#like you can just tell he's fully aware of the type of movie he's acting in LMAO

[crumb]

john hawkes in night of the scarecrow is THE toxic bisexual drunk. he vandalizes a dude's cornfield awakening a cursed scarecrow warlock dude, he harasses the unlikable protagonists, caresses a dude's face as a way to?? intimidate??? bully??? idek. he gets his hands on some tits but then just walks away to get another beer and comes back to find her with scarecrow corn husk vines coming out of her tits and watches as they drag her into the ground. then he's killed by the scarecrow warlock who emerges like CGI goop from some hay bales he's sitting on to recover from the tiddy/vine/hook-up ordeal. And he has arguably the best close-ups in the film as well as the best scene transition. best character in the film and he;s dead by the 45 min mark. I'm gonna scream

[ewingstan]

I. Introduction

A while ago, I wrote on how Jack Slash was a prime example of how Worm approaches metatextual commentary. Wildbow has a general tendency in his first two serials especially to identify common story tropes and give them in-universe justifications. Jack Slash in particular is a response to the tendency for writers to give plot armor to the Joker and similar sorts of popular villain characters. The out-of-story justification of the authors ("we can't have someone just shoot him, that's boring, besides everyone loves this guy look at him go") becomes an in-story aspect of his powers: an ability to subtly influence other capes behavior allowing him to always escape danger. Plot armor transformed into an in-universe mechanic that characters are aware of, react to, and work against.

Notably, this tendency is never used to highlight the status of wildbow's characters as characters— there is no fourth-wall breaking or attempts to undermine the audience's perception of the story as containing essentially a self-contained world running on its own internal logic. But this certainly isn't the only way you could comment on Joker-type charcter's plot armor: Funny Games covers similar ground using the opposite trick, repeatedly having its home-invader villains draw attention to how they're characters in a story, and that whether they win or lose is determined wholly by the author's will. Director Michael Haneke continually draws his audience into the story only to violently and repeatedly pull them out with suspension-of-disbelief-shattering acts on the villains part. It's The Treachery of Images as a horror movie.

Together, Worm and Funny Games showcase two different approach to explaining why the villain gets to live another day. If you can explain their deal using only the internal logic of the story ("Jack has a power that lets them escape consequences"), then the author is giving a diegetic justification for the trope justified by mechanisms of the story's universe. If you can't explain their deal without reference to them being characters in a narrative ("Paul can talk to the audience and rewind time because he's a fictional character and can do whatever the author says he can do") then its a "narrative" or nondiegetic justification for the trope.

These can be combined. Seidlinger's Anybody Home? used them together for awkward effect: serial killers perform acts that get recorded by some mysterious "camera" that produces a log of their events, which through mystical and mysterious means gets distributed to film producers and adapted into horror movies. Killers have fully "narrative" reasons for following horror tropes—they know they have an audience and are behaving for their benefit. But the story suffers from its awkward in-story justification, its "mechanical" framing: the audience the killers are acting for are other people within the story's universe, not the readers of the book. Characters realize they're "victims" in a story, but they're framed not as existing fully for the story but as normal people who got caught within a story, stuck in it like one gets caught in a storm.

In this post I want to highlight some more elegant ways of combining the mechanical and narrative approaches to metafiction, especially in regards to plot armor. I'll be commenting on wildbow's second serial Pact, Homestuck, and Eidolon DISKA, and heavily spoiling all of them. I've divided them into sections so readers can avoid spoilers or skip over works they're uninterested in, though they're not separate essays. I'd maybe recommend checking out DISKA if you haven't. Its great. Alright then.

II.

Pact and the otherverse gives its characters diagetic reasons for following tropes that align with narrative rules though its magic system. Otherverse magic largely involves telling the universe a story and hoping that your behavior has enough symbolic resonance that it believes you. A lot of the magic spells work on a "I dunno, this feels like it would work" logic.

This means that characters need to be aware of how characters in good stories would act, and often need to behave in a way that is believable if they were characters in a story. The result is that Blake Thorburn ends up purposefully trying to emulate a monster from a horror story, purposefully playing into the tropes of such a character. He acts like a specific type of story character, not because he's broken the fourth wall and knows he's in a horror story, but because he knows convincing the universe that he's a horror villain will likely lead to the universe letting him survive just a little bit longer before he collapses into an exsanguinated heap.

However, Pact's approach to the specific mechanics and abilities of Blake and other monstrous entities of his ilk is much more in-line with how wildbow previously approached Jack Slash. Horror-movie style monsters are a grab-bag of entities called "Boogeymen" within the setting, with little in common outside of previously being people who had fallen through the cracks of reality and climbed out of the abyss changed.

The tropes of slasher movies are once again given mechanical justification: the monster drives conflict and acts unpredictably because being feared gives its more of a foothold in reality. It can't stay dead (and keeps returning for sequels) because it can always climb back out of the abyss again, or be summoned by Scourges to be used against their enemies. Some of the ways the in-universe boogieman mechanics reproduce these tropes are explicitly narrative justifications—they're stronger if the universe sees their ends as especially "iconic," and Blake seems to be empowered the most when he leans into character and goes on a rampage— but for the most part, you could explain their deal without having to refer to their roles as characters in a narrative.

III

The same couldn't be said for Homestuck's take on the serial-killer trope, which is explicable pretty much only in non-diagetic terms. Which is interesting insofar as its one of the only parts of Homestuck that doesn't at least provide a diagetic fig-leaf for a character following a cultural script.

Much like Pact's Otherverse, Homestuck also formalizes many narrative tropes as diagetic, in-universe mechanical laws of its setting. However, it doesn't bother giving justifications for why the setting has such mechanics. There's no equivalent to "they're like this because the magic of the abyss;" Homestuck's mechanical rules are almost more in the Funny Games vein of being inexplicable if you don't accept that they're the consequences of this being a story.

But the narrative rules it draws attention to are often all its own. See, in some ways the setting of Homestuck is meant to be an obvious set of fantasy Bildungromane. The characters enter a game world, Sburb, and are each deposited on a planet with almost stock templates: Land of Wind and Shade, Land of Heat and Clockwork, etc. Each are filled with a population of simple game constructs with little personality outside of what's needed to drop lore tidbits, and a slumbering denizen connected to a personal quest tailor-made for the player. This sense of "generic fantasy world made for a generic fantasy quest" is heightened by Homestuck's constant references to other media containing famous lands constructed from fantasy stories: Peter Pan/Hook, the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Don Quixote, and The Neverending Story. (That last example makes up not only a substantial amount of aesthetic references, but also structural echoes; as Homestuck copies it by having a second half in which reader-stand ins enter the story, characters go from one world to another, and the role of author and audience gets muddled in a world-threatening manner.)

It seems like the game Sburb created the players different worlds to facilitate a typical Bildungroman adventure. Enter the fantasy land, meet the locals, learn the lore, defeat the monster. Unlike Jacob's Bell, The Lands of Homestuck don't make sense as anything besides a game construct, a way to facilitate this narrative arc. And the character's tendency to sidestep the quests set up by the Lands and skip through or break things feels like a subversion of those typical sorts of fantasy stories.

A complicating factor, though, is that the game was set up with the expectation that the players would skip around and break things. The entire game is composed of a series of time loops, including the characters creating themselves, creating the big bad in an attempt to defeat him, etc. Everything that happens in a game session was engineered to happen "by" the game—including the parts that seem to break the intended narrative arc of the Lands. There's plenty of things that seem to be breaking the "intended" experience: Rose taking apart her game world, Vriska reading the mind of her Land's consorts to find out all the lore they have pre-programmed in, Jack Noir killing the Black King before the players could face him as the intended final boss. But all of these turn out to be essential conditions for the game coming to exist in the first place, for the characters to create themselves, for the Lands to be created as game constructs in the first place. The game creates conditions that require the players to "cheat."

In other words, its not just that the comic is subverting a typical fantasy story. Its that Sburb itself is a game that runs on the narrative rules. Not the narrative rules of a fantasy Bildungroman, but the narrative rules of a subversion of a fantasy Bildungroman. The subversion is expected and built-in.

This subversion-as-the-rule is something Hussie enjoys making the narrative conciet of a story: early Problem Sleuth was written with the one rule that the audience could never be right about how the main character's office worked. Its also a feature of Homestuck's general approach to characters and dialogue. I think a good example of this is Eridan and Feferi's early conversations. They get introduced as the primary examples of a form of alien romance the narrative just got done explaining, a pair of moirails that the narrator declares are "made for each other". But of course, the subversion of that is already built in, as before Eridan's full introduction we learned that he wanted to be in a different relationship with Feferi. So when the first few on-screen appearances of these characters turns out to be their break-up texts, its a "subversion" of the destined romance the narrator set-up, but its a sign-posted and expected subversion.

But back in terms of Sburb's mechanics: players of the game who perform a ritual to achieve god-tier status can only die if their death is either Heroic or Just: that is, they can only die if it’s narratively satisfying. If a powerful character dies without it being a satisfying heroic sacrifice or a satisfying end to a villainous rein of destruction—in other words, if the death is uninteresting and narratively pointless, then the character pops right back up. Like in Worm, plot armor is a mechanic of the setting that the characters can find out about and exploit, and like with Pact's boogeymen, characters become whole new types of beings as part of fitting to a character narrative that'd require plot armor. But unlike in wildbow's work, Homestuck's God Tiers have little in the way of diagetic justification. Hussie knows that there are situations where an audience won’t accept the stakes set out before them—they can tell that the bad thing can’t be allowed to happen, because if it did the plot couldn’t continue or the story would suffer, so they know the bad thing won’t happen. Accepting this, they play around with the trope by having it literally impossible for the bad thing to happen if the story would be worse for it.

But where it gets weird is how this plot-armor mechanic gets applied to Gamzee, in one of my favorite sections of Act 6. Gamzee was introduced as a joke character riffing on the juggalo evil clown subculture, who later goes on a murderous rampage for reasons that are never made fully obvious in-text. He then scuttles about the story as a figure who keeps breaking the story’s rules: both the mechanical rules of how Sburb works and the rules of storytelling generally. This ramps up a lot in Act 6, where he puts on a fake god-tier outfit and starts showing up at times and places he should not be able to be based on the established mechanics of Sburb, which up until then had been incredibly strict parameters on the story. Unlike a lot of the items that loop back in time in convoluted ways, we don’t see how Gamzee appeared on Jane’s planet, or went to the future to raise the cherubs, or all the other shit he gets up to. And we aren’t given a reason for why he’s selling blood like an RPG merchant or why he’s raising the big bad or why he’s doing anything at that point. He becomes a deus ex diabolica, a character whose not really a character at all so much as someone who sets up the obstacles in the story and has no reason for doing so besides the fact that the story wouldn’t work if he wasn’t there to set up the stakes.

One especially odd thing about him though is that even though he never actually reached God tier, he seemingly couldn't be killed.

At first this seems weird. Gamzee is breaking a core mechanical rule of Homstuck: he's immortal despite not being God-tier. But then you remember that the mechanical rule of God-tier immortality was already just a formalization of a narrative rule: a character can't die if the story isn't done with them. Homestuck is breaking its diagetic rules, but following the narrative rules they reflect.

This meta-interpretation of Gamzee's immortality is strengthened by the fact that the above conversation is taking place between Andrew Hussie and one of their characters. Furthermore, said character is a fandom stand-in who later transitions into being an author stand-in. This character (Caliborn) is the main villain of Homestuck, and has been interpreted as everything from the chains of narrative inevitability, to the interface of the webcomic itself, to Homestuck readers with an unhealthy relationship to the work, to the viler tendencies of Hussie themself present throughout the comic.

Not the only such stand-in; nearly all the villains of Homestuck assume some authorial role, as Hussie has an ongoing theme of equating the author role to being a manipulator. Thus the most heroic characters generally are reactive rather than proactive, thus Doc Scratch/Vriska/Dirk/etc all trying to author the timeline or claim causal responsibility for events while manipulating other characters, etc. But Caliborn ends up representing some more of Hussie's specific creative tendencies, and is the only character that Hussie's in-comic self has a conversation with.

Notably, this conversation has pretty much the only instance of Hussie presenting all the weird obstacles of Sburb as something they've set up as the author.

Oddly enough, apart from this, the yellow yard, and the Spades Slick sideplot, "Hussie" as a character has all but no role in the story. Which is in keeping with their (possible farcical?) ethos of all their characters existing as their own entities/character types, with Hussie just expressing them. The Entities in Worm actually end up being more direct author figures than Andrew Hussie's own self-insert, since they at least perform the role of authors (control characters in a way that produces dynamic and interesting scenarios).

This is a part of why the Hussie stand-in apparently lacks knowledge of their own story, and gets surprised by it.

Hussie claims even they don't know where Gamzee got things, what he gets up to, or why he's doing what he's doing. The first two things are probably true, honestly. The actual author Hussie may not have an idea in mind for how Gamzee gets to any of the places he does, since its not really relevant to the story. It feels weird that he doesn't, since so much of the rest of Homestuck is tracking how various objects travel from one point in a timeline to another, but when there's no interesting answer to be constructed by the author none really has to be provided. Again, by this point Gamzee is a plot device that Hussie has dressed up as a funny clown for the audience's amusement, he's not really a character.

But if the Hussie stand-in is meant to be taken seriously when they say they don't know why Gamzee has the keys, then there's a disconnect between Hussie the character and Hussie the author. Since the keys do have a plot purpose that's revealed almost immediately, and that Hussie almost certainly had planned.

A weakness in metafiction generally is that having the author be a character in any real capacity lowers they're ability to be a true author figure. If the stand-in is surprised by something the author wrote, then they're not reflecting the author. If the characters kill the author stand-in, but the story keeps on going, then what the hell was the author representing?

IV

The only piece of metafiction I've seen that squared that circle is EIDOLON DISKA, which mostly suceeds because of its structure as an actual-play. It has a GM who serves as a narrator alongside being the voice of almost all the characters, but all the main characters are acted out by other people. So it can pull a lot of the standard metafiction moves in much more convincing ways. The narrator reveals that he's an in-universe character who they actually know, and whose been writing the story they're all in. When the player characters are still able to rebel and fight against the narrator, it works, because the PCs actually are representing other people making decisions apart from the GM. Even a character usurping the author ends up working, since it just means that character's player becomes the GM.

As you'd expect, EIDOLON DISKA is another piece that blends diagetic and narrative rules. Gods currently writing the story (aka the current GM) can't rewrite portions that previous gods wrote, because doing something so narratively unsatisfying would break their own godhood. Breaking the rules of the Eidolon rpg system also risks being usurped, since they're the narrative rules the story runs on, and the diagetic rules of Godhood are just narrative rules.

This gets most interesting when the characters end up dying, as will sometimes happen in an actual-play of a ttrpg where death is a mechanic. The podcast is divided into two time periods, with the first group being the founding members of their school's mystery solvers club. The second group are the members of the same club 20 years later, trying to solve the murder of the founders. Because the first group's death is a set event that the narrator already wrote would happen at a specific time, every time the characters in that first group die before that point, they have to come back. And once it becomes clear that they're characters, they become aware of this, and start abusing it. They take bigger risks, stop freaking out when their friends get hurt or killed in battle, start getting chatty with the increasingly annoyed grim reaper—in other words, they realize they have plot armor and start acting like it. Since they're aware of and secure of their plot armor, they use it more fully than Blake does. And since its an actual play instead of something written by one person, they're actually able to use that plot armor to be more than a villain thrown into heroes way like Jack Slash or Gamzee. DISKA isn't finished yet, but I have the most hope for it going into interesting places with plot armor out of any of these stories.

[madlad-sadgal]

I got bored again, so for the third time, here are random things I noticed throughout my rewatch of Nimona.

As always, Nimona Spoilers!

To start off, a few people pointed out how the first time Nimona shows up on screen, we see her doing a graffiti of the word dumb. Also, rewatching some of the scenes, in the scene where she shows the new murder wall, you can make out the word "Nemesis" written over Ambrosius' picture. Also, if you look at the very top of the wall, we can see a drawing of Bal's prosthetic with flames coming out of it with the words "Literal Firearm" written under it. So, I rethought it, and realized Gloreth was probably the first human Nimona had ever seen (as far as we know), so Gloreth probably taught her to speak, write and read, except this was a thousand years ago, and language constantly evolves, and we can all agree that "From whence you came" and "Nemesis" aren't really phrases or words people seem to use. So, I think Nimona probably has some knowledge when it comes to reading and writing, both thanks to Gloreth and just picking up bits and pieces throughout those 1000 years, but she still has trouble when it comes to full on writing actual long phrases to create like an essay or something like a resume.

When she pins back Am's picture on the wall, we see a post it with "Disrupt the System" written and highlighted on it.

We get a hint that Nimona might be "Gloreth's monster" when we see a drawing of her in dragon form that kinda resembles the dragon we see at the beginning in the scrolls.

When Bal calls Nim a monster, there is literally a newspaper cut out on the wall next to him with his picture and the word "Monster" written on it.

We get a bit of insight on the type of pressure Ambrosius suffers from when we get back to the Institute. All the other knights seem to think it's his fault for not having stopped Bal from escaping, despite a whole horde of knights chasing after him and not one of them even coming close to stopping him from escaping either. The other knights, despite probably not knowing the full extent of it, seem to be aware of the close relationship between the two of them, putting him under even more pressure because of that small fact.

When the Director stops the fight between Ambrosius and Todd, she tells them; "Look at you, acting like common children." Reminder that everyone is fully aware that Bal was a commoner and is currently suspected to having killed the queen. She is basically telling them; "Those people are very clearly below us and one of them is a murderer and a villain, and yet you are acting like them."

When Am volunteers to lead the manhunt for Bal, we can clearly see him go slightly worried for Bal as Todd is talking about how he'll make Bal pay. He probably volunteered because he wanted to lessen the chances of Bal getting hurt.

Like I mentioned in another post, Nimona often tries to get Bal to understand that the Institute is filled lies, but not by directly telling him. She starts by giving little hints. One example of him is when she tries to tell him that maybe there's nothing over the wall. I talk about it more in this post.

Nimona's little pink streak in her hair

Nimona is quick enough to go up an escalator that goes down, but a literal knight who has gone through harsh training isn't.

Todd knows that Am's hair smells like lavender. In flower language, lavender is associated with purity, silence, devotion, caution, serenity, grace and calmness. That sounds an awful lot like qualities the Institute would expect a direct descendant of Gloreth to posses, doesn't it?

I'll stop here, cause this is starting to get long.

Unrelated, but I decided to watch Nimona with my siblings (13, 7 and 5) and they all loved it. The best part for me was that my homophobic aunt watched the bit where Bal and Am kiss, started freaking out that I was pushing it onto them, and then my 13 years old brother just commented about how she kept forcing him to watch her romance movies with her and was always pushing him to "get a girlfriend for them to meet" and she just shut up and left. Just wanted to put that out there.

Might make another one of these if y'all like this!

[rodolfoparras]

I need someone to share this idea (brainrot) with because it's all I can think about-

The archetype of early 2000s older brother was always the hottest thing ever to me but it's also the aesthetic that I love and see myself in to some degree. Watching those 2000s movies and seeing sleazy, alt, gamer/skater older brother character and he's mean and nasty is just..... literally speechless.

And then I thought- Simon as that type of character. Simon as best friend older brother that's kind of mean (but secretly sweeter than you think) and he is punk and in garage band and all he does is smoke weed, jerk off, play drums and skate or ride bike. (I need him to bend me over kitchen counter while my best leaves to go shopping or something and we're home alone-)

Anyways thank you for coming to my tedtalk. My crippling addiction to nasty and horrible men will be the end of me. I might end up making bot and/or writing fanfic with his concept because it's h a u n t i n g me

-🔮

Oh Absofuckinglutely best friends older brother ghost who’s a bit mean puts on this I’m the older one here facade and acts like the two of you are the most annoying thing to exist

But he always knows when you have a bad day can tell before you’ve even walked through the door, he won’t pry too much just ask “all good?” While practically staring into your soul and if you say yeah sure he’ll just drop the issue but he’ll subtly try to brighten your mood peaks his head into his siblings room and say he just ordered pizza before he swiftly leaves (fully aware that’s your favorite food)

Will offer to teach you how to drive when he hears that you’re trying to get your license and it raises some eyebrow bc that man doesn’t look like he has much patience yet he wants to help you ?

One night you and your best friend walk through the door drunk out of your minds and his sibling is fast asleep while you’re practically puking your guts in the toilet and he’s the one giving you water and helping wash your face grumbling about how kids these days can’t handle their liquor or something maybe even let’s you borrow one of his t’s since you ruined yours

You have a wee bit of a crush on him but you know he’s got a pretty gf so you’ve always thought he was straight and tried to forget about your crush until one day you see a half naked dude walking out of his room and you’re just like🧍🏻

[glitterguts13]

You know how you did a review for every genshin guys on how loud they'd be giving birth? Can you do one for hsr guys too?

Coming right up! Doing this by Path type! Also, a friendly reminder, all characters are assumed to be 18+ here.

The Hunt Boothill 8/10 Yaps through the whole thing, swearing up a storm. He's a nervous talker, and he's chattering through the whole thing, even if there's no one around to listen, he's ranting at nothing. Pain isn't new to him, but having something ripping through your (metal????) insides is a bitch no matter who you are. Not a lot of screaming, just yelling and swearing.

Dr. Ratio 3/10 Slow, deep, even breaths. He knows it's pointless to waste time on screaming, it isn't going to help. Gets only slightly louder when it comes time to push, and that's just because he's panting in short, shallow bursts. The typical, ah, ah, ah, ah panting.

Yanqing 7/10 Getting stabbed is so much easier than this. He's shouting, begging for someone to help him because this is too much. It feels like he's being ripped in half, and everyone is going to know.

Dan Heng 5/10 Starts off very quiet. A few quiet groans here and there, but mostly keeps to himself. Switches up pretty fast near the end, when he starts to crown, it's all downhill from there, and it's yelling and swearing up a storm. Catches everyone off guard to hear him acting so out of character.

Preservation

Aventurine 9/10 Very loud, lots of whimpering and moaning at the start. Thinks he can handle it, but swiftly turns into a screaming, sobbing, gagging mess. He's been in so much pain, so many times, and it all just seems to come rushing back- A lot of trauma around the agony he feels, which just causes him to scream more.

Gepard 6/10 Lots of low, drawn-out moaning. It's deep and guttural, keeping him anchored to the moment. Not much screaming, but a few shouts and groans as he's actively pushing.

Welt 5/10 Very stereotypical Hollywood movie Lamaze breathing sounds. Very controlled sounds? At no point does he fully lose his cool, but does start shouting a bit near the end.

Luka 7/10 Another goddamn yapper. He's rambling away through the whole thing, only stopping to breathe or moan, and ends up screaming his way through the actual birth with very little downtime to actually breathe.

Sampo 6/10 Laughs through a lot of it because he isn't really sure what else to do. It hurts, it hurts bad and all he can do is laugh about how ridiculous the whole situation is. Aha really must enough watching him suffer.

Erudition

Argenti 6/10 Keeps decently calm. A lot of quiet moans, some deep panting, and slowly grows louder as it comes to it's peak. Babbles a lot of nothing, because it keeps his mind off the pain, but slips back into panting and moaning as the head starts to peak out.

Jing Yuan 4/10 The picture of control. He handles the pain well, stopping to moan time to time, rocking his hips back and forth. Starts to shout a bit near the end, but never gets to the point of screaming.

Destruction

Blade 1/10 I'm not sure he even feels it?? Probably just cuts it out of himself because he can't die anyway-

Arlan 8/10 The whole space station is well aware Arlan is giving birth. He's gagging and choking on his own spit and tears, screaming for some sort of pain relief because Aeons why does it hurt this bad??

Misha 9/10 Turns out that giving birth in the dreamscape is in fact just as painful as giving birth IRL. Throws up a lot, has tons of hip pain, and screams bloody murder through the entire process. His body feels like it's being torn in two.

Abundance

Loucha ??/10 I'll update this when the game actually TELLS ME SOMETHING ABOUT HIM

Gallagher 5/10 Moaning and groaning like an old man. A few screams near the end, but it's mostly heavy breathing and panting.

[alpaca-clouds]

On Writing Fight Scenes

I have been asked about it, so let me try and talk about it. Because those of you who are reading my fics, will know that I actually do like writing my fight scenes. Be it just characters having sparing matches - or outright fights. There is quite a few fics I have written that go into the action/adventure area.

Yet, I do know that a lot of people struggle a lot with fighting sequences. So, I will try to explain some of the core aspects needed to make an fight scene work. Most of these also work for other types of action sequences - though I might write a bit more on those in a seperate blog.

See, I think there are six aspects you need to keep in mind when writing a fighting sequence.

Characters

Pacing

Skills

Perspective

Emotion

Space

Let me explain those points.

Characters

In a fighting scene you need to keep in mind, that actions speak louder than words. Which is to say, that how the characters act within the fight scenes is going to tell the reader about who they are. Their tactics, how brutal their attacks are, how precise they are, how much they care about preventing friendly fire, how much effort they put into preventing collateral damage... It all says something about the characters involved in the fight scene. Hence it makes sense to start with thinking about what characters are participating in a fight and how they would act within it. This goes both for your protagonists and the antagonists.

There is also other stuff. Like: Do they attack head on? How tactical are they about the fight? How aware would they actually be of their surroundings (more on that a bit later)?

This would technically be a good point for me to rant about modern action movies, that often just do not do this AT ALL. And yes, yes, I am talking about fucking Marvel.

Pacing vs Details

I think one of the aspects that most often get messed up in written out fighting sequences is the pacing. Even in a lot of published books (even those by some big names) this is often not done very well - and I will not say that I do fully master this myself. Because it might be the hardest aspect of a fight scene to master.

Simply put, an fight scene needs flow. It will always struggle against the aspect that what it is describing is happening faster than words can convey it. Something that happens within a few seconds is so easily blown up into 300 words or more. And that... is a problem.

Because within a fight scene two opposite aspects struggle against each other: The pacing of the writing - and the need to convey enough information to the reader, so that the reader can get immersed in the scene.

So as a writer you are constantly trying to balance those two things against each other.

Something I personally found works well is putting effort into making sure you know what perspective you are writing - and find way to shorten things. Make the sentences short. Maybe just make super short additions. Two examples:

She aimed, breathed, shot. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Making the description very short. And accented. The same here:

He stabbed her, then stabbed her again. Again. Again. Until the blood was splattering across his face.

Skills

Something that is closely connected to the character, is that they all have different combat skills. How skilled are they with different weapons? How physically strong or dexterous are they? How fast do they think?

Let's face it. Most of us will probably write within some phantastic setting, in which the characters might also be able to use some magic or otherwise supernatural abilities.

All of this needs to be kept in mind. Especially in how it relates to the characters and their actions. This is especially true when you the characters might have an ability that would actually end the fight rather quickly and the writer does not use it. Something that might actually rub readers the wrong way.

Perspective

Alright, let me talk about another thing that I see a lot of people struggle with - once more including a lot of actually published work. And that is something that I actually find really annoying: Know your perspective.

Most of us use personal narrators - so a narrator who usually is narrating from the limited perspective of a character. And this means in a fight scene you will also still be limited to this characters point of view.

And especially in a bigger action scene a single character might not be completely aware of everything happening in that fight. Because their attention is on whoever is the biggest threat on them right now. Maybe they are also somewhat aware of the persons closest to them (be it physically or emotionally), but probably not of everything. And that is okay.

If you go out of the point of view, there is a good chance, you will just confuse the readers, or will break their immersion. Given that again, this will tell you a lot about who the character is. Because if a character diverts a lot of attention towards other things happening in a battle for example. And this might actually not be quite what you want to say about a character.

Not to mention that it actually might take from the perceived threat of the battle. Because you are saying: "Oh, yes, their opponent is unthreatening enough that the character can totally take their attention away from that opponent."

Emotion and Thought

This also ties very much into another aspect of this: How much attention is diverted towards the emotions and the thoughts of a character.

Let me be fully honest here: I have been in life threatening situations before - though never in a fight where my life was in danger. But I can tell you even from the non-lethal fight, as well as just really some dangerous situations. And I can tell you something: Adrenaline will usually make it that you are hyperfocused on the situation at hand, and will furthermore actually kinda block out a lot of emotions. Because that is literally one of the things we have the adrenal gland for.

Sure, the character might think about the situation, trying to find a good solution to win the fight. Especially, when they are more experienced fighters. But even they will probably not think about some implications or why like their one friend had been in an argument with someone else before... Stuff like that once again is immersion breaking - unless it actually has some influence on the fight. Like, if the character thinking about something else making them distracted and that leads to them getting badly injured. Stuff like that.

But even if in a fight you see someone you care about getting injured or killed... The emotions of it will usually only hit after it. And I actually think that makes it even more raw.

Space

Okay, let me talk about the last point, that again tends to be something that a lot of folks struggle with (and here I will very much include myself, especially once we get three-dimensional). And this is the space and spatial relationships within a fight scene.

Again, it is fine that a character is not aware of where everyone is - because they will probably focus on the biggest threats against themselves. But they will at least be vaguely aware of the geography of the space the fight is taking place - and probably have a very general idea of where different people are. And the reader should be able to understand this so that they can understand vaguely what is happening in the room.

This is of course most important to relay the information of where the POV is in regards of their active opponents. Which is gonna be important if you want to understand their actions - and the danger characters pose to them.

So... Make sure to keep that in mind.

Well, that is the most important stuff I can think off. To whoever this might be helpful.

[my-monologues-to-my-brain]

You ever think of how Laurent acted like he was amused by painfully killing his horse cause he was ashamed and angry at the fact that he did it to protect Damen, all while in the midst of the shock of his uncle straight up attempting to murder him for the first time? Of how it was easier to play it nonchalant and make Damen be disgusted with him than to face the fact that he had chosen to protect him? Easier than to face the fact that his uncle was going for the kill starting now? Cause i do. Boy, i do.

Fuck me but i keep thinking of this. When reading Captive Prince and getting to that part i was genuinely as sick to my stomach as Damen was, and i truly couldn't see how any development of Laurent's character or of his dinamic with Damen was ever gonna get rid of that bitter taste in my mouth of He brutally killed his horse. He brutally killed his horse and even if he didn't enjoy it, he didn't even mind it. Cause even if the horse is "his toy", even if being rich enough to get replacements of anything with no trouble has you unworried about it, it's still a big leap from that to mutilating an animal with no empathy for their pain. Knowing that we weren't meant to think this of Laurent forever, knowing that Damen wouldn't, i figured the story would have Laurent gain some humanity, get him to a point where he would no longer do something like that, and i was dreading it. As Damen in this scene, i thought it too cruel to ignore, even as i knew the plot would walk away from it.

Boy oh boy was i wrong. And not even wrong in a way i could've guessed.

Props to C.S.Pacat, writing a character with actions so hateable and with attitudes to said actions that really make him dig his heels in, and then humanizing him not through change but by revealing that we had not in fact seen what was truly going on. Damen doesn't fully react the way he does to the killing of the horse until Laurent's words, what he did to the animal being terrible but not outstanding until Laurent's attitude tells him and us that Laurent couldn't care less. But the point is, we assume wrong. We don't come to root for Laurent cause he has changed, we just realise that what we saw as cruelty was something more, that everything when it comes to Laurent is not what it seems. It's scattered through out the three books, small and big discoveries of a truth we weren't aware of.

We don't learn until later, in Prince's Gambit, that the incident with the horse was the first time that the Regent attempted to murder Laurent. It's not until Damen and Laurent have to come to a point in which they are answering truthfully to the questions asked by the other, even if they're still both lying by omission when they need to- like Damen answering with the truth about Jokaste but skiping his own identity, or Laurent admitting to being caught off guard when his uncle poisoned his horse but skipping over their twisted dinamic leading to it that had him unsuspecting of an actual attempt on his life. And of course Damen has questions, the poison that had the horse fractious and covered in sweat not being what had killed it in the end.

A lot of things reframe the way the reader looks at Laurent through out the trilogy, the biggest one yet to come at this point, not to be revealed until Kings Rising that Laurent was perfectly aware of Damen being Damianos of Akielos since the very beggining, but this thing with the horse did something to me. Call it what you want, selective caring or whatever else, but i'm the type of person to find in movies animal deaths often more terrible than people's (god bless whoever started doesthedogdie.com, my anxiety goes through the roof when i'm worried about the dog to the point where i stop focusing on the actual movie)- maybe it's the fact that you can't really slap human morality onto animals in order to categorize them as Deserves To Die or Doesnt Deserve To Die the way we kinda do with people, but i think it's about how a person can understand the way an animal won't, the way there's no final telling them they are loved, or a way to make them not die afraid or feeling betrayed by loved ones or feeling like it's their fault. Call it what you want, but violence and killing animals hits as something specially devoid of empathy, even when the same action as applied against a person is already severely lacking in empathy (and we sure get a good taste of that with the themes of slavery in the trilogy). And so, Laurent. I didn't skip through the violence towards Damen, only half explained when we think that at the very least it's directed at him this way because he is a reminder of Auguste dying by akielon hands and at worst simple sociopathic cruelty, either way violence that can't be retaliated against since it's the violence of a master against their slave. But it still get's accentuated by having Laurent casually and painfully killing his horse. It is, in a way, the most on the nose representation of the violence of royalty: Laurent kills a being so loyal to him that they wont even break away while in pain, so beyond understanding that there isn't a choice to be made, all conception of the world defined by their relation to Laurent and their inherent obedience to him, and then he doesn't even have the humanity to care about what he has done. It was what i thought was a nail in the coffin of my sympathy for Laurent, a display that i wasn't all too sure i'd be able to walk away from.

It fits, where it's revealed in the story. By then, we have already begun to realise that we lacked vital context when it comes to Laurent, to his real character, and to his actual treatment of people. The horse incident starts to look somewhat out of place and then it's confirmed to us that it is. And, kill me why don't you, Laurents attitude after the hunt makes that much more sense.

Laurent comes back after having killed his horse in a bloody mess, and having done so not only while struggling with this charming new development in his uncle but while knowing he was covering up the murder attempt to protect either Damen or any akielon slave whose framed involvement was likely to drag Damen with them. And he is fucking pissed about it. I don't know how he wouldn't be, knowing what i know now. By the time of the hunt, of the deal with Torveld with the akielon slaves, Laurent is no longer trying to get Damen straight up killed like he was in the beginning, he is starting to see something with honor and rooted in good where he was sure to only find bloodlust and brutality and the reason his brother is dead. But protecting Damen, choosing to protect Damianos of Akielos Princekiller, is quite a leap foward. I'd argue its the first time where maintaining Damen there requieres not just tolerating him without trying to maim him, but action. It's the point where Laurent has to admit to himself what he had avoided admitting until then: Damen is no longer this killer of legend, this myth that he has built in his mind ever since Auguste's death and that he has prepared himself to kill in rightful retaliation. Laurent chooses a course of action and in that has to admit that he is willing to protect Damen, the man who killed his brother, cause that is what's right, cause he has found in Damen someone not just guilty, not just a murderer, but also someone deserving of more than what he is about to get in the crossfire of this conflict between Laurent and the Regent. So he does what he does, he kills his horse and makes sure to maintain a casually arrogant demeanor when facing his uncle, the interaction of two men who know that the other is aware of what has been done but won't say it out loud... to then face the scapegoat he's pointed all his ire towards all these years, knowing he has now upended his ways for him. Yes Laurent is fucking pissed. He won't backtrack any of it, it's not his way, but he can distance himself from what he's done by acting like this role he parades with in court when he needs his defenses up, play it up and watch Damen's disgust while he distances himself too. He won't backtrack, but he will play up the image he knows he has, to Damen and to others, he will revel in the illusion of this rather sadistic glee, and going over it again it strickes me so much as a self destructive response that it tears at my heart.

So much of Laurent strickes me as self destructive upon second read, and has me honestly in awe of Pacat's storytelling. With context it's clearer and clearer how Laurent's way of interacting with people and his way of making decisions and planning ahead is a result of abuse, but also and more specifically the result of this self destructive instinct caused by the abuse. It goes from blaming himself for that first attempt on his life while recounting it to Damen, saying he provoked his uncle into it, to keeping everything and everyone at arms lenght for what is more than just safety reasons. He might want what things could be like, but why ever allow himself a normality he doesnt he doesn't deserve? A normality that doesn't fit someone who will never clear the stain of what's past?

Laurent came back from the hunt knowing the terms of this hidden war with his uncle had changed, seeing it as something brought upon him by himself, his fault, his failing, and having admitted to himself his failing with the Princekiller, his failing to do justice to Auguste by extending more mercy to this murderer than had been afforded to his brother, an unforgivable fault cause what kind of brother chooses the killer over his murdered kin, to hell with what is fair or right. But Laurent doesn't backtrack any of it, it's not his way. His way is foward, unyielding and proud, back to the hunting party. Into a death trap at border duty. Into a death sentence at the Kingsmeet.

And i guess the difference for Laurence ended up being the same as it for the rest of us cause, don't we all survive our self destruction by being followed when proudly marching foward? He wasn't alone in the end. No one is.

[michellepamelalyons]

On Trans Issues, Comedy, Bigotry, and Growing The Fuck Up – or, Could You Stop Focusing On My Genitals And Just Listen To Me?

A while ago now – it was only just over a year back, but the internet makes it feel longer – the singer Sam Smith got a tattoo on their arm. This is how People Magazine in America described it: “The design depicts a young person standing in front of a mirror in tighty whitey underwear and high heels”.

The tattoo unintentionally acted as a kind of Rorschach test. For your usual right wing types, it was clearly some sort of dangerous pornography. Yet to me, and many others, we instantly realised what it was about. And while it was meant as an expression of Smith’s non-binary identity and their discomfort with various aspects of gender, I also saw a very trans melancholy in this image.

That kid was me at one point. There is zero prurience about that tattoo, it just happens to reflect an experience that happened to many of us trans women when we were younger. A slowly dawning realisation that all was not right, and that a mistake had been made before we’d even been properly born.

For me, this period didn’t last long – “a phase”, some would have said in relieved tones, if I’d admitted to it at the time. And the key word there is “admitted” – this was seen, through the social mores of the 1980s / 1990s, as some kind of aberration rather than an initial clumsy attempt to correct a mistake. I certainly was aware at that young age of how adults viewed people like me. Trans people were the universal butt of the joke in all media, the safest of safe targets. In some ways, that remains the case.

And while I have always loved comedy, comedy has not always loved me. Off the top of my head – the entirety of the ending of the first Ace Ventura movie; the bit in Crocodile Dundee where Paul Hogan assaults a trans women for laughs; John Cleese pontificating that he knows what’s what about trans women in Life Of Brian. (In October 2022, it was announced that the grim hard-right British news channel GB News had signed up Cleese to provide regular commentaries on “wokeness”.)

So it’s not a surprise, given the judgement of those famous men I looked up to, that what should have been a necessary breakthrough became a “phase”. I did not tell anyone. I pushed this right down into a vault in my mind, locked it up and threw away the proverbial key. You remember that bit in The Simpsons where Marge talks about compressing all her anger and anxieties into “a little ball”, the implication being that this isn’t healthy? Basically that.

I was so far in the closet, I refused to even acknowledge the presence of any closets within a five mile radius of myself; it genuinely did odd things to my mind. Talking about this period of my life, my early teens, is still difficult for me. But to outline the mess as simply as I can: I essentially became a proto-incel. The attempts to fit in, be a man, and appear "normal" only resulted in fucking me up. I actually remember thinking things like, I’m a nice guy. Why don’t girls like me? I regarded such dumb statements as truisms. I wondered if I should shave my head, take up body building, wear those horrible lime green shirts that every tosser in the land seemed to have back then. And the punchline was that I was a girl all along.

But what hope was there for me in those supposedly halcyon days of Maxim Magazine, Alex James’s leering face and Section 28? Is it any wonder that that kind of thing quickly rotted into the mulch from which the alt-right sprang? It nearly claimed me as one of them. And it took me years, even after leaving the toxic wasteland that was my high school, to fully shake off those evil messages. Some of it even lingered long into my initial phases of my being a Youtuber. There are some videos I put up on the platform when I was an adult that have me wincing when I see them now.

Looking back there are so many clues, and so many of them tied to TV shows or cartoons or movies or video games. I remember playing the arcade game Gauntlet as a young child, and being overwhelmed with the realisation that I could be a woman in the game. I loved the series of sketches in the Saturday morning show No. 73 about “Jane Bond”, a gender-flipped James played by future film director Andrea Arnold. I enjoyed a rental VHS of the Rainbow Brite movie so much that I tried taking a picture of the cover with my Dad’s Polaroid, just so I had a memento of it when it went back to the shop.

These are not necessarily the most feminist things in the world (with the notable exception of the second), but that was what was on offer to girls back then, and I devoured it when I could. I didn’t think of it in explicitly trans terms, or as anything – it was just stuff I liked. But I already knew enough not to mention it to the boys I was friends with. Of course I did.

Without even trying to, without breaking a sweat, society around me hammered me down into something that was universally felt to be “correct”. In doing so, it nearly destroyed me.

And now because people have realised how wrong this is, and that many other things in this world are equally hideous – the repulsive cycle of racism, the arrogance of those in power, the broken news media of the UK and US - naturally there has been a pushback. A well-funded, deeply sinister pushback.

(From this point in, bear in mind I'm talking from a mainly British perspective. I don't know enough to talk authoritatively about these issues in non-anglosphere countries, so I won't presume to pretend otherwise.)

The funny thing is that I genuinely don’t think some of the actors and comedians taking part in this lunacy realise that they’re being bad in any sense, or are being played. They seem to have accepted what some in the comedy world and the rest of the media have told them – that we’re humourless, we’re the actual fascists, we hate free speech, etc etc etc… it’s the old 1990s complacency at work, leading to all those deals with the devil.

Simply being part of the generation that produced punk, rave and grunge has fooled many into thinking that they could never be the 2020s equivalent of those crusty old people who railed against anything with long hair in the 1960s. But they are those people now. They may have dyed hair in primary colours, wear fashionable clothes, or even go skateboarding or some bloody thing, but they’re ultimately 21st Century equivalents of Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells. There are times when I am deeply embarrassed to be part of Generation X.

These people, these heroes of mine, fail to notice that the people they sidle up to don’t want genuine “debate”. They just want to silence all dissenting views, and to get to say (and do) whatever they like, no matter how vile, without any comeback from those pesky minorities. The right wing pretense of caring about free speech is being used as a method to dismantle free speech. Any kind of actual debate where people listen to each other can’t be allowed to happen. Why else are we never asked onto Radio 4 to talk on the Today programme or Women’s Hour? And even if we were, we’d be shouted down within seconds.

And why is it that any old bastard on the right, if their stupidity is revealed and gets them supposedly “cancelled”, then gets to embark on a whistle-stop tour of every news outlet in the country? How come after being “silenced”, they’re on Good Morning Britain whining away with the full support of the show? How come they always end up somewhere else, still spouting their claptrap, still in business? We already know the answer.

Simply by existing the way that I want to, I end up butting heads with the most dangerous people in society. They may not know my name, but they want me dead. There’s a notorious noise music album called “The Right To Kill”, which basically sums up their entire world-view. It was an album born from a place of deep idiocy and cowardice, despite the creator’s continued attempts at intellectualizing and explaining away the record. Personally, I just want the right to fucking exist.

I do not want to take part in a “culture war”. I do not want the evil and madness to continue. I do not want people to suffer. I do not want people to die. I want to live.

It gets so much at times that I almost forget there is still joy in this world, and that there is also joy to be had in simply being my true self. When I turn off the news feed (or rather, the spurting bubbling gutter that pours sewage into our minds), I get to live again. The human car alarms are out of earshot and I can just exist, and I can dream. Like the actual, literal dream I had the morning I wrote this, which prompted the creation of this post you’ve been reading.

The complete and unexpurgated “plot” of the dream isn’t important – anyone’s subconscious always seems to be really invested in supplying endless and absurd curveballs - but there was something very obviously significant during one part of this particular image-jumble. So, to summarize...

...I was standing on a train platform. My family were around me, as in the dream we were all returning from a holiday. We were deep in the countryside, and we were trying to get back as soon as possible to our house in the suburbs near London. And then, of course, I noticed my family had all disappeared.

It’s a typical thing to happen in dreams. Everyone who has ever fallen asleep has dreamed this, countless times. Panicked, I started to call out for them, wondering where the hell they’d got to. Eventually, the first two members of my family re-appeared. The first was my Mum. She looked confused, and asked me what was wrong. And the second person was me.

Only, it wasn’t me at all – it was my past self. My faux-teenage-boy self from about twenty five years ago. An avatar once used in real life, that hid, shielded, and poisoned me. There wasn’t a hint of recognition in his eyes, no trace of understanding that I was who he had to become; no disgust, confusion, anger, evil amusement – he just looked at me. Who’s this woman? Why is she shouting? Does she know my Mum?

And then, as the rest of my family returned, he vanished.

[stackthedeck]

If I'm remembering the right romcom spideytorch might be a good fit for your remix

God like it absolutely is! Hold on every go watch how to loose a guy in ten days or this going to make no sense. It’s so fun absolutely worth the watch btw

Peter as Andy, journalist that hates his job and is trying to be taken seriously but is relegated to writing fluff pieces. Johnny as Ben, the man’s man that can’t make a relationship last past the one night stand. For the sake of keeping the original plot and for daily bugle vibes Peter’s best friend characters are Betty and Eddie. Betty is crying about Ned leaving her cue the plot of the movie. Peter is accused of having everyone falling deeply in love with him instantly despite the glaring red flags and he’s gotta write the piece “how to loose a guy in ten days.” Because I still want super heroes involved here, Johnny is still on the fantastic four but he’s trying to get his acting career off the ground, he’s trying to get a part in a romcom but he’s the playboy of heroes what does he know of romance. The director and screenwriter take him out to a bar and challenge him to get with the cute nerd with glasses, real boy next door type, but get him to stay until the red carpet movie premiere so that they can prove Johnny is leading man material. Cue the plot of the movie!

I love that line in the movie where Ben is standing on the fire escape and says to himself “oh you’re falling in love with me already” and Andy looks up at him and says something like “I’m going to make you wish you were dead.” I cannot express enough that this movie is the opposite of taming of the shrew. Like that’s the vibe I want for the beginning of the fic! Johnny trying desperately to pull out all the stops for this cute but unassuming nerd that he’s fully aware he’s using and Peter actively committing psychological warfare. Andy in the movie does a lot of like clingy crazy girlfriend things but I don’t think that translates for dudes or for Peter so I think it’d be a lot of emotional unavailability, swinging out on dates (it’s only strictly necessary half the time), being weirdly mean and petty, etc. There’s this scene in the movie where Andy ruins Ben’s boys night but let’s be real Johnny doesn’t have enough friends for that what I think would be even funnier is if was like Peter trying to be himself and Spider-Man to ruin their weekly movie nights and like switching wildly between costumes. The dynamic flips after the couples therapy incident (if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about the way Ben flies down the fire escape just to beg her on his knees!) Peter gets to meet the rest of the fantastic family, they take a vacation to Glennville, and that’s the moment they fall in love for real. Johnny official invites Peter to the premier and it’s adorable and perfect and they’re having such a good time at the premier until Spider-Man bullshit. Peter tries to make an excuse, telling Johnny that the human torch should go take care of that. Johnny jury kisses him sweet and slow, telling him that Spider-Man can take care of it, he doesn’t want superhero stuff ruining their perfect night. Peter obviously has to leave for Spider-Man stuff and when Johnny notices Peter is gone he goes to help, maybe burning the supervillain a little more than necessary. Peter gets back to the premier as fast as possible but Johnny gets there first and blows up at him. The whole thing comes crumbling down around them, the challenge and the article, and they have the dramatic break up. Johnny reads Peter’s article later and realizes he still loves him, but it’s not enough because Peter is flaky and he can’t trust him but damn it Johnny still kinda loves the dork too. He calls Spider-Man to the Statue of Liberty to ask advice but it’s Peter there waiting for him. Big romcom confession moment! Peter tells Johnny he’s Spider-Man and that’s why he’s so flaky and he wants to fold all parts of his life into Johnny’s life. They kiss and all is forgiven roll credits

[badassbutterfly1987]

2024 Film Reviews (January-June)

5 stars

Much Ado About Nothing (1993): Just a solid adaptation. Everyone is charming and witty, even aside from a couple dodgy accents.

Short Term 12 (2012): Oof, not an easy watch. Deals with high-risk foster kids in a surprisingly understated way, which I think makes it all the more effective.

Point Break (1991): Yeah I can see why this became an action classic. Charming leads (especially Patrick Swayze) and enough little odd details to make it memorable. Folks weren't overstating the queer subtext either.

The Fandom (2020): The history of the furry fandom. Definitely an interesting watch.

4 stars

Man of Tai Chi (2013): I ended up enjoying it. Solid acting, action, and story even if it's a bit generic. A callback to older martial arts movies. Script has some weaker points but overall it's both a good highlight reel for Tiger Chen and a strong directorial debut for Keanu Reeves.

Seized (2020): The Scott Adkins/Isaac Florentine combo usually makes for a solid movie and I'm glad this one continues that. Solid story and solid action, which is good because the latter is what this type of movie's audience is looking for. The only notable mark against it (aside from the random topless nudity prevalent in DTV movies) is that the son is an annoying bratty preteen which isn't helped by the actor's flat acting. Thankfully he's only in a handful of scenes. The resolution was unexpected in a refreshing way. Considering how routine and formulaic this genre can be, that's definitely a positive.

Destination Wedding (2018): What happens when you have two awkward pessimistic cranky introverts dragged to a wedding for people they hate? They sit in the corner judging everyone else and bantering back and forth. Points docked for a couple casual lines of homophobia and transphobia.

3 stars

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023): Middle of the road superhero film, a general downgrade from the first one. Some scenes work while others feel perfunctory. Hard to tell if the weak material was present in the script or if executive meddling/behind the scenes drama is to blame.

Madame Webb (2024): It's... not great. Very messy script, plot doesn't gel together well, and there's a lot of slow moments. But it is an interesting watch, in the ways it feels more like the 2000s era superhero movies that what the MCU has been doing. Characters are fun even if they aren't much more developed than their archetypes. Also like how the movie shows her pre-cog powers and how disorienting they can be, even if the editing gets a little too frenetic at times.

Godzilla x Kong (2024): Fun action scenes, pacing problems, good Kong moments, and mediocre human moments (Jia is a standout and the overall acting is good, it's just the script is lacking). Visuals are cool but some of the effects used are dizzying to look at. More of a Kong movie than a Godzilla movie, Goji only gets a couple notable moments beyond fighting and swimming around.

Kickboxer Vengeance (2016): Good choreography weakened by choppy camera work. Alain Moussi makes for a charming lead, JCVD is fun in the mentor role, and Dave Bautista has an intimidating presence as the antagonist. Typical revenge story has a bit of a tell instead of show problem.

IF (2024): It's fine. It's cute at points. I fully dreaded that this would be an insufferable mess and it is at points; the first act in general and Steve Carrell as Blue in particular. Two notable moments of visual and auditory noise that had me curled up in my seat. The second half is decent and there's a fun reveal with one of the characters I liked.

Red Notice (2021): A fun though not especially unique action comedy about a trio of thieves. The humor is pretty hit or miss, depends on the viewer feelings about self-aware referential humor and Joss Whedon esque quippy lines.I did like the fun twists and turns though.

[jp-hunsecker]

The hero suffers from amnesia, and the filmmakers hope so does the audience, because that’s the only way Blackout wouldn’t feel like something we have seen a million times before — and yet, despite the familiarity, we somehow can’t quite believe what we’re seeing. In addition to the always convenient Laser-Guided Amnesia, what we have here is Die Hard in a Hospital if the Carter building from New Jack City had been a hospital instead of an apartment complex.

This is what people in the business of show call a ‘high concept;’ this time, however, whoever came up with it must have been literally high. And speaking of Die Hard, Blackout has ‘latter-day Bruce Willis’ written all over it; for some unfathomable reason, Nick Nolte has been compelled to appear in this dreck and assume the Willis role.

There’s also a McGuffin which happens to be briefcase which happens to contain… something. This is obviously an allusion to Pulp Fiction; the big difference is that in Pulp Fiction no one says what’s in the briefcase, but then no one asks — it is assumed that those who want it know what’s in it. Here’s where the memory loss angle comes back to bite the filmmakers in the ass.

The protagonist can’t help asking, since he doesn’t remember, what the briefcase holds, and to say that he can’t get a straight answer is putting it mildly; first he’s told it’s “the golden ticket” (sadly, this intelligence does not prompt an Oompa Loompa song and dance number), which at least is a reference to an actual thing, as opposed to Nolte raving about “The whos, the whats, and the wheres. The puppeteers and the puppets. The leaders and the members. The avatars and the aviators … Presidents, dictators, elections. Broadway theater.” And to think only 25 years ago Nolte was starring in Affliction and The Thin Red Line.

So cliched and predictable is this script that we automatically know things aren’t what they seem even before the hero’s supposed wife starts calling him by his last name. We can also easily and correctly deduct that whoever and whatever John Cain (Josh Duhamel) is supposed to be, he’s actually someone/something else.

It’s too bad they didn’t play this material for laughs, because only a Naked Gun-type farce could possibly get away with Blackout’s setting: a Mexican hospital wherein DEA and CIA agents and Cartel thugs beat and shoot each other up while nurses and doctors simply go about their business, completely oblivious to the mayhem around them.

Let’s say Eddie (Omar Chaparro, the only one here who appears to be aware of exactly what kind of movie this is) has such a stranglehold on this hospital that the staff (I won’t talk about patients because we don’t see any apart from John) not only do not call the police, but actually act for the most part like nothing out of the ordinary is going on — but what about the people outside?

Consider this: John kicks a bad guy through a fully illuminated stained glass window in the hospital chapel (it’s night out, which means that the filmmakers’ cluelessness extends to how stained glass works); the dude falls to his dead on the sidewalk, landing on what I assume is a transformer, because the impact produces a spark shower — but does anyone notice any of this or care, and if they do, do they care enough to report it to the proper authorities? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

Those who do know and care, such a John’s boss Ethan McCoy (Nolte), are unable to do anything about it since, although John manages to contact Ethan on a satellite phone, John can’t give him a location and Ethan can’t track him (“the whole point of a sat phone,” he and I are informed).

Oddly, Anna (Abbie Cornish) — who, to no one’s surprise isn’t John’s wife but nonetheless teams up with him against Eddie — presumably knows where they are (as in the exact address; at some point Ethan tells John that the latter is in a “Mexican hospital,” as if John hadn’t been able to figure out at least that much); her memory’s fine and she came to see John of her own volition, so why can’t she tell John so he can tell Ethan?

All things considered, this is a retarded movie populated by idiots who do the stupidest things, like asking “do I have a birthday?” Bro, your memory was erased, not your entire existence; of course you have a fucking birthday.

Blackout reviewBlackout plays out like any number of Liam Neeson action movies with the ridiculous level cranked up a few notches just…lylesmoviefiles.com

“[Josh Duhamel]’s got the presence and weathered, rugged looks to believably pull off a dude beaten down scores of goons and minions".

“Weathered, rugged looks”? Duhamel is so far from resembling that description that the movie itself refers to him as a “Ken doll.” As it turns out, though, this quote-unquote review is just an excuse to shill “The Transformers 3 Movie Collection on Blu-Ray on Amazon.” Shame on you!

BlackoutA man (Josh Duhamel) wakes up in a hospital bed with no idea of who or where he is. As he struggles to regain his…parentpreviews.com

“Imagine you showed a 12-year-old boy John Wick and The Bourne Identity back-to-back and then asked him to write a movie script. You would probably wind up with the screenplay for Blackout.”

Wait, those movies weren’t written by 12-year-olds?

“There is no rhyme or reason to anything that happens; yet somehow, I predicted all of it.”

You and me both.

“Maybe this is just a me problem, but I was very distracted by a really bad wig worn by one of the characters [played by Omar Chaparro]. I could see the edges and it looked extremely unnatural. Yes, that seems like a small complaint but honestly laughing at that wig was the only enjoyable part of this experience.”

As I mentioned in my own review, Chaparro is about the only person in this mess who looks and acts like he knows he’s playing an over the top villain in a cheesy 90s throwback actioner.

Spoiler-Free Review of "Blackout" (2022) on Netflix: Josh Duhamel can't remember who he is... - TV…"Do you remember how you got here?" Blackout premiered on October 12th 2022 on Netflix. The action-thriller film stars…tvfanatic.blog

“He’s the main reason why I tuned into this movie and he was the best part of it. I find him captivating in everything, including the Nacho Fries commercials for Taco Bell. I thought he was bad-ass in this film and elevated a generic script as much as he could.”

Amazingly, this review isn’t shilling a different, Josh Duhamel-related product.

Blackout film review: Josh Duhamel-starrer banks on B-action cliches-Entertainment News , FirstpostCast: Josh Duhamel, Nick Nolte, Abbie Cornish, Omar Chaparro, Barbara de Regil Director: Sam Macaroni Star rating: 2/5…www.firstpost.com

“ … when Anna tells Cain he works with Eddie in the cartel, his reaction, meant to be a high point baring a hint of ironic humour, is typical: “I have to wake up and be a f**king cartel member, are you bullshi**ing me?!””

Moreover, Cain randomly adds that he could have been a “carny” instead, as if that were any better.

[helpwhatsthis]

headcanons of tom (make up) and prince paul being your boyfriend? 💐

tom:

-actually the sweetest boy oml

-very needy, both emotionally and physically. we're talking borderline clingy, which he is fully aware of and feels bad about.

-requires constant reassurance, like every day. he just overthinks everything and overanalyzes way more than he needs to.

-has trust issues but is also way, way too over trusting. don’t ask how that works.

-his love language is gift giving, acts of service, and physical touch. 

-i feel like showing you places would be really important to him as well. he’s like “i know a place.” and it’s like the most random ass location that you’re almost positive you shouldn’t be at. 

-likes small, secluded dates instead of expensive, fancy ones. 

-probably like going and getting fast food, then sneaking it into the movies or something. 

-i am a firm believer that he likes to hot-box his car with you and then just go out and do whatever random thing you think of. 

-a biter, both sexually and as a form of affection. 

-will literally steal your clothes or hide them so that you’re forced to wear his.

-like i said, a worrier, so he always keeps extra jackets and stuff in his car for when you go out. 

-he's definitely the type of guy who wants to meet your family. he thinks hearing about the dumb shit you did as a child is the cutest.

-but if your family is something you're insecure about, he's so reassuring! he always tells you he can wait until you're ready, bc he wants you be comfortable more than anything.

-being married and having kids isn't something he necessarily thinks he needs. if you want that, he's all for it. if you don't, it doesn't bother him at all.

-girldadgirldadgirldad

-i'll die on that mf hill

-he's just so attentive to all your needs, all the time.

-someone pls just love this boy :(

paul:

-omg don't get me started on how much of a dick he'd be at first

-rude. as. shit!

-it wouldn’t take him long to warm up to you, once he realizes you are actually kinda funny.

-hate to say it, but he'd end up with someone catherine actually likes. the mommy issues really pop out-

-likes if you're intellectual but also snap back.

-he needs someone he can have serious conversations with, but also pulls him out of his shell and shows him there's more to life than he thought.

-probably terrified of being in love honestly.

-love languages are gift giving, openness, and showing you off.

-would be pretty possessive until he realizes you genuinely want in and only him.

-his biggest thing is that he wants you to feel safe. always.

-he brings you little things when he travels, especially books. he likes to lay in bed with you, teaching you new languages.

-wants kids, and for more than the reason of having an heir; which he never thought would happen.

-probably wants sons, just bc he thinks he'd connect with them more.

-but if you had a daughter, he'd quickly realize just how good he is with her. i'm a firm believer that he'd turn her into a daddys' girl so fast.

-i don't have much else for him, dating in the period is an odd topic to think abt.

[rek1s-headband]

hi! figured i’d drop a request for you :))! Maybe some general bf hcs for reki and langa? Just in general how they would be as a boyfriend or how they would act in a relationship?

Hi!! Thank you so much for your request, I’ve been excited to do one of these. I hope you enjoy it!

➯ random boyfriend headcannons

➯ characters: Reki Kyan and Langa Hasegawa x gn reader

➯ warnings: none! Just some fluff for these two boys:)

Reki:

-Literally the most enthusiastic person you’ve ever seen. He’d be happy to just sit in silence with you because come on, it’s YOU. There’s no one he’d rather be wasting the hours away with.

-Your biggest hype man, EVER. You post something on Instagram? Get ready for a flood of comments, all from him. You could put your phone down for two minutes after posting, and you’ll come back to 99+ notifications of just reki commenting along the lines of “woah suddenly I’m on one knee” “DAMNNNN” and many, many more.

-Never leave your phone unattended around him. He won’t snoop, but be prepared to come back to your camera roll flooded with just zoomed in pictures of his face, his mouth, his eye, ANYWHERE. Mf is spamming your whole phone with pictures of him for you to come back to.

-He has to always be touching you in some way. Whether it’s holding your hand, your waist, a casual arm around your shoulder, there has to be something. He’ll put his hand on your ass sometimes while you walk in public.

-Honestly doesn’t even think PDA is anything out of the ordinary. Like, you’re his s/o??? Yes you’re in his lap, yes you’re in the middle of the skatepark, so what? You’re his, and he’s happy he can make everyone aware of that.

-I saw a post on here that said he would peel stickers off fruit and stick them to peoples’ foreheads, and I fully stand by this. However, it doesn’t just stop at fruit stickers. Anything remotely sticky, whether it’s tags from clothes, tape from a food box, even random sequins and bits of glitter he finds around, it’s immediately being stuck to some part of your face.

-Loves casual dates. Stopping by food stalls, browsing in clothes and game stores for a few hours, and skating around with you until it’s time to go home is a dream for him. Be prepared for day-long dates, because he will clear his entire schedule just to spend the day with you.

-His family adores you. His mother is always goading him to bring you over more, complaining that she misses her "honorary son/daughter/child". His sisters love you too. Any time you come over there’s immediately three tiny bodies shooting at you, grabbing you by the waist and dragging you over to wherever they’re playing. Reki tries to drag you away, wanting to have you for himself, but you always try and stay for at least five or ten minutes. Secretly, he loves that you get along so well with his siblings, going soft at the thought of how you would act with children of your own.

-He loves playing video games with you. Sitting in his lap, the two of you could spend hours switching from game to game. One minute you could be burning down a village in Minecraft, the next complaining while Reki whoops your ass in Mario Kart. His mom brings you food for your breaks between games, and she’ll even stay for a few minutes to talk to you while Reki shifts underneath you, glowing red from embarassment.

-If you can’t skate, he would beg to teach you. If you accept, he goes all out. He’ll make you your own customised board just for practicing, making sure it’s absolutely perfert for you to learn on. But if you can skate, get ready for endless races and competitions to see who can nail a new trick the quickest.

-Adores when you come to S to support him. He loves looking into the crowd and seeing you there cheering him on before he goes into a beef. If he wins, he’ll race over to where you are in the crowd, picking you up and spinning you around, kissing you without a care in the world. However, if he loses he’s thankful you’re always there to pick him back up and make him feel better afterwards.

-Loves cleaning you up after a big fall, kissing your bruises and cuts better. He’ll carefully wrap each injury with care, telling you how brave you are, no matter how small the cut. Secretly, he loves when you baby him after he falls himself. Seeing you wipe away the blood from a new cut and place a small plaster on it with such tenderness melts his heart in a way only you could.

-Speaking of plasters, this man has one for every occasion. Princesses, pirates, aliens, cats, dogs, sparkles, stripes, you name it, he’s got it.

-The type to sneak you out at two in the morning to get a slushee with him. Honestly, he’s up so late making boards for people he just has no perception of time.

-Spams your phone with TikToks or other funny things that reminds him of you. It could be a very specific thing, or a flower or cloud. If he thinks of you when he sees it(which is fairly often), it gets sent to you.

-Talks with his hands a lot. He’s a very expressive talker, so when he’s telling you a story it feels like you’re right there in the story with him.

-Please just kiss him. His cheeks, his forehead, his hand, his shoulder, his temples, his lips. Anywhere, he’ll melt under you. Mf is touch starved to the max.

-Always knows how to make you laugh. His laugh is infectious, it could get you out of your darkest moods.

-Sleeps with his head on your chest, and one hand in your shirt little perv.

-His social media is like a SHRINE for you. His highlights, his posts, his stories, EVERYWHERE. He’s just so proud to be able to call you his that he wants the whole world to know.

-Kisses in the rain while you run home, skateboards in your hands after the weather forecast failed you once again. He’s just so happy in the moment that he can’t contain himself, so he’s pulling you into him in the pouring rain, kissing you hard while your hair gets drenched.

-You don’t need to steal his clothes, he will literally give them to you because “you just look so cute wearing them”. Occasionally, he’ll take one of your hoodies, and even if it doesn’t exactly fit him, he’ll still keep it near him while he sleeps so he can keep your scent close to him.

Langa:

-This man is so oblivious to obvious hints, but still manages to pick up on the smallest of details? It’s incredible, honestly. He could describe the exact colour of your eyes with the most insane detail, but he still won’t notice when you try and hint that you like him in the first place!

-You two have a bit more of a low-key relationship, but you’ll make your usual appearance in his Instagram posts, or on his Snapchat story with a casual caption like a simple heart, or “my love<3”

-Not very big on PDA, not because he doesn’t like it, but because he doesn’t think of it. However, when he does feel like he’s being too physically distant, he’ll link pinkies with you as you walk along, or rest his head on your shoulder while you watch a video on your phone.

-His mom adores you, which is why Langa despises bringing you to his house. You always seem to leave with seven of his baby photos from his time snowboarding in Canada, a new recipe from his mother that you complimented, another one of his hoodies, and more miscellaneous stuff that you don’t even know how it ended up in your bag. He has a little shelf in your room specifically for this random stuff, and he always adds to the collection when he comes to your house. He’ll leave a keyring, a small toy, a Polaroid, anything honestly.

-Loves dates that you can experience. The movies, aquariums, museums and the zoo are common dates for the two of you to go on, but other than that, he adores going skateboarding with you. He’s been improving, and he loves when you notice little things he’s been picking up on, whether it be a new trick or simply how he balances himself on the board.

-Adores old Disney movies. Yall will binge a ton of them in one day, having full-blown musicals in Langa’s living room. When any of the romantic songs come on, like “So this is Love” from Cinderella, Langa will stand up and offer his hand to you, as the two of you waltz around his sitting room, humming the tune of the song.

-Study dates are frequent with the two of you. If you happen to stay up late studying and fall asleep on each other, his mother will cover the two of you with a blanket, tidying some of your books and leaving with a smile, happy with the knowledge you were making her son the happiest he’s been in quite a while.

-Slow dancing in the kitchen while you cook is a regular. When a particularly sappy love song comes on while he stirs the pot, he’ll turn around and hold you close to him, twirling you around the kitchen.

-Reki constantly jokes that he is a third wheel, poking fun at the two of you, Cherry and Joe, and Shadow and “his little girlfriend back at the flower shop”. He’ll hang out of Miya, whining about them having to stick together since they’re the only two “lone wolves”. He’ll usually get a well-earned thump into the back of the head from Miya, but it’s still funny to watch the whole thing go down.

-Tends to be shy when giving you clothes, so instead of asking you to wear them he’ll leave them out in places he knows you’ll find them, or he’ll come up behind you and plop it in your lap, murmuring about how cute it would look on you.

-Please do this man’s makeup. He will sit so still for you, waiting patiently while you dab eyeshadow at his eyes, trying not to blink so you don’t mess up his mascara. He’ll sit there mesmerised for a few minutes, taking in how he looks, and simply whisper “you do this every day?”

-Evem though he’s not a very openly affectionate person, he is stuck to your hip behind closed doors. He’ll lie in your lap for hours, staring up at you while you mess with his hair, pulling it into little plaits and pigtails.

-I can’t even describe how the two of you sleep. It’s simply a mass of limbs, and no one knows exactly what belongs to who. Somehow one of yall will end up upside down, and-why is Langa on the floor??

-He could talk about his time in Canada for hours, and you’d just lie on his chest and listen to him. Every once in a while he’ll look down at you to see if you’re still listening, and his heart will melt a little every time he sees you staring back up at him, eyes wide with interest.

-This man NEVER gets jealous. You’d literally have to cling to another man for it to click in his brain that Oh. He doesn’t like that.

-He’s not big on texting, but if you call him he will stay on that call with you for hours, even after the two of you fall asleep.

-Whenever he falls(which is quite often), you’ll always have plasters on hand to help fix him up. He always flushes bright red when you kiss his cuts better, and never knows just what to do with himself afterwards.

-When he skates against tough opponents, you’ll always give him a kiss for good luck. Of course, this doesn’t stop you worrying, but you know Langa wouldn’t go out of his way to get injured. And if he does, well, at least he’ll have you there to kiss his bruises better.

[kimnjss]

keep going | jjk

⤑  series: cherry pickers

⤑ pairing: gamer(fuckboi)!jungkook x video vixen(virgin)!reader

⤑ genre: smut!! (and the start of angst at the end...)

⤑ rating: explicit

⤑ word count: 4.8K // unedited.

⤑ warnings: cursing, slight dirty talk, oral sex (m/f. receiving), handjob, cum shot, face sitting, spitting, grinding, (half-assed) 69-ing, nipple play, groping, dry humping, they’re both half drunk nd messy.

⤑ A/N: hiiii! how are you? sooo ., i decided to make the party two parts bc i had terrible time management today nd it’s getting late - buut i really wanted to post today. sooo part two up tomorrow!!

MAY 8TH, 2020 | 23:30

Jungkook hears your squeal over the booming bass of the music, long before you're appearing through the crowd of drunk partygoers. Jimin is steps behind you, large black glasses resting on the tip of his nose. Eyes likely bloodshot underneath them obvious from the stumble in his walk. Your hair fans out behind you as you run, jumping with a shout onto your boyfriend. Who is more than ready to catch you. Hands splayed over the small of your back, while your legs wrap around his waist.

Giggling, even though nothing's really funny. Cold hands finding his cheeks as your hair creates a curtain on one side of his face. “My baby!” Speaking a bit too loud for how close you are, but he doesn't mind it. Especially since you're quick with covering his mouth with yours. The strong taste of alcohol hitting his tongue as if how drunk you were wasn't already obvious.

The kiss doesn't last long because you're being distracted by your thoughts, lips parting from his, you begin to bounce in his arms. Thighs brushing against his waist and the skirt of your dress riding up the swell of your ass. “Jimin said you got dressed up for me,” You're wearing this pretty smile on your face, cheeks tinted pink and he's not too convinced it's just from the alcohol.

He nods without a bit of hesitation because he had nothing to hide. Wouldn't even be stood here in this outfit if he didn't think you'd find him attractive in it. Another squeal is leaving your lips, legs leaving his body as you jump down out of his grasp. Taking a step back to fully take in his appearance.

“You look good enough to eat,” Moving in close to him, your arms lift to wrap around his neck. Tugging gently so his face is level with yours, the tip of his nose nudging against your cheek as you lean up to reach his ear. “We'll get to that later, though.” A gentle kiss pressed to the outside of it and you're sure you hear a moan leave his lips.

Not dwelling too much on the sound, you pull back, taking his hand in his, leading him into the kitchen where you swear you saw Jimin disappear. Probably in search of smoother drinks to accompany the numerous shots swimming in his stomach. Jimin was quite the drinker and a bit hard to keep up with, either way, you managed without falling over. That was definitely a plus.

Jungkook had been here an hour or two before you showed up. Found Taehyung in the crowd and Yoongi after that, the three of them spending time drinking and talking while he waited for you. Your friends were cool and he was enjoying the music and everything, but at the end of it, he was most looking forward to seeing you... even if he had been with you just the day before.

Shots were passed around and Yoongi had his mind set on getting absolutely trashed, him and everyone within a ten-foot radius. Which had him refilling every single empty glass in sight. Including Jungkook, despite the fact, he was on the far end of the couch. So yeah, not as drunk as you, but definitely heading in that direction.

Who cares, though? It was a party after all.

MAY 9TH, 2020 | 00:19

Sat up on the kitchen counter with Jungkook beside you, quietly sipping from his cup while you talk a mile a minute with the guys in the room. Taehyung has taken an interest in Jimin who has made it his entire business to play hard to get. The whole nine yards, honestly, not looking directly at him while he spoke, acting aloof when it was clear to any of your close friends that Tae was enjoying the undivided attention.

Yoongi had gone somewhere a good half hour ago, nothing but a brief mumble of his departure which was drowned out by the music. Hoseok was leaving a few moments after him, loudly declaring he wanted to go dance. Yet, you have yet to see the inevitable circle form around him.

That left Joon and Jin with you and Jungkook, the four of you laughing and talking loudly about something that you'd no doubt forget in the morning. Well, three of you... Jungkook only half listened, the rest of his attention on you. Hadn't taken his eyes off you since he was setting you down on the counter and it was getting a little hard to ignore his stare.

Jungkook was always obvious, hardly ever beat around the bush... especially when it had anything to do with you. So just one look in his direction and you could tell that he was undressing you with his eyes, playing a dirty movie in his mind where the two of you were the stars.

Normally, you'd tease him. Get him all riled up until he was whining, basically begging for some type of release. It was always fun to see how far you could push him, how much you could get away with before he was becoming a mess of himself. 

Strangely tonight, though, you didn't feel like teasing. Wanted him just as much as he wanted you, if not more. And with this liquid courage cruising through your veins, you didn't care if he knew it. You didn't care who knew it. Jin has sparked Joon's argumentative spirit, claiming he was right about something that Joon literally based his entire life on.

It's not often you get to see Joon get riled up, especially in the face of a stranger. But the oddly sexy vein popping out at the side of his neck is very low on your list of concerns. No, your focus is on Jungkook and how you can get him from this room to upstairs a little more private.

“Koo,” His head snaps in your direction in an instant at the sound of your voice, cloudy eyes taking in your outstretched arms. Instantly putting together that you were beckoning him toward you, he doesn't waste a moment to stand in front of you. Palms settling down against the tops of your thighs, the coldness of them forcing goosebumps to rise on your warm skin.

Long legs stretching out to wrap around his hips, pulling him closer. You always wanted him closer. Fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him down closer to you. He kisses you immediately, hands wrapping around your thighs, using his grip to pull your body toward him. He's hard. Can feel it pressed right against your thigh, a curious hand dropping down his torso until you're able to reach him.

Jungkook flinches at the touch, hips jerking forward and teeth scraping against your lower lip. The subtle pain pulls a moan from your lips that's quickly muffled by the determined twist of his tongue. Hesitant fingers inch underneath the hem of your dress and then back down your thighs, up a little higher, and then back down. His fingers repeat their movement three times before you're pulling away from his lips.

“What are you doing?” Your words come out through a laugh, hands on either side of his face as you look down to watch his fingers on your skin. “I'm just checking...” All slurred and barely coherent, he's not looking at you instead he's tracking the movements of his fingers as if he was in the midst of creating a masterpiece on your legs.

You can't help the laugh that slips past your lips at his focus, fingers racking through his short hair. Pushing the fluffy strands out of the way so you can get a better peak at the look of concentration on his face. “Checking what?”

Dark eyes lift to find yours, teeth catching his lower lip as he searches your features. Looking for any hint that you were uncomfortable. That you wanted him to slow down. Something that you constantly caught him doing if the two of you were moving past a peck. It was sweet, nice of him to always be thinking of you. But it did make you feel fragile like you needed him to look out for you. Never did you like this feeling, but coming from him... it didn't feel so bad.

“How high up you'll let me go this time. Do you want me to stop?” There's a second question hidden in there. He wasn't just talking about his hands on his legs, but rather how far you were willing to go tonight. It's obvious because Jungkook was horrible at hiding what he was thinking, every thought written on his face at all times.

Which is why you're so quick to shake your head, using the hold you have around his waist to pull him further between his legs. His hardening length brushing against the crease of your thighs and you're humming at the feeling of warmth that spreads throughout your body. “Not yet. Keep going,”

That's all he needs to hear and it's like a switch has been flipped inside of him. Whatever restraint he had been using since you first jumped on him going out the window as his hands move higher up your legs, face nuzzling in the crook of your neck. His teeth catch your skin, blunt nails dragging their way to your ass and all you're left to do is whine and moan underneath him.

A hand running down the front of his pastel-colored pants to cover his crotch. Fingers flexing around his bulge, shamelessly palming him through his pants in the middle of Yoongi's kitchen. He's letting out a breathy groan, head falling back as his hips move in motion with your hand.

He looks so hot, it's almost unbelievable. Eyes squeeze shut, with his lower lip tucked between his teeth. Thick neck on full display, you can't help but lean up and kiss it. Sucking open-mouthed kisses into his skin, while your hand moves over him. 

“Fuck,” he groans, loud enough for just you to hear. The sound sending a pang of arousal pooling between your legs. “I want to fuck you so bad,” It's a drunken confession that he's barely aware of, his focus on his hands squeezing your ass over the fabric of your dress.

Leaning back enough so your eyes catch his, he's looking at you with such desire and want. A look that you're no stranger to, but it definitely has you feeling a little less out of control tonight. Tilting your head up, you press a soft kiss to his lips, pulling back just before his tongue is able to slither past your lips. 

“Wanna go upstairs?”

MAY 9TH, 2020 | 00:57

Jungkook takes two steps toward you the moment Yoongi's bedroom door is secured shut. Hands on either side of your face, holding your head steady as he goes in for a kiss. A sloppy rushed kiss that pulls deep groans from his lips. Fingers curling in your hair while his hand drops low on your waist, pulling your body into his.

He's spent long enough holding on to restraint, not wanting to tip the scale in either direction in hopes to keep you from pulling back. Only going as far as you'd let him, but now you were giving him the green light for more. And although, he wasn't sure how much more you were willing to give... he was going to enjoy all he was able to take.

His mouth falls from yours, fingers moving toward the neckline of your dress. The same tiny dress you deemed too tight to wear anything underneath, besides the lace thong that does nothing but look pretty against your skin. With a fluid motion of his hands, your tits are spilling out the top of your dress, nipples peaking from the cool air circulating around the room.

His cock stiffens in his pants at the sight. Trying not to be obvious with the way the sight of your bare chest makes him drool. This was so far from being the first time he's seen boobs, but this was the first time he was seeing yours and that felt like the first time ever. He didn't know what to do with himself. Brain working overtime trying to figure out where to start. He wanted all of you, that much wasn't a secret. But he knew that he had to be careful, this was a privilege of course. A rarity. One wrong move and he fuck it all up for himself. 

The blank stare on his face does nothing for the pounding in your chest. Wishing that he'd just say something instead of staring the way he was. Not even looking directly at you. Did he think they were weird? Were you doing too much? Should you cover up?

Two strong hands wrap around your thighs, lifting your body off of the ground. Finally, finally looking up at you with those dark brown eyes of his. So easy to read, so filled with lust. For you. Long strides taken across the room and before you know it, your body is being surrounded by fluffy sheets and the smell of Yoongi.

“You're so perfect,” He sounds like he's in disbelief, shaking his head at his own words as he climbs onto the bed with you. Your head trapped on either side of his arms, hips pressed flush together. He fit so well between your legs.

Warm lips meet yours, tasting heavily of alcohol and his fruity lip balm. He's swallowing the moan that falls from your lips, tongue pushing against yours as his hips move in a slow rut. Kissing you breathless with his hand wrapped around one of your breasts, thumb flicking against your nipple. So easily pulling moans and whines from your lips with a simple flex of his muscles. “I can't believe I'm with you,” His words murmured against your lips, but your heart is standing at full attention, ready to swell in his favor.

Pulling back only to leave a trail of wet kisses down the length of his neck, mapping his way to your breasts. A breathy cry of his name falls from your lips when his teeth scrape against the hardened nub. Chuckling soft, his eyes lift to meet yours as he wraps his lips around it. Tongue moving just as it had been inside your mouth and you can't help but wonder how it'd feel in other places too.

Always ten steps ahead of you, Jungkook's hand outlines the curve of your breasts all the way down to the dip of your waist, passing your hips until the tips of his fingers catch the hem of your skirt.

He pulls off your chest with a pop, a thin line of spit connecting his lower lip to your skin. His tongue juts out to break it while his gaze lowers to watch himself reveal more and more of your skin with each movement of his hand. It's not long until your entire dress is bunched up at your waist, the maroon thong you had shimmied into on full display for his greedy eyes.

The growing wet patch between your legs is all he can seem to focus on. Jungkook startles you with his quickness, head dropping between your legs in an instant. Arms looping around your thighs to hold them apart, nose nudging against your covered clit as his tongue flattens against your slit.

“Holy fuck!” It's like someone has lit your entire body on fire. Back arched off the bed and toes pressed against the sheets. He's letting out a laugh, the prettiest sound you've ever heard paired with that toothy grin of his. Three gentle kisses are placed right on top where his tongue just had been.

Reaching down to find his soft head of hair, you gently drag his face up away from your sensitive pussy. His nose bumping against yours and his stiff cock resting just above your clit. Much harder than before and you can only guess why. Yet, despite his obvious arousal and his desperate want to continue, he's still able to compose himself enough to ask.

Pressing the softest of kisses to your lips, fingers pushing strands of your hair out of the way. “Keep going?” Silently hoping that you answer in his favor. Pretty much over the moon when you're nodding, hips lifting to meet his. It's his turn to curse, teeth cutting into his lip to keep from being too loud.

Kind of hard with the way you were grinding against him. Even through your useless panties, his boxers, and pants, he could feel you. How warm you were, wet too. So sure that his fingers would slip right in. How many would you actually be able to take? Just one? Two? Maybe three?

Had to be at least three if you expected to take his dick after. Never one to brag, but Jungkook was a decent size. Thick in the places that it mattered most, long enough to boost his confidence. Definitely took pride in the way your eyes would go wide when seeing it. Were you thinking about it too? Him fucking you.

“Yn, fuck.” He's hissing through clenched teeth, only now noticing the work you've done at the front of his pants. Buttons undone and fly wide open, your warm hand down the front of his briefs to fish out his throbbing length. It only grows harder in your soft grip, twitching at the brush of cool air.

It takes two of your small hands to cover him, the pink mushroom tip peaking out from your closed fists. Hands twisting in opposite directions and he doesn't even hesitate to fuck into the hole you've created. Eyes fluttering as breathy moans fall from his lips, heavy balls slapping against your covered pussy.

Jungkook's got a firm grip on your breast, the other hand clutching the bunched up fabric of your dress. Head bowed as he watches his cock disappear and reappear between your hands. He has no shame in the fact he's imagining it's you he's fucking. That he's being squeezed by the tightness of your walls. Imagining that you're reaching your limit too, instead of him selfishly getting his release. Every single time.

He loses it when you're sitting up, spitting into the palm of your hand to create a much wetter slip for his cock. Hands tightening around him and moving at a much faster pace. He's gasping and groaning, fucking forward as if he's buried inside of you. And you're close too, it makes him feel a lot better about the loud way he spills his load onto your stomach.

Warm and sticky against your clammy skin, you're lifting a hand off of him to dip your fingers into the mess. He watches the way you drag through it, bringing your index finger up to your mouth. “Oh, God.” He groans, earning a pretty giggle from you. His mouth is on yours again within an instant, fingers tangling in your hair as his tongue rolls around the inside of your mouth.

Tasting himself on your tongue and that just makes him want you more. “Please let me taste you.” His eyes still feel heavy and his body too, but that's the least bit of his concern. He wants to make you feel good. It's only fair, with the way you're constantly catering to him. You deserved it. “Please,”

Not even worried about sounding desperate or even whiny, he just wants you. He wants you to want him. And you do. Have wanted him since the first time you met him if you're honest. Tonight all of that was only amplified, a mixture of the alcohol and the realization of how quickly you had fallen for him.

Didn't even realize it was happening until it was done. Jungkook was quickly becoming it for you. Not a day went by where he wasn't on your mind, yearning to see him, to talk to him, to kiss him. Needy in ways that were nearly foreign to you. Always so good at keeping it together, but when it came to him you just couldn't.

And you didn't really want to either.

“Okay,” His face breaks into this huge smile and you can't help the laugh that falls from your lips. “Okay?” He has to check, make sure that he's hearing you right. And when the sound of your laugh fills his ears, followed by another confirmation he's almost ready to jump for joy.

Springing up, he's shrugging his shirt off. Wiping the drying cum from your stomach as a true gentleman would. Tossing the dirty fabric to the side, he's shifting to lay on his back before you're stopping him. “Take this one off too,” Reaching for the sleeve of his undershirt and he doesn't waste a moment before tugging it over his head and tossing it to the side.

He's moving to lay on his back before you're allowed the proper time to admire his well worked on chest. The ripples in his stomach that can only be accomplished with hours upon hours in the gym. His head lifts to find you sat up in the same spot, this quizzical look on his face which you return with a laugh.

“Come sit on my face,” He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world, reaching out for your wrist, to gently drag you toward him. Your eyes are saucers, cheeks flushed at the thought of being sat up on him like that. “Why?” It's obvious to the both of you why, but you wait for his answer anyway.

His shoulders lift in a slight shrug, lips stretching into a slow sexy smile. “I've always wanted you to sit on my face,” He's so calm about it too as if he didn't just admit to the dirty secret thoughts that bounce around his head when the two of you are alone. You're so inclined to give this man whatever he wants that you don't bother to fight it anymore, simply lifting yourself up to stand over his head.

Taking in the way he's smiling up at you like a kid on Christmas, arms looped around your legs to help you lower yourself onto him. The tips of his fingers latch onto the waistband of your panties, tugging them far enough down your legs so he's getting a good look at your bare pussy.

Lips glistening with your arousal, slightly puffy from the bit of stimulation. There's a small patch a hair above it, trimmed into a neat triangle. Almost like an arrow saying: Jungkook's mouth goes here. And he's forever one to follow a sign. With his arms looped around your thighs, he's lowering you comfortably over him. He lands an open-mouthed kiss on your clit, using the grip he holds on your thighs to hold your body still.

Gasping, your hips jerk, body lunging forward to brace yourself on his stomach. “Fucking cute,” He murmurs into your pussy, head tilting to the side so his tongue can reach deeper inside of you. Paying close attention to the sounds of your whines to make sure that you're enjoying yourself just as much as he was.

Much sweeter than he had thought, arousal dripping down the sides of his lips. You've got a tight grip in his hair, hips moving in stuttered thrusts against his mouth. A hand pressed onto his stomach, nails scraping against the skin. He's cautious with introducing his fingers to the mix, teasing your hole slowly before he's pushing one in. Cock stiffening at the loud wail that leaves your lips, legs spreading wider for him.

It's never felt this good. Not when you're alone with your own hand down there. His is much longer, thicker. Reaching deeper inside than you ever could. With lips latched around your clit and a single finger fucking inside of you, Jungkook's pretty sure he's died and gone to heaven. The sounds of your moans being the welcome bell.

His tongue moving around your clit in quick circles and he swears he feels your walls clench around his fingers. So wound up, it's not long before you're nearing your end. And he takes the chance by pushing another finger alongside the first one, much tighter and harder to move but the sound that leaves your lips eggs him on.

“Shit, baby...” He pants against you, the warmth of your hand around his shaft making him lose focus. You stroke him lazily, barely able to keep your head up with the way he's making you feel. But you manage, tongue poking out to roll against the tip. His whines vibrate against your pussy and throughout your entire body, forcing an involuntary roll of your hips.

Fingers plunging deeper inside of you as his hips lift, cock brushing against your lips at the same time he's curling his fingers. Pressing against the rough patch that has you spiraling out of control, hips bucking against his face and grip tightening in his hair. “Jungkook, fuck! I'm...” Pretty much delirious at this point because he has no interest in letting up, determined to knock you over the edge if it's the last thing he does.

A string of curses leaves your lips. Sloppy kisses landing on his length, a failed attempt to muffle them. All at once you're feeling pressure build and snap in the pit of your stomach, a wave of heat washing over you. Your legs shake on either side of his head, loud cries of his name and incoherent sentences falling from your lips.

Jungkook holds you steady through all of it, the movement of his tongue slowly as you come down. Lips puckering to plant a gentle kiss to your lips, just as your body is falling limp against his. Slowly pulling his fingers from inside of you, he doesn't waste a moment with sucking your juices from them, humming contently at the taste.

“So sweet,”

Shifting in his hold, you move to sit on his lap. His nose, mouth, and chin are shiny with your arousal, cheeks flushed and eyes hooded, hair a knotted mess. He looks absolutely fucked out and it's so hot. Lowering yourself, your mouth is finding his, tongue plunging into his mouth as you lower your body. The tip of his cock nudging against your clit, forcing a moan from your lips.

All it would take is a certain angle of your hips and he'd be sinking inside of you. Stealing away your virginity with a single thrust of his hips. You wanted that so bad. With him. Only him. “Jungkook.” Sighing his name out, his cock twitches between your legs. And from the way his eyes go wide, you can tell he's just noticed how close you actually were. 

“I want you to fuck me. Please, Kookie,” There's slight whine in your voice, but you don't care how desperate you sound. You've never wanted something this bad. Felt it in your chest, your stomach, your core. You wanted him.

He doesn't say anything for a while, eyes scanning over your features for a little longer than you'd like. Before he's letting out a soft sigh, his hand reaching up to push his hair back on his head. Sitting up with you in his lap, his hand lifting to wipe at the wetness around his lips. “Fuck, princess. Not tonight. Not yet,” Two large hands set on your shoulders, he's offering up an apologetic smile.

A pout is already forming on your lips. You can't help it, your brows just seem to automatically furrow and your lip pushes out. “Why not?” His hand is lifting to pat your hair, head tilting up to press a soft kiss to the tip of your nose.

“Because, when I fuck you... I'm gonna fuck you.” You'd think he was explaining the cuteness of puppies with the way he was looking at you. The tone he was using. “And you've been drinking. I need to make sure you remember every second,” His fingers rub against your scalp lightly before he's going in for another kiss.

Not even a moment is granted for the sting of rejection to settle in. The moment he's pulling away and gently nudging you off of his lap to redress, there's a loud knock on the door and you're becoming all too aware of the party that was still going on downstairs. A loud crash follows the knock and you can hear shouts from two very familiar voices.

And then another, much harder knock. Joon's voice sounding from the other side. Hurriedly explaining all the commotion going on downstairs. 

“Hoseok and Yoongi are fighting!”

— known for your body and surrounded by rumors about your sex life… rumors that he doesn’t think to doubt. until he’s meeting you… forced to realize there’s much more to you then the thonged shorts and lacy costumes.

⤪ masterlist ⤨

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A/N: timestamps make sense throughout the fic. if u want to be added to the tag list, send me an ask! + if you’ve asked to be on my permanent taglist, you do not need to ask to be added to this one !!

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Dear Evan Hansen

You may have seen some ~online discourse~ about the film Dear Evan Hansen, an adaptation of the 2016 Broadway musical, and you might have wondered what all the hubbub is about. I mean, it’s a feel good story about a senior in high school, Evan Hansen (Ben Platt), who has some pretty severe anxiety and depression. While trying to fulfill an assignment from his therapist to write a letter to himself, his letter gets picked up by another student, Connor (Colton Ryan) - and later that day, Connor kills himself. Connor’s grieving parents and sister Zoe (Amy Adams, Danny Pino, and Kaitlyn Dever) are desperate to learn more from the boy they think was Connor’s best friend - after all, Connor’s suicide note was a letter addressed to “Dear Evan Hansen.” And, as you can imagine, Evan tells them about the unfortunate mistake and sits with them in their grief as they struggle to pick up the pieces of their lives. 

Just kidding! He lies to them, repeatedly, elaborately, expansively for months, constructing an entire false friendship with Connor that never happened, and ingratiating himself into the wealthy nuclear family he never had, in large part because he wants to get into Zoe’s pants! THIS IS THE PROTAGONIST OF THE STORY. Oh, and it’s a musical so there is a lot of singing and crying and singing WHILE crying and sometimes crying and not singing at all. But the #inspiration, you guys. 

Things I liked:

Pretty much everything but the story and Ben Platt’s performance. The supporting cast is stacked, and all of them do a great job at elevating material scraped directly out of a diaper worn by someone who just chewed their way through a copy of the DSM-5. 

A couple of the songs are damn catchy - “Waving Through a Window” and “You Will Be Found” are standouts for a reason - and here’s the thing, Platt sings them well. But as you’ll discover, there’s a lot more to a movie musical than just singing your part. 

Stephen Chbosky, the man behind every deep thought I and a lot of people in my generation had in 2006 after he wrote The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is a pretty good director. I particularly enjoyed the fanvid-type cuts in “Waving Through a Window” in conjunction with the lyrics, and his use of interstitial shots to flashbacks (and sometimes flashforwards!) is a neat little bit of shorthand that I thought was used sparingly enough to be effective. 

Amy Fucking Adams. She’s holding on so hard, so desperately to the idea of who her son could have been, rather than the reality of who he was, and she is full of such deep pain that is masked by an almost endless supply of patience with Evan and relentless positivity. All this made me want was Enchanted 2 even worse than I already did. 

Super into everything Zoe wears - the costuming department did a great job, and now all I want to do is live in mom jeans and baggy sweaters.

Did I Cry? I teared up a couple of times because I’m not a completely heartless bastard and when Amy Adams offered Evan Connor’s college money, my heart broke for the lie Evan had thrust upon her, and Julianne Moore’s song got me good, because she’s just a single mom to Evan who is doing her goddamn best. 

Things I hated more than the time I dropped a frozen gallon container of fruit cocktail on my pinkie toe in my parents’ garage and it turned black and I thought it was gonna fall off:

Ben Platt is 28 years old. He originated the role of Evan Hansen on Broadway, so in many respects it makes sense that he plays the role in the movie, except for the one kinda sorta important thing where he looks like a wizened old crone standing amongst a sea of children doing his best twitching, cringing Hunchback of Notre Dame impression. If you want someone to convincingly play 20 years their junior, hire Paul Rudd. Otherwise, please don’t ask me to believe that this supposed 18-year-old has crow’s feet. 

And that twitching nervous energy is a huge part of the black hole at the center of this film - he’s playing to the cheap seats and walking through the halls of his high school like a wet chihuahua. It’s an excruciating acting choice to watch - he doesn’t just have anxiety, he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown seemingly every second of every day. Like honestly, where is only-mentioned-never-seen Dr. Sherman, because this young man’s meds are NOT WORKING DR. SHERMAN. 

There’s such a lack of self-awareness on behalf of the writing, directing, and performance by Platt. There’s one song, “Sincerely, Me,” that offers the only glimpse of commentary about what Evan is doing, by pointing out the malicious ridiculousness of him writing a series of fake emails as proof of his and Connor’s friendship. 

Also what high schoolers email this much?? I know this was written in probably 2014 or so, but has a bitch never heard of a text? Even a DM? This whole plot is constructed around the premise that high schoolers are just constantly, constantly emailing each other. 

Everything - and I mean EV-ER-Y-THING - about Evan’s relationship with Zoe is so creepy and disturbing that with a soundtrack change, this could easily be a horror movie. He attempts to get her to like him by describing to her all the things her brother noticed about her - oh wait, I’m sorry, all the things HE noticed about her while he was skulking in the shadows following her around for years, watching every move she made, and it ends with him singing repeatedly “I LOVE YOU” because following a girl around and never having a conversation with her or knowing her at all is love, right? This was clearly written by the same people who chose “Every Breath You Take” as their wedding song because Sting is hot and they never actually listened to the damn words. 

And it gets about 10 billion times worse when Zoe goes to Evan’s house alone, takes him up to his room, and sings “I don’t need reasons to want you” and that was the moment I was that person I hate in a movie theater and I pulled out my phone to Google who wrote the music and lyrics to the musical (we were in the back row of the theater no one was behind me THIS WAS AN OUTRAGE EMERGENCY) and of motherfucking course it was written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, 2 men who heard about meeting an actual human woman from a friend one time but otherwise are unfamiliar with the concept. 

Lastly, enormous serial killer vibes from Evan sending unlabeled flash drives anonymously through the mail with no note in an attempt to right his wrongs. That’s not catharsis, that’s how the next installment in the Saw franchise starts, with Evan in a Billy the clown doll mask showing up on the screen and asking if you want to play a fucking game. 

Also, I know it’s not possible for the narrative to justify this in a way that could be satisfying based on Evan’s actions, but what is with this thing where single working-class mom Julianne Moore is turning down rich people’s money for Evan to go to college? Like, obviously we can’t have that happen in the movie but in real life, fuck your pride! Take those rich people’s money!

I also know how movies work but nothing annoys me more than a giant group of high schoolers all getting beeps and boops to indicate text notifications all at the same time because I don’t know a single person under the age of 55 who keeps their ringer on. That shit is on vibrate AT MOST, and I feel like that’s a millennial thing. 

The emotional climax of the film is obviously Evan’s WAY TOO LATE confession, but the idea that it’s prompted by Connor’s family suddenly getting a lot of internet hate is, frankly, laughable. If Sandy Hook taught me one thing, it is that no tragedy is immune from trolls who live only to cause other people devastating emotional pain on the internet. That shit starts day 1. Apparently no one involved in this production has ever been on Twitter?

Also it feels like there should have been a dog somewhere in this movie and there was no dog, so points off for that too. 

Perhaps Dear Evan Hansen isn’t nearly as deep as it aspires to be. Perhaps it’s a morality play, a simplistic message of “Don’t lie, kids, lying is bad!” Major studio movies wrap themselves up with a nice bow at the end so everyone can feel good about themselves and leave with a happy ending, but the moronic cruelty on display here makes that feat feel impossible. We’re left with Evan in an orchard, reading Connor’s favorite books and staring into the big blue sky with all the self-actualization he’s earned now as a lil treat. And if Evan Hansen looked like an actual 18-year-old, it would be a lot easier to extend more empathy to him and his not-fully-developed prefrontal cortex, but it’s a little harder with this fully-grown, weathered man who was old enough to remember seeing Liar Liar in theaters. 

Dear Evan Hansen, 

Get some actual help and a haircut and maybe you can grow up enough to have an actual healthy interaction with any other living person, ever.

Sincerely, 

Me

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[jeongjaebae]

To the boy I’ve always loved

⇢ Younghoon x reader, 1.3k, fluff fluff fluff, best friends to lovers!!!!!

⇢ Out of the five letters you send to your past crushes, somehow only one makes its way to its recipient.

"There's no response from any of them," you sigh. "Was it too much to expect a reply? Maybe I'm just not likable."

Younghoon nods at your words from where he's walking home by your side but doesn't say anything. He's strangely quiet but it's not unusual since he never seems to be very interested in your love life, often choosing to remain silent or react with very short acknowledgements before changing the subject.

So you had been quite surprised that he was the one to suggest the idea of sending out letters to your past crushes in the first place. And perhaps that had been a big part of the reason you'd actually went ahead with filling pages with nostalgic memories of the past and brief moments in time when there may have been a spark between you and these people. But it wasn't anything too deep as there hadn't been anyone you really had feelings for in the past; you mainly just sent them for the sake of wanting to experience what's it's like being the main character for once in your life.

"I didn't think you'd actually do it," Younghoon says slowly. His gaze was trained forward though you knew your best friend well enough to see that there was something on his mind.

"It was just for fun," you shrug. "No harm done if they don't reply, and if they do, we can see how to go from there."

It was definitely nerve-wracking waiting for a response though.

You'd been afraid that it would be awkward in class today since you delivered Juyeon's letter a couple of days ago, however the guy hadn't even spared a glance at you. If anything, it seemed like he hadn't read the letter at all. Maybe that was a good thing because then he wouldn't know about how you'd found him cute since fourth grade and briefly liked him after he helped you up when you'd fallen off the monkey bars. It was a nice memory, even more so when Younghoon had bought you ice cream afterwards.

"Were you hoping any of them would reply?"

"Hmm." You sneak a glance at him to see that his lips are pressed, brows furrowed. "Maybe one of them."

If Sunwoo had read his, there was no indication at all today as he made faces at you in calculus when the teacher wasn't looking. Maybe it was better that he didn't find out your friendly academic rivalry had made you feel some type of way at some point, and that you didn't actually need the hours of study sessions you spent with him. After all, your best friend was already the best study buddy you could have.

"Y/N..."

"Hmm?"

There was no way of knowing whether Hyunjae and Eric read the letters you delivered to them, but it's been a few days and there's only been radio silence as your answer so far.

Younghoon sighs and finally turns to you as the two of you approach his house. "Y/N, it's not you. You're likable, okay? They just... haven't read the letters."

"How would you know that?"

His eyes wander as he hesitates to answer, but you already had a feeling what he was going to say. "Because I—I stole them," he finally says. "The letters. I stole them from their porches before they could be read."

"But you literally told me to send these letters," you say, confused that your best friend would act in such a way. Couldn't he just be supportive of your non-existent love life for once? It seemed like every time you had something borderline romantic going on in your life, he'd be the one to ruin it if it hadn't been already ruined by you first. "So why are you going back on your words now? Why would you do such a thing?"

"I—I didn't want you to get hurt," he says softly. His eyes meet yours briefly before they flicker away. "The suggestion was just a joke anyways; I didn't think you'd actually send them out."

"Younghoon, I'm your best friend, not your little sister. You don't have to protect me from getting hurt. Besides, pain is just part of the experience. How am I supposed to live out this main character life if it doesn't fully encompass all the emotions?"

"You're right. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that." He reaches into his bag and pulls out the four envelopes with the names written in your neat scrawl. "I only managed to get back four of the five letters though, so you might still get a response from the last person."  

You sigh, taking the letters from him and quickly stuffing them in your bag.

Maybe it was a terrible idea after all. Things don't usually turn out like in fictional books and movies anyways, so maybe this was meant to happen to save you from a lifetime of embarrassment. Now that you think about it, you didn't even want to imagine the way Sunwoo would clown you if he ever read your letter.

"No, maybe you're right," you say, "I don't think I'll send these after all... they're too cringe-worthy."

"Really?" Younghoon looks up at you in surprise. "No, Y/N, I really didn't mean to stop you but it's just that I've liked—"

Even if you were avoiding his gaze, you're aware of the exact moment he looks behind you and sees the last white envelope sitting on the sill of his window by the porch. The one with his name written in a font all too familiar as it was identical to the rest of the letters that he's already seen.

"Yeah, um. The four letters that you took were mostly just for fun. The one that you didn't take is the one I was hoping to get a response from the most..." you trail off.

He goes to pick it up carefully and glances at you with wide eyes. There's some surprise there but you could see the ways his face lights up and his body sags with relief as he takes out the letter.

As his eyes skim over the page, you know that he's recalling all of the memories you'd shared over the years. Spending summers at the local playground as kids, awkward middle school dances, how he went from being the same height as you to much taller now. The realization that the reason you couldn't crush on anyone else was because the right one was beside you the entire time.

The other letters are probably crushed when your bag falls to the ground and he's so close as he always is, but it feels different than before. Maybe it's felt different for a while now, but you find yourself wondering when he became so attractive, when his familiar face and presence became something that wasn't familiar at all with the way you felt slightly strange as the butterflies fluttered in your stomach and in your heart.

"You beat me to it," Younghoon says when he looks up. "I was planning on telling you first, but I just didn't know how. Y/N, maybe it was selfish, but this was the reason why I stole your letters. I've liked you for so long and just didn't want to see you falling for someone else."

"Did you not expect a letter? I thought you told me to send them just so that you might get one," you tease. The nervous pounding of your heart shifts into a bud of hope at his words and you can't help the way your lips curl upwards.  

"Ah, I was indeed hoping for one but didn't think it would actually happen."

"You don't need to steal letters when you've already stolen my heart."

And when his eyes curve as he smiles and it warms you like the sun on your face, you know that the other letters didn't matter, never mattered when this was the only letter worth sending at all.