#so it's easier to distinguish between characters

[whispers-of-gallifrey]

I feel like it's the little things about the AAI2 official translation that's going to get me more than the character names

Like the PIC now being the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence or Logic Chess becoming Mind Chess and 'Wait and See' becoming 'Bide my time'

Its bc I know the character names are changing but I havent thought about all these little things that are going to change too

[coolishcorvidcryptid]

They should invent a million different pronouns actually

[nonbinary-arsonists]

Jimmy, Timmy, Danny, Manny, Jenny, and Dib.

With Dib being on the "bad" side in Globs of Doom, I think he'd have a hard time fitting in with the rest of them.

(Alt text under cut)

ID: Page 1 of a comic featuring Nicktoons characters. Panel 1: Dib Membrane from Invader Zim looks down at a weird device. He is wearing his usual outfit and has dumb hair. Dib says, “Hey Timmy, did you get the energy readings I sent?” Panel 2: Timmy Turner from Fairly Oddparents looks up from a phone while leaning casually on a giant green cartoon hammer in a suburban street. He is wearing a pink hoodie, scuffed jeans, and a backwards hat over a mullet. Timmy says, “Uh. No? What do you expect me to do with them?” Panel 3: Dib and Timmy talk to each other. Dib says, vaguely put off, “What? No, not you, the techie kid with the stupid hair.” Timmy points at him, saying, “Oh, you mean Jimmy!” Panel 4: Timmy looks over his shoulder at Jimmy Neutron and says, “And look who it is! None other than Mr. Chocolate soft-serve himself!” Jimmy is wearing glasses and a red turtleneck under a lab coat and holds a similarly high-tech device to Dib’s. He looks at Timmy, unimpressed, and says, “Can we stop making fun of my hair?” Timmy replies, “Nope!” Panel 5: Jimmy sighs and rubs his face, saying, “Okay, what do you need.”

ID: Page 2 of a comic. Panel 1: Timmy elbows Jimmy playfully and says, “Eh, I dunno. But get this– Dib still doesn’t know our names!” Jimmy looks at Timmy, interested. Dib angrily shouts, “Wh- it’s not my fault your names all sound alike!” Panel 2: Jimmy shrugs and looks at Timmy, saying, “Well, he does have a point.” Timmy looks unimpressed. Panel 3: A close-up of Jimmy saying, “Statistically speaking, it’s much easier for the human brain to distinguish between highly contrasting elements. (I. Brigg, 1978)” Panel 4: A zoomed-out shot of Jimmy, Timmy, and Dib in the street. Jenny Wakeman from My Life as a Teenage Robot is floating down to join them. Jimmy says, “You can’t really blame him when our names are so similar,” with his hands spread diplomatically. Timmy looks incredibly unimpressed. Dib arrogantly says, “Yeah, you all need to get better names.” Panel 5: Jenny appears next to Dib and says, “I am not changing my name.” She looks similarly to her appearance in the show, but has a ponytail and side bangs instead of twin pigtails and is wearing a contrasting maroon vest. Dib is startled and drops his device.

ID: Page 3 of a comic. Panel 1: Jenny appeals to Jimmy, saying, “Anyway, there are other ways to quickly memorize information. Like patterns!” Jimmy looks up with a hand over his mouth, thinking, and says, “Right!” The background is a red and yellow striped pattern. Panel 2: Jenny stands, confident, in front of Timmy and Dib. She says, “Plus, our names already form a recognizable pattern!” Timmy side-eyes Dib, who stares at Jenny, annoyed and confused. Panels 3-5: Jenny starts listing off the members of their group. Panel 3 shows Jimmy and Timmy, looking at each other and smiling. Jenny says, “There’s Jimmy and Timmy,” accenting the last parts of their names. Panel 4 shows Manny Rivera from El Tigre and Danny Phantom. Manny, in his El Tigre outfit, crouches on an awning in the background while Danny, in ghost form, approaches and asks, “Uh… what are we talking about?” Jenny continues, saying, “Danny and Manny,” once again stressing their names. Panel 5 features Jenny, waving a hand in the air while finishing her list, saying “-and Jenny works with that pattern too!” Panel 6: a group shot featuring all of the characters mentioned. Manny leaps down from the left. Danny stands somewhat in the foreground, looking at Jimmy. Timmy stands in the back, looking at Jimmy while thinking. Jimmy and Jenny stand in the middle, continuing their discussion. Jimmy says, “So you’re saying, if anything, Dib should change his name!” Jenny says, “Exactly!” Dib, in the foreground, objects, saying, “W- hang on-“

ID: Page 4 of a comic. Panel 1: Dib holds his hands up in protest, sweating, and says, “I just meant you should- -y’know, give me some slack w-“ Panel 2: Dib is interrupted by a mischievous Timmy, who elbows in and says, “Hey, what do you think about changing your name to Denny?” Dib looks confused. Panel 3: Manny enters from the other side, scratching his chin and grinning. He says, “I dunno, Timmy. He looks more like a Benny to me.” Panel 4: Danny butts in, holding a finger and looking down at Timmy. He says, “Cut it out you two!” Timmy and Manny look confused. Dib looks relieved. Panel 5: Danny finishes his thought, saying “Besides, this guy’s totally a Kenny.” Timmy and Manny both crack up, while Dib looks royally ticked off. He stares straight ahead and says, “That’s it! I’m going back to the syndicate!” Panel 6: A far-out shot of all 6 of the kids. Dib is storming away, angry. Jimmy and Danny follow after him, Jimmy worried and Danny apologetic. Timmy and Manny continue to laugh between themselves while Jenny stands over them and scolds them. (End.)

[kaileedraws]

Introduction: Adrien Agreste

Hey fellow miraculers! Here’s Adrien and a little about how he’s going to be portrayed in this AU. I’ll list the characteristics and/or problems that I saw in the show and then delve into how I’m going to take things here. Most of the issues I found in his character is just that his issues aren’t really talked about, but the subtext of a great character is there and he definitely has main character potential

1. His outfit

This is honestly a budget issue/creating recognizable characters for the show, but like all characters, I want to see more Gabriel Agreste fashion on him.

2. Love interest or main character?

In the show, it’s said that he’s the main character, but he doesn’t appear as such. A lot of his emotions, struggles, and life isn’t delved into as much as Marinette, yet he has so much potential. He’s a teenage Rapunzel trapped in a tower waiting for his ladybug in shining armor to come save him. I want to explore not only his fears of losing his freedom, but also his experimentation with rebellion and standing up to his father.

3. Adrien as a Model

In the show, his life as a model isn’t talked about really much, he just thinks it’s boring and it’s a nuisance to him. However, with some research, I discovered how horrible it can be. For one, Adrien would become desensitized to personal space and being touched without permission, putting him into awkward positions in his job and even with classmates. He would get taken advantage of a lot easier. As a model and celebrity, Adrien would also experience Parasocial Confusion — which is when a celebrity has difficulty distinguishing between genuine personal connections/love and relationships/infatuations of fans. This would make relationships with him incredibly difficult.

Additionally, model assault is a huge thing in the fashion industry. Unfortunately, because Adrien is such a pushover and people pleaser, this puts him up to be a prime target for abuse that he probably thinks is just normal (yes this happens, I promise, it sucks.) I want to see a huge character arc with him learning about personal boundaries and learning how to enforce them, with his friends teaching him what is Ok and what is not socially.

4. His personality before his mother dies

If I’m not mistaken, I don’t think we ever get much insight into how Adrien is like before Emilie “disappears.” From what we know about her, she is a princess and an actress, which brings me to my headcanon:

Emilie brought Adrien up on broadway shows, fairytales, and romances — this would explain why he has an “old fashioned” ideology that “boys save girls” (S3E3). This would also explain his gentlemanly behavior— like he was literally written/taught his behavior by a princess (he was. Her name is Emilie).

Inspired by musical theatre and the arts, Adrien began to take dance classes, where he meets Chloe Bourgeois — Emilie is to blame for this, and Gabriel would rather him take fencing, but he gives in. Chloe and Adrien become childhood friends through dance and being partnered often is how they became so close. Based on his “breakdancing” moves as Chat Noir, I think it would also be reasonable that he took other forms of dance too, like hiphop.

As Emilie started to get sicker and sicker, his ambitions for dance and the arts faded. He began fencing like his father wanted to and abandoned dancing. He and Chloe still remained close friends — as this was the only friend he was allowed to have. Gabriel knew Chloe’s dad, after all.

Although Emilie was portrayed to be kind, beautiful, and caring, it’s easy to paint memories of a person better than they actually were. Although she was those things, Emilie also was dramatic, hotheaded, and emotional. If Adrien did something wrong, she’d be quick to scold him harshly, but then just as quick to apologize for her outburst. Toward the end of her life, she was also rather absent from Adrien’s life, as she didn’t have much energy to take care of him anymore. It was difficult for her to take care of him as she got more and more sick, and he would often try to be the best little boy he could because he didn’t want to be a burden on top of her sickness. I mean remember, the last 3 years his dad had gotten him a freaking PEN for his birthday. This occurred when Emilie was still alive.

The person who raised him the most was Nathalie — as his mother became weak, and Gabriel became absent

5. Mental health and coping so he isn’t akumatized

Headcanon that to keep himself from being akumatized, Gabriel has him talk to a counselor who prescribes him multiple medications that work a little TOO well. Meaning? Let’s just say that he starts to become numb to feelings and that it’s just another way for his father to control him — His rebellion streak is going to hit hard yo.

Despite these methods, he’s still going to get akumatized — don’t worry, no one is safe.

His mental health illnesses insinuated from the show include depression, ADHD, parasocial confusion, abandonment trauma, social anxiety disorder, attachment disorder/trauma (which leads to lack of boundaries), and to add some spice, probably claustrophobia (or just feeling trapped). This poor boy has so much he needs to shift through and I’m excited to guide him on an arc to healing.

Conclusion

I think Adrien is my favorite character simply because of how there are certain aspects of him that I heavily relate to — plus he’s such a kind soul who has every right to turn into a villain but stays a sunshine golden retriever boy. It takes a lot of strength and determination to go through so much and be good in the end. I can’t wait to write him in this AU and give the boy the healing and happiness he deserves. There’s so much more I could talk about with him, but this is just the beginning!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Plot

Rick Riordan's Writing Tips

Rick Riordan:

How I craft plot has changed radically over the years. With BIG RED TEQUILA, I did very little plotting in advance. I simply began writing, then went back later and tied up all the loose ends, of which there were plenty. With each successive novel, I've done more outlining in advance. Strangely, this has made writing no easier — it's only made the process harder in different ways. My attitude about plot and how one develops effective pacing is evolving, but below are five points I stand by:

RICK RIORDAN'S TOP 5 TIPS ON PLOT

Don't write the parts the reader would skip anyway.

I'm paraphrasing the great Elmore Leonard here.

Most readers, from time to time, have skipped over portions of a chapter to get to the "good stuff."

For instance, many readers will skip a long paragraph of description so they can find the next line of dialog.

One trick for keeping the reader's interest is to zoom in on the content they want to see and leave out the rest.

Writers, especially beginning writers, tend to over-explain.

Distinguish between mystery and confusion.

It is good to keep the reader guessing.

It is bad to keep the reader confused.

The key to successful plotting is giving the reader sufficient information to keep them interested and engaged, but not so much information that they no longer care about what will happen next.

The plot should be built in layers of compelling questions –

"What will he do?"

"What is his secret?"

"Why does she hate him so much?"

The reader should always have at least one question in mind, and be dying to find out the answer.

Get going!

Beginning writers tend to believe that they must "set things up" before they get into the real meat of the novel.

They want to introduce characters, history, and setting before they start on the central dilemma.

Chapter one is often limp, because of this.

Even worse, some writers are so hesitant to get to the point in chapter one that they put off the action even further by writing a prologue.

The problem is, until we know the dilemma, we won't care about the set-up. Get to the point!

Often manuscripts are better if they start with chapter 2, as Lawrence Block once rightly pointed out.

Identify the moral dilemma driving the novel.

The successful novel will haunt a reader because it deals with some ethical or moral dilemma that makes the reader wonder what he or she would do in the protagonist's place.

Action may hold a reader for a chapter.

A surface dilemma like a kidnapping or a romance may hold the reader for fifty pages or more, but only a moral dilemma will hold the reader for an entire novel.

The protagonist must exert influence to solve the problem, and the antagonist must exert influence to stop the solution.

The book must be about conscious choices, carried out in active terms.

It must be about conflict.

A book about random events happening to passive people will not be compelling.

Coincidence is taboo – things can't just happen.

There must be a cause and effect.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[eschergirls]

And after a few days break, here's the third and final part of the "Let's Draw Manga Sexy Gals" posts (here are parts one and two if you missed it).

These pages are just kind of strange: the arbitrary distinction between "anime" and "manga", apparently anime girls are all just little children compared to manga girls, the differences between male bodies and female bodies, that women apparently just vanish after age 40 (and they become space aliens as teenagers).

But my favourite is the "coke bottle" page where a) that's not what a coke bottle is shaped like, but also 2) the actual woman drawn there is the OPPOSITE of the shape they depict (which again, isn't what a coke bottle is shaped like).

The bottle they drew is wider in the hips than in the chest/shoulders, the woman they drew is wider in the shoulders than in the hips. xD

This feels like another situation where the person writing the text (or who drew that coke bottle) wasn't on the same page as the person doing the figure.

I also love "women can be depicted as four circles", that should be a meme. And the four circles woman looks kinda like a bunny.

Anyway, I hope everybody learned a lot about drawing manga sexy gals.  I know I did.

For those interested in the uncensored versions of the first 2 images, there are links in the EscherGirls.com post.

(Cover and snippets from Let's Draw Manga Sexy Gals by Heisuke Shimohara)

I've included descriptions for text readers in the images, but the longer commentary on each page is too long to fit the description boxes, so I'm including the transcription of just the text below:

Transcription of image 1:

Depicting Softness of Form - Part 1 The bottom line for drawing an attractive woman is to effectively project the softness of her body. No one likes a rock-hard body on a girl! Here are some techniquest o use for bringing out a soft form. The curves of the female form can be represented as four circles. The "coke-bottle figure", long used to describe the ideal female form, is characterized by a small waistline and rounded buttocks.

Transcription of image 2:

Differences Between the Male and Female Form - Part 1 The male and formale form exhibit several distinguishing features. These differences are often exaggerated in drawings. Generally speaking, the male form is based on an inverted triangle, while the female form is based on an upright triangle. Shown below are the three body parts that most distinguish men from women. Shoulders Give this portion some mass. (pointing at male shoulder) Make the neck thin and long. (pointing at female neck) Chest The male chest should have a square, rigid appearance while the female chest should be curved and soft. Waist and Leg Bones Straight waist (pointing at male waist) Slim down the torso for a pinched-in waistline (pointing at female waist)

Transcription of Image 3:

A comparison of Manga and Anime Characters - Part 1 There are too many differences between the two artistic styles of manga and anime to describe all of them here, but we can examine each through erotic illustratoin. Here are some examples typical of this genre.

Transcription of Image 4:

Manga: Mature facial features with realistic eyes, nose and mouth Anime: Eyes are comparatively large in relations to other features. The ears have a simple shape. Comparing Body Proportions: Always keep movement in mind. A typical anime character is designed with simple lines, making it easier to draw in action poses.

Transcription of Image 5:

Facial Differences in Women According to Age A conservative hairstyle with somewhat subdued facial features 30 to 40 years old: Sharper facial features with a more provocative hairstyle. 20 to 30 years old: This face is borderline anime style. Notice how the unnaturally large eyes extend further down the face. 10 through teens: Like an anime character, the eyes are unusually large and positioned just below the center of the face.

[regular-gnome]

Hello! I've been enjoying your content for a while, but sometimes I get confused about the architects because I’m not always sure of their names. I’m not sure if anyone has asked this before, so I apologize if it’s a repeated question.

No worries! I think it was posted before, but I don’t mind. To be honest, there’s a lot of this on the blog, and they all wear similar archivist attire. There’s The Anatomist, Curator, Architect, and Wayfarer. The easiest way to tell them apart is by their ID symbol and the placement of their archive symbol (the tiny mask). The ID symbol never changes, so it’s easier to distinguish between their kid and adult versions

I also tag the characters in the posts, so all posts featuring character like Architect tagged as "c:i Architect". I do need to update the tags when I have a bit more free time but its there

related asks - reference - names change - about names

[krems-chair]

Daily Dose of Solas-Posting Time/just a love of what love can achieve I guess?

I think a lot of people in this fan space struggle to distinguish the apparently very blurred line between "oh look, this poster likes Solas and must therefore condone murder to achieve one's goals", and "rad, she understands that this is a game in which characters do things she would never approve of in real life but given the fact that these are all tiny people on a screen she enjoys extrapolating larger themes"

And for those of you in that second camp how freaking beautiful is it that we get to see one of the oldest saddest elves go on an absolute bender and still get the chance to make things right because he has a friend/lover who knows his heart and refuses to let him hide from it any longer.

Varric disapproves of trying to save him at the end of Trespasser and clearly at some point within the next eight years goes "you know what? This sassy nerdy passionate guy was my friend once and I believe in what he could be if he gives up on the self-destructive path he's chosen"

Harding struggles to fathom what the Inquisitor sees in a disingenuous clefted egg but knows that if nothing else she trusts her friends and for all my critiques of Veilguard I do think Bellara gets a baller of a line with the "trust your heart, it is a good one" banger. Harding may not know exactly how she feels about Solas (and yeah that is so fair) but she knows the Inquisitor's heart is a good one, and if they're trying to save him, she trusts it. She chooses to believe that in an ever-darkening world there is power in restoring a little bit of light.

Your Inquisitor has the option to be like "wow this guy was my friend, occasional confidante (and potentially the most brutal love of my life), fought alongside me and guarded my life as I guarded his, and spoke so wistfully of things I did not understand at the time but now realize came from a place of deep grief. The way he's acting now stems from hurt and trauma and I know it'd be easier to just stab him with his own dagger but what if what if what if..."

And if you're able to look at his story at its simplest (if you're able to see past the broken man and into the spirit of wisdom he once was, if you will) it's really just the grandest version of pre-EA Bioware's bread and butter theme for at least a few companions per game: even the most broken people are capable of changing themselves and ultimately the world for the better if those who can reach out a hand do. And the Inquisitor only has the one hand to reach out, in fact they only have that one hand because of the very man they're hunting down, but if they can find it in themselves to extend it, damn. It brings a broken man back to his feet after an absolutely brutal confrontation of his past and helps him stand tall and face what's coming next in a way he wouldn't have been capable of otherwise. It lets Solas, who is at his absolute lowest, know that someone he strongly admires, who can relate to the challenges he once faced as the young leader of a massive movement, sees the parts of him that just want to do what's right but can't quite remember how anymore.

And to someone who hasn't fought in a war or forged the tools that wrecked entire civilizations, sure maybe that wouldn't hit as hard. But who amongst us hasn't betrayed the core of who we are to make others happy and regretted it? Who hasn't charged down a path that sent thorns digging into their skin with every step because to stop and turn back means facing everything they've done to get there? Means admitting they were wrong? Who hasn't hit a low and crawled their way back to themselves again because that hand came down and refused to let go?

To someone like that, like me, it can make all the difference in the world to see it go down on that tiny little screen.

Mmmmm there's just so much power in having even one person who sees you self-destructing at your worst and goes "not on my watch" and I love that most of these games have brought us such beautifully simple yet meaningful ideas in so many different ways.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I always repeat it but I truly love the way you write Leona ☹️ you portray not only his personality but also his inner thoughts and how he processes information around him so well... I love all your writings but specially your Leona related works (sorry for being very much biased)

I hold your Leona interpretation so close to my heart 🤲💛 I often see a lot of mischaracterization (and I kind of get it- he's hard to decipher sometimes), so seeing such a good portrayal that I feel encapsulates his whole being is so important to me ☹️☹️

[Not sure if this is feedback in response to a particular writing piece I did, but just in case, this Leona interaction was the most recent one before receiving this ask.]

cbjddbwkkeoqhd Thank you!! I try to do the same thing Yana did when first conceptualizing the Twst characters… I try to put myself in their shoes and wonder what it must be like to be them in a given situation. The example Yana provided in one interview was something along the lines of, The poison apple didn’t want to be poisonous, but the Evil Queen forced it to. How did that make the apple feel? I want to think about not only how someone would speak, but also about their body language, their thoughts, their emotions, previous interactions in similar scenarios, their life experiences, their goals, their strengths and their flaws, how those can color their perception of others and the world--everything that makes up a character! I also aim to make my dialogue distinguishable, even if there's no name attached to it. If you can swap out several other character's names and the dialogue still works, then the intended character's voice isn't coming through strong enough and I rewrite it from scratch. If I write "You've earned my brother's respect," that's not good enough for me. It has to be “Oh, would you look at that. You’ve gone and earned my dear onii-sama’s respect and admiration. How good for you," to properly convey Leona's sarcasm and haughtiness.

The Twst characters are all very complex and multifaceted (particularly those we're given the most detailed backstories about *stares at the OB boys*), and there's also tons of content to comb through between the all the characters, main story, vignettes, events, and additional materials (interviews, art books, mangas, light novel, etc.). As a result, it can be easy to overlook elements of a particular character or to simplify/condense characters--either making them the extreme of being too cruel or the other extreme of being too kind--to make them easier to write. It takes time to nail that characterization, so I encourage my fellow writers to keep trying ^^

To speak a little more about writing Leona! It's honestly hard because you have to balance his arrogance with his lack of motivation and his depression-like beliefs about himself without whiplashing between those components. He's also very intelligent, and those kinds of characters can be difficult to do, especially for inexperienced writers. Leona works in subtle ways to get what he wants, and you have to find a way to communicate that between himself and the reader, but not give away what he's scheming to the other characters involved, who are not in his headspace. Then, of course, there's that whole ongoing debate about whether Leona would treat women significantly "better" than men (which is a topic worthy of a whole separate discussion post; I won't get into that here since it would elongate this post by a ton)... There's several things to consider when writing him. If you enjoy my interpretation of Leona, then that makes me happy ^^ I genuinely do put forth a lot of effort to capture the characters in my writing, so it's nice when those efforts are recognized.

[pomefioredove]

new fav twst fic author just dropped lmao I love you sm 😂 💕

btw can I ask for an angsty fic abt reader being scared of falling in love w someone? yk like instead of butterflies in their stomach, it feels bad, demeaning and gross? like, in the end they don't realize they're in love bc of how afraid it makes the reader, but ends up sucking it up bc of a valuable friendship? yk, like love it-hate it?

but pick whichever character u want, feel like this would work out w a few of them 👀

thank you!! and OHHH I love this genre of angst... I'm very like this as a person. my immediate reaction was vil but I've done a similar prompt with him in the past so I'm branching out

summary: all is fair in love and war type of post: short fic characters: lilia additional info: ambiguously romantic, angsty, reader is gender neutral, reader is not specified to be yuu but kinda is?

Love and hate are emotions too close for comfort.

It's times likes these that remind you of why Aphrodite and Ares were always tangled in affair, why the hands of love and war fit so nicely together.

Red is the color of both romance and blood.

The heart doesn't distinguish between the heat of passion and the heat of battle, and there's really nothing quite pleasant about that feeling: it's sticky, uncomfortable, warm and wet, making a home in every divot of your skin. It dries on you like blood.

Sometimes, you wonder if being stabbed would be easier.

After all, physical pain, perhaps, is preferable to the dizzying sensation of a beating heart, so noticeable that you can almost taste it from the back of your throat.

...This unwelcome, intrusive feeling, a thief in the night, a sudden loud noise, something that no amount of deep breathing and waiting can seem to quell.

It's not so much longing as it is torture.

You resent yourself for feeling this way. For the way your stomach turns, as if sick, every time you see him.

For the way you can't seem to stop thinking about it, about him, about every little thing he does, about every little question he leaves you with. It's a form of obsession, though one you struggle to resist.

Some days you fantasize about interrogating him until he explains all that he is, so that you might understand why it's him, of all people, him.

But that would never work.

Lilia Vanrouge enjoys keeping the fine print to himself, always leaving you guessing, always leaving you hungry for more. He does it on purpose, he knows, but he enjoys playing this game of cat and mouse far too much to ever finish the kill.

...At first, you did see it as a sort of game. Now, it feels more like a trap, and one that you so eagerly and stupidly walked into.

And yet, still, you can't find it within yourself to resent him. You can't find a way to accuse him of sorcery, of bewitching you, because you know, deep down, that this is your own doing.

You were the one who set the trap. Who started the war.

It was you, you, who blindly ran into battle, armed with nothing but your wits and the pit in your stomach. You were destined to lose from the beginning.

This... feeling. The one that makes your stomach turn, that makes you dizzy, that poisons your mind and senses and turns you stupid and hungry and obsessive, it's your own doing.

And you could just as likely kill it off, swing your blade of reason down on its sickly, thin neck and just be over with it.

But you won't.

And that's the other half of the battle.

For as much as it haunts you, as it tortures you, as it makes you toss and turn at night fantasizing about answers and wars and traps, you want to lose. You want to play this game with him.

Now, it's simply a question of who will strike the final blow.

[sluttyten]

You In My Arms

Chapter 1: The Tourist

full masterlist || haechan masterlist || YIMA chapter index

summary: Haechan doesn’t mind being a background character in someone else’s love story as long as he gets a front row seat to the love scenes. He’s in university, still learning about himself, still exploring his sexuality, and during his last year, he finally experiences an awakening, realizing a truth about himself: he likes to watch

length: 11,045

tags: slowburn, friends to lovers, voyeurism, exhibitionism, masturbation (public & in private), general perversion, smut

Haechan’s first real heartbreak happens when he’s at university.

The girl he has a giant crush on – she’s the most gorgeous girl he’s seen at their university, like a model with her perfect body that draws the attention of every red-blooded straight man on campus – kisses one of Haechan’s friends right in front of him. 

It’s not a peck, not a chaste kiss, not even a kiss in a game of truth or dare (though they do play that game regularly at their small parties, at the nights at Mark’s rented house, spent drinking themselves numb after a rough week). It’s a kiss, like hands on cheeks, bodies pressed together, and the moment Haechan sees a flicker of tongue, he’s done.

“Okay, gross. We get it!” He says, and he wonders if his voice is actually as loud as it sounds in his ears. His heart is pounding, stomach lurching. 

Mark, Chenle, Jungwoo, some of the others are all laughing. Haechan’s face feels slack, stomach tight, palms sweaty as he looks at the bright smile on Shotaro’s face. Haechan feels that sharp bite of jealousy in his belly as she gravitates to stay by Shotaro’s side.

He ignores it. Ignores the jealousy he feels – because he has no claim on her heart; he’s never had the guts to confess his feelings to her – as the days and weeks pass by. Haechan buries himself in other girls, fucking his way through all the girls on the dorm floor beneath his until they all know him as a manwhore and want nothing more to do with him.

Desperately looking for anything to focus on other than the moon-eyes that Shotaro keeps shooting at the girl Haechan has spent so long lusting after, Haechan turns to a little good, old-fashioned fantasy material. He uses Twitter mostly, digging up some good content to watch and jerk off to, hiding himself in his bed at the dorm, thankful that his roommate is almost never home. 

His airpods, his phone, and a bottle of lube become his near-constant companions while he’s tucked away in the dorm room. It’s not a problem because he makes sure it isn’t one. He can still have sex with real women and distinguish what’s happening from the way things play out in the videos he watches online. He’s not delusional, okay?

But he does quickly learn a few things about himself. He unburies a few kinks he didn’t realize were a thing for him.

Like, getting caught jerking off by his roommate. That’s one that he didn’t realize he liked until it happened. His roommate doesn’t seem to care too much the first time he walks in on Haechan with his hand wrapped around his own cock. Even the second time, a week or two later, it’s no big deal. It happens. But when he walks into their dorm room and finds Haechan making direct eye contact with him as he cums, then it’s a bit much.

“Dude, get the fuck out,” his roommate had said, and Haechan had obeyed. 

It’s awkward after that, every time they encounter each other, so Haechan begins to spend a lot more time at the house a few of his friends rent together. Their sofa is always open, sometimes a few of them let him sleep in their beds whether they’re in them or not. He still crashes in his dorm sometimes because all of his stuff is still there, and when he needs to focus on his coursework, it’s always a lot easier to get done there than at the house. But things between him and his roommate remain tense. There are many nights, he just hangs out at the house until everyone kinda falls asleep, or until they ask him to just stay the night.

This is particularly easy on nights when everyone is over at the house. Their whole friend group gathered around the living room on the floor and sofas, on armchairs and bean bag chairs. Once the alcohol comes out, Haechan knows he’ll be fine to stay the night tonight, even if it means snuggling up on the sofa between YangYang and Xiaojun, neither of which live in the house either, but who both are likely to pass out from overindulging in drinks.

Sometimes, if Haechan is really lucky, she stays the night too, folding her beautiful self onto the sofa or an armchair. He’s watched her curl up in one of the armchairs, still clinging to a half-empty bottle when she falls asleep. He’s been lucky enough to be on the sofa with her one night, her head resting on his shoulder, and his shirt still smelling like her perfume the next day. 

Tonight, he watches as the party dwindles around him, as his friends that don’t live here slowly leave, until only a few people are left. She’s one of them, giggling at something Renjun’s telling her. Her eyes are shiny, dancing around the room to look at the last few members of the party – Jaemin and Jeno, both of whom live here, one of the girls in their friend group who spent the first part of the night teasing Haechan about his flubbed presentation in one of their shared classes, Shotaro, Chenle, Sungchan, and Haechan. She smiles when she meets his gaze, and his heart does a foolish little flutter.

But then Shotaro passes by, and her smile grows infinitely brighter.

Haechan loses track of her when Jaemin starts squawking about whatever game he’s just lost against Chenle, and when Haechan next looks up, she’s gone. He doesn’t see her again, so he figures she’s left for the night along with everyone else after a short while longer.

He curls comfortably on one of the sofas, dozing lightly until some sound drags him out of his dreams. A creak of floorboards, the sound of rushing water tinkling against the kitchen sink. 

Haechan sits up, squinting in the dim light. It’s still the middle of the night. Who the hell is up right now?

He twists around, looking in the direction of the kitchen, and what he sees there freezes him to his core.

There she is, an absolute vision.

A vision of her in another man’s shirt.

Haechan’s fingers curl against his blanket. Jealousy turns his stomach. She’s wearing Shotaro’s shirt, the holey band t-shirt that he brought over with him from Japan, the one that Haechan and Renjun have both insisted he get rid of. She’s wearing it. And if Haechan isn’t mistaken, the shadowy mark on her neck is a hickey.

Suddenly, a lot of different things make connections in his mind.

That kiss he’d witnessed between her and Shotaro, the one that everyone had thought was just the one time kiss. The moony eyes Shotaro’s been making at her since then. And many little things from the past few weeks. Many little things from just tonight – they’d both vanished for a while earlier during the movie, but Haechan had just assumed she’d gone upstairs where some of the guys were gaming; the way they’d sat so close together for most of the rest of the evening. But mostly, the way that they’d had similar truths about sex during a game of truth or dare someone had brought up; the way she’d vanished entirely tonight, just shortly before Shotaro had turned in for the night.

He doesn’t know what he plans to do, not really. Even as he pushes the blanket off of himself, as he rises to his feet and walks towards the kitchen, Haechan doesn’t know what his next move is.

She looks up, startled. Her eyes are wide, open and innocent in the darkness, frightened even.

One of her hands drifts down to the hem of the shirt, tugging it down a little. The other holds a glass of water.

Haechan can’t help drinking the sight of her in, even if she is wearing Shotaro’s shirt. He folds his arms across his chest, leaning against the doorway to look at her. Gorgeous. And her thighs are beautiful, he just wants to feel them against his hips, he wants to bite them and kiss them, feel them squeezing against the sides of his head as he – 

No. 

He can’t do any of that. None of that will happen with her because she’s with Shotaro in whatever capacity. And Haechan isn’t going to infringe on that no matter how he feels. 

So, in the moment, Haechan puts on a brave face and decides to call her out on it. “So, you and our innocent Shotaro, huh?”

The way that she holds his gaze in challenge is truthfully very hot. He watches the way that she gulps down her water, a stray drop spilling from the corner of her mouth, trailing along her face to her jaw. Haechan struggles not to imagine catching that water droplet on his tongue, tracing it back to her lips, kissing her until she completely forgets whose bed she’s left.

And then she walks towards him, and all he can smell is her perfume or her shampoo or body wash or whatever it is, he’s just enveloped in a cloud of her. It drives him a little wild, forcing him to look away from her before he does something really stupid like kiss her. Because she’s not his to kiss; it’s Shotaro’s lips that she’s had all over her tonight because up this close, Haechan can definitely see a hickey low on her throat, almost hidden by the neck of the t-shirt. 

He makes his accusation, putting it out there into the world just to see if she’ll deny it. Her and Shotaro. It doesn’t make sense, not to him. The boy is an innocent, or at least he was up until he claimed otherwise tonight. What does she see in him? How good of a lover could inexperienced Shotaro really be?

To Haechan’s surprise, she doesn’t deny what he’s figured out. She’s got a bold, sharp look in her eye, though she’s avoiding looking directly at him. She doesn’t deny a thing about his assumptions about her and Shotaro, instead she asks, in a quiet voice that crackles with a challenge, “Are you going to tell everyone?”

No, he’s not going to tell everyone. That would be really fucking stupid of him. She’d be furious, and he’d be ruining any chance of her ever wanting to speak to him again. Ruining any tiny chance that if this thing with Shotaro goes sideways, she might someday consider Haechan, even though deep down he knows that if he ever stood a chance with her, it would’ve already happened. She’s gorgeous, she’s not been celibate in the while that he’s known her, so if she’s avoided his company and has instead found herself in Shotaro’s then that’s probably where she’d like to be. 

He doesn’t know what brings him to do it. Doesn’t know why he lets his arm brush against hers because the moment that he feels how soft her skin is, how warm she is, his brain short-circuits a little, and he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. “I’m just glad Shotaro’s finally made his move. He’s had a crush on you since the first time he met you.” It’s the truth, but he’s not entirely sure why he’s telling her this right now. He can remember the first day that Renjun introduced Shotaro to all of them, the way that he’d fit right in, the way that she had come in at the last minute, running late because of something to do with the campus buses. She’d been windswept and a little sunburnt, wearing a sundress with one of the straps sliding over her shoulder.

She’d been enchanting.

Apparently, Haechan hadn’t been the only one caught under her spell that day. 

Hours later, after she’d left, Shotaro was sitting there, talking with Renjun, YangYang, and Haechan. He’d been pretty quiet up until someone mentioned her name, and then his eyes had lit up. It was obvious right away that Shotaro liked her, and he liked her in a different way than Haechan usually heard guys talk about her. Haechan himself was a bad example since he was lusting after her, in love with her body more than anything else. But when Shotaro talked about her he was wanting to know more about her, wanting to repeat all the things she’d said that he’d found funny; he liked her for her personality and didn’t even mention how great her tits had looked.

Haechan had assumed it was just the innocence of Shotaro, but tonight he’s seeing that Shotaro clearly harbors lusty feelings for her too. 

“I thought his heart would’ve exploded that day you kissed him in front of us,” Haechan tells her, watching the way that her gaze flicks up to meet his briefly before dancing away again. In truth, Haechan’s heart had nearly burst that day too, but surely Shotaro’s had as well. It had been Shotaro’s first kiss, with the girl of his dreams. Haechan still could only wish that he and Shotaro could have switched places that day. What he wouldn’t have given to be the one kissing her in front of all of their friends, to have them all know that he’d bagged the hottest woman on campus; he wanted to be the cause for her blush; he wanted to be the one who had walked away with her at his side.

He doesn’t know what he expects from her at this moment. What her reaction would really be to him telling her that Shotaro’s had a silly schoolboy crush on her for the past year and a half, but he doesn’t expect this.

Her shoulder knocks roughly against Haechan’s, pushing by him to escape the doorway. “You should go home, Haechan. Stop crashing on their couch,” she says. She walks away, crossing the living room towards the stairs, heading back to Shotaro instead of lingering for even a moment longer to talk to Haechan.

“Yeah, yeah.” Haechan feels a new burst of jealousy, thinking about her climbing those stairs, crawling back into Shotaro’s bed, pressing herself up against him in that t-shirt. Or, even worse, maybe without it. And again, he doesn’t know why he says it when he calls out in a voice just above a whisper, “Go crawl back in his bed!”

She’s going to do exactly that.

The sight of her extended middle finger draws a laugh from Haechan, but she doesn’t look back. She climbs the stairs and vanishes from sight. 

He collapses back down onto the sofa, trying to stop straining his ears for any sounds overhead. What is he trying to hear, anyway? The creaking of the floorboards? The squeak of the mattress springs as she rejoins Shotaro in bed? Or what, her waking Shotaro and them making sounds together.

A strange pit opens in Haechan’s belly, twisted full of complex knots that he can’t even begin to untangle the meaning of. 

Somehow, he eventually falls asleep, though his dreams are possessed with jealous scenarios. Her face, Shotaro’s, his own. Scenarios where he gets her, only to find her taken away in Shotaro’s arms. Dreams where he’s trapped outside the room while the sounds of her and Shotaro having sex echo in his ears. He wouldn���t necessarily call them nightmares. 

He doesn’t know exactly what wakes him in the morning, but something startles him awake, finding himself with a face full of bright sunlight on the sofa in the living room. His blanket is tucked up beneath his chin, and there are voices everywhere. Mainly though, he hears Shotaro’s voice, telling some story, and as the words come together in Haechan’s still half-asleep brain, he realizes that the story Shotaro is telling is a lie. An excuse for why he’s come down from his room this morning with company.

Haechan opens his eyes, catching sight of her standing on the stairs. She’s wearing her own clothes now, that hickey from the night before hidden away. He remembers one of his dreams when he’d been the one to give her that mark. 

The others seem to buy the bullshit story about her being drunk, vomiting and passing out in Shotaro’s bed. Haechan hears the quiet exchange of words between her and Shotaro in a soft, lovey-dovey tone that makes Haechan want to be sick. He sees them leave the stairs, making for the door and their smooth escape, and he can’t help it. He wants to make himself known to them before they leave.

“Such a gentleman, our Shotaro.” He says, “Letting her sleep in your bed. So sweet.”

She turns her head around so quickly, Haechan would be surprised if it didn’t hurt her neck. There’s venom in her eyes, but at the moment, Haechan can’t feel the sting of it. Especially when he’s instead blinded by the bright, bright sunlight as Shotaro throws open the front door. To combat her glare, Haechan responds with a wink and a wave, though that just makes her pretty face tighten.

“You should go home, Haechan,” she repeats her parting words from the night before. “Stop crashing on their couch.”

He laughs, because what else is there to do? 

She and Shotaro step out into the daylight, closing the door behind them. He laughs again, chuckling to himself as he remembers her words, the look on her face. 

A pillow smacks him full in the face. 

Haechan swears, bringing his hands up to ward off the possibility of a second attack as the pillow falls away. He looks up to see Renjun standing over him, glaring down at him. “She’s got a point. Either pay rent, dude, or get off our couch. Figure out the deal with your roommate.”

It’s impossible to figure things out with his roommate, but luckily, the other guy gets a girlfriend — the lucky bastard — and he starts spending all of his time at her apartment. Haechan returns to his ways of jerking off every chance he gets just so he can attempt to forget about those dreams he’s been having about Shotaro and her tangled together in bed. 

Weeks pass, and he manages to do a pretty good job of avoiding them. It helps that most of his nights are spent in his own bed at his own dorm now, but even when all of their friends are together, he always manages to miss being one-on-one with her and Shotaro. Until one weekend. 

The camping trip to the lake. 

All day long, Haechan was tortured by the sight of her bathed in sunlight, wind blowing through her hair, her face constantly lit up with smiles and laughter. All of the girls were wearing bikinis which had been a delightful sight to his eyes, and Haechan had even found his attention drifting to a few of the guys to admire the way their muscles moved and glistened with sweat in the sunlight. But his attention kept returning to her and the way she filled out her bikini. She easily could be a model, so gorgeous that he can imagine her as one of the models on the cover of a swimsuit catalogue, a Victoria Secret runway, or a Playboy magazine. 

He purposely puts himself close to her all day, though he also notices the way that she keeps gravitating toward wherever Shotaro is. 

Sometimes Haechan allows himself other distractions. He wrestles with Mark and Renjun in the shallows. He plays beach volleyball with several of them. He flirts with Karina where she floats on a pool float tied to the dock. He spends a short while sunbathing on the dock with one of the girls and Xiaojun, all three of them staring up at the clouds. 

And then comes the time in the early afternoon when a few of them start playing chicken. Shotaro is nowhere in sight, so Haechan takes the opportunity to ask the object of his lust if she would like to play. And to his luck and surprise, she agrees to partner with Haechan, letting him hold her on his shoulders. Her bare thighs rest over his shoulders, her fingers in his hair, and he knows it’s probably just his imagination, but he could swear he can smell her — sweet temptation tucked just beneath the scent of sunscreen and sweat and those fruity drinks Xiaojun and YangYang had been mixing up and passing out all day. 

They lost the game of chicken, but Haechan didn’t even care because for those few moments he’d had her. Or at least, it had felt like he did. Her fingers had tugged at his hair as she said his name with her thighs on his shoulders. And maybe his imagination got a little carried away. It was a good thing he was up to his waist in the lake so no one could see the trouble rising in his shorts thinking about all of her sun kissed skin against his. 

It wasn’t until hours and hours later, when the sun was plunging towards the horizon, when some of the other guys were busy grilling meat, that Haechan sat down beside the bright bonfire, pulling on a hoodie to ward off the chill sweeping in. Some of the others drift inside to rinse off after the day spent on the lake, the others start dinner preparations, and Haechan helps out some, mostly as a mood-maker, trying to draw laughs out of those whose faces have grown grim with hunger and irritability after being in the sun all day. 

When Haechan looks across the fire after a while, he finds her sitting there. Her hair is damp, her cheeks ruddy from the sun, but she’s freshly showered, dressed warmer now. Gone is all of that gorgeous exposed skin, the bikini that had felt like nothing when he’d held her on his shoulders earlier. He watches as Shotaro passes by her, brushing his hand over her shoulders. Haechan witnesses the little grin she throws towards Shotaro as he keeps walking into the house. She makes a move like she could just follow, and Haechan’s imagination takes that and runs with it, envisioning the two of them sneaking off and fucking in the house, imagining how he could walk in….

“This is a nice break, huh?” A girl drops down into the seat beside him. She smiles, wrapping her arms around her knees as she draws them up towards her chest. “I don’t know about you, but I feel like this semester is kicking my ass.”

Haechan welcomes the distraction. 

“Professor Kang especially,” Haechan agrees. He and this girl have several classes together since they’re in the same major, and the course that Professor Kang teaches is one required for the major, but if it wasn’t Haechan would have dropped it by now. 

She laughs. “Kang’s class is a little rough. But I’m doing pretty well in it right now if you need any help.”

Haechan isn’t even surprised by that. The girl sitting beside him is probably the smartest in their year. She does well all the time; the professors compliment her on it in class. Haechan’s definitely sought her out before for help dozens of times since they met as freshmen. 

“I might take you up on that,” he sighs, tipping his head back to look up at the sky. “But like you said, this is a nice break. I feel like this weekend we can all just relax and let loose a little.”

She’s smiling when he looks over at him. “When do you ever hold back from letting loose, Lee Donghyuck?” 

The sound of his full name from her lips makes his stomach do a flip. People so rarely use it, and when they do he’s often in trouble. But that’s not how she said it, with her voice warm and happy, full of laughter. 

She is laughing, Haechan realizes, and he laughs too. She’s not wrong. Haechan takes pretty much every opportunity he can to crack jokes, to relax, to bring a little brightness to the days of the people around him.

Xiaojun comes over to see what’s so funny, and he draws her attention away until Haechan feels like he’s been cut out of the conversation. He decides to go help finish up the last of the meal prep. 

He does his best to try to rile up some of the others as they all eat. Trying to get a round of dares going because he wants to see someone have to go skinny dipping in the lake tonight even though the night air is quite cold now. No one’s up to play his game unfortunately, but as the night sinks in around everyone at the fire, Haechan does convince YangYang to drink with him, to see which of them can drink the most. 

The more he drinks, the harder it is for Haechan to keep his eyes from drifting across the fire. The harder it is to ignore the way Shotaro and the girl are so wrapped up in each other. And Haechan Isn't blind, although all of their friends might be, so he can see that Shotaro has stolen her heart, and that unsettles Haechan. 

For as long as Haechan has known her she hasn’t been tied down in a relationship, but now he can see that if she isn’t already, then she’s about to be fully in one. 

It throws off the balance of the world he knows, shutting out any possibility of him getting to experience any fun with her. 

Unsettled, jealous, a little drunk maybe (though Haechan refuses to admit that YangYang might have beat him), that’s what drives Haechan to say what he does. 

His words leap over the fire as everyone’s making jokes about Mark and one of their other friends finally jumping over the line between just friends and fuckbuddies. 

Haechan’s eyes are fixed on her and Shotaro, his heavy tongue lifts, mouth open to draw everyone’s attention to the secret couple in their midst. 

He can tell from the look in her eyes then that he’s done for. There’s no going back from these words he’s speaking, but it’s too late. Drunken words are sober thoughts, and all that, but it just keeps spilling out of him while the others around the fire look on. 

“Shotaro has obviously been in love with you from the start,” Haechan can hear himself saying, “Literally that very first day you met each other. He wouldn’t stop talking about you that night on the way back to our dorm, and kept trying to get Renjun and Mark to invite him to places where you would be. Absolutely lovesick. And then you were his first kiss? How romantic! Did you take his virginity too?”

Jaemin spits his drink out when he laughs, and several of the others laugh as well, someone spouts out their own teasing comment aimed at Shotaro. The night crawls over Haechan’s skin, but he’s staring at her. At no one else but her and the fire reflected in her eyes. She’s beautiful. She’s pissed off, but she’s beautiful. 

It’s the sound of the others around him joining in, it’s the alcohol soaking through his veins, he doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore, just anything to embarrass Shotaro honestly, because Haechan can see their fingers knitted together now, and he knows that Shotaro is the one that she wants and Haechan hates that, he absolutely hates it. He was here first, he should’ve taken his chance while he could. 

The jealousy eats at him, so he goes on and on, attacking everything from Shotaro’s lack of experience to the high likelihood of him being bad in bed. 

Even when she rises to her feet, the fire in her eyes no longer just a reflection of the bonfire, but her own blazing anger, Haechan leans back in his seat and smirks. She uses his full name, and its the second time he’s heard it used today, but this time is certainly the more familiar usage — with the tone of anger and followed by her telling him to fuck off, an accusation of him being drunk. 

He does start to feel a little bad about it when he notices the tears swimming in her eyes as she rails at him for bullying Shotaro. Haechan’s gaze flicks over to the other man, and he finds Shotaro looking a little embarrassed, but they all tease him about this stuff all the time, and Haechan’s drunk, so he can’t really be held accountable for what he’s saying right now. He and Shotaro will still be friends in the morning. 

Haechan isn’t really listening to what she says, not until he hears her say, “We don’t all ask about your sex life, or lack thereof. It’s not like you’re getting a lot of action.” 

That starts a fire in Haechan’s belly. It’s not like he never gets laid anymore. He can if he wants to, but it seems like since he found out about her and Shotaro his fantasies have starred the two of them more often than not, and he can’t have her, so it’s just a lot easier to settle for his hand and a fantasy. 

But she’s not finished yet. 

“Maybe you should be worried about your own skills instead of Shotaro’s.” She takes a half step forward, and Haechan is once again thinking about how hot she is even while she’s angry. She’s gorgeous, and maybe if she weren’t so obsessed with Shotaro, Haechan could redirect this anger she’s feeling into something more productive. 

Or so he thinks, drunkenly, until her next words. 

“Maybe if you were a semi-decent fuck, you’d not be sleeping on the sofa at their house every night.”

Those words finally hit home. 

He’s not a bad fuck. 

He’s more than a semi-decent fuck, thank you very much. 

But hearing that insult from her is more than he can take at the moment. It’s annoying, is what it is. She doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about. Just last week, at a party, he’d fucked a sorority girl boneless and she’d still begged him for more. He’s a good fuck. 

He sits forward in his seat, fingertips digging into the edges of the arm as he tries to haul himself forward. 

He at least has the sobriety of mind to bite his tongue from saying the first thing that springs to mind. He holds in the offer to show her firsthand his skills although the words dance right there on the tip of his tongue. 

Instead, he says something else. 

“You want to talk about what I’m up to every night?” He could tell her a thing or two — the kinks he’d awakened in his weeks of video-watching trying to get over her, the things he’s already been experimenting on with people he’s met on a hook-up app. She doesn’t need to worry about what he’s up to. “Why don’t we talk about how every night you’re there fu—“

Shotaro rocks to his feet, face twisted with anger that Haechan has never seen from him before. A shout leaves his lips, drowning out the rest of Haechan’s words, leaving them floundering in the taste of vodka on Haechan’s tongue. 

Maybe this time they won’t be friends in the morning. Haechan can see that in the way Shotaro glares at him. At the possessive way that Shotaro puts his hand on her shoulder, moving her away from the fire, away from Haechan. 

She goes. 

Shotaro follows. 

Haechan rises to his feet, wanting to follow because he’s not done. 

Renjun’s there in an instant, and although he’s smaller than Haechan, he’s easily able to manhandle him. Especially since Renjun’s relatively sober and Haechan…. He’s had more than enough. He knows that. Renjun’s telling him as much as he corrals him inside the cabin, rambling to him and lecturing him about the things he’s said. 

He doesn’t want a lecture. Doesn’t want to think about anything else. He definitely doesn’t want to sit inside this cabin and pretend like he can’t hear the muffled sounds of Mark and their other friend fucking in the back bedroom. 

Renjun forces Haechan to sit at the kitchen table. He puts a glass of water down in front of him. 

“Drink, Donghyuckie.” He collapses into the seat beside Haechan, rubbing at his forehead like he’s got a headache. “Why do you always have to stir up shit with Shotaro, huh? Just because he genuinely likes the girl you just want to fuck? Because she kissed him? Move on, buddy. She’s clearly not into you. There are plenty of other people that are.”

Haechan glares but doesn’t say a word, just downs the glass of water as quickly as he can. Renjun just picks it up and refills it for him. 

He doesn’t want to talk about this with Renjun. Doesn’t want to talk about it with anyone. So he just sits there silently and sullenly, allowing Renjun to all but waterboard him in an attempt at sobering him up. 

By the time the couple in the back room stumble out to the kitchen, looking a little bit rough and blushing, Haechan does feel a whole lot less drunk. Some of the others have started to drift inside, toting in their blankets and their drinks and snacks. Calling it a night.

Haechan can hear someone singing out by the fire though, and Renjun wanders back out there, his voice joining in. Haechan can’t just sit inside and be miserable, and he doesn’t feel tired yet, so when Mark heads back to the fire, Haechan follows. 

Wherever her and Shotaro had gone while Renjun dragged Haechan off, they’ve returned. She sits tucked into Shotaro’s side. They look happy, and Haechan feels like shit.

And his mind is a lot more clear now. The jealous haze is gone, except for a tiny wrinkle of it in the back of his mind, so he has the clarity to at least stop by where the two of them sit. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, ducking his head. “I was a dick before, and I know it. I just — I don’t really have any excuse, other than that I was just being an asshole.” He lowers his voice a little, glancing at where their hands now sit intertwined above the blanket that covers their laps. “But, hey, now it’s not a secret anymore, right?”

That thought doesn’t seem to reassure either of them too much, so Haechan walks away, snuggling into the spot between Mark and Renjun. The girl Haechan had talked with about school earlier is sitting across the fire  shooting looks at him, and he can’t help wondering if he was that much of an asshole earlier that she’s wary of him; he and her have always gotten along, but now when he looks at her, she avoids eye contact.

Haechan steers away from the bottle of whiskey that is getting passed around, and slowly the rest of the night passes. The crowd around the bonfire shrinks as his friends disappear inside, and soon there are only a core few of them left. 

The night wind whistles in off the lake, biting at his bare legs where he’s still wearing his swim trunks from earlier today. 

Jeno laughs, then he turns to look at Haechan, at the other few still left. It’s only Shotaro and his girlfriend, Jeno, Haechan, Xiaojun, Mark, and the girl from earlier left around the fire now. 

It’s grown cold out even with the bonfire. Haechan wishes he’d opted to put on warmer clothes earlier in the evening instead of just his thin swim trunks and a hoodie. Several of the others are bundled up in jackets and pants and blankets. As Haechan looks around the fire, the girl he has class with shivers, tucking her feet under the blanket covering her lap. Xiaojun is still sitting beside her and he drapes another blanket across her lap. 

Jeno smiles around the fire at all of them as he says, “Maybe before we all head in, we take a dip in the hot tub.”

“I think I’m done for the night.” Mark stands up, stretching his arms above his head. “It’s too cold.”

“It helps that you’ve got someone new to warm your bed, though, I bet,” Jeno calls at Mark’s retreating back. Mark just flips him off.

Haechan is chilled to the bone, so it sounds good to him. Xiaojun also heads in for the night, but all of the others agree, and before he knows it, he’s stripped down to his boxers, sitting in the boiling hot water of the tub up on the deck. He’d almost forgotten about it since it’s tucked off to the side of the house. 

He’s entirely sober now. He’s downed enough water over the last two hours that he’s probably fully replenished any of the dehydrating effects of what he’d drunk earlier in the night. But tragically, as he realizes after he’s been stewing in the hot tub for a little while, he needs to piss. 

He’s not so much of a dick that he’d do it in here, so he gets up. Internally he curses at how cold the air is on his bare skin, but externally he doesn’t say anything even as he can see the steam rising from his skin, even as his swim trunks cling tight to his hips and ass. He just grabs his sweatshirt from where he dumped it with everyone else’s clothes, and he heads inside. 

He just goes in to take a piss, expecting he’ll be back out there with the rest of them in a minute. There is no way Haechan’s gone for longer than five minutes, but when he steps into the kitchen on his way back outside, he finds the girl who’d been in the hot tub now sitting at the table. Jeno’s clothes are on the floor, which means he’s probably not out there either. Did they all come in?

She’s got her head pillowed on her arms, but she turns her head to the side as Haechan approaches. Her eyes look heavy, sleepy, as if she’d been about to doze off. 

“Are you just gonna sleep out here?” Haechan asks. 

There are plenty of rooms in this house to sleep in, not to mention those nice tents out there by the fire. If it’s her roommates she’s trying to avoid — which he would also avoid rooming with Karina and Winter, like she was supposed to be — his room on the second floor is still open. 

“You know the King bed upstairs is still open,” Haechan tells her without really knowing why he’s offering. He’d won that single room fair and square from the other guys. But maybe it’s because he’s slept with Karina before — actually slept with her, not just fucked her, though he has done that too — in a room shared with Winter, and he knows the sparks of jealousy that Winter can ignite when her space is infringed upon. “If it's the idea of rooming with Karina and Winter that has you scared to sleep in there, you’re welcome to the room up there.”

Her eyes go wide for a second, mouth forming a soft o, and she shakes her head a little. She looks cute like that, and Haechan feels a little smile rise to his lips. He’s not saying that he’s never really thought of her that way, but it’s never really struck him much. Not when there was someone around to overshadow her like Shotaro’s girlfriend. But right now, she looks cute, open and vulnerable in her expression. Not to mention the open and vulnerable way that she’s still barely dressed from the dip in the hot tub. Haechan can’t fight the urge to sweep his gaze over her, all the skin exposed by the little bra she’s wearing and her underwear that are still wet and a tiny bit see-through. 

He notices the way she draws her arms closer to her body, pressing the bundle of her clothes against her chest as she stands. 

“Why is no one sleeping up there?” She asks, and it takes Haechan a second too long to remember that he’d just offered up his bed to her for the night. 

Haechan explains quickly that he won the single room, and it’s still unoccupied because he’s not tired yet. And then he repeats his offer for her to take it. She just looks at him with these wide, pretty eyes, then she asks, “And what about when you do get tired? Where are you gonna sleep then?” 

He just shrugs. He’s really not tired at all right now. He could use a good long soak in the hot tub, especially if the rest of them have abandoned it. Or maybe he’ll just go sit by the fire, pick up one of the beers someone surely left out there. And he’s pretty sure that YangYang left half a bag of marshmallows out there for roasting. So right now the thought of where he’s going to sleep isn’t really something he’s too concerned about. “That’s a problem for then.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, so Haechan reaches for the door to step back outside, and the doorknob has just turned beneath his hand when he hears her quiet voice behind him.

“When you get tired Haechan….” She pauses just long enough that Haechan turns to look back at her. 

She’s twisting her shirt in her hands like she’s nervous, and Haechan can’t help smiling at that. Does he make her nervous? They’ve been friends for a while now, sharing classes, study rooms, meals and conversations. When they’d talked earlier today she hadn’t seemed nervous at all, but right now she does, and Haechan knows that when they first became friends she had a crush on him, but he thought she grew out of it. Maybe not. Her cheeks grow a little warm, her gaze dipping away from his before returning. 

“Well, it’s a big bed,” she says, “I’m happy to share.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Haechan pulls the door open, still watching her. 

He sees something there in her eyes, buried deep. Just a flicker of some deeper hunger, a small spark in the dark.

Interesting.

But it’s gone just as quickly, and Haechan looks away, murmuring a quiet “goodnight” to her, and then he’s stepping out through the doorway. 

Just as he rounds the corner of the house to return to the hot tub, Haechan freezes in place. 

The hot tub, which had held four people when he left, and which he believed would now be empty, still holds two people. 

Haechan shrinks back around the corner of the house, but he doesn’t withdraw completely. Doesn’t look away. 

How could he look away from the sight of one of his fantasies playing out right in front of his eyes? The girl he’d just finally relinquished his lustful crush on now straddling Shotaro? Her shoulders steam as she drapes her arms over Shotaro’s shoulders, as he draws a hand up out of the water to touch her back. Haechan can’t look away, transfixed by the way that she shivers into Shotaro, the way her back arches slightly against his light touch. And she’s smiling, holding Shotaro’s gaze when Haechan sees the other man’s wrist flick, and then his breath catches in his throat. 

Her bra falls away, and Haechan has dreamed of her tits. He has had very, very specific fantasies about fucking them, fondling them, resting his head on them during post-coital bliss. 

But he’s never seen them in person. Not until right now. 

Shotaro drops her bra over the edge of the hot tub, and Haechan can only stare, like a fucking pervert, at her bare tits. They’re perfect. Her nipples stand to attention in the cool air, and then Shotaro’s hands are on them, just like Haechan wishes his were. His hands flex at his sides, curling into fists, trying to rid himself of the phantom feeling of soft boobs in his hands. 

And then Shotaro’s lips are on her neck, and Haechan watches the way her eyes flutter shut, her mouth falls open. 

He should stop looking. 

Look away, he tells himself. Just go inside, and stop being a pervert.

But he likes watching. 

He likes to see the way her body reacts. The way she gasps and shifts in Shotaro’s lap as he kisses her neck, as he trails his kisses down. The soft moan she lets out when he scrapes his teeth over her collarbone. 

Fuck. 

Haechan feels his cock stirring in interest. 

He notices when she shifts higher in Shotaro’s lap, when her mouth falls open on a sigh that becomes a moan of Shotaro’s name. And then she starts moving, rolling her hips, and Haechan realizes that Shotaro must have his fingers inside her right now. She clutches at Shotaro’s shoulders, and Haechan wishes with all his being that he could be Shotaro right then. To have his fingers buried inside her soft, tight heat. To have his lips on her tits, her writhing in his lap and saying his name. 

Haechan can tell Shotaro isn’t holding back. He’s not teasing, not drawing it out. He’s just giving it to her exactly like she wants it. And Haechan drinks in the show, the way she rides Shotaro’s fingers, her face flushing and eyes aglow when she looks at Shotaro’s face. And then, Haechan gets to witness her cumming, falling apart on Shotaro’s fingers, beneath Shotaro’s lips. She pulls at his hair so tightly. 

Haechan doesn’t even notice at first that his hand has risen to his own hair. That he’s knotted his fingers through it. He tugs, and it’s only at the jolt of pleasure that goes straight to his cock that he realizes what he’s doing. 

He’s so damn hard in his pants right now. 

Even watching her kiss another man, in this context, Haechan feels nothing but arousal. He watches, knowing that it’s wrong, but also knowing that he likes it. 

He likes watching her with her guard down, uninhibited and raw with Shotaro, unaware that Haechan’s watching. The thought makes his cock throb a little, and Haechan reaches down, just offering his cock a little squeeze. 

They’re moving again in the hot tub. Her and Shotaro are making out, and Haechan, from his vantage point twenty feet away, can only barely hear Shotaro moaning into the kiss. More importantly, Haechan’s focused on the way her body moves, on how she’s clearly grinding down on Shotaro, but Haechan wonders if he missed the moment when she started riding Shotaro, or if she’s really only teasing him right now. 

Another squeeze of his hand around his cock, the glide of his palm over the tip. 

Fuck, she’s so sexy right now. On top. In charge. 

The wind whips around the corner of the house towards Haechan, carrying with it the sound of Shotaro whining. His head thumps against the side of the hot tub, just gazing up at her. Haechan wishes, again, that he was in Shotaro’s spot, looking up at her like she’s a star in the night sky, like she’s the moon, like she’s all that matters in the universe with her pussy so tight around him. 

He shivers, his foot moving. 

His toes knock into a small branch on the deck, and it makes a small scraping sound, rolling away across the boards. 

Haechan moves, drawing further back around the corner, but lingers close enough to peek around. 

For a moment he thinks he sees her look in his direction, but there’s no shout of anger, no look of surprise. 

She just dips her head to kiss Shotaro’s cheek or his neck. Her hair falls in a curtain obscuring Haechan’s view a little bit until she sits up a moment later. She shivers in Shotaro’s lap, goosebumps rising on her skin and her fucking nipples look like they would feel so good in Haechan’s mouth. 

Damn it all. 

He pushes his hand down the front of his swim trunks, fingertips moving over his abdomen, down to wrap his hand around his bare cock at last. 

Now Haechan can see that she was definitely just grinding on Shotaro before. He can see the way she rises up a little bit, the way she reaches down beneath the water, this look of mischievousness and delight in her eyes as she sinks down on Shotaro’s cock. 

And then she moans, and Haechan’s entire body goes numb. 

That sound. 

It’s unmistakable and so loud that probably half of his friends heard it in the house. Not that her or Shotaro seem to care. 

Judging by the way that she moans, Haechan feels a new brand of jealousy. Is Shotaro’s cock really that good? Haechan has never seen it, obviously he’s never heard any tales about it, but if just sinking down on him has her making a sound like that then Shotaro must have a dreamy cock. 

Haechan thumbs at his tip, smearing a bit of precum around, reminding himself that he shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be jerking off to the sight of his friends fucking unwittingly in front of him. 

But then she starts moving, starts kissing Shotaro in an absolutely filthy way with visible tongue and moaning from both of them. He can see Shotaro with his hands on her ass, her back, her tits. 

Haechan just leans against the wall of the house, hand fisting his cock as he starts jerking off, moving his hand at the same pace that she’s moving on Shotaro.

And when she starts bouncing? Tits jumping on her chest, Haechan feels a new jolt of lust and lets a fantasy overlay reality. He’s still watching her with Shotaro, but he’s also envisioning himself beneath her, her pussy hugging his cock, her ass smacking against his thighs, and his lips wrapped around her tit, his hand at her hip to keep her moving. In his fantasy, Haechan is making her moan, but in reality, he’s mostly just hearing Shotaro, which should probably be a turn-off, but something about everything combined means that Haechan’s cock is growing harder, more wet at the tip as he twists his wrist, imagining his face buried in her tits. 

He thinks about earlier today, when she’d sat on his shoulders for the game of chicken, the scenario his mind had come up with then of eating her out, her taste on his lips as he’d imagined the smell of her all around him. 

Haechan bites his bottom lip, feeling a tug in his belly, the tightness in his balls. 

And when he refocuses on the sight in front of him, he watches Shotaro standing up, lifting her out of the water with her legs twisted around his hips. She laughs a little, her voice carrying clear over to Haechan as she says, “Fuck me, Taro! It’s cold out here.”

Shotaro laughs too, turning to sit her ass down on the edge of the tub. 

Not that either of them could possibly be aware of it, but doing this has made Haechan’s view just that much better. Although now he’s getting an eye full of Shotaro’s ass, Haechan can also see where their bodies join. Can watch her thighs tighten against Shotaro’s hips as he drives into her, can catch a glimpse of his cock pushing into her and — oh, fuck, Haechan can barely hold in a moan as he sees her pussy. Pretty, perfect. Again, he imagines licking her out, his tongue swirling circles on her clit, her voice moaning his name. 

“Taro!” She cries out, shattering that little bit of Haechan’s fantasy. But still. 

Her nails rake over Shotaro’s back, and Haechan feels phantom zings of pleasure down to his lower back. 

Shotaro fucks her like he’s got experience, and fuck, Haechan supposes that he does have experience right here with her. He knows exactly where to touch, where to kiss, what angles and how deep and everything that Haechan doesn’t know in this situation. He fucks her with confidence, and with the ability to show her so much pleasure that Haechan can tell she’s on the brink of orgasm. 

He’s close too, seeing her like this. All laid out like a vision as Shotaro works her to the edge. 

And then it happens. 

There’s no denying it now, not when she glances his way, and their eyes catch. 

Haechan thinks that this is it. That he’s done for. 

But she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t yell and make Shotaro stop so they can kill Haechan for being a pervert. She locks eyes with him, and there’s something there in her gaze that makes him reevaluate everything that’s happened in the last few minutes. Earlier when he thought he’d narrowly avoided being caught, had he actually been spotted? Had they put on a show for him?

Fuck, that thought alone, that any part of what he’s witnessing had been done with him in mind, even just a little bit. 

Shotaro grabs her chin, dragging her mouth back to his. Her eyes flutter shut, Haechan forgotten. 

Haechan doubles down on his cock, and his orgasm hits right as hers rocks through her. He cums over his fist inside his swim trunks, watching her toes curl, her fingers dragging through Shotaro’s hair and down over his shoulders. 

He’s still pumping his cock, his body wracked with pleasure, when she slips off Shotaro’s cock to sink into the water, and Haechan watches her give the most intense, sloppiest head to Shotaro. Maybe Haechan cums again a bit, watching her bob her head on another man’s cock, and perhaps he feels a bit filthy for it too, but there’s a deeper satisfaction to be found there. 

Haechan doesn’t hang around to watch Shotaro cum in her mouth. He slips back around the house, down the stairs from the deck, and he walks over to the bonfire. They really should’ve put it out before they walked away, but it’s dying now anyway. The last burning embers of it flicker in the wind off the lake, and Haechan takes a seat, wipes his cum-covered hand off on a towel that someone left slung over this chair, and he stares into the embers to process what the fuck just happened. 

How is he going to be able to look either of them in the eye again after tonight? If Shotaro knew that he was watching, then their friendship is probably definitely over. 

He can’t believe he just stayed there and watched. 

Of course, he knew he was a bit of a perv, maybe an exhibitionist when his roommate walked in on him the first time and Haechan liked it. He definitely knew he was into it when he held eye contact with his roommate while cumming that other time. And, sure, his interest in watching porn definitely stemmed from him enjoying watching other people going at it. 

But this? 

“Haechan.” 

It’s the sound of his name that finally snaps him out of his stupor. 

He has to blink away the afterimage of the embers imposed on his eyes, but when it clears enough, he sees her and Shotaro both standing there staring at him. Hands clasped, still wet and flushed from the hot tub. 

He doesn’t know if they’re here to talk or if they’re claiming one of the nice tents out here to sleep in tonight. Either way, Haechan doesn’t want to be here. 

He stands up, not making eye contact, brushing right by them with nothing more than a goodnight. 

Inside the cabin, it’s very quiet. Everyone is asleep, and Haechan can feel the need to sleep finally catching up with him, the big bed upstairs calling his name. 

Shit, he remembers, the bed isn’t empty anymore. 

He does his best to open the door quietly, but even with his caution, he has barely pushed the door open before he hears the sound of a startled movement from the bed. She’s half-lifted herself up, and she’s just staring at him in the dark.

“Sorry,” he apologizes as he steps inside. “It’s just me.”

She sighs and sinks back down into the bed, and that’s when Haechan realizes she’s lying on his side of the bed. He prefers the left side, but it seems rude to ask her to move now. He closes the door again behind himself, and he does his best to keep quiet as he moves around the room towards the ensuite bathroom. He needs to rinse off – or at the very least clean up his jizz. 

Haechan pulls his hoodie off, letting it fall to the floor, and then he casts a quick glance at the girl laying in his bed. Her back is to him, so he feels fine about it as he drops his swim trunks and takes those last few steps into the bathroom fully nude.

He flicks the light on in the bathroom and takes a look down at himself. Gross. He grabs a wad of toilet paper to clean himself up, then decides the still slightly damp washcloth draped over the edge of the bathtub will be better. It takes only a moment to wipe his tacky cum off his skin, then he turns the light off again, and steps back out into the room. She’s still got her back to him, and she doesn’t move at all when he walks across the room to reach the desk where he’d sat his baggage for the weekend. 

It’s pitch black in there anyway, so even if she were to look over at him, it’s not like she would really see anything. And it’s not like Haechan isn’t confident in how he looks. He is. But… this is different.

His bag is sitting on the desk, and he quickly grabs out a pair of sweatpants, slips them on, then walks over to the wrong side of the bed.   

“You smell like lake water, bonfire smoke, and chlorine.” Her voice is half-muffled.

“I’ll shower in the morning,” Haechan says, pressing his face into the pillow. It’s not right. This pillow isn’t as comfortable, but that’s probably because he brought the pillow on his side of the bed from home. It’s perfectly formed for him, and he’s half-tempted to drag it out from beneath her head or maybe make her switch him sides of the bed. “You’re on my side of the bed, by the way.”

She snorts a tiny sound of amusement. 

Haechan moves just slightly, and he feels his foot bump against some part of her. Possibly her calf – he doesn’t know, all he knows is that whatever part of her it is is soft and warm.

“You’re the one that invited me,” she teases, “Guess you should’ve been more specific about where you wanted me.” 

She turns over to face Haechan then, and the movement sends a tiny puff of air in his direction. She smells nice, and he breathes in again, noticing that she doesn’t smell like nasty lake water or chlorine, and she only smells a tiny bit like smoke from the fire, but there’s something else sweet and aromatic about her that makes his mouth water just a tiny bit. 

And maybe his dick grows a little hard too, if he’s being honest. 

She’s already in his bed, so it doesn’t take a whole lot for his imagination to get carried away, especially not when he notices that now that his eyes have adjusted to the light level, it’s not nearly as dark in this room as he’d first thought. There are two uncovered windows, and light comes in through both of them – from the fading bonfire and from the lights over the hot tub on the deck below.

In that small amount of light, he can see her face now, and when his eyes briefly dip lower he can see that she is still only wearing that clingy thin bra that she’d worn in the hot tub. Her tits look perfect right now, like they would feel perfect in his hands or beneath his lips. He can just imagine rolling her onto her back, tugging the top edge of that material down, taking one of her nipples into his mouth….

But no. He’s not going to fuck her tonight. 

They’re just friends, and he might be a manwhore but he’s not an asshole. Making a move on her when it’s already so late and she’s clearly half-asleep, when he’s the one that told her that she could just sleep in this bed, that would obviously be a dick move. 

So no, not tonight. But he’s not saying never.

“Next time I’ll make it clear where I want you,” Haechan says, and he hopes she hears the promise that if they someday find themselves in a position at all similar to this one, he’ll be glad to position her exactly how he might want her. 

In the morning, Haechan gets rudely awoken by YangYang shoving into the room, not even bothering to knock in his rush to use this room’s bathroom. Haechan just groans and rolls over, stretching his limbs out across the bed as far as they can go, and it takes him a moment to realize why all of the space tickles some part of his brain as strange. Because then he remembers that this bed wasn’t empty when he fell asleep last night. 

Haechan lifts his head to squint at the side of the bed that prior to last night had been his. Empty. Sheets rumpled, but empty of the girl who had filled them.

He just drops his head back down, and he rolls over, sliding onto that half of the bed to get comfortable on his own pillow from home.

The only thing is that it doesn’t smell like home right now. 

It smells like her, like that pretty attractive scent he’d breathed in last night. He feels a little perverted when he buries his nose in the pillow to take a whiff. There’s one spot that stimulates something deep in his brain, and he wonders if that’s where she’d laid her head for most of the night, if that’s her shampoo that he’s smelling the most right there. He groans a little.

Yeah.

He’s definitely a perv because he’s getting hard again.

First the hot tub voyeurism and now this?

God damn, he’s a freak.

Willfully ignoring the rising problem, Haechan gets out of bed and heads down to the kitchen, determined to start the day off either with a coffee if someone’s got some brewing or a beer or maybe even something stronger if it’s available. 

Renjun squints at Haechan when he comes down, complaining about how he’d been woken up by Jeno nearly puking on him, hungover as hell. He lays all the blame on Haechan, since he’d been Jeno’s drinking buddy earlier in the night yesterday, and he’d also been one of the last ones hanging out with him last night, so he should’ve at least gotten him to trade out the alcohol for water.  But thinking of Jeno makes Haechan think of the hot tub, and thinking of the hot tub makes him think about the scene he’d witnessed, and that is something he can’t think about right now. 

He can’t risk it showing on his face somehow, and he refuses to admit to anyone else about his perverted moment last night. He can’t even face the happy couple. Not over breakfast when they appear in the kitchen hand-in-hand, blushing and bright-eyed from outside where they’d slept in one of those tents. 

He avoids them until he can’t anymore. 

For some reason, YangYang is the one allowed to steer the boat that had come with this rented property on the lake, which YangYang thinks makes him the Captain. He stands on the dock, waving everyone on board until the boat is at maximum capacity minus one. 

Haechan lingers on the dock as Shotaro and his girlfriend step onto the boat. 

YangYang stands there, watching Haechan, waiting. “Dude, are you not coming?”

To everyone’s surprise, but no one more so than Haechan, Shotaro answers. “Oh, no. Haechannie likes to just watch.”

Heat flashes through Haechan’s face. 

So they both knew about last night. 

And Shotaro is making jokes about it. 

Her face is lit up with laughter. Everyone else brushes the comment off, but Shotaro smiles, looking at Haechan with forgiveness in his eyes, even amusement. 

Haechan rocks past YangYang and onto the boat. He puts his arm around Shotaro’s shoulders, and he glances first at her where she’s watching the two of them, and then he meets Shotaro’s gaze so close to his own. 

“Consider me a tourist,” Haechan says, and the feeling of his words resound in his bones. “I just want to enjoy the view.”

That brings a laugh from both of them, Shotaro pushes him away, but Haechan moves further onto the boat. And then YangYang hops on board, unmoors it from the dock, and moments later he’s Captaining everyone across the lake. 

And Haechan looks around at his friends, his gaze lingering a little extra long on the happy couple, where Shotaro’s hand rests so low on her waist that it’s pretty much on her ass. His gaze passes momentarily over his friend who’d shared his bed last night; his attention pauses on Jeno where he’s wrestling with Jaemin, both of them shirtless and dripping with the beer that Jaemin had just dumped over Jeno. Haechan sees Karina and Winter drinking with Chenle. There’s Renjun grinning down at his phone at the far end of the boat. And Haechan again Haechan’s attention returns to the girl who had fled his bed this morning, she sits now with her head tipped back to soak in the sun while Xiaojun talks to her and flexes his muscles

Yes, Haechan thinks as he takes it all in, he’s certainly something of a tourist, enjoying the view.

YIMA chapter index || next chapter -> 

a/n: Chapter 1 done! If you’d like another perspective of this chapter, you should check out kiss kiss (fall in love) which is a 3 part Shotaro x Y/N fic, and that scene in the hot tub occurs in part 3! 

[kseniyagreen]

Zhao Yuanzhou is certainly a character with many flaws, but I see him in the situation with Li Lun not so much as cruel as weak.

He was also a teenager, like Li Lun, only a soft-hearted naive idealist. When his naive world collapsed, it shook him to the point of essentially a psychotic breakdown and a split personality. Because I am strongly convinced that the story with the ever burning wood and the red moon is not the cause, but a metaphor for what happened between them.

When Li Lun committed an act of aggression, the adults said that Li Lun should be isolated - and Zhao Yuanzhou obeyed the adults, because he is actually a very driven person. But his soul still could not accept this situation. And so in his breakdown, he killed the goddess - who had just imprisoned Li Lun.

And then he destroyed the Demon Hunting Bureau. Because well ... the subconscious, having entered into an aggressive rage, does not conduct an investigation and distinguishes who is right and who is guilty. He sees a sign that says "demon hunters" and takes out all his unexpressed anger on them, both for the demons in the clinic's cages and for Li Lun.

But then he woke up with blood on his hands, and after that, even thinking about Li Lun became unbearable. Because now Li Lun is not just a loved one who made a mistake. Li Lun is now his own unbearable guilt, that burning him from the inside.

And in my opinion, this is a fairly accurate metaphor for how the inability to face your own dark side makes you no less dangerous to others than the one who brings his dark side into the world.

All this certainly did not make the situation any easier for Li Lun, who first learned that in the human world, creatures like him are caged like wild animals. And then his closest and most beloved people essentially did the same to him. What meaning can he see in the world after that? And empathy and morality are actually very fragile things, easily dying if the world and your own life cease to have meaning for you.

And for me too, I would like, if not a better ending, then at least more sympathy for Li Lun from the other characters. The most he got in life was recognition that they did not want him to die in the eyes of Zhuo Yichen and Zhao Yuanzhou.

In general, of all the anomaly characters in the drama - Zhuo Yichen, Zhao Yuanzhou, Li Lun, Bai Jiu - only Zhuo Yichen received at least some explanation about how the world works from a respected adult in childhood. And how it changes things!

All the others fell into the world of prejudices, understanding almost nothing about themselves or about humans and immediately got into the most epic troubles.

[purplerakath]

School Spirits S2 Theories - Ep 1-3

So the first episodes did a lot of things, they mostly feed into my theories from last season. I don't plan to distinguish between the three episodes as I don't have time to rewatch them one at a time so I will just- do all of them.

Spoilers, and junk.

Despair Theory

For those that didn't see any of my theories before, despair theory is the way that heartbreak ties into connecting to the spirit world. Both in the creation of Ghosts, and being able to hear/see ghosts. This has gotten two big additional pieces of evidence.

Janet is just as much of a despair pit as the other ghosts. Thanks to her dad. (I hate her dad.)

Xavier can't see ghosts, because in spite of everything, he isn't heartbroken enough to see them.

I would add that the next living person closest to the despair event horizon to see ghosts is Claire, thanks to her whole... everything. Ironically the two that want to see Maddie are too hopeful to see Maddie.

This feels a little too solid to break apart with new information. The themes of the show feed into it too much to really argue the point any other way. The only real question marks to the theory are the band kids (they're weird) and Xavier's small stint in the ghost world while he was dying.

But the latter is less evidence and more anomalous, he was dead a few moments. And the second part of what we know comes into play now.

The Doors, the Keys, and Crossing Over

So the path to the Other Side is blocked off by... whatever snarl of trauma has these ghosts trapped. Which is physically accessed with the key (an item from your death) and the scar (the location of your death). That was pretty well set-up already.

Because we've seen it before. The Reverse Seance. Dawn didn't have her room, or her key. She just... recalled all of her trauma, faced it, and found whatever her answer was. We assumed, at the time, it was Maddie calling her a friend. But now?

I don't know how to tie that into the rooms and the keys. The structure of the rooms makes it seem like you have to find the answer in yourself, but so much of the show is about the characters as a comradery. And if the mechanism for crossing over is built on a little help from your friends, it means someone doesn't get to cross over.

I dunno, I'm curious where this will go. And it's the thing we haven't investigated yet since it was the end of Ep 3.

Janet and the Dead

I don't think Janet can see the dead, right now. At least, that's what I think they were setting up with the flashbacks to her leaving? It'll make the whole thing more complicated if she can't talk to the dead kids, but know they're there.

I do think Janet and Maddie interacting is going to be the juiciest drama when it happens, and I do want that very much.

Other Thoughts

Quinn is adorable. I like Quinn.

Charlie kind of feels underwritten so far this season, but this season has been a lot of Wally and Rhonda thus far.

Again, Janet's dad is the worst. Hate that guy.

Where is Theater Ghost!?

The living buying everything Simon said about Maddie feels weird but also not that weird. Because the more they see how nothing Janet does makes sense for Maddie, the easier it is to think 'that's not Maddie.'

Yuri is pretty adorable, not gonna lie. I do appreciate how every ghost used as evidence for Mr. Sketchy Ghost Teacher's teachings is in fact not evidence at all.

Except for the Band Ghosts, who are still very weird.

...I'll do one of these next week with the next episode, hopefully better put together.

[mdzs-fanon-exposed]

MDZS Fanon VS Canon: 7/?

Mo Xuanyu and Xue Yang were Jin disciples at the same time

Rating: FANON – SUPPORTED

There's a not insignificant amount of fanworks that depict Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu interacting during their time as guest disciples of the Lanling Jin sect. While we do not have any concrete evidence that the two characters ever met, it is (mostly) possible to discern whether they were guest disciples at the same time.

The timeline of Mo Dao Zu Shi is often hard to follow because specific years and dates are rarely given in the books, but using context clues, I can piece together a rough estimate of when both characters were present at Golden Carp Tower and use that to identify any points they may have overlapped.

Xue Yang:

Xue Yang's time as a guest disciple is easier to define, so I'll start with him. The earliest time we see him, chronologically, is during the flower-viewing banquet that Lanling Jin held directly following the end of the Sunshot Campaign:

Xue Yang was extremely young at this point in time. Although his face still had a boyish cast to it, he was already very tall. He also wore a Sparks Amidst Snow robe, the very picture of carefree youth as he stood beside Jin Guangyao, like a spring breeze caressing the willow. (Seven Seas Ch. 10, Part 2)

He is already a disciple of the Jin sect, although he hasn't been one for long, according to Nie Mingjue's reaction:

Nie Mingjue frowned. “Xue Yang from Kui Prefecture?” Jin Guangyao nodded. Xue Yang was already infamous at a young age. Wei Wuxian could clearly sense Nie Mingjue’s frown deepening. (Seven Seas Ch. 10, Part 2)

Note that at this point, both Wei Wuxian and Jin Zixuan are alive (and attending the flower-viewing banquet as well). We can assume that this happens approximately 1-2 years before Wei Wuxian's death, due to factors such as time skips and a reference to the Sunshot Campaign from when Xiao Xingchen leaves the mountain, which we know is about a year after the Siege:

At the time, it had only been a few years since the end of the Sunshot Campaign, and the Siege of the Yiling Burial Mounds had just concluded. (Seven Seas Ch. 7)

and

Twelve years ago happened to be the year right after the Siege of the Yiling Burial Mounds, so they had just missed each other. (Seven Seas Ch. 7)

We can also approximate when Xue Yang's time as a disciple ended. He had to have been a guest disciple of the Lanling Jin until between one and two years after Wei Wuxian's death. We know it was at least one year afterwards, because he meets Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan while still associated with the Sect:

Xiao Xingchen smiled, seemingly well aware that it was in Jin Guangyao’s nature to speak in an ingratiating way. “Lianfang-zun speaks too highly of me.” His gaze then turned to Xue Yang. “He may be young, but since he ranks among the guest cultivators, he must still exercise self-discipline and restraint. The Jin Clan of Lanling is distinguished, after all, and should strive to set an example in many aspects.” (Seven Seas Extra 3)

And it must have been up to two years or less because Xue Yang was both imprisoned and exonerated for the crime of the Chang Clan massacre (and therefore no longer a disciple) while Jin Guangshan was still alive:

“I’m not shielding him,” Jin Guangyao defended himself. “The incident with the Chang Clan of Yueyang shocked me greatly as well. How could I have anticipated Xue Yang would slaughter a family of over fifty people? But my father insists on keeping him…” (Seven Seas Ch. 10)

and

Jin Guangshan began thinking of ways to pull Xue Yang out of jail ... until finally, the Jin Clan of Lanling successfully persuaded Chang Ping to change his story. He withdrew all the grievances he had stated before and announced publicly that the clan extermination case had nothing to do with Xue Yang. (Seven Seas Ch. 7)

And we know Jin Guangshan died eleven years before Wei Wuxian was resurrected, from Sisi's story.

“I’ll go first, then!” She casually curtsied to the crowd. “What I’m about to tell you is an incident that happened roughly eleven years ago.” ... And the half-dead man on the bed must have been Jin Guangshan! (Seven Seas Ch. 19)

Therefore, Xue Yang's time as a guest disciple lasted anywhere from two to four years in total, beginning at the end of the Sunshot Campaign and ending approximately a year (give or take) before Jin Guangshan dies.

Mo Xuanyu:

Mo Xuanyu's timeline is harder to define, because we never actually see him while he's a disciple, and have to rely on rumors and circumstantial evidence. The only reliable information we have, date-wise, is that he was fourteen when he was called to Golden Carp Tower by his father:

And sure enough, when Mo Xuanyu turned fourteen, that clan leader sent over a grand party to officially take him back. (Seven Seas Ch. 2)

Although knowing he's fourteen isn't particularly helpful, we do know that Jin Guangshan was still alive at the time. As for the exact time frame in which Mo Xuanyu could have been accepted as a disciple, Jin Guangyao says this:

“Did you think that I would rise in position with Jin Zixuan’s death? Jin Guangshan would rather bring back another illegitimate son than have me succeed him!” (Seven Seas Ch. 10)

This implies that Mo Xuanyu was accepted into Lanling Jin after Jin Zixuan's death so that Jin Guangyao would be further down the line of succession. This sentence is said when Nie Mingjue confronts Jin Guangyao about sheltering Xue Yang from the consequences of the Chang Clan massacre. Therefore, Mo Xuanyu could have (theoretically) entered the Jin sect at any point between Jin Zixuan's death and Nie Mingjue's confrontation, the latter of which took place after Xue Yang's imprisonment.

However, I believe it is more likely that Mo Xuanyu was brought in during the aftermath of Jin Zixuan's death, for the sheer reason that it would shunt Jin Guangyao out of the line of succession quicker.

We do know that Mo Xuanyu was present at Golden Carp Tower after Wei Wuxian's death, because Jin Guangyao gave him access to Wei Wuxian's manuscripts on possession:

He had written plenty of these manuscripts back then, all penned on a whim and tossed aside just as easily, scattered all around the cave where he slept in the Yiling Burial Mounds. ... He’d wondered where Mo Xuanyu had learned such forbidden magic. Now he knew. Never in a million years would Jin Guangyao have allowed unimportant people to glimpse the remains of a manuscript on forbidden magic. (Seven Seas Ch. 10)

And although we don't know exactly when Mo Xuanyu was kicked out of Golden Carp Tower, we can infer that it happened before Jin Guangshan's murder. During the events in the Sword Hall of Lotus Pier, after Sisi and Bicao's testimonies, one unnamed cultivator says this:

"He spent the last few years before Jin Guangshan’s death busily clearing the land of his father’s illegitimate sons, for fear that someone would suddenly pop out of nowhere and challenge him for the position. Mo Xuanyu was probably one of the lucky ones. Had he not gone crazy and been booted back home, he would likely have ended up disappearing like the others." (Seven Seas Ch. 19)

This implies that Mo Xuanyu's expulsion from the sect happened at some point before Jin Guangshan's murder. Theoretically, this was done because he would be a potential threat to Jin Guangyao's legitimacy (and have gotten killed) otherwise. As Mo Xuanyu was not legitimized, though, it's unlikely that he would have posed a genuine threat to Jin Guangyao's succession. Regardless of the reasoning, the quote here indicates that Mo Xuanyu was kicked out before Jin Guangshan's death.

To be clear, however, this cannot exactly be taken as reliable evidence. As Wei Wuxian says about this exchange,

If they’re just rumors, why so quick to believe them? If they’re secrets, how would you even know of them? This was not the first time these rumors had spread. While Jin Guangyao was in power, they had been suppressed so well that no one took them seriously. But tonight, the rumors all seemed to have become hard facts with irrefutable evidence. They became a solid foundation for Jin Guangyao’s multitude of crimes, proving just how unscrupulous he was. (Seven Seas Ch. 19)

So while it's possible that the timeline here is correct, we know that (as established earlier in the books – see Chapter 1) rumors in the world of Mo Dao Zu Shi are unreliable at best and often contradictory. For the purposes of this post, though, I am choosing to assume that this is at least partially true.

So taking the assumptions I've made into account, we know that Mo Xuanyu's time as a Jin disciple could have lasted up to approximately three years, anywhere between directly following Jin Zixuan's death to just before Jin Guangshan's death.

The timeline:

Now that I have a rough estimate of when both characters were present at Golden Carp Tower, I can try to find places where they overlap. Unfortunately, even with all this sleuthing, I cannot say for sure if they were present at the same time. The chance that they just barely missed each other, though, is unlikely.

Given the most generous interpretation of their respective timelines, Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu could have been Jin disciples together for almost three years at maximum. This assumes:

Mo Xuanyu was accepted into the Jin sect almost immediately following Jin Zixuan's death.

Both Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu's expulsions happened soon after one another, within the same year as Jin Guangshan's death.

This means Mo Xuanyu would have been a disciple since before Wei Wuxian died, and that Xue Yang's imprisonment and exoneration happened on a very tight timeline right before Jin Guangshan's death. This is the interpretation that gives both characters as much time to interact as possible.

Given the least generous interpretation, however, Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu just missed each other. This assumes:

The massacre of the Chang Clan happened very soon after Xiao Xingchen descended from the mountain.

Mo Xuanyu's acceptance into the sect happened just before Nie Mingjue confronted Jin Guangyao.

This means that Mo Xuanyu's call to join the sect would have happened in between Xiao Xingchen apprehending Xue Yang and Nie Mingjue confronting Jin Guangyao about it, which is presumably a very short amount of time. This is also the least likely interpretation, as it wouldn't make much sense for Mo Xuanyu to have been accepted so late and during such a controversial period for the sect.

The most likely interpretation is somewhere in the middle: that Mo Xuanyu and Xue Yang were, in fact, Lanling Jin disciples at the same time, but that they did not have much overlap. I believe it is probable that Mo Xuanyu would have been accepted into the sect within a year or so of Jin Zixuan's death, and that the Chang Clan massacre happened at least half a year after Xiao Xingchen descended, meaning the two would have had around a year of overlap between them.

In conclusion, I can say with relative confidence that Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu would have been Jin disciples at the same time. However, I cannot confirm this as canon, as there is not enough evidence available in the books. Therefore, this must be rated as SUPPORTED FANON: the text does not directly state this is true, but it is a distinct and likely possibility.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Kabru & Mithrun's Life-Changing Road Trip

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safhkjkhf no but also fake!Kabru is entirely flat because Mithrun doesn't have depth perception...

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Between this and the information that the team has a 1:2 ratio of guards to criminals, with the guards often appointed by their families as a melodramatic show of loyalty to the realm - which is...possibly literally true, considering the prestige of badassery; but, considering the criminals and the danger, also very possibly a polite euphemism for what amounts to a public sacrifice... I kind of ferally want to know about the dynamics of the Canaries. Are they loyal to each other, or to the cause? Are they all just under the threat of execution? Kabru expected the captain of the squad to be an aristocratic guard, them being more trustworthy than a semi-pardoned criminal ofc, but instead he's...whatever exactly Mithrun's legal status is; I've avoided some details of his backstory.

...I might have to go back and try to actually mentally distinguish these people from each other.

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Laios Heaven is actually Kabru Hell, and vice versa. It's a very efficient system!

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*giggles* Kabru is having a weird, upside-down day.

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"Don't wish often" is such a threatening thing to say, honestly. Don't want. Don't try. Don't be alive, or this place will try to kill you and eat you, for it, too, wishes to live, and that is how the continuation of life works.

It's so so interesting how elves clearly have ANSWERS, answers that our party have been searching for, which would've made their whole adventure easier, and the elves just aren't telling people. To maintain their own power over other races? Probably. Because knowing about demons who'll offer you unlimited power would be a dangerous temptation to many? In fairness, probably that, too. But it sure as hell serves them first.

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Oh yeah, this definitely reads as aristocratic youths joining the Canaries isn't per se voluntary on their families' parts. It's the elvish Suicide Squad.

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The timeline isn't making sense. When Mithrun banished the giant mushroom, it was clearly implied that it went to where and when Team Touden were when we'd last seen them, just after their first incident with the changeling mushrooms and then the dwarvish cable car. However, now the pop-up side panels are saying that Kabru and Mithrun's week in the dungeon together is happening at the same time as Team Touden goes through their shapeshifter adventure, barometz, Golden Country, griffins... Which makes sense if one assumes the Canaries & co went into the dungeon right after Kabru first spoke to them, which does seem right in terms of those characters' plotline and personal timetables. But there was no indication, when it cut over to them, that we'd suddenly gone backwards a week in the comic's timeline; indeed, the giant walking changeling mushroom incident suggested it was a single continuity...

Is this just a continuity error? Did I miss some clarifying signifier?

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Kabru: [tells Mithrun his own backstory back at him]

Mithrun: You left out the soap operatic relationships rooted in royal intrigue, which in turn was rooted in millennia of other royal intrigue.

Kabru: Yes, but I need it to be understandable to a man who's mostly just going to ask me how the goat-demon tast– I mean, uh... Your story structure was bad, so I simplified it.

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Oh shit, that's the thing Marcille is studying! She doesn't know it summons demons!

...My instinct is, "if only someone told her instead of completely outlawing the knowledge, forcing her to stumble blindly into the consequences on her own!" But, uh... I'm not sure this would actually stop her. She's very determined, and also has her share of wizard hubris. This is, of course, a driving question of the story.

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It wasn't easier to kill them? It wasn't easier to simply stop drawing magic from the infinite-power dimension?

...ok obviously not the latter, because, y'know. Fossil fuels. But seriously it wasn't easier to just kill them?

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It's sooo intersting how everyone else views Laios's love of monsters as a dangerous moral failing, when it's really just...ecologist enthusiasm. The man thinks this class of being is Neat. He is harming literally 0 people about this. He isn't even forcing anyone to eat them, just inviting them really enthusiastically and/or pointing out that this is necessary in order to achieve their shared goal of saving Falin.

Yes, obviously this could be subverted into something terrible by an encouraging demon. Just like, obviously, a desire to protect and preserve people can be! Or a desire to live happily with your loved ones! Laios isn't worse than any other Lord of a Dungeon; y'all just hate monsters!

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Kabru that is SO gay, jfc. I object on principle to the phrase "no heterosexual explanation", but--

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M! V! P! M! V! P!

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Friendship? Teamwork? Mutual respect and shared understanding of goals? Mithrun is a very useful ally because he really does Only want to stop the demon; he doesn't care about the geopolitics of it. Though his perspective is still very elvish and he definitely will kill our beloved protagonists without hesitation if they seem like they're going to be a problem.

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I would read an entire novel about the formation of the halffoot union, honest to god. I bet it was very exciting. I bet someone tried to kill Chilchuck at least once.

[scriptlgbt]

How should I show that a character's nonbinary when they themselves don't know? Should I even do it if they'll just be misgendered the whole story?

They're born in the early 70s (when the main story takes place they're 22). They have trans relatives but I don't think they know there are options beyond (a) staying their AGAB, (b) transitioning to the other binary gender, or (c) drag, which isn't really their thing.

I want to make it deeper than "they think gender roles are stupid" but I don't know where to start in portraying an nb egg.

[I'm assuming a lot about the culture of the particular 70s you're referring to. My POV is that I am "canadian" and much of my own personal knowledge of transness in this era comes from research in US archives. YMMV when it comes to places outside the heavily American sphere of cultural influence.]

So first of all, the 70s had a bit of a renaissance of androgyny. A common thing I'll see in advice columns of the era is someone asking what to do as a customer service worker when they "can't tell" what gender they think someone is, because of their hairstyle and the way they are dressed. I imagine there probably were a lot of people who took refuge in that ambiguity. A fro, a pageboy haircut, all these are something that people of any gender (not necessarily every texture but I digress) could wear.

Secondly, I figured out I was nonbinary before I knew it existed, before I had the words for it. (Though the term genderqueer was the in vogue one in the community at the time I figured my stuff out.) It's just that I sort of saw it as, "hmmm, well, I feel kind of between these things." And I think I'd seen it as sort of "half-trans" until I really understood transness better. (Note: this was for like a week tops.) I also went through a period of time a few years before this where I just sort of saw myself as a crossdresser (not drag - just someone who chooses to dress and cut their hair as they are comfortable and feel happy), but like, that as my gender identity, if that makes sense. I didn't have access to community of other people who felt like I did in order to compare to. But at the time, this also meant that when I talked about my feelings with others, they wouldn't have the same hangups about what it would mean for them if they said they felt the same. There were a lot of people I talked to in 2011ish who basically said they experienced gender as I did, only, I don't think most of them would understand for another 4 years at least.

One day I'd like to post more info about nonbinary history (especially in the 70s), but I'm just dumping info at this point. Something I will suggest for more on the topic is reading Lou Sullivan's diary, and reading autobiographies from trans people who were alive then. Even when they weren't out, they still existed, and lived in a world where they were carving out spaces for themselves.

To my understanding also, a lot of trans culture at the time sort of distinguished "transvestite" (trans people generally? but who haven't accessed medical transition) and "transsexual" (trans people who have or are intending to transition medically). Trans people of every variety might change gender expression based on their outness or the safety they had, and this didn't make them less seen as trans per se. A lot of people who ID'd either way (though more for "transvestite") would have a variety of approaches to things like name and pronouns. If this were the dominant terminology of the time that I were figuring things out, I'd probably have called myself a transvestite, though I would have likely been questioning the transsexual label for a while and ultimately not been able to access medical transition. (Though it depends on when in the 70s iirc - there was a time earlier on where it was easier to access I believe, but I'd need to fact check.)

In terms of general nonbinary egg mode stuff, or at least egg for an era where being nonbinary is not widely known to be a thing, here's some 'signs' (some are just straight up "that's canon if you put that in") I've brainstormed.

admiring specific fashion trends and looks that are gender nonconforming or androgynous (especially celebrities - maybe glam rock musicians, Joan Jett) (Joan Jett was huge for egg me personally...)

finding a lot of different ways to express how they feel in words (the "man/woman in a woman/man's body" phrasing is something that has historically bugged me, but people have used it throughout history) (more examples, dependant on the person, "I feel just as un/comfortable in my body and the way people see me as I would if I'd been born differently." "It's not a wo/man's haircut, it's mine." "I feel like a guy among my guy friends and a girl among my girl friends." "I feel uncomfortable when I go out with my partner and we are assumed to be straight/gay, though I don't know why." "I really enjoyed breeches roles when I did theatre in high school." "It felt good when I was mistaken for a woman.")

referring to themselves in their head with neutral terms

having dreams where they are recognized as themselves

feeling at home around trans people and queer people in general

watching or listening to certain songs/movies/etc that feel Gender for them over and over again

some kind of fixation on facial hair/other body part or lack thereof

it feeling different when different people use gendered terminology for the character (ex: a conservative Girl Guide leader calling everyone "ladies" vs a gay man saying "hey girl"). this is usually to do with what it's assumed the speaker's assigned meaning to the word is.

Re: misgendering through the whole story. A really convenient way to curb this would be to just have the character feel like the way they are (mis)gendered is also a part of their identity, it just isn't the whole picture. Another thing I sort of thought of in my early years was like, if people think I'm a woman, at least they understand there is something off about it. Whether they think I'm a butch lesbian or intersex (which was very regularly assumed throughout my life, at least until the general public started to catch wind of genderqueer identities). It matters to me that they at least understand my approach to gender is queer.

Another approach would be to have the story written from a distant past tense where the reader knows the identity of the character, because everything is told in distant hindsight. This is my favourite approach personally.

-mod nat