#the peer pressure is immense and ridiculous

[softness-and-shattering]

I do not care if you made it in a fucking day. That doesnt entice me to click, it pisses me off. "Look how abled and also likely rushed and careless I am isnt that impressive?" No. It would be impressive if you dedicated yourself to doing something properly over whatever time it required and you had capacity to pay attention to details and make something well-designed and well-made to the best of your taste and ability. It would be impressive if you took your time to learn and practice your craft like you actually cared. It would be good if you were realistic about the time taken to do things instead of either discouraging those who can't or don't work to speed, or encouraging people to be hasty with their work.

I would watch you take a year to make something spectacular over rushed crap that only looks finished and you had to skip multiple steps twice a week.

If you were just sharing the time it took thats fine. But as clickbait? Im actively angry and Im not gonna watch your video now. Fuck hustle grind whatever culture. Look after your damn self and take pride in what you do.

[animeshrink]

Kakashi - No signs of trauma

TW: Sucide mentioned.

So back to this picture. A little context. The masked guy is an Anbu agent (think elite covert ops). The yellow-haired guy is Minato, Kakashi's teacher/sensei, and Hokage (leader of the village) who had put 13-year-old Kakashi in Anbu.

As for not seeing any evidence of trauma, by 13, Kakashi...

Was a child prodigy. The prodigies of prodigies. He graduated the ninja academy at 5, yes 5. Which even by anime standards is RIDICULOUS. And became a chunin, or intermediate level shinobi, that is considered an adult at 6. So, yes, in their world, he was considered a full-fledged adult who could take care of himself and lead others, including adults on missions, at 6. And at 9 or 12, became jonin, or elite.

Prodigious children, in general (so not all, but it's not uncommon), can struggle to relate to peers and it can be a very isolating experience. It's not uncommon for prodigies to experience increased levels of anxiety and depression due to pressure and isolation.

Parentified/Adultified children may experience a social disconnect from peers due to adult responsibilities, again, causing increased feelings of anxiety, social anxiety, and isolation.

2. Had lived with a parent with mental illness. Sakumo, Kakashi's father was an elite ninja, who had a mission go wrong. He was ostracized by Konoha, the village where they lived, and died by suicide. Kakashi found his body and was 5-8 years old/under 10.

Children with parents who have mental illness are more susceptible to mental illness themselves due to genetic and environmental influences.

3. Was a child soldier. This was the norm for their world, but as such, he witnessed immense violence and partook in it to the point of normalization and desensitization. It was the ninja world. He was doing this since he was 5-6. All because it was the norm does not mean it wasn't traumatic. See #4, 5, and 6.

4. Lost his eye in battle. He lost his eye during the 3rd Shinobi War when attacked at unawares. He was 9 or 12.

Losing a sense (sight) and an organ is traumatic. In addition, he received a transplant on the battlefield. Medical trauma. It's not often talked about, but it's still trauma.

5. Witnessed his best friend die in battle. His friend, Obito (the kid in orange and blue), was crushed by a rock, saving him. Right after he lost his eye. In fact, he got his transplanted eye from Obito.

Thinking the traumatization is self-explanatory.

6. Other squad mate and friend used him to die from suicide.

Don't really think I have to explain how this is traumatic.

Survivor's guilt. At this time, both of his squadmates were dead. It's not uncommon for people who experience traumatic events in which they have survived and those around them, especially loved ones or close ones, have died to experience survivor's guilt or the immense guilt that accompanies the fact that you survived and everyone else died.

So, this is when he was placed in Anbu. His teacher/sensei thought it would be helpful to place him in a covert assassination squad to help him cope. Does his trauma stop? Coping skills is another post. But for now, the trauma.

The guy in the middle. That's Minato his sensei. By now, the boy on the left, Obito, and the girl in the front, Rin are dead. Kakashi is 14 and in Anbu. And guess what?

7. Minato dies.

Depression, anxiety, PTSD - Kakashi does develop all of these, but guess what, the Anbu saw no signs of trauma in him. We'll talk about adult him in a few posts, but wanted to cover kid him first. We'll also talk about resiliency, a BIG factor for Kakashi.

*This post for entertainment educational purposes only, if you are feeling suicidal ideation, please contact your local suicide prevention hotline. If you're in the US, call 988.

[matchagator]

Inescapable Delusions | Ch. 2 | Explicit 21+

After discovering the truth behind the House of Cards, uncover what happens next as our characters are forced to find their place amongst the circus as the men pull at their strings.

*This is an explicit story. Minors do not interact*

{Summary:} Enter the House of Cards for an evening of countless wonders and jaw-dropping spectacles. While you become entranced in the various acts, take caution not to fall victim to the illusions or you may end up facing inescapable delusions.

{Main Pairings:} Animal Tamer Jeon Jungkook/ Original Female Character

{Rating:} 21+ Explicit *Caution: Read Warnings*

{Genre:} Alternate Universe - Crime Circus

{Warnings:} Circus (no clowns), Smut, Abuse, Gaslighting, Rough Sex, Bondage, Rape/Non-con - Freeform, Angst, BDSM, Blood and Violence, Knifeplay, Crimes & Criminals, Sex Trafficking, Death Threats, Nudity, Stockholm Syndrome, Explicit Language, Manipulation, Possessive Behavior, Praise Kink, Abusive Relationships, Unhealthy Relationships, Secrets, Sexual Slavery, Prostitution, Tigers, Elephants, Animal Attack, Virginity, Bad Decisions, Banter, Manhandling, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Degradation

The early morning brought another wave of unease as the two women were separated and dragged to the costuming tent in search of more appropriate attire for their new roles as circus courtesans. Anna could hear Sophie’s voice echoing in her subconscious, having spent most of the evening hearing her dainty best friend complaining about how Anna was the sole cause of their false imprisonment, dreading the morning as they would soon be forced to find a place in the traveling sin circus.

Anna peered into an old dusty floor-length mirror that was nestled at the edge of the tent, the grey hues of the oxidation allowing her just the slightest peek at the attire dressing her figure. A pair of cream-colored shorts hung from her waist as the ruffled edges tickled her thighs, providing a provocative view of her legs as a matching corset hung around her torso. Anna clung her arms around her breasts, holding the stiff clothing in place as she finally submitted to the idea of wearing such a promiscuous ensemble.

“This looks ridiculous.” Anna groaned as the woman in charge of costuming stood behind her, her knee pressing against Anna’s back as she tugged the string of her peachy-colored corset. Anna hissed in pain from the suffocating pressure pressing into her ribcage, meeting the scowl of the woman through her gaze in the mirror as she tied off the material.

The woman seemed to show her the vaguest trace of sympathy as she tugged at the material to conceal more of Anna’s hips, the tight-fitting corset pressing her breasts up to show a scandalous view of them peaking from the confining attire. “I’m not wearing…” Anna’s words were cut short as the woman yanked against the strings once again, causing Anna to gasp and lose her footing as she stumbled from the strong jolt.

“All the women wear this.” She spoke quietly as she poked and pried at all of Anna’s imperfections, causing her wonderfully curvy frame to become immensely accentuated in the revealing costume. “Master's orders.” The woman continued, wishing Anna would simply stop arguing with her and be compliant.

Anna took in a sharp breath as she tried to adjust to the discomfort constricting her as the woman plugged the hairpin that was keeping Anna’s hair neatly bunched at the top of her head. “Excuse me!” Anna snapped, peering back at the woman to see an unapologetic look on her face.

“No pins. Hair down.” She spoke, watching as the brunette’s strands draped against Anna’s shoulders, pairing with her attire perfectly to provide an alluring image of a woman ready for the taking. “You’re done. Leave me at once.” She spat in disgust, waving Anna off as she turned to toss her hairpin into a bin of similar-looking objects.

“I’d say it was a pleasure…” Anna began speaking, biting her tongue as she offered the woman a fake smile before making her way out of the tent. She squinted at the harsh lighting of the sun outside, holding her hand up to block the abrasive sight until she noticed a man standing just beyond the fabric of the tent. She recognized his perfectly handsome features as the hand balancer from the circus, watching as he stood beside Sophie who had also been dressed in new attire.

Anna’s eyes widened at the sight of her relatively more modest friend dressed in an equally revealing ensemble. Her friend had a powder blue corset cinched at her waist, with a thin ribbon traveling around her neck, mimicking the same appearance as a halter top. Anna suddenly felt thankful for the shorts concealing her intimacy as she peered over at the white lace shorts barely resembling such, with white garters decorating her friend's thighs.

Sophie had her arms crossed in front of her chest, utilizing her limbs to hide the view of her figure, upset by how exposed she felt to the men and women parading around the circus grounds. “Did I mention I’m going to kill you?” Sophie smiled sarcastically at her, watching Anna shrink beneath her stare.

“Let's go. Boss is waiting.” Seokjin spoke sternly, eager to deliver the women to the big top. Sophie reluctantly obeyed, hating the fact that instead of being in the comforts of her apartment, sleeping in and enjoying her soft sheets, she was forced to wake up early and dress like a complete harlot.

Seokjin waited once noticing Anna wasn’t so quick to listen, flashing her a glare through the soft pink strands of hair hanging loosely over his eyes. The stubborn brunette had every intention of making a run for it until she spotted the haunting stare of Hoseok beaming at her from across the lawn. Anna rolled her eyes, following after her friend as they were led to the main stage to start their trials.

Jungkook and Taehyung stood overlooking the center ring, peering up to see a lean man with fluffy blonde hair effortlessly manipulating a set of aerial silks, his body twisting elegantly amongst the white fabric as he practiced his act. The two men were dressed in more casual attire compared to their stage costumes. Jungkook was missing his usual harness, replaced with a simple pair of trousers and a peasant blouse while Taehyung’s extravagantly beaded red coat was now just a dress shirt and trousers.

Jungkook heard the shuffling of steps behind them, turning to face the oncoming women as his large eyes darkened at the sight of them dressed in their deliciously revealing costumes. His eyes devoured the sight of Sophie’s body wonderfully displayed for his enjoyment, peering up to meet the terror in her large doe eyes as she peered up to find Jimin practically flying above them. He practically purred at the sight, nudging Taehyung to turn and witness the sight for himself. “I told you they’d be enough to make men go mad.” He tutted proudly, satisfied with the appearance of the newest women they’d exploit during their next performance.

Taehyung shifted his weight to glance back at the sight of Seokjin guiding the women towards them, grinning mischievously at the look of annoyance plastered over Anna’s features. “You’re right, Jungkook. They look absolutely desirable.” He spoke as he ran his tongue over his teeth, moving to circle around Sophie as her dainty innocent demeanor was paired with the sensual sight of her clothing.

He moved to circle beside Anna, seeing the scowl grow large across her lips as she huffed in vexation. “Except this one. While she may appear alluring, she also looks like a complete bitch.” Taehyung’s voice was void of kindness as he hissed his words close to her ear, moving to stand beside his partner in crime once again. “Jimin!” He hollered out as the man above them suddenly released his grip on the silks, letting his body drop rapidly before catching himself just as his body came in close contact with the floor.

Sophie gasped, her eyes wide in awe at the manner in which Jimin daringly trusted his abilities to prevent him from falling to his death. Jimin’s body was upside down, his head only a couple of feet from the ground as his legs clung to the silk as his muscles strained against the hold, letting himself flip down onto his feet. “Yes?” The soft demeanor of his features seemed friendly and flirtatious versus the intensity of the ringmaster and animal tamer beside him.

“Maybe a trip up to the tightrope will loosen her up.” Taehyung’s grin morphed into a malicious smirk, peering back toward Anna as he motioned for her to join Jimin.

Anna let out an amused laugh, her features scrunched in disgust as she addressed the face of their unholy operation. “You’re out of your damn mind if you think I’m going up there.” She hissed in retaliation, crossing her arms against her chest in protest as a deep voice echoed in her ear, the ghost of their breath tickling the skin of her neck.

“It’s not too late to kill you.” Anna felt chills rake through her body as she quickly stepped forward to escape the close proximity, turning back to see Hoseok had joined them. His eyes were darkened with ill intent, watching as Sophie visibly shrunk from the presence of yet another threatening male figure as Anna’s scowl only intensified.

She glanced back towards Taehyung, watching him gesture once more toward Jimin. Anna felt completely defenseless in the possibility of winning any argument she dared attempt. “Fine.” She muttered, dropping her hands to her side as she stepped toward Jimin who was politely holding his hand out to guide her up the ladder along the center post of the tent.

Sophie had her arms still latched around her torso as she watched her best friend ascend to the open space at the top of the large tent. She shifted her gaze upon Jungkook and Taehyung who were both invested in the outcomes of their first trial, testing the women on the trapeze and aerial acts. Anna felt her body tremble the higher she got on the ladder, feeling thankful once she got to the top platform. She clung to the rails as she stood up, feeling her mind spin as she peered down at the ground below. Sophie suddenly felt fearful for her friend as she found the thin rope spanning the length of the ceiling from one post to the other.

“Go ahead.” Jimin gestured, finding a rope and twisting his arm around it in case he’d need to rescue the beautifully stubborn damsel. Anna peered down, not realizing just how thin the rope was as she hesitated to step out onto it.

Sophie watched anxiously from the floor, feeling uneasy by the chuckle that escaped Taehyung’s throat at the sight of Anna’s hardened features softening in fear as she stepped out onto the rope. Sophie gasped as she watched Anna take a few steps before her balance sent her tumbling to the ground. Sophie let out a scream just as Jimin jumped from his surface, swooping down to catch the brunette in midair.

The magenta-haired animal tamer shifted his sights onto Sophie, taking a few slow steps in her direction as his eyes darkened at the view of her still concealing herself. He mimicked an animal stalking his prey as he stepped in front of her, gently peeling her arms from their position across her chest. Sophie felt both terrified and entranced as Jungkook's alluring smile caused her to freeze before him. She felt her arms drop to her side as Jungkook moved the strands of her hair over her shoulder to expose more of her decolletage. “Your turn, beautiful.” He cooed, just as Jimin and Anna made it back to the comforts of solid ground.

“Let’s try her out on the trapeze,” Taehyung spoke plainly, hoping to have a successful outcome to find an act to place the women in.

—

Sophie managed quite well at the trapeze, hanging and swinging from the bar gracefully, however, refusing to let go to travel towards Jimin purely out of fear of falling to her death. With her reluctance to perform accordingly, Taehyung sought out the help of Seokjin to test the women’s skills at some acts much closer to the ground.

Anna was currently standing beside Seokjin, giving her best effort at attempting to balance on the thin pegs that he so effortlessly teetered upon day in and day out. She watched the flex of his muscular frame as he shifted from one hand to the other, creating stunning shapes with his body as his talent became evident in his every movement.

Anna bit her lip nervously as she pushed off the ground with her toes, using whatever strength in her muscles in an attempt to hold herself up off the ground. Unfortunately, her lack of arm strength caused her feet to fall back to the floor, preventing her from falling off the small beam as she attempted once more.

Taehyung witnessed her effort, his annoyance with the brunette escalating as he began raking his brain for other acts she might prove useful in. He shifted his gaze upon the other woman, finding Sophie pleasantly bent in half as she attempted her hand at contortion. Her body was bent back into a bridge, lowering her arms to rest upon the ground as her chest pressed into the cold flooring beneath her. She let out a deep breath, her back further bending as she crawled through her legs, laying on her chest with her legs bent above her head.

Jungkook’s gaze darkened as he watched the women successfully complete a trick their audience would find appealing and amazing. Taehyung’s annoyance dissipated as he joined Jungkook, equally enjoying the sight of the woman sensually bent in half before them. Her corset helped create an alluring outline in her body as she gently unfolded herself from the position, leaving Jungkook practically growling at the sight of her provocative attire despite her bright blue doe eyes reflecting her innocence.

Sophie smiled proudly as she stretched out her limbs, standing back up to stare at the animal tamer and ringmaster that were watching her intently as if dissecting her every move. “Men will love her.” Taehyung beamed, his eyes practically glimmering with dollar signs as he moved towards Sophie, patting Jungkook on the back as he passed the man who was responsible for their addition to the circus. “Get inside that box,” Taehyung commanded, his voice void of any kindness as he eagerly awaited to see if she could pull off the most important part of the contortion act.

“I’m sorry?” She raised a brow as her eyes peered over to find a small clear box. There was no way her body would fit in such a small space, her mind was suddenly plagued with worry that she’d become stuck if she attempted to get herself into it.

“I said, get in the damn box.” His patience was running thin between the two women, however, he was pleased to see that with the slightest raise of his tone, Sophie nodded in submission, moving to do as instructed. Her mindset was merely on surviving this hell. If it meant doing circus tricks to please their kidnappers, she’d happily submit.

Jungkook’s smirk widened at her submission, watching as she obeyed Taehyung as she helplessly attempted to bend herself into the box. Taehyung moved back toward Jungkook, realizing Sophie wouldn’t quite fit the mold of a contortionist. Hoseok joined the men as they observed yet another round of failed attempts contemplating how they could manage to make these women fit in their acts. They already had plenty of women parading themselves around the ring.

Jungkook’s eyes remained locked on Sophie’s gentle demeanor, imagining the contrast between her dainty frame to his powerful tigers, knowing the opposition was wildly intriguing. If just the thought of it drove him mad, it would surely make their clients foam at the mouth.

“I’ll take her,” Jungkook spoke up, causing the other men to peer in his direction in surprise. Jungkook was very confident and possessive of his animals which often lead him to do his act on his own. They discussed possibly adding women to the act to increase the appeal, however, never seemed to find the right woman to fill Jungkook’s expectations. Since he laid eyes on Sophie at the circus, he relished in her fragile innocence, the perfect prize for a man eager to taint such a delicate rose amongst thorns. She was the perfect woman to add to his collection.

Taehyung followed Jungkook’s gaze, finding Sophie stretching as her bright eyes flickered in his direction. “Think she’ll comply?” Hoseok added, his stoic features void of emotion as Jungkook chuckled at his comment.

“Please. I could ruin her with a single crack of my whip.” Jungkook’s thoughts flashed back to yesterday's show, recalling how easily he got her to flinch despite the eye contact he had her pinned with.

“What about that one?” Hoseok motioned with his head toward Anna who was visibly becoming frustrated with her efforts.

As if she heard his comment, the feisty brunette abandoned Seokjin as she stomped toward Taehyung and the men discussing their future as if they owned them. She was sick and tired of submitting to their requests, moving to give him a piece of her mind.

“This is absurd. I can’t do any of this shit.” She hissed, refusing to mind her manners whether it made her appear as less of a lady or not.

Jungkook and Hoseok glanced in each other’s direction as Taehyung mockingly leaned in closer to her face. “It’s not my fault you’re incompetent.” He hummed in a teasing manner which only further infuriated Anna.

“At least I’m not ignorant.” She barked back, watching Taehyung’s features sharpen as he raised his hand, promptly sending the back of his hand into the swell of her cheek. Anna felt a sharp sting against her face, sending her tumbling down before Taehyung as he hovered over her.

“You belong to me now!” He roared, as he leaned down to hover his disapproving glare just above her. “I suggest you learn to bite your tongue.” He hissed, not realizing that his actions would draw Sophie’s attention.

“Anna!” Sophie moved to join her friend, eager to help her to her feet. Taehyung simply glanced back at Jungkook who promptly moved to retrieve the younger brunette, grasping his large hands around her arms as he tugged her back into him.

He gently whispered in her ear, attempting to calm her down as he aggressively rotated her body to face him. “You’re coming with me, beautiful. We have lots to practice.” His voice was stern as she fought against his hold, causing his jaw to tighten at her disobedience as he began unapologetically dragging her off towards the back of the big top.

Anna peered up to see Sophie struggling against Jungkook’s hold, feeling defeated as she was so easily lifted up and dragged off with the magenta-haired man. Anna rested her hand against her cheek as she glanced up through the strands of hair that were thrown about her face, refusing to spare Taehyung from her glare.

Hoseok nudged Taehyung as he noticed Yoongi walking into the big top, watching as he moved towards his knives to get in some target practice. Taehyung followed Hoseok’s gaze, quickly catching on to his suggestion as an amused grin crawled over his features.

“Yoongi!” He hollered out to the man with a scar decorating his skin along the length of his eye. He peered back down at the woman below him, enjoying himself far too much. “I’d like you to meet your newest target.” He continued on after gaining Yoongi’s attention. “I give you full permission to graze her if she acts up.” He added, his eyes filled with evil intent as Anna continued to bore into him with her gaze. “Just not her face.” He smirks, causing a chill to run down Anna’s spine.

Previous | Next

[jenngerbread13]

ffxivwrite 2023 #2: Bark

Cursing to themselves, Kerina hovered the hand over the thin strip of roof atop the windmils in Kholusia and set themselves down. Doubling over, they clutched their hand to their abdomen, gritting through their teeth as they used their strength to force pressure in their abdominal area.

"You know, Hero, I thought you were handling the light aether better than this." His voice caused them to grit their teeth more.

He is here to help. Bite it back for now. Maybe he can help.

"You would be correct on that account, then," Kerina grimaced, turning their head to look at him, squinting in the bright Kholusian sun "But I suppose since you deigned to make your presence known, I could beg a boon of you?"

A quirk of his eyebrow and the expression of them being beneath him written plain on his face told them everything they needed to know at face value, however they could still see the inherent curiosity in his eyes "I told you I am but here to observe. After all, can you not prostrate yourself in a ridiculous manner again like you did in Il Mheg for the Fae King herself to come to your guidance?"

Kerina laughed, fingers gripping the roof tiles tight, eyes squeezing shut as another wave of pain wracked their body. "Ow. Would that be an option. No, Emet-Selch, I believe you may be my only hope."

"Dire straits for the Hero of the Source indeed. Having to depend on the Ascian for help. Truly, what would the Scions say?" He hopped down off the chimney and with a practiced grace sauntered along the thin roof line to stand next to them, robes fluttering in the wind as he stood over them.

"Probably some moralistic bullshit forgetting that the 'Great and Honorable Exarch' pulled us all here against our will. Plus there are some among the Scions that would empathize, unlike others." Emphasizing the quotes with their hands, Kerina sighed and realized it would be better to present themselves better, stronger. They stood up, carefully balancing themselves on the rooftop, one arm pressed to their abdomen.

A sly smile graced his face as it became apparent they had piqued his interest "What could be so important that you could only turn to me for help?"

"Fennel. Doesn't grow here. Nor does willow bark. Both would help immensely. If I was on the source I could get those easily. Alas, I am here and have no way of getting back. It's quite clear you have no such issue as it would place me in your debt." Bowing low, they peered up at him, pleading with their eyes.

"You act as if you could offer me anything worth my help." He shrugged and turned around, throwing his arms up in a dramatic flair "I suppose it cannot be helped, though, if we are to work together in cooperation. I will deliver what you ask."

The sigh of relief that escaped Kerina's lips audible in the air between them and he turned around, a near feral grin on his face, as he gripped their chin tilting it up with his leather-clad hand. "And believe me, I will be calling in the favor." 

Turning, he raised his right hand in the air and waved goodbye in his typical style, stepping into the void, leaving them there, with no retort on their tongue and their mouth dry. Pressing a button on the remote in their pocket, the mechanical had eventually hovered back over them and picked them up gingerly in the deceptively strong fingers, flying back towards the Crystarium.

The next morning, Kerina awoke to a basket on the table in their room with vibrant, feathery stalks poking out of it on one side, and dark, fragrant bark on the other. Scrambling over to the table with only their sheet covering them, they offered a small prayer of thanks to him for delivering what they needed. They took the note in their hand and read the even, flowing script. 

'Remember, you owe me. -Emet-Selch'

Taking a small piece bark, they pulled out their mortar and pestle, grinding it down a bit before popping it in their mouth, chewing on it for a long while, truly grateful for the relief it brought.

[ssa-atlas-alvez]

Whumptober Day 25 (BAU X y/n Hotchner)

No. 25 SILENCE IS GOLDEN

Lost Voice | Duct Tape | “You better start talking.”

Warnings: cold/flu, illness

Word count: 1591

Please let me know if I’ve missed any warnings

”Baby Hotch,” Emily smirked, “Adult Hotch wants to see you,” You groaned lowly, coughing when it tickled your throat. You gave a weak sniff. 

“Old Hotch can annoy me greatly sometimes,” You huffed before standing up and making your way to your brother’s office. 

You gave another sniff and swallowed, wincing at the pain in your throat before you opened the door. 

“Agent Hotchner Junior reporting for duty sir,” You grinned, hoping he didn’t notice that your voice was slightly deeper than usual.

“Go home, (Y/N),” Aaron said with a sigh, he pushed his paperwork to the side as he looked at you.

“I’m not ill,” You responded, voice deeper than usual, thick will the cold you currently had. "I've just got a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat," Aaron gave a deep sigh.

"You're ill,"

"Nu-uh!" You replied, sniffing slightly. "I'm perfectly fine,"

"Go home,"

"I'm not ill, I'm fine," You and Aaron stared at each other, waiting to see who would break first. Aaron sighed.

"If you won't go home, I'm benching you.” 

“We don’t have a case,” You said, seeing Aaron’s face you groaned, “We have a case?”

“You're not to leave the police station when we get there,"

"What about coffee runs?" You asked, folding your arms.

"Take Morgan with you for coffee runs,"

"Aaron-"

"Ah, nope, don't want to hear it, those are my terms," 

"Fine," You said with a sniff, breathing through your mouth since your nose was blocked. "But I'm perfectly fine."

You left the room, holding back a pout as you did so. Honestly, your brother can be so ridiculous at times. You were perfectly fine, he was just dramatic. 

"This is so unfair," You huffed, slumping in your seat next to Morgan, who gave a chuckle. You folded your arms close to your chest. “It’s just a cold,”

“Right,” Emily chimed, sharing a grin with Morgan. “Your brother benching you?”

“Yep,” You groaned, “It’s so unreasonable, I’m perfectly fine,” You clear your throat to avoid coughing, but it builds up and you give a deep cough. “That was acting,” You say, seeing your brother give you a look. Aaron rolls his eyes, causing you to scoff. "You believe me Derek, don't you?"

"Stay away from me man, I don't want whatever plague you've got," 

"I don't know, Aaron said you had to go on Coffee runs with me," You grinned.

"Aw, what? That's so unfair," Morgan chuckled, you flipped him off with a laugh, which quickly morphed into a cough. You rolled your eyes at the look Aaron shot you, trying to mask the wince that painted your face when a pain behind your eyes exploded due to the headache that was slowly beginning to make itself known. 

You leant closer to Morgan, "You got any paracetamol?"

"Nope," You looked at your coworkers as they all shook their heads. 

"Hotch normally carries some," Reid chimed. You thought for a moment before straightening up.

"Nope, that won't be necessary because I am not ill," You said, folding your arms. Your voice was beginning to feel scratchy and hoarse, which was annoying but you pushed it aside the best you could. 

Boarding the jet, you huffed, pulling your hoodie closer around your body. It suddenly felt very cold. You ignored the look of concern Aaron gave you and the amused looks from your peers and sat down, sniffing as you did so.

You wince as the jet takes off, causing an immense amount in your ears. Your hands go to your ears and you wiggle them about, open your jaw, move your jaw side to side, swallow, cough, anything you can think of that might help relieve the pressure - you even try sniffing. But nothing works. Aaron silently hands over a boiled sweet. You think they’re discussing the case but you can’t tell, everything sounds like it’s underwater, a lot of water. You put the sweet in your mouth, sucking on it and hoping it’ll decrease the pressure. After a few minutes of nothing working you turn to Aaron, motioning angrily to your ears and then shrug. You don’t want to speak in case you start yelling. That would just be embarrassing. You watch as Aaron turns to Spencer, you assume he asks if there’s anything else that would help and you see Spencer say something before Aaron turns back to you. He says something, when he speaks you shake your head and shrug again - Aaron rolls his eyes, which has you glaring at him. Aaron puts his fingers over his nose, plugging it and mimes trying to breathe out. 

You nod, you can’t believe you forgot that trick! You plug your nose and try to breathe out, feeling the tension build up before releasing. “You’re a lifesaver, Spencer,” You say. 

You were hoping it wouldn’t get any worse over the course of the case, you had the tendency to get a little… clinging to Aaron when you’re ill. Which you knew the team would never let you live down. Ever. Luckily, you were sharing a hotel room with him, which meant you had easy access to stealing his clothes. 

As the hours pass, you’re trying not to give in and show how ill you’re feeling, but you’re feeling rough. The team notice you sticking to Aaron where you can, they also notice Aaron watching you closely. You’re sniffing every thirty seconds, rubbing your eyes, unable to focus, but still pushing through.

You're two days into the case and you can't help but be relieved that your brother benched you. You were tired, you ached all over, and at about lunchtime, you began to shiver. Obviously, you weren't going to tell him that you were glad he did. You weren't going to give him that satisfaction. Instead, you wore a large and very warm hoodie and debated putting the hood up throughout the entire recap of the evidence collected thus far. 

It didn't take you long after that to lose your voice. Not that that stopped you from talking. Turns out, talking only made it worse. Like a lot worse. And soon enough, your voice was simply a whisper.

“You got any paracetamol?” You croak as Aaron walks past. 

“Let me grab you some-” You shook your head, he always goes into Mother Hen mode when you’re ill. 

“I’ll get it,” You said, sitting up, pausing for a moment as you waited for the room to stop spinning. At this point, Aaron was already in front of you with a glass of water and medication. You gave him a thankful grin as you accepted the items. 

“(Y/N), you need to go back to the hotel,” Aaron said, you were both in the breakroom, Aaron making a coffee for himself and a tea for you. You were sat at the table, resting your head on the cool wood. 

“‘M fine,” You groaned, turning your head into your elbow as you coughed.

“(Y/N).”

“I don’t wanna,” You moaned. 

Aaron would have laughed, if he wasn’t worried about your health. “You need rest,”

“I am resting,” You mutter. 

“How about if I send Morgan with you?” Hotch offered, you shook your head, “Why not?”

“You’ll be here,”

“I have to be here,” Aaron sighs.

“I’m fine here,” You mumble, “I’ll just be ‘sleep here,”

Aaron shut his eyes, trying his best not to groan. You were already asleep. He poked his head out of the breakroom, “Morgan?”

Derek’s head shot up and Aaron motioned for him to come into the breakroom. “Can you take him back to the hotel? Maybe sit with him while you work?”

“You really do go Mother Hen on him don’t you?” Derek teased before nodding, “Of course Hotch,”

Aaron gently shook your shoulder, “(Y/N)? You need to wake up,” He said softly, “Derek’s taking you to the hotel,”

“No,” You mutter, waking up. “I don’t want to go to the hotel,” 

“Well, you don’t have a choice,” Aaron said, folding his arms.

“Big brother boss man said you have to,”

“Told you he goes all mother hen when I’m completely fine,” You mutter to Derek as you stand up, Derek’s hand on your shoulder, steadying you.

“This is completely fine, is it?” He asks sarcastically, “I’m pretty sure if I let go, you’d go down like a ton of bricks.”

“You’re just rude,” You mumble, causing Derek to snicker, “You’re not allowed to laugh at me, I’m ill.”

“Ah, so you are ill then,” Derek replied with a snort, you huffed. 

The team took shifts keeping an eye on you in the hotel room whilst working, all except Aaron, who had to stay put in the police station until the end of the case. He only went back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep each night and a shower. Soon enough, the case was finished and the team was back on the jet on the way home. Knowing you were still feeling rough, the team let you have the couch for the flight back.

Aaron sighed, watching as you curled into a ball on the jet couch, trying to conserve as much body heat as possible whilst you slept, shivering. He grabbed the spare blanket from the other couch, carefully draping it over you. 

"Just a cold my ass," He muttered before returning to his seat. 

Two days later, Aaron sneezed. He was going to kick your ass the next time he saw you, when he was feeling better that is.

[taetaespeaches]

“I never would’ve thought Agust D would be so soft after sex.”

yoongi x reader (or oc) genre: smut; fluff word count: 3.1K

a/n: ok, so, Kid is ready to give Yoon that good good just after hearing like half the mixtape, our girl hasn’t even seen the damn mv yet guys, like, she’s ready to pounce after just seven songs from her man. And honestly, mood. I hope you lovelies enjoy this, I hope it lives up to your expectations lmao, and thank you for reading :))

YOU paced back and forth from one end of your kitchen to the other as you waited for Yoongi to answer his damn phone. I mean, seriously, how long does it take to pick up the-

“Hello?” Yoongi’s low voice interrupted your thoughts through the phone’s speaker.

Gasping, you eagerly asked, “Can I start listening?” omitting a proper greeting.

“Oh hey, I’m fine, how are you?” He teased.

You rolled your eyes, fully aware he couldn’t see you. “You’re expecting a lot of self-control from me right now, Min,” you complained.

Yoongi allowed himself to chuckle before responding with a humored, “if you want, you can listen, Kid.”

You squealed in excitement, bouncing around in front of the oven. “You’re sure? I don’t have to wait for you or anything?”

“Nah, I’m almost there anyway,” he told you, and you could tell by the tone of his voice he was grinning. “Just no music video yet,” he said in a whiny tone which you knew must be accompanied with a pout. He enjoyed watching your reaction to his music videos.

“No music video, I promise,” you smiled, absolutely fond of the man. “Oh my god, I’m not ready for this am I?” You yelled out, Yoongi scoffing in response.

“Jesus, you’re ridiculous,” he groaned.

“Shush, I’m hanging up, I have a long-awaited mixtape to listen to, thank you very much.”

“Ok fine, fine,” he laughed, but before you could hang up, Yoongi added, “Hey, Kid?” You hummed in response. “Love you.”

You’ve heard the words a million times, but it never failed to make your heart pound. However, that didn’t stop you from teasing him a bit. “Yeah, yeah, love you, I gotta go, priorities, baby. I don’t know if you’ve heard but the Agust D just made a comeback.”

He chuckled into the phone once more before giving you a, “See you in a bit,” and then hung up.

Immediately, you were pressing play on the mixtape on Spotify, already having had it pulled up for five minutes.

The first song, ‘Moonlight’, started off soft before scratching records came in, and then your boyfriend’s voice. When he gave his iconic laugh with an “August D” you smiled in pride. That’s my honey boy.

You turned your attention to the meal you were preparing for you and Yoongi, one of his favorites, stirring the contents in a big pot on the stovetop. Bopping along to the music, you listened to the lyrics that talked about his story, starting in Daegu to flying high with his group, how he goes through feelings of confidence in his work to feeling untalented, the struggles of writing this exact mixtape due to the pressure from a larger audience, expectations, and self-doubt. You knew those struggles all too well. You were with him throughout it all.

You’d been given glimpses of the songs throughout the writing process, some tracks in full while others you only saw lyric scribblings on those yellow notepads he leaves around his studio and that littered your apartment. You first saw the chorus to ‘Moonlight’ written on one of those notepads that sat on your bedside table.

“I like this,” you told your boyfriend, holding the notepad in one hand as the other found its way in his dampened hair, his face resting against your bare chest.

“Huh?” He looked up at you, his hand gripping your waist as his eyelids fluttered. The sheets were in disarray around your still nude forms. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, is it for D-2?”

“Maybe,” he told you with a yawn. “Not sure.”

“I think you should use it,” you told him, your finger outlining the shell of his ear as his lips curved into a lazy smile. “It’s beautiful.”

“You really think so?” He asked, uncertain and a bit more awake.

“Yeah, definitely.”

He kissed the center of your chest before nuzzling his face further against your breasts. “You always know best, Kid.”

You felt your eyes prick with tears as you listened to the song, feeling immensely proud of your boyfriend. Of how hard he worked, of overcoming the doubt and fear, and just simply for the talent, passion, and artistry he shared with so many people.

As the mixtape played, you went through phases of dancing around, squealing in excitement, gasping at lyrics and phrasing, and more bouncing and dancing. You tried your best to focus on the lyrics, though you knew it would take a few listens to catch them all as you were too excited to comprehend everything just then.

Completely invested in the music, you didn’t hear your front door open, unaware of your boyfriend’s presence until he appeared in your peripheral, catching you doing a little strut that resembled Yoongi’s swagger walk he did on stage. Your head snapping to him, you were met with his gummy grin, his shoulders shaking in laughter as ‘Burn It’ continued to play throughout the kitchen.

“Are you leaving me for Agust D yet?” He teased, walking toward you.

“Do you realize how sexy you are? Like do you have any idea?” You asked accusatorily. “Like what the fuck, dude?”

“Jesus,” he huffed, a smile still plastered on his face. “You’re actually ridiculous.”

“Yeah, and you’re ridiculously talented, Min. You’re not told that enough,” you told him seriously. Reaching you, he placed his hands on your hips as you wrapped your arms around the back of his neck, stepping further into his arms.

“I’m told that plenty,” he dismissed with a bashful grin.

“No, you’re not,” you told him as ‘Burn It’ continued to play. Instead of responding to you, he kissed you which you immediately deepened, Yoongi stepping back a bit by the unexpected force behind your actions, though his arms wrapped tighter around your waist so your body was flush with his.

Pulling away, he chased your lips, making you smile. “I don’t even have the words right now to tell you how proud I am of you,” you told him seriously, tears forming in your eyes. You watched as Yoongi took a deep breath, keeping his own emotions under control at your sincere confession. “Just know I’m really proud,” you said as tears threatened to fall.

He quickly nodded just before bringing a hand to your jaw as he caught your lips again, giving you several quick pecks as he composed himself.

Letting out a breath that sounded to be one of relief, Yoongi peered around your frame, inspecting the food cooking on the stove, as well as the food that had spilled outside of the pot, with a grin. “That looks good.”

“Hopefully,” you said with a smile as Yoongi nuzzled his face against your neck, refusing to let you go. With the overwhelming pride and love you felt, mixed with the fact that the man on the mixtape was all yours, and he was standing in your kitchen, in your arms, pressing sweet kisses to your neck, you had a sudden desire for him.

As ‘People’ started playing, you were instantly struck with the memory of coming to his studio as he was working on that very track. It was just the instrumental then, but it was interesting and different from the other stuff he had been working on. Yoongi must have been thinking upon the same memory as he lifted his head, a gummy grin directed to you as his eyes found yours.

“I remember the night you wrote this,” you smiled, biting your lower lip. That night, you had spent about an hour of it sitting on his desk as Yoongi sat in his chair in front of you, his chin resting on your knees as you both discussed your ideas of life, and people, and changes, and what it all meant, if it even meant anything.  

You had already been dating for well over a year, but it was a moment where you and Yoongi felt a closeness between you both that hadn’t really been there before, becoming more mentally and emotionally attune with each other.

The conversation eventually faded out, the intense feeling of understanding between you both leading to you having sex on his studio couch.

“Trust me, I remember it very well,” he chuckled, his mind running through every moment of that night, from the feeling of closeness, to the warmth of your body underneath his as he pressed you against the couch cushions, the way you moaned his name and whispered ‘I love you’s’.

As the chorus of ‘People’ sounded from your laptop, your eyes widened at the sultry soothe of your boyfriend’s vocals.

“Since when do you sing like that, Min?” You teased with a smile, your eyes bouncing around his soft features. As he let out a breathy chuckle, you slid your your hands down his neck to rest overtop his collarbones as you leaned toward him and kissed him deeply.

The action took him by surprise though he easily found his rhythm, his hands slipping underneath your shirt, feeling at the bare skin of your waist.

As you began backing up, he quickly felt around to shut the stove off before following you toward the bedroom, never breaking the kiss. Your hands found his waist as his moved to your face, taking control. You began lifting his shirt up, you both separating just long enough for you to pull it over his head and discard it somewhere in the hallway outside your room.

Eagerly, you unbuttoned his jeans, Yoongi helping you get the clothing off him as he released his hold on you to step out of them. Backing up, your legs hit the edge of the bed and you locked your eyes with your boyfriend’s. Smirking at him, you pulled your own shirt off before unhooking your bra and letting it fall to the floor at your feet.

Yoongi bit his lip, his eyes settling on your chest before slowly dragging them back up to meet your darkened gaze. Tilting his head at you, you quipped, “What are you waiting for?” Yoongi scoffed before approaching you and pushing your body so you fell against the mattress. He reached for the waist of your jeans, taking no time in unzipping them and tugging them down your legs, you lifting your hips to help him. Your panties were removed next, Yoongi dropping them to floor as he allowed his eyes to rake over your body, taking in every inch of you.

You sat up on your elbows, watching the man as he looked over your nude form. “For a man who brags an awful lot about being a king and a boss, you seem a bit timid, baby,” you teased in a sultry tone.

Your boyfriend scoffed again, a smirk forming on his lips. “Be patient,” he scolded, though he stepped toward you, nudging your inner knee with his leg, making you widen the gap between your thighs as he stared down at your center.

“My patience disappeared the moment I clicked play on that mixtape,” you smiled. “I want you.” With that, you sat up, your hands slipping underneath the waistband of his underwear, lowering them until they easily slid down his legs, pooling at his feet. You kept eye contact with him as you left a sweet kiss to his lower abdomen, just above his pelvic area.

He let out a quick breath as he smiled, lowering his body on top of yours, your back meeting the mattress. “If I had known Agust D would get you this worked up I would have released a mixtape two years ago,” he joked, your hands grabbing onto his sides as his lips found yours, kissing you passionately.

One of his arms was being used to prop himself up overtop you as his opposite hand slid down to your core, his fingers feeling between your legs. He groaned into your mouth at feeling how wet you’d become, and you smiled against his lips.

Not wanting to wait any longer, you used your strength to push against his body, rolling him over and straddling his hips. Yoongi’s breath was heavy and shallow as he anticipated being inside you, his large hands gripping your hips, his eyes eagerly taking in the sight of your form on top of him. He always did love you on top.

Placing one of your hands to his chest, your other found his hardened length. You stroked him a few times, Yoongi letting out a soft moan at the feeling, his hand sliding up your abdomen to your breast as he squeezed the supple flesh in his palm. At his touch, you guided him to your entrance, sharply intaking breath at the feeling of him slipping inside, letting the air out in a throaty moan.

“Fuck, Kid,” Yoongi breathed out, pinching your nipple between his fingers as you moved your hand from his dick to his chest, bracing yourself against him as you began slowly grinding atop him. Yoongi’s hand left your breast to your thigh, clutching the muscle as he bit his lip, watching your body move. “You’re so fucking hot.”

You held back a moan as you increased your pace, looking up to the ceiling before squeezing your eyes shut as he hit particularly deep. “Fuck,” you breathed out, lowering your gaze to Yoongi’s face, meeting his hooded eyes as he looked up at you in bliss.

His chest was like velvet underneath your hands and you wanted to feel more of his skin on yours. As if reading your mind, Yoongi moved his hands to your lower back, pulling you toward him so your chest was flush with his. He kissed you messily as he lifted his hips off the bed to move in and out of you as he held you to his body.

“I love you so much,” he confessed shakily against your lips, his breathing erratic due to the pleasure you were giving him.

“Oh my god, Yoongi, I love you,” you moaned, moving your face to his neck where you kissed and nibbled his skin lightly.

Wanting to treat him, you reluctantly pulled yourself away from him, sitting back up as you rocked back and forth on him, arching your back and placing a hand to his thigh to support yourself. Yoongi’s hands grabbed onto the sides of your legs as he watched you, looking more and more fucked out the longer you rode him.

Eyeing his thin but toned body, his smooth skin, and the flex of his abdomen as he took sharp breaths, you groaned. “You look so good,” you told him, admiring the man beneath you. Your man. All yours. “Feel so good,” you moaned.

One of Yoongi’s hands left your leg to find your hand that was pressed against his lower abdomen. He took your hand in his, intertwining his fingers with yours before bringing it to his lips and kissing your knuckles softly as he locked his gaze on yours.

The intimate action had your lower abdomen tightening. Sitting up straight, you brought your hand toward him which he grabbed with his other hand, helping you to support yourself as your motions atop him became hastier, approaching your high.

“Yoon, I’m gonna-”

“I know, baby,” he nodded, squeezing your hands as you neared your climax. “Me too.”

You let out a whimper, lowering your body to Yoongi’s again, your dewy chest meeting his, Yoongi wrapping his arms around your lower back as you both worked each other into your finishes. Yoongi buried his face in your neck as he let out small muffled grunts, you breathing out a moan in his ear. As he came, he hugged your body to his tightly, letting go inside you. The feeling of him releasing had you crashing into your own high, biting your lip as you moaned breathily, Yoongi kissing your neck sweetly as you came down.

You relaxed atop Yoongi, breathing heavy as his fingers toyed with the small of your back, soothing back and forth along the curve of your ass. You had a hand on his neck, slipping your fingers into his damp strands, your other hand on his chest, dragging your fingers along his pectoral.

“The mixtape is really good,” you assured him in a whisper, kissing his jaw. “Well, what I’ve heard so far.”

Yoongi let out a breathy chuckle, flattening a palm on your lower back. “Thank you, Kid.”

“No need to thank me, I’m just being honest.”

“No, thank you for always supporting me. In everything,” he clarified, emotion thick in his voice.

You lifted your head to peer at his face, catching the glassy shine in his eyes. “Always,” you assured him.

He nodded, looking at you with a soft smile. “I know,” he whispered, barely audible, giving away that he didn’t trust his voice, knowing it would break if he spoke louder. “It means- you mean the world.”

You lowered your lips to his face, giving his plush cheek a small kiss. “I never would’ve thought Agust D would be so soft after sex,” you teased with a big smile, Yoongi scoffing, though he couldn’t hold back his gummy grin.

He groaned loudly, stretching his arms over his head. “I’m starving,” he changed the topic, making you giggle.

“Well, lucky for you, your girlfriend made you a delicious nearly cooked meal that is probably very cold at this point,” you smirked.  

“Oh, lucky for me?” He questioned with a small smile.

“Mhmm,” you confirmed with a small chuckle.

Yoongi sucked air between his teeth, ticking his head to the side. “Remind me to wife you up later.”

You scoffed playfully, rolling off his body as you prepared to stand up and find some clothes. “In your dreams, Min.”

Scooping your t-shirt off the floor, you slipped it over your head before grabbing a pair of panties from your dresser drawer, all while Yoongi’s eyes followed your every move. Sending your boyfriend an air kiss from where he sat at the edge of the bed watching you, you walked toward the bedroom door. “Hurry up and get dressed, Gramps, I need your album commentary.”

You exited the room, turning toward the bathroom to clean yourself up. Yoongi shook his head with a chuckle. “Yeah, in my dreams,” he mumbled as he stood up to get dressed. Taking his sweet ass time, you walked back past the bedroom toward the kitchen, noticing him still stumbling around for a shirt.

“Hey, hustle, Min! I still have a music video to watch, my dude!” You called out to him as he looked to you with widened eyes. “Your shirt is out here, by the way.”

“Ah, what did I tell you about patience,” he whined out, a pout on his lips as he walked through the hallway, grabbing his shirt on his way, feeling full of appreciation and adoration for you.  

[xhanisai]

Truth Or Dare?

AO3 / FFN

Summary:

Adrien gulped, completely frozen in his seat under the gaze of his demonic classmates, the almighty, notorious peer-pressure throwing a concert whilst his Lady continued to act like that the string on the floor was far more interesting than the fact that her newly discovered partner was currently in the hot seat. 'Now how do I answer this!?' He panicked internally, twiddling with his thumbs and praying to the Gods more reliable than Plagg that Marinette would suddenly come up with some brilliant, top-notch plan that would surely get them both out of this. Especially if she doesn't want him to whimper out: "Ya got me! It was Marinette when she kissed the evil out of me after I got shot by Dislocoeur, hahaha! Oh, do I need to mention that I have no recollection of it whatsoever and that I was decked up in my usual catsuit whilst she was in her polka-dotted onesie? A brilliant first kiss, amirite!? Not to mention that our second kiss was also wiped from my memory, cheers for that Alya and Nino!"

Pairing - Adrinette Prompt - 'Truth or Dare?' ~(x)~ . . . Adrien was fucked. He was entirely, thoroughly, immensely fucked. And not in the literal way much to the teen's utter dismay and painful frustration. And certainly not anytime soon, judging by his princesse's stiff, flustered posture who was on the floor across him, along with the rest of their class sitting in a circle (sans Lila and Chloé, Dieu merci). Gremlin-like smirks were etched on their friends' mischievous faces and sinister cackles escaped their mouths like the Madhatter from Alice Au Pays Des Merveilles. Even timid ol' Sabrina wore a grin that would rival the Cheshire cat. But never mind that. What was the cherry on top was how both he and Marinette just found out each other's identities no more than ten minutes prior. The two idiots were desperately sprinting back to collège Françoise Dupont after their latest akuma battle without noticing the other, only to literally collide into one other and their transformation to wear off immediately, leaving them both with matching gaping expressions. If luck was on his side, the scenario would have carried on with Adrien whipping out 'suave move #9236' and channelling his inner 'Tamaki Suoh', helping his Lady to her feet with a smile so sexy and seductive (guaranteed to win her over of course) and then him proceeding to ask her out for a cup of coffee where they can talk! Then, he would have totally charmed her with another brilliant smile that would have surely fly kicked away whatever feelings she had for that 'other' boy (he named him M. Imbécile), caressing that soft, soft cheek of hers with his hand and surely they would have leaned in for a hot, passionate, true love's kiss (and he'd finally know what it's like to be properly smooched)! MAIS NON. NON. His five seconds of absolute happiness, of pure bliss after finding out that the two girls he bloody loved so damn much and practically worshipped, were one and the same- WAS INTERRUPTED. . The inconveniently timed Ladyblogger and her DJ boyfriend arrived at the scene, practically snatching both him and Marinette away and back to class, babbling about how Mme. Bustier was going to arrive late hence they were going to take advantage of it. By taking advantage, they meant avoiding all responsibilities by playing a specific game. A game that Adrien has learnt to now, unconditionally despise. . "We're not getting any younger here, Buttercup. Tell us, who was your first kiss? And don't even think about lying your way out, we can tell by your face that you definitely got some sort of action~" Alya's glasses flashed in such a devilish way, even Le Papillon would have found himself shitting his pants. "Of course, if you don't want to answer the truth...you can always pick dare," 'LIKE HELL I WILL!' The last person to have picked 'dare' was Rose and she was instructed to deliver a hearty smack to Kim's bum! The teen model pretty much vowed that the only booty his hands were allowed to touch was Marinette's, with consent obviously. And vice versa. And the person before Rose who chose 'dare' was Nino! He was dared to sneak outside, climb to the top of the building's rooftop and sing Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' from the top of his lungs, recording himself live on Instagram as proof. It was a miracle that he never got caught by the staff! Again, the feline hero very much preferred that any attempts of his serenading would only be heard by the ears of the love of his life. . Adrien gulped, completely frozen in his seat under the gaze of his demonic classmates, the almighty, notorious peer-pressure throwing a concert whilst his Lady continued to act like that the string on the floor was far more interesting than the fact that her newly discovered partner was currently in the hot seat. 'Now how do I answer this!?' He panicked internally, twiddling with his thumbs and praying to the Gods more reliable than Plagg that Marinette would suddenly come up with some brilliant, top-notch plan that would surely get them both out of this. Especially if she doesn't want him to whimper out: "Ya got me! It was Marinette when she kissed the evil out of me after I got shot by Dislocoeur, hahaha! Oh, do I need to mention that I have no recollection of it whatsoever and that I was decked up in my usual catsuit whilst she was in her polka-dotted onesie? A brilliant first kiss, amirite!? Not to mention that our second kiss was also wiped from my memory, cheers for that Alya and Nino!" Unfortunately, (once again) for him, not even his pleading kitty eyes were able to penetrate the wall of aloofness that Marinette held between them, leaving him completely on his own, ready to be torn apart by their friends' malevolent hands. He was the equivalent of a teeny tiny, illegally cute kitten, surrounded by a circle of hungry, deadly, carnivorous wolves, licking their chops! Yet, Marinette remained unphased, pretending to stare out into space and think about what her Maman and Papa would prepare for dinner as if Adrien's scrutinising gaze weren't like arrows all over her side. However, much to her disadvantage, Agreste is her partner and he knew her very, very well. The desperate cat was able to pinpoint the cold sweat that was growing on her forehead, knowing that his presence was starting to get to her and conscious of the fact that she cannot ignore him for long either. 'Come on Marinette, you can't resist me forever. Please help!' His lack of any sort of psychic powers didn't stop him from wishing that she could read his mind but dammit did he try. 'Don't you love your pauvre Chaton!? Aidez-moi s'il vous plaît, My Lady!!!' Just before he could resort to begging out loud, Alix Kubdel... ...snickered. Simply from that evil, ominous sound, both Adrien and Marinette paled on the spot at a speed faster than M. Césaire's panther could ever dream of running at. "Ever since we asked you that question, not once have you looked away from Marinette...now why is that~?" The short girl's insight caused the rest of the class to gasp cheekily and "Oooh~?" simultaneously, their ferocious appetite for juicy gossip now at full throttle much to both heroes' apprehension. "And you, Mari! You look like a kid who got caught stealing from the cookie jar. I think the two of you have something big to admit to the rest of us, hmm?" "...No-oooo...?" Dupain-Cheng refused to make eye contact with anyone, her lips stuck between what looked like a grimace and a fake smile, continuing her sentence which was just as truthful as Jagged Stone's claims of being in his mid-twenties. "I am still a lowly virgin maiden in the kissing department...heheh...heh..." Adrien on the other hand blinked owlishly as he finally came to a conclusion, his singular working brain cell grinding its gear through his thought process. Oh? Ohoh??? OHOHOOHOH??????? . "So that means I was your first kiss too?" . If there was a compilation labelled "Top Ten Ways That Adrien Mothafuckin' Stupid Agreste Fucked Up"... This would be number one. "...You didn't hear me say that out loud...right?" He gulped meekly, shrinking under the astonished looks that everyone gave him, his Lady's jaw dropping further than what he assumed was humanely possible. He. Was. Fucked. . The entire classroom erupted with utter chaos. Ranging from high pitched squeals from Alya, Rose, Mylène and Kim to "HOLY SHIT!" and "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!?" from Alix, Nino, Juleka and so on. Even Marinette was left burning brighter than a tomato, covering her face in embarrassment along with her iconic mantra: "THIS IS A DISASTER!!!" and shaking her head. Money was exchanged from secretive bets that were placed on the model and designer, naughty comments were thrown around left and right and even more! If one were to enter the room right now, they'd think that they've just stumbled across a hectic zoo. Never in his life did Adrien want the ground to swallow him up so badly or even run away at the speed of sound to an unknown island where he would live off of fruit and grow old all alone without ever getting married. Marinette probably- no, she definitely hates him now. Her refusal to come out of her 'Don't talk to me, I'm catastrophising' human ball and face him was more than enough evidence to prove that. Who was he kidding, thinking that he would be able to get such a wonderful, spectacular girl like her to fall for a hopeless, ridiculous nincompoop like him? His attempts in the past never worked out before and it certainly wouldn't have worked out now. Forget about pursuing a romantic relationship with her, he's one-hundred percent sure that he's absolutely tarnished what was left of their friendship! He can visualise his terrifying, depressing excuse of a future already. No more shy, cute greetings with a gorgeous smile in the mornings before class from Marinette. No more fun banter and warm hugs on their favourite patrol environments from Marinette. No more cheeky jokes and flirty teasing from Marinette. No more timid conversations and saying his name in the most softest way he's ever heard from Marinette. And, no more perfect "Bien joué!" fist bumps after an akuma battle from Marinette... How...how was he supposed to live without her? 'Shit, I can feel my eyes starting to water...' He took a deep breath, staring at the ceiling to force the traitorous tears away from daring to come out. The last thing Marinette needed was to deal with a dumb crybaby like him after he's just embarrassed her like that with his stupid, big mouth- "-But when did this happen, Marinette??? Girl, why didn't you tell me!?" Snapping out of his self-pity, Adrien tuned back into the pandemonium, wincing at how mortified Marinette still looked (albeit she was no longer in her cocoon of doom). She pursed her lips at Alya with that adorable pout of hers, unsure of how to answer with something that didn't sound like a terrible excuse. . Finally, a solid answer blared in Adrien's brain, the blonde teen adamant that he turned the situation around and salvaged what was left of the bond between him and his Princesse. For now, he can focus on the dreadful future after he got the current situation sorted. He would do anything to make Marinette feel good around him again. "It was during that time we were at le Musée Grévin when I invited Alya, Nino, Marinette and Manon to join me," He ignored the way that their classmates leaned closer with wide grins, focusing on sending a quiet apology to Marinette's direction with his pleading eyes alone. "I was being dumb and tried to play a prank on Marinette when the other three were away. I ended up tripping and Marinette tried to help me but I accidentally pulled her down with me and...we accidentally kissed..." Although the scenario wasn't fully true, Marinette did manage to land a light peck upon his lips during that incident and that's all it took for it to be branded in his memory. The sear of foreign warmth that left his lips in tingles, the subtle taste of strawberry gloss that left him hungry for more and the unadulterated softness that rivalled even the most expensive of silk. He hoped that his little white lie towards the end was enough to alleviate what was left of Marinette's embarrassment, deaf to their classmates' coos and brows furrowed to emphasise how sorry he was to the girl he loves. Although there was still a hint of pink on her cheeks, her expression was something that he wasn't able to decipher and that only made his heart race even faster than before. 'Please don't hate me, please don't hate me, please don't hate me-' "So how was the kiss, then?" Ivan waggled his eyebrows, both him and his girlfriend playfully winking at Marinette at her protesting stammers. "Oh? E-Erm...it was very quick and brief so I didn't get a chance to enjoy it-" His treacherous eyes decided to land on Marinette's lips midway, his mind screaming to stop digging a deeper hole for himself. He wasn't quick enough to flit his gaze away, the indication that he wanted to kiss her again so painfully obvious that even a blind person would have noticed. "-It was very soft and nice, however! I don't regret it-" Suddenly... . ...Marinette stood up. Adrien felt like his heart was going to bust out of his chest with the way it ricocheted against his ribcage, his emerald eyes wide with apprehension and his breath lodged in his throat as if a vice was clasped around his neck. Was she going to kill him? He certainly thought he deserved it. "Alya," The heroine in disguise began, the teen model unable to hide his flinch. "Dare me to kiss Adrien." 

She lifted her head to face her partner, her sapphire blues no longer hidden in the shadows of her fringe and sparkling with both amusement and...love? Her kissable lips were upturned into a confident smile with a gloss that was begging for him to taste and he was absolutely losing his mind. Was he dreaming? He must be dreaming. Yes. No way in the seven heavens would Marinette, THE Marinette, would want to kiss HIM, the embodiment of bad luck! Yet, the twinkling of her eyes and the warmth that radiated from her as she walked closer and closer towards him said otherwise. He didn't even hear Alya's excited declaration for Marinette's dare, solely focused on the way his Lady kneeled in front of him, smoothed her hands towards his cheeks and cupped them so gingerly. . "Pucker up, Buttercup," Marinette murmured against his lips with an endearing smirk, grazing her nose with his and rubbing his cheeks with her thumbs before sealing the kiss. . With all the romantic daydreams and boyish yearning he went through when it came to Marinette's lips, Adrien thought that he was well prepared for the real deal if the day were to ever come, disregarding his bad luck of course. However, he has been wrong before. He's absolutely, definitely, positively wrong now. The brief, shocked, brush of lips back in the wax museum was barely a taster. Barely a glimpse of the real thing. Not even close to a sample of the luxury. From the moment she pressed her lips against his, Adrien was hit with an outstanding overwhelm of fervour, tenderness and sweetness. His body instinctively shuddered as a pleasant fire seeped from her mouth to his and then coursed through the veins of the rest of his body, his hand that was clutching his precious good luck charm gift from Marinette then loosening its grip and automatically reaching for her cheek. His piano fingers dug into the locks of one of her ponytails, entangling them. 'If this really is a dream, then please, don't wake me up,' The sensation was slightly odd and just, indescribable at the same time. Yet, the more he tasted that strawberry gloss, the more her lips moved against his, the further he fell in love, addicted to the sugar that he's craved for so long. His red-tipped ears were oblivious to the class' whoops and cheers, his heart crashing against his chest louder than ever and the feel of hers doing just the same against him had him soaring. 'She never hated me all along, right? This isn't a kiss of hate at all,' But most importantly, the feeling of Marinette's pulse quickening from when his fingertips slid down to meet the side of her sensitive neck, cradling the back of it and the almost inaudible whimper she let out, was branded to his touch and memory like an imprint. 'So this is a real first kiss? Is this what Marinette felt when she kissed me to get rid of Kim's spell? How did she manage to keep her composure around me since then?' Just as Marinette pulled away, her eyes shimmering with wonderful emotions and her lips as beautifully rosy as her cheeks, Adrien couldn't resist and pulled her back in without a beat. As if to make up for all those missed opportunities, all the moments where he could have stolen her breath away and all those unsaid words that surely would have made them happy. They could talk about the reveal and their feelings afterwards in the safety of Marinette's humble balcony without any prying eyes. They could sort out their overwhelming emotions and bask through their memories over that cup of coffee that Adrien now has the confidence to ask her out on. But just for now, the two of them wanted to enjoy their present and make the most of it. 'Sweet, sweet, sweet, she's so sweet...' . . . ~(x)~ A/N: Ah shit it's six am. I'll edit this tomorrow.

[thestreamdreampony]

Ok, so while I'm in a talkative mood, there's smth else I wanna talk about:

Ya'll make me feel so goddamn old. I was able to pull out the "listen to your elders" card in my previous post and I turned 22 a few days ago. Do you people even realize how young that is? I still barely feel like an adult most days and I've lived away from home for the last 4 years.

Most mcyts are my age or younger. I know we joke about Phil being old enough to go into retirement, but my man is 33. That's not old. That's not even middle age.

Ya'll hold these teens and barely-adults to such a ridiculous standards of conduct, when they are still children or barely of age. And while this definitely applies to ccs like Tommy, Ranboo and Tubbo, I especially want to talk about Techno and Dream. Because neither of them is that much older than the teens. Being of age doesn't come with a neatly packaged box of maturity that's served with the birthday cake.

Both of them are younger than me. Hell, Techno turns 22 today. I'm not even going to talk about their neurodivergence (because I am not qualified to do so). They are young as hell. And while yes, Techno has been doing Youtube for many years now, both of them have been thrust into the limelight in an insane way, in one hell of a short time. Hell, Dream went from no subscribers to 22 million in less than 1.5 years.

Every single move they make is scrutinized by literally millions of people, both with friendly and malicious intentions. Both people who mean well and people who don't rifle through every single thing they say and ever said in their entire online history and use that spin a narrative about them. And that narrative can be good, even worshipful and it can be bad, with the goal to hurt both the ccs and their fans.

Obviously, them being famous and influential is largely beneficial to them, especially financially, but I think a bit of perspective is sometimes necessary. These barely adults are scrutinized and scrutinized and scrutinized. Every action, ever toneshift, every relationship, every word is analyzed and picked over.

And for that I do admire them because I know that neither I, nor most of my peers (who are in my age range, if not older) would be able to handle that kind of pressure. To be bombarded with thousands of people screaming at me day in day out has got to be fucking exhausting.

And the way they handle themselves, especially Dream, speaks to me of an immense capability for growth and for listening. The Dream that admitted to cheating yesterday is not the same person that defended himself hot-headedly a year ago.

And even that is somewhat understandable. Like, don't get me wrong, Dream not admitting to his wrong doing and getting really defensive about it was in no way a great way of handling the situation, but imagine how you'd feel if you suddenly you get bombarded by thousands of people calling you the scum of the earth, after being completely unknown to the public not even a year before that. (Like I said, I'm not going to get into him being nd, but that, as far as I'm aware, also heavily impacts the way he processes and handles things. Same for Techno)

You don't have to like anyone's actions. You don't have to forgive them if they fuck up and you don't have to like anyone at all. But please, for the love of god, keep in mind that these people, while highly capable and fairly mature, are nowhere near as old as most of the fandom likes to act they are and that they are most definitely capable of learning and changing.

[life-rewritten]

Gifted Graduation: The futility of Pang's idealism

Episode 8-10 of Gifted Graduation has been just filled with mind fuckery, and overflow of plot twists after plot twists. Thing is as much as everyone is complaining about this,  The Gifted has always been a show that has taken us on a journey of fear, exhilaration and worries only to then even break us further by ridiculing our hopes, dreams and idealism for a better future/better world. In this situation, we are like Pang, a boy who was shown the cruelty of close-minded and controlling adults who have no care for the children like him. These kids who are being viewed as tools and accessories because of their unique abilities.

In season 1 Pang learnt about his powers and made a decision to fight the system and defeat the adults who are controlling it. Season 1 ended with a depressing revelation; Pang was still too naive and too unprepared for taking down the adults. So he and his team hid for two years preparing for a way to defeat this system. In season 2 from Episode 10 we are shown how futile all this is, all Pang had hoped for, all he worked for, all he dreamed of was a lie, he was still being used as a tool for the downfall of all his own dreams. This is so painful to see because we are like Pang, we want a better society, a better world, a better life, and yet just as we also hoped and thought that things would improve we again fell for Supots lies and trickery. So we also were left feeling bleak and hopeless. So here is a post analysing why Season 1 finale of Gifted mirrored episode 8-10 of The gifted graduation. Is Pang's idealism really useless, how does this affect everyone, has Supot finally won, and what do we do now?

THE THEME OF THE SHOW; FUTILITY OF IDEALISM

I first noticed the clue that Season 1-Ep 10-13 was being mirrored in Gifted graduation episode 8-9 because of the certain similarities that were shown and also the return to plotlines from the past season that finally showed growth/change or showed a full-circle moment. The reason for why Gifted graduation ends up mirroring the same ideas as Season 1 is to laugh at us, and to laugh at Pang for failing yet again to realise the truth (despite thinking we were close to winning ) and again repeating the same mistakes of the past. Let me explain with the clues first:

PANG DEFEATED

In Season 1, Pang starts as a determined boy who wants to prove he's something, but slowly sees the horrors of his school system misusing and treating his peers like experiments because of their powers. Pang is determined to defeat Supot and change the gifted system. Still, by the finale, we see that even though he thought he was always a step ahead Supot always knew what he was up to, Supot manipulated him and his peers and unravelled all their plans in one go by revealing his powers and revealing his plans for the gifted. Pang is left defeated with his memories wiped and we the audience screamed in pain and frustration at our main character losing.

Season 2 Pang thinks he has the upper hand; his memories are back. He's avoiding his powers, so he doesn't end up like our villain, he has his peers back on his team. By episode 4 the goal is fulfilled; Supot is defeated and even by episode 6 despite the fact that we think the ministry is evil we still see that Supot is defeated, he's forced out of the school, and he goes in hiding. By episode 7-8 we begin to think Supot is actually a victim of this messed up system and he's just become evil because of the pressures of life, we start to trust him a bit, and we begin to think there is an immense evil at hand to defeat. Pang and we were fools. Gifted episode 10 repeats again the same copy of Pang being under Supots control, Pang being betrayed once again by his peers, and Pang also realising that everything he did was for nothing.

This time, the defeat is more painful, there's more at stake, there are lives lost and broken (Korn, Yuth, students being under a virus that causes brain damage) and the very goal Pang had wanted to defeat in Season 1, Pang was the sole cause of making it fulfilled. Its dramatic irony, it's hurtful, and it is soul-crushing to realise that all the pain he went through was for nothing. In the end, Pang is just still a tool to Supot, Pang put his peers again under Supot's control, but it's even worse time because he's putting more schools under Supots control. Pang is left with no one, nothing and no hope on his side. He's left defeated once again.

SUPOTS POWERS MORE THAN THEY SEEM

Season 1 is such an incredible story for how Supot and Pang became enemies to each other. We start of Season 1, learning about Pang's potential, to control minds with touch, we're petrified and scared about the strength of his powers since we see how it can hurt people (the first time he uses it), the only thing that's exciting and hopeful about this is that he can use it on Supot who is blissfully unaware. We expected Supot to underestimate Pang and not know what his gifts were but no. The reveal again in a painfully ironic twist is that Supot is a stronger version of Pang. His powers are so powerful he's able to get everyone to defeat Pang, he's able to convince people to lie to Pang and us, so we are blissfully unaware of what was genuinely happening the whole season. Pang is left horrified at the truth about Supot; not only does he have with the same potential as him, but he can do with without touch. This was an incredible plot twist. 

Yet season 2 manages to trick us into thinking Supot's powers are not as powerful anymore, Pang is the one who has to use his powers to become stronger and defeat the ministry. Supot had a past where he didn't want to use his powers for evil. Or that's what he told us, and that's what we fell for yet again. The realisation in episode 10 that Supot is insanely powerful, he can prevent Pang's potential from affecting him, he can convince people to kill themselves, and yes he can also convince and hurt Pang's peers if they don't do his bidding; the fact that Supot yet again manipulates Korn in this episode. This is also a repeat of season 1 because Korn was tricked into thinking his powers were gone by Supot only to realise he lied to there was no antidote. This both affected Mon and Korn just like Supots control over Korn revealed in episode10 led to Korn trying to commit suicide because he was so scared and betrayed, and Mon losing her trust in Pang because of losing Korn. Supots powers not only leads to Pang being hurt and betrayed but in season 2 we've seen they've led to death, they've led to despair, and they've led to misunderstandings and pain.  Supot from the start never was good; he tricks us into believing he was someone else when really he erased his ex-best friends identity and convinced him to kill himself whilst he had lost his hope and had learnt that his idealism for a better world was useless. Already we see that with Supot's past that the show is echoing that idealism for equality and difference is futile.

WAVE AND PANG AGAINST THE WORLD

This and Clare and Punns storyline in episode 8 are what made me know that Gifted was mirroring season 1 with this season. I couldn't see the reason at that time or sort out the theme, but now I know what it is. So Clare and Punns relationship is damaged as both have to grow, we get a repetition with Punn going evil with Void showing up threatening to hurt and kill again, Punn broken down at the end by Clare. But it shifts, we see Punn and Clare break up, they've both grown, they've both changed, and they want to work on themselves first before they return to each other.

In contrast, we get a repetition of a bond that was tested throughout season 2, Wave's trust in Pang is ruined at first because of Pang's insensitive actions when focused on his goals ( another repetition of season 1 with Pang's flaw). Still, Wave and Pang reunite to try and defeat the ministry and also help achieve their goals. Whilst everyone betrayed or wasn't on the side of Pang, Wave stays loyal and it's him and Pang against the world. 

In season 1 this also happens, more because Pang refuses to trust anyone else to help with his goals, and so he keeps it a secret; his plans to defeat Supot, Wave helps him with it but ends up betraying him because of Supot. We see in the trailer for episode 11; Wave is forced to think again about this decision because this time he's threatened with the virus. There is now something that can defeat the gifted and take away their potential. 

Wave however in season 1 pretends to side with Supot, but we see at the end he helps Pang regain his memories. So I don't believe that he'll betray Pang, I think whatever we see on the surface in the next episodes are not to be trusted, Pang and Wave will have another plan on how to defeat Supot, but it will be very hidden and secretive. But the importance of this mirror is because Pang needs Wave, so he doesn't give up on his idealism, so he still has hope in his dreams. Wave is the person who is the helper to Pang through thick and thin. Pang's idealism may be futile right now but because we have more episodes and we still have Wave who won't betray him unless, under mind control, he'll come back around.

SUPOTS PAWNS

By the end of season 1 everyone becomes a pawn in Supot chess game, he uses and manipulates everybody to do his bidding. Sometimes he keeps them hidden as final revelations, sometimes he lies to them to make them give in and change, and sometimes he uses his powers to convince people to lose. The repeated pawns ins Supots plans from season 1 obviously is the Pom and Chanon.  But before we talk about them, let's talk about the other mirror characters:

DARIN; she's a mirror character for the previous female teacher in the school. The audience thought that teacher was supportive of Supot but Pang learns that she is actually good and worried about the students without potentials. Pang also uses her with his powers to attack everyone and give them the vial that causes removal to their abilities.  Pang used her as a pawn as the last option to defeat Supot. She ended up being weak and not necessary. Darin is the same, at first we think she's right and she's out to protect the kids (just like this woman, and she probably was because she's a mirror of this woman) but she ends up being seen by Pang as manipulative and also evil siding with the ministry. Supot convinces Pang and us that the ministry is corrupt thereby we also see her as someone evil. In episode 10 its revealed she's just as weak; she's just a pawn underneath Supot and the ministry who is helpless and powerless just like the other teacher.  She and the ministry don't even come close to being the greater evil we thought they were; they're under Supots control. They're his tools for his goals. And Pang joins that. Sigh.

POM AND CHANON have a different significance; Pom was the pawn who we thought we could trust in season 1 until it was revealed he betrayed Chanon, he had the potential to erase memory and he was under Supots control by choice. Pom keeps betraying Pang despite being a father figure to him, someone who mentors and helps him with his gifts. And sigh season 2 reveals that Pom still is that pawn, he still is under Supot. His goal, to teach Pang the theme and reason for why we keep getting this copy of the plot of season 1; idealism is futile, it's useless to fight someone like Supot, and it'll just hurt worse if you try. Pom, however, ends up growing as well, he reveals he's good, and he cares about Pang and Chanon, but it's too late because he was right, idealism and trying to fight was useless. Chanon overpowers him, and he ends up being discarded as a worthless tool for Supot (though he loved him as a son), and now he's broken and damaged by the virus.

So you see Chanon who we saw as the actual symbol for Pang's idealism. He's the reason for why Pang hoped and tried to fight for freedom, he's the reason for why Pang still trusted adults, he's the reason for why Pang believed he could defeat Supot (because he predicted accurately of Pangs coming), but no he ends up being the very symbol for the futility of idealism. He ends up being the worst useless pawn under Supot; he destroys all of his old personality, his old idealism, his old positives for revenge because he's been traumatised by the past. Because of resentment for Pom, Supot manipulated and convinced Chanon to throw away his idealism and become defeated. It's painful because again these two echoes the same theme Pang's idealism is futile, Supot is always one step ahead and trying to fight him is hopeless. It hurts. We realise now that we didn't succeed at all even after season 1 taught us how to evade Supot. We still failed, instead, like fools we've repeated the same story, but this time Pang played a massive role in getting Supot what he wanted. Pang ended up being the worst painful pawn under Supot. It's so ironic, it's so severe, it's so soul-crushing, and it leaves all of us in shock. 

What do we do now? Can Supot be defeated? Will ever get to see Pang get his goals? Or is it all useless to try and change the system?

THE NEXT GENERATION; GRACE, TIME AND THIRD

For so long, I wondered why we needed these three characters, why didn't we just focus on our gifted students. But that's the point, whilst all of our other characters were repeating the same mistakes and stories of the past, seeing time and time again that idealism was useless, our three new characters were stuck, on a pause, they show up by the end of episode10 belatedly ready to try and defeat Supot. 

Supot doesn't have these three under his control yet; he does not know of Grace's potential to see the future. I also think this is already showing you a symbol that even if idealism is futile, the future is always filled with potential for change, potenial for hope and potential for a difference. Grace being able to see her self in the future suggests that the message we've been shown so far can still change, the mistakes of the past can still be erased and improved on, and we will be fine. Supot does not know how much these kids believe in Pang's idealism and in how much these kids want change and want to fight for what is right:

From the beginning, these kids are perfect for defeating Supot:

We have Time: who will do anything for the right reason, someone who wants change, someone who fights for change and fights for doing the right, justified thing. Time does not give up easily, and just like Pang, he's idealistic and hopeful about changing the world.

Grace: does not give a fuck about traditions and the system. she thinks that as long as you try and as long as you make an effort, you can get what you want. Unlike Time, Grace isn't afraid to try different ways to achieve her goals even if they seem wrong/not moral. She's someone who cares about her friends and her peers, and she doesn't care about adults.

Third: Aggressively chooses what is right, he likes to be correct, he likes to be on the side of power but because he wants to be useful. He likes doing good and ensuring that people follow the rules. This is also a negative because if he ends up believing that Supots rules are the right thing, then he can also be a villain. Still, for now, he believes that Pang and the ministry are correct, so he is going to aggressively fight for those rules to be followed, for the right thing to be done.

So with our new generation, we have determination despite seeing futility, we have lack of care for tradition, adults and the system despite how scary it seems, we have hope, and a will to fight for what is right. And we have people who want justice. Isn't it funny? Although gifted shows the failure of society, the way we are all stuck in old systems that are cruel and wrong, the way achieving change and equality is always seeming futile to us because of the people above us, the new generation still stays fighting. The new generation does not give up; they're loud, active and willing to get change no matter what. These three students are now with Pang (who has escaped) the people who still can defeat Supot. We may have had history repeat, but the new generations learn from history, knows not to give up hope, and pushes on to try and change.

So you see, using Season 1 repetition and mirroring to keep echoing that Pang's idealism for change and equality is futile, useless and ineffective, we also get one more repetition where just as Chanon said about Pang in the past showing up to prove Supot wrong and fight for change, we get Grace and her crew now taking Pang's place as our main characters ready to go fight for change and end Supot's tyranny. And you know what? I believe that we will get a successful ending because of this. I think this is beautiful, way to show that the world might be broken (especially with all that has been going in 2020: the riots in Thailand for equality and freedom, black lives matter in the US, NSARS in Nigeria and other countries that have been fighting for a change)  but we still can fight for change and equality. Having idealism may seem futile, but it isn't, it's needed and its what's going to change and break the system. So thank you for The Gifted Graduation for this message.

[fivenightslaughter]

Wicked Serpentine (Part 4)

pairing: draco malfoy x femravenclaw!oc

summary: slowburn enemies to lovers fic, multiple parts. <3

warnings: none i think

word count: 1,668

taglist: let me know if you’re interested in being added!

a/n: short severus related part 

I skipped through that night in my mind, fast forwarding to my entrance to Diagon Alley. I had looked like a scared and abandoned puppy, which made sense considering my circumstances.

I had twenty galleons in my pocket and Lily’s letters in a bag on my side. Ollivanders. All I had to do was make it to Ollivanders and buy a wand. I felt sweat bead my forehead and I tried desperately to navigate through the ridiculous amount of people here. They towered over me and swept on by, making me feel dizzy and panicked. I needed to calm down, but I couldn’t.

I spotted a rather dark and empty looking alleyway and rushed for it, attempting to regain myself in the shadows for a brief moment. I closed my eyes and slowly sucked in a breath. I counted before releasing and did this a few times before opening my eyes, sure my heart rate had finally slowed.

Seemingly for nothing, however, because as soon as I glanced around me, I noticed eyes eating me up. Hungry and yearning, greasy looking faces. People that looked ragged and not much human at all, figures with crooked smiles, closed in on me.

“What’s a pretty little girlie like you doing here?” The words sounded snake-like, as if it were a hiss. My entire body felt like a stone. I was inching down onto the ground, trying to shy away. I felt my body hit the stone bricks and felt suffocated.

As quickly as they had appeared, with a curious glance behind me, they all hurried off to the end of the alleyway. They took sharp turns into different directions, scattering like mice. A voice reverberated on the stone walls and I felt even stiffer than before.

“What are you doing... in a place like this?” He allowed me to turn my head to him and I discovered that he was a tall man, cloaked in palpable darkness. His words were nearly monotonous but still clearly a question. It felt as if every word he’d spoken had been planned decades in advance. My heart raced with more fear than before.

He had dark hair that stopped just below his ears and a lined face, as if he had suffered many years of tumultuous grief and it had etched itself onto him. He showed no sign of it, however, other than those very creases.

“ Well ?” He drawled expectantly.

I was suddenly very aware of my blinking and breathing. In a wildly nervous manner, I fumbled with the bag on my side, retrieving a parchment that came with the owl from my window. It was a long list of things I needed but likely couldn’t get. I tried handing the paper out to him as I spoke.

“Well, sir, I was trying to find Ollivander’s to buy a wand. I also need to find the things on this list but I… don’t know where to start, and I much doubt I have the funds for more than a few things.” I managed, trying my best to speak despite the immense pressure I felt in his presence.

He narrowed his eyes as he scanned me up and down, ignoring the paper.

“I’ve seen the list before… How odd you haven't a wand at… This age.”

I folded the page and pressed it back down into my bag.

 “It’s a long story, sir.”

His eyes were still narrowed as he offered me a hand. I was inches from the ground and felt like a tiny child being reprimanded for skinning her knee. I allowed his help, grabbing his outstretched hand.

It was so cold I had to keep from sucking my teeth. As soon as my legs were straight I yanked my hand away as politely as I could manage. It was a cold that sent a shiver down my spine, a feeling of fear. I was glad it hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds or I’d surely freeze to death.

He turned swiftly, his robes swishing behind him in a dramatic manner.

“You may follow me… to Ollivander’s.” He spoke with his back to me, but it was as clear and vibrating as when he spoke to my face. His words were not a request, but rather a command. I followed without hesitation, grateful I had some kind of help- however terrifying it may be.

He led me to a gorgeous shop, holding the door for me to go inside. I hurried in and immediately found myself taken with the walls and walls of boxes and papers. I carefully headed for the desk and the only other person in the store. I’d assumed this was Ollivander himself?

He looked up at me from whatever he was doing at the table and a broad grin crossed his face. “Here for a wand, eh?” He chuckled to himself. I meekly nodded and he turned to the boxes on the wall, contemplating for a moment before plucking one down.

“Here, try this.” He lifted the top of the box, gently pulling a dainty stick from its long sleep in the dark cardboard.

I hesitantly pulled it from his fingers, weighing it in my hands. My hand curled perfectly around it and it had felt so natural I wondered if I’d ever lived as a muggle at all. He seemed pleased by my reaction and slid the box back into the wall, as if it had never been touched.

“Would you like to try a spell?”

Before I could choke out a ‘no’ and explain that I hadn’t known about magic until days ago, a presence weighed heavily behind me. I had almost forgotten about the man that led me here.

“She’ll be going.” He stated plainly, placing seven gold galleons down on the table in front of me, to Ollivander.

He looked a bit jumpy in such a dark presence, his hand clasping over the money on the table. “Yes, I see.” He looked from the eerie man down to me, a smile dusting his features still.

I heard a faint “Enjoy your wand, dear!” as I was ushered out of the store.

I turned to face the man, a bit peeved he’d been so gracious and yet such a weirdly cold figure. I didn’t understand his motivations. When I reached his eyes, I found that he had been peering down at me, his face tied in a mild sneer and his head tilted back carefully as if he were above all.

It shocked me how he could look at me in such a way when his actions thus far had been wildly opposite. Sighing, I spoke carefully.

“I am incredibly grateful for your generosity and directions to Ollivander’s. Paying for my wand was not necessary, but I am appreciative of your immense kindness. Thank you.”

It was probably the only sentence I’d spoken to him so far without confusedly stuttering and I was grateful to myself for it. The sneer on his face seemed to soften, although he was still very much unreadable.

“ What is your name?” He asked yet another plain question in the same monotonous, drawn tone.

“Eris Woodwork, sir.” I replied, assuredly. He gave a curt ‘hm.’ and turned on his heel, his robes swishing grandly again. I had been ready for him to leave me and to navigate the rest of this place myself. I silently wondered to myself if I could ask people for directions to places when he cut through my thoughts.

“Severus Snape. I have business to attend to, however, we will collect your… items … Along the way.”

That was the most I’d heard him speak the rest of the day I’d spent with him, buying robes and books and the like. It was rather fun once I’d gotten used to the way air turned to ice around him in any room we entered. I didn’t even spend a galleon, which was incredibly odd to me. I had wondered how much all of it would have cost if tallied and why he’d even chosen to help me.

Pushing it all out of my head, my mind came back to the bed I now lay in. My case open and my wand in my hand. No Severus Snape, no Luna, no Malfoy or Hagrid. Just me, alone in this extravagantly empty bedroom. I pulled out my folded clothes that I’d wear tomorrow along with the books I’d need and placed them on the nightstand at the end of my bed. I latched my trunk closed and pushed it off the side of my bed, hearing it hit the floor with a soft ‘thunk’.

I stretched and eased completely back onto the pillow. Examining the wooden wand in my hands, I bit my lip in thought. This wand was real, this world was real, and magic was real. I felt as if I had to keep reminding myself or it would all slip away like a dream.

Wand in my hand, my face seemed to sink into the plushness of the blue pillowcase. I felt my hand tighten around the stick, my knuckles undoubtedly white. It was my alternative to just pinching myself. It was the only thing keeping me awake.

Tucking my free hand under the pillow, I held the wand close to my face and examined it. My scrutinous gaze absorbed every edge, lift, or pockmark. It was mostly smooth and light, fitting as perfectly in my hand as it had in Ollivander’s.

The tip began to glow, softly. It warmly illuminated my face and drew my mouth into a smile. I felt any remaining nerves unknot themselves in my stomach and I let my hand drop to the bed, the light dimming into nothing.

My grip loosened lightly as I began to wonder, ‘why stay awake?’

I felt a yawn escape me and I laughed lightly to myself. I don’t need to.

With that final thought, I drifted into a near dreamless sleep.

[gunmetal-magnus]

And what if I can’t?  What if I’m not worthy of my ideals?

As I stare out my apartment window and watch the drizzling sky, I’m drawn to the subtle gradient of yellow.  Clouds coasting through the sky, gray yet without dismay.  And the sun?  The sun will live to break another day, that I am confident in.  I only wish I were so confident in myself.

....

Life is strange.  Mine in particular looks like it might be going in a good direction.  I’ve been getting interviews for jobs and as someone who’s spent their fair share of time hopelessly unemployed and depressed, not knowing what to do with themselves (besides salsaing with suicide ideation), I should be elated about any progress.  I wish I could say that I am or even that I was but that wouldn’t be accurate.  The truth is that I’m a harrowing hailstorm of things - surprisedsleepybusycuriousthankfuloptimisticexposedhorrifiedcriticalnervousanxiousinsecurepressuredtired - it’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?

Knocking on the looming doors of success, I find myself feeling the crushing weight of my expectations.  The walls are a deafening white with not a texture or pattern in sight.  If you try to touch them they ripple like water.  There are no windows for me to peer through.  Fog creeps around me like a cheetah stalking its prey.  It’s so thick you could choke on it.  Success is...scary.

I know I know, that sounds a ridiculous thing to say, shouldn’t I be more afraid of failing?  Welllll...no.  You see, the weight I mentioned earlier was not merely crushing, it was also comforting.  Over time failure became familiar and eventually, my friend.  I got used to failure as the status quo, smothered in its cosy embrace and the threat of change, of combing out of this embrace into the chilling embrace of uncertainty, of becoming someone worthy of their success - it’s unfamiliar, it’s scary.  But just what is so comforting about not achieving your goals - about not getting what you really want?  For me it’s because of one paralyzing question: And what if I can’t?  What if I’m not worthy of my ideals?

“But…I’m…I’m just a soldier, I-I’m not worthy.”

It’s a terrifying prospect that I could give something my all and find that I just couldn’t do it.  I don’t want to be saying “I did my best and it wasn’t good enough,” because what I may mean is “I wasn’t good enough.  I don’t have the power.”  But that’s exactly the point!  I do have the power and if that is true then I have to come to terms with my responsibility to that power - that it’s up to me to use that power because when you can do the things that you can do...and then the bad things happen...they happen because of you.  I don’t want that burden so it’s easier to cast it off and reinvent the narrative by claiming powerlessness.  It’s easier to identify as a fraud and be done with it, to say to myself “men like me should’ve never dared to believe.”

Haha…paradoxically in our journey to discover our own power we discover just how little power we hold, that our only power is in ourselves.  Time and how bound we are to what we know at present, our surrounding circumstances, and the fact that we’re only people who can only do people things - these serve to remind us that the power of what we control and free will are only so vast.  It’s strange - you are responsible for how you use your power but not the outcome because you’re not omnipotent.  Bad things don’t always happen because of you.  Sometimes they just happen.  Sometimes things in general...just happen.

Let’s say I achieve success, what then?  The pressure to maintain is immense and to exceed - it’s even more so.  Who perpetuates this pressure?  For many of us it’s society but the greater threat lies within the darkness of our own hearts.  The societal gaze is nothing without validation and that validation comes from our self-worth and how grossly entangely that is with achieving success.  There is an expectation of linearity and escalation in progress, if you get good grades you’re expected to keep getting good grades and then some, so it’s shocking and disappointing when you don't.  People wonder how that could’ve happened, you wonder how it could’ve happened, you start to doubt yourself...should you though?  Writer and retired athlete Christopher Bergland challenges the expectation of linearity in success and explained in a conversation with his daughter, “I learned as an athlete that in order to succeed and become the best that I could be, I had to fail again and again—but always keep trying. Inevitably, every time I raised the bar, and took on a new athletic challenge, I would have to fail first in order to ultimately succeed and break a record." He embraced failure as part of the ebb and flow, it was part of success.  To him, failure was no reason for doubt.  So why should it be for me?  I don’t know, because life’s not that simple I suppose?  Identifying as unworthy and fraudulent, these are not easy to shake.  Negative self-identity manifests itself in habitual self-sabotage.  Worrying about how we align with our perceptions of ourselves, procrastination via instant gratification distractions like Instagram scrolling and going back on our promises such as taking that drink we know we shouldn’t become commonplace - habitual and they will take habitual work to undo them.

Even so, is this really just about the burden of ideals?  Perhaps not.  Susanne Babbel writes in her article “Fear of Success'' that the physiological reactions to trauma and excitement over success are similar - too similar. “When we experience a traumatic event — such as a car accident or a school bullying incident — our body associates the fear we experience with the same physiological feelings we get while excited.”  Heart tensions, shortness of breath, quivering and more - they are triggered in me by both stimuli and my body cares not for the messenger, only the message and that message is “be afraid.”  

if I’m responding to excitement as if it were trauma, the question is what is my trauma?  

…

Babbel mentions that throughout our lives, we may be made to feel less than, “many of us — especially if we've been subject to verbal abuse — have been told we were losers our whole lives, in one way or another. We have internalized that feedback and feel that we don't deserve success.”  I knew someone who made me feel like this, I called her my mum.  I spent a lifetime being told by her in one way or another that I wasn’t good enough.  I remember being dragged into the unlit attic by her for losing a crayon as a child, I remember being shouted at for getting some mediocre grades in junior high school - being told that I better do better, I remember being told that she had given up hope on me - I remember, all of it.  We don’t talk anymore - except we do.  I internalised her voice and I made it my own, I began to identify with failure.  I have an excerpt from an old journal entry that illustrates this identity crisis all too well.

                                                                                                                               5.11.20

“Sometimes I really wonder

If it’s better

To be a 

Fuckup

Than a Success

Without

The Interesting Mess.

...Why do I have to compromise the things that make me who I am to be happy?...Why can’t I have my misery?...I hate doing the right thing...Maybe I like being a failure, a mess, a no man’s man.”

By this time I had long since left home but you can’t outrun your demons, only challenge them.  I have only begun to unravel this voice due the therapy I have recently completed and am fighting this battle every day.  Sometimes I lose and they gain territory.  Other times I manage to reclaim it and even add more.  It’s an endless battle.

And yet, the voice of Failure clings to me like some foul smog.  Since he doesn’t want to let me try and fall, he’ll say, “It’s comfortable here.  Flounder into the fondue of failure, it’s what you know - it suits you.  What precisely is so wrong with failure in the first place?”

…

It’s a good question.  In an ideal world, the answer may be, “nothing in particular,” because I don’t need to succeed to be valid - do the people you love need to be successful for you to love them?  I should hope not.  However, it is not so simple for me to love myself.  Failure will cost me something more than money and a career.  The price of failure is stagnation, embracing the non-linearity of progress and I hate that.  I’m grossly impatient and want to move forward with my life, not wallow in the depths of Misery Mires.  I’ve been stuck here all my life and I’ve just begun the journey out of here.  Failure, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t suit me as well as you think.  I must change sometime because I don’t want to die in the claws of the demons from which I was born.

I can’t stay in my comfort zone.  Yet I can - I’d even quite like to.  Why?  Because...because...deep down I’m still reconciling with the idea that I’m worthy, that I’m worthy of living a life worth living, that I can be what I say I am without fear that it’s all a lie and always will be.  The only way for me to challenge such a belief is to fly in the face of it - to say that “I am worthy” and to act like I mean it, whatever that means - I don’t quite know yet.  My therapist and I agreed that this would be a long road and that ideals are nothing without practice.  I guess all I can do now is drive…

“If you aren’t worthy, you’ll keep trying until you are.”   In order for me to be worthy of my ideals, I first need to believe that I even have a shot.  Beyond that, I need to believe that I deserve to take it. Being worthy means recognising my power to change and the responsibility to act that  comes with that.  Simultaneously, my power is not all-controlling as I am only a person.  Success isn’t linear and failure is a part of that.  However the burden of trauma is heavy.  The self-sabatory habits I picked up from that will require me to reinvent my self-identity and in turn deconstruct those habits.   Lastly and perhaps most importantly, I need to be willing to give the process time.  Can I?  Haha! - s-sure, why not?

Perhaps one day I will find myself staring out into the sky - maybe it’s drizzling, maybe it’s not.  Maybe through an apartment window, maybe in a lush field as the gentle breeze brushes by.  The clouds are coasting by as they always have, slowly but surely.  What colour are they?  Who cares, I don’t even know what colour the sky will be.  Maybe it’s illuminated with a lovely peach pink that reaches out and touches the heart of my inner romantic.   Maybe it’s an apocalyptic red that leaves you weak in the knees - the possibilities are endless but it doesn’t matter - it doesn’t matter what may be.  What matters is what will be and 

I will be watching.

I’ll say I’m worthy and

I will mean it.

I don’t know yet know how

But I will

Because that’s what I’ve decided.

[thetorturerwrites]

Lamb: Ch 5 - With Firm Faith

***This amazing artwork was gifted to me by @elmidol​​. Please do not re-use or re-post it without permission from them and/or myself. Don’t be a dickbag.

Previous Chapter

Summary: It was three steps. Three steps and a world away.

A hundred questions rose in your throat. Did he speak to them? What did he say? Could they see him? Would you be comforted if that version of The Ren was the last thing you saw? What did the team moving behind and around him actually do? What happened to these people after they died?

A/N: Y’all aren’t new. This is adult content. Potentially triggering. Tread carefully.

Word Count: 2.7k

"Hail Leia, full of grace and blessed among women," you grimaced through the prayer, twisting in the sheets, all composure lost.

After the row at the Demarcation, and the nights after, he took you to his bed.

He no longer chased you down in the hallways for his kisses. He saved them. Every day, he scooped you up from wherever you were in the keep, herded you into his bed, and plied you with hungry kisses until you squirmed with senseless desire.

He didn’t immediately leave, either. After that bourbon butterscotch flavor rolled over your tongue, he would capture your gaze, mesmerizing you with the way his irises never quite picked a single hue. Like this, every time, he spun you into spellbound sleep.

Sometimes, he stayed with you. You would wake up groggy and entangled in his sculpted limbs. He told you it was because your nightmares drove you to somnolent sobbing, the sounds of which echoed annoyingly.

You remembered them all. Dreams of your family, their deaths, your journey here, and its purpose.

Any moment you had his attention, you tried to ask about the bargain you’d struck, but he would brush the words away from your lips, rubbing at them absently. In exchange, he would answer another question.

Sort of.

You learned that there truly had been countless others to sacrifice themselves for his favors, and you were right about the altar being stained with blood over time, but he wouldn’t tell you how many he’d actually granted. He confirmed that he tracked the passage of time, but his answer confused you. Nothing here was linear, he said. He simply liked the sound of the clock moving ever forward.

Last night, you asked how many he’d brought back here, kept as a pet, but his eyes darkened with irritation. Then, because foolish was your genetic code, you asked what made you not ready to make good on your end of the deal. On the heels of your stupid curiosity, you’d slept alone.

Besides waking up disoriented next to a deity, he kept you in a constant state of arousal. With kisses that would melt marble, nips to your earlobe that raised goosebumps, and the barest brush of knuckles against your flushing skin. He was relentless, ensuring that it was, in fact, only a matter of time before you begged him to fuck you.

It was this sweaty, weighty, vulgar need that sent your hands roaming, mapping the curves and valleys of your body. You pressed your face into his pillow to inhale the sickly sweet aroma that lingered. You groaned and twisted, feeling light-headed and too full of raw energy for your limbs.

Try as you might to endure his delicious torture chastely, you could only handle so much before the screaming in your cunt demanded you take action.

Digging your fingernails in roughly, you scratched angry red tracks into your inner thighs and the outer, meaty labia in an attempt to subvert the craving, but it only loosed a shudder that lifted your shoulders off the bed. 

It would be fine, you coached yourself. He was never here. Just a bit, just a touch would be fine.

Letting your knees fall apart wide, you surged into a painful arch as your fingers connected with your long neglected clit. You skipped everything else; there was no need for foreplay or build up. You hit that wet hot target and worked it desperately, hurriedly.

“Is this what you do when I’m not here?”

You shrieked as his voice broke through the commotion in your brain.  You rolled away to hide what you were doing, burning with shame and bristling with unsatisfied lust, but he caught your ankle and pulled you down the bed. Your shirt, his that you’d been wearing since he caught you in it, hitched up around your ribs, baring the evidence of your hunger.

He crawled onto the bed’s corner, inching nearer, and you couldn’t make yourself breathe.

He skimmed your inner thighs, tickling through the stickiness, and tutted at what he found there. Easing down to lie beside you, he turned your face to his and pressed his now tart fingers to your mouth.

“Harlot.”

It was a low rumble, nearly a purr; and in response, your pussy clenched hard around nothing. Dipping his head down slightly, he caught your gaze and held it, the entrancing array of changing color and depth beckoning you in.

You couldn’t have looked away for anything in the Galaxy. It was murky and hypnotic. And when he slipped his fingertips past your lips, you were gone.

“Look at you,” he said, peering into your very soul. “I quite like you like this. Mindless, panting, begging to be filled.”

Slipping wide fingers beneath your jagged collar, he held you to the bed, a physical counterpart to his mental bondage. His free hand wandered, squeezing your breasts, barely grazing through your dewy sex. Emptying you of everything but this all-encompassing yearning.

“Concentrate, little lamb.” He nipped at your lower lip to draw your fluttering eyelids back open and your eyes to focus upon him. “What shall I say to bring you back here? Hm?”

Your insides pooled to lava, painting your thighs and perfuming the air. Your lips wobbled, the feeling building and threatening to tip you over. You were little more than insatiable, feral need made human; and from somewhere, your gray matter produced only supplication.

“...please.”

Please put your hands, your mouth, your dick in me, on me, somewhere, anywhere. Please let me cum for you. Please please please please.

His lips tugged up into a smirk. His eyes flashed with a devilish spark. He leaned down to line his mouth up with the lobe of your ear, his cool breath eliciting a delectable shiver. He was ice to your fire, and you wanted nothing more than to die of hypothermia.

“All right, girl.” His fingers lazily pet your pussy, just a hint of pressure. “I’ll say it.  I’ll say please; and when I do, you’ll feel exactly this way — swollen with want, throbbing and feverish, your cunt aching to be stretched and used.”

Absent his narcotic stare, your eyes slammed tight shut on an obscene moan. Sluggishly, your mind worked its way around to functioning, and you clutched at his sleeves with all your might. The thinking part of your brain knew this was manipulation, that he was conditioning you to behave the way he wanted.

The rest of you couldn't care less.

Nearly there, you dug your toes into the soft covers and tipped your hips in just that right way. If he stayed right there for another moment… If you could just hang onto the way you were feeling right now…

As though he could hear the pitiful pleas inside your mind, he pushed his thumb into your mouth to smear that candied drug across your tongue, and your brain exploded. Your body bowed painfully as electricity sizzled up your spine and into your cranium. It was so tight and so sudden of an orgasm you left your body on a sharp cry.

You felt unstable, combustible, and you could do nothing but writhe and shout as the satisfied seizure rolled through you. He spoke through it all, his voice raspy and barely controlled, but whatever he said was lost, each word a victim of the inferno.

At the other side, where you were wrung dry and buzzing from head to toe, guilty tears stung your eyes.

You shouldn’t feel this good. You shouldn’t feel good at all until your purpose here was fulfilled. The purpose he kept you from. And the reward he withheld. Sniffling, you pushed at his shoulder and tried to wiggle from beneath his hands.

Whatever sort of intimate moment this was passed quickly, and the man who’d coaxed you to the sort of orgasm you’d never had before shifted into stoic silence. His features hardened, and his eyes grew cold. Grasping your upper arm, he slid from the bed with you in tow. 

You didn't understand what you’d done; but finally, you knew better than to speak.

You jogged next to him, trying in vain to not dawdle, but his legs were so ridiculously long that you struggled to keep up. The dismal, narrow hallway opened up into an immense room so breathtaking you stalled. The walls stretched up forever and disappeared into a sparkling night sky. Sconces twinkled about the room, firelight dancing inside demure, perfectly spherical glass bulbs. You stared at the oddity of it so long you crashed directly into your captor, who had stopped to open a chest at the foot of what you decided was the largest throne you’d ever see.

Too intrigued to let it go, you tugged yourself free so you could investigate the lights. You stood on your toes, trying to get a better look. On a gasp, it registered for you just as he spoke your name.

Stars. The sconces held stars.

You marveled at how, daily, you found something to remind you that you were in The Ren’s clutches. He didn’t just create flowers; he made luscious killers. It wasn’t just a bath; it was magic water. They weren’t just lights; it was trapped starlight.

That cosmic snap cracked to draw your attention, punctuating the vast difference between you as a human and him as decidedly not.  

Once you were within his grasp, he stole your shirt in seconds and tossed it over his shoulder as a cadre of men walked into the room. You covered your breasts and squeezed your thighs together, shooting him an angry stare, but he only slapped your hands away and wrapped something long, flowing, and midnight blue around you.

“As much as I enjoyed you in my shirt, lamb, it’s time for something different.”

It resembled a cloak, but with sleeves and a hood, and the flowing bottom portion barely covered you. All he had to do was move one fold aside, and you would be on lewd display. He buttoned the thing around you, tucking the sides in about your breasts, lingering to skim a knuckle over one until it tightened for him.

You didn’t know if you should say thank you. Everything he did was for himself, for his pleasure; so, you didn’t think this was a gift just for you. Pressing your lips into a thin line, you watched him for any hint as to what you should do next.

In the very center of the room was a massive, free-standing obsidian wall, toward which you were hastily led. Bewildered, you frowned at the dull shine of the thing, at the subtle ripple radiating out from the center, at the way you could almost hear voices the closer you got.

What came next, though, set you to anxiously fidgeting.

The Ren stood to one side, and the unit of men who’d appeared from nowhere took up flank. You faced that wall, trapped by the wraiths hulking between you and what you now considered safety. Stealing your focus, the god to your left tipped your face up and searched it for what felt like an agonizingly long time. Etched into his beautiful features was uncertainty, doubt, but what was he looking for? What was he deciding?

“Close your eyes.”

His tone was gentler than you expected, and his fingers didn’t gouge into your skin the way they had when he was angry. With his heavy arm about your shoulder, he tucked you in tight against his body.

It was three steps. Three steps and a world away.

When his hold loosened, you lifted your head and peered out from beneath his shroud.  You stood onto your toes and looked over his shoulder, piecing it all together. What you thought was a wall was more like a window, a portal to anywhere, it seemed. On that side was the keep you knew, the familiar corridors and rooms you’d started to figure out.

On this side was a whistling, wicked wind, prophetic gray clouds, and a raging battle. The Ren, too, had transformed. He towered above you, a looming destiny. The cozy shroud you just enjoyed came alive, whipping and billowing around its Master. Worse, a terrible black helmet and mask hid his face. The visor was an onyx void, not reflecting even the smallest shard of light.

This was The Ren you expected that first day.

Subconsciously, you took a step away, but a hard glove latched onto your biceps, and the hammer of your heartbeat intensified.

“Stay here.” The voice that came from inside the helmet was crisp, almost hollow, and you shied away from it. “You touch nothing. You speak to no one. You stay here.”

Dumbstruck, you nodded, ready to prove that you could be more than an idiot girl. They left you at the top of a knoll in the very center of a haunted, stormy sky. Mere steps away, The Ren’s red death saber blazed into existence.

The weight of what you saw dropped you to the ground. The stories were true. He was a ghastly specter, and he reaped in a carmine haze.

The vastness of the universe shrank to this hill, this battlefield.  It was all you could process. Gunshots rang out. Blaster fire shot sparks high into the air. Muffled shouts and curses mingled with wailing, with horror and hurt. The boom of a bomb in the distance infused your very marrow with terror, even if you weren’t sure you could die here.

Swallowing down your fear, you tracked the only thing you knew.

Through the fray, The Ren’s path was measured, purposeful. He whirled from fighter to fighter, spinning agilely to miss those who weren't ready for him, but it wasn’t clear if he ever spoke. Each time he paused, still as stone, interminable seconds would pass; and then, they would fall, lifeless.

A hundred questions rose in your throat. Did he speak to them? What did he say? Could they see him? Would you be comforted if that version of The Ren was the last thing you saw? What did the team moving behind and around him actually do? What happened to these people after they died?

A warbled sound interrupted your fascination, and you hunted for its origin. Your breath caught at the sight of a young man at the bottom of your hill. Attempting to crawl away from the battle, he hiccuped and sobbed on each painful inch gained.

In a flash, you succumbed to stupid and threw yourself down the hill. Scrambling near to him, you cursed this day, these people because he was just a boy, barely old enough to hold a weapon. There was no way to know if he had been sold to war or was trying to defend his home; but either way, he was too young to be here.

Conscious of at least some of your instructions, you didn’t touch him, but doing nothing to relieve this boy’s suffering was out of the question. His distressed howls cracked apart your heart.

You knew that pain.

Lips trembling, you lay down beside him and pressed your face to the grass near his wounded head. You had no idea if he could see or hear you, but you had to try; and at the first sound of your voice, his panic lessened. He bit down on his lip to keep from crying, listening intently, and you strove to make your voice as kind and warm as your Nona’s always was.

We believe in the Balance, Grandfather Sky Walker, and the makers of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

We believe in our Fathers, the rightful heirs of the Galaxy, born before all others and all ages.

We believe they made the Balance for our salvation. For our sake, the Fathers hold creation and death in their hands, and we believe them to be just, steadfast, and eternal.

We believe in one true way and the promise of peace in the Balance. We strive to live it, day by day, that we will be fairly judged at the hour of our death.

With firm faith, we make this proclamation and pray it reaches the ears of our Fathers, for theirs is the way, the life, and the Balance.

At the end of your litany, your young warrior was calm. His fingers loosely held his chest, splayed over his heart. He had joined you in prayer; and though you weren’t certain he could see you, he was looking directly at you with such gratitude, such grace and love.

It was a long moment before you realized the boy’s wasn’t the only gaze on you.

[ibijau]

Worst engagement AU // on AO3

Nie Huaisang decides to play a game, only for it to get out of hand.

Set about a week and a half after they return to Cloud Recesses after Wen Chao’s wedding, and about two or three days after Nie Huaisang got a letter telling him some of his birds died

Nie Huaisang enters the house expecting everything to be exactly the same as always. It has been months now, and they’ve never varied from their routine, except those few recent occasions Lan Xichen managed to convince him again to talk about art. Even then, he had to go get his paintings from his room, allowing them to waste a little time.

Today, though, there’s a xiao on the table. It puzzles Nie Huaisang at first, but while Lan Xichen goes to light the incense he recalls a conversation in Nightless City and snorts.

“Lan gongzi, you’re really trying too hard. I guess it really annoys you that anyone might accuse you of not keeping your word, eh?”

“If I make an offer to you, then I intend to see it through,” Lan Xichen replies, coming to the table to serve tea for Nie Huaisang. His own cup appears to have been already filled earlier, before the tea became too strong for his tastes.

“So serious,” Nie Huaisang mutters, unsure how to feel about that. 

He knows Lan Xichen is a skilled musician, so it wouldn’t be unpleasant to hear him play, and it’d avoid the need for conversation. But that’s the issue: in the past, Lan Xichen has used music as an excuse to avoid having to talk to him, when they were younger, and to this day Nie Huaisang hasn’t forgiven it.

“I try to be,” Lan Xichen replies, putting down the teapot with perfect elegance. “So, would that please Nie gongzi? Or would you rather play Go?” he asks, almost making it sound like it's a joke between them. It kind of is, at this point.

“Yes.”

Lan Xichen nods and reaches for his xiao, but Nie Huaisang makes a gesture to stop him.

“No, I meant… fine. Let’s play Go.”

“Really?” Lan Xichen gasps, his eyes widening as a smile spreads on his face.

Nie Huaisang shrugs and looks away, as if it doesn’t really matter to him. It doesn’t. Between this and music, Go is the lesser of two evils because he doesn’t have any bad memories associated to it, and he enjoys playing it in general… but he’s half regretting agreeing to it because Lan Xichen is so happy about it that he struggles to return to his normal empty smile. At the same time, it’s always nice to provoke a crack in his jade mask.

“We play until the incense runs out,” Nie Huaisang announces while Lan Xichen fetches the board. “Or until there’s a clear winner. What colour do you want?”

“I’m fine with either,” Lan Xichen assures him, his hands trembling slightly as he puts the board on the table. It’s almost cute, really.

“Then I want white.”

The game starts quietly. Once he gets his head into it, Lan Xichen appears to calm down and turns once more into his usual jade statue self. At least, he mostly does. Sometimes he can’t help a small smile after seeing Nie Huaisang’s choice of move, or else he’ll raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. Nie Huaisang is used to expressive adversaries since he mostly plays with Jiang Cheng, but for some reason Lan Xichen’s little reactions are immensely distracting.

Too distracting, in fact. Between that, Nie Huaisang’s struggles to really focus on anything since hearing the fate of his birds, and the fact that Lan Xichen is an excellent player, Nie Huaisang isn’t doing too well with this game. Since he absolutely refuses to lose against his fiancé, that means he’ll have to play dirty.

Thankfully, playing Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng has given him plenty of experience with that.

“You know, I’ve been wondering something,” Nie Huiasang says just as Lan Xichen moves to put down a stone. “At Wen Chao’s wedding… how did you know that alcohol would have a bad effect on you?”

As expected Lan Xichen freezes and throws him a slightly worried look. Nie Huaisang gasps theatrically, putting one hand on his heart.

“Lan gongzi… did you break the rule and drink alcohol before?”

Lan Xichen looks down in shame.

“I would rather not speak about this.”

“While I absolutely want to know! Lan gongzi, I need to know. Am I going to marry someone who’s secretly a drunkard? Ah, poor me if it is so!”

“It was only one time,” Lan Xichen protests, his cheeks quickly turning pink. “And it was your brother’s idea. You know how Mingjue gets when he wants something.”

“Drinking and giving in to peer pressure, how shameful,” Nie Huaisang sneers, leaning over the table and resting his chin on his hand. “Lan gongzi, what would your uncle say?”

“My uncle knows because I told him, and he gave me the appropriate punishment, of course,” Lan Xichen retorts haughtily.

Nie Huaisang snorts at that very Lan behaviour. When Lan Xichen finally puts down his stone, it’s not on the spot he was originally aiming for, and in fact it leaves Nie Huaisang with an opening he’s quick to seize. It’s obvious that Lan Xichen has only played serious games with serious people, if just a little bit of friendly chatting can disturb him this much.

“Maybe Lan gongzi should drink more often,” Nie Huaisang says with affected casualness as he puts down his own stone. “Lan gongzi was very entertaining. Had Lan gongzi never held hands with someone before?”

He glances toward Lan Xichen, and nearly bursts out laughing at how red the other boy is turning.

“I’ve held my brother’s hand many times when he was little,” Lan Xichen protests. His voice and expression are still calm in spite of his heavy blush. “My mother’s too.”

“Family doesn’t count. Ah! Lan gongzi! That means I was your first!”

Lan Xichen’s eyes open wide, and he drops the stone he just picked up.

“Don’t say it like that,” he mumbles, looking down and fumbling to find the stone that fell onto his knees.

“Why not?” Nie Huaisang innocently asks. “Can’t I be happy to be my future husband’s first… hand holding? You’re not mine, I’m afraid, but you could have been if Wei Wuxian didn’t have a habit of grabbing everyone like that. Ah… are you disappointed to not be my first?”

Lan Xichen, who had just found his stone again, drops it a second time and stares at Nie Huaisang like a rabbit in front of a fox.

“You’re teasing me,” Lan Xichen mumbles in a pathetic manner than Nie Huaisang can’t help but find adorable. “This is… this is not an appropriate conversation.”

“Lan gongzi, are you embarrassed by hand holding?” Nie Huaisang snorts. “That’s going to make our wedding night interesting for sure. Hey, you know how that’s supposed to go, right? If you don’t, I can explain to you, I’ve read a bit about it.”

The way Lan Xichen gapes at him like a fish out of water is amazing. Nie Huaisang’s own cheeks are a bit hot from joking so boldly on such a matter, but it’s well worth it to see Lan Xichen so out of his depth. Nie Huaisang can’t wait for the meeting to be over so he can go tell Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan that the First Jade can react like a normal person sometimes.

“Can we please just go back to the game?” Lan Xichen begs, looking down at the board. “This isn’t… I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk at all. Can’t we just play?”

“Am I distracting you from the game?” Nie Huaisang asks, batting his eyelashes. “I am so sorry. Here, I’ll help you to make up for it.”

To Lan Xichen’s growing horror, Nie Huaisang rises and joins him on the other side of the table, sitting right next to him, pressing against his side to steal a black stone. It’s a trick that Wei Wuxian has often used against him and Jiang Cheng when he felt he was about to lose and didn’t want to admit it, knowing that if he pissed them off enough they might drop the game in favour of arguing. Nie Huaisang rarely fell for it, but it’s very efficient on Jiang Cheng’s proud temper.

“Here, I’ll play this one for you,” Nie Huaisang announces in as serious a tone as he can manage. “Aren’t you glad I’m helping you?”

“I don’t need help!” Lan Xichen complains, reaching for the stone, only for Nie Huaisang to move his hand away. “Why… Nie gongzi, you shouldn’t have agreed to play if you weren’t going to take it seriously!”

“I’m so serious!” Nie Huaisang protests, already breaking into laughter as he tries to place the stone on the board, moving it out of reach when Lan Xichen tries for it. “I’m attempting to be nice. When you were drunk you complained about me being too mean, I’m making up for that.”

"Nie Huaisang! This is ridiculous!" 

It is, and Nie Huaisang laughs at his fiancé's outrage. Lan Xichen is the eldest between two siblings, surely he should have dealt with that sort of mischief before. But then again, with a little brother like Lan Wangji, it's not unlikely that he has ever dared to pester Lan Xichen this way. The thought that here too he's the first to do this makes Nie Huaisang laugh even harder. He is thus unprepared when Lan Xichen makes another attempt to get the stone back and, losing his balance, he grabs the nearest thing to avoid falling. That nearest thing happens to be Lan Xichen who did not expect it, so they both fall on the floor. 

Nie Huaisang's hilarity only doubles at being stuck this way under the mighty and ever proper First Jade of Gusu Lan, laughing so hard he's nearly crying. He tightens his fist around the stolen stone to protect it from another rescue attempt, but Lan Xichen doesn't pursue the fight. Intrigued, Nie Huaisang looks up at him, ready to tease him some more. 

Laughter dies in his throat when faced with the intense look on his fiancé's face, the blush on his cheeks. Nie Huaisang suddenly realises how close they are, how Lan Xichen is looming over him. If it were with someone else, their position could be mistaken for something else. But of course it's Lan Xichen, he would never… 

Lan Xichen's eyes flicker to his lips. 

They really are too close. 

Nie Huaisang doesn't mind as much as he should. 

"What's this, Lan gongzi ?" he teases weakly. "I'm so beautiful you feel like trying your chance?" 

As he says this, Nie Huaisang props himself on one elbow, expecting Lan Xichen to move out of his way. He doesn't. Their faces are far too close now. Nie Huaisang' cheeks heat up because he can feel the other boy's breath against his lips, especially when Lan Xichen, far from pulling away, leans toward him. 

The movement is slow, as if to give Nie Huaisang time to protest or turn away. He does neither and just closes his eyes. When Lan Xichen stops, hesitating to cross the last inch, Nie Huaisang does it for him, kissing him. 

Lan Xichen's lips are soft, warmer than Nie Huaisang would have expected if he had allowed himself to entertain this possibility. It feels. It feels nice. Lan Xichen's mouth is gentle against his, a little clumsy but impossibly tender in a way none of the other boys ever were. It's nice, and Nie Huaisang can't help enjoying it. It's nice, and he feels warm and he wants… 

Lan Xichen's hand comes to his cheek, resting there only a moment before curling behind his neck to pull him closer while his tongue hesitantly licks at Nie Huaisang’s lips. That breaks the spell, reminding him where he is, who he is with. Nie Huaisang pushes him away with all the strength he's capable of, making Lan Xichen fall on his back. 

"What do you think you're doing?" he hisses, sitting up. "Who said you could kiss me?" 

The impact is violent enough that Lan Xichen is again gasping like a fish out of water as he stares at Nie Huaisang. Or maybe it's just the surprise of the sudden rejection. 

"I just thought…" 

"You thought?" Nie Huaisang mocks. "I don't think you thought at all! What, I try to be a little nicer for once, and you take that as permission? As if… as if I'd ever kiss you!" 

"You've kissed others," Lan Xichen mumbles. "Why not me?”

As soon as the words leave him Lan Xichen realises his mistake and winces, but it's too late. Nie Huaisang jumps to his feet, his blood boiling with anger.

"You don't own me yet!" he shouts. "I'm still free! If I want to kiss someone and they want it as well, I can kiss them! I can do whatever I like!" 

"But we’re engaged," Lan Xichen protests softly. 

"So what? That gives you rights? We're not married, I can still say no to you for now!" 

Lan Xichen pales, as if wounded by the harsh words. Good. Nie Huaisang wants him to hurt, wants it to be clear that he's not going to submit to anyone and anything. 

"You're unfair," Lan Xichen murmurs. "I wouldn't… I'm not like that, I'm not like my… I just thought you were flirting." 

Nie Huaisang kind of was, but not… It was just a joke to make him lose the game, it wasn't serious. He hates Lan Xichen, he'd never flirt in earnest, it was just so he could have something fun to tell Jin Zixuan later. Sure he got caught up in his own game, and that kiss was… but he didn’t want to enjoy that, even if he did. He hates Lan Xichen, he hates their engagement, he hates that they’re going to get married. Maybe Lan Xichen has convinced himself that he wants this after all, but Nie Huaisang won’t lie to himself, and he hasn’t forgotten how much pain this engagement has caused him, and he’s not going to forgive either.

“Are you really so stupid you’d think I’d flirt with you?” he taunts, hands on his hips. “After the way you’ve treated me all this time? You think there’s a single person in the world I wouldn’t pick over you? I’d kiss Wen Chao before I’d kiss you! I’d fuck Wen Chao before I let you touch me!”

Lan Xichen grows paler still and throws him an indignant look.

“Don’t joke with that, Nie gongzi. Kissing is one thing, but…”

“But what? You think I wouldn’t sleep with someone else? You think I haven’t already done it? Think again!”

Nie Huaisang should stop. He knows he should stop. He promised Jin Zixuan he wouldn’t tell anyone, he swore he wouldn’t, and this is going to make things so messy. But Lan Xichen looks like he’s going to cry if he hears another word, and there’s a dark little beast inside Nie Huaisang’s heart telling him he’ll never get another chance as good, that if he wants to make sure Lan Xichen hurts, if he wants to take revenge for everything he has suffered, then he has to do it now.

So he does.

“I fucked Jin Zixuan,” he says.

Lan Xichen’s eyes go wide and he recoils as if he’s been struck. Nie Huaisang can’t stop himself from grinning at the raw pain in his fiancé’s eyes. This is revenge, this is payback for every time Lan Xichen dismissed him, for every condescending look, for every awkward conversation, for the tears he spilled, for all the pain Nie Huaisang felt when he tried so hard and failed so badly, again and again and again, never good enough for that perfect jade statue.

"I'd rather be with anyone than with you. Even if we marry, you're never touching me. If you try, I'll break your neck, or mine!!" 

"Huaisang, please…" 

"Please what? Please let you touch me? Please pretend I like you? I don't! I hate you!" 

"Please, stop," Lan Xichen sobs. "I'm sorry, I shouldn’t have, please stop."

He is crying, which only adds to Nie Huaisang’s triumph. 

Or it should, anyway. But Lan Xichen's tears aren't the elegant ones that people have in stories, when their sorrow highlights their beauty. When Lan Xichen starts crying it's ugly and raw, distorting his perfect jade face into a pained grimace. 

He's not the First Jade of Gusu Lan when he cries. He's just a boy nearly the same age as Nie Huaisang who can't control his emotions anymore. 

The ugly thing inside Nie Huaisang’s chest, the one who told him to hurt Lan Xichen as badly as he can, starts turning against him. This was too far, too much, too cruel, he really had been flirting after all. To combat this, he tries to recall every memory of his own pain and humiliation to prove himself he didn't do this without reason. Lan Xichen is hateful, Lan Xichen is haughty, Lan Xichen is prideful, Lan Xichen is crying, Lan Xichen is sobbing like a child, like Nie Huaisang did last year when he realised he would never be enough. 

Jin Zixuan, after one of his angry rants against his annoying fiancé, told him to be careful, to avoid going too far, and maybe he was right because seeing Lan Xichen broken like this doesn’t feel nearly as good as Nie Huaisang thought it would.

“Lan gongzi…”

“Just leave,” Lan Xichen begs. “I’ve heard enough, just leave now, please.”

Out of habit, Nie Huaisang checks the incense stick and finds it has finished burning. He can't be scolded for that at least, he thinks as he exits the house. 

As for the rest… He'll deal with it, somehow. 

[love-killed-the-superstar]

yay its day 2!! uhh this one’s very dialogue heavy lol

CASSUNZEL WEEK DAY 2 - SECRETS AND PROMISES

“Hey... Cass?”

“Mhm?”

“The Day of Hearts is coming up. Think you’ll stick around for it this time?”

“Eugh. You know there’s a reason I don’t like to come back this time of year, right?”

Cassandra rolls her eyes so spectacularly far back Rapunzel can’t help but laugh despite the gesture being directed at her.

“Well, since you returned I’ve been thinking about the first Day of Hearts we spent together.”

“Oh, geez, this again? Can’t we just put that whole incident in the past?” Cass grumbles.

She’s posing – stiffly as a whistle, mind – for one of Rapunzel’s signature portraits. Rapunzel knows that Cass gets restless whenever she paints her, but the request is a way she can keep her in one place for a while. (That, and Cass is one of her favourite muses; something about the sharpness of her eyes draws her in, and the delight she takes in trying to paint hints of her toned muscles under her formless clothing is unparalleled.)

Cassandra hasn’t been back for… over six months now. She’s missed her.

“You just seemed so… annoyed about the whole affair, even before that guy Andrew arrived in Corona,” Rapunzel continues, mixing up a creamy paint for the base of Cassandra’s skin. “Was it really because you were only pretending to date him?”

“No, no, it had nothing to do with him at the core of it, I just… don’t care for romance and hearts, and Shorty dressing as whatever the hell kind of messed up cherub he’s going for.”

“Sure, the sight isn’t for everybody,” Rapunzel laughs. “You still believe you don’t care for romance and hearts though, after all this time?”

“You’re an exception to the rule, all right? Besides, Corona has way too many public holidays for my liking.”

“All right, noted. I’ve just always wondered if there was something more to it. I know we don’t share everything, and I know you have boundaries. If you really don’t want to talk about it, I’ll drop the subject. Princess’s Honour.”

She holds up her hand in a scout-like salute, almost dropping her paintbrush in the process, and Cass laughs.

“As a rogue traveller, Princess’s Honour only goes so far these days.”

“Well, what about Girlfriend’s Honour?”

“Now that, I can work with.” Cass hums in thought. “To tell you the truth, Raps, I just don’t have a great experience with romance. Besides you, of course.”

“I have no experience with romance besides you and Eugene,” Rapunzel remarks. “Does that make us about even?”

Cass grins, shaking her head in exasperation. “Uh, maybe, I guess. Besides, even if I was looking for love – which I’m not, just to clarify – it’s not so straightforward as that.”

“What?! Why? I know you, er, don’t warm up to people so easily, but you’re smart and funny and strong, and you’re beautiful! Any man would-”

“Well that’s one of the bigger hurdles, to start with,” Cass interrupts. Her mouth pulls into a line as she contemplates her next words, her eyes darting between Rapunzel and the door as if calculating her odds of being able to make a hasty exit if things get too personal for her liking. “I don’t date men, Rapunzel. At all. I thought that would be obvious, since I’m in love with you, but...”

Rapunzel stares, brush suspended midway to the canvas as she processes that last statement.

“What, at all? But, I thought – even if you were pretending with Andrew, you still…”

“Seriously?! After all that happened you thought I would actually be attracted to that whiny, pig-headed-”

“Ah-ah-ah!” Rapunzel holds out her hand, and Cass stops her arm-waving tirade to glare at Rapunzel. “Please, Cass, I’m still painting you.”

Cass pulls a face and reluctantly moves back into her original pose, before starting again. “Rapunzel, did you listen to that ridiculous story about the sheepskin jacket? I had to hear it three times. And the preaching on and on about being a bibliophile, while I had to sit there knowing perfectly well he couldn’t even spell the word… Any shred of curiosity I might have had for how the other half lives – it left long before that last retelling, believe me.”

“He had a nice face,” Rapunzel offers.

“A nice face is just a nice face, it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t forget he’s tried to invade Corona twice already.”

“Hmm. Good point. Well, you have me now, so we can forget about that guy.”

“I honestly haven’t given that clown a passing thought in years.” She stands patiently as Rapunzel holds up a tube of paint against her tunic to judge how much warm blue to mix with the yellow in her palette. “Besides, you’re telling me our extremely brief sham relationship felt believable to you? I’m surprised. Romance isn’t something you can just… force.”

And Rapunzel gets that – no, really, she does. While her relationship with Eugene has had its share of rough patches over the years, it’s something that happened organically. After all that she’s been through with Cassandra, it should have been obvious that she’d never had even an ounce of fondness towards the guy she had almost mercilessly swindled. Some small part of Rapunzel just wanted Cass to have felt happy and safe with someone in the days before they got together, she supposes.

“I guess back then I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did,” Rapunzel admits. She etches out Cassandra’s sturdy frame in shades of moss green, each stroke a little bolder than the last. “Maybe I still don’t. But I’d like to, you know! Has there ever been someone else you liked, as more than a friend?”

“...Once,” Cass begrudgingly admits. “It’s not exactly a happy story.”

“But it’s your story.” Rapunzel peers around the canvas to meet Cass’s reluctant gaze. “If you’re willing to share it, I’m here to listen.”

“God, I’ve never talked about this with anyone,” Cass sighs, folding her arms over her chest. This time, Rapunzel doesn’t bother asking her to move back into her original pose, out of fear of detracting from the story. “Well, anyone who doesn’t already know, anyway.”

“It won’t leave this room,” Rapunzel promises. She mixes a shade darker than the tunic and begins to fleck in little details. Stitches, tears, stains, anything to bring the girl on her canvas to life as the girl in front of her begins to recount her tale.

“...Her name was Alix. When I was turned fourteen my education was finished and I got indoctrinated into being a palace maid by my father. Alix was the same age as me but had been working there much longer, so she sort of took me under her wing and taught me the basics of, y'know, folding laundry properly! Making beds to the palace standards! All that stuff.”

“You've never mentioned an Alix before,” Rapunzel murmurs. She tries to conjure an image of this elusive Alix. Was she pretty? Did they understand each other on levels Rapunzel fears the two of them might never? Did she go charging in out of the goodness of her heart, blind to the consequences, like Rapunzel so often does when it comes to Cassandra’s wellbeing?

“There's a reason for that,” Cass sighs. She peeks over at Rapunzel doubtfully. “This... isn't going to paint me in a favourable light.”

“I can take it!” Rapunzel says, almost indignantly. She reaches over, standing on her tiptoes and stretching out her arm as far as it’ll reach past the canvas, to squeeze Cassandra's hand. “It’s me, Cass. You can tell me.”

Cassandra cracks a smile and hangs her head. “All right, all right! But you've been warned. Okay, so... just over a year after we first met, we started… I don’t know, being a couple, I guess. Iit wasn’t anything serious. Or maybe it was. I don't know, it was my first time just – just being with somebody, you know? It was all new to me – liking somebody, liking another girl.”

Rapunzel tries to picture an adolescent Cass, running arm-in-arm with this girl, whose features she just can’t seem to imagine. It’s pretty surreal, seeing as Cass was such a closed-off person when they first met, that she could ever be this giggly teenager smitten over a first crush. Then again, hasn’t Rapunzel been witness to moments like that, when she takes Cassandra’s hand unexpectedly, or hugs her from behind, or puts into words just how much she cares for her?

Against her better judgement, Rapunzel abandons detailing on the tunic and focuses on Cassandra’s face instead, wishing to capture a hint of that life in her eyes; memories of times she’s caught her unguarded, rather than the gloomy face of her girlfriend in front of her.

“So the Day of Hearts is approaching,” Cass continues, “and we’ve been together for a few months. It’s been great. But then one day Alix decides that when the day rolls around, the two of us are going to sign Herz Der Sonne’s journal together.”

“Wow, that’s… that’s a big step.” What else can she say? She and Eugene only signed their names last year, and they’d waited to get engaged before feeling ready to take that next step. She can only imagine the immense pressure someone like Cass, who has always been skittish about committing to anything in the department of romance, would feel when propositioned with something like that.

“Thank you, exactly! It felt like the biggest deal in the world! It was a big commitment, we were way too young, and I didn’t even think we were together long enough to do something like that.”

Rapunzel frowns. “So what happened?”

“We argued about it.” Cass snorts. “She called me chicken, like if she psyched me out enough I’d change my mind. Can you imagine that, saying it’s chicken for not wanting to commit to someone when you’re just barely fifteen?”

Rapunzel can’t imagine. At fifteen she’d never even met someone she could consider a romantic interest. Even the few books in the tower gave her a very limited view on what romance was.

“Anyway, I told her no. A firm no. I didn’t mind us spending the day together, but I didn’t want a written reminder that would show the whole world who we were. Of course, that turned into a fight about, you know, identity politics and pride in ourselves and stuff that as a kid I really didn’t think too much about. Well, she stormed off and I finished my shift as normal.”

Cass’s face changes a little, from this tired exasperation to… something of a stormy expression. “But I didn’t realise that she’d swiped my keys in the heat of our argument. That night, she snuck in and signed our names in the book after dark.”

Rapunzel’s jaw drops.

“But – but that’s against everything the ritual stands for! It’s something couples are meant to do together, with – with complete honesty!”

“Alix didn’t exactly care much about the rules, it’s what drew us together in the first place. Anyway, the next day she told me all about it, like it was something to be proud of. Really gloated that now we were serious and she’d done it because she wasn’t afraid of her feelings or what anybody thought about us.” Cassandra’s eyes narrow at the memory. “So I took a swing at her.”

“With a sword?!” Rapunzel frets.

“What? No, with the end of my broom. We were working. You think I’d still be working in the palace when we met if I’d struck another maid down with a sword?” Cass’s mouth draws into a grim line, and she suddenly finds herself incredibly interested in her own feet. “Well, that turned into the two of us physically fighting, so we were put on latrine duty as punishment and my dad was summoned. I was so distraught about what happened I couldn’t even think about explaining it to him, but somebody happened to overhear what we were fighting about and showed him the book.”

She falls quiet, and the silence stretches on. Rapunzel stops her almost frantic etching of facial features to peer past her canvas in concern, before Cass finally speaks up again. “That’s how he found out about me. About who I was.”

“Are you okay?” Rapunzel asks quietly.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s just kind of a horrible way for it all to go down, right?” She looks over at Rapunzel, eyes almost blazing, and utters, “My dad is a good man. He saw how furious and upset I was and marched right to the king to explain the situation. Hours later, our names were papered over and we pretty much never spoke of it again.”

Rapunzel thinks back to the times over the years that she’s spent flipping through the pages of the journal, recalling the one page with a simple square of embossed lilac paper neatly concealing the paper beneath, clearly a later edition. She had always wondered about it.

“And what happened to Alix?” Rapunzel ventures, as she mixes a deep raven for Cassandra’s hair.

“She was fired for breaking into the throne room after hours and desecrating royal property,” Cass recalls with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “After all, your father is a stickler for tradition. Last I heard she took up a post in Pittsford, but I don’t keep tabs on her or anything.” She spreads her arms out in a theatrical gesture. “Anyway, there you have it. My very sad, very brief experience of love.”

“She sounds awful,” Rapunzel declares, shaking her head in disdain. Cass shrugs.

“She wasn’t. Misguided, inconsiderate and a horrible decision-maker, yes, but she wasn’t a bad person. We were kids. I like to think she’s embarrassed about what happened, but I guess we’ll never know.”

“...So that’s the real reason you hate the Day of Hearts.”

“Raps, we went through this already!” groans Cass. “It’s not to do with any one thing, I just… don’t care for commercial romance and public holidays, that’s all there is to it.” She pinches her brow tiredly. “But I hated the book for years after. Just knowing our names were in there, even if no one else could see, just made me mad.”

“I’m sorry that it happened to you,” Rapunzel says gently. “It wasn’t a fair situation.”

“Yeah, well, what’s done is done. Look, uh…” Cass folds her arms, shifting from one foot to the other uncomfortably. “Can you… not tell Eugene about any of that? Or anyone? Not like… that I’m a lesbian, you can tell anybody that. In fact, I’m pretty sure Eugene already knows that part. But… all the stuff about Alix. That whole chapter of my life is kind of embarrassing, and I just. I don’t like to bring it up, so.”

“Cassandra, I promised you,” Rapunzel says, setting down her paintbrush and moving over to her. She grabs her hand and squeezes tight. “This is between us. No matter what.”

Pinched expression melting into relief, Cass squeezes back and squares her shoulders. “Thanks. So, can I see this painting yet? Or move from this spot, at least?”

“Sure, come here.”

Rapunzel leads her over to admire the canvas. The painting is a little odd, compared to Rapunzel’s typical style; the pose is stiff and vacant, just as Cassandra had been stood herself, but the ferocious brush strokes and tiny details woven in amplify the tension radiating from her body language, almost to the point of appearing antagonistic. Likewise, her expression is bright, wide-eyed and challenging; just as it is when Rapunzel says something overtly romantic or daring that takes her away from her usual focused exterior.

The amalgamation of those characteristics creates a vision of Cass that looks ready to jump up and pick a fight at any moment. Rapunzel glances over at Cass, an apology on the tip of her tongue, only to find that her girlfriend looks somewhere between amused and enamoured by the final product.

“I, um, didn’t mean to paint you looking so confrontational,” Rapunzel begins.

“Are you kidding me? I love this! Look, Raps, as much as I love your usual paintings of the two of us smiling at each other and hugging in a meadow or the like, this… it’s unusual for you. It’s fierce. I really, really love it.”

She leans down and presses a kiss to the top of Rapunzel’s head, before pulling her into a side hug. Rapunzel leans into the hug, beaming up at her.

“I’m glad you like it. It makes the standing in one spot for too long worthwhile, doesn’t it?”

“Ehh, almost. I wouldn’t push it too hard, Raps.”

“...Hey, Cass?”

“Mhm?”

“Do you think you’ll ever write your name in Herz Der Sonne’s journal, after what happened?”

“Maybe. See, now that you mention it, there’s this girl who I really like…” Rapunzel cranes her neck to look up at her, unimpressed, and Cass’s mouth quirks into a grin. “I’m talking about you, Raps. Just so we’re clear.”

“No, no, by all means! If there’s someone you’d like me to meet…”

“Well, I’ll give you a hint, it’s definitely not Andrew.”

“Thank goodness for that.” Rapunzel reaches up to cup Cass’s face, gently pulling her in close. “And it’s definitely not that jerk Alix, right?”

Cassandra’s grin grows wider. “You’re not jealous of the girlfriend I briefly had when I was a teenager, are you, Rapunzel?”

“What? No! I just, y’know, wish she’d treated you better, that’s all,” Rapunzel grumbles. “You deserve better, Cass. You deserve the world and more.”

With a huff of laughter, Cass leans in and kisses Rapunzel softly. “Lucky for me, my current girlfriend knows how to treat me right.”

“You know, my magic girlfriend powers work best on the Day of Hearts,” Rapunzel trills, twirling a strand of Cassandra’s hair around her finger. “Just so you’re aware.”

Cass groans. “I better not regret it if I agree to stick around this year.”

“You won’t! We’ll keep it nice and lowkey. You’ll never even know it’s the most romantic day of the year!”

“Uh huh, keep talking…”

Maybe this year won’t be the year. In fact, after everything Cass has told her today, wouldn’t it be super insensitive to broach the topic of signing the book together in two days time? Still, as she glances back to the painting of the tough fighter of a woman staring back at her, warmth washes over her, settling comfortably in the pit of her stomach.

Some day, when the timing is right, wouldn’t it be wonderful?

[cloudyfm]

ok yes i’m here with lilia’s info ur resident demon have fun pals<3

family background - yes this is copy pasted myob<3

ya’ll ever read one of those drug ring ao3 fanfics where y/n is dating the sexy drug cartel leader? well that’s their family!

generational family blood money because that’s how cartels work i think. started running + dealing three generations back with their great-grandparents in order for them to make a living. it wasn’t until the so-called business was handed down to their grandparents that they wanted to expand and generate more money. the big pharma cover was created in order for them to manufacture, distribute, and supply at a larger scale. present day, their family name has notoriety with other cartel and mafia families.

basically avery was supposed to take over because he was the oldest right, but lilia did not want that at all. their parents started favoring avery and schmoozing up to him a little bit to get him to say yes (even though avery was fully prepared to give lilia the position) and lilia was like! what the fuck! so she told their parents about this one time that avery accidentally blabbed the family secret to a stranger at a party which broke their one rule of keeping it a secret. their parents wanted nothing to do with him anymore and completely cut avery off and kicked him out of the family.

everyone knows that avery and lilia are siblings, even though they don’t really know the actual details about their past together because avery doesn’t say anything about his family and the cartel is a secret. now that they are both at yale and in the elites together they are just kinda like haha awkward <3 they basically would just tell everyone that they grew apart if other characters tried to pry but also lilia is now telling people that avery fucked up a business decision which is why he left the family and avery is like alright but good luck trying to get other info out of them! xo, the jeongs

personal background

a legacy and a member of the yale's elite, they're twenty-one and a junior undergrad student majoring in pharmacology. they are as zealous as they are vain.

blackmails: and yes ik we only needed 2 i got pressed and stubborn (drugs tw):

blackmailing vanity fair to keep them from speaking negatively about her and her family by dealing to their reporters. she’s more so doing this to protect herself and her brother than her parents.

is aware of annie and violet’s work arrangements with her family’s drug business. she refuses to involve herself by mentioning that the family they work for is hers and is currently turning a blind eye to the questionable tasks that are asked of them.

purposely sent an ex boyfriend to prison when she was 18 due to her being tired of being in a consistently toxic relationship. she set him up to be found with various bags of illicit drugs (of which were owned by her family) and framed him with possession with intent to distribute and supply to garner a felony charge as an adult.

ok moving to present day stuff<3

ever since avery left the family, her parents have basically put immense pressure on her to fill his spot - the spot she wanted, and since her loyalty is with them and herself, she accepted it and did whatever had to be done. she was 16 when it became her job to take over, so whatever parts of her childhood she had left kind of just left when they began to prime her.

at 18, her mom finally revealed to her that avery had the intentions to give her control of the family when she came of age - something that she didn’t know until 2 years after she fucked up ! her guilt eats her alive to this day, but rather than mending her relationship with him personally, she sends him money anonymously through shorting her parents. 

she actually loves being in the elites ... it gives her such a sense of importance whether or not she is considered a legacy. was kind of excited to join actually and frankly that bit her in the ass with the blackmailer out here but its fine.

her college years have frankly been quiet like .. she’s studious to the point she needs to be but she really is not a partier, doesn’t do drugs because she’s seen first hand the shit that her parents are involved in, and barely drinks. when she does she literally doesn’t know how to handle it and fears losing control. literally if you wanna manipulate her this is how u do it lmao.

this is mentioned in the personality section but yes she is in the classics book club at yale ... she loves her classics</3

she’s actually easy to get along with ok just don’t cross her i promise my god im going to lose it

i don’t know im blanking so bad and this is alrdy almost 1500 words i cant do this anymore. UGHGHH more of her personal stuff is in the personality section im heaving

personality

ridiculously cut throat and has no issues stepping on people to get to where she needs to be. like if it came down to saving herself or saving someone else who she doesn’t have a close connection to? she will always pick herself. 

makes a game out of other people one - upping her<3 if she knows she can win, and sometimes even when she can’t, she will purposely cause a problem just to see them fall and grow her own ego.

also will start problems casually and then just sit back and watch them unfold while drinking wine out a mug.

literally ... and i mean literally obsessed with being perceived as beautiful and pretty. she’s so mf vain that it’s actually a problem, and i can promise you if you call her ugly miss girl will cry. this mostly has to do with her self esteem issues and the pressure put onto her by her parents after avery left. yes she did this to herself dni.

loyal only to those who she cares about otherwise they can frankly rot<3 and there are times where she will break that loyalty if it benefits her.

ik this may not be believable but she actually is extremely insecure and anxious deep down lmao like she has such an obsession with proving that she’s the best to her peers and her family that it flat out consumes her consistently. this is what causes her to act out most of the time and if someone was to become close to her it would be plainly evident. yes - she can be soft.

has an overt persona of positivity and carries herself as someone who doesn’t have negative intentions and sometimes makes it hard to believe that she’s actually capable of doing the things that people accuse her of.

yes she is calculating and manipulative and miss girly will look for faults only to make them worse.

she literally wasn’t always like this but when her and avery’s relationship started to fracture, she kind of let her own selfishness consume her.

she plays stupid a lot KLNDFKNDLKFSD  will pretend to be interested in random men in her classes so they will baby her and do shit for her that she could have easily done herself. it’s not that she’s lazy but she’s only studying pharma because of her family. she has an obsession with classical lit and would have rather majored in that if given the chance. 

has a fear of emotional intimacy </3 went through a really toxic relationship from the ages of 16-18 that was basically more done to bring her family and another together for a business deal and it just ... did not end well for her and basically she was treated like shit. literally the only way she could get out of it was to frame him and then bribe people to make sure the felony charge wasn’t dropped. her family doesn’t know she did this so<33333 

statistics

full name: lilia iris jung.

nicknames: lili or lia.

age: 21.

date of birth: august 02, 1999.

siblings: avery ( older brother ).

birthplace: new york city, new york, united states.

current location: new haven, connecticut, united states.

astrological sign: leo sun / capricorn moon / virgo rising.

gender: cis female.

pronouns: she / her / hers.

height: 5′1″.

sexuality: bisexual.

religion: atheist.

piercings: double lobe on her right ear, triple lobe on her left ear, tragus on her right ear, and a helix on both her left and right and ears.

tattoos: this on her inner, right bicep, and this behind her left ear.

haircolor: brunette.

literally for wanted connections i want 2 things: (1) someone to rock her shit bc that is deserved, and (2) idk she’s wearing a mask like 80% of the time so someone who she is close enough to actual b real with :\ if this doesn’t make sense myob im taking a nap

[themoonsbeloved]

Women like me have been keeping a secret. It’s a secret so shameful that it’s hidden from friends and lovers, so dark that vast amounts of time and money are spent hiding it. It’s not a crime we have committed, it’s a curse: facial hair.

What can be dismissed as trivial is a source of deep anxiety for many women, but that’s what female facial hair is; a series of contradictions. It’s something that’s common yet considered abnormal, natural for one gender and freakish for another. The reality isn’t quite so clearcut. Merran Toerien, who wrote her PhD on the removal of female body hair, explained “biologically the boundary lines on body hair between masculinity and femininity are much more blurred than we make them seem”.

About one in 14 women have hirsutism, a condition where “excessive” hair appears in a male pattern on women’s bodies. But plenty more women who don’t come close to that benchmark of “excessive” still feel deeply uncomfortable about their body hair. If you’re unsure whether your hair growth qualifies as “excessive” for a woman, there’s a measurement tool that some men have developed for you.

In 1961, an endocrinologist named Dr David Ferriman and a graduate student published a study on the “clinical assessment of body hair growth in women”. More specifically, they were interested in terminal hairs (ones that are coarser, darker and at least 0.5cm/0.2 inches in length) rather than the fine vellus hairs. The men looked at 11 body areas on women, rating the hair from zero (no hairs) to four (extensive hairs). The Ferriman-Gallwey scale was born.

It has since been simplified, scoring just nine body areas (upper lip, chin, chest, upper stomach, lower stomach, upper arms, upper legs, upper back and lower back). The total score is then added up – less than eight is considered normal, a score of eight to 15 indicates mild hirsutism and a score greater than 15 moderate or severe hirsutism.

Most women who live with facial hair don’t refer to the Ferriman-Gallwey scale before deciding they have a problem. Since starting to research hirsutism, I’ve received over a hundred emails from women describing their experiences discovering, and living with, facial hair. Their stories loudly echo one another.

Because terminal hairs start to appear on girls around the age of eight, the experiences start young. Alicia, 38, in Indiana wrote, “kids in my class would be like, ‘Haha look at this gorilla!’”, Lara was nicknamed “monkey” by her classmates while Mina in San Diego was called “sasquatch”. For some girls, this bullying (more often by boys) was their first realization that they had facial hair and that the facial hair was somehow “wrong”. Next, came efforts to “fix” themselves.

Génesis, a 24-year-old woman described her first memories of hair removal. “In fourth grade, a boy called me a werewolf when he saw my arm hairs and upper lip hairs … I cried to my mom about it … she bleached my lower legs, my arms, my back, my upper lip and part of my cheeks to diminish my growing sideburns. I remember it itched and burned.”

After those first attempts come many, many more – each with their own investment in time, money and physical pain. The removal doesn’t just make unwanted hair go away, it raises a whole new set of problems, particularly for women of color. Non-white skin is more likely to scar as a result of trying to remove hair.

"Instead of reading or finishing homework on the car drives to school growing up, I would spend the entire length of the drive obsessively plucking and threading my mustache. Every day." – Rona K Akbari, 21, Brooklyn

On average, women with facial hair spend 104 minutes a week managing it, according to a 2006 British study. Two-thirds of the women in the study said they continually check their facial hair in mirrors and three-quarters said they continually check by touching it.

The study found facial hair takes an emotional toll. Forty percent said they felt uncomfortable in social situations, 75% reported clinical levels of anxiety. Overall, they said that they had a good quality of life, but tended to give low scores when it came to their social lives and relationships. All of this pain despite the fact that, for the most part, women’s facial hair is entirely normal.

"If I know I have visible facial hair, I’m much more reserved in social situations. I try to cover it up by placing my hand on my chin or over my mouth. And I’m thinking about it constantly." – Ashley D’Arcy, 26

"Meanwhile, my 95-year-old demented, deaf and blind Italian aunt sits in a nursing home, and whenever I visit, she points to and rubs her chin, which is her way of communicating to take care of the hair situation. That’s how I know she’s still in there and she cares. I hope someone returns the favor in 40 years." – Julia, 54

There are, however, some medical conditions which can cause moderate or severe hirsutism, the most likely of which is polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, which accounts for 72-82% of all cases. PCOS is a hormonal disorder affecting between eight and 20% of women worldwide. There are other causes too, such as idiopathic hyperandrogenemia, a condition where women have excessive levels of male hormones like testosterone, which explains another 6-15% of cases.

But many women who don’t have hirsutism, who don’t have any medical condition whatsoever, consider their hairs “excessive” all the same. And that’s much more likely if you’re a woman of color.

The original Ferriman-Gallwey study, like so much western medical research at the time, produced findings that might not apply to women of color (the averages were based on evaluations of 60 white women). More recent research has suggested that was a big flaw, because race does make a big difference to the chances that a woman will have facial hair.

In 2014, researchers looked at high-resolution photos of 2,895 women’s faces. They found that, on average, the white women had less hair than any other race and Asian women had the most. But ethnicity mattered too – for example, the white Italian women in the study had more hair than the white British women.

"But more than a gender thing, for me my hair was about race/ethnicity. My hairiness really solidified how different I was from my peers. I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas. And although my school was pretty diverse, the dominant beauty norm was to be blonde and white." – Mitra Kaboli, 30, Brooklyn

These numbers might be helpful to women like Melissa who said her facial hair meant “I felt inferior, I was a ‘dirty ethnic’ girl”.

But giving reassurance to ethnic minorities probably isn’t why this research was undertaken. The study was funded by Procter & Gamble, the consumer goods company worth $230bnwhich sells, among other things, razors for women. They know that female hair removal is big business.

Over the years, as women showed more of our bodies – as stockings became sheer and sleeves became short, there was pressure for these new exposed parts to be hairless. Beginning in 1915, advertisements in magazines like Harper’s Bazaar began referring to hair removal for women. Last year, the hair removal industry in the US alone was valued at $990m. The business model only works if we hate our hair and want to remove it or render it invisible with bleach (a norm just as unrealistic as hairlessness – brown women rarely have blonde hair).

When did we sign up to an ideal of female hairlessness? The short answer is: women have hated our facial hair for as long as men have been studying it. In 1575, the Spanish physician Juan Huarte wrote: “Of course, the woman who has much body and facial hair (being of a more hot and dry nature) is also intelligent but disagreeable and argumentative, muscular, ugly, has a deep voice and frequent infertility problems.”

These signposts are strictest when it comes to our faces, and they extend beyond gender to sexuality too. According to Huarte, masculine women, feminine men and homosexuals were originally supposed to be born of the opposite sex. Facial hair is one important way to understand these distinctions between “normal” and “abnormal”, and then police those boundaries.

Scientists have turned their sexist and homophobic expectations of body hair to racist ones, too. After Darwin’s 1871 book Descent of Man was published, male scientists began to obsess over racial hair types as an indication of primitiveness. One study, published in 1893, looked for insanity in 271 white women and found that women who were insane were more likely to have facial hair, resembling those of the “inferior races”.

These aren’t separate ideas because race and gender overlap – black is portrayed in mass media as a masculine race, Asian as feminine. Ashley Reese, 27, wrote “part of my self-consciousness about my facial hair might also tie into some ridiculous internalized racism about black women being less inherently feminine”. While Katherine Parker, 44, wrote, “It makes me feel very confused about my gender.”

Some women are pushing back. Queer women – those who are questioning heterosexual and cisgender norms – are already thinking outside of the framework that shames female facial hair. Melanie, a 28-year-old woman in Chicago explained that as a queer woman “there is less of a prescription for what I should embody as a woman, what attraction between my partner and I looks like, which has helped immensely in coming to terms with my facial hair”.

Social media accounts like hirsute and cute, happy and hairy and activists like Harnaam Kaur are resisting these norms too, by shamelessly sharing images of hairy female bodies. And even women who aren’t rejecting these standards outright, feel deeply ambivalent about them. “I understand, on a rational level, how inherently misogynistic it is to expect women to be constantly ripping hair out of themselves, hair that grows naturally, wrote one woman who, like many I heard from, asked to remain anonymous. “But I can’t bring myself to accept it and let it grow.”

Another wrote: “It’s one thing to be a little heavy, or short, or both. But facial hair? That’s pushing it.”

I’m not about to judge any woman for removing her facial hair. Despite knowing that I don’t need “help”, I still go to see a beauty “therapist” each month. I pay huge sums so she can zap me with a laser that damages my hair follicles. I’ve signed up for a solution, even though I know that the problem doesn’t really exist. I lie there wincing with each shock as she asks me about my weekend and says “Honey, are you sure you don’t want me to do your arms too? They’re very hairy.”