things. what’s more surprising is him getting visibly confused at you initially throwing a fit at him when you mistook him as your real roommate, explaining to you later on that he and your parallel version are dating. you purposely avoid parallel dimension changbin for a few days in embarrassment from the latter, that is until he sits you down in the living room a week later (while your dimension’s changbin is out at his part-time job) and asks you, “so, what’s your problem with my parallel self? maybe i can help!”  

only parallel dimension changbin proves himself to be unhelpful when all he comments on your subsequent ramblings is a cheesy grin and, “your roommate’s probably in love with you. god, i can’t believe that even in your reality i’m stupid.” 

in a world where the person who doesn’t reciprocate an individual’s strong feelings instead of the other way around, hyunjin’s had his own fair share of sick days and pharmacy runs to suppress the flowers that bloom in him from admirers who fall way too deep into his charms. he’s slightly grown desensitized to it, having already memorized what to do and what to say to the people who are forced to confront and apologize to him each and every time. when it’s you who’s suddenly confessing your sudden feelings to him, promising that you’ll get over it in a month and even stay away for a while for his sake, only then does he feel a strange mix of dread, worry, and fear at the pit of his stomach. he doesn’t want you, his best friend, to ever leave his side but at the same time he can’t find it in himself to reciprocate your feelings for you to stay. for the first time, he doesn’t know what to do nor what to say to you, the daffodils suddenly feeling heavier in his lungs the more you try and distance yourself and see new people.

 jisung, unlike how the cliche trope goes, always bets everything on him missing his shot at your subdivision’s basketball court. he always says something along the lines of, “if i miss this shot, let’s go the movies!” or “if the ball falls off the rim after 5 seconds, you’ll go to the beach party with me!” despite being the star player of your high school basketball team himself. he always purposely misses for fun and gets his reward, of course, even when you remind him to shoot properly through flustered expressions and feigned huffs. this has then caused you your entire summer time and allowance, all spent glued to jisung’s hip and buying him all sorts of things from ice cream, extended time to borrow surf boards at the beach, and even a ride ticket to the travelling carnival’s ferris wheel (where he stole a kiss from you at the top like the cheesy little shit that he is). 

whenever you ask him why he bets in reverse each and every time, however, only then does his confident smirk disappears into his blush and he turns his entire face away from you; too shy to admit that you make him a little too nervous whenever it’s just you watching him shoot hoops. give him a rest, he just wants more full assurance that he’ll get to spend more time with you, as boyish as that sounds. 

you probably should’ve known better than to provoke chenle and wooyoung when you told them over the student council meeting that a marriage booth probably wouldn’t give you a lot of revenue since your school festival this year doesn’t fall on valentine’s day week. you probably should’ve expected that the first thing they’d do after the student assembly, when the festival is formally opened, is to drag you into said marriage booth—your english classroom decorated from top to bottom in cheap white cloth, plastic flowers, and an edit of your senior alumni bang chan as jesus—and put you into one of the flower crown veils they probably got at someone’s baptism, explaining that they need someone to kickstart the booth and attract more customers. but most of all, you probably should’ve expected that these two troublemaking vice president and secretary of yours wouldn’t hesitate to take this opportunity to torment you even further because suddenly you’re getting fake married to felix, your chem lab partner and long-time crush, who also has his own ‘sins’ to atone to chenle and wooyoung (something about ditching them at a party because he saw an injured cat stuck up on a tree on the way to the venue). the two of you stand in front of the “bang chan altar” for 10 minutes with han jisung in a questionable pope costume, the two of you attracting passersby who are mostly your classmates murmuring “oh my god, y/n and felix?” or “i knew it! those two are so cute together!” as the two of you are forced into exchanging cereal box rings and saying impromptu vows. 

what you didn’t expect from this experience, however, is felix suddenly confessing in his vows, clearing his throat awkwardly while sliding the purple plastic ring on your ring finger and saying, “this isn’t how i imagined it to go but we’re both here, all of our classmates are here, and you’re looking really pretty today so, uh...y/n, i just want to say that i’ve really liked you for a long time.” 

your grandmother shows you her first look of disapproval over your weaved fabrics when you start creating pieces that seem to resemble the aura of a boy. as much as you don’t want to see her disappointed, tradition still stands that you have to design your fabrics according to how you would interpret your dreams and since you turned 18, all you’ve been dreaming about is your potential soulmate. of all 7 billion in the world, you just have to be one of the rare ones with the ability to interpret your dreams on textile and have these said dreams be your soulmate bond to someone else as well. instead of arbitrary colors or shapes resembling nature like your grandmother and everyone else, you’re trying to recreate the face of a boy your age with the kindest smile you’ve ever seen and the prettiest brown eyes; instead of putting the sounds of the ocean or the chirping of birds as they would be usually heard in dreams onto colorful fabric, you’re trying to mix red, orange, and yellow dyes on threads just to try and capture seungmin’s golden voice whenever he would sing to you in your dreams. your soulmate becomes your muse, the lasting impressions he makes on you in the 3 real-time seconds of dreaming that you spend with him embedding themselves into the blanket you’ve been tasked to make for the winter. 

seungmin is more than flattered of course, finding genuine fascination in what you do and excitement to see you in person once university allows him. it’s only at the end of the year, however, right on christmas day, when he finally sees you on vacation in your town with his family—finding you at the beach party his new friend hyunjin invites him to where you dance around the bonfire with your own friends, wrapped in the blanket made of warm colors that just scream his very soul and aura. your eyes meet almost as soon as he arrives because of your soulmate pull, causing you to become flustered at realizing that you’re wearing the blanket design that’s been inspired by him, and before he knows it, kim seungmin is running to you and grabbing your arm. “hi.” he pants breathlessly, his relieved smile shining brightly against the orange glow of the fire to your side. “finally. it’s you!” 

jeongin stares at his laptop for a solid 5 minutes in complete and utter confusion before his roommate seungmin pokes him on the side of his head and asks if he passed his dream university, snapping him out of reality. it’s not that he didn’t pass the entrance exam, definitely not because he’s still feeling confident from answering it from almost 6 months ago. rather, it’s that the acceptance e-mail sent to him by the university is for a completely different name, your name out of all applicants out there—that one person he sat next to at cram school and turned down at the end of the summer. logging into his social media accounts, he sees people voicing out their concerns for similar incidents, that they’re getting acceptance or rejection e-mails of other applicants instead of their own, and posts that aim to track down who’s gotten who to remedy this. when seungmin hears this, he simply shrugs and urges jeongin to simply message you and get over it since the two of you are connected on social media anyway. but still, jeongin takes another hour to message you with a simple, “hi, i got your e-mail. should i forward it to you?” even closing his laptop in a hurry and running back into the comfort of his blanket as soon as he hears the dreadful ping of the messenger app. he knows he shouldn’t be flustered to message you, especially with something as important as your acceptance letter, but he can’t help but feel weak in the knees at the thought of having to talk to you again after almost a year because all he can think about is that he really shouldn’t have rejected you in that offer to go to the movies in the first place. 

what’s worse is that, since he sent the message over online, his thoughts can’t help but overthink your simple “really? here’s my e-mail” reply that comes not even a second after he sends his message—even more your follow-up reply of “i got yours too btw! i’ll forward it to you when you forward mine” when he doesn’t reply immediately. jeongin’s fingers uncontrollably shake as he musters up the courage to reply, face blushing red the entire time as he e-mails you your acceptance letter. all this time, considering how the two of you haven’t talked in a long time, he only thinks about one ambitious thought: “is it a bad time? to bring up that movie offer again?” 

[purplesurveys]

1275

When you were younger, did your mother or father ever let you open a few presents before Christmas or your birthday even arrived?  We open all our presents the night of Christmas Eve to begin with; but no, they don’t tease by letting us open a few of them before our usual schedule.

If you could receive a 100 dollar gift card for either blouses, pants, dresses, shoes or purses, which would you chose?  If I could change blouses to shirts, then I would go with that because I’ve recently gotten into t-shirts and sweatshirts and no longer the trendy and preppy tops I used to like haha. But if not, I would go for shoes.

What is your favorite thing to do after crying? Ex: Sleep, listen to music, have some alone time, talk to someone, etc?  It varies as it depends on how much I cried. The harder I cried the more I’d want to sleep it off, because it can actually get pretty exhausting. Sometimes I’ll reach out, sometimes I write. It’s really different every time, but at the end I’m just glad I can no longer even remember the last time I cried out of sadness.

Do you think Trump will be assassinated, or will he survive his term?  Well we know the answer to this. It’s satisfying to notice him disappear off the face of the Earth immediately after his term, though. I don’t have a clue what he’s up to now.

Last time you felt suicidal?  For some reason I felt down last Thursday and I felt the slightest, slightest tinge of suicidal thoughts. No idea where it came from.

Last time you had butterflies?  Ugh idk but it was probably BTS-related hahahahahahah

Biggest asshole you know?  Certain politicians.

Did you ever leave someone because you know you’d hurt them?  No, I was on the opposite side of the coin for this one. I was broken up with because they believed they would hurt me, if not already doing so.

What song did you last listen to?  Hip Hop Phile by BTS.

Ever ridden in a police car?  Nopes.

Ever witnessed a murder?  Hmm, not that I can recall. I do remember having to monitor crime stories for one of my very first journalism assignments and the one time I didn’t tag along to the fieldwork with my classmates, they got to witness a stabbing incident :/ By itself of course it always sucks to have violent situations like those, but as a reporter it would’ve been interesting to see the scene and its aftermath.

Have you ever lied under oath?  I don’t think so, no. I can’t even remember the last time I was put under oath.

Have you ever failed a subject before? I’ve failed exams but never an entire class.

Have you ever had a deadly animal as a pet?  No.

Have you ever kissed someone of the same gender?  Well yeah, I dated one.

Have you ever been in a hot tub before?  Sure.

Have you ever been to a movie that sold out?  I’ve never experienced trying to buy tickets only to find out they’re all sold out, but that’s also probably because we have hundreds of malls in Manila alone and you can always find a theatre that are still offering tickets.

What movie last made you too scared to go to sleep?  I’m not usually that way with horror movies, but I do remember running into a jumpscare on TikTok while I was scrolling at 3 AM. Not fun.

When you’re on a laptop, do you hook up a mouse or use the touchpad?  Touchpad. I never use a mouse.

What’s your mom’s mom’s name?  Agnes.

Would it be hard seeing someone else kiss the person you like?  I’m not interested in anyone so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Have you ever been tempted to steal?  Sure, but the urge is never so strong.

What is the main character’s name in the book you’re reading? I’m not reading anything.

Do you have a favorite local band? Who are they? Nah. I did have a Ben&Ben phase, though I haven’t revisited their music in a long time.

Who’s the last person you saw naked, aside from yourself?  I’m not sure about completely naked, probably still my ex. As for partially naked, my dad sometimes goes shirtless at home as most Filipino dads do lol.

Who’s your favorite horror monster/killer?  The most iconic for me would be that porcupine looking ass from Resident Evil 4, I believe it was meant to be for one of the boss stages or something. Anyway, it’s memorable for me just because that fucker had been impossible to defeat and I loved watching my older cousin do attempt after attempt. I don’t think he ever got to beat him and by the time he did us cousins were already adults, lol.

On a side note, we called him ‘Porcupine’ as kids since a shitload of spikes would stick out of him unpredictably during the boss stage, and I thought that nickname had been just our thing; but I’m actually surprised that that villain actually comes up when you do a simple ‘Resident Evil 4 porcupine’ search haha. I guess other people called him the same thing too.

What kind of music do you prefer to listen to when driving?  I usually put on a playlist of BTS’ rapline; I tend to enjoy high-energy songs while driving.

Would you ever own a hairless rat, cat or dog?  I don’t see why I wouldn’t when it comes to the dog. I don’t want a cat or rat. 

All the people you’ve kissed, what did their names start with?  G.

What did you and your ex fight about most?  It was about the deeper, more profound stuff. We never saw eye to eye about the future, if we were helping the other grow, etc. Someone was always scared or insecure about something that the other could never help with fixing.

Don’t you love long hugs?  Sure, I love getting hugs as long as I’m comfy around the one giving it.

And long kisses?  Mhm, they’re nice.

Have you ever purchased condoms?  Only for Angela when she had still been too shy to ask for it herself. 

Have you ever gone on vacation with your boyfriend/girlfriend?  No. We had gone out of town for daytrips, but never for a fully-decked out vacation.

Have you ever trashed your ex’s car after an argument?  I wouldn’t do anything that loud. My resentment’s a lot more reserved and subtle, definitely on the passive-aggressive side.

Would you leave a note on a car claiming responsibility if you damaged it?  If I left like a paint scratch, no. If I was somehow stupid enough to manage wrecking the car then yes.

Have you ever used someone's handicapped parking pass to get a parking spot?  Oh that’s just gross. No. I do remember unknowingly parking over a spot meant for the handicapped once just because the paint was so fucking faded. It was genuinely so hard to tell but in the end I ended up just getting out of the spot and looked for another just to be on the safe, unassholey side.

Are you embarrassed to tell people your job?  Not at all! I love telling people I work in PR and sharing the brands I work with...it’s just a bitch trying to explain what exactly it is I do on a normal day. I’m still blanking out on it now that I’m thinking about it, haha. PR’s a challenge to summarize in one or two sentences.

If you ran over an animal would you keep driving?  I honestly have no clue how I’d deal with it. Ideally I would pull over and help bring it to the side of the road, and try to ask for help from passersby as well. I’m still not sure what I should/would do next.

Where’s the best place to eat a romantic dinner?  French, Spanish, and Italian restaurants always seem to carry a pleasant, date-y atmosphere to them, so any of those cuisines should be ok. I also like quieter restaurants with warm yellow lighting, since that makes me feel at home the most. The place definitely doesn't have to be super popular; I would just want for it to serve good food.

What hobby would you get into if time and money weren’t an issue?  Flying planes.

What would be the most amazing adventure to go on?  Probably something that’s booked with thrill-seeking adventures? Like a day of wakeboarding, paragliding, skydiving, riding an ATV...I would be exhausted as fuck and sleep for the next three days, but I can’t even begin to imagine how fun it would be.

When people come to you for help, what do they usually want help with? Writing stuff. < Yeah, essentially. My friends ask me for general life advice too.

Has anybody criticized the way your significant other looked like?  Yeah. But I always defended her.

Have you written or drawn anything for somebody else?  I mean I’ve written long letters, but I haven’t made a poem or song for anyone.

Who has impressed you most with what they’ve accomplished?  These days it would probably be Arlan. He just finished his Masters in Journalism at Columbia and I couldn’t be more proud. I remember wanting to attend Columbia too, but seeing how my love of journalism turned out...I’ve long accepted the fact that that route was not meant for me, hahaha.

What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?  Finish a painting, which can also serve as a callout to me lol.

What would you rate 10/10?  Seafood.

What do you hope never changes?  My relationships with my best friends.

Would you ever have sex with the last person you texted?  No, I barely have a clue who she is and she seemed decades older when she called me up this morning.

Is there anyone that you’d love to just spill your guts to?  I’m good.

Where is the person you have feelings at right now? 

Are you happy with your relationship status?  Yessssssss. I love not having to worry about another person to spend on LOL

When did you last cry? What for?  Two Saturdays ago. The one-year mark of my breakup had been coming up and an overwhelming wave of emotions just flooded me all of a sudden, I guess. There was happiness and relief from not being stuck in it anymore; feeling sorry for myself as I remembered the turmoil and deterioration I went through in the latter part the year; anger for the shit she pulled; and there was also just the general feeling of being grateful that I’m still here after everything.

Do you think you’re wasting your time on the person you love? 

When’s the next time you’ll kiss someone?  No clue. I’m not holding my breath for it and that’s okay.

Were you ever scared to death of anyone you knew? Or are you currently?  Yeah, unfortunately I’ve always been surrounded by at least one person who terrifies me.

What’s the longest you’ve been away from home by yourself?  Nothing more than a day. That’s something I have yet to try out.

Have you ever been made fun of, because of what you look like?  Athenna was relentless in her insults. I dunno why I was friends her for as long as I was.

Have you ever made fun of others, because of what they look like?  If they’re some random person on the internet with disgusting political views, then yeah; but it’s just thoughts I keep in my head and I never verbalized the bullying. But not anyone in real life. Do you think it’s cute when you’re leaving a place, and a guy says “no hug?”  If I’m friends with the person I’ll banter with them for a bit until I give in for a hug. If it was any other guy I barely know...I would be disgusted and throw them the dirtiest glare.

Do you wear short shorts (if you’re a girl)? I didn't know short shorts were specific to females. < LOL same. Anyway no, not these days. I used to but they’re not really a part of my personal style anymore.

Who are you the most uncomfortable around?  Relatives with the wrong political views.

Who has your heart?  Nobody.

Should cloning ever be allowed to happen?  I don’t see the point. No.

Are you impatient with really shy people? If it gets to the point that they seem aloof and radiate very I-could-not-care-less-about-getting-along-with-any-of-you vibes, then yeah I feel like I would get irritated pretty fast. But I was an extremely shy person once too, so I’m typically friendly with them and I would usually be That person who constantly stays next to them so they feel like they belong.

Does your house have air conditioning throughout, or do you have one that sits in your window?  It sits in the window, as with most households here.

What is the most ridiculous band name you’ve heard recently?  I haven’t encountered anything wacky recently.

Would you ever get a fashion mullet?  No.

Do you believe that Jesus lived and is returning?  No.

Do you believe in spiritual gifts?  No.

Do you believe in callings?  Not really, no.

If you were rich, would you get a professional photoshoot done?  Hell no. I get extremely sheepish in front of a camera and a thousand times worse at posing.