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wave-to-jenny · 11 months ago

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The World Is My Oyster

Literary Journalism By Jenny Park

As a citizen of South Korea, Korean Pop music has always played an enormously influential role in my upbringing. It was the 26th of May in the year 2023 when I had been compelled by my sense of admiration. As the season of change comes to a close and the humidity of summer slowly rises, I found “change” within myself when I came across a documentary video of the, back then, one-year-old KPop girl group called LE SSERAFIM under the company Source Music. Originally, all that I had known back then was that they were a six-member group turned 5 and that three of their oldest members had come from a KPop survival show called Produce48 — a brutal reality competition show wherein numerous trainees from Japanese girl group AKB48 and others from a variety of companies are sent to compete in singing, dancing, and rapping to showcase their skills and last until the end of the show through the votes of the judges as well as the viewers — but what had caught my eye was the title of the YouTube documentary; The World Is My Oyster.

A total of 4 videos, 20 minutes each, and the gut-wrenching reality behind the adversities of these girls working like dogs to achieve their lifelong dreams. That was what I had understood right then and there. The documentary itself reveals the triumphs and hardships the girls had to go through to prepare to meet the world as LE SSERAFIM.

Episode 01. The beginning. Just like staring at an empty canvas, the beginning, the start, and the forefront is always the most difficult. When the group first came together, the girls had all been contacted by HYBE Labels underscoring a similar statement of “I want you to join the team.” With fluttering feelings of both nervousness and excitement, each of the girls — Sakura, Kim Chaewon, and Huh Yunjin — return from where they once were to become a member of a team of possible strangers. “It’s a bit of a pressure to be carrying the name Miyawaki Sakura,” “I want to show a side of me that’s new and better than when I was in IZ*ONE,” “It felt strange. Other companies have contacted me but I was just going to go back to school. I thought that I had nothing left to do with KPop.” Once again, starting the training process with singing, dancing, media training, and language training, their lives were flipped upside down when one of the trainees — Haruka — was announced to be eliminated from the team. The brutal truth is that even though you have trained together, ate together, and spent nearly 24/7 together, in the end, you may end up in entirely different directions. The cold reality here is that reasons as simple as not fitting the aesthetic or vision of the team can get you removed. As the remaining three were left in a dark place, not knowing when they would debut or if they would even get to debut together, a bright light from the Netherlands has given them hope. Nakamura Kazuha, a girl who had been lost, found a new sense of interest in none other than KPop. A simple dream, yet so far away. From learning an entirely new language, being far away from family and from what you were used to, and doing a 180 from ballet to hip hop, waacking, and more. Not even three days later, the final member Hong Eunchae, born in 2006, entered the room.

Episode 02. The narrative of LE SSERAFIM. With the diverse backgrounds of each of the members — Sakura who has been an idol for over 10 years, coming back with her third debut, Chaewon who is reclaiming her identity and showing the world a new version of herself, Yunjin who had initially given up on her dream to simply live her life as a normal girl in New York, Kazuha who wanted to find a new passion within herself, and Eunchae who had been waiting for what felt like years to achieve the dream she has had since she was a little girl — the story they are trying to tell is towards the people talking about the past, they say that they do not need the past because “We are stepping into the future fearlessly. We won’t let the past hold us back.” To tell the audience that this is who they are, this is their story, and this is what they have been through. From going to work at 9:30 in the morning, having one-on-one lessons, meeting with the rest of the team to dance for up to at least seven hours a day, to going home at dawn. That vicious cycle of being in the South Korean media industry had just gotten even more difficult. With everyone’s eyes on you and all that you give to satisfy them, all you get in return is “you’re a bad singer,” which only further instills the insecurity and fear of entering the recording booth and wanting fewer and fewer parts in a song that tells your story. However, even when the girls’ debut becomes delayed, practices get tougher, and even when one’s health deteriorates, they have each other. Five girls who had been strangers not long ago, become a true team — a family — as they spend every second, minute, and hour of their days with one another and another piece of data enters the memory card.

Episode 03. The process of transformation. From wanting to show a new side of themselves and the overbearing thoughts of “If I had just lived a normal life and did not become a trainee, then would I have been freer? Was it right to give that life up?,” to the thoughts of wanting to do more, to experience and experiment further, to create pieces that are their very own right from their fingertips to the pen and papers laying on the mattress of the bed as the guitar lays taught on Huh Yunjin’s hands as a means of consolation and fascination. Every one of those girls has led what they had considered normal lives, and yet here they were doubting themselves and finding ways to overcome that intimidation and fear of being the most experienced and having shown the world who they once were, of being different, of choosing an entirely new path, and even that of being the youngest and constantly pushing yourself to catch up to the rest. Yet, each one of them shows that their hard work paved through until the end.

Episode 04. I am Fearless. The birth of LE SSERAFIM to the rest of the world finally arrived on the 2nd of May 2022. Fearless, is a befitting song title for the group who truly showed that they were brave throughout their pre-debut journey. Likewise, the name LE SSERAFIM is an anagram for the words I’M FEARLESS, marking the beginning of their success as a group that has now become akin to family. But before the group had been fully exposed to the idol industry, I could feel the buzz of their excitement through the screen of my phone as their album preparations had finished, their schedules were filled with different variety shows and live singing programs for idols, and their debut showcase was merely weeks away. However, when times get easy, it also gets rough. Since their debut was not far from approaching, they had to get stricter with each step, each stretch of the arm, facial expressions, their appearances, and their conditions. Fixing what they were lacking with the limited time they had was not an easy feat. As each one of them came together and polished endlessly at what they were given, the girl group became the talk of the town as news got out that they were debuting. Numerous articles in the South Korean media stating “HYBE’s First Girl Group Debut Countdown,” “First Reveal of LE SSERAFIM’s Visuals,” and “FEARLESS Showcase with Over 100,000 Concurrent Visitors” appeared as the group set their foot on stage for the first time as a team. Their team name plastered all around the big stage as they prepared to show their faces and their skills to those who had been eagerly waiting. Just as the LED stage cover slid up, the roar of the fans’ cheers filled the stadium to the brim with passion and enthusiasm as the members were slowly revealed to the world. The sea of white lights and banners printed with the team logo had spread chills all over me even just as a simple audience of this documentary and it was right there where I told myself that they belonged on the stage, they should not be separated from performing because that is what makes them feel alive. “I’m an idol because it makes me happy,” “My driving force is being on stage,” “I don’t have any regrets,” “We worked so hard and I want to show them that.”

The journey of LE SSERAFIM from their beginnings to their debut as a cohesive group is a testament to their unwavering determination and passion for their craft. Through the challenges of training, self-doubt, and the pressures of the industry, they have emerged as a courageous and united team. Their story is one of resilience, friendship, and the pursuit of their dreams. As they step into the spotlight, they carry with them the message that they are not bound by their pasts, but instead, they are boldly embracing the future. LE SSERAFIM’s debut marks not only the beginning of their music careers but also the start of a new chapter filled with endless possibilities and achievements because they are FEARLESS.

#kpop #kpop gg #kpopidol #girl group #le sserafim #fearless #the world is my oyster #literature #poetry #creative writing #creative nonfiction

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utilitycaster · 3 years ago

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Thanks folks! I can't quite write the same intensity of essay for everyone both because Caleb's epilogue was an especially dramatic one, as well as the fact that there was something specifically to push back on (the idea that a straight-up revenge narrative would be superior, which, it would not), but I can at least give you an understanding of why these are good endings, and in a couple of cases push back on the things I have seen from the fandom.

I think most dislike of the ending of Campaign 2 comes from projection in the end. I really do understand the desire to take a flamethrower to everyone who hurt you or who ignored that you were being hurt, but Caleb is not here to be the vessel of that; he's a character Liam created to tell a story, and that's simply not the story he was telling and the signs are clear throughout. The same goes for the other characters and their creators. A character's ending is not a universal statement that this is the correct or only way forward; it's saying "this is how this person chose to live their life." Most criticism seems to attribute a universality that was never present nor intended.

Caduceus

This one is pretty short because Caduceus, is ultimately, a very simple person. As Taliesin said about both him and Molly, he did not need to change. Now, he does change, but it's in very small ways: learning more about the world around him and developing the ability to express negative emotions to others. But the story is still quite simple: Caduceus is left as the sole guardian of a dying temple. He doesn't know if he's the only member of his family left and the temple will die with him, he's alone and depressed and doesn't know how to move forward, and then he finally gets a tangible sign, and he goes through a huge barrage of terrible and wonderful things, and he saves his family, staves off the creeping death of his temple, and saves the world, and throughout the whole thing he really just wants to go home and be with the family he was so terrified he'd lost that it - pun and reference fully intended - paralyzed him for a decade. Caduceus's story is one of someone metaphorically trapped in stone unfreezing in his own way. And it changes him! Had Calliope returned in episode 28, rather than half the Nein, would Caduceus then go on walkabouts with her? Almost certainly not! But Caduceus's story is not one of being abandoned by the rest of the Mighty Nein; he has a family, and he has a temple, and that is where he wants to be.

Veth

Veth's is also a relatively straightforward and short one: Veth had a pretty concrete goal, and she achieved it in episode 97, with the help of the rest of the party, and then, much like Caduceus, she wanted to return home. Home was not, for her, a place, but it was a family, and she spent much of her time after her halfling body was restored asking herself why he wasn't with Yeza and Luc. But at the same time, she too changed in ways beyond the physical. She had developed confidence in her own skills and become a proficient magic user, and so while she returned to her family, their situation changed dramatically, and her role expanded to include not just wife and mother and apothecary's assistant, but to also encompass her skills with the crossbow and with magic. Like Caleb, she becomes a teacher, and can show people their own potential in a more caring and safe environment than the one which forged her.

Beau and Yasha

The usual criticism here is that it's too traditional; that it's disappointing for Yasha to become a housewife. There's honestly not much I've seen regarding disappointment with Beau's story (unless they wish she'd ended up with Jester instead, and when they do I rarely see any indication of what their life might look like). So I am not entirely sure what to push back on here, but: Beau's story was a very subtle one because I think of everyone, she least knew what she wanted other than "not being here, not being under anyone's control, and being respected." She doesn't want to return to the household in which she was abused; and for most of the story, she has reservations about the Cobalt Soul, an institution she thought to be complicit in her father's wishes. When that's resolved and they discipline not only her father but also one of their own, she's able to find a home in the Cobalt Soul, where she is valued and recognized.

Yasha, meanwhile, is tired. She was raised in a nomadic warrior society and given a name under which she chafed, and then they killed the woman she loved because she was not the one she chose. Yasha has been used and controlled, repeatedly, for her ability to kill. Being able to lay down that sword and to put down roots with the woman she has chosen to love is a profoundly radical act. She has broken literal and metaphorical chains to get to a point where she can make her own decisions.

Thematically, Beau and Yasha's story is one of rejecting what people who hurt them told them they had to be, and of becoming a person who chooses her own destiny. A sword on its own is not empowering; it is the ability to pick up or lay down the sword solely of one's own free will.

Fjord and Jester

Fjord and Jester's ending is I think the one that throws people through a loop the most, because it is left the most open. Fjord has very concrete unfinished business, and Jester's unfinished business is expansive and never-ending - the act of adventuring, as she tells Artagan.

Still, just as Beau and Yasha's ending is a story of rejecting expectations in favor of choosing themselves and each other, so too is Fjord and Jester's. But instead of fighting those expectations, they both adapted to become people who would meet those artificial standards. To an extent they enclosed themselves, rather than were trapped by others, and through the campaign helped each other escape - and in doing so, found their own way out.

Fjord and Jester both compared themselves - impossibly - to their parental figures. Fjord adapted aspects of Vandran, down to his voice, in the hopes that this might give him a small amount of power after a lifetime of being at the mercy of the cruel demands of others. He is only able to abandon that when he, as himself, can no longer solve the problem by being agreeable or by making demands - when all he can do is walk out and hope it's enough to save himself. It is, still, a leap of faith at the end of the story; he is still at times under attack. But he is able to value himself and his own convictions, after they were the only thing that could save him.

Jester compared herself to her mother, and saw herself as lacking Marion's talent in charm. In holding her mother in such a high esteem, she found she couldn't ask or express certain things to Marion and had to fit a certain role, even though Marion never shared that feeling or expected this of her. It was always a self-inflicted expectation. It took the immense pressure of another figure she saw as above her and a person to please - Artagan - asking her for help for her to be honest with her own emotions. Jester's story is about learning to stop idolizing others or comparing herself to them and to choose herself, even the difficult parts - to stop living in stories and to live in the world, with all that entails.

Where Beau and Yasha's breaking of the expectations around them is exhibited through their choices, Fjord and Jester's is exhibited through their freedom and their ability to finally be honest with themselves.

#for real though all the C2 couples are like. thematic resonances my beloved #recognition of the self through the other. plato's symposium. i am lying on the floor now and I shall not get up.#critical role #mighty nein

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notnctu · 4 years ago

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jaehyun: the charming

━ welcome home to housemating smut series :)

☆ click the link above to read background info about this housemate!

☆ GENRE: smut, pwp ☆ DETAILS: fem!reader, college!au, housemate!au ☆ WARNINGS: explicit language, nicknames, dirty talking, possessiveness, rough sex, praise kink, oral (giving and receiving), spitting, choking, unprotected (wrap up yall!!) ☆ WC: 4.1k ☆ SYNOPSIS: A harmless game of Truth Or Dare with your housemates reveals Jaehyun’s true desires and has him eyeing you the entire night.

☆ AUTHORS NOTE: this is the only part for jaehyun ! sorry for the long wait,, i started this during my writing hiatus and did not have much motivation to finish it since its been really difficult to write smut lately :/ regardless, i hope you can leave me some feedback if you liked it <3 doyoung’s part will be the next in the series once i get to it !

“If you could kiss anyone in this room right now, who would it be?” Johnny beckons his drink to Jaehyun, who blinks at him with knitted eyebrows and a quizzical expression.

It’s one of those rare nights where all your housemates are home and Doyoung is actually out of his room to participate in everyone’s foolishness. All six of you sit comfortably in the living room as the fifth round of Truth or Dare commences.

You share the large couch with Jaemin and Haechan, sandwiching you in between them happily. Doyoung, Jaehyun and Johnny are seated in their own respective chairs that circle the tiny coffee table in the center.

And if your housemates could be any more distracting, Jaehyun sits laid-back without a shirt on and grey sweatpants that fit loosely on his legs, manspreading as if he has all the space in the world. His soft hair falls messily around his face from constantly running his hands through it and his abs flex without him needing to do much.

It’s hard not to stare, but no one in the room calls you out for doing so. They’ve all stared at you plenty enough times on other occasions, so it would be hard for any of them to give you a counterargument. Jaehyun simply looks good enough to devour, and he can say the same for you as he steals sly glances your way.

Every subtle connection of smoldering eye contact sends a thrill down your core, and the smirk paired with his dotted dimple has you swooning for him over and over. Jaehyun knows every way to drive you wild without needing to say or touch you.

It’s unbelievable how that man has only allowed you to see his intimacy once with the way he whistles whenever you walk down the stairs in a cute outfit or how often he compliments your butt just for the pure satisfaction of you having one. Despite having the highest body count in the entire house, he has great self control and never comes off as being too needy.

And every time he is needy, he already has another girl in his room to satisfy him. So, this never gave you another opportunity to sleep with him as much as you wanted to. If you weren’t so bashful, you might’ve had enough courage to just walk into his room and ask.

Nonetheless, here you both are: sitting across from each other during a slowly escalating game of Truth or Dare and eyeing each other every chance you can get.

“Shouldn’t you ask y/n that question?” Jaehyun mumbles, finding Johnny’s question rather ridiculous since the ratio in the room is 1 girl to 5 guys and finds no curiosity to know how bad of a kisser the rest of his housemates are. “I think you’d rather know her answer than mine.”

You clear your throat when every attention is drawn toward you, expecting you to give a truthful response when it isn’t even your turn. “What if I didn’t pick truth?”

“You want a dare?” Jaemin rests a hand on your bare thigh and turns delightfully toward you with a dark mischievous gleam in his eye.

Gulping, you try your best to diffuse the situation. “It’s not my turn.”

“I’ll give my turn to you.” Jaehyun smiles and proceeds to gesture toward you to speak.

Bewildered, you’re looking to Doyoung to protest about such unfair grounds of switching the rules. However, he doesn’t say a word, shrugging it off like it’s not a big deal. “You’re all unbelievable.” You scoff sarcastically.

“C’mon, it’s just a friendly game. Everyone wants you to go.” Haechan clicks his tongue out of impatience, the anticipation practically suffocating the whole house.

“Ask me when it’s my turn.” You stand your ground and send Jaehyun a quick glare.

The tension drops instantly from the stiff atmosphere. Haechan’s groan erupts beside you as he sits back against the couch with his arms crossed.

“Okay, buttercup. I’ll answer Johnny’s ridiculous question, but know that I have a good one for you.” Jaehyun leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped together loosely. “I’d kiss y/n.”

Your breath hitches, but no one else is actually surprised by his answer. “Yeah, I’d kiss y/n too if this was my selection pool.” Doyoung remarks with a roll in his eyes.

“I mean,” Jaehyun sits back coolly in his chair, hands stretched behind his head and every muscle flexed in view. Every movement has your mouth watering at his impressive body on display. “Even if we were playing with other people, I’d still choose y/n.” A dimple smile causes your heart to beat rapidly.

Johnny scoffs, “if we circled up all your flings, you’d still choose y/n?”

Jaehyun ponders the hypothetical for a second, but his eyes land back on yours and every hesitation disappears. “Yeah. She has the softest lips.” He says, very matter of fact.

Your fingers unconsciously graze against your lips briefly, before you clear your throat and shake away the power of his arousing words. “Okay, okay. Let’s move on?”

“Okay, y/n. Truth or Dare?” Jaehyun picks this open opportunity to bring the attention back to you. Your housemates wait patiently for your choice, with eyebrows raised in the thick tension that this simple game has built up.

With shifty eyes and a dry throat, you mutter. “Dare.”

There is a notable sparkle in Jaehyun’s dark lustful orbs. “I dare you to kiss the person that you think is the hottest in this room.”

“Well, it would be difficult to kiss myself.” Rolling your eyes, the edge in your tone is enough to make the rest of them snicker.

“I’m done after this round. It’s always the weirdest twists whenever we play games like this together.” Doyoung crosses his arms, throwing a small fit at the request.

Johnny smirks, “because you know y/n wouldn’t kiss you?”

Doyoung’s mouth opens to protest, but he falls short of a defensive response. He takes his defeat and slumps back against the chair, pouty and grumpy. “Just get it over with and kiss Jaehyun.”

With a turn of events, you get up from your spot on the couch. Jaehyun follows your every move, your stare never leaving his own. Like a lost puppy, you lead him into thinking the kiss would be for him. However, you lean forward and hold Doyoung’s chin gently, planting a soft kiss on the equally shocked boy.

“I think Doyoung is the hottest because he treats me with the most chivalry.” The sweetness that taints your mocking words has Doyoung turning red and Jaehyun turning into stone. The charming smile that lights up your darkest parts is gone, and Jaehyun blinks back at you with a tight jaw.

Jaemin and Haechan read the room too well, excusing themselves before the tension reaches its peak. Doyoung gulps, glancing between you and Jaehyun, and awkwardly makes his way back to his room. Johnny chuckles at the abrupt end of the night, patting Jaehyun’s shoulder lightly before also heading up to bed.

Every next move is crucial. With your weight barred on your left leg, you cross your arms with as much attitude as you can to push Jaehyun’s buttons further. “Jaehyun, if you really wanted a kiss, you could just ask me without wasting a turn.”

“Where’s the fun in that, buttercup? You clearly like testing your limits.” His voice drops at the end of his sentence. Jaehyun stands up, approaching you slowly. “But if you want my attention, you could just ask me without trying to make me jealous.”

His boldness catches you off guard, leaving you a bit speechless to formulate a proper explanation. Your hesitation gets caught in your throat when Jaehyun lightly places his hand on your waist. “It’s late, we should probably get to bed.” His raspy baritone cadence rumbles your chest.

Fingers graze his arm softly, but he pulls away before you can get a hold of him. “Are you actually going to sleep?”

Jaehyun walks to the bottom of the staircase, motioning you to walk first. “No, I’ll be up thinking about you.” A smirk finishes his sensual taunt and you cautiously head up the stairs.

He follows directly after you and a whistle escapes his lips. “Have I given you your daily ass compliment yet?”

“Got one this morning.” With each step, Jaehyun is quick to match.

“Well, you look amazing everyday.” He meets you at the top of the steps and when you’re ready to part back into your room, he stops you. “Where’s my kiss goodnight, baby?”

You can’t possibly count the numerous times you’ve rolled your eyes being around him. “In my room, if you dare wish to enter.” Though your statement was clearly sarcastic, Jaehyun raises an questionable eyebrow.

“I’ll only come if you let me in.” His innocent eyes do not match his sinister tone and his hidden innuendos.

“I guess I always go into your room, it would be nice to have a change.” Taking his hand, you lead him down the hallway. The doors of your other housemates are oddly closed, but you figured they wanted some privacy. His warm hand feels rough against your palm and your heart drums as you two inch closer to your bedroom.

Jaehyun gently closes your door and examines your room as if he’s never been inside. “Don’t be a stranger.” You say, dropping his hand and sitting at the edge of your bed.

“Do you leave your underwear drawer open for all your friends to see?” He snickers, his pinky holding your special red lace panties up in the air. Your eyes go wide as you quickly yank the material out of his possession and shove the cabinet closed.

“I wouldn’t have figured you were the nosey type.” You grumble, but he takes this close proximity to pull you into his bare chest. His firm hand gives your ass a soft squeeze.

“It was quite obviously on display.” His dark whisper sends a chill down your spine and butterflies to swirl in the pit of your core. The faint smell of his body wash suffocates you all around and his sultry stare has you melting in his hands. It is so difficult to resist him, you want everything that is Jung Jaehyun.

Your words are quite possibly caught in your throat, but the hesitation does not show in your expression. Lightly, your fingertips trace the outline of his biceps and his dark stare follows every drag. Admittedly, Jaehyun will find any excuse to grab your attention. Call him possessive for no good reason, but something inside him bubbles with envy whenever your other housemates even leave a lingering stare.

Although he’s not the type to be vocal about it, his facial expressions speak volumes. May it be his competitive nature, but he can’t let the others have you. You have unknowingly become off-limits to the rest, but frankly, you don’t care all too much. Your prize is already in front of you.

“Are you going to kiss me or do I have to wait all night again?” With every will, you try your best to control the nervous tremble in your bold rhetorical question.

Jaehyun wastes no more time; soft lips crash into your own and you feel like you’re floating. Only he can make you feel this way. Hands in hair, the tug on his fresh locks has him moaning through the kiss. Jaehyun loses himself in you, rubbing his semi-hard cock against your thigh and gripping your ass harshly in his hand.

Every drip of saliva is swapped in the mess of your connected mouths and you’re reminded of how rough this man enjoys to be. Your knees buckle at the thought of him and Jaehyun is quick to hold you up, placing you strategically at the end of your bed.

Pulling away, he stands in front of you with the largest dick print against his sweatpants, along with a small wet spot. There are no bashful words exchanged as the room is filled with heavy breathing and sultry looks. Jaehyun guides your hand to his waistband, silently waiting for you to free him.

Looking up at your beautiful boy, the neediness of release almost ruins his perfect charming look. Hair is tousled wildly across his eyes and his bottom lip escapes underneath the top row of his pearly teeth. He just looks so fucked out already, you can’t imagine how much he was holding back earlier.

You pull down enough of his pants for his dick to spring up right in front of you, not expecting the lack of underwear. Your small gasp cause him to chuckle, pushing the back of your head forward toward his hard cock. “Surprised?”

“You weren’t wearing underwear the entire night?” You question him as your hands cup his balls. A sharp intake of breath is his only response before he can compose himself.

Through gritted teeth, Jaehyun stutters, “Like you were?” He throws his head back when your warm tongue flicks against his throbbing red tip. Every vein in his arm and neck pops on display as he grabs a hold of your hair.

“You wouldn’t know.” You snicker, running your tongue up and down his shaft. Jaehyun looks back down at your piercing eyes and his dick right above your cheek.

A smirk grows devilishly, “I’m about to find out.” Pushing your shoulder back gently, your back lands comfortably on the mattress. Your heart is racing as Jaehyun gets down on his knees, situating himself in between your open legs.

“May I?” He asks, warm hands on your inner thighs as he patiently waits for your answer.

“Yes.” Jaehyun pulls your shorts down to reveal your favorite comfort cotton panties that have faded from their original color. Naturally, you grow embarrassed and quickly slap your legs closed before Jaehyun can process.

He blinks at you questionably, quite taken aback by the abrupt motion. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s just say I wasn’t completely expecting to sleep with anyone tonight. I’m not quite prepared down there.” Your gaze drops and you anxiously fist your sheets in your sweaty hands.

Jaehyun nods, understanding your implications. “I don’t care about those things. You are…” landing a quick peck on your bare knee, he rubs reassuring circles with his thumb. “.... the prettiest baby ever. And if you’d let me, buttercup, I want to make you feel good.”

He has always been suave with his words, as if he knows the handbook to get butterflies fluttering in your stomach. Slowly, your legs open back up before him and the slightest groan rumbles from his throat.

The wet patch on your panties is hard to ignore and he’s mesmerized, to say the least. He peels down your underwear and uses his thumb to spread your lips. Leaning forward, Jaehyun lightly licks at your erect clit and your twitch in response is enough to feed into his ego.

He dives hungrily, eating you out until your eyes roll to the back of your head and your back is arching off of the bed. He flattens his tongue against you, pushing in and out of your dripping hole in a rhythmic motion. His nose is deep in your skin, intoxicated by your arousal, and his eyes are drinking up your uncontrollable reactions.

It’s as if electricity shocks through your lower half. The pleasure that comes with every lick and sweet suckle has you panting for more. His name echoes from your tender lips while Jaehyun inserts two fingers to stretch you out. The initial ache subsides into an indescribable pleasure; it’s the feeling of being full of anything mixing with the sensitivity of tongue against clit that has you practically on the verge of release.

Jaehyun isn’t going to give it to you that easily. The moment your moans grow bolder, your legs begin to shake, your hand putting a little more pressure on his head, he pulls away and gets up. A desperate sigh crushes your chest as the build up leads to dissatisfaction. Jaehyun wipes his chin with the back of his hand, his two fingers glistening before being shoved into your own mouth.

“That’s my good girl, give yourself a taste.” His hot words cause you to flood a bit more, the feeling of wetness pooling at your core. However, you two toy each other with no end as he is provoked by the way your tongue sensually swirls around his digits and how your hips keep squirming closer to the edge. “How badly do you want to get fucked?”

His firm hand holds your moving hips into the bed and you’re aching to be filled with his dick. He’s so hard that it slaps against his abdomen, red tip and spewing precum. Nonetheless, his self restraint is quite strong as he notices the defeat in your expression. Enough teasing, your body wants him endlessly.

“Jaehyun, I want you to give me all that you got.” At the end of your request, he enters you slowly with a breathy moan. The stretch is much more than his two fingers, causing you to squirm and wiggle. Inch by inch, Jaehyun fills you to your brim and pauses for you to adjust to his size.

“Fuck, it’s been awhile since we’ve slept together. I almost forgot how tight you are.” How could this man possibly smile with so much innocence while saying such foul things? The next action causes you to go a bit dizzy as he spits down at your clit and rubs it lovingly with his thumb. You practically see stars on your mundane ceiling.

He starts moving his hips, deep long thrusts pulling out to only sharply fill you up again. Jaehyun is relentless as every thrust forward has you moving more and more up the bed. Your legs are pressed against your chest, folding you over to hit your sweet spot. When his tip grazes upon the greatest feeling ever, your grip on the sheets grows tighter and he’s smirking at how your mouth hangs open in pure ecstasy and shock.

“You’re so good at taking my cock.” He pants, moving faster than before. “My baby hasn’t been fucked properly in a while, has she?”

You’re at a loss for words at every drag and push. Regardless of you wanting to speak, no words seem to make its way out. Jaehyun narrows his eyes at you, dark grin and a menacing taunt in his low voice. A chuckle begins his sentence, “I know… it’s hard to talk when you feel so good right, buttercup? I can feel you getting more excited down there.”

Placing your legs around his waist, he leans down over you. His sneaky hand travels up your torso, giving your boobs a light squeeze through your shirt. Then, he wraps his hand around your neck gently and carefully, only applying enough pressure to drive you wild.

He breaks his rhythm, reverting back to the previous slow pace. Something about the way you feel around him, hot and tight, needy and wet. Jaehyun just loves how your body reacts.

The feeling of soreness occupies your lower half and you’re more than certain it’s going to be rough tomorrow morning. Every thrust is agonizing, yet powerful enough to be felt in your guts. Jaehyun never fails to leave an impression.

Through your moans, you manage to stutter out his name. “Please, harder.” Jaehyun picks you up, hands supporting your butt and pressing your back against your door. Placing your legs down, you’re standing up right facing him with a confused expression at the change of location.

For a brief moment, his lustful glare is warm and friendly. It’s the same look that greets you in the car when he drives you two to campus. It’s the one he often looks at you with across the dinner table, usually accompanied with his robust laughter. Jaehyun looks at you as if he’s only ever seen you.

However, his next words are far from romantic and his hand finds its way to your throat, pinning you up against the cold door. “I want them to hear how good I fuck you.” Them. The rest of your housemates. Knowing that the house is far from soundproof, Jaehyun wants everyone to know how enthusiastic he makes you feel.

“But--” As you begin to protest, he drives his hips up and nestles into you. His free hand grips your waist steadily as he barely pulls out, fucking you deeper until you feel him at the pit of your stomach. There is no ability to hold back your pleasure, moans just naturally fill the room and bounce off every wall.

“Cum for me, I know you’re close.” Jaehyun has no intentions to stop, the feeling of both releases being at the tip of your tongues. “Be the good girl that you are and cum for me.”

The small bubble inside of you is ready to burst. Jaehyun sucks on his fingers to coat them with saliva and reaches down to stroke at your clit. Like a switch, your internal light bulb explodes and every spark of electricity fuels your every vein.

Your orgasm electrifies you, causing every limb to shake uncontrollably and sporadically. Jaehyun keeps thrusting up, helping you ride out the intensity of your high.

“There you go, baby.” A small kiss on your shoulder, he pulls out and the emptiness is felt immediately. Getting on your knees, you take his cock in your mouth to help him finish. He rests his fists on the door, hovering over you as his abs flex beautifully under the fluorescent light. Hollowing out your cheeks, your throat invites him deeper and this causes him to mindlessly thrust into your mouth.

Jaehyun sounds breathy above you, whining about how close he is to cumming. Silence in the room has been replaced with his heavy pants and soft groans, the sound of suckling and slick saliva droning out anything else.

“Fuck, y/n.” He says, as he holds your cheek in his palm and maintains eye contact with you through his brown locks. The view of his dick being swallowed up in your mouth is more than enough to drive him to his edge, strings of cum coating the back of your throat from his release. The saltiness immediately hits your palette.

Jaehyun tosses his head back until the satisfaction dissipates. Slowly pulling himself out, he moves quickly to find you a tissue. For a moment, neither one of you speak as he silently dresses himself and you wipe the remaining spit off of your lips.

He helps you up from the floor, lightly dusting off your bare knees for you. And he says something to break the slightly awkward atmosphere, “are you kicking me out like you do with the rest of your hookups?” Jaehyun laughs, wide smile and dimples deep in his soft cheeks. The glow in his skin radiates in the dimness, he’s a sight that’s too difficult to look away from.

“Did you want to stay?” Tossing on a pair of fresh underwear and pajama shorts, you have a vague memory of Jaehyun holding you after your first fuck together.

Though Jaehyun is your friend before anything else, he responds like every other hookup unsure about the next steps. He shrugs, turning around and tapping his back for you to hop on. “I’ll take you to the bathroom to wash up.”

Jumping on his back and wrapping your arms around his neck, he carries you down the hall to the shared bathroom. “You didn’t exactly answer my question.” Your voice is barely above a whisper, knowing how embarrassed you are going to be the next morning when facing the rest of your housemates.

“I know you’re just going to come into my room anyways, right?” He sets you down and the door to the bathroom swings open to reveal an equally surprised Haechan.

“Shit, you two scared me.” The dramatic boy rests a hand on his chest to calm his startled heart. “You might want to air out the bathroom before doing anything in there.” Jaehyun and Haechan share a laugh as you groan, irritated by the putrid fumes that cursed the poorly ventilated bathroom.

“You’re so gross.” You say, punching Haechan jokingly on the arm.

“Says you.” Haechan pauses to poke at Jaehyun’s bare chest, “and you. We are never playing Truth or Dare ever again.”

“Don’t hate the players, hate the game bro.” Jaehyun snickers.

Haechan pays no more attention to the two of you, back turned and hurrying into his dark room. “I do hate the game now!” He yells in a whisper, shutting his door to end the conversation. You sigh out of relief that Haechan didn’t press for more details or jokes.

Housemates, you never know what adventures you’d run into with them. Nonetheless, you don’t mind and getting to see a shirtless Jaehyun parade around the house is always a treat.

#neosmutcollective #neowritingsnet #kpopscape #nct-writers #neothestars #nct smut #nct scenarios #jaehyun #jaehyun smut #jaehyun scenarios #nct #jung jaehyun #jaehyun scenario #housemating

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inhonoredglory · 3 years ago

Note

another character based question - how do you feel about mikasa? a lot of fans dont like her, im curious about how you feel! - armin anon

Hellooooo Armin Anon. OMG it’s been forever since I had the time to sit down and do a proper meta, and I apologize.

First off, I finished the manga!!! (So, spoilers ahead for anyone else reading this.) I had to lie down after reading 139. It’s a tremendous story and I’m still taking it all in. The set pieces and personal/emotional stakes of everything that happens is just astounding. If it’s one thing Isayama does good, it’s the gut-wrenching personal anguish that underlies the action. I’m absolutely floored. My favorite bit was probably the timey-wimey stuff in Paths and Eren. That blew my freaking mind. But onto Mikasa!!

A Cruel Yet Beautiful World

I remember way back when I started the anime that I started liking Mikasa first out of the group. I liked how sullenly silent and no-nonsense she was, and I liked her loyalty to Eren. Her emotion, especially when Eren died in Trost, was palpable and terrifyingly beautiful. Her grief was incredibly realistic––rushing off with a death wish that even she couldn’t succumb to in the end, because of the drive to fight that she got from Eren. In a world like SNK, her relentlessness breaking through her grief was incredibly moving. And her philosophy is basically the driving theme of SNK: “This is a cruel world, and yet so beautiful.”

This is the same moral message she gives Eren when he can’t find the strength in him to fight Annie––and gives him that warm, understanding, inscrutable smile that allows him to finally accept his own monsters, fight Annie, and save her and Armin. (One of my favorite panels of her from the manga, actually.) Mikasa is basically the first character we meet who embodies this contradictory morality, which grows to engulf SNK and other characters as well (Levi, Reiner, and Armin especially come to mind). Which could be why I was drawn to her at the start, since the complex moral outlook of SNK was the primary reason I fell hard for this story.

(And gosh, it’s tragic to realize that it’s teaching moments like the scene above that made Eren into the person who could influence his own child self to murder, the person who could wipe out so much of humanity, the person who could take Ymir’s challenge to free her by destroying the love of the person who cared the most about him. I’m still processing yo.)

Acker-parallels

I started really analyzing Mikasa when I had to defend her from a friend of mine who accused her of resenting Levi (for beating up Eren) and that’s why she attacked him so violently in the RTS serumbowl. Because of my research into rebutting that, a lot of my affection for Mikasa now comes in seeing the little ways in which she cares and trusts other people, including Armin, Levi, Gabi, and Jean. And her quiet sensibility that goes beyond her love and protectiveness of Eren.

With Levi in particular, I find a lot I like about her. Because you can definitely see her annoyance at him, but she also trusts him more than anyone else in the Corps outside of Armin. After Levi’s violent encounter with Historia, she was the only one who implicitly trusted Levi’s judgement, backing up Armin’s more reasoned logic. She sees beyond her own emotions and even moral feelings and realizes the world is cruel enough that sometimes people have to do dark things to help others and survive.

This is very much the same statement Levi made to the 104th when he had asked them to follow Erwin’s orders when the commander’s plans were questionable on the surface: “Do you trust him? Those dumb enough to say yes… come with me.” These two understand each other on a moral level, and they ask for their comrades’ loyalty without demanding it, because they each know that everyone’s conscience is their own.

There’s a clear parallel between Mikasa and Levi, not only because of their Ackerman heritage and sensibilities (loyal to a fault to their chosen person, impossibly strong, quiet and grim), but their frustration when they cannot protect the people they are responsible for. They both know they are the strongest around, and if they cannot fulfill on that power, a lot of people will die.

There are many moments in which Mikasa puts aside her personal feelings to do her soldierly duty, from leaving Eren to help with the evacuation of Trost to leaving Eren and Armin to fight the Colossal Titan alone in Shigonshina.

And then there’s the fact that Levi’s the one who could break past Mikasa’s headspace and distraction so that she can do the right thing. He understands her strong emotion, he respects it, but he also knows when that has to be put aside for the greater good. But he doesn’t put her down for having those emotions, either.

Strength from Eren, Humanity from Armin

Mikasa’s love and loyalty to Eren challenges her tremendously after the timeskip and her sorrow at Eren’s change is what really stands out to me about her character in the Marley arc. The absolute grief in her eyes when she tells Eren what he’s done is devastating, and it shows just how much goodness and compassion she does have.

And yet she longs to understand Eren, to trust him, to believe there can be something redeeming, and not merely jaded and tired, in what he taught her so many years ago––to fight, to win, to live.

There’s such a difference between these same words said here by Mikasa, so many years later, after so much heartbreak, to the anger and flame that were in them when she first heard them, back when she realized that this was the way of the world. That death and killing happens in the natural world everyday and that’s how you survive. That the world is both cruel and beautiful.

And yet as the years wore on, as Mikasa grew closer to others, found purpose in protecting others, sought a life with Eren… as she wandered further into the forest of life and society and relationships, she lost some of that simple injunction... to live is to fight, to fight is to win. She, like so many of the 104th and the others on this journey, found that it’s not enough to just fight and live and be satisfied. We really want it all to mean something, to have our actions be redemptive. To allow ourselves to believe that we do what we’re doing because we’re not just saving ourselves, but saving others, “saving the world” like Yelena points out (in the forest therapy session pfff). And it’s that drive for something bigger in our actions that grieves her so much with Eren, because as she wants her own actions to be fundamentally good and selfless, she wants his actions to be moral as well.

So while Eren is the person that frustrates Mikasa and motivates her to become stronger and braver than she ever was, Armin is the person who humanizes Mikasa and allows her the space to be gentle and vulnerable. She comforts Armin, confides in him, puts her faith in him, and puts her life in his hands.

She trusts Armin with Eren, and she values Armin’s intellect and compassion, qualities she doesn’t have in nearly as much quantities as he does: “There are only so many lives I can value. And… I decided who those people were six years ago. So... you shouldn’t try to ask for my pity. Because right now, I don’t have time to spare or room in my heart.”

This bit from her confrontation with Ymir and Historia was a defining moment for me with Mikasa. It’s honest and realistic in a way that few of us care to admit about ourselves, and it’s just super chilling and badass coming from her, too. It also shows how much she fights for Armin and Eren both. They are the two people she loves the most in the world, and she never gave up on saving either of them––from death or from themselves.

I’m looking back on Trost now and finding so much irony with the ending to SNK. In Trost, she was the one to give up on Eren, telling Armin that it was hopeless to try to extract Eren’s personality from his Titan form. And yet, like in the end, it’s always been between Armin and Mikasa to try to salvage Eren’s humanity. In Trost, Armin tells Mikasa to leave––to go do what she’s good at (saving lives)––and to entrust Eren to him.

It’s a huge expression of both Mikasa’s trust in Armin, and her belief in Armin’s abilities and friendship for Eren. And in the end, it’s the two of them again debating on if there’s any humanity left in Eren. The bond they share is intimate and deep. With all the military doubting Eren and scheming to take away his Titan (with even Jean and Connie unavailable to them emotionally), it’s only Armin and Mikasa against the world––the only two people who can truly consider Eren’s actions and hold off on judging him. And you can feel their love for him even as they doubt him.

And like back then, it has always been Armin who understands Eren most, the one who recognizes his own evil and Eren’s and finds a redemption in having others stop you, because you cannot stop yourself.

And that’s the thing I really take away from SNK and from Mikasa’s journey, that we all have devils inside us, and yet there is still beauty to be found, within us and in the world––from the natural wonders that Armin dreams of, to the comfort of purpose and companionship that Mikasa has in Eren. Love and wonder is what redeems us of our devils. And yet love itself is complicated, and can turn ugly in its obsession. That giving up that love is what makes the love selfless and beautiful, what absolves us of the selfishness within us. That’s what Mikasa learned. And in the end, she was able to release that love for the good of the world.

So I guess to sum up, I really love Mikasa. I can see why her dogged loyalty to Eren might annoy some fans, but I think there’s a lot more to her than simply that, and in fact, her journey and growth is heart-rending and one of the most symbolic arcs of SNK and fundamental to its entire theme. She’s a badass with a lot of emotion and depth behind her cold mask.

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cafecourage · 4 years ago

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The moment they realized they loved you. (Isekai Au Edition) Part 1

Because this was my first time doing this I went a little crazy. If you want more information on this AU here is the Link!

Time:

- It had been welcomed with open arms.

- You two are literally the opposite but also very similar. Time is calm and stoic. You are chaotic and loud. But both of you are very cryptic.

- You’re the only person in the kingdom of hyrule currently that remembers what he had gone through. He feels like he can trust you with anything.

- It’s started with a slip up by wind and just spiraled out of control.

___________________________________

Time was discussing the groups inventory with Twilight and Wild when it happens. A small slip of the tongue followed by a laughter that could be mistaken as a fairy chime. He looked over to see your bright smile shining through under your hood. In front of you was the target of your amusement, the youngest link.

“That’s so cute!” You exclaimed to the horror of Wind, who was red in embarrassment. “Wait who’s dad?”

“Can we let this go?” The teen was covering his face now.

“It’s Time.” Four said without looking up from his book. Utter chaos broke loose in camp with just a few words. A chorus of any forms of agreement was making you laugh even harder. Time though covering up his true feelings about the situation was very lost. While yes, he acknowledged that he had slowly became the father figure of the group. That title didn’t involve you.

Unless…

“Time! I didn’t know we were married!” You bounced over to their leader looking at him with a playful smirk.

A life with you flashes in his head.

There could be a small cottage farm surrounded by the forest that reminding him of his old family and home. You could take care of the garden while he could take care the animals. In a few years the two of you might just have a few kids running around. Playing with each other without a care in the world. No more fighting. No more traveling. Just a simple lifestyle with a tight knit family. It looked peaceful. Everything he would want.

“You should have told me.” He was brought back to the present by your face looking up at him expectedly.

“I thought you knew.” He said super seriously. “We’ve got to raise nine children together already.”

“Hey! I raised you during the war old man!” Warriors called out from across camp.

“You’re the uncle then!” (Y/n) countered “I already say Twilight is our first born!” You declared pointing to Time’s flustered descendent. The rest of the conversation was tuned out as he went back to his thoughts once more.

Time lived longer than most of the heroes here by age 11. Yet not once did he stop to think about a future and family. He was so busy trying to keep out of hero work that it just slipped. Yet see you with the other heroes, knowing now that you were just as much a parental figure to the others as him. It made his softer just thinking about it and he welcomed that warm fuzzy feeling with open arms.

Reaching out he brush’s hair out of your face to kiss your temple. “I’ll propose to you properly later.” He said in a teasing tone to suggest he was only joking to hide the truth in that statement. Seeing your entire face flush red was really worth it.

“Gross Mom and Dad are flirting!”

___________________________________

- He’ll never once tell you straight if he liked you or was just playing along with the ongoing joke that the chain has.

- This time instead of you observing him. He wants to see how far he can go until confessing.

- It drives you crazy. Since you can’t get a read on him. You attempt to flirt back in retaliation. However, it always ends with you being the most flustered.

- Who knew the Old Man had it in him?

Twilight:

- It became a melancholic hopeless feeling that spiral out of control.

- He already had his heartbroken by someone before and he knows he shouldn’t get attached to you too.

- Yet he can’t stop himself from wanting to be near you. He heard you so clearly before.

- Now that he can actually speak to you directly, he wants to get to know his other travel companion more.

___________________________________

Being alone in the forest with you wasn’t what Twilight planned when dropped in a different Hyrule but here you two where. You offered to go on patrol with him when the others were setting up camp claiming it was too see if you could identify the era. It didn’t matter since Twilight enjoyed your company no matter what. The lack of conversation between the two of you didn’t bother him. If anything, it felt the most natural. Only a few words were needed for the two of you to understand each other. “Do you mind if I use my wolf form?” Twilight asked fiddling with the chain that attached to the shadow crystal around his neck.

You paused to think about it. “I mean you can. But be aware I will baby talk you.”

This got Twilight to stop walking. Maybe he lied. He doesn’t need a few words to understand your thought process. “Excuse me?”

“I can’t control myself around cute creatures.” You simply stated like it was the most obvious thing.

Instead, Twilight was burning up. You thought his wolf form was cute? Of all things you used that word? What did you think of human Twilight if you thought like that? Did he want to even know? He was searching for any way to take this conversation but it all lead to dead ends. “Cute?” Was all he could ask. His voice pitching up as he got flustered.

“Yeah?” You looked at him just as confused as he was. “Wolves are just like big dogs and to be honest you look more like a giant dog then a wolf.” Your explanation did not help at all with his situation. “If it makes you feel better you’re very handsome as a Hylian and also built like an go-“

Twilights brain was malfunctioning he couldn’t hear any more of what you had to say about him. He grabbed on to the shadow crystal, turning into his wolf form he ran. He didn’t hear you call out his name in surprise.

Hylia, what was wrong with him? You were just a friend. A very blunt yet gentle friend. Nothing more. Nothing less. Why was his heart racing so much? He had heard you shower him in complements before while on his first adventure. But hearing you say it to his face with no shame whatsoever was a different story.

Twilight knew what these feelings were and deep down he really wanted to act on them. But was it ok? Was his heart finally healing from his last love? Twilight was already aware this time that you had to leave at some point. He didn’t need to act on them despite wanting to. He could just be your friend and continue the relationship like that.

His heart was already breaking a second time.

Twilight was in love you and it was driving him crazy.

___________________________________

- Like Time, Twilight isn’t going to tell you about his feelings. Instead, he is going to forever pine for you.

- It’s going to be a slow process and you need to be aware that he will get hurt if you’re going to go back home.

- He’ll see you off with a smile, but as soon as your gone he will break.

Warriors:

- It was full of denial and fear.

- He went through the receiving end of someone’s obsessive love.

- And it doesn’t help that you’ve watched over their adventures. He vowed to not get that close to you.

- There was a need to destroy the endearing feeling he sees when you smile at him.

- Yet seeing you with a sad far out look on your face makes him scramble to your side to find out what’s wrong.

___________________________________

It was just the two of you. Weaving throughout the crowds of castle town. You were currently in Four’s Era and in the middle of the Picori festival. The group was long spilt up, leaving Warriors alone with the dimensional traveler. Soon even (Y/n) was walking away from him. He didn’t know why he followed, the argument in his head was telling him that it was so they didn’t get lost. Yet there was a part of him that knew that wasn’t it.

“Where are you going anyway?” He thought to finally ask as you reached a quieter area. “It’s going to be hard to spend time in the festival from here.”

“Yeah, that’s the point.” You were a bit snappy today, “shouldn’t you find someone else to hang out with?” Warriors just shrugged as you slowed your pace down to pause in front of the small river that ran through castle town. The silence now filled with the rushing of water as you sat on the bridge.

Against his better judgement Warriors sat next to you. Finally, he got to talk to you one on one but the normally impulsive and excitable person Warrior’s grew to expect had changed in that moment.

You looked so tired.

“Hey Link?” You finally called out to him “I know I shouldn’t ask you this but…” hesitation was new to your character. “How do I even start?” You rake a hand through your hair. Sweeping a part of your hair out of your eyes. “Was I ever helpful during your Adventure?”

Oh… Oh he really wasn’t the right person for this talk.

You look back you and towards the festival and he followed your gaze. From where they were he could only spot a few of his party members. Wind was with Legend and Hyrule playing some of the stall games. While Four was with his Zelda holding hands as she pulled him further into the crowd. “Last time I saw this festival it ended up destroyed by Vaati.” The wind mage was only brought up a few times by Four. All Warriors really knew was that the villain was supposed to be sealed away by the Four Sword, and that his power was connected by the dark mirror. “I found myself wondering if my presence even mattered.” Your shoulder slumped in defeat as you curled into yourself.

The instant need to comfort shot through Warriors. He wanted to reach out. He fought the urge to hold you. He bites his tongue when he started to think of embellished words to make you feel better.

What was wrong with him?

Warriors had to say something though. “I don’t know about Four or the others.” He didn’t even think about your presence in his adventure too much. If anything, he actively tried not to think about it. Here you were though a person and not a figment of in his imagination. “During the war, your voice and presence is what broke the tension. The moments that could have been my lowest, you were there saying things that I wanted to repeat out loud.” There was a fondness while he was looking back at the memories. From the moment he ran on the battle field foolishly as a trainee soldier. His pride grew upon hearing your praise and surprise when seeing him fight for the first time. To your excitement while meeting his friends from the other Eras. He shared your sentiments about Mask as you cooed over the child as Warriors fought by his side. Then your anger, disgust and pity towards Cia. While on his side, your empathetic nature had you morning during her passing. These where just the tip of the iceberg.

Just having someone voice out mutual thoughts on a situation helps when you can’t do it on your own. You feel crazy thinking the way you do. “With you there it’s like you always have someone by your side cheering you on and supporting you.” He paused to look at you. Conflicting emotions clashing together. You turn to look at him, your eyes only briefly visible through your bangs. Curiosity and guilt were swarming with in them. “I’m not the person to talk to about this.” He finally admitted out loud. “But I would be lying if I said your presence wasn’t important to us.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Was that not what he was supposed to say? Warriors tried to stay calm under your gaze.

You let out a huff of laughter covering your mouth and turning away from him a bit to calm down. “I didn’t think about it like that.” There was a pause where you looked back at the festive before turning back to smiling softly at him. “Thanks Cap.”

The smile that you had on your lips had Warriors stomach do back flips. A blush decorated his face as he turns away. “It’s something that should have been said a while ago.” He manages to say without stuttering.

You were really pretty.

The sound of a picto box followed by winds snickering, was ignored when the thought had just register in his head. He finally realized how far he fell for you.

___________________________________

- one by one his defenses lowered.

- With every smiled sent his way, with every laugh that he earned. He found himself wanting more.

- He slowly opens up, a slow process but it wasn’t as scary as he thought it was going to be.

- A teasing nickname here. A gentle touch there. He realizes he has gone too far.

(Part 2)

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu twilight #lu warriors #lu time #London fog tea

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makeste · 4 years ago

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“...and I bullied him.”

hello, hello, good afternoon or evening or whatever time it is. so by now we’ve all had some time to bask in those “Kacchan admitted he cares about Deku” feels (well, technically they were “All Might pointed out that Kacchan was worried about Deku and Kacchan didn’t deny it” feels, BUT THOSE MIGHT AS WELL BE THE SAME FEELS, YOU KNOW). and it’s been lovely. I’ve been having a time. it’s been nice.

but now I would like to talk a bit more about a part of this chapter which I think was even more important.

for me, this was the line of the chapter. this one panel may honestly be the biggest piece of Kacchan character development since all the way back in chapter 120. “I ended up bullying him.” okay but guys?? can we just talk?? about how absolutely extraordinary this one sentence is.

it’s self-aware.

introspection? from a kid who’s had to be dragged kicking and screaming to every character development milestone he’s ever experienced in his life? and on an emotional level that actually goes deeper, and doesn’t just stop at the surface-level anger that’s so often his instinctive reaction to everything? who are you and what have you done with Bakugou Katsuki lol.

but seriously, the level of self-analysis here almost stunned me, guys. not only does he demonstrate a very impressive level of insight into Deku (something I especially love because it mirrors the many analyses Deku has made of him, and shows that the understanding between them is actually mutual), but he also shows an unprecedented degree of insight into himself. like, historically speaking, Bakugou and Feelings have not always exactly been on the same page, you know? so for him to suddenly get so thoughtful now, and sincerely try to analyze these feelings which up until now he’s always ignored and avoided dealing with... that is such a huge step. also, bonus points: he recognizes it as a problem within himself, and doesn’t try to pin the blame on Deku in any way. he recognizes that he’s the one who reacted badly to Deku’s behavior. to be able to examine your own feelings like that and arrive at a conclusion that acknowledges that you’re not the good guy in this, that you’re the one who made the mistake -- that takes a level of accountability that not everyone possesses.

it’s self-prompted.

okay this one is a big deal honestly. no one put a gun to Katsuki’s head here and forced him to confess this. all All Might said was “you’re worried about him too” and that somehow prompted a level of emotional honesty that Katsuki has never before shown. now, based on the fact that the successors’ notebook is still fresh in Katsuki’s mind, and that All Might mentioned earlier that Aizawa couldn’t help because he was “busy at the moment”, this conversation likely took place shortly after the kids returned from their New Year’s break. meaning that this was basically right after the Endeavor internship arc, when thoughts about seeking atonement were still fresh on Katsuki’s mind. so this isn’t entirely out of the blue; it shows that Katsuki did, in fact, learn exactly what All Might was hoping he would learn from Endeavor.

but it’s one thing for this to be on his mind, and another thing entirely for him to actually confess it out loud. and I absolutely will give him full credit for that. he admits, without anyone forcing him to, that he bullied Deku. there’s no incentive for him to do this whatsoever. Deku isn’t there to hear it. he’s not admitting it for the purposes of seeking forgiveness. he’s simply just being honest, and owning up to what he did because he realizes it was wrong. and that takes a lot of inner strength, to do that. to not shy away from it and keep pretending like it never happened. this is a huge first step for him.

it’s a confession that leaves him emotionally vulnerable.

this is another big one. it’s not always evident because he makes a big effort to downplay it, but Katsuki looks up to All Might every bit as much as Deku does. he seeks his approval, he wants All Might to be proud of him, even though he very often puts on a big show of not caring about it at all. it means a lot to him. a lot.

and Katsuki knows how much All Might cares about Deku. and sure, All Might is already perfectly aware that Katsuki and Deku aren’t exactly on the best of terms, and he’s always been understanding about it; always gently compassionate and attempting to smooth things out between them without being judgmental.

but All Might also doesn’t know everything about the two of them. and even with Kacchan and Deku’s relationship never exactly being on the most rock solid of terms at U.A., there’s still a vast difference between the way they interact there, and the way that they interacted back in middle school. when Katsuki was not only hostile, but occasionally downright cruel. and when Deku was still quirkless, and very much not on equal footing with Kacchan in terms of power, and yet Kacchan bullied him anyway.

what Katsuki is confessing here puts him at risk of rejection from one of the people whose opinion of him matters the most. he’s opening himself up to the possibility that All Might might not, for once, react with his trademark understanding. he’s admitting to All Might, I did something unherolike, and I hurt someone you care about, and I didn’t have a good reason for doing it. All Might, in the moment immediately following this statement, has an incredible amount of power over Katsuki. he has the ability to withdraw his support, to condemn him, to pull away and decide that Katsuki is not someone worthy of becoming a hero after all. he has all the power in the world over Katsuki in this one moment; a rejection from him would be a blow he’d never recover from.

and Katsuki, knowing this, tells him anyway. willingly opens himself up to that possibility of being hurt, of being rejected and shunned by the person who inspired his dream. because the alternative is being dishonest with him. this is, in short, a decision made because he believes All Might deserves to know this, and deserves to hear the truth from him. he wants his approval so badly, but he can’t live with the knowledge that he’s “tricked” him into giving it. so he tells him the truth, ready to face whatever consequences might arise from that. and I think that might be one of the bravest things he’s ever done.

it’s not attempting to shirk responsibility.

this, right here, is why Katsuki is my favorite character. because even though he’s flawed, even though he’s made a lot of mistakes, when he realizes that and is confronted by it, he never tries to hide from them. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: to me, the essence of Katsuki is that he is someone who is always trying to be better. he wants to be a good hero; he wants to be a good person. when people point out to him that he’s done something wrong, he listens. it doesn’t always sink in right away, sure, and sometimes he gets stubborn and it can be hard to hammer that truth in. but once he gets it, he always makes the change. he never tries to make excuses. he owns up to his shit and does his best to course correct.

with this acknowledgement here, that he bullied Deku, there’s no attempt on his part to say that it was Deku’s fault, that Deku shouldn’t have done this or that. he doesn’t blame his parents or his teachers or try to act like he didn’t know any better. he makes no attempt whatsoever to justify it. it’s just simple, honest truth. back then, I ignored my own weakness, so I ended up bullying him. it’s a plea of guilt. no attempt to mitigate it or downplay it. the verb he uses, “ijimeta”, doesn’t water it down.

“to ill-treat; to torment; to be cruel to.” there’s no attempt here to paint this in a flattering light at all. which is good. because in order for him to really atone for it, to really go the distance in his redemption arc which we’re all rooting for him to do, the most important step is for him to take responsibility. he can’t learn from it if he’s trying to hide from it or make excuses for what he did wrong. he has to fully acknowledge his mistakes. and that’s exactly what this is.

it shows remorse.

that’s right y’all. they sent my boy out to do an internship with Endeavor over the holidays, and he came back having learned the true meaning of Christmas. his heart really did grow three sizes. honey badger does care.

there is genuine, sincere remorse for his actions here. he’s sorry for what he did. he regrets what he did. there’s real contrition there. it’s not forced or insincere. again, nobody made him say this! nobody pressured him, nobody led him on. these are his own feelings. I bullied Deku. I shouldn’t have done that to him. I want to atone for it.

I know some people in fandom don’t think this is enough. the same thing happened with Endeavor as well. people aren’t always satisfied with restorative justice; they want retribution. they want punishment for his actions. and that’s a natural feeling; it stems back to that instinct of wanting everything to be fair, which I mentioned in another meta not too long ago.

but the thing is, retributive, punitive justice doesn’t actually help anyone. it doesn’t restore what was lost. Katsuki being punished doesn’t do anything to undo what was done to Deku. it doesn’t do anything to heal the harm that was dealt. it doesn’t do anything to make things better for either of them moving forward.

but do you know what does? restorative justice. making amends. which is exactly what this is building up to now.

it shows an understanding that remorse is not enough, and that in order to move forward he has to take action to be a better person.

Katsuki understands that simply being sorry for what he did is not enough. I suspect that’s one reason why he hasn’t attempted to apologize to Deku yet; because he recognizes that after years of tormenting him for stupid and self-centered reasons, a simple apology might seem meaningless at best and self-serving at worst. it puts pressure on Deku to make a decision to either accept or not accept it. Katsuki saw the Todoroki siblings struggling with a similar conflict not too long ago. and he knows better than anyone else how selfless Deku can be. “deep down, he doesn’t take himself into account, y’know?” and so if Katsuki simply apologizes, Deku might end up offering forgiveness that he doesn’t actually deserve, just because Deku is that kind of person who puts others above himself.

and so rather, what Katsuki has opted to do for now is to put all his efforts into helping Deku. he knows Deku is in a considerable amount of danger. he knows how much Deku has on his plate with the SIXQUIRKS and trying to handle all of that. and he knows there are other potential dangers looming which they don’t even know about yet. he’s been alert and anxious about this -- you saw how quickly his mind leaped to worst-case scenarios about the past OFA users; how he was sure that All Might was hiding something from them, and how agitated and apprehensive he got thinking about what that might be.

“I’m worried for him. you are, too,” All Might said. and Katsuki didn’t deny it. didn’t even try. he is worried about Deku. he’s worried about what he has to face. he’s worried about him getting in over his head and something happening to him. and so the way that he has chosen to try and atone is to help him. with his training, with his quirks; whatever he can do. if he needs to push him he’ll push him. whatever he can do to help make him stronger. and if he needs to protect him, he’ll do that too.

atonement is not the same thing as forgiveness. atonement is about trying to make up for what you did, to try and correct your mistakes however you can. it doesn’t mean you’re pardoned from them. all it means is that you’ve acknowledged them, and are doing your best -- doing whatever you can -- to repair the harm done, and to be a better person going forward. and sometimes there is no way to ever completely make up for it. sometimes you can’t undo the harm, because you can’t go back and change the past. the only thing you can change is the now, and the future.

and so Katsuki is trying to atone. he’s trying to be the friend Deku deserves now, since he wasn’t before. he’s trying his best to make things right, and it all starts with this one sentence. that acknowledgement of what he did, of what can’t be changed. acknowledgement of the mistake, so that he can learn from it, so that it never happens again.

so yeah. BnHA Redemption Arcs strike again. Horikoshi you smooth son of a bitch.

#bnha 284 #bakugou katsuki #all might #midoriya izuku #bakudeku #bnha meta #bakugou meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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kiwi--bot · 4 years ago

Text

Patterns

Rating: T Words: 2,872 Warnings: Blood, Injuries, Al-An doesn’t understand emotions very well. Summary: Al-An prefers when things fall into an easily recognizable pattern. It’s how data forms, it’s easier to work with, and less surprises make it easier to remain efficient. Robin is a rogue bit of code in the set sequence.

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Indeed, it had been quite some time since Al-An was allowed to exist in any dimensions outside of their temporary isolation. And truly, Robin had done well in the fabrication of an Architect form that would suit their needs to relocate the pair off the planet, and return to their home with the remedy for the Kharaa Bacterium; for the Architects of their home world.

Unfortunately, following the reconstruction of their new form, Al-An is hit with the immediate problem that their supposed mode of transportation has... degraded over time; and they are quite lacking really on the resources department. Countless amounts of bits and bobs, here and there, that simply corroded over the years, or just did not operate further. And every small tick of a list of issues added up to an inoperable phase gate. Yet Robin-- ever so helpful Robin-- offers to help collect whatever Al-an could need to repair their ship.

“Always together, even if you’re not stuck upstairs anymore,” She had joked, tapping the side of her head in an emphasized way. How Al-An could only think of how true that statement was...

And so, life on 4546B settled into somewhat of a steady, even pace for Robin and Al-An.

Robin relocates her primary base to the facility where Al-An prepares for convenience’s sake. She wakes up late in the morning, and Al-An’s learned to get a cup of coffee steaming hot and settled at her nightstand at precisely 13:29. This in turn helps her wake up and become functional no later than 13:50-14:00, depending on how late she was up the previous night.

Following that, Al-An fabricates a nutritious meal of her choosing, and it’s set onto a table-- or, a section of the facility that’s been repurposed into a table-- and she eats before she heads out for the day to find the resources needed. (And always, Al-An makes sure that there’s a fabricated meal packed away in a thermally-controlled container for her to take along.) And like clockwork, Robin is back at 22:22 with her Seatruck stuffed to the brim with all the supplies she could find.

And usually Al-An has to check her for injuries or parasites and she just grins when they comment on how inefficient her resource-gathering is if she must hurt herself every single time. “Awww, you just like to fret over me, Al-An,” she coos as they utilize their on-hand medical devices to knit up skin from a rather nasty bite.

“I do not fret, I observe,” Al-An states plainly, and Robin rolls her eyes, only wincing a little when Al-an has to wipe over another puncture with that strange antiseptic gel, and the skin closes under the heat of that magic little tool that Robin has yet to scan. “And I know that humans are one of the most fragile things that get in more trouble compared to any living creature I have yet to meet.”

“I’m gonna talk that as a compliment, Al-An.” Robin flexes out her wrist once the wound is all sealed up, the only reminder a faint scar left in the wake. She flashes a grin at the Architect, who would promptly turn back to what they had been working on prior before they needed to patch her up.

At 27:00 or 28:00, Al-An ceases working for a short period-- one Robin requested so that they don’t overwork themselves. Of course, an Architect cannot really do such a thing as ‘overwork,’ but Al-An humors her. And Robin’s meal is fabricated and settled on the table no later than 28:50. She used to always request Al-An eat dinner with her-- and although they do not eat like she does, they sit nonetheless at her side.

And Robin will scroll through her PDA and read the day’s logs once again, chewing hear and there and really making an inefficient use of her time as she often does. But humans like to be that way-- leisurely, as Robin once corrected them-- and so Al-An will not question it again.

She always leans back against the stone of the her temporary seat, shrugging and shuffling and making a good amount of noise that could startle even the most focused Architect from their endeavors. Over time, she would unconsciously lay against Al-An’s side, and that often settled her, so they would not comment.

If they had to admit something, the pressure therapy from her body weight was a welcome one, given they did not have the proper tools to recreate such things.

Robin turns into bed anywhere from 1:00-3:00; it will depend on what areas she visited, and what the day’s events involved. And she will bid Al-An goodnight with a smile and pat on their arm, before she retreats to her bed. Although, she doesn’t really go anywhere, because her ‘room’ is just a small section of the facility adjacent to where Al-An primarily works.

She’s fabricated herself a bed, some storage, and even hung up some curtains to block out the steady glow of the facility. It’s a small little space that reminds Al-An of how Architects would furnish the habitats of subjects they used for research.

Peculiar.

And this is how their pattern would fall into, resetting each day at 13:29 with the first coffee of the day. Al-An finds the repeating pattern of each day, as Robin would put it.... soothing. Did Architects even need to be soothed? Historically?

No. And yet Al-An could not help but find this... calm, inside the promise of the known. Perhaps it was a way for them to deal with the fact that they might not know what would await them on the other side of the phase gate, where they would have to face their people, and answer for their mistakes. Perhaps that reason is why they can now find solace and even comfort in something as simple as a daily pattern.

How the other Architects would be baffled at the thought. The very notion of it was so unlike them all. Al-An would have to blame Robin for this, at the very least.

Merging with her cerebral cortex must have changed something in their emotional status....

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And with the promise of a steady pattern, Al-An could find each day predictable enough to not impede any portion of their work. They worked quickly to repair what needed repairs, to adjust what needed adjusting, to alter what needed altering.

Steady. Steady. Steady. Repeat.

The illusion of this pattern gets shattered when 22:42 arrives one evening, and Robin is not yet home. Al-An, logistically, should be business as normal. She could have gone farther, she could have had a small set-back, she could have gotten distracted. But when 23:22 arrives, and Robin is still not home, Al-An finds they cannot work.

The data rolls in front of their vision as normal, the facility is operating at 100%, and they have spent the better part of this week weaving data in such a way that it is second-nature. But their hands do not move, their gaze is transfixed on the door, and the progress of their work is stunted.

She should be back by now. She should have been back exactly 60 minutes ago.

Al-An cannot work. They shut off their normal programs and instead set up a long-range scan. It puts them off schedule immensely, but they, for once, cannot find it in them to care about inefficiency. It takes 20 minutes for the scan to prepare, and the entire time, Al-An keeps their gaze on the door. Like Robin will burst in any second, with a couple new wounds, yes, but here, and alive.

Robin does not enter the door by the time the scan is online at 23:42.

Robin does not enter the door as the scanner searches at 23:43.

Robin does not enter the door as the scanner searches at 23:44.

Robin does not enter the door as the scanner searches at 23:45.

Robin is not home as the scanner searches at 23:46.

Robin is not home safe as the scanner searches at 23:47.

Robin is not home safe as the scanner searches at 23:48.

Robin is not home safe as the scanner searches at 23:49.

Robin must not be safe as the scanner finds her at 23:50.

Al-An must prepare for the worst, even as they wish to leave as soon as the scanner reads her biosignature in the Arctic. No good in retrieving her if they do not have food, medical supplies, warmer clothing, an extra hair tie-- she always complained when her current one would break-- and anything else humans needed when they were potentially in distress--

No.

Robin is not in distress. The very thought has the Architect frozen to the spot, a flicker of something so unfamiliar buzzing through them. She is fine, just delayed. Off-schedule, off-pattern. No matter, Al-An will locate her and then they will both repair that.

They finish collecting everything needed into a neat pack, and just as they prepare to put the facility into lockdown, there’s a familiar faint splashing, and then footsteps padding across a stone floor.

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It is 24:17 when Robin Ayou enters the Architect facility she calls home with her arm crudely wrapped in a sling and her leg leaving a trail of blood. But nonetheless, she’s got the same grin on her face, and carries something sharp in her uninjured hand. She’s limping.

“Al-An!” She calls, her voice loud and full of excitement. She’s stumbling over her own feet, and Al-An blinks to her side to catch her with the beam of their mechanical arm, lifting her right off the ground. She doesn’t notice how their posture is tight and tense, instead waving the sharp object in her hand. “Al-An I did it! I fought off one of those Shadow Leviathans and I freaking won!”

Al-An does not reply.

“It tried to eat me, Al-An!” Robin’s arm waves wildly in her excitement, and she doesn’t protest when Al-An brings her to the empty table to seat her, once again getting to work on mending what is broken. Her injured arm has several gashes in it: some down to the bone, and covered messily with plant matter. Al-An removes those and starts on sterilization.

“It yanked me by the arm, but I was quick-- I stabbed him right in the eye, and I held on, because he was pulling me towards his mouth!” She grins wider, adrenaline masking any pain from the antiseptics, or how the beam begins to knit the skin and muscle back to one piece. “I lost my grip on my knife, but I grabbed his spine-- or whatever those glowing things on his belly are-- and I held on and kicked him right in the stomach!”

Al-An silently redirects attention to her leg, where acidic liquid had eaten through her suit and burned the skin-- not too horribly, but bloody. That is treated next.

“And then I must of hurt him bad, because he let me go, but not before I yanked and yanked on those spine things-- And look! I got it, I ripped one clean off!” She’s talking quickly, her body thrumming at the thrilling tale, and feeling so alive. “I felt bad at first, but then I remembered that he tried to eat me, so I shrugged it off, and he backed off after I ripped off this. I won, Al-An! Against a freaking Shadow Leviathan!”

Robin laughs, slapping her now healed hand against her forehead and grinning wildly. “God, I thought for sure I was a goner when I didn’t take the prawn suit down--”

“And why didn’t you, Robin?”

They are both startled by the tone of Al-An’s voice. And Robin finally realizes that Al-An is stiff, mechanical in how they treat her-- so different from the almost caring way they usually do. And they are glowing a sickly yellow color, their gaze transfixed on her wounds as the mechanical arm fixes up the burns on her leg.

“I-I.....” Robin is at a loss, her eyes now locked onto them. “I.... don’t know.”

An uncomfortable silence falls between them. Al-An finishes up work on her leg, and then does a general scan over her to make sure they didn’t miss any other wounds. Processing, methodical, even.

Something is wrong, Robin thinks. Even now, as they seem to pull away from the situation, the same sickly color tinges the edge of her vision. Robin catches their arm as they turn to assess her findings, and she doesn’t miss how they tense.

“Al-An....” She begins, but stops. She can’t find the right thing to say. It all feels wrong. Like anything she says next won’t be the right thing to say. But she tries with, “Are you okay?”

“That is hardly a question you should ask me, Robin.” Al-An’s voice has gone back to the same, even tone as when they first met, but it’s all off. Too even, too tight. Like there is something beneath the surface, just hiding and waiting to strike like an Ice Worm. “You should ask yourself that. You were the one who was injured. Sustaining traumatic injuries is detrimental to the overall health of--”

“Did I scare you?” She asks, and Al-An falters.

“Fear is not a concept we feel,” They state, and yet they now feel the sinking familiarity of it nonetheless. Fear. They were afraid, they had been afraid when Robin was not home at the right time. They were scared when Robin returned injured. They were scared when she recounted her harrowing tale, and they were scared that she’s going to do it again and they would not be there to pick up the pieces--

“Al-An...” Robin’s voice cuts through the swirling data inside their head, and her eyes are soft as she reaches and touches their chest gently. She feels.... awful. Physically and emotionally. How could she not realize that they were upset? How could she have been so blind when she’s normally so in tune with the Architect? “Al-An, I’m really sorry.”

“You have done nothing that warrants an apology,” Al-An states; but their lights flicker pink for the briefest moment. “You were simply acting inefficiently and radically in a way that could have resulted in several versions of a potential death, which is not uncommon for your species.”

Robin smiles. That unintentional insult was 100% all Al-An. She shifts closer to them, and then her arms wrap around them, and she leans her head against their chest, and she imagines she can hear their heartbeat through their thick, armored body. “I know, I was being an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m hugging you, Al-An. Never had a hug before?”

“Architects do not partake in this sort of behavior,” Al-an tells her. But, nonetheless, they mimic her movements, and their organic arms encircle her smaller frame, and having her close to them like so reminds them just of how tiny and delicate she is. “....Touching one another was not commonplace.”

“Then I’m gonna make it commonplace, and I’m gonna give you a hug everyday until I catch up on the hugs you’ve missed out on your whole life,” Robin hums as she closes her eyes, yawning.

“That would be impossible, given the length of your human lifespan,” Al-An corrects her, but they find the idea of one of these each day not entirely unpleasant. Robin laughs, and she just smiles. And their lights shift to a light pink as she falls asleep against them, and they return her to her bed: asleep too early for the schedule.

But it was alright to be a little off-pattern.

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And so, life on 4546B settled into somewhat of a general routine for Robin and Al-An.

Al-An has her coffee ready at 13:29 and she drinks it as she wakes up and rolls out of bed by 14:00. Al-An fabricates breakfast, packs her a lunch, and she’s out the door for the day’s work. And if she returns at 21:57 or 23:37, Al-An is not worried. After all, she’s returning with less injuries, and that is good enough for them.

Together they sit when Robin has her dinner and Al-An has their break around 28:42, and Robin reads aloud her PDA entries to Al-An-- even though they could easily scan and upload the documents themself, it makes her feel happy, so they indulge. And Robin leans back against Al-An without hesitation once she’s done eating, and they find the pressure nice.

And when 1:00 or 2:00 rolls around, just before she turns in for bed, Robin will throw her arms around Al-An for their daily hug, and she will hold on tight for a good few minutes, and Al-An learns to hold her in return. Perhaps if they held long enough, tight enough, she would never be in danger again.

And they find that perhaps, maybe... they like hugs.

And Robin fashions the Leviathan fragment into a necklace, that she gifts Al-An.

And Al-An wears it everyday.

#Subnautica #Subnautica: Below Zero #Robin Ayou #Al-An #Robin/Al-An #Al-An/Robin #KiwiBot Writes

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lightsinthedistancee · 4 years ago

Text

Under the Cover of War: FO!Poe Dameron x Resistance!Reader

Pairing: FO!Poe Dameron x Resistance!Reader

Word Count: 2.4k

Summary: “‘Let’s go,’ he murmurs. ‘Let’s run.’ His gaze is fixed on you, begging for this. He needs you—he needs you to be there for him so that he has a place in the galaxy, a place he would never have otherwise. ‘Please.’”

Following the destruction of the Hosnian System, a promise and a dire decision are made by you and Poe.

Warnings: Language

“Why?”

The single word is clipped, volatile, dangerously soft in nature. It’s a question, a plead, an accusation, all at once. It seems to scream in the silence, to imply a million other queries that Poe doesn’t want to answer.

He simply remains quiet as he stares at your back turned to him. You sit on the edge of the bed, breath shaking, refusing to even look at him.

He inhales, blinking rapidly. “Sweetheart—“

“Why?” This time, it’s a scream. The sound is ragged, painful, your voice cracking. It makes him flinch, makes him draw into himself.

The loud cry echoes, disintegrates as the seconds pass.

He wishes he could transport himself back to five minutes ago, before either of your holos had rung. Before the First Order had reported a victory to him, before the Resistance had reported a devastating, unfathomable loss to you.

He wants to return to when he’d laid beside you, running his fingers down your sides, when the memory of pressing you into the sheets was still fresh in his mind.

But somehow he knows that whatever the two of you have will never return in any way.

“How could you?” you whisper, the shock of five of the galaxy’s most populous planets being obliterated in mere minutes still in the process of shattering you to pieces.

Poe wants to shrink into the air, disappear in moments. He knows you’re crying, that you can’t handle it. He’d be lying if he said he himself was handling it at all.

“I…I don’t know what happened.” He stares at the sheets, tears running down his own face. He can’t imagine it. The deaths of tens of trillions. Their screams, the pain they must have felt in the blinding light of imminent death.

Your hands tighten into fists as you shake. Your form is locked in tension, perhaps about to abruptly turn around and strike him, perhaps about to break and collapse into a distraught pile of bone and flesh. “You’re a liar.”

The words are akin to a strike itself. He near hisses, unstable in his new knowledge. “Why the fuck would they tell me? I’m not even a colonel.” His volume rises, swirling in the atmosphere, ready to completely burst free. “I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it—“

“But you certainly have something to do with those who ordered it!” You finally turn to him. You’re livid. Eyes red with tears, lips in a tight line, a glare that threatens to break him.

And your statement is not something he can deny. He deflates, silent. He can feel your eyes on him expectantly, but nothing comes.

When enough time passes, you stand from the bed, grabbing your things from the bedside table. As your fingers delicately wrap around the blaster you regularly carry around, he briefly thinks that perhaps you’re about to turn around and shoot him.

But you don’t, and something new finds home beside your anger: a heartbreaking sense of disappointment.

It’s on instinct when his hand shoots out, grasping your arm. “No, wait…please. Don’t go,” he says quietly.

You’re all he has. There’s nothing more to say other than that. Life in the Order is a cold one, always has been. While he may not agree with the side you’ve chosen, you’re the sole warmth in his life, the sole radiant light.

You jerk in his grip, but he tightens it, eyes unashamedly pleading with you, begging you to not leave him.

Even in the place you always meet him, buried beneath layers of rock, surrounded by passages of clandestine activity necessary in your illicitness, his meetings with you never fail to be the only times he’s truly happy.

“Please…,” he pleads once more, thumb running over your knuckles.

A debate takes place on your features, and he can read you better than he can anyone else. He’s the person you’d let into your heart, the person you’d revealed every personal secret to. He’s the one who’d whispered ‘I love you’ one fateful night, the one to whom you’d whispered it back. He’s the one that had challenged your blind loyalty to any ideology, the one to whom you’d done the same.

He can see all those things viciously, ruthlessly grappling with the horrifying events that had just transpired: bodies being ripped to shreds, building being reduced to dust, life being annihilated in fire.

And in an act of emotional obscurity, the two opponents are shockingly close.

It’s evident which wins out when you limply fall back to the bed, body slumping to lie down, eyes tiredly closed.

“Then tell me why,” you whisper, barely audible.

“Why what?”

“I want to know why you joined the people who did…this.”

And at that simple request, he feels his walls rise. Even if they’d fallen long ago when he was around you, they’d never truly disappeared.

“I thought we don’t talk about stuff like that,” says Poe quietly.

“Well, I changed my fucking mind.”

He gazes around the room, reminded of the sole thing that prevents full, unconditional commitment to the other. The space they are in is a brutal reminder of the fact, for it presents itself in sets of two, an embodiment of duality.

Two blasters on top of the bedside table. One polished and new, the other dull and thoroughly used.

Two sets of boots clumsily scattered by the door. One shiny, lacking a single scuff mark, one that’s appearance suggests it’s been passed through several owners.

Two jackets. One with the hexagonal, sixteen-rayed symbol of the First Order, one with the starbird of the Resistance.

It’s a glaringly horrid representation of the two of you, never destined to be the same.

“Did your tongue also vanish along with the five planets?”

He slowly comes back to the present with your words, forcing away his disconnect.

It’s not something he can afford right now. Maintaining his privacy, hiding the events of his past, concealing the cause of his motives—he can’t afford any of that if he wants you.

And somehow, all he does want is you. You, you, you—to the point that he wonders if it’s unhealthy, if it’s even real and true, but that’s something he refuses to consider in the moment.

Even though you’d seen some of the darkness through him, he is certain that your loyalty to light is stronger, if only marginally, and that means he has to tell. He has to reveal.

“My mother,” he simply says, gaze unfocused. “She was a rebel pilot. She died.”

The slight stirring of your body freezes. He’d never talked of his family’s loyalties; he’d always given the impression that they’d passively existed in the deluge of light and dark that had overtaken the galaxy.

“She’s why I joined.” He flinches at the memory, grimacing at the pain he’d felt as a boy. “She died because of rebellion recklessness. Because of belief in blind hope.”

The anger—it’s simmering once more, bubbling higher, inching further and further to the edge of his chest.

And he can tell yours is too. Your fingers grip at the sheets as your eyes narrow. “Reckless…blind…hope?” He’s questioning your belief, accusing it of something dangerously irrational, and you yearn to lash back on instinct, to defend the beliefs you’d lived your life by—even as your own doubts of it conceal themselves in the background.

He laughs bitterly, his voice rising again. “Don’t kid yourself. That’s what the New Republic lived off of, and it was a fucking mess.”

You tense up, practically shrieking your next words, wholly, viciously attacking him back. “Who are you to say that—“

“There were people revolting in the streets!” he yells, his voice perhaps even louder than yours had been. “There were people in the Outer Rim starving! It was chaos—“

“And the First Order is what? Orderly?”

“They’re better than you and your—“

And he falls silent all of a sudden. He stops himself.

He knows where this is going. It’d happened and been resolved before, but he has a sneaking suspicion that that won’t be the case if the two of you continue down this road.

“Fuck,” he groans under his breath, his back slumped as he rubs his face with his hands.

“Me and my what?” you ask quietly.

He just shakes his head.

You fall back to your laying down position, head burying in the sheets, trying to block everything out. He’s right. He’s entirely right. The flaw in the Light, the flaw in the Republic, but you can’t bring yourself to denounce the loyalty you’d inherited.

He sniffles, hiding his tears behind his hands, and his figure—he knows it’s one of pure pain. As good as he’d gotten at hiding his emotions, they always seem to show themselves in your presence, no matter how hard he tries to defeat them, and it’s undeniable that you feel them to the fullest.

“You say ‘mama’ in your sleep sometimes,” you whisper all of a sudden.

At the revelation, he goes still. It’s an unsettling thought…that perhaps you’d known of his weakness long before he’d willingly showed you, long before he thought you deserved to know.

That maybe you’d heard the words of him crying out for his mother before you’d even known the slightest deeply-personal thing about him, when you’d only known the feeling of him inside you and the feeling of his lips on yours and the weight of his body as he slept beside yours.

His reluctance to look at you only increases tenfold when the shame floods in. The shame of a lifetime at this point—of weakness regarding his family, of putting blaster bolts in people who didn’t deserve them, of not being able to let go of his past, something he’d been striving for his whole life.

It all externally devolves into a mere fit of subtle trembles.

“Poe?” Your tone is soft now, gentle. You’re on your knees, sitting up, a single hand on the side of his face joining the space between the two of you. A certain mixture of concern and inquisitiveness finds home in your eyes, and for a second, he thinks your expression reflects one of a person staring at a beaten-down, once-aggressive animal.

“I regret it—joining the Order,” he simply says, voice cracking. The gas, plasma, fire, flesh, and bone of the destroyed system fill his imagination. “Is that what you want to hear?”

“Only if you mean it.” There’s still no sympathy to your voice, but there’s a softer edge to it, the kind that’s always existed but disappears in every fight.

“I do.” He leans back into the pillows, forearm over his eyes. It feels as if this has been going on for far too long, for he’s exhausted.

Your hand finds its way into his curls, tracing from his hairline to the base of his neck. It’s hauntingly reminiscent of what he’d felt so passionately and tenderly before the conflict had even begun.

“All darkness dies in the light,” you whisper.

It’s an ambiguous statement to many, but he automatically knows what you’re asking of him—you want his darkness to die in your light.

And while part of him begs and yearns to submit to your wish, something about your words perturbs him—the words unsaid. His darkness…the one he’d held for so long, you don’t want it to disappear, you don’t want it to transform, no, you want it to die. You want him to kill it.

“I can’t,” he says softly, fingers fumbling with the sheets, almost hoping to blindly find you.

“The Light Side’ll—“

“I’m done with the fucking sides,” he interjects, his words lined with a sharp edge. A puff of air leaves his lips as he desperately wishes for calm, one with at least some semblance of permanence. He finally looks at you, eyes now completely devoid of any anger or menace they’d held before, just the sadness of someone who’d made one too many wrong choices. “It’s just pain either way, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” you admit, a brief expression of hesitance crossing your face. “But you have to choose.” The hesitance turns to anguish, a revelation in its most subtle form. “There’s more pain if you don’t, and perhaps…perhaps that’s why I chose my side.”

He props himself up on his forearms at the mere implication—the implication that your unwavering loyalty to the light is not so unwavering, that you’d gone head in like he had with his loyalty and was now beginning to doubt things.

“Some don’t choose—“

“And they suffer for it,” you interrupt, finishing his statement with your own thoughts. It’s something you’ve seen your whole life: those who don’t choose being made to do so—often in violence.

He laces his fingers with yours, delicately wrapping each of your digits around his palm.“We’ve suffered our entire lives, darling,” he muses. “Born into a galaxy at war, a brief respite, and then yet another one…just suffering, suffering, suffering…within us, around us…what’s a little more?”

The whole room seems to freeze as you peer at him, part curiosity, part doubt, part disbelief. “What are you suggesting?”

“I think you know,” he says softly. The warmth staring back at you is undeniably something you would die for.

“Say it.” Your whisper is said with the deepest conviction, awaiting the words that would cement your decision, perhaps a decision you won’t know until you hear the offer leave his lips.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs. “Let’s run.” His gaze is fixed on you, begging for this. He needs you—he needs you to be there for him so that he has a place in the galaxy, a place he would never have otherwise. “Please.”

Your breath shakes, just barely, contemplating, debating. There’s an inevitable weight to war, the kind that crushes people to pieces, and the temptation to run from such a force—it feels right. It feels right to be free, to live safer, to be with whom you want. “There’ll be sacrifices to make.”

“There’ll be sacrifices either way,” he insists, and you’re certain he’s right. “Darling….” His words fade off, and he surges forward, gently locking his lips with yours. It’s tender and pleading, the ultimate question asked once again through touch.

“Poe….” The way you say his name is filled with something decisive, something deliberate. The seconds pass. He waits. “Let’s go.”

..::::.. ..::::.. ..::::.. ..::::..

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sweetestlamb · 3 years ago

Text

Let's Play A Love Game

Author's note: this one is rated 😈 so yeah. There was originally more angst in my mind but once I got to that part I was over it lol I'm the worst at angst I much rather make it naughty. It's more rushed than I wanted but I don't really have time to write 10k fics right now. But hopefully soon.

Summary: it's just pretend, right?

She hadn't meant to push the event in the corner of her mind until she forgot about it completely, so much so that when the e-vite showed up in her inbox she stared at it in wide eyed shock not even noticing Mi-Seon creeping up behind her.

"It's already time for that? I usually know it's coming because you start buying expensive dresses you can't afford and crying at your credit card bill. Maybe country life has really changed you hm?"

False. Inaccurate. Utterly wrong to the every core.

She lets out a shrill scream letting her head fall painfully on her desktop.

"I'm an idiot! Just kill me now, I deserve it." She has nothing to wear, okay the mountain of boxes in her living room, bedroom and some hidden in the linen closet beg to defer but none of that is worthy of this event. The annual dentist convention in Seoul, it's a week long getaway. It's meant to be an opportunity to build connections and attend professional learning classes, but that has long been abandoned. Now it is a fashion show and chance to show off your success and this year more than ever she has to impress everyone. They all look down on her and her cute little practice. Those judgemental snarky bitches.

"Do we have anymore patients?" She absently asks her best friend, only friend already getting up and walking away.

"No that was the last one. Do you want to call it a day?" She doesn't give a verbal reply lost in her phone and the disease that is online shopping, in the span of three minutes she has already added seven dresses to her cart.

"Chief Hong is going to have a long day."

It's just as Mi-seon says the next day the nosy know it all shows up glaring at her over the handful of packages in his arms.

"Don't tell me you're doing this again. What more could you possibly have to order? How much things does one woman need?" His voice is an air warmer than the last time they were in this very same position, but she tries not to think too hard about it. Their relationship is too confusing these days, as temperamental as the sea.

"Are delivery men allowed to complain this much when they're doing a job they are getting paid for?" She snarks back, snatching her packages from his arms with a huff. Ignoring the grin on his face as she disappears into her house.

"That better be all you order. I'm not coming back."

He comes back. At least six more trips, more boxes each time on the last day he doesn't simply leave after making his delivery.

"I'm coming in for tea because of you I've been working too hard." She squeaks indignantly as he pushes past her, their shoulders brushing in the tight space of the doorway.

She should wait until she doesn't have an audience but she's too impatient so while he's making the tea in her kitchen (so rude and intrusive), she starts to open a few boxes pulling out the contents. Dresses, blouses, shirts, hair accessories, lipsticks in all shades and hues, and of course shoes; heels, flats and everything in between.

"Your house looks like a department store." She jumps at his voice glancing up at him, almost laughing at the hedgehog mug that he's drinking out of that Mi-seon gave her as a joke. Leave it to him to pick the most ridiculous mug.

"Hurry up and go so I can try everything on." She starts to take the objects out and organize them, putting together possible outfits lazily.

"Why not have a fashion show?" He slurps loudly at the tea, sighing and smiling down at the warm beverage. Acting like he's never had tea before, such a plebian.

"A fashion show?"

"Yeah, model all that", he motions to the new boxes littering her bedroom floor, "and I'll let you know what looks good."

She scoffs, loudly looking at his lackluster outfit; a simple white tee tucked into dark cargo pants with suspenders.

"What do you know about fashion?" She replies meanly, despite the little voice in her mind that reminds her that while his outfits are more practical than fashionable there is something distracting about the way his shoulders fill out his shirts and the way his long legs sit in his pants.

He shrugs looking down at himself, "I'm the town handy man I have no need to look good. But I'm still a man I can tell you what I think looks good on a woman."

Oh. It's a nonchalant statement said with no real heat but the implications make her skin warm up, she's never once thought that he saw her as a woman; nor considered looking at him like a man. (Lies.)

"I--why woul--why?" She stutters through an answer, tongue heavy in her mouth. He looks back nonplussed, sitting down pointedly on her couch.

"Never took you for the shy kind. You growing bashful now Ms. Dentist?" His eyes twinkle with mischief and she knows that she's being played but she wants nothing more than to wipe that smug look off his face. Slamming her room door, she pulls off her casual house clothes and grabs the first thing that catches her attention- a buttery yellow dress that grazes her knee, pairing them with white heels and a high messy bun. A swipe of lip tint completes the look and she confidently opens her room door.

Du-sik is staring aimlessly at his phone and doesn't notice her reappearance at first, so she coughs loudly folding her arms and when his eyes land on her, a chill runs down her spine at the look that lands on her body. It's been a long time since a man looked at her in this way, his eyes are undressing her even though he was the one who implored her to dress up in the first place. She hates it. At least she should hate it. But she can't ignore the satisfaction that washes over her at his dumbfounded look, that smug look obliterated by her very first look.

"Well?" She pushes harder, twirling to give him the full look. His gasp is loud behind her, she knows exactly why. The deep revealing plunge that travels all the way to the small of her back. There's no way she would wear this to the convention much too suggestive but that's her business.

"Wher-" his voice cracks and this time she can't contain her smile, dimples flashing now at her clear affect on him, clearing his throat he tries again, "Where exactly are you going again?"

She hums turning back around, gleeful at the vibrant blush on his cheeks. So he is just a man after all.

"A dentist convention." She answers cheekily and he guffaws loudly, eyes narrowing at her like he knows exactly what she's trying to do. They stare at each other for a long moment and she ultimately breaks the stand still, realizing what's happening. It feels a lot like flirting.

Collecting herself, she barrels back into the room.

"What the hell are you doing?" She whispers to her reflection, face too flushed for her liking.

A hard knock at the door pulls her from her self chastisement, "You didn't even wait for my rating."

She sighs loudly covering her face in embarrassment at her own action. She doesn't even have alcohol to blame this time.

"I don't care. This was stupid, let's stop."

Of course he ignores her.

"I liked it. But it's too...sexy for convention. You should wear that for someone special. I doubt anyone with a beating heart would be able to resist you."

What the fuck.

This isn't who they are, when did they become comfortable enough for conversations like this? They despised each other, right? Confused and annoyingly flattered, she peels the dress off her body trying her hardest not to think about the fact that only a door separates him and her naked body.

"I would love to see the others. But I have to go, but if you want my opinion. Red is definitely your color."

"What?" She replies, but she can hear the too loud click of the front opening and then closing and just as capriciously as he arrived, he leaves.

Burying something that feels a lot like disappointment she flops onto her bed, head fuzzy like its been wrapped in cotton.

"What is going on?"

They don't see much of each other the next day and it's unusual given how much they see each other on a regular basis but she refuses to think about it or even consider that he's avoiding her. He's just busy and she doesn't care anyway, they have nothing to do with each other.

The convention is in two days now, she has her overnight bag packed with all her new purchases and the messages have been pouring in their group chat. She's mostly chosen to ignore them but on a whim she decides to check what they're so excited about, only to feel her stomach drop.

Why isn't Hye Jin answering?

Maybe she's busy with her mystery man 😉

Oh! She has to bring him, we need to interrogate him!

Yoon Hye Jin don't pretend you don't see these messages!!

That she had forgotten about.

"Why did you tell them that he's interested in you? Has living here altered your brain, you idiot." She berates herself.

"Who's interested in you? Why are you an idiot?" Mi-seon looks curious from the doorway, without waiting for an invitation she hops onto the bed with two cans of beer. She grabs one, drinking it in a flash.

"Oh it's that kind of night." Mi-seon says excitedly running to grab more beers.

"So let me get this straight, you told them that Chief Hong is interested in you and that he's been chasing you but you're not interested?"

She nods meekly, wishing the floor would swallow her up.

"Why did you lie?"

That's the brunt of the issue, she's a liar. She should have sent her initial message and told them that there was nothing between them but how could she when they were all calling him handsome and acting like she finally did something right? She'd spent that entire dinner feeling like her teenage self on the outside looking in, wanting nothing more than to be someone worthy of being included.

"I know I should have told the truth."

"Yes, you should have told them that you're interested in him too."

Huh.

Time stops as she processes the words that her best friend just uttered. There is static in her head as she tries to make sense of it.

"What are you talking about?"

Mi-seon looks at her unimpressed.

"You can both keep lying to yourself but the rest of us aren't as stupid. You're both interested in each other. It's mutual."

She wants to ardently deny the accusation but the words are caught in her throat and all she can manage are refusing sounds.

"You've been wearing red all week." Mi-seon says accusingly and she jumps up in huff, "So what? I'm allowed to wear colors!"

"You hate wearing red. You said it makes your skin look too pale. You hardly ever wear it. So color me surprised when I learned that red is the favorite color of a certain part timer."

That damn town chat. There has to be a way to get Mi-seon out of it. Maybe it was a mistake letting her live here. She was learning too much.

"Don't even bother to deny it. I won't believe anything you say. But I think you should ask him to go with you, you'll get some time alone to figure this out."

There's nothing to figure out. They are..... acquaintances who can admit that the other is vaguely attractive at times. His face isn't all that bad and she's pretty, so it's natural that there is tension at times, like he said they were still humans.

So she doesn't tell him about her fib, pretending everything is fine until it's the day of the convention and her anxiety has all but smothered her and her hands have a slight tremble in them as she starts to drive.

"It's going to be fine. Everything will be okay." She doesn't believe a word she's saying to herself, her heart is thumping in her heaving chest. She doesn't want to go alone. Convincing Mi-seon to leave was a failed endeavour, her and that police officer becoming inseparable. She knew what that smile meant when her best friend had realized that she would have the house to herself. She could barely get a word in as Mi-seon started frantically shaving her legs then pushed her out of the bathroom to "shave her wild cat".

With a sigh she starts driving, the car too quiet despite what she'd told Du-Sik and the Gongjin grannies. Uncharacteristically she turns on the radio, kpop blaring from the speakers. She recognizes the tune, never before has something as mundane as butter seemed so interesting but the kitchen essential was given new life by the song. She bops her head to the catchy beat, trying to ignore the fact that she's driving to the lion's den.

Some time later, she pulls into the hotel a valet already coming over to get her car. Grabbing her overnight bag, she exits the car handing her keys to the waiting hands of the valet.

Everyone is here and none of them had come alone, she was the only one without a plus one. They haven't noticed her yet so she watches as they all laugh at a joke she can't hear, unnecessarily stroking at their husband's chests as if to show off their exorbitantly priced wedding rings. Everything was always a competition here.

She shouldn't have come. Their was nothing about her life that they would be envious of. She was going to make a fool of herself. Impulsively she starts stepping back but it's too late, Hong In-A spots her and points her out and immediately all eyes are on her, they all start walking over to her and she wants nothing more than to run far, far away. Get on a bus and go to the beach and never see any of them ever again. But she's no longer a child, no longer that scared little girl; worked too hard to shed that skin.

Fortifying herself she puts on a fake smile. Ready for war.

"Hye-Jin ah, there you are. We were beginning to think you wouldn't come. You never responded in the group chat." Ye-Ri states with an attitude, looking around her as if searching for someone and eyes brightening when she sees no one. "Did you come alone?" This makes all of them perk up, looking around like chickens with their heads clucking. She swallows the shame the question elicits, "Who would I be with? I told you in already, it's not like that."

They all look at her with pity, it makes her want to slap them all across the face. Who were they to make her feel like shit, she didn't need anyone that didn't make her pathetic.

Finally one of the husbands cracks the awkward tension by introducing himself, she tries her best to ignore the pervasive way his eyes run down her body. Instinctively she crosses her arms, feeling naked under his stare. Nobody else notices her discomfort and after all the introductions, they all walk away as if she's no longer worth their time.

Lump in her throat she walks into the hotel, determined not to show them that they've gotten under her skin.

There's a scheduled lunch and she tries to find a new table but Sung-Mi waves her over and she doesn't see anyone else she recognizes or wants to sit with.

He hadn't been wrong, she has no friends besides Mi-seon.

"You were looking around, were you looking for someone? Are we not good enough to sit with?" The question is asked with a bite and sneer as if the idea is laughable that she would ever be better than any of them.

She swallows her pride, "No nothing like that. I was merely looking around."

Sung-Mi looks satisfied as if putting her in her place has righted her world.

They begin a conversation that completely excludes her, regaling drama that she knows nothing about and doing nothing to bring her up to date or invite her to join. It's the polar opposite of her experience in the countryside and with shocking clarity she realizes that she wishes she were there, it's only been a few hours but she misses it. Nobody looks down on her there, no usually she's the only doing that she notes with shame.

"I'll find the restroom." She says to no one because none of them are paying her any mind except the husband with the wandering eyes and she would much rather not have that attention.

Thankfully the bathroom is empty and she has to stop herself from splashing water on her face, her make-up was done perfectly it would be a waste to ruin it. Pushing her hair behind her ears she takes a deep breath and then another until her head is clearer, the noise lessening.

"It's only a day and a night. You've suffered far worst."

With that lacking pep talk she exits the bathroom, almost colliding into a wall. Wait, no it's just a person- a chest to be specific. She looks up ready to apologize when a familiar face stops her in her tracks.

"What are you doing here?" She stares flabbergasted at him, more dressed up than she's ever seen him. In a white suit with a white vest, the tee-shirt peeking under the only thing that feels like him to her. And his white sneakers. She can't hide her surprise at his sudden appearance and without thinking she starts to pull him to the side, to avoid being seen but she's not fast enough and soon they are swarmed by her colleagues, before she even has a chance to talk to him.

"Aren't you the man from the picture?" Yoo-Jin asks blushing way too much for a married woman if her husband's cold stare means anything.

"The picture?" Du-sik replies, clearly confused.

"You're the guy that's chasing after her. She told us that you liked her and you were courting her." Sung-Mi answers for her, she wants to vanish. It would be better if she had never existed. Even non-existence would be better than this embarrassing moment. "I got a picture of you two last time, when you followed her."

His eyes ping-pong between the group and her and she realizes this is his chance to ruin her. After everything she's done, all her rude comments and snobby remarks about the town and people he cares for so much, this is his chance for revenge. He can laugh and deny any feelings for her, tell them all that she's a liar and he's never been interested in her, not even once. This is what is going to happen. She prepares herself for the fall out, surely after this she won't be able to show her face in Seoul again.

He starts to laugh and her stomach tightens, her palms are so sweaty.

Here it goes.

"Oh I guess she wanted to keep me a secret."

Wait. What. That doesn't sound like denial.

"We're together now. I finally bulldozed those walls and made her mine. Nice to meet you all I'm Hong Du-sik, Hye-Jin ah's boyfriend."

Her eyes widen as he bows and starts to shake hands with the husbands, the one that stared at her looking disappointed. Their handshake goes on for a second too long, eventually with the latter pulling away with a pained look. She's too confused to consider what that means.

"And you were so cold earlier saying you had no one. Did you want to make a fool of us?"

He answers for her, "It's nothing like that, my honey is still getting used to us. I'm sorry I'm so late I had something to take care of."

Her head is spinning too fast to keep up with everything happening and she's grateful when he excuses them and guides her outside with a large hand on her hip.

Fresh air is much appreciated and she takes in huge heaps of it as soon as they're free.

Then reality crashes down on her.

He knows about her lying.

He had called her bluff.

But he didn't out her.

"Why didn't you tell them the truth?" She finally manages to say, head still reeling.

But instead of answering he's staring at her legs, then slowly his eyes swivel upward cross her thighs curving around her hips, past her breasts (a bit too slow there) before moving to her collar and settling on her face.

"You look great."

She feels the heat rushing to her face. What was he doing to her?

It hadn't been in purpose but she finds herself in red again, an a line dress with criss crossing straps over her shoulder and a middle slit. It was conservative without being too formal or professional. She'd felt comfortable in it but now seeing that look on his face, comfort is the last thing she feels.

He was distracting her and she couldn't afford that with those harpies inside waiting for her downfall. They needed to get back on track.

"What are you doing here?" She tries again, but he responds with his own question, "Why did you tell them that I was chasing you?"

"It was a mistake. They thought we were together and I just....said that for no reason." It's half the truth.

"They don't seem like your friends. You looked like you needed someone on your side, so I just found myself saying we were together for no reason."

She looks at him blankly, heart pounding now. In her moment of weakness instead of kicking her, he'd lended a helping hand. What kind of person did it make her for expecting the former?

"So what now?" She asks still in disbelief that he's here and that he'd told people that there were dating, she would be angry and offended later that they had readily believed it. Perhaps it didn't seem too farfetched now with him looking like that right now.

"Well, don't look but they're watching us through the glass."

This time she finds herself turning to look and he's the one that has to stop her, he does so by suddenly grabbing her hand and tugging her into his body. She squeaks at the collision. Leaning down so his lips are level with her ear, he speaks, "We can give them a show. I'm happy to be your pretend boyfriend."

Why?

She yearns to ask him why he's willing to go this far for her? Why was he even here when she had never told him where the convention was taking place? But his words were hot on her ear and she's tired of being their source of entertainment so she nods looking up at him, "Just this once. I'm going to lean on you. Let me borrow your eraser and copy your homework."

He stares before a blinding smile graces his handsome face.

"Let's go then." His hand is heavy on her waist as he walks back towards the hotel, taking his role very seriously it seems.

He fits in perfectly. Able to talk about a plethora of topics to anyone he's introduced to and even she's impressed by him. Be it travel, philosophy or poetry he seems well versed in everything things that even she is ignorant to and it makes her regret the way she looked down on him before, he was anything but a country bumpkin.

She leaves him to his conversation to get a drink, a whiskey on the rocks. Needing something hard tonight.

Not that. Down brain.

"Yoon Hye Jin? I would recognize that face anywhere."

Twisting to face the voice, she sees a familiar face- old classmate. Rung Do-Bae, they weren't anything more than classmates despite his many, many attempts.

His eyes sweep over her hungrily. She swallows her drink, painting on a shallow smile.

"Sunbae, how nice to see you here."

Invading her space he grabs her hand, "There is no need for such formalities. You can just call me by my name, Hye Jin ah."

As if she ever would.

Gently she tries to extract her hand but he won't let go and she doesn't want to make a scene.

Suddenly she's warmed by a body pressing into her, she knows who it is without even looking, her body relaxes immediately.

"Sorry I got lost in conversation honey. Who might this be? Another friend of yours?" He thrusts his right hand out and Do-Bae has no choice but to release her hand to return his handshake. Scarily enough she's starting to become used to his nickname, barely reacting to him using it again.

"Yes, this is my sunbae from school. Sunbae this is Hong Du Sik my....."

She knows that this is all an act, they were doing this to help her but she can't bring her tongue to form around the word, boyfriend.

"Her boyfriend." He finishes for her, pulling her tighter to his body.

But Do-Bae looks suspicious now.

"Boyfriend? I thought you were still single. You never changed your status on SNS. I've checked."

"Why are you so curious about that?" Du-sik challenges in return, doing a great job of sounding like a jealous boyfriend. She's almost even convinced.

"Hye Jin ah and I have always had a very special relationship. Beyond that of a hoobae and sunbae. Isn't that right?" He directs the last bit to her and she feels Du-sik stiffen next to her, seemingly believing these lies. So she clears that up.

"I have no idea what you're referring to honestly. We have never had anything that would constitute as a "special" relationship. I would appreciate if you didn't spread such lies, especially to my boyfriend. Enjoy the rest of your night."

She tugs Du-sik away, not waiting for a reply from the other man. The conversation was over anyway.

When they get far enough he speaks, "You have a lot of admirers."

She raises an eyebrow at the non-sequitur.

"Are you surprised?"

He brushes a hand across her cheek, making her freeze.

"No. It makes sense."

She blinks slowly before laughing, it sounds fake even to her ears.

"You should have been an actor. Your acting skills are incredible." He doesn't laugh, doesn't move before they're pulled into another conversation and she tries not to think about how tightly his body is pressed against her own.

"How is he in bed? He hasn't left you alone all day, I bet it's passionate." As soon as lunch had ended they had invited her to a spa, she'd considered saying no but she knew they would talk about her even if she wasn't there so it was best to at least know what they were saying.

Du-sik looked sad to see her go, but she told herself that she wasn't good at reading his faces. They hardly knew each other.

"I can't remember the last time I had a passionate night of sex. Kids and a full time job, leave no time for that. I'm pretty sure he's cheating on me and I'm too tired to even care." Sung-Mi confesses and she's shocked when the others nod in agreement instead of threatening to castrate him, as she'd done when Mi-seon told her about her ex boyfriend cheating.

"I have no complaints. He's... attentive. He's always touching me and pushing his way into my space. He's gentle but passionate, and I like...that he's so much bigger than me." She knows she should stop, this is definitely taking the lies too far. But that night bleeds into her thoughts, making everything she's saying feel true. He'd been so gentle with her, those huge hands cupping her face. She wondered how they would feel on other parts of her body.

"Damn. Look at you getting horny just from remembering. I'm so jealous."

Jealous. There were envious of her, it was all she'd been hoping for but the happiness she expected to erupt never comes. Instead she feels cheap, like she'd used Du-sik for her own benefit. She had tainted that night. This wasn't what she wanted.

As the day had gone on she found herself looking at him too much, he'd come all the way just for her and regardless of her brain trying to minimize that, it was huge. He hated snobby people like them who based a person's worth in their monetary success and yet he put on a smile and chatted with everyone, letting them mock his way of life and call people like him useless dreamers. All while she did nothing to defend him and drank wine, happy that they were being accepted.

He was the perfect gentleman all day and he was getting nothing in return for this. It was all just to help her.

Would a friend truly go this far to help? Was she being naive or was it like Mi-seon said, was she lying to herself?

"I'm such an idiot."

Without another word, she flees the sauna rushing to the locker room and changing back into her clothes. Nobody follows her because they aren't her friends. Why had she wasted so much time trying to impress these people who aren't even truly happy in their own lives?

The drive back is long, and she doesn't know what she's going to say but she knows that she's tired of being scared.

Leaving the key in the car she rushes past the valet, into the hotel elevator pressing their floor and waiting impatiently.

It takes three tries to get into their hotel room but once the door opens, he's right there. Sitting in the seat by the window reading a book.

"You're back early. I thought you would be gone until three?" He looks up, dog earring his book and giving her his full attention. Her heart skips a beat.

"Why did you agree to do this for me? Why go through all this trouble for me?"

It's the same question he's been asking himself since he first met her. Why was he was interested in her and why did he keep wanting to save her?

It was the desire that led to him being here.

He had accidentally overhead Mi-seon talking to Eun Chol about being worried about her, the convention was overnight and everyone would be bringing someone and she'd be all alone. The thought of her alone and isolated, made him race to her without a plan. Only stopping at a store to buy his outfit so he would fit in with her crowd, he'd spent more in that shop then he usually did in a week. But it was worth it for her.

It was a miracle that she hadn't questioned his presence more, he knew it was shameless and deceiving but none of this felt like pretending to him. His jealousy had been real, he'd had to strangle the urge to kick the pervert husband with the wandering eyes and then the insistent sunbae who wouldn't take a hint. She was a vision in the red dress and it wasn't a surprise that men found her enchanting, he just didn't like them looking at her. But she wasn't his, never would be because he couldn't confess.

They weren't right for each other.

"Do you like me?"

That question again. Last time he had laughed it off, called it absurd. But it wasn't. Not liking her would have been absurd.

"I don't know why you're asking me that."

"Because I'm tired of us lying to ourselves. Don't laugh and don't you dare say it's absurd again."

He can't respond, he's stuck on the word "us". It wasn't just him, they were an us?

Hearing that gives him courage he had long thought had been most forever.

"I wasn't pretending today. Nothing was fake to me, I meant it all." It's terrifying, unchartered land for them and he waits to see which one of them will chicken out first. It's sure to happen.

"I'm going to kiss you." She says instead of running like he expected and secretly wished for.

And then she's crossing the room and leaning down to grab his face, she watches him giving him a chance to pull away but he does the opposite, this time he meeting her half way. As soon as their lips meet the kiss is already too much, she's sliding into his lap and he wraps his arms around her tugging her closer until their chests are squished together.

He hasn't kissed anyone like this in a long time.

Hasn't been this close to losing control in a longer time.

"You're dangerous." He whispers into her mouth and she giggles at the statement, wiggling in his arms and rolling into him forcing a punched out groan from his lips.

Carefully he lifts her shirt watching her face closely for any signs that she wants to stop but finding nothing but her palpable lust.

Her skin is unbelievably smooth and soft and he can't stop himself from stroking her, rubbing at her back his hands resting right above her butt.

"How long have you felt this way?" She asks softly seductively nipping at his neck and running a hand over his shirt to caress his stomach, he physically aches for her.

"I wanted you the moment I saw you. But I didn't feel this until you convinced grandma to get her implants. That was when it became more for me."

She looks surprised and he is too, that they're speaking so candidly about feelings they've always denied.

"What about you?"

She stops licking at his neck to look him in the eyes. He's nervous to hear her reply.

"I.... don't know."

He tries to hide his disappointment. Maybe she was starting to retreat back into her shell. Maybe he shouldn't have been so honest.

He's about to untangle them when she continues, "It wasn't at first sight but one day I found myself looking for you. Seeing you become the best part of my day, I started to count on you to be there for me. To expect it. Just like this, I've been scared to lean on anyone until I met you."

Now that's a confession.

Impulsively he stands with her still on his lap, forcing her to to latch onto him so she doesn't tumble to the floor. Not that this would ever happen because he would never let her fall.

"I could have fell!" She cries, clinging to his shoulders and wrapping her legs around his waist. Her half naked bra clad body so close to him is causing another biological crisis in his pants.

Walking to the large bed in the middle of the room he falls backwards, enjoying the view of her on top of him a little too much.

It's all probably too soon and they should probably slow down, but his body is strumming and he wants nothing more than to break her apart.

"I'm all sweaty. I should take a shower."

Instantly an image of her wet and naked under the downpour of a shower flashes in his mind and he has to twist away from her.

"Pervert." She accuses but he can hear how satisfied she is with his reaction. Damn tease.

"Do you want to join me?" She teases some more, having fun now that she knows her power over him.

He looks at her helplessly.

"Are you having fun? Remember what I told you before? I'm still a guy. You're sitting here in your bra taunting me, do you think I'm that much of a good guy? Do you think I don't want to throw you down, rip your clothes off and eat you alive? I'm so hard right now just seeing you naked would be enough to push me over the edge. So don't make propositions you can't follow through on."

She looks dizzy from his words, eyes hooded and glossy. He watches her gulp and then stagger off to the bathroom, without a word to him. It's probably for the best, everything is too charged right now.

A shower for her and many glasses of water for him later, she's back and it's almost time for dinner.

"I think they said dinner starts at 6. Should we head down?"

She glances at him, while opening her bag and pulling out skin creams and some fuzzy socks.

"Would you be opposed to ordering room service and staying here?"

It's the best offer he's heard all day, only second to her asking if he wanted to join her in the shower.

"What about your colleagues?" He asks to make certain that she's really okay with this.

"What about them?" She replies with a shrug and he grins picking up the room service menu.

They order too much food and not enough alcohol but neither of them want to forget this night. She tells him stories about her time in dental school and he's happy to get to know her better, chuckling at the funny stories and commiserating at the sad ones.

Before he knows it night has fallen.

And he realizes that they'll be sharing a bed. Unless she wants him to sleep on the couch.

She's wearing a big shirt and loose shorts and he still can't believe he gets to see her like this.

"Are you coming to bed?" She's already getting under the sheet and that answers his question, this is really happening. He starts to follow her lead, getting under the sheets but keeping a respectable distance between them.

"I'm cold." She announces suddenly and he starts to look for a thermostat in the room or an extra blanket, before realizing that she's looking at him over her shoulder, he stares back confused before she lifts an eyebrow and oh, he gets it. Carefully moving closer he feels her warmth surround him as they meet, forth to back.

"Took you long enough." She grumbles, pulling his arm over here body and settling back into him moving until she's comfortable.

She's so close and warm and her smell is all around him and he feels his restraint dissolving and when she presses back into him, her hip rubbing against his crotch he bites down on his bottom lip.

It's too much for him to resist and without warning or preamble, he's turning her to face him and swallowing her moan of surprise eagerly. He grabs her head firmly holding her in place and slips his tongue into her open mouth, her unique taste exploding on his taste buds. He's hungry for more. So he starts to tug down her shorts, heart beat thundering in his groin. She kicks the shorts away, and he groans at the sight of her panties she was trying to kill him, he was certain.

"You're the devil." He chokes out staring at red lace, he'll never be able to see the color again without getting a raging hard on.

"You haven't seen anything yet. Honey." The word drips from her tongue just like the real thing.

Forgetting all reason and logics he lunges at her, devouring her mouth and sticking his hand in her panties. She's so warm and fuck, wet drenching his fingers.

Simultaneously he thrusts his tongue into her mouth and his fingers in her wet folds, groaning as she melts like butter under his touch. There's no resistance, as he plunges two fingers inside her experimentally before picking up his place when she clutches onto him and grinds back on his fingers, begging the whole time.

"More, more, please!"

As if he could ever deny her anything, with one hand he grabs her ass and the other he thrusts into her opening over and over until her voice gets breathy and she starts to stutter, squirming wildly in his arms and he knows exactly what's coming: the beautiful end. So without warning he pulls back the sheet and slithers down her body, throwing her legs around his head and pushing his tongue in to the brim, hungrily drinking at her until she shakes and combusts in his arms. Sweet on his tongue, he swallows it all greedily.

He strokes her as she recovers from her high, climbing back up her body. So much for taking things slow, but he can't even think about regretting it when he sees the blissed out look on her face. He wants to imprint it in his mind. Nobody else will ever get to see this face but him.

"It's your turn." She says sounding loopy like she's drunk and he laughs as she reaches for the tent in his pants but misses his bulge and instead falls into him.

"You're tired. Go to sleep. That was enough for me, seeing you like that fulfilled every fantasy I've had. "

He truly means it. He's a giver. And it's not like he can't tug one out later in the bathroom with her face and moans playing on repeat in his brain.

She starts to argue, but her phone vibrating on the nightstand distracts her. Reaching over she picks it up before chuckling and flopping back into the bed.

"What?" He asks curious, jealous of whoever is making her smile like that.

Ignorant to his inner thoughts, she thrusts her phone into his face. The room is so dark it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the bright lighting of the phone, but once he can see he reads the message on her phone and starts to laugh too.

"Dusik is missing! Nobody has seen him all day!! We started a search party."

#hometown cha cha cha #sikhye couple #caution 😈 ahead #hong du shik #yoon hye jin #living rent free

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askthewvba · 3 years ago

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Hippo Island Culture 101 (Crash Course)

Everything you’d never think to ask! 🤪

First off! Hippo Island actually refers to multiple smaller islands surrounding a larger landmass. The King Hippo has one of these smaller islands all for islands all for himself while the larger island is occupied by his people and the other smaller islands are each used for their own special occasions.

🍍Characteristics

Hippoans are human beings. Despite their intimidating and foreign appearance (and lack of noses) they are just as human as the rest of the Punch Out cast with their own language, culture, history and struggles. Just to get that out of the way immediately! While it is commonly believed that King Hippo is kind of a kind, that's simply not the case!

The Hippoans do all just be Built Different! All Hippoans are heavy naturally, and the heavier you are the more healthy and desirable you’re seen in their society. Having especially chubby children or a chubby spouse signals to other Hippoans that you’re a generous person and they know whose hut to visit at dinner time! There are rare exceptions to this rule but big is the bar set and big is beautiful.

This weight does come at a price however. Hippoans are so heavy with all of their heft and dense bones that they are completely incapable of swimming. Hippoans will sink like a rock!!! This has lead to most of them being absolutely petrified of the sea. Traveling from island to island is fine because the water between the smaller islands is typically not enough to drown in and otherwise is only a short ride by boat away. Traveling any farther than the lands governed by King Hippo is out of the question, and King Hippo is seen as indisputably courageous for traveling to the Mainland regularly. If a Hippoan falls from the boat they must be rescued and pulled back aboard immediately or face certain death by drowning. There’s no recovering a sunken Hippoan. They will simply never be seen again.

The dark part of a Hippoan’s face actually isn’t a mask or facial marking, but rather a natural indent on their face! This indentation and their thick fleshy eyebrows are protection against the harsh sun on Hippo Island.

The skin of a Hippoan is thicker and more resilient than that of a non-Hippoan. It’ll bruise like any other and Hippoans will bleed like anyone else, though it tends to be just a bit harder to take them down with the usual means like sharp objects. They are built different and are built to take a ton of damage. That being said, their tummies are always a weakness without exception. Why this is as of yet unclear, but a blow to the stomach is so potent of an attack that when struck there a Hippoan is absolutely thrown for a loop. It’s like a complete system reset, going unconscious and often waking up disoriented and confused.

We also haven’t discovered why they evolved to not have noses, but it is suspected their sense of smell works like snakes. Rather than flicking out their tongues however it may be that they are smelling when breathing through their teeth.

🥥Names

Names don’t exist in the traditional sense on Hippo Island. Your name is typically your job, but even then there’s a bit more to it than that.

King Hippo was born Hippo Heir IV, as he was a potential heir to his father's throne along with at least five other siblings. When he dethroned his Father, who was then called King Hippo, his son took the title of King Hippo from him for himself.

Toddy is a nickname bestowed on him by King Hippo’s friend and personal translator, as it’s a name for Coconut Wine. This is a reference to the fact that his mother, King Hippo’s wife, was a brewer before she became Queen Hippo. Toddy would be known to his mother as “son” or “Coconut Son”, and had a collection of other names and titles over the years before he became generally known and accepted as Prince Hippo, most prominently “Coconut Servant”. Coconut in this case is used as an identifier to separate him from the other servants King Hippo used to have alongside Toddy. It was originally due to his haircut resembling a halved coconut.

Queen Hippo still prefers her ‘maiden title’ Coconut Brewer. To King Hippo she is Wife, to her he is Husband. Despite her elevated status she still goes to work as a Brewer every day, and it’s in being a Brewer that she’s nicknamed her children after her favorites fruits to ferment. Her son is Coconut Son, meanwhile…

Her daughters are Pineapple Daughters, Pineapple Princesses, and before King Hippo and Coconut Brewer got married they were known to the villagers as Shell Collectors. They are nicknamed Tepache and Neerah by King Hippo’s translator for convenience. The translator tried to nickname every Hippoan she’d ever met.

Other examples include the Ferryman, who simply goes by Ferryman along with a few other nicks, the Weavers (Elder Weaver, Loving Weaver, and Mischievous Weaver/also known as “Silkie”; three generations of Weavers), Lone Builder who is married to Loving Weaver, Boar Herder (“Tusk”), and Chicken Herder (“Drumstick”).

There are also unfavorable monikers for the less reputable villagers. Hippo Island is generally a peaceful, crime-free community, however there are a few outliers at any given time who serve as exceptions to this. The only noteworthy one who you may come to know is a hunter, formerly Ferocious Hunter, who is now widely known as “Bonehead”.

After losing his title of King Hippo, his father would go on to be known as “The Loathsome One”.

Related to names, “One” serves as a replacement pronoun for “I” and “me”.

King Hippo: Needs no introduction. He is simply This One. Used to refer to himself as ‘this hopeful one’ and ‘this victorious one’.

Toddy: This dutiful one.

Brewer: This hardy one. She too now has the credence to call herself This One.

🍌Jobs

Jobs are normally determined by the work already in the family, but there’s normally no shame in changing career paths. A Weaver Daughter could decide to be a Warrior. A Builder Son could decide to become a Craftsman or a Child Caregiver.

Brewer was originally a warrior in training during her youth, before deciding she wanted less to do with the battles and more to do with the merrymaking and celebration that comes afterwards. Toddy was a fire dancer for the better part of his teen years, but due to circumstances in his life decided he wanted to be a warrior.

Staying within your family’s line of work is a safe way to live since you’re surrounded by seasoned veterans of that skill set, but by no means are you limited to work within your bloodline. While everyone’s personality is different, most Hippoans are happy to teach.

Children of Hippo Island are usually given menial tasks, like collecting shells, to both prepare them for adult life and to educate them on the barter and trade system that Hippoans operate under by having them trade their trinkets with other children.

🌋Faith

The elements are Gods and Goddesses, plain and simple. The Volcano Gods must be appeased regularly and the Gods of the Deep must be respected and feared at all cost.

While all of their Gods command respect, each family tends to put higher value on different Gods in accordance to their job, and these families are at the forefront of all celebrations relating to these deities. The Ferryman, King Hippo and Toddy stand alone when celebrating the Gods of the Deep.

🏝Customs

This is a bit of a Work in Progress, but we do know their romantic customs. 🥰

Interest in one another is expressed through flower crowns and chains. There’s an entire color language when offering flowers with some signifying friendship, gratitude, or condolences. For simplicity’s sake we’ll focus on three such cases however.

Pink flowers are used when first pursuing another Hippoan that they fancy. It is the general color of a new love or infatuation.

Red flowers are a more passionate form of love and serve as making a much bolder statement. Typically you want to avoid these when you’re merely confessing your interest in another person, as red flowers are most commonly used in marriage proposals.

For extra points one may want to include their intended’s favorite flowers or flower of their favorite color to show consideration and a more genuine interest in who they are.

When offering the Infatuation Flowers, there’s not much fanfare involved. Simply get your loved one alone and ask if they’ll accept it. If yes, they’ll wear it on their head or around their neck. If you’re showing your feelings to a Hippoan and they reject you, they might just eat the flowers. A rude rejection will involve stomping on the flowers to snuff out the affections entirely.

Offering Proposal Flowers has a lot more symbolism, especially if, say, you’re King Hippo. When King Hippo proposed to his wife, he knelt before her and held his flowers for her up over his head. Slowly he lowered his head to bow to her until the crown fell from his head and rolled over towards her feet. Bowing is apart of every Hippoan proposal, but the Hippoan royalty exemplify it’s importance. Your intended is someone who you place above yourself, you humble yourself before them, and you sacrifice the symbol of your pride by allowing your crown to fall off. For commoners the practice is still meaningful, as it means you see your significant other as someone worthy of being royalty, as they are the only person other than your actual King/Queen who you would bow to.

Arranged Marriages used to be somewhat commonplace until some short time ago, when it was realized that matchmaking was a largely imperfect practice. It has always been preferred that either marriage occurred out of love, or when the arranged marriage elevated the family by means of having a relative become betrothed to Hippo Royalty. Nowadays marriages outside of love are met with scrutiny and discomfort and harems are completely out of the question. (Though that’s not to say our King Hippo hasn’t laid with a few Hippoan ladies before tying the knot with his wife… that just wasn’t their status in the hierarchy and wasn’t apart of their naming scheme.)

When Hippoans pass away, they are given a funeral similar to that of the Vikings, though without the fire. Hippoans don’t have the land and therefore the luxury of burying their dead, nor would they consider cremating them. Instead the dead are placed inside specially made boats, sealed inside with flowers and trinkets from the deceased’s family, and after a small service full of mournfully singing Hippoans, they are pushed out to sea to appease their ocean deities. Unlike the boats that serve the living on their journeys, these boats are designed to eventually capsize and sink.

Hippoans… don’t really have the capacity to speak in other foreign tongues. Not very clearly at least. King Hippo actually does speak some English if you listen closely, but even then it’s very difficult to fully understand.

Hippoans are called such for a reason. Their growls and deep bellows are reminiscent of a hippo, though their language and variants of it cover a wide range of other animals as well.

Child Hippoans typically sound like bear cubs whereas infants sound almost froglike. Some Hippoans have even been known to sound like elephants. Hippoan singing, as mentioned in a previous post, sounds like a mix of throat singing and a chorus of bull frogs.

There are words formed under all of these animalistic noises and these words can be learned, but few take the time. Until our King Hippo, the Hippoans were widely forgotten about by the rest of the world. Even now tourism to Hippo Island is very carefully limited by the King himself.

👑Becoming King

There’s a ton of Hippoan history being omitted here to spare time. What you need to know is that due to a change for the worse over time, in order to become King or Queen (or Sovereign depending on your identity) you would need to defeat the ruler of that time in a fight, one that strongly resembles boxing. Normally to postpone that from happening, the ruler would sire a multitude of children via a harem (or their spouse should they have one; our last King Hippo did not), and then those children would be trained to eventually do battle with one another for the right to take on their parent.

Upon meeting defeat the siblings would depart from the islands by boat, presumably to never be seen again. Same was the fate of The Loathsome One when his son dethroned him. As the new King he could have done away with the banishment tradition if he desired, but due to the damage callously caused by Loathsome (and the assumed loss of his family) it was decided he deserved no mercy. King Hippo would have executed him, but he wanted to herald in a new age for the Hippoan people that saw an end to violence and needless bloodshed.

#punch out #punchout #askthewvba #nintendo #punchout wii #punch out wii #king hippo #punch out headcanons #punchout headcanons

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anghraine · 4 years ago

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Consolidating (...at considerable length) some of the ideas from the Denethor+Faramir vs most Silm Elves discussion:

A. The basic issue is this: Tolkien depicts or references Denethor’s and Faramir’s special Númenórean abilities (non-exhaustively listed here and discussed here) virtually every time either one of them appears. And some of these abilities seem like they would have been awfully useful to the Elves of the Silmarillion, but for some reason, weren’t actually used by them.

The most notable has to do with lies and deception. Gandalf says it is difficult to deceive Denethor and “dangerous” to try—a statement backed up by Faramir’s interactions with Gollum in TTT, when Gollum squealed in pain when he tried to lie to Faramir, and was unable to wholly prevent Faramir from seeing information “in his mind.” It is clear in the Silm, however, that a good number of Elves can be deceived without setting off similar abilities, with a few exceptions like Galadriel.

So I’ve been wondering why that is, based mostly on LOTR.

B. There is, of course, the potential meta-reason that some of these specific abilities would probably break the plot of the Silmarillion, which is packed full of Elves, while nearly full-throttle Númenóreans like Faramir and Denethor are quite rare in LOTR, only show up infrequently apart from Aragorn, and are thus much less disruptive to the narrative as a whole. But that doesn’t explain anything in-story.

Various ideas came up in the general discussion, but I think they can be roughly divided into two types:

1. Most Elves don’t use these abilities because they choose not to, or

2. Most Elves don’t use these abilities because they don’t have them.

Under #1, it’s possible that Elves prefer not to use these kinds of powers for their own Elvish reasons. It may be that many of them simply don’t care for intrusive telepathy and similar abilities. It may be that there are taboos and protocols around it that fade by the Third Age, especially the later Third Age, but are very much in effect earlier on.

But the underlying assumption here is that they could have used the same abilities if they had chosen to do so, but are not (by and large). One of the questions that arises here is if all abilities of this kind have to be deliberately ‘activated’ to work, or if they naturally just happen and will only stop if controlled or repressed. If it’s the latter case and there are actual methods of control, it may be that Denethor and Faramir never fully turn off their abilities because they don’t know how. Who was going to tell them?

The Faramir-Gollum scenes might support this. Faramir is certainly trying to extract information from Gollum, but it doesn’t seem at all probable that he would deliberately inflict pain on him. It’s possible that some of this is just part of his being as far as he knows.

Meanwhile, there are also several possibilities involving #2. I think this one is, on the face of it, more difficult to accept (not-quite-full Númenóreans with greater powers than many Elves? bzuh?). But there are probably some ways it could work.

The first is relatively simple. It’s clear that Elves (like Númenóreans!) have different ranges and clusters of ability. An Elf being very powerful doesn’t mean they can do ALL THE THINGS. It means they’re very powerful at the things that they do (which might be many!). And there are some abilities that are very widespread, and some that seem to be less so. It may be that deception detection in particular is something that’s fairly uncommon among Elves as a strong ability. It’s not 100% assured that any given Elf has all the abilities of any given Númenórean.

The second possibility is a little more complicated. LOTR and Middle-earth generally (but esp LOTR) don’t operate on a hard magic system with clearly-defined rules. Galadriel points this out, and that the hobbits aren’t really distinguishing Elvish “magic” from Sauron’s “magic,” but they are in reality very different things. Elvish abilities are byproducts of their inner selves. Even outside of LOTR, Fëanor’s abilities (for instance) are inextricably tied up with his fiery spirit. The link between spirit or will or disposition and outwards ability is much stronger with Elves than with the other peoples of Middle-earth.

So it would still be the case that Elves aren’t doing some of these because they can’t—but it wouldn’t be a matter of power or arbitrary talent, but because of their underlying characteristics. It may be that things like what we see Denethor and Faramir doing require a temperament that most Elves don’t have (but Galadriel does, lol).

In that case, I would then wonder if Denethor’s and Faramir’s abilities are outgrowths of their dispositions. Their abilities seem to revolve around gathering information and commanding others; they’re described as “commanding” and they love information, so it makes sense that that’s how their abilities would manifest. Then again, it may be that Númenórean powers, though similar to some Elvish ones in outcome, operate differently.

Tolkien comes up with several ideas for where Númenórean specialness comes from in general. In some places, it was Númenor itself that changed them, and their decay in Middle-earth comes mainly from the loss of Númenor. In some places, their gifts have to do with their mode of living and thinking. In some places, it seems to be entirely hereditary; things run in particular families (like the kingly healing of Elendil’s heirs) and are reinforced by ~pure blood (um). And sometimes it seems like their gifts are, at least in part, literal gifts from the Valar which are gradually being withdrawn by the end of the Third Age. Or some combination thereof.

Regardless, the ancestors of the Dúnedain did not come by their abilities naturally. Either directly or indirectly, their size, their lifespans, their craftsmanship, their mental abilities, and more were given to them by other powers. Perhaps Elvish powers were the template for Númenórean powers, but it doesn’t work the same because Númenórean powers are ultimately coming from a divine source. That might even be why Denethor and Faramir are associated with wizards (i.e. Maiar) much more than Elves, which is pretty astonishing on the face of it. I mean:

“Ah well, sir,” said Sam, “you [Faramir] said my master had an elvish air; and that was good and true. But I can say this: you have an air too, sir, that reminds me of, of—well, Gandalf, of wizards.”

He [Denethor] turned his dark eyes on Gandalf, and now Pippin saw a likeness between the two, and he felt the strain between them, almost as if he saw a line of smouldering fire drawn from eye to eye.

???????????????????????????

The first quote is particularly interesting because it contrasts Faramir’s wizardliness with Frodo’s elvishness, as if those things are not quite the same, though Faramir is also briefly associated with Elves later on.

There’s also the issue of Elros; it seems extremely probable that most Númenóreans are descended from Elros at this point (in fact, multiple times over). The Stewards are explicitly so in multiple drafts of the Appendices. While it’s so remote that it wouldn’t make a difference in most cases, maybe part of what goes on with Númenóreans is that some of them inherit a fraction of Elros’s abilities, which ultimately derive from Elves, Edain, and a Maia. Maybe all these Númenórean-??wizardly??? types cropping up in time to fight Sauron is a sort of last hurrah for Melian’s blood among the Dúnedain, and what we see in Denethor and Faramir is the share they got.

Or not!

Anyway, this is a lot, and it’s not like the possibilities are even mutually exclusive, so maybe two or more are all operating at once, to make things even more complicated. Or maybe something altogether different is. But I think this is everything that’s come up so far wrt the (inverted?) disparity between Númenóreans and most Elves.

#there's also the aragorn stuff but that's slightly tangential to this #and it's enough of a monster post already #denethor #faramir #anghraine babbles #...a lot #legendarium blogging #húrinionath #jewel of the seashore #galadriel #gandalf #hmm ... i think it merits my catch-all númenórean stuff tag #team dúnedain #anghraine's meta #not sure it merits that lol but i'll add it #long post

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yanderenightmare · 5 years ago

Text

BNHA HEADCANNONS

YANDERE ! SEVEN DEADLY SINS

goodiebag WARNINGS: yandere, abuse, dubcon/noncon themes, mind control, profanity, threats, torture themes, kidnapping, abduction, Stockholm syndrome mentions, stalking

YANDERE ! BAKUGO KATSUKI - KACHAN PRIDE CRAVES PROSPERITY – FEARS DEFEAT

Katsuki is, above all, a narcissist. He isn't overly delusional. However, his vanity knows no bounds. So, when he picks someone to be his soulmate, it’s very confusing and dawning for him when he realizes that his wishes won’t be met. He genuinely feels as though he is the perfect option for his darling, even though the option part of it all proves to become bendable after some time. After countless encounters, or so he feels, of him explaining and defining the situation of their relationship to his darling, something of which he considers as blatant fact meant to be respected, only to be met with laughter, she only brushing his bold statements off as simple jokes, he comes to the resolution that his darling is confused and doesn’t understand how great he is. And, what more, when his darling still has the audacity to refuse to appreciate his greatness, his superiority, even after numerous of his faked rescues, he realizes he simply needs to be a bit more aggressive with his approach. She obviously isn’t capable of taking care of herself, as delusional and naïve as she is. He is aware that kidnapping his darling is in basis wrong, he understands that she’ll need time to adjust, however he is confident, especially because she won’t be going anywhere anytime soon... this is where she belongs, safe and sound with him, whether she likes it or not.

One might mistake his drive for wrath, when in reality it’s passion. He’s prideful, but not without reason, he is a top-ranking hero after all. He craves prosperity; to always strive for a higher goal. And, although he’s not opposed, however not big on punishment, he’s very fond of rewards, as in: credit will be granted where credit is due. He expects his darling to show him the same form of respect. So, she better praise him for his efforts each time he offers them. Does his darling finally reach one of the goals he has set for them, either she finishes one of the meals he so lovingly prepared for her or she surrenders to him in between the sheets, she will be given a liberty and so on and so worth. Good behavior will be rewarded. This does however, by no means, make him and his darling equals. He takes his role as dominant very seriously, and makes sure to enforce this in the relationship each time he may feel his darling slip out of her role as submissive. He feels the unrelenting need to be above everyone else and for people to understand that they are beneath him. He fears defeat more than anything; to one day meet the realization that he isn’t, in fact, the best person to protect his darling. Never once realizing he is the only one she needs protecting from.

YANDERE ! DABI – TODOROKI TOUYA LUST CRAVES DEVOTION – FEARS LOSS

Dabi is a nasty, unrestricted, lustful dominator. When he decides that his darling is his, well… praying will do her no good anymore, it will only turn him on even more. The thing about Dabi is that he isn’t delusional whatsoever, unlike most yanderes. He’s very lucid during all his stalking. That’s what’s so very terrifying; he knows how very wrong it is… and he loves it. And, it isn’t even as though he can’t help himself. He never tries to or creates any sort of excuses for himself. Dabi has full control over everything he does, however… he doesn’t see why he should hold back even though he is fully capable of it. He has the power, and he will exercise that power as much as he so wishes. He knows she’s afraid, he knows she thinks he’s creepy, but… he quite enjoys that. He knows what he’s doing is not only criminal but borderline evil and is under no false impression that his actions are in his darling’s best favor. He knows kidnapping is wrong when he does that too, he just… doesn’t care, or… he rather gets off on it. He is confident however in fixing her attitude. He’ll make her like it. Through pleasure, through pain, through any shape of contact discipline, however many times it takes before she’s undoubtedly his and his alone. That’s how lustful for her he is. And though patience isn’t his strongest suit, he does enjoy playing games, which means he’ll savor every moment of stalking, fantasizing and humoring his plans before kidnapping his darling.

Like Katsuki, Dabi has a major superiority complex. However, unlike Katsuki, it’s not a fixation with the entire world, but one with his darling alone. He lusts for her in ways too painful to imagine. He craves her devotion; an unrelenting, unbound, unconditional devotion. This need is cultivated over several years of neglect. Since there wasn’t much he could control in his childhood, he needs his darling at his beck and call at all times. If she fails to please him, her actions will have consequences in the shape of blue flames. However, he’ll never inflict any severe injuries, he much enjoys and prides himself in changing her mind through pleasure instead. And, he’s pretty sure that over time she’ll grow to love those thumbprint hearts he singes into her skin, and there will be no need for his punishments any longer. He enjoys thinking that she might even one day ask him to burn his name into her chest, he just needs to fry her brain a bit beforehand. You can only hate someone for so long before that hatred turns to passion, until eventually the line that used to separate love and hate has disappeared completely. He knows this, and he’ll exploit it. He doesn’t fear much, but jealousy is unrivaled in his lustful heart. So much as though the mere possibility of his darling feeling the same love for someone else tears at his heart more than anything, which is why he needs to brand his mark onto her as well as keep her hidden away from the rest of the world.

YANDERE ! SHIGARAKI TOMURA GREED CRAVES CONNECTION - FEARS ISOLATION

Tomura is starved. Starved beyond just famine, so much so that it’s more like death. The worst part of it all is: he doesn’t even know how parched he is. Not until he gets a taste of his darling, and only then does he realize that he is, in fact, insatiable. That’s why, after only one encounter, it didn’t take at all that long before she woke up in a foreign room, the remnant feeling of his fingertips evident on her skin. He couldn’t risk letting the opportunity slip out from his grasp, not when she was standing there so delectably, begging to be taken by him. Alike Dabi, Tomura is fully aware that what he’s doing is wrong, however he doesn’t enjoy it as much as Dabi does. He is fully aware that his darling doesn’t reciprocate his needs, however… they are needs. Undisputable needs. He needs her, he’s dependent on her. It’s not just an addiction, it’s beyond that, he can’t live without her. He just simply… needs her, there is no denying it, there is no ignoring it. And, because of this split-second realization of dependence, the kidnapping wasn’t a very careful or calculated abduction either, but then again… what’s the need for caution when you have the power to obstruct all evidence with the mere touch of your fingers? One could mistake it for gluttony, but there lies choice in being gluttonous. Greed however, greed is satiated only to awake with a newfound determination. Tomura’s greed is a hunger so rash, so incontrollable; unavoidable. No one can ignore hunger. In fact, if you let your hunger go on unmet, you die. Which is exactly what he has been feeling all his life, except not understanding it before she gave him a taste of what living actually feels like. Pray for his darling when she doesn’t satiate his needs, he doesn’t ever want to feel like he’s dying again. One knows how desperate people get in the face of death.

Tomura is very tenacious, as in: he’s not easily ignored or dispelled. He’s clingy and needy and unrelenting in his pursuit. He craves connection, his darling’s affection and her attention. And, he isn’t above hurting his darling in order to get what he needs. However, he would much rather prefer it if she didn’t scream or cry or fight him each time he made to touch her. He doesn’t want his darling to hate him, therefore he makes it his mission to get her to understand his predicament, that he needs her more than anything else life has to offer, that she is life itself in his eyes. As though that would help ease the situation. And, though his desperation calls for some sympathy, it does not serve as an excuse for when he touches her without her consent. However, she can only resist for so long when he begins threatening her family and friends and any acquaintances she’s ever made. He really doesn’t want to threaten her. However, his fear of isolation outweighs his fear of her hating him. And, not to mention… he fears what might happen if she were to isolate him, since he’s not one for self-control. He cannot control his frustration, or who he takes it out on, if she decides against giving him what he so obviously needs. She better think twice before disobeying him. He may not look it, but he is powerful beyond compare and ruthless in every step of reaching his goal.

YANDERE ! SHINSO HITOSHI GLUTTONY CRAVES CONTROL – FEARS DECEPTION

Hitoshi is a glutton. As in: he loves playing with his food, and hates when his food plays with him. Because of this: Hitoshi doesn’t flirt unless it’s absolutely necessary. And, when he does: it’s usually with people he’s trying to exploit and not with people he actually likes. He enjoys a much more straightforward approach with people he’s interested in. Hitoshi craves control over his conversations, flirting is too volatile and calls for too rigid and illusive information. Hitoshi views flirting as lying. It’s something one does to benefit oneself, it’s rarely honest and real and at all clear in any way. It’s manipulation, something of which he is in no dire need of and in no desire of either, what with his quirk and all; he can extract much more understandable answers. And, when it comes to his darling, he figures flirting isn’t necessary because… well… if he’s decided she’s his… there’s not much she can do to prevent it, now is there? Hitoshi is completely capable of taking whatever he wants, and he will. Although, he would much rather enjoy her offering herself instead, but he’s not picky, he knows better than anyone that God doesn’t give with both hands. Besides, he might be patient, however he doesn’t relish games unless he’s the one in control, and therefore won’t allow his darling’s antiques for very long. If she refuses to indulge him in his wishes, he will very well just make her. There’s not much she can do to stop him when he decides he’s had enough of her teasing. He loves making rules anyway, especially when they’re so easy to enforce. He’ll allow his darling many freedoms, unlike most other yanderes, simply because he has the means to make her stay, keeping her subconscious leash rather short. It’s safe to say that the kidnapping went pretty smoothly.

Despite craving control, the last thing Hitoshi wants is a counterfeit relationship with his darling. He wants and will strive to preserve those key elements that drew him to her in the first place. He’ll try to restrain himself from overusing his controlling powers too much, as so to let her personality survive what changes he’s adding to her psyche. He’ll kindle the flames of her spirit enough to keep them lit and flickering. Always sparking hope inside her every now and again to keep things interesting, also to test her progress. He never results to violence with his darling, not seeing how it’s needed when he has the means to correct her behavior without so much as lifting a finger. He finds that simply implying to use his quirk proves affective enough on its own. When she results to quit speaking and answering him altogether, he’ll simply wait. Wait, because nothing bites more than solitude, yet another thing he’s learned over the years. And, while relishing in each time she gives herself to him willingly, he cannot wait for the day where she finally comes up to him begging for him to ask her a question, pleading for him to take control, praying to be his little puppet on strings. If only for a little while, he so enjoys the taste of her mind in his clutches.

YANDERE ! TAKAMI KEIGO - HAWKS SLOTH CRAVES ESCAPE – FEARS REALITY

Keigo is not just one of the most obsessive yanderes, he is the most obsessive yandere, but… can you blame him? Ever since Keigo became a well renounced hero he’s become so used to getting what he wants, easily at that, especially females. He’s just so baffled when his lazy charms don’t work on the apple of his eye. He feels so out of his element when, instead of being flattered, his darling repels in disgust at his compliments. He spends multiple days pondering over what on earth he could be doing wrong. Approaching her again and again, winking his golden eyes at her, something of which usually has the ladies swooning and melting at his fingers. Stalking her quickly begins to feel too weird, and too frustrating for Keigo’s liking. All this pining over things he can’t have begins to remind him of his unpleasant childhood, where everything was out of reach. With that thought nagging at him, he realizes that he would much rather just take her. It’s so tempting when it would be so easy, just simply snatching her away for himself. Not much thinking would need to go into the abduction either. He has wings, hawks are birds of prey after all. The more he finds himself drowning in the thought the harder it becomes to stop himself when he acts on it. And, there he is and there she is: her mouth stuffed full with all the feathers he could spare to prevent her from screaming as he flies them back to his house. It was almost as though he had no idea what he was doing until she was safely stored in his bedroom, crimson feathers keeping her struggles subdued. His golden eyes; devoid of their usual suave nature and replaced by something frantic. The realization of what he’d just done coming down upon him. He results to rambling, stalking back and forth inside the room with his fingers interlocked in his hair, ideas on how they would figure things out along the way spilling from his lips in panic.

He really just wants to have fun with his darling. He craves levity and laughs, but it’s hard with all her screaming at him. Telling him he’s insane. Telling him he’s a monster, a demon, a villain. It’s exhausting. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but this behavior is intolerable and in need of punishment. He never means for it to go so far. He has a hard time controlling his temper, as if some other animalistic force takes control of him. Waking up to his darling’s skin bruised with his handprints, blood dripping from fresh cuts, tears running down red skin. He’ll apologize afterwards, kissing the raw skin he’s provoked. He’ll clean her up, praising her when she doesn’t fight as he undresses her for the bath and for when he decides to get in with her. Calling him delusional would be faulty, it’s more true to the nature of denial than downright insanity. He fears waking up one day to the realization that he’s destroyed a life and built his own around the rubble of it. He fears coming to terms with the fact that his entire reality is a disgusting lie. Worst of all, that it’s a product made entirely by him. So instead, he’ll tweak and twist and mend and bend and escape into his darling’s arms, forcing some more lies down his own throat and hers, and relish in those moments where it all feels somewhat normal and real in some shape or form.

YANDERE ! MIDORIYA IZUKU – DEKU ENVY CRAVES UNDERSTANDING – FEARS RESENTMENT

Izuku can come across as delusional alike Keigo, however it’s often a ruse where only some few delusional characteristics attribute and somehow condone his fixation. However, as Keigo feels he’s going through rehab, Izuku is experiencing a full-on overdose. But, no one can blame him when he commits all the acts he does with the amount of love he has. The entire population of Japan adores him, why can’t he carry the same amount of adoration for his darling? How is it wrong? Izuku loves his darling, worships her even. That’s why it hurts when she looks at other people the same way she looks at him. Doesn't she see that he’s better? Doesn't she understand that he deserves more? He can’t stand it. He won’t stand for it. He deserves his darling’s undivided attention because that’s all he ever gives to her. How dare she give others the light of day, when she so clearly belongs to him? She must be very confused... or at least he can make her believe that. Poor darling. Poor little bunny in a world full of wolves. He needs to save her. He needs to fight anyone and everyone who dares even look at her. They don’t deserve her. They cannot have her. But, Izuku’s smart, genius even. Despite his unrelenting, frenzied obsession, he’s still patient and knows how to work hard to achieve his goals. He’ll plan and plot and stalk until every single nitpicky detail about his darling is thoroughly written down in a notebook entirely dedicated to her. Izuku’s is at an advantage in this game as well, because most people look at him as a hyperactive spaz; a sporadic, nervous wreck, however… that’s not the case. Izuku knows how to focus, especially when it comes to things of importance. Everything will be perfectly in place for when he finally saves her.

Izuku isn’t a terrible guy, he tries to make that very clear. He’s a hero, a protector, a good guy. He would never put his darling in harms-way, he strives for the very opposite. He isn’t going to hurt her, he would never hurt her, however… act like an animal… don’t be surprised when he treats her like one. He won’t hurt her though. He’ll lock her up instead, like Hitoshi, isolate her until she begs for his companionship. He’ll welcome it with open arms and a smile that’s always a bit too bright and a bit too wide and a bit too patronizing. And, because he’s so very starve-touched himself, he won’t let her go until he’s had his fill, even if she changes her mind and begins to scratch and claw and scream at him to get off. Besides, if one form of discipline doesn't work, he’ll just move on to plan B. He’s much stronger than her anyways. This is how it is meant to be, Kachan taught him that much. He just wants her to admit that this is what’s best for her, that this is what she needs, the he is all she needs. He needs her to say it, to tell him she’s grateful for his protection from the outside world, protection from everyone’s bloody fingers that could stain her beautiful soul. He needs her to understand why he did this. He would hate for her to resent him, that’s truly the last thing he wants. He doesn’t really know what he would do if she were to tell him that she hates him… and he knows that neither of them want to find out.

YANDERE ! CHISAKI KAI – OVERHAUL WRATH CRAVES LOYALTY – FEARS CORRUPTION

As soon as Kai understands and recognizes in some pioneering act what’s happening to his heart when he is stalking his darling, finding his lips quirk up into an actual genuine smile, a smile of endearment as opposed to what other disgusting uses of the display he usually gravitates towards, and when he finds the familiar burning of pure rage fester a storm in his gut at the sight of her interacting with others, she is at once taken and isolated from the rest of the filthy world. He doesn’t think too much of it. He’s yakuza, the world belongs to him. He does do the act himself though. He wouldn’t usually like getting his hands dirty with jobs like these, especially when he has countless goons to do them for him, however his darling is a prize he cannot trust anyone expect for himself with. He cannot let anyone or anything touch his darling. He kills, or rather destroys, everything that he deems in his way to take her and keep her. The world is rotten and filthy and disgusting and it’s a miracle that something as pure as his darling even exists amongst all the death and decay and trash. It infuriates him that other people laid their hands on her. It enrages him that the world has laid its pesky paws and claws and tongues all over her. He will take his time in washing every spec that isn’t purely her away from both her body, soul, mind, spirit and heart. She will be so perfect whence he’s done; raw, pure, healthy perfection.

Alike many of the others: Kai might love his darling, but he is still very much in charge. He will not forgive insubordination easily and every act of disobedience will be reprimanded and corrected. Her loyalty is paramount to him. As in, she cannot go around breathing the same air as anyone but him. If that happens, people will die the outmost gruesome death and she’ll have to be thoroughly cleansed and punished. He will not shy away from disciplining his darling. It’s a very grave situation is she not to listen to his demands and follow them without hesitation. It can cause corruption in his poor darling, and that will not be tolerated. She should do what he tells her without question, to better keep her safe and pure and perfect and his. However, with the level of security he’s bestowed upon the compound of which he keeps his darling, there is very little room for her to manage to upset the construct of his wishes. But, keeping her out of defective areas is only one of his goals. Kai is not a kind man, he doesn’t try to be either. Kai is not a patient man, not when his goal is within perfect reach. Kai gets what he wants when he wants, no matter the objections. If his darling revokes, Kai has experience within the world of persuasion. Mere threats are almost always enough when they leave his lips. And, when his hands get involved, she better be begging him for mercy.

YANDERE ! TODOROKI SHOTO DESPOND CRAVES KINSHIP – FEARS ABANDONMENT

Shoto might come across as aloof, but he is fully aware of what he wants when he sees it. He doesn’t know how to flirt, he doesn’t want to give it a try and fail, so he doesn’t. He settles on simply becoming his darling’s acquaintance at first, slowly gaining her trust as a friend, casually stealing her personal belongings when she’s heavily asleep. He’ll be respectable, professional, slightly strange at times where he’s unable to control himself, but never anything too alarming. However, tiptoeing around is far from enough for him. And, with this pent-up obsession, he’ll settle for simply kidnapping his darling in the end. There isn’t much need for planning he decides, he has all the means to make her stay and keep her hidden, what with his powerful quirks, money and status. Unable to wait any longer, especially with knowing how easy it would be for him to simply take her and hide her away all for himself. It was almost as though she was begging to be kidnapped, if you ask him. He really doesn’t see how he could have gone about it any other way. If he had told her of his feelings, he would be risking being denied and everyone would soon find out, making it near impossible for him to try again. This was the only safe option. Besides, if he were to approach things in a traditional sense, there would be no telling that she’d be willing to indulge in what unorthodox activities he had in store for her. This way, she’ll have no choice. This way, he’ll get his way.

Shoto is nothing if not a sadist. Given his long line of family trauma, he is in desperate need to take it out on someone, to find an anchor. That someone unfortunately being his darling. He’s not in denial of the fact either, he is very well aware that he’s a monster, however… it isn’t his fault he became this way. He is in mourning. Only love can bring him though this, he deserves love, he demands love. He craves the love of a kindred spirit, and the more he breaks his darling like his father broke him, the more he will be able to love her and she him. He believes if he can make his darling love him, despite him being an utter monster, they will have achieved an unbreakable bond. He will try to be kind, to be soft when his darling is at her limit. He’ll even try to make the pain pleasurable, make it playful, with his quirks as toys for the both of them to enjoy. Besides, he knows how pain has a habit of becoming your friend once you’ve been introduced to it enough. His worst fear is being abandoned, he can’t go through what his mother put him through again. Which means he’ll be swift and merciless when it comes to reprimanding any escape attempts. Leaving him is not an option. His darling spends a lot of time with cuffs on all her limbs, just to satiate his fear of her running away. He might just break her legs if she ever manages a step too far away from him.

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