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megahwn · 2 years ago

Text

Swan Song

Pairing: Kim Namjoon x female reader

Genre: hybrid!au; speed dating!au; strangers to lovers

Word Count: 11.030

Rating:18+

Warnings: asexuality mention; alcohol mentions/consumption; explicit language; discussion of mistreatment of hybrids; fondling over clothes; nipple play; handjob; feather play; cunnilingus; vaginal fingering; finger sucking; unprotected vaginal intercourse; almost simultaneous orgasms; creampie

Summary: You think your choice to attend a local speed dating event is a complete waste of time, as you don’t feel a spark with anyone. Then you meet your final date.

A/N: Part of @jeonggukkiepabo‘s Hybrid Collab. The questions asked in this fic come from {THE AND} Strangers Edition, which can be found here.

At this exact moment, you can’t think of anything worse than speed dating.

Your best friend, lovable thing that she is, somehow managed to convince you that you needed to ‘get out more’ and ‘meet new people.’ The thing that no one knows about you, however, is this: you think you might be incapable of romantic love. You’ve never even really felt attracted to another person, much less had any kind of feelings of affection for them. Bottom line, you think you might be broken. (Either that or you belong on the asexual/aromantic spectrum, which is completely valid but you don’t think is an accurate description of how you feel. It’s… confusing.)

Anyway, your best friend still believes in you even if you don’t, so she introduced you to the world of ‘fancy bar speed dating’. You’re meant to go to a fancy bar, as the name implies, get a drink, and sit at a table as several men cycle through. You’re meant to chit-chat and get to know each other over the course of five minutes. Then, once the night ends, you meet back up with anyone you felt like you had a spark with and exchange information or plan to see each other again. While you still don’t really think anything productive will come out of this evening, you had allowed yourself to become just a bit excited about the night ahead while you were getting ready earlier.

Right now, however, you find yourself nursing your drink while your first date of the night speaks to you from across the table, and you just know you should have stayed home with your ice cream and wine.

The guy is nice enough, attractive even, but Jesus his life sounds boring. He apparently goes to the gym every morning at 6:00am before starting his office job a few hours later. You don’t even register the rest of what he says about his work, because at that moment the daydreaming side of your brain kicks in and takes your mind on a complete tangent. You begin wondering how you would fare if you worked at a desk instead of with the kids who keep you on your feet at all hours of the day. Then you begin thinking about how you want to move up the proverbial ladder at work, and how you need to go back to school to make that happen. The prospect excites you and makes you nervous all at once.

“-But the only reason I didn’t win that marathon is because I helped an older guy who fell down near the finish line. The video went pretty viral, maybe you saw it.”

You realize the man has paused his speech for you to respond to him, so you take a large gulp of your drink to give yourself some time to come up with something to say. The alcohol burns the back of your throat.

“Um… no, actually, I haven’t seen the video. Sorry,” you finally manage to get out somewhat dumbly. The man’s face morphs from one of self-assuredness to one of disappointment almost immediately. You can’t say you care very much, if you’re being honest.

Your second date is no better, if not worse. This guy brought a list - an actual, physical list - of qualities that he ‘requires’ any partner of his to possess. Before you’re even able to introduce yourself completely, he’s already reading them off the piece of paper like he can’t remember them if he doesn’t read them verbatim.

“So basically I’m gonna need you to be honest about everything, be good with kids because we’ll have at least four, be a great cook, never wear anything that I don’t approve of…”

That’s where you tune him out completely.

It’s disconcerting that this egomaniac thinks he can treat a date like an interview and actually get a woman that way. What’s worse, though, is that you actually do possess some of the qualities he had rattled off at you. Maybe it’s time for a new personality.

The night continues exactly as you feared it would: with you, tequila sunrise in hand, unimpressed by any of the men who come to your table. There's nothing wrong with them, per se (okay, the guy with the list was pretty bad), but you just don't feel a spark… with any of them. You don't find them interesting or exciting. One man droned on for so long about his fratty college days that you were tempted to pretend the buzzer had gone off just to get rid of him.

Just as you decide you are ready to throw in the towel and go home to your ice cream and wine, the host announces that it is time for the final round of dates. You debate with yourself for a moment, wondering whether you can stand another five minutes with another man you don't care about, when someone sits down across from you and begins to speak. You look up from your drink to interrupt him and make up some bullshit excuse for why you suddenly have to leave, but as soon as you lock eyes with the stranger, your words die in your throat.

The man is practically ethereal in his beauty, from his raven hair to his dark chocolate eyes to his full cherry lips to - are those dimples? What the hell is this guy doing here when he's this gorgeous? There must be something wrong with him, you quickly decide. You double down on your decision to leave the place before the round ends when you accidentally tune in to what the man is saying to you, and boy does it make you wish you had been paying attention to him earlier.

"- So basically I've been wanting to meet you since I saw you at the bar earlier, but I got really nervous so I went to the bathroom and hid my wings under my jacket. So... yeah." The man ends his speech with a huff of what sounds like frustration or... embarrassment, maybe? You don't even register anything he had said to you because he genuinely looks so sad now, and you find that you actually feel bad about it.

Wait.

"What did you say about wings?" you ask, more intensely than you had meant to sound. The man's head shoots up and a look of fear flashes across his face for a moment before he appears to steel himself.

"Out of everything I just said," he starts, sounding cautious, "you're the most interested in my wings?"

Wow, okay, you think, you definitely have to come clean about not hearing the first half of whatever this guy was saying, because apparently mentioning his wings was not the correct thing to do.

"Okay," you reply, "I need to be honest here. I missed a whole bunch of what you said at first, and only really started paying attention when you said you had been wanting to meet me since the bar. If you said something about your... wings... before that, then I missed it. So if it's not too much trouble, could you start from the beginning?"

Why, why did you just say all that? Why did you even ask about his wings in the first place? You had literally just decided there had to be something wrong with this guy and that you needed to go home anyway, that tonight was a total bust. Why in the world are you still sitting here and actually having a back-and-forth with the man? And why do you feel so relieved to see him smile right now? Before you can freak out any more than you already have, you focus your attention back onto the stranger as he begins to speak again.

“Okay, so I’m guessing you didn’t hear the part about me being a hybrid, then?” A shy smile graces his face as he speaks, and he dips his head but peeks up at you, seemingly to gauge how you will react to his revelation. That’s when it clicks for you.

This guy is nervous for you to know that he’s a hybrid.

But why?

There are some people out there who are still stuck in the past, who can’t accept that hybrids now live among humans as their equals. But that’s never been how you think. You’ve been friends with hybrids for many years. Hell, even some of your family members are married to hybrids, so you’ve been surrounded by them since you were little.

Do you give off some sort of anti-hybrid vibe that this guy is picking up on? You really hope not. You don’t stop to ponder why you hope that.

“Do you think I don’t like hybrids or something?” you blurt out without thinking any further. The man’s eyes widen and he begins shaking his head vigorously.

“No, no! It’s not that at all!” he says earnestly. His voice then softens considerably when he says, “It’s just that, um… usually, when I tell people - I mean, women - that I’m a hybrid, they get all excited and want to know more about that, but they don’t want to know more about me as a person.”

“Oh, ew,” you say immediately, distaste bubbling up inside you at the thought of humans fetishizing hybrids.

“Yeah,” the man says, his face falling slightly. “So I didn’t want you to only be interested in me because of that, so I hid my wings. But then I felt like I would be lying to you if I didn’t say anything about them, so that’s why I told you as soon as I sat down.”

“It’s not lying,” you respond after a beat, leaning forward and placing your elbows onto the table that sits between you and the handsome hybrid. “It’s totally okay to not want someone to use you or pretend to be interested in you just because you’re a hybrid. I get why you would want to hide your wings because of that.”

The man smiles softly, and a light blush spreads across his cheeks. “I’m Namjoon, by the way. I don’t think I ever actually introduced myself in my embarrassing rush to be honest.”

You snort at Namjoon’s cute self-deprecating comment and grin back at him as you introduce yourself. Your curiosity still burns into your thoughts, though, so you attempt to sound casual when you say, “So... what kind of hybrid thinks he needs to attend a speed dating event, anyway?”

Namjoon’s blush appears to deepen at your question. “A rare one with very little confidence,” he replies back, although it sounds more like a question than a statement.

“A rare one, huh?” you reply, barely able to conceal your curiosity at this point. You don’t want to make it seem like you’re doing exactly the thing Namjoon feared you would do, but you really want to know exactly what kind of hybrid he is.

As Namjoon nods in response to your question, you remember that you hadn’t been paying attention to him when he was speaking earlier. Maybe he mentioned what kind of hybrid he was then and you just didn’t catch it, you think excitedly. You mentally thank your scatterbrainedness for paying off in this moment.

“Did you mention what kind of hybrid you were when I wasn’t paying attention?” you attempt to sound apologetic when you speak. Namjoon rolls his eyes good-naturedly and chuckles slightly.

“I don’t think I did, actually,” he responds lightly, as though he has already become comfortable with you and your questions. He doesn’t say anything else though. He just looks at you expectantly, as if he wants you to just come out and ask the question already.

Are you reading the signals correctly? You’re not sure what to do at this point, considering that only a few moments ago Namjoon seemed almost afraid to let you know that he was a hybrid at all, and now it seems like he’s completely open about it and even wants you to ask him about it. What brought about such a quick change? Maybe it was your earlier responses to him speaking about the struggles of dating as a hybrid. Maybe he wanted you to ask, but he was just nervous about what you’d do if you found out.

But why you? Why does he feel comfortable with you, when you’ve known each other for fewer than five minutes? And why do you feel comfortable with him? You’re honestly confused, but at the same time you notice something in yourself that feels like… gratitude, maybe? Appreciation? Whatever it is, you do know that you think Namjoon’s ability to put his fears aside for you, whatever the reason may be, is possibly the most attractive thing about him to you in this moment. Even more than those dimples.

You brace yourself to ask what kind of hybrid he is and possibly be that person and ruin everything because, dammit, you really just can’t help yourself at this point. If you read the signs wrong after all, then so be it. It’s not like this guy is your soulmate or anything. (Right? Right.)

Just as you open your mouth to speak, however, the final buzzer sounds and the announcer’s voice booms into the room, interrupting your stream of consciousness and bringing you back into the present.

“Alright, folks, that’s the end of the evening! If you managed to find a spark with anyone here tonight, feel free to leave us a kind Yelp review! Good night!”

You and Namjoon roll your eyes simultaneously, then catch the other’s gaze and begin to giggle. Neither one of you moves to get up from the table even though everyone else is clearing out from the speed dating area, either leaving the building entirely or heading back to the bar.

For some reason, your time with Namjoon has lifted your mood immensely and you are no longer pining for your ice cream and wine back at home. What is this feeling you’re experiencing? Why does this guy have such an effect on you? You want to question it further, but you find that you’re too taken with Namjoon to do so. You just know that five minutes with him was not enough time. Not even close.

“So, you gonna leave a good Yelp review?” you ask cheekily, hoping to stall the man across from you. Namjoon’s eyebrows shoot up and his cheeks redden once more.

“Um… uh…” he stammers cutely.

“Because I think I might have to,” you continue honestly. You have no desire to lie to him, and you’re not afraid of how he might react. Namjoon doesn’t say anything, but his ears do take on the same shade of crimson as his face. Why does that make your insides hotter?

When Namjoon’s stammering continues, you decide to take a different approach and ask him, “Do you like playing games?”

Namjoon clamps his lips together and nods at you.

You’re really glad you stayed for the final round.

As soon as you step into your apartment, your puppy runs to the door to greet you, tail wagging. You take on your baby voice immediately and exclaim, “Hi, bubby! I missed you!”

You almost forget about Namjoon standing in your doorway during your puppy greeting ritual, until the dog moves on from you and jumps up onto Namjoon’s legs to get some ear scratches.

“Oh gosh, I’m sorry! Muffin, get down!” You move to take your puppy away from Namjoon’s nice slacks, but before you can, Namjoon is petting Muffin like she is his own dog.

Your insides get hot again at the sight of Namjoon gently petting your dog’s ears. You roll your eyes internally and remind yourself that it isn’t actually that crazy that Namjoon is a dog-lover. Lots of people are dog-lovers, after all.

Once Muffin leaves Namjoon’s side and trots back over to her designated spot on your sofa, you lead Namjoon from the entryway into your living room.

Your place is pretty small, but in a way that’s cozy rather than suffocating. You decorated it well, if you do say so yourself. You filled it up with your books and your plants and your artwork, and it makes you happy. Your favorite part of your apartment, though, is the little corner that houses your record player and all of your records. You make a beeline for that corner of your living room and put on your favorite record. Then you offer Namjoon a glass of wine, which he readily accepts.

You come back from the kitchen, two full glasses in hand, and you have no choice but to drink in the sight before you. Namjoon is perched on the middle cushion of your sofa, once again petting Muffin’s ears. At some point while you were pouring wine, Namjoon must have lit the candles sitting atop your coffee table. They are burning bright, shining a light over Namjoon’s tan skin that makes him look almost iridescent. When he hears you come into the room, he looks up at you, smiling softly with his pillowy lips and gorgeous dimples. You want to burn this sight into the back of your memory and save it there forever.

Before you can stumble over your words, which you know you absolutely would after seeing Namjoon smiling at you like that, you make your way over to the coffee table to put down the wine and then over to your bookshelf to retrieve the game you had been planning on having him play with you. The box is an unassuming little yellow thing, but you know what’s inside it is what really matters.

“Okay,” you say as you walk back toward the couch, opening the box as you move. “This game is really simple. We go back and forth asking each other questions and answering them. Every question must be asked, but not every question must be answered. If you don’t want to answer a question, you have to look the other person in the eyes for ten seconds before saying, ‘Pass.’ Got it?”

By now, you’re sitting on the only available part of the sofa, right next to Namjoon. You hadn’t realized until now, but as you were explaining the game to him, you had not only sat down next to him, but also put your feet up and sort of shimmied them underneath his legs. Before you even have time for any kind of embarrassment to bloom inside you, though, Namjoon is responding to your explanation with a simple, “Got it,” as he continues to pet your dog next to him.

“Okay, cool,” you say, trying to remain calm. “Do you want to ask first or answer first?” you ask, getting the cards out of the box and setting them on the coffee table where you both can reach them.

“Um… I think I’ll ask first,” Namjoon replies. “I want to know what kinds of questions these are before I have to answer one myself.”

You chuckle at his candor, then sit back against the arm of the sofa and gesture to the pile of cards neatly stacked in front of you both.

“Okay,” Namjoon says with finality in his voice. He reaches toward the table and picks up a card, then reads it to himself.

“Oh, okay,” he says, more to himself than to you. “So they’re like, conversation starters, kind of? Okay, yeah, this is fine.”

You smile slightly at Namjoon’s words, and you wonder what kinds of questions he had originally thought the cards might have held. Before you can ask him, though, he is posing your first question to you.

“What’s a mistake you’ve made that affected your life for the better?” Namjoon reads from the card, sounding almost official in his tone. You can tell that he takes what you’re doing seriously. You would never admit how much that fact is turning you on right now, though.

You think for a moment about how you can best reply to this question. You want to be truthful, of course, but you also want to be interesting and maybe a little mysterious in your response.

When your answer comes to you, you can’t help but smile broadly. Namjoon must notice your excitement, because he smiles back at you just the same.

“I had a summer job once,” you begin. “And to this day I think it was the best job I’ve ever had. I worked as a camp counselor for kids with different disabilities. I basically helped them with all the stuff a camp counselor helps kids with, but I also helped them shower, brush their teeth - stuff like that, you know?”

The man next to you nods in acknowledgement, and you continue.

“So even though it was my favorite job, I got in trouble a couple times for advocating for my campers in a way that wasn’t exactly polite. Eventually I ended up yelling at the camp’s assistant director because I had this firm belief that she didn’t give a shit about the counselors and I got fired for it.”

It’s here that Namjoon’s expression changes from concentration into surprise. His eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline and his jaw even drops slightly. You can tell he wants to ask you something, but he remains quiet in order to let you finish your story. You appreciate that more than you thought you would. Then again, after tonight’s disastrous speed dating experience, you think that Namjoon waiting for you to finish speaking is exactly what you need and deserve.

“The reason I’m grateful for the experience, though,” you say as you near the end of your story, “is that if I had been able to go back the next summer, I wouldn’t have gotten Muffin and I wouldn’t have had her for my last year of school when I was living alone.”

Namjoon turns toward Muffin for a moment, continuing to pet her behind the ears as she snoozes comfortably. He then turns back to you, a questioning look in his eyes.

“Am I allowed to ask any follow-up questions?” he asks with a hint of hesitation in his voice.

“Of course!” you reply easily as you move to stand. “This game is meant to foster conversation, you know? It only makes sense that follow-up questions are allowed. They’re actually encouraged. Oh, do you want anything to eat?”

“Yes please,” Namjoon says with a sigh. “It’s been such a long day.”

“Aw, really?” you say as you start raiding your fridge for leftovers. “How come?”

“Oh, just… work is stressful, family is stressful, dating is stressful. You know, the usual.”

“Wow,” you draw out dramatically. “So you’re saying I’m stressful, huh?” you continue with jest in your voice.

Namjoon sputters, then replies, “No! No, that’s not what I meant at all. I, uh… I just meant that, uh… oh gosh, what did I mean? What did I even say?” He sounds hopelessly confused.

You giggle as you carry the containers of Chinese takeout back toward the living room couch. You give one to Namjoon, who has one hand over his blushing face while he sighs. You then hold your own with both hands to stop yourself from moving Namjoon’s hand away from his face. You won’t admit it to him, but you like that he gets flustered by your words.

“You were saying that dating is stressful and then I made fun of you,” you say matter-of-factly before taking a large bite of lo mein.

Namjoon removes his hand from his face and indignantly whines, “You were just making fun of me? That’s so rude. Here I am thinking you’re actually offended by what I said.” His face is still burning red, and he looks down into his food with a pout. A very cute pout.

To stop Namjoon from getting too far into his own thoughts, you lightly place a hand on his shoulder and say, “I was kidding, you walnut. I know you meant that the speed dating thing was stressful. Believe me, it was the same for me, too.”

Namjoon looks up at you questioningly. “Really?” he says like he doesn’t quite believe you. “It was stressful for someone like you?”

Your heart flutters at his words. You try to keep your voice calm when you say, “Yeah, even for someone like me.”

You squeeze his firm shoulder one time for reassurance and then you let go. Even though you want to touch him in many other places, you don’t want to overwhelm him or scare him away.

You reach toward the table to pick up the next card when you remember something.

“Oh!” you exclaim. “Didn’t you have a follow-up question for me?”

Namjoon, still red in the face but less so than before, looks up toward the ceiling in thought. After a beat, he snaps his fingers and says, “You’re right, I definitely did.”

“Shoot,” you say behind your fork.

“Okay,” Namjoon starts. “You really don’t seem like the type to yell at an authority figure. What made you yell at that director person?”

“Oh,” you say with a quiet chuckle. “You know that MLK quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere?”

Namjoon nods.

“Okay,” you continue. “So basically that’s one of the codes I live by. I don’t get angry very easily, but when it comes to injustice, especially against people who can’t advocate for themselves, I get extremely heated and sometimes I end up lashing out at the people who I believe are letting the injustice occur.”

Namjoon continues to nod throughout your explanation, as if he’s completely fascinated by what you have to say. It honestly feels amazing to have someone just listen to you after the events of this evening.

“That’s really awesome of you to do, even if you did get fired for it. It’s brave,” he says with a look of sincerity on his face.

Now it’s your turn to blush. “Thank you,” you reply simply. “I guess it’s my turn now?”

“Oh yeah. I almost forgot we were doing this,” Namjoon shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts away. “Go ahead.”

You pick up the next card. “Ooh,” you say with a lilt to your voice as you read it. You then glance up to see a curious-looking Namjoon. “I get to fill in my own question.”

“Oh boy,” Namjoon groans as he situates himself next to you on the couch and replaces his food with his wine. “Do your worst.”

The question that has been on your mind since you were at the event earlier overtakes your thoughts once again, leaving little room in your brain for you to come up with any other queries for Namjoon to respond to. You don’t want to waste your question on something so simple, though, so you try to come up with something different but still related.

“I can think of a question, but you don’t have to answer it if it makes you uncomfortable,” you say reassuringly. Namjoon motions his glass toward you in a signal to continue.

“Okay,” you brighten. “What’s it really like being a hybrid?”

“Oh, wow,” Namjoon says right away. “You know, usually people don’t ask me that. They just assume they know the answer already. They think it’s the easiest thing in the world to be a hybrid and that nothing ever goes wrong in my life. I have no idea where they got that from though. Maybe from all the sitcoms about human/hybrid roommates.”

You snort at the thought of people getting their information about hybrids from fictional television shows. You can attest, though, that those same shows do portray hybrid life as somewhat idyllic. You aren’t sure why that’s the case, though, considering the fact that most of your hybrid relatives and friends have shared with you stories about their own personal experiences with discrimination or mistreatment from humans.

“The truth is, though,” Namjoon continues, “that it’s really fucking hard sometimes. And I’m not just talking about dating, although that in itself is a struggle too. It’s just hard trying to live life and never being sure if the people around you think you’re worthy of having, you know, basic human rights. Like for god’s sake, my great-grandparents are old enough that they were kept as pets when they were kids, before the emancipation. That’s only three generations before mine! And there are still humans out there who don’t respect us, who don’t care about us, who use us. It can make a person really bitter after a while.”

Throughout his answer, Namjoon remained completely composed. It was only as he finished his story that his eyes appeared to water slightly. You can only imagine how tired he must be from having to defend his right to exist in the world.

“I’m so sorry that there are humans out there who have treated you and your family so poorly,” you say, your voice empathetic. “I hope that never has to happen to you again.”

Namjoon’s eyes continue to water, but no tears fall. His voice does sound slightly hoarse when he thanks you, though.

“Is it okay if I ask you a follow-up question?” you say cautiously. You still don’t want to make Namjoon uncomfortable.

Namjoon takes a large sip of his wine. “Yeah, it’s okay,” he says after swallowing.

“Okay,” you say, then you take a deep breath and continue. “You said dating was a struggle too. I know we talked about how humans have only wanted to get to know you because you’re a hybrid, but is that the only reason that dating is hard for you?”

Namjoon’s blush returns and intensifies, but he still looks you straight in the eye as he answers your new question.

“Dating is hard because the animal side of me mates for life. So I’ve basically been spending my life looking for one person. I can’t date around like most people can. I choose not to have sex with anyone because I’m afraid I’ll become attached to the wrong person and then I’ll end up alone. It’s really hard trying to be a normal person when the animal side of me has such strong needs.”

You sit next to Namjoon, astounded by what he has just told you. Does this mean that he’ll choose to not become attached to you? Or does everything that has happened tonight mean that he’s serious about you already? And why do you think you’d prefer the second option to be the correct one?

Additionally, does this mean what you think it means for him sexually?

“Have you ever had sex?” you ask before you can stop yourself. You then slap your free hand to your mouth as Namjoon chuckles at you.

“Honestly? I haven’t,” he says somewhat confidently. “Is that going to be a problem?” he continues, now sounding almost like he’s ready to be disappointed.

“What?” No, of course not,” you express earnestly. “That’s, like, the opposite of a problem. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.”

Namjoon looks a little skeptical - which, in this sex-obsessed world, you can understand - but he apparently decides to let it go because he doesn’t say anything else about it. He just picks up the next card from the table and reads it aloud for you.

“What’s a dream from your childhood that you never forgot? Huh, this is a cool one,” he muses after reading the question.

“Ooh, this is a fun one,” you say excitedly. “Let me think… Oh, okay, I got it! I had this recurring dream as a kid that was very odd. So my siblings and I had this little pool with a slide attached to it and we would play in the pool all the time during the summer. In the dream the three of us were sitting at the top of the slide and the slide was trying to fling us over a chain-link fence to where hundreds of dinosaurs were running from a desert scene into a jungle scene.”

By the time you finish your answer, Namjoon is smiling so wide that it looks like he might hurt himself. You start to laugh and you say, “What?! It couldn’t have been that good of a story.”

“It’s not that,” Namjoon says with a laugh. “I think we interpreted this question differently, that’s all.”

“Oh… how so?” you ask, curious and only slightly embarrassed.

“You thought it was talking about a literal dream you had when you were sleeping, and I thought it was talking about a dream you had for the future. I didn’t expect you to tell a story about dinosaurs and an anthropomorphic kiddie pool slide.”

You let out a small snort and begin laughing right alongside Namjoon at your two interpretations of the card.

To cover up your lingering embarrassment, you say, “Well, do you want to hear about a future-related dream I had as a kid?”

Namjoon swirls his wine in his glass and takes another sip. “Yeah, of course,” he says, sounding genuinely interested.

“I wanted to be a hairdresser,” you say with nostalgia in your voice. “I had this big doll head that I would practice on all the time. I thought that knowing how to braid meant that I could do pretty much anything.”

Namjoon laughs along with you.

“But,” you continue, “I think I also wanted to do it because I just really liked the lady who cut my hair when I was little. She was nice, and she always asked how I was doing in school. My mom took us to a barber shop, and I remember they always charged more for girls’ hair than for boys’.

By the time you finish your story, you realize that your eyes had become unfocused and that you were staring off into space. You blink a few times to refocus your gaze, only to find that Namjoon is looking at you almost adoringly. It makes you a little nervous, but you like it all the same.

You drink some more wine. “What is it?” you question when Namjoon doesn’t say anything.

“Oh,” he says, seeming to come out of his own daze in that moment. “It was just a nice story. I like that you told me. I don’t know… I guess it made me feel close to you.”

You look away from Namjoon with a small smile on your face. “Thank you,” you say softly.

Before you give Namjoon a chance to keep talking and possibly make your heart explode in your chest, you quickly pick up the next question card and read it to him.

“What do you think people remember about me?”

Namjoon’s eyebrows raise almost imperceptibly at the question, but just as quickly they return to their normal spots. He appears to think for a moment behind his wine, and then he gives you his answer.

“I think they remember how understanding and thoughtful you are. And your passion. Like how you advocated for your campers. I think they also remember how confident you are. You were so well-spoken back at the bar, like you just didn’t give a shit about what anyone thought. I, uh… I might have watched you a little bit while you were talking to the bartender.”

Your surprise must show on your face, because Namjoon follows up by asking, “What? Did I say the wrong thing?”

“No! No, not at all,” you immediately counter. “I just… didn’t expect you to say that, I guess. Like, I don’t really understand my appeal, so to hear that someone was watching me and then still wanted to get to know me is kind of a lot to take in, that’s all.”

Your confession makes Namjoon’s eyebrows raise again, but this time it’s definitely noticeable.

“Really?” he asks you, disbelief apparent in his tone. “How could someone not want to get to know you after seeing you?”

You feel like you’re shrinking into yourself at all of Namjoon’s compliments. “I have no idea,” is all you can think to say.

Namjoon must notice your sagging shoulders, because he says, “It’s okay, we don’t have to talk about it. Especially if it makes you uncomfortable.”

You can feel yourself physically relax at Namjoon’s comforting words. “Okay,” you say into your wine. “Thank you.”

Namjoon gives your knee a quick pat before he reaches toward the table to pick up the next card.

“What’s your favorite thing about me?” he reads the question, then places the card gently back on the table and looks at you with that same gentleness. It makes you feel safe. You already know your answer, so you’re able to respond quickly.

“The fact that you were so nervous about letting me know you were a hybrid, but that you chose to be honest with me about it anyway,” you say with certainty in your voice. You’re not sure you’ve ever been so certain about anything before now.

“The fact that you respected me enough to tell me the truth about it before you knew anything about me,” you continue. “I mean, for all you knew, I could have been one of those horrible people you talk about that use hybrids and throw them away. You still chose to trust me. It really speaks to your character, I think. I still don’t know why you made that choice, and I’m not going to ask. Just know that I really appreciate it and you.”

Namjoon’s expression is unreadable for a moment, as if he was focusing very much on your answer just now and he didn’t have the capacity to change the way his face looked as you gave your response. Then he smiles at you.

“I know you said you weren’t going to ask, but I can tell you if you want,” he says with a slight sigh. “After the last question, I mean. I don’t want to get sidetracked.”

“Okay,” you say back to him with your own smile. You pick up the next card, eager to get the game done now so you can have your curiosities satisfied. There are no cards underneath the one you pick up.

“Oh, this is the last question,” you announce to the room as Namjoon begins to resituate himself on the couch. You then read the card aloud.

“Look me in the eye and tell me something in silence.”

Namjoon pauses his movements, then he puts his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands as he begins to ponder. His eyebrows are knit together and the corners of his mouth are slightly downturned. He closes his eyes and you take the opportunity to look him up and down. His look of contemplation is a sexy one, and you can’t get over how much you want to run your hands through his inky black hair (and maybe give it a tug).

His shoulders are broad, but not intimidatingly so. Through his fitted button-up shirt, you can tell that he works out. What are intimidating, however, are his thighs. They’re thick and they look like they could rip Namjoon’s pants at any moment. (Not that you would complain.)

Just as you are about to let your fantasies run wild and give in to your urge to touch some part of Namjoon, his eyes open and he announces that he is ready to answer your question. He turns to face you directly, blinks a few times, and then he stares intently into your eyes, as if what he has to tell you is the most important thing he’s said all evening.

Damn, why can’t his answer to this question be a vocal one? You want to know what he has to say so badly. You don’t think you’ve ever had a better conversation with a stranger than you have had with Namjoon. It doesn’t feel like you two are strangers anymore. You find yourself wishing for so much more with him.

Just as you find yourself beginning to lean into Namjoon’s space, hopeful and daring in your movement, Namjoon blinks again and turns his head away from you so that he is facing forward on the couch once more. You can’t say you’re not disappointed as you back up to where you had been.

“Was what you had to say to me important? It felt important,” you say without thinking.

Namjoon’s ears redden immediately. “Um… yeah, it was,” he practically mumbles.

“Was it what you wanted to tell me after the game ended?” you probe further.

“... Yes,” the man beside you says in almost a whisper.

“Do you want to tell me what it was?” you ask, trying and failing to keep the anticipation from your voice. You weakly follow up by saying, “You don’t have to.”

“I want to, but I don’t want to ruin things between us,” Namjoon says, a little louder this time.

“Go ahead,” you urge. You can feel your heartbeat in your ears.

“Okay, um…” Namjoon starts, then looks toward the ceiling. He closes his eyes again before continuing.

“I think you’re supposed to be my mate.”

Now you can feel your heartbeat in your throat. You’re squealing internally because it all makes sense now. You’ve never felt this kind of instant connection with anyone in your life. Sure, you’ve dated people, but only to fulfill some sort of societal expectation that you thought you had to satisfy. Sex and relationships just never appealed to you the way they seemed to appeal to literally everyone else. But now you know why. You’re meant to be this man’s mate. For life. While that fact should probably make you dissolve into a panic right now, all you can feel is peace.

“What does that mean exactly?” you breathe out, not wanting to let your thoughts run any wilder.

Namjoon reaches for your hand. You take it. “It’s the equivalent of two humans deciding to marry, I suppose. It means that we both feel something almost indescribable for each other, even though we just met tonight. We have no desire to part from one another, and we want to spend our lives together. Does that sound right on your end?”

“Yes, that’s right,” you say immediately, not wanting to leave any room for Namjoon to doubt you. “I’ve spent my whole life searching for the feeling I feel with you. It’s amazing and scary and wonderful. I never want to live without this feeling again.”

“Really?” Namjoon says, sounding so hopeful you might cry.

“Really,” you repeat, squeezing Namjoon’s hand as you speak.

“Okay, so… what now?” Namjoon still looks and sounds hopeful, but nervous as well. It’s adorable but you don’t want him to be nervous about what happens next.

“I’m not sure, exactly,” you say slowly. “If it were up to me, we’d probably be in bed already but I don’t really know how you want - or need - to go about doing this.”

It’s only after the words leave your mouth that your brain processes them. You just admitted that you want to sleep with Namjoon. Before you have the chance to take your statement back or even make your face look slightly ashamed, Namjoon is already speaking.

“It can be up to you,” he says, quietly but confidently.

“I didn’t - wait, really?” you respond, admittedly a little surprised by the apparent ease with which Namjoon made such a decision. “What makes you say that?” you probe further, wanting to make sure you’re both making the right choice.

Namjoon looks bashful once more, but he holds his head high and looks at you straight on. “I’ve wanted this since before I even spoke to you for the first time,” he says earnestly. “This has never happened to me before now, and I’m not going to second-guess myself or my feelings for you and potentially let you slip away.”

You smile and turn away from Namjoon’s gentle gaze, and you give his hand another squeeze.

“If you didn’t want to, that wouldn’t make me ‘slip away,’” you say as you turn back to face Namjoon, putting your free hand under his chin. “Remember, I’m not like those other humans who only wanted you for one reason. I’m here to stay, no matter what you choose right now.”

The wetness in Namjoon’s eyes from before returns again, but this time a single tear tracks down his cheek. You wipe it away with your thumb.

“You’re seriously everything I’ve ever wanted, you know that?” he says with a disbelieving laugh. Then he leans in and kisses you.

It starts out slow, and you can tell Namjoon is trying to make it purposeful by the way he cradles your head delicately in his hands and gently slots your lips together without even a hint of tongue. He really cares about you, you think to yourself as your lips move against his. The thought makes you sigh out against his mouth and move your hands to tangle in his hair.

Namjoon appears to take your cue, moving his hands from your head to wrap them tightly around your waist, pulling you flush against his side. The positioning is slightly awkward, what with you both still sitting next to each other on the couch, but you’ve never felt more comfortable kissing someone. It’s sweet and passionate all at once, and it makes you hungry for more.

“So,” you start as you separate to take a breath. You’re both flushed red and Namjoon’s hair is standing up at odd angles from you running your hands through it. You would laugh if you weren’t so turned on. “Where did we land on this being up to me?” you finish, biting your lip to try to hold back your beaming smile.

Namjoon’s eyes zone in on you biting your lip and he licks his own. “Um… yeah, it can be up to you,” he says distractedly, never taking his gaze off your mouth.

You giggle and stand from the sofa, still holding onto Namjoon’s hand as you lead him to your bedroom. Once you step inside the small room together, Namjoon pulls your hand toward himself to turn you around and catches you in another firm kiss. This time, however, he opens his mouth against yours and gently swipes his tongue along your bottom lip.

Your response is immediate, mouth opening against his and eager tongue meeting his own in the middle. You begin exploring each other with lips and tongues and hands as you gradually make your way to the bed in the center of the room.

Just as the backs of your legs hit your plush comforter, you aim to put your hands inside Namjoon’s jacket to push it off his shoulders. He lets you, briefly taking his arms off your waist to let the clothing slide down his arms and hit the floor with a dull thud. Just as you move to pull Namjoon onto the bed with you, though, you remember what he had hidden beneath that jacket.

You quickly pull away from Namjoon’s kiss, opening your eyes and breathily saying, “Would now be a bad time to ask you what kind of hybrid you are?”

Namjoon chuckles, lets go of your waist once again, and turns around so his back faces you directly.

There are two masses of feathers on Namjoon’s back, right where his shoulder blades reside. They rise from there to the tops of his shoulders and then dip down to his waist. You’re already shocked by the fact that he managed to keep them hidden from you the entire time you’ve been together, when something amazing occurs.

The masses of black feathers begin to shuffle in front of your eyes, and suddenly Namjoon’s wings are stretching out to their full size, taking up so much space that you’re sure their tops will hit your low ceiling. It’s nothing short of majestic.

The wings, the hair, the lips, the fact that Namjoon said he mates for life...

“You’re a swan,” you say with complete awe in your voice. Namjoon’s feathers ruffle cutely.

Swan hybrids are incredibly rare. So rare, in fact, that many people say they no longer exist. This reveal was truly the last thing you had expected to happen tonight, but you welcome it all the same. You want Namjoon for Namjoon, not for what kind of hybrid he is.

When Namjoon doesn’t say anything else, you continue. “You’re beautiful, you know that?” you say as sincerely as you can. It’s true, after all. Namjoon is beautiful.

“Thank you,” he replies to the wall in front of you, as he has yet to turn around and face you again. You giggle and put a hand on his shoulder, urging him to turn back around. As he does, he retracts his wings back toward his body, but one of them still brushes against you. It’s possibly the softest thing you’ve ever felt and it makes you shiver with desire for the man in front of you. You want the feathers to touch you again and again, but you don’t want it to be accidental. You want Namjoon to do it purposely.

“Wow,” is all you can say before Namjoon crowds into your space once more to get back to kissing you, his hands once again gripping your waist like it’s his favorite part of you. You’re thankful that you don’t have to think of anything else to say to him because it probably wouldn’t make sense anyway. All you can really think about is his feathers on your skin as he begins kissing down your neck with more intensity than he displayed before.

You let out a small moan when Namjoon laves his tongue over the spot right above your collarbone, and in response Namjoon pushes you against the bed, making you fall onto the covers with him following closely behind.

Namjoon immediately settles a knee between your thighs, close enough that you can sense his presence but far enough away that you can’t get any kind of friction or relief. You wonder if he meant to do that. He continues to kiss you fervently, licking and sucking at your neck as he begins to move a hand underneath your shirt and up your stomach. You arch your back slightly into his touch and let out another soft moan to tell him that he can continue his movements.

Namjoon slowly inches his way up your stomach to cup your breast, still hidden within the confines of your bra. He massages your nipple through the material, which both excites and frustrates you simultaneously. He’s so close to you in so many ways, but so far away all the same. You want nothing more than to be naked under Namjoon in this moment, to be as close to him as you can be.

You tug slightly on Namjoon’s hair to get him to pause his ministrations and look up at you. When he does, you notice his already-cherry lips are even redder now from kissing you. You completely forget what you were going to say to him, and instead you simply grab his head with both hands and bring him back up to your level so you can kiss him some more.

As you continue to kiss and Namjoon continues to massage one of your nipples, you move your hands down his body and to his belt loops. He gasps slightly into your mouth but doesn’t stop you, and you continue toward his belt, undoing it with ease and slipping it off his body. It joins his jacket on the floor, and the thought of having the rest of Namjoon’s clothes end up there as well only serves to make you wetter than all this kissing has already made you.

The man above you appears to take your cue again, this time moving his hand to the top of your bra, where he pulls it down just enough to expose your breast to his hand. He goes back to massaging your now-free nipple, and the difference in feeling has you arching into his touch once more.

As you move your hands toward Namjoon’s zipper, you stop kissing him just long enough to say, “Take my shirt off.”

He squeezes your breast in his hand before leaning up slightly to grab the hem of your shirt with his other hand and bring it up over your head. He then comes back down to kiss at your newly exposed skin, but not before he gets a good look at your erect nipple that he’s been teasing for what feels like years.

Now that he’s occupied by your chest, you take the opportunity to undo Namjoon’s zipper and slip your hand inside his pants. He seems to be very affected by your movements, as he pauses his and leans up again to focus on what you’re doing to him.

“Is this okay?” you check in with Namjoon, wanting him to be comfortable with what is likely his first sexual experience with another person.

“Yes,” Namjoon breathes out into your chest, making you shiver as goosebumps rise on your skin. “Please keep going.”

You give a small peck to Namjoon’s neck before you continue moving your hand into his pants, grabbing onto his hard cock that’s still within the confines of his underwear. Now it’s your turn to tease him over his clothes.

You rub the length of Namjoon’s cock back and forth, purposely avoiding the head, where you know he needs your touch the most. He moans and drops his head to your chest, beginning to thrust slightly into your palm.

“Fuck,” he whines, clearly frustrated with your decision not to satisfy him completely.

“Yes, lovebird?” you say softly as you continue to rub and squeeze at his shaft.

“Not… enough,” Namjoon pants. His feathers ruffle again above you, and you wonder if it was due to your use of the pet name. You decide to keep that in mind and ask him about it later.

“Okay,” you give in easily, and move to rub your thumb in circles around Namjoon’s cockhead. It’s wet there, even over his underwear, just as you hoped it would be. Namjoon cries out softly and grabs onto your shoulders with both hands, which only turns you on even more and makes you moan wantonly.

Namjoon must notice that he has stopped teasing you (or touching you sexually in any way, really), because he soon goes back to grabbing at your exposed breast and kissing down your chest. He eventually brings his mouth down to your nipple and wraps his plush lips around the sensitive bud, making you sigh out and push your free hand back into his hair like you did earlier.

Namjoon sucks on your nipple with just enough force that you can feel your neglected clit practically vibrate with need. You continue to rub your thumb on Namjoon’s still-weeping head, and it must be enough to make him want things to move along, because he starts moving his hands from your shoulders down your arms, back toward your waist, and to the hem of your own pants. This is where he hesitates slightly.

He begins moving his fingers gently back and forth along the soft material of your pant hem, then stops just as soon as he started. His mouth leaves your breast with a soft kiss as he lifts his head from your chest to look at you. You’re already watching him, having paused your movements in his slacks as well. You want to ask if everything is alright, but he beats you to it, and calms you down immediately.

“Is this okay with you?” he asks innocently, gently dipping two fingers inside the hem of your pants, not even touching you where you need it most yet. Your response is involuntary anyway. You moan slightly, buck your hips upward toward Namjoon’s own pelvis and lean your head back into your plush comforter. Namjoon turns bright red.

Noticing Namjoon’s expression of shock, you put a hand to his warm cheek and say, “It’s okay, lovebird.” (There go those feathers again.) “I’m just really sensitive. And really wet.”

“Oh,” is all Namjoon can manage to get out at that information, and you giggle. “Is, uh… is that a good thing?” he says without looking at you. He’s still focused on playing with the hem of your pants.

You scoot over slightly on the bed so Namjoon can lay down next to you. Then you take the hand toying with your pant hem and slowly push it down inside your clothes, all the way to where you’re soaked for him.

You watch as his expression morphs from one of trepidation to one of pure elation and lust and love. He begins moving his fingers around in your ocean, eventually finding your swollen bud and staying there when you cry out softly at his touch and grip his arm tightly.

You’re whimpering at Namjoon’s gentle movements, but you’re still able to get back to touching him, this time without his own underwear as a barrier. You can feel a vein in his cock practically throbbing with need for you, and his head is still wet with precum when you graze it with your thumb.

His response to you touching him now is to buck into your hand slightly while he simultaneously applies more pressure to your clit than before. The fact that you’re pleasuring each other so effortlessly after just having met a few hours before should be scandalizing to you, but it feels so right. It feels meant to be.

You’re lost in your bliss, thinking about everything and nothing all at once. Namjoon is touching you so purposefully, but not aggressively, and you look up at him briefly to see his eyes closed and his plush lips red as cherries from all your kisses. He’s concentrating on your pleasure just as much as his own and it makes you practically gush for him.

Namjoon suddenly moans out an “oh, fuck,” and opens his eyes questioningly at you without ever stopping his movements around your pussy.

“Did you just get even wetter?” he asks with a hint of pride in his voice.

“Mhm,” you respond in a moan, head thrown back onto your pillow and hand gripping Namjoon’s arm so tightly that it’s going a bit numb.

Namjoon briefly takes his hand out of your pants to taste you on his fingers, and he shudders when he licks you off of him.

“Damn,” he mutters, getting your attention. “You taste amazing.”

Without missing a beat, you open your mouth and stick out your tongue, inviting Namjoon to put one of his fingers into your own mouth so you can taste yourself. You lick your juices from his finger but keep going, almost deep-throating it, which makes him hiss and remove it just to give you the most intense kiss he has so far this evening.

Namjoon then proceeds to move down the bed again, taking your pants and your underwear with him and dropping them to the floor with his clothes. You’re laid bare in front of him, save for your bra that is half-removed from your chest anyway. As Namjoon looks you up and down, you begin playing with yourself so he can watch you, which you can immediately tell he is enjoying. His cock is still straining against his slacks and you want to see it for yourself.

“You want more?” you say sultrily up at him. He nods as he rubs himself over his clothes, seemingly unable to help himself as he drinks you in. You move a finger on your free hand in a “come hither” motion and he obeys, crawling up in between your legs again so he’s just over you.

Without saying anything else, you make quick work of the buttons on his shirt, letting him take over and bring it off of his broad shoulders and down his back so you don’t harm his wings in the process of getting him naked.

You expected the shirt removal process to be a bit of a struggle for him, what with how large his wings are. However, he makes it look easy by shimmying his wings through the shirt’s designated slits and letting it fall to the floor behind him. He only loses one feather.

You immediately get to work on his pants, pulling them down over his hips and down to his knees. You do the same with his boxers, putting your hands inside over his ass to push them down. He manages to kick them both off of his legs rather gracefully, and he’s suddenly as naked as you are. He’s still drinking you in, so he doesn’t really notice when you move to grab his lost feather from the edge of your bed.

You toy with the feather in your hands for a brief moment before voicing your thought from earlier. Your voice seems to ground Namjoon back into the present moment, because he refocuses and his eyes lose the slight glaze they had taken on a moment ago.

“Will you use this on me?” you ask outright, without any attempt to be coy.

“Of course,” Namjoon immediately replies. Then he follows up with, “Use it how?”

You giggle slightly at his willingness to please you then say, “Like how people do feather play. You know what that is?”

“I’m sure I can figure it out,” Namjoon says with a soft smile. “Close your eyes.”

You do as you’re told and you feel Namjoon take the feather from your hand. Your heart rate speeds up in anticipation for what’s to come and you’re so tempted to open your eyes that you wish you had a blindfold on.

The feeling of the feather touching your ankle makes you gasp, and the feeling of it traveling up your leg makes you squirm. You hear a soft chuckle followed by the words, “Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes,” you breathe out as the feather continues to move up your body, now caressing your hip, then your waist, then your chest, then your neck. You shiver as it makes contact with each new body part.

You can hardly contain your arousal when Namjoon suddenly moves the feather off of your neck completely. You’re about to open your eyes because you think he is finished teasing you, when you feel something tickle your mound. It’s the softest of touches, and you realize he’s going to tease your pussy with this feather. He really knows what he’s doing, you think to yourself as you continue to squirm at the light touches. The feather makes its way over your mound and down past your clit and then it’s on one thigh, then the other, and just as you think that you might come completely untouched, the feather is replaced by a mouth.

Namjoon is devouring your thighs one at a time, and then without warning he grabs hold of your clit with his lips and starts to suck. You cry out and tangle your hands back in his hair, pushing him closer to you and urging him to lick and suck you harder.

Namjoon seems to understand that you need more, because he quickly brings two fingers up to your pussy and swirls them around in your wetness before easily slipping them inside you. He continues to suck your clit as he pushes those two fingers into you as deep as they can go, then he pushes upwards.

Your scream of elation is enough to let Namjoon know you’ve just orgasmed, but he doesn’t seem to want to stop there. He continues pushing his fingers up against your wet walls until you’re coming a second time, shaking so violently that Namjoon has to stop what he’s been doing and come up to hold you for a brief moment.

“Are you okay?” he asks as he notices your breathing start to even out. You nod, not sure if you’re currently capable of speech.

“Are you done?” he asks his second question with what sounds like a hint of disappointment already in his voice. You shake your head.

“No,” you manage to get out. “No, I’m not done. I can come multiple times and keep going, I promise.”

Namjoon looks at you like you just told him Christmas was coming early this year. He kisses your forehead as you giggle.

You clear your throat and ask huskily, “You ready for more?”

Namjoon nods again and you bring him on top of you, and without any further hesitation you grab his cock back into your hand and begin stroking it again. After a few strokes, you lean up and whisper into Namjoon’s ear.

“Lovebird, I want you.”

You hear the rustle of feathers and all of a sudden Namjoon’s cock is stretching your walls wide and you’re crying out again and Namjoon is grunting and you’re looking at each other while he fucks you. You’ve never felt so close to another person in your entire life. The feeling of Namjoon inside you is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. The thought makes you clench, already on the verge of another orgasm.

Namjoon fucks into you rhythmically, his pace steady but quick and his eyes full of love for you. He finds your hands and holds them tightly above your head, and he brings his lips down to meet yours in a gentle kiss.

You feel yourself reaching the peak once more and you warn Namjoon of your imminent orgasm. He thrusts even more intensely into you and you come undone around him, clenching his cock so forcefully that he comes involuntarily with a gasp. As he fills you up, you hear him mumble something you can’t quite make out.

“What did you say, Lovebird?” you ask sweetly.

“I said, ‘I love you,’” he repeats, this time more firmly and with more conviction. You don’t miss the ruffle of his feathers above you.

You smile. “For life, right?”

He smiles back. “Yeah. For life.”

#the hybrid collab #Namjoon x reader #Namjoon smut #Namjoon fanfiction

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alice-and-ethel · 3 months ago

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I am currently reading And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by John Meacham as a follow-up to the excellent American Rebels by Nina Sankovich (highly recommended btw!) in an attempt NOT to wallow in fear and despair ahead of the November election. I chose it less as a biography and more as an inspirational book about defending America’s ideals despite sociopolitical turmoil.

That said, it’s still written as a biography—though one rather sparse on details despite various primary source quotes so far—and that brings me to…

“Abraham was nine when she [his mother Nancy] died. His recollections of her were sparse, his ambivalence about her deep. Once she was gone she was unable to provide her son with love or with security. In memory, she was a source of insecurity and embarrassment as Lincoln absorbed the stories of her illegitimacy and of the allegations about her, or certainly her family’s, promiscuity. When he needed her as he grew up, he could not have her. Later in life, when he did not want her…he could not avoid stories about her.”

No, really: I went to the end notes and found…nothing for this paragraph.

“Mrs. Lincoln was...affectionate... [She] always taught Abe goodness, kindness...taught him sweetness and benevolence as well.” Dennis Hanks (Nancy’s nephew)

“She was beyond all doubts an intellectual woman, rather extraordinary if anything. Abraham was like his mother very much.” John Hanks (Nancy’s cousin)

“She was a brilliant woman—a woman of great good sense and Modesty.” Nathaniel Grigsby (a neighbor, brother of Aaron Grigsby, Nancy’s son-in-law)

You have no idea how badly I wish I still had a copy of David Reynolds’ Abe handy right now. I would pull out Burlingame’s Volume I, which I do own…but I couldn’t get very far into that one, either (despite the fact that it’s acclaimed) because it’s full of this same kind of gossipy, and frankly sexist, speculation about Lincoln’s parents, specifically about his mother and the Hanks family. (It goes on for way too long in that book.) Meacham repeats a contemporary-ish rumor that Lincoln was illegitimate because his mother slept with another man before her marriage to his father…but even if that story was true, Abraham was the Lincolns’ second child, born two and a half years after their marriage.

More to the point, though: until now, I’ve never seen a biographer suggest that Lincoln—despite being rather closed-mouthed about his childhood—was “insecure” about his mother, much less that he felt “ambivalent” towards her memory or that he barely remembered her. (By this author’s own admission, Lincoln had a remarkable memory from childhood. I know nine is young, but it’s not that young, particularly when discussing a child who could recite entire sermons verbatim after hearing them just once!) Nancy’s death deeply affected him. She may have taught him to read and was definitely the more affectionate and gentle of his two parents. Far from slandering her as a “loose” woman, people who actually knew her remembered her for her intelligence and her kindness—and for the similarities between her and her son.

Lincoln loved his stepmother Sarah like another mother, and he might have been embarrassed by Nancy’s illegitimacy (though he attributed his own intellect to her Virginia planter father). He may or may not have ever said “all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to my [angel] mother,” either. But I’m willing to put money on him not being ambivalent about her or ashamed of her. He was devastated by the loss of her, and her death was followed by a period of extreme hardship for Sarah and Abraham before Thomas Lincoln remarried—so it’s really no wonder he was reluctant to talk about that time later in life.

#back on my lincoln bullshit don't mind me #anyway I want to like this book but seriously what does Nancy Hanks' legitimacy have to do with Lincoln's stance on slavery #or saving the union? of even his character as a person?#and frankly how dare you say he was ashamed of her or whatever my dude. piss off. respectfully.

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isthisselfcare · 2 years ago

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Please forgive my absence, I log into tumblr once every 4 business months

I have answered some asks but not all, for which I apologise

hello! rereading your work for the second time, proud of myself for translating less words than before (this british english's got hands and they kick me a lot). i keep beating myself about the question: WHAT is the clue about the mole in chapter 1? you said it was paltry, i didn't believe you, now i'm trying to make my eyes fall out over finding said clue. spare me.

It was the line about Shacklebolt’s assistant, she was grouchy about Draco for no discernable (at the time) reason: ‘Draco scheduled a visit with the Minister of Magic later that week. He sauntered past the Minister’s sour-faced assistant on the designated day, wondering who had pissed in her Pixie Puffs.’

She’s the one who would’ve heard Hermione discussing her findings with Shacklebolt early on, and subsequently learned that this Notorious Auror was going to protect her. That’s the entire not-even-clue. Rubbish, isn’t it?

Hi, since you like Jerome K Jerome, I was wondering if you've read "Two and a half men in a boat" by Nigel Williams? He basically recreated the boat trip on Thames with his friends like in Jerome's book. Nowhere near as good as the original, but it's pretty funny! He emulates Jerome's wit quite well.

I have not, but will add this to my reading list!

Is Hermione bi in your fic?

I am congenitally unable to write cishet women, so, yes, or pan, possibly. Didn’t get into her head enough to know

hey girlie. what does "cutty-uppy" means? i can't find the definition anywhere

Sorry. That was a made up word, referring to the sort of people who cut people up, those terrible Muggle surgeons

do you mind if your tags are used on other fics? i think your tags on DMATMOOBIL are a creative writing piece in their own right (they make me laugh sm) so I was a bit disturbed to find fics that copy them verbatim with no credit.

I don’t mind at all, AO3 tags take on their own self-referential, memeish life and I am happy to add mine to the ecosystem. My own tags on Mortifying include the ‘no X we die like men’ and ‘what is X if not Y persevering’ meme-phrases

do you see yourself writing more dramione in the future?

I haven’t any plans to do so at present, sorry!

Continuing an investigation to see if you are actually Hermione, can you do a taraskvana?

Hah. No. I've got a dodgy knee, I can hardly even sit cross-legged!

She's a 10 but she only has 1 story posted

It’s me!

Dont know If somebody has already asked you this - would it be okay to print Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love?

Printing for your personal use is fine

I noticed something about the Beltane chapter: "hippocampus" is a part of our brain's limbic system and one of its functions is memory formation, specifically creation and consolidation thereof, so I thought it was very symbolic that Hermione and Draco were racing creatures with the same name. Cause I feel like that chapter is a turning point in their relationship - Hermione stops seeing him as a barely tolerable pureblood ass. It's around that point that they really do start kind of liking each other and start - if you will - forming new memories together! I know I'm just overthinking things, but I love dmatmoobil so much I'm constantly on the lookout for hidden meanings and symbolism.

There are a lot of easter eggs in the fic, but with this one, you have given me far too much credit. Thank you for sharing it!

Will you be participating in the DHr advent?

Hiya, no, I had to decline as I hadn’t any writing time this autumn, honoured to have been invited, however, and eager to read the works!

Would you ever write a Tomione or a Sevmione?

I never say never, but frankly the possibility is remote. So sorry

Pain au chocolat ou chocolatine?

Scandaleux comme question, ça… pain au chocolat !

Re the “Marathon of chaos” on your Instagram. It’s been such a ride to not only follow your fanfic (I was an early adopter, which I know makes me sound like a hipster snob, and maybe I am one) but also watch it go from like 100 kudos to one of the top fics in the fandom. I’m here for your marathon and really grateful for all the work you put into MOBIL. Now for the question… when can we expect your next book? I don’t care if it’s Dramione, any other pairing, or any other fandom, or original fic, I WILL read it! Please continue to hit us with chaos!!!!

Thank you for your kind words!

I haven’t got an answer on the timeline for the next piece, or whether I will link it with this online identity, but I am toying with the idea of writing it entirely in comic sans

Your Hermione was my gay awakening

If this is serious, I hope you find your own Hermione one day!

Can we please be friends? You sound like you would make a great one

Unfortunately, I am a rubbish friend who never responds to texts and cancels plans at every opportunity, you don’t want to know me

I was so happy to see Uzbekistan mention in your story. That had never happened before. Thank you for mentioning my country 😻

You are welcome! Uzbekistan is honestly one of the most breath-taking countries I’ve ever visited – monuments that dwarf the Taj Mahal – unearthing the grand and bloody history of the Silk Road – stepping upon the same sands that the great Khans thundered across – seeing the ruins of the caravanserai – sheer magic! To say nothing of the hospitality of the people. I had far too much plov and quickly discovered my limit for vodka

You are my favorite cryptid

Cheeky. Thank you

And, finally, thank you to the person who sent me this article on a sacred relic that was stolen from an abbey and then returned ‘in an unceremonious cardboard box’! Hormone and Crotch are still at large

#asks #over 80 remain in my inbox #please forgive me for not answering all

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cafeleningrad · 2 years ago

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🔥 + any shipping discourse of your choosing :D

Oh boy, at a point I noticed that so many shipping wanks in fandoms just use the same circle of ad verbatim arguments just with a different coat of paint. And for the sake of enjoying my fandom experience I prefer to stay out of such discussions as good and often as possible.

BUT...

One development I don't get is the need of canonisation of shipping. I mean sure, who of us hadn't thought that a certain relationship would have improved/made more sense for a story, especially a character arc? Sometimes bittersweetness, unused potential, or unfullfilled longing makes sense for the plot, sometimes the author is an idiot (the eternal pain of enduring shounen manga endings written by men...). However... that is what fandom's for: The possibility of transformative versions, exploring ideas canon had space for, never intended, going silly, having fun. I would love to see my blorbos smooch each other but in the end that's free time enjoyment, nothing that I need to harass a creator/creative team over.

Whereas I do think that well written stories developing relationships that stray away from the standart het couple* can speak to people, and put a foot in the door for more stories being told by creators outside the standart Hollywood demographic, they are going to be usually not as popular in fandoms themselves. The reasons can be varied although my take would be it would be the invisible undercurrents of general dismissal of female characters, especially PoC female characters, a disinterest to engage outside of big IPs in first place. That's not me policing what kind of shipping would be the "🙏moral thing actually(TM)✨", fandom is for personal interest or fun in the first place. What I do find questionable is how the way that the language of social justice activism is coopted to argue why one's blorbos should smooch each other is beyond personal gratification actually also will singlehandedly be a deciding step in [add human right's movement of your choice here], adds another layer of annoying shipping culture. Certainly, it is mean how even acknowledgement of minorities has to compete against other demographic acknowledgement which also only has a chance to tolerated, and not even of large scale, in the accessible mainstream media. Still, I don't find it weird how, by example, the mere shipping (not even canon) of an interracial couple gets dismissed by other shipping groups as "no, the character is ✨gay✨, hun, no girls allowed".

I would maybe less irked by all that if so much shipping culture recently wouldn't push for "canonisation". having one ship next to the other or liking both ships could be a perfectly fine thing within fandom but the claim that one kind of ship would be better than the other in canon, without the consideration what cultural bagage comes with dismissing some kinds of relationships).

[*I mean two able bodied, cis, beauty standart guy and gal. Next to queer relationships (not excluding any intersection either),there's so much potential in talking about cross cultural relationships, dealing with disabilities or beauty standarts, or love in old age, generally love outside the model that "romance" occurs in fast food media only when the protagonist dude meets a conventionally attractive girl and they're obligated to fall for each other based on hormones boiling alone.]

In ill thoughts, I suspect that the wish for caonisation is only partly based of the distortion of fandom as activism space. (I mean when you spend all your life time on the web in fandom instead of going out creating or commissioning others to create the progressive work you want to see - or, very subversive, actually do activism and community support work yourself.)

Another the other reason I ill-mindedly speculate on is overindulgent wishfullfillment in two forms: A) A favourite blorbo gets so much projected on, they become a distorted fanon character yet have nothing to do with canon themes. This character then becomes a an altered Gary/Mary Sue doll the fandom created for itself, uses for dollplay whereas the canon does it's own thing. So what ever happens to thematical canon blorbo doesn't meet the ideal of fanon Frankenstein-blorbo and is met with anger. B) A Variation of the point above is selfprojection on the blorbo. Say when a blorbo becomes one's personal idol. Eg, like YA romance protagonists who're so suitable for reader inserts that one could easily think they themselves were the pretty sad girl with a hot love interest. The same can be observed in fandom where blorbos undergo the same doll-fication in a more personalized edition. Then character X isn't their canon self anymore, aggressive factions of fandom claim that X absolutely has to get together with the blorbo love interest - no matter the rest of the plot. (I wish the shipping wars during GoT season 8 were my only example but oh boy...!)

Speaking of the rest of the plot... I really dislike how overtaking shipping has become in fandom spaces. Certainly, makes more sense in romance centered fandoms but in in non-romance centered fandoms, it really bugs me how during the duration of shipping wars (and for all the flimsy excuses fandoms uses in the points above) it's impossible to talk about anything else, and how distorted fandom views can get about a certain kind of ship. Maybe, two blorbos smooching is not that world shattering as it personally feels.

(Yes, this is a reminder to myself by times when fandom gets too stupid. A reality check helps by times that people getting heated about two dimensional events is still leisure time whereas financial ends and deadlines need to be met, and honestly if something bugs me, the block function of users and/or tags is a great thing. Generally, we should log off more often but that's a topic for another day...)

#Lewis ranting #Lewis' ask box management #thank you for asking! It finally became a coherent text :')

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vaultsixtynine · 1 year ago

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26 & 28 for Vash and Darcy and as a little treat for me, 58 for WHF and Johnny

firstable. thank you <3

secondly let's do johnny and whf first because i miss them:

58 - Who’s more likely to hold a grudge after an argument?

The obvious answer is Johnny - and he does, for a little bit. They bicker often but a full-on fight is rarer and usually he bites harder than whf does in the moment - their chip keeps them quieter at the ignition point, but they actually hold onto the things he says to them for much longer after he's cooled off and had time to regret and forgive. He might churlishly remind her of something she said for a few hours, maybe a couple of days - but it's like three months later and he'll say something in a tone that might be considered snide and she'll just be like. I don't want to hear that from you, [repeats what he said to her in an argument 3 months ago verbatim].

Luckily! (for him), she will Let It Go if he apologizes if/when something gets brought back up, or it spawns a deeper discussion to map the edges of the hurt and navigate how to patch it (this is not done with therapyspeak, they are both terrible at Therapy). They've spent much of their life subdued in arguments and actually I think after awhile Johnny challenges them on it. Hey you're not gonna just not say your piece here but yell at me about it later, are you? Phrased LIKE THAT she realizes it's a bit silly - and as she gets more comfortable with him and also eventually gets the chip removed, she gets more comfortable in her anger also.

CUT FOR THE OTHER 2 :]

26 - What are their vices?

OUGH. Many of their vices directly feed back into their virtues in an ouroboros but that can be said of many people/characters.

Darcy - curiosity, dedication to a purpose at the exclusion of MOST other things, thinking she's always right (she is often right. however. don't be a fucker.), stubbornness, taking care of other people too much, is kind of goddamn reckless and assumes she can think her way out of any situation. i should give her some more vices/flaws tbh, i'll work on that

Vash - passive (common) and active (less common) forms of self-destruction, alcohol, "deserved" punishment, saying sorry too much, aimlessness, dedication to a purpose at the exclusion of all else, refusal to process anger productively or really at all, convincing himself he must be alone for the scales to balance correctly, is kind of terrible with money actually. i'm loathe to label most of his Coping With Being What He Is as a vice, so i won't. the alcohol is here because it is a problem that it's one of his only hobbies, regardless of how much it is or isn't a coping mechanism.

28 - What are there thoughts on pet names? Do they have any?

hi. yes. of coursseeeee. Darcy is a Nicknamer which means she had a nickname for Vash within 24 hours of meeting him - Sunshine, for the hair, but also Sunshine, for the smile and the general ease of being around him, even when he's being a bit odd and trying so hard to pretend he's Normal Normal Normal. it only gains more credence based on the fact that he burns noticeably warmer than the average human (because he isn't and also is a nuclear generator sewn into a human sock puppet) - which she didn't know at the time of giving it to him. She has a couple of others and will mimic other people's nicknames for him from time to time but Sunshine is ol' reliable.

Vash is less of an overt nicknamer but does like nicknames very much, they feel so special and individualized. Darcy has a threadbare little stuffed cow (one of her only possessions from childhood) named Clover and that was sssssoooo fucking cute when he found out but also something Vash could be annoying about, so he started calling *her* Clover as well. He also consistently referred to her as Miss Tanis to be a bit cheeky in their early days together where she was technically His Employer/Boss.

In terms of regular pet names - they take almost three and a half years to enter something resembling a formalized relationship (a blip on Vash's radar but also an eternity of longing for both of them bc time seems to move like molasses when you want something very badly and cannot have it), but they DO like standard pet names as well. Sweetheart is probably the most reliable one but darling and babe/baby will pop up as well.

#tee hee thank u marti #js tag #whatsherface #darcy #vash tag #silver lining

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earlgreytea68 · 4 years ago

Text

Heyyyyyy, I bet you were DYING to know stuff about that Google v. Oracle decision, huh?

You may have heard recently about a big deal Supreme Court decision called Google v. Oracle, a litigation that has dragged on for many, many, many years and focuses on Google having copied some pieces of computer programming owned by Oracle and known as APIs. Most of the write-ups I’ve seen about it have focused on its enormous repercussions for the technology sector, which makes sense since it’s a case about computer programming and APIs and other tech-y things.

But the thing about the decision is that it’s a fair use decision. The Supreme Court could have found that the APIs weren’t even protected by copyright. But instead, the Supreme Court used the doctrine of fair use, and this means that the case potentially has ramifications for all fair use situations, including fanfiction!

So, if you don’t know, fair use is a main defense to copyright infringement. Basically, you can use somebody else’s copyrighted work without their permission as long as what you’re doing with it is considered a “fair use.” E.g., you can write a story in somebody else’s fictional universe or draw art of somebody else’s fictional copyrighted characters without their permission as long as your use is a “fair use.”

“What’s a fair use?” is an incredibly complicated question. The long and tortured history of Google v. Oracle illustrates this: a jury found Google’s use was a fair use; an appellate court found that it wasn’t and basically said the jury was wrong; and now the Supreme Court says no, no, the jury was right and the appellate court was wrong. Like, this is not unusual, fair case rulings are historically full of disagreements over the same set of facts. All of the cases reiterate over and over that it’s a question that can’t really be simplified: every fair use depends on the particular circumstances of that use. So, in a way, Google v. Oracle, like every fair use case, is a very specific story about a very specific situation where Google used very specific APIs in a very specific way.

However, while every fair use case is always its own special thing, they all always debate the same four fair use factors (these are written into the law itself as being the bare minimum of what should be considered), and especially what’s known as the first and fourth factors. The first factor is formally “the purpose and character of the alleged fair use,” although over the decades of fair use jurisprudence this has come to be shorthanded as “transformativeness,” and the fourth factor is “effect on the market.”

Most of the energy and verve of a fair use case is usually in the transformativeness analysis; the more transformative your use is, the more likely it is to be fair (this is why AO3’s parent organization is called the Organization for *Transformative* Works – “transformative” is a term of art in copyright law). To “transform” a work, btw, for purposes of copyright fair use doesn’t necessarily mean that you have edited the work somehow; you can copy a work verbatim and still be found transformative if you have added some new commentary to it by placing it in a new context (Google Image Search thumbnails, while being exact reproductions of the image in question, have been found to be fair use because they’re recontextualizing the images for the different purpose of search results). The point is, transformativeness is, like fair use itself, built to be flexible.

Why? Because the purpose of copyright is to promote creativity, and sometimes we promote creativity by giving people a copyright, but sometimes giving someone a copyright that would block someone else’s use is the opposite of promoting creativity; that’s why we need fair use, for THAT, for when letting the copyright holder block the use would cause more harm to the general creative progress than good. Google v. Oracle recommits U.S. copyright to the idea that all this is not about protecting the profits of the copyright monopolist; we need to make sure that copyright functions to keep our society full of as much creativity as possible. Google copied Oracle’s APIs to make new things: create new products, better smartphones, a platform for other programmers to jump in and give us even more new functionality. The APIs themselves were created used preexisting stuff in the first place, so it’s not like anyone was working in a vacuum with a wholly original work. And, in fact, executives had thought that, the more people they could get using the programming, the better off they would be.

Which brings us to the fourth fair use factor, effect on the market (meaning the copyright holder’s market and ability to reap profits from the original work). There’s a lot of tech stuff going on in this part of the opinion but one of the points I find interesting from that discussion is that the court thought that Google’s use of the APIs was not a market substitute for the original programming, meaning that Google used the APIs “on very different devices,” an entirely new mobile platform that was “a very different type of product.”

But also. What I find most interesting in this part is the court’s explicit acknowledgment that sometimes things are good because they are superior, and sometimes things are good because people “are just used to it. They have already learned how to work with it.” Now, this obviously has special resonance in the tech industry (is your smartphone good because it’s the best it could be, or because you’re just really used to the way it’s set up?), but there’s also something interesting being said here about how not all of the value of a copyrighted work belongs *to the copyright holder* but comes *from consumers.* Forgive the long quote but I think the Court’s words are important here:

“This source of Android’s profitability has much to do with third parties’ (say, programmers’) investment in Sun Java programs. It has correspondingly less to do with Sun’s investment in creating the Sun Java API. . . . [G]iven programmers’ investment in learning the Sun Java API, to allow enforcement of Oracle’s copyright here would risk harm to the public. . . . [A]llowing enforcement here would make of the Sun Java API’s declaring code a lock limiting the future creativity of new programs. Oracle alone would hold the key. The result could well prove highly profitable to Oracle . . . . But those profits could well flow from creative improvements, new applications, and new uses developed by users who have learned to work with that interface. To that extent, the lock would interfere with, not further, copyright’s basic creativity objectives.”

This is picking up on reasoning in some older computer cases (like Lotus v. Borland, a First Circuit case from decades ago), but I think it’s so important we got this in a Supreme Court case: if WE bring some value to the copyrighted work through our investment in it, why should the copyright holder get to collect ALL the rewards by locking up further creativity involving that work? Which, incidentally, the Court explicitly notes is to the public detriment because more creativity is good for the public? This is such an important idea to the Supreme Court’s reasoning here that it’s the first part of the fair use test that it decides: that the value of the work at issue here “in significant part derives from the value that those who do not hold copyrights . . . invest of their own time and effort . . . .”

This case is, as we say in the law, distinguishable from fanfiction and fanart. APIs are different from television shows, and this case is very much a decision about technology and computer programming and smartphones and how old law gets applied to new things. Like, fair use is an old doctrine dating from the early nineteenth-century, and here we are figuring out how to apply it to the Android mobile phone platform. That, in and of itself, is pretty cool, and it’s rightly what most of the articles you’ll see out there about this case are focusing on.

But this case isn’t just a technology case; it’s also a fair use case that places itself in the lineage of all the fair use cases we look at when we think about what makes a use fair. And, to that end, this has some interesting things to say, about how much value consumers bring to copyrighted works and where a copyright holder’s rights might have to acknowledge that; about the fact that there are in fact limits to how much a copyright holder can control when it comes to holding the “lock” to future creativity building on what came before; about what part of the market a copyright holder is entitled to and what it isn’t. Think about the analogy you could make here: Given the investment of fans in learning canon, which is what makes the creative work valuable in the first place, allowing enforcement against fanfic or fanart would allow the canon creators to have a lock limiting future creativity, which would be highly profitable to the original creator (or, let’s be real, to Disney lol), but wouldn’t further copyright’s goals of promoting creativity because it would stifle all of that creativity instead. And just like Google with the APIs, what fandom is doing is not a market substitute for the original work: they’re “very different products.”

This is not to say, like, ANYTHING GOES NOW. Like I said, fanfic and fanart are very different from APIs. Fictional works get more protection than a functional work like the APIs at issue in this case. And there’s still a whole thing about commercial vs. non-commercial in fair use analysis which I didn’t really touch here (but which obviously has limits, since it’s not like Google isn’t making tons of money, and their use was a fair use). But this decision could kind of remind a big media world that maybe had forgotten that the copyright monopoly they enjoy is supposed to have the point of encouraging creativity; we grant a copyright because we think people won’t create without a financial incentive. (Tbh, there’s a lot of doubt that that is actually a true thing to believe, given all the free fic and art that gets produced daily, but anyway, it’s what the law decided several centuries ago before the internet was a thing.) Copyright is a balance, between those who hold the copyright and the rest of us, and the rest of us aren’t just passive consumers, we have creative powers of our own, and we might also want to do some cool things. And this case sees that. None of us are starting in a creative vacuum, after all; we’re all in this playground together.

#copyright #copyright law #legal #long post

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tricktster · 5 years ago

Text

the twilight series suddenly makes 100% more sense if you read them under a specific premise that, i contend, is heavily supported by the text:

Much like Amy’s diary in Gone Girl, the books in the Twilight Saga are verbatim reproductions of in-universe diary entries carefully and deliberately created and curated by badass unreliable narrator Bella Swan as a means to achieve immortality.

Prerequisite assumptions:

1) Bella actively and persistently wants to become a vampire, both diagetically and (I contend) non-diagetically. The average vampire novel format often fails to capture realistic human behavior in one highly specific area: the protagonists are frequently mortals who grapple with the choice of whether to become a vampire. This is stupid, because being a vampire would obviously be dope as hell; particularly in the Twilight Universe, where vampires are not required to take a human life to survive, and indeed, have the capacity to live full and rewarding lives while integrated* into the human community.

(*integrated-ish; see Assumption 6)

2. There are too many coincidences for Bella to have encountered the Cullens by sheer chance, only to be the ONE person that Edward can’t live without (due largely to the novelty factor of not being able to read her ding-dang thoughts.)

3. Diagetically, the Volturi don’t even know Bella’s psyonic gifts until New Moon, but we also know that the Volturi scour the globe for recruits to enlist into the protection of their governing body.

4. Nobody wants to be a voiceless cog in a bureaucracy.

5. Nobody, and especially nobody in high school, wants to be a high school student forever.

6. Vampires in twilight are, as a group, cartoonishly terrible at disguising their true nature.

7. Forks is a backwater town approximately 3.5 hours away from the biotech hub of Seattle.

7. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney can eat my farts and they deserve to be preserved in this snapshot of an innocent author’s mind slowly unraveling.

Proposed timeline:

In 1993, there is a key system meltdown at a improvised biohacking startup in Seattle, rendering all innovative genetic modification experiments into a puddle of brown sludge that nobody can figure out how to dispose of per Federal regs, since they don’t even know what it is.

The broke founder of the startup, who for the purposes of this timeline I will call Jeff Bezos because that’s who it was, eventually grows tired of all the discussion about what to do, and just pops it in a barrel, drives a few hours out of town, and dumps it in a pond.

Bella Swan, a small child, is hanging out at a park with her family friend Jacob Black (and a ton of his friends) when they all decide to wade in a slightly murky pond. Thereafter, they are transformed.

Bella grows up as a normal, highly powerful mutant with a +20 to deception checks and wisdom saves. She lives in Arizona, but up until 2002, summers in Forks. While in Forks, she picks up on the local lore about a family of vampires who don’t eat people.

Because Forks (population: 17 + Charlie’s mustache) is boring, Bella bones up on the only interesting thing about it, i.e. Vampire Hometown baybeeeee.

In 2000, George W. Bush gets elected president, and his evangelical politics and general bumbling ineptitude informs Bella’s opinions on authoritative governmental entities.

In 2001, the Cullens make their intention to move back to Forks known, but they take a while because they need to pack all their stupid graduation hats and volvos, etc.

Later in 2001, a psychic Volturi scout rolls through Forks to ensure that nobody within living memory recalls the Cullens, and notices an anomaly in the psychic field.

The scout goes to confront Bella about joining the Volturi, and Bella immediately clocks him as a vampire, because vampires in the Twilight Universe fucking suck at looking/acting human. This leaves the scout in a bind: she’s too valuable to kill, but she’s a pre-teen, and therefore too young to be transformed per Volturi authority.

The scout warns her he’ll have to kill her if she discusses the existence of vampires with any human. He then tells her he’ll be back in five years, and begins to sweet talk her on how good life will be when she’s a vampire, beautiful, immortal, powerful, etc. Bella asks if she has to kill, and dude says “nah, actually there’s a bunch of vegetarian vampires who are moving back here soon. Fucking nerds, but otherwise they’re doing well.” Bella is all about becoming a vampire, because Bella is a rational actor.

Bella moves to Arizona, and as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unjustifiedly initiated, she recognizes that while she DOES want to be a vampire, she does NOT want to be a foot soldier in any war that she can’t support. She needs a plan.

In 2004, Bella is watching her step-dad’s minor league baseball game when it occurs to her. On her own, she’s a target for the Volturi, but if she had some people to watch her back, she might be okay. Of course, nobody fucks with the Volturi on behalf of some rando human. She’ll need to con her way into a coven who’ll have her back and also give her that +10 to constitution via vampiric transformation, which she desperately wants because she’s a rational actor. And where are the non-volturi vampires that might have her back? Fucking Forks.

Bella moves to Forks in 2004, and upon seeing the Cullens, she immediately clocks them as vampires even though they left their “we’re all vampires” booty shorts at home, because, as previously discussed, vampires in the Twilight Universe fucking suck at looking/acting human.

Bella notes that all the vampires but one are paired off in heterosexual bliss, and takes note of the straggler as a potential vehicle to vampyrdom.

Bella figures out that Eddie can read everyone’s mind but hers, because Edward Cullen fucking sucks at looking/acting like a human who can’t read minds. Bella further observes that Eddie has a huge undead boner for her.

She’s found her mark. Now she just needs to convince him that she’s better off as part of the coven than on her own. Problem: Eddie’s a self-pitying insufferably guilt-striken perpetual adolescent who keeps himself busy by feeling sorry for himself because he’s a vampire, angst angst angst etc etc. Also, I think he’s Catholic, so add some more guilt in. She’ll have to win him over by convincing him that they’re destined to be soulmates.

What does a vampire used to having complete insight into everyone’s mind but his crush’s want? A method to know what she really thinks of him. Bella begins writing a “diary” knowing that there’s no way in hell Eddie won’t sneak in and read it. So she Gone Girls it, and begins to lay a trap to lure him in. That first diary? Twilight.

This was just in the movie but a stoner chases her around with a worm on a stick. Nothing to do with this theory, I just like that part of the movie. Where’s my spinoff about that guy?

Eddie won’t give Bella what she wants (eternal life) by the end of book 1, even though she asks him to EXTREMELY POLITELY. Time to hit the diary with some more promises of undying love.

Bella reconnects with her old friend Jacob and the rest of the Mutated By Jeff Bezos Boys. Alas, they cannot turn her into a physically powerful sexy immortal with a bite, so she’s still stuck with plan A) win over a whole family of vampires with big Mormon energy. It’s the long con.

Edward’s angst abruptly takes a swing towards terminal. He’s absolutely your classic sadboy, perhaps because Bella now has one (1) friend that he knows about.

When Eddie begins to drift away on account of Angst, Bella conjurs up a secondary love interest who, coincidentally, is ALSO a sexy supernatural entity, and is much less coincidentally just Jacob.

We should establish here that Edward is like a 107 year old white dude and so even though Diary!Bella pretends not to see it, Metatextual Frame Story!Bella knows that dude is super racist.

Jacob Black is three things: 1. Like Bella, a mutant (although one with shapeshifting abilities), 2.one of Bella’s oldest and most trusted confidants, and 3. down to clown on an elderly teenage vampire who keeps stereotyping him. Sure, says Jacob, I’ll take the form of a werewolf. He seriously thinks we’re all just beastmen, huh? Hey look at me now, I’m Regis Philbin because this is 2005 and Who Wants to be a Millionaire is still sort of relevant. Sick.

Edward does not like that Bella has one (1) other friend. Bella and Jacob plot to use this to their advantage and lure Edward back on the wings of jealousy.

Eddie gets himself into trouble on account of Angst and poor communication, so Bella has to go rescue him from himself/the Volturi.

Aro finally meets her and gets to test her powers, which impress him. Now she’s back on the fucking radar.

I forget everything that happens in Eclipse, so i have chosen to omit that part.

Eventually she extracts a quid pro quo from Eddie; i’ll marry you if you turn me into a dracula.

We don’t really call ourselves that, Wet Blanket Cullen replies, entirely earnestly.

Bella gets married at 18 in 2006, and Eddie starts to backtrack his promise about changing her. This won’t stand.

Well, look, he’s an elderly guilty catholic/mormon teen who probably still uses super racist terms, but she’s stuck on honeymoon island, he has certain angles that work for him, and seriously what are they gonna do but fuck? Bella’s alternative is listening to her “husband” drone on about his interests, which are almost certainly Car, How Do I Post a Minion Picture on Facebook, and Licorice Used To Be a Lot Cheaper in the Good Old Days.

Whoops a fetus.

Bella recognizes that she’s GOT to have this baby: time’s running out, and Bella knows that at least two of the Vamps in her coven will cut ties if she terminates or otherwise fails to carry this baby to term because of the conservative religious subtext. She’s going to have to stick it out for 9 months, even though it’s a risky call.

Bella gets what she wants after giving birth. “My time as a human is over, but I've never felt more alive. I was born to be a vampire.” That’s a direct quote. Except now she’s got a (pretty cute and easy) baby that she desperately wants to protect from Turning Into A Vaguely Religious Cullen Dressed Head To Toe In Cream Colored Wool.

Bella decides to fake her own death and escape with the kid and Jake so they can form i guess a detective agency. Bella will get “killed” by the Volturi, move to Sydney, and open up shop, and Jake will take the kid after her a few months later.

They’re gonna need a reason why Jake gets the kid though, and there’s only one reason to do anything amongst the Cullens: a heterosexual love interest with a super problematic age gap.

Jesus, Jake sighs, is Eddie really going to believe I’m in romantic love with your actual infant? Does he really think that little of me?

Yup.

Bella tries to draw the Volturi’s attention.

Works too well.

The Cullens call up all their vague acquaintances, who are at least kind of fun. Particularly that one dude who keeps getting angry about British conduct during the American Revolution.

Well, fuck, now the Volturi are bringing an army to fight their ragtag army of Vampires Who Are Cool And Interesting Enough That We Can Safely Presume They Are All Definitely Gay. Bella can’t let those guys die, they’re the first actually compelling vampires she’s ever talked to.

Bella saves the day because she’s OP.

All the Cool Vamps start packing up to leave and Bellz almost goes with them, but the Cullens would just keep sending missionaries after her if they knew.

Bella finishes her fourth journal with the vague warning that the Volturi are still out there somewhere and they miiiight just try and get her.

Two days later, she stages a scuffle and gets the fork out of Fucks. Her journals are the only clue.

Sirius Black and baby nessie follow once edward has stopped sobbing into his cream colored sweater and moved on to Extended Power Pouting.

Bella recruits her own army of fledglings.

Bella stages a coup against the Volturi and succeeds.

Bella sits on the iron throne with a hot lady vampire on each knee and they all kiss and stuff.

Nessie I guess forms a post punk band?

Edward dies from aspiration of a brussel sprout that he ate because he just wanted to feel something.

Charlie and Billy get married.

Charlie’s mustache develops a cult instagram following, providing them with a modest retirement income.

Jacob shapeshifts into Bill Murray and is always crashing weddings.

Bella’s stepdad is off in the B plot this whole time winning the world series with the help of a kooky angel.

There. Fixed. My soul is at rest.

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justkending · 3 years ago

Text

Moral of the Story. Chapter Five.

Summary: Marrying too young out of highschool leads to a naive and failed marriage. Now 10 years later, word comes that the divorce was never actually completed. Bucky and Y/N have to come back together after all these years to settle what wasn’t all those years back. Passive attitudes, miscommunicated endings, and reminiscing of old loves and lives all comes back for the two.

Pairing: Bucky x Y/N

Word Count: 3200+

Chapter Five:

Once the meeting was done and over, Bucky and Y/N both left at the same time. Bucky was kind enough to hold the door open for her as they made their way back to the street, but Y/N’s goal was to get back to her car as quick as possible. So she gave him a curt thank you and moved quickly to leave.

“Y/N!” Bucky shouted just as she was less than 10 feet away. She paused with a cringe on her face before turning back to him. He was walking hesitantly to catch up with her. “Listen, I know it’s been a few years.”

“A few is an understatement,” she mumbled and he heard, but decided to move on.

“I just- I,” he stuttered. What the hell was he doing? “Would you want to get coffee? Catch up some? I-,” Before he could finish, she cut him off.

“Listen, as great as that sounds,” she tried to say nicely, but he could see the nerves in her face. “I actually have plans right after this.” He deflated some in his spot. She noticed and though she thought she wouldn’t care if she hurt him after all these years, something deep down proved that thought was wrong. “I-I just haven’t seen my family in a while, and the little time I have left here this weekend, I wanted to spend time with them where I could.”

“Right, right,” Bucky tried to brush off unbothered, but failed. “I’m sure your dad misses you, and you him.”

“Yeah, it’s been a few years. That and I haven’t been back in the city in 10 years, so I have a lot to catch up on,” she nodded.

“Wait, you haven’t been back here in 10 years?” he asked shocked. He thought she had a least been in town throughout the years. Even if he hadn’t seen her.

“Um, yeah. I kinda…” she hesitated, but figured where would the truth hurt? “Guess I wasn’t ever really ready to get back here.” Bucky knew what she meant even if she wasn’t saying it verbatim, and it hurt his heart knowing he was the cause. Well, I guess both of them were, not just him. “That plus starting up Horizon, it was hard the first few years. But the family still sees each other for the holidays.”

“That’s right. Colorado,” Bucky nodded.

Y/N had kept forgetting for some reason that Bucky and her father were with each other at least once a week most of the time. Always hanging out and doing guy things, or really, father and son types of things. Meaning he knew of, if not actually knew, Sherri, Denise, John, and Chloe too. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t know about the yearly Colorado trip.

“Right,” Y/N nodded with pursed lips, putting it all together and Bucky realized.

“Oh, God sorry. I promise I’m not stalking you, it’s just your dad and I-” he started to defend his knowledge.

“It’s fine James, really,” she said with a wave of her hand and a slight chuckle. One he never expected coming from her. And the name… He wasn’t sure the last time he heard her say Bucky. As soon as they decided to bring an end to their relationship, that nickname never passed her lips again. “I know you and my dad are close.”

“You’re not upset at that?” he asked, slightly confused.

“I’m not evil. No matter how much you may think,” she mumbled the last part. “I-I… I know the relationship you two share. You’ve had it since the beginning of time practically. I wouldn’t dream to take that from either of you.”

Bucky didn’t respond. Because all he could do was look at her with a longing look. God, he missed her. Sure he held some anger from where they ended things, but he had moved on for the most part. Now he just missed his best friend. The girl he grew up loving. From best friends to girlfriend, to eventually fiance and wife. He missed her. Just who she was as a person when resent wasn’t a feeling she had toward you.

Sure, it was a lot to think back on in just the thought that she still cared for him enough not to banish her father from him, but it spoke volumes for who she was as an individual and he missed that.

“I mean not that I really have a say in other people’s life, but if I did, I wouldn’t do such a thing,” she looked down, fidgeting in her spot seeing him staring at her like earlier all over again.

“I know you wouldn’t,” he responded, quickly noticing his stare and looking down at his own shuffling feet. “Well, in that case, I’ll let you go. Thomas has been excited beyond measures to have you home. I won’t keep you from him.”

She nodded as they made eye contact again and started to turn back to her car. But before she could get too far, knowing this may be the last time he sees her again for a while, if not ever, he had to say it.

“Y/N?” She turned at her name and sent him a questioning look. “I’m glad you’re doing ok. You seem to really be taking the world by storm like you always were going to,” he smiled softly and she blushed some before returning the smile.

“Thank you, James. You too. You seem like you’re doing some pretty amazing things yourself,” she nodded once.

They didn’t speak more than that, but instead walked back to their cars. Not without a second glance here and there.

___________________

“So? How did it go?” Thomas asked as soon as Y/N walked in through the garage door. Him and Sherri sitting at the breakfast nook with cups of coffee in hand and wide eyes ready for all the details.

“It went,” she responded, throwing her purse on the island bar stool and going to make a mug for herself.

“Wow, such a colorful description. Anything more and she’d be over doing it,” Thomas exaggerated, getting a giggle from Sherri who stood up and joined Y/N’s side grabbing the creamer and sugar for her.

“Come on now, sis. Good? Bad? Magical?” she added the last word with flare.

“Anything besides magical,” she sent a playful glare to the woman. “I will say this though.” She walked over and sat with a huff in the nook across from her father, practically deflating in her seat. “I am still technically Mrs. Barnes.”

“What?!” they both gasped.

“How?” Thomas pushed on.

“Well I guess the meeting today was just to update the papers and nothing else. I mean, yeah. A few signatures here and there, but it’s not finalized.”

“So it was just an revision meeting? When’s the final cut?” Sherri asked, leaning on the back of Thomas' chair. The two watching their daughter with intrigued eyes.

“A few days?” she said more in a question. “Matthew, our new lawyer, said him and his partner are going to update them within the next day or so, and then send us the final write up to sign. After we send those back in, it’ll all be settled.”

“You still going to have John overlook everything for extra measures?”

“Never hurts. I really would rather NOT go through all this mess again. Getting divorced once sucks, but twice? Yeah, I’d rather not have to do it a third time. And all with the same man,” Y/N sighed heavily before taking a long chug of her coffee.

The couple ahead of her sending each other a silent message to the other. Y/N hadn’t noticed as she closed her eyes at the upcoming headache, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have time to question it as her phone started going off.

Looking down, she saw the office calling her. On a Saturday?

“I have to take this. I’ll be back in one second,” she groaned, taking her coffee mug with the buzzing phone to the back patio. “Hello?”

“Y/N! Hey, I have a quick update,” Melody’s voice came through the other line.

“Why are you at the office on a Saturday?” Y/N said a little sternly, but good intentions were behind it.

“I got an email from our recycle plant we had scheduled for that Monday meeting and it couldn’t wait until Monday,” she was quick to explain. “But listen. They had to reschedule. The main guy and his wife, the bosses of the vendure who was coming to discuss the offers, had a family emergency come up and asked if they could postpone it a week.”

“Um, yeah sure. That’s fine,” Y/N shook her head trying to run the schedule through her mind. “Did you contact Bee’s Knees and let them know about the postponement?”

“Yes, and they said they were fine with it as well.”

“Ok, good,” Y/N nodded. “So I have a clear schedule besides background work Monday. Is that all?”

“Well…” Melody drug out.

“Why does that sound like a Natasha kind of ‘well��,” Y/N questioned with a quirked eyebrow. This wasn’t receptionist or assistant talk about to happen.

“Speaking of Nat, we thought because that was your only big meeting for the week and everything else is normal for the rest of the week, you should extend your stay in Brooklyn,” she replied.

“What?”

“Come on. We both agree you haven’t seen your family in far too long, and a weekend trip isn’t going to cut it. That plus, Nat made a good point that you have tons of old friends you haven't seen in way too many years either,” she went on. “Why rush catching up with everyone, if all the work you need to do can be done on your laptop from Brooklyn? That and for once, your schedule isn’t overstacked with meeting after meeting. That happens once every few months. Plus, you’re already in New York!”

“Ok, ok. Calm down there, Sparky,” Y/N chuckled at her friend being out of breath. “I mean I guess, you’re not wrong…”

“She can’t be. I’m the one who came up with all this,” Nat’s voice broke in.

“Oh, yeah. I may or may not be hanging out with Nat and Yelena,” Melody giggled bashfully. “Or be partially tipsy.”

Y/N rolled her eyes at the three, but couldn’t stop the laugh from coming out of her own mouth.

“You sneaky little bitches,” Y/N chuckled.

“What can I say? We’re Romanoff’s,” Nat smirked through the phone.

“Well, I’m a Hill, but Romanoff by descent,” Melody added in.

Again, another joking eye roll.

“Now I have to change my flights and everything,” Y/N sighed.

“Oh, woes me,” Nat mocked. “What a challenge it must be to log into your computer and change a flight to another week…”

“Hey, smartass,-”

“Lucky for you, you have me. I state once again,” Nat laughed. “I already checked into your flights to see if we can get a cheap reschedule.”

“How’d you know my login information?” Y/N asked, confused.

“I have my ways, now don’t interrupt,” she scolded before continuing. “I was able to find you a flight around the same time, plenty of time to get to your rescheduled meeting, and it won’t cost you a hair off that pretty head of yours.”

“How’d you manage that?” Y/N asked with a smirk of her own now and a pop of her hip.

“I’ll say it again since apparently you’re deaf. I have. My ways,” the red head replied.

“You sure you weren’t a spy in another life or something? Because sometimes you and Yelena have some strange tricks up your sleeves that I’ve only seen done in movies.”

“I would like the answer to that as well. Like how they coroerced me into a girls night while I was hiding in my apartment trying to take a relaxing night to read,” Melody spoke up.

“Drink your juice, babygirl,” Yelena’s voice came quietly in the back.

“With all that being said, we are gonna to let you go. We’re going to get all the details of last night out of this little one and go to a few clubs,” Nat explained.

“Oh, I’d love to hear the details when you have them,” Y/N laughed.

“I’ll have a nice 5 page paper ready for you tomorrow morning,” Yelena yelled from a distance.

“I’ll be expecting it. Now you girls go have a good time and please show Melody what she’s missing out on!”

“Can do, boss lady! Love you! See you next week!”

With that, the phone call ended and Y/N looked at the empty lock screen.

“I guess we’re staying a little longer.”

________________

“So, how’d it go?” Steve asked coming home from his early half shift.

Bucky was sprawled across the couch with a pillow over his face, a sports playback running in the background and a beer that looked like he had been nursing all afternoon on the coffee table.

“She looks great,” he mumbled into the cushion, but Steve couldn’t syfer the words.

“You’re going to have to say that again without a throw pillow over your face,” he chuckled, kicking off his shoes and throwing his keys by the door before heading to the nearby kitchen.

“I said, she looks great!” Bucky all but grunted as he sat up. Frustration and annoyance clear in his answer.

“And why do you sound like that’s a horrible thing?” Steve laughed again from the distance.

Bucky groaned as he stood up and walked into the other room with Steve. He was parading through the fridge for an afternoon snack, or by the looks of the clock on the oven, lunch.

It was 12:30 already?

“Because Steve, it makes it hurt all the more,” he pouted, crossing his arms as he leaned against the island in the middle of the space.

“Her looking good, hurts you?” Steve asked, standing up with a tupperware bowl of leftovers in his hand.

“I don’t know!” Bucky sneered at him, angry that his best friend wasn’t catching on to his feelings that even he didn’t understand. “I guess deep down, I was hoping she didn’t age well so that walking away would be easier. But there she was, walking in like fine wine. All mature and curvy, and… Perfect…” he mumbled the last part. “She did smack me though,” he added, thinking back with a dazed face.

“Smack you?” Steve chuckled, popping the cold food in the microwave.

“Our lawyer is blind. I asked a simple question of out of all the states to live in, why New York in that kind of condition?” Bucky said, hating how it sounded. “I realize now, after processing it, that was stupid and rude.”

“Hence why she smacked you,” Steve laughed, copying the brunette's stance on the opposite counter. “You’re an occupational therapist, Buck. Out of all the things to understand, it’s people adapting to their handicaps and disabilities.” He couldn’t help the laugh at his friend who seemed oblivious to the irony.

“I was nervous, ok?!” Bucky defended, throwing his arms up and going to pace the room now. “Y/N and I had been sitting in awkward silence for the most part of the meeting so far, and that was the first piece of conversation that came to mind.”

“I’m hoping for your sake, he wasn’t a dick about it.”

“He wasn’t. He actually said he gets asked that a lot. Apparently, he hasn’t been blind all his life and said he’s lived here all that time. Helps when you grow up in the environment you live in.”

“Very true,” Steve agreed, grabbing his food and stirring it around before taking a bite and talking again. “Besides her looking ‘perfect’, did the process go well? You know, besides her reprimanding you like a mom?”

“Ha ha. You’re so funny,” Bucky deadpanned. “But yes. We signed our things and updated it all. Hey, did you know she’s a co-founder of Nat’s woman’s home? I guess not a co-founder, but investor?”

Steve finished his bite and shook his head. “Can’t say I did. It must be recent if that’s the case because neither Nat or Y/N told me about that.”

“I think it is, but damn…”

“Damn what?” Steve asked.

“Well, at first she had me dropping my jaw at the fact that she did everything and more that she had hoped to do. She’s become an environmentalist like her grandmother and has started a whole business based on it.”

“I mean she was an environmentalist as soon as her GG had her walking. Remember how she would always take our straws at restaurants and have the waitress take them back so we didn’t ‘kill the turtles’? And that was before that was a like a worldwide trend,” Steve remenised, moving to the living room to eat at the couch. Bucky following.

“God, yes. She started carrying like 10 reusable straws with her as soon as they came out with them. That and remember the amount of reusable bags she had in her backseat any given time of the week?” Bucky laughed, joining him in thinking back to the dated memories.

“So many she would hand them out to people in parking lots at grocery stores to use themselves,” Steve added. “God, she really loves this planet. I admire her passion though. We need everyone to have a heart for our home like that.”

“She made it everyone's mission around her to know just how important it was,” Bucky smiled at the thought as he looked off in the distance, wrapped in the memories he loved. But that wasn’t the point. The point was he would never be close with her like that again. What they had was done and over… Or would be. “Funny thing actually…” Bucky chuckled awkwardly.

“What’s that?” Steve asked, looking at the TV in front of him.

“We may or may not still be married…”

There was a pause as Steve stopped mid-chew and slowly turned his gaze from the baseball reruns on the screen to Bucky with a tight smile.

“Excuse me?”

“I guess that wasn’t the endgame for today’s meeting…”

“What was?”

“Getting things updated and signed so that the papers were actually ready for our divorce,” Bucky answered.

“So she’s still Y/N Barnes?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t say that to her face. She looks like she wants to physically throw up when you call her that,” Bucky slouched in his chair. His hand coming up to cover his face as he rubbed his temples with his thumb and middle finger.

“So still married?”

“Still married.”

“How long?” Steve sighed, putting his food on the counter and leaning back in his own seat.

“As long as it takes to make up the new divorce settlements and get them signed and sent back in. Until then… I’m a married man.”

If you would like to be tagged in this series, please send an ask! It keeps things more organized for me. If you comment, I most likely will not add because I loose them:)

- Tags will be closing soon.

Moral of the Story Taglist:

@taylormobley @ximaginx @vicmc624 @leyannrae @lonerlovescompany @jessyballet @angstysebfan @tita127 @semistablecentenarian @im-a-light-child @alyssahowden @studiesinspanish @natyvwe @rebekahdawkins @fanfictionjunkie1112 @millennial-teenybopper @scotlandasshole @aquariusbarnes @shinykoalacat

Marvel Tags:

@thejourneyneverendsx @death-unbecomes-you @heyiamthatbitch @lizzymacy555 @srrymydood @xa-dia @redhairedfeistynerd @morganclaire4 @connie326 @captain-asguard @mollygetssherlockcoffee @teenagedreams-bucky @shower-me-with-roses @pham-tastical @livstilinski

My Lovelies forever:

@natura1phenomenon @lauravicente @kakakatey @traceyaudette @notyourtypicalrose @laneygthememequeen @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @sandlee44 @thorne93 @thefaithfulwriter @essie1876 @greyeyedsmile14 @capsiclehan @xostephanie @averyrogers83 @awesomenursingstudent @gh0stgurl @cs-please @carls1022 @jjlevin @rainbowkisses31 @anise-d-castle6 @deannotmoose @their-bibliophile @kitkatd7 @willowbleedsonpaper @mariaenchanted @snffbeebee @couldabeenamermaid @rebekahdawkins @alyispunk @princess-annna

Bucky Barnes Tags:

@chloe-skywalker @charmedbysarge @jbarness @bellamy-barnes @katiaw2 @aikeia @stopjustlovethemcu

#bucky barnes highschool sweetheart #bucky barnes highschool au #bucky barnes college au #bucky barnes x reader au #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x y/n #justkending #moral of the story #marvel au #marvel #marvel series #marvel fanfic #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #au series

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oumakokichi · 4 years ago

Note

What are the differences between the original and localization?

Hmm, that’s a very simple question with a pretty lengthy answer! I did answer some similar questions in the past, but that was a long time ago, much closer to when the localization was first released. There are probably a lot of people whose main experience with the game has only been with the localization, and who don’t really know or remember those differences anymore.

For that reason, I’m going to go into kind of a “masterlist” of things that were changed in the localization in this post. This will be very long, but I really want to explain the whole story behind the localization and its differences from the original to people who might only be hearing about this for the first time. I’m going to cover full spoilers for the game obviously, so be careful when reading!

Also, please feel free to share this post around, as I think it contains a lot of information that might be interesting to people who’ve only experienced the localization!

Before I really get into it though, I want to stipulate that the differences I’m covering in this post are mostly going to be things that I believe could’ve been handled or translated better, not every single line that was changed verbatim in the game. This is because a localization’s purpose is incredibly different from a literal translation.

Where a literal translation seeks to keep as much of the original authorial intent as possible and has the leeway to explain various Japanese terms and cultural specifics to the readers in footnotes or a glossary, a localization is usually much more targeted towards a specific target audience, usually one more unfamiliar with Japanese culture or terminology. As a result, some things in a localization are occasionally changed to make them more understandable to a western audience.

So, for example, I’m not going to fault the localization for changing Monosuke’s extremely heavy Kansai accent in Japanese to a New York accent in the English dub. It’s much easier for western players to immediately grasp that, “hey, this guy has a very specific regional accent that the other characters don’t,” and it works really well as a rough equivalent. Similarly, localization changes like changing a line here or there about the sport of sumo to be about the Jets and the Patriots also helps get the point across to players quickly and easily without having to explain an unfamiliar sport to western players in-depth before they can get the joke.

That being said… there were some liberties taken with ndrv3’s translation which I don’t believe fulfill the point of a localization, and which changed certain deliveries or even perceptions about the characters in a way that I just don’t agree with.

Let me explain first how the localization team actually worked, to people who might be unfamiliar with the process. Ndrv3 had four separate translators working on the localization. When NISA first announced that the game was being localized, these four translators introduced themselves on reddit in an AMA, where they also mentioned that they were by and large dividing up the 16 main characters between themselves, with each translator specifically assigned to four characters.

Having more translators working on a game might sound like a good idea in theory, but it’s often not. The more translators assigned to a game, the harder it is to provide a consistent translation. Translation is messy work: often there are multiple ways to translate the same sentence, or even the same word between two different languages. If a translation has multiple translators, that means they need to be communicating constantly with one another and referencing each other’s work all the time in order to avoid mistranslations: it’s difficult work, but not impossible.

However… this didn’t happen with ndrv3’s translation team. It’s pretty clear they did not reference each other’s work or communicate very well, and the translation suffers for it. I’m not just guessing here, either; it’s a fact that various parts of the game have lines completely ruined by not looking at the context, or words translated two different ways almost back-to-back. I’ll provide specific examples of this later.

Many of the translators also picked which characters they wanted to translate on the basis of which were their favorites—which, again, isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but which does raise the risk of letting character bias influence your work. No work is inherently without bias; all translators have to look at their own biases and still attempt to translate fairly regardless. But because translators were assigned four characters each, this meant that while they might be really enthusiastic about translating for one character in particular, they were less enthusiastic for others. These biases do reflect in the work, and I will provide further examples as I make my list.

This system of delegation also leaves more questions than it answers. It becomes impossible to tell who translated certain parts of the game, particularly in areas where the narrator is unclear. For example, did Saihara’s translator translate Ouma’s motive video, as Saihara is the one watching it in chapter 6? Or did Ouma’s translator do it, since it’s his motive video? Who translated the parts we see at the beginning of certain chapters, where characters from the outside world make occasional comments? It’s really unclear, and I’m not even sure if the translators divvied up these parts amongst themselves or if only one person was supposed to handle them.

To put it simply, there were quite a lot of complications and worrying factors about the way the translation was divided by the team, and the communication (or lack thereof) between said translators. It’s impossible to really discuss the main problems that ndrv3’s localization has without making it clear why those problems happened, and I hope I’ve explained it well here.

With that out of the way, I’m finally going to cover the biggest differences between the original game and the localization, and why many of these changes were such a problem.

1.) Gonta’s Entire Character

To this day, I still feel like this is probably the most egregious change of the entire localization. Gonta does not talk like a caveman in Japanese. He does not even have a particularly limited vocabularly. He talks like a fairly normal, very polite high school boy, and the only stipulation is that he’s not very familiar with electronics or technology due to his backstory of “growing up in the woods away from humans.”

Gonta does refer to himself in the third-person in Japanese, but I need to stress this: this is a perfectly normal thing to do in Japanese. Many people do it all the time, and it has no bearing on a person’s intelligence or ability to speak. In fact, both Tenko and Angie also refer to themselves in the third-person in the Japanese version of the game, yet mysteriously use first-person pronouns in the localization.

I wouldn’t be so opposed to this change if it weren’t for the fact that Gonta’s entire character arc revolves around being so much smarter than people (even himself!) give him credit for. He constantly downplays his own abilities and contributions to the group despite being fairly knowledgeable, not only about entomology but also about nature and astronomy. He has a fairly good understanding of spatial reasoning and is one of the first people to guess how Toujou’s trick with the rope and tire worked in chapter 2.

Chapter 4 of ndrv3 is so incredibly painful because it makes it clear that while Gonta was, absolutely, manipulated by Ouma into picking up the flashback light, he nonetheless made the decision to kill Miu of his own accord. He was even willing to try and kill everyone else by misleading them in the trial, because he thought it was more merciful than letting them see the outside world for themselves. These were choices that he made, confirmed when we see Gonta’s AI at the end of the trial speak for himself and acknowledge that yes, he really did think the outside world was worth killing people over.

Gonta is supposed to be somewhat naïve and trusting, not stupid. He believes himself to be an idiot, and other characters often talk down to him or don’t take him seriously, but at the end of the day he’s a human being just like the rest of them, and far, far smarter and more capable of making his own decisions than anyone thought him capable of.

Translating all of his speech to “caveman” or “Tarzan speech” really downplays his ability to make decisions for himself, and I think it’s a big part of why I’ve seen considerably more western fans insist that he didn’t know what he was doing than Japanese fans. I love Gonta quite a lot, but I can’t get over the localization essentially changing his character to make him seem more stupid, instead of translating what was actually there in order to more accurately reflect his character.

2.) Added Some Slurs, Removed Others

It’s time to address the elephant in the room for people who don’t know: Momota is considerably homophobic and transphobic in the original Japanese version of the game. In chapter 2, he uses the word “okama” to refer to Korekiyo in an extremely derogatory fashion. This word has a history of both homophobic and transphobic sentiment in Japan, as it’s often used against flamboyant gay men and trans women, who are sadly and unfortunately conflated as being “the same thing” most of the time. To put it simply, the word has the equivalent of the weight of the t-slur and the f-slur in English rolled into one.

This isn’t the only instance of Momota being homophobic, sadly. In the salmon mode version of the game, should you choose the “let’s undress” option in the gym while with Momota, he has yet another line where he says, “You don’t swing that way, do you!?” to Saihara, using his most terrified and disgusted-looking sprite. This suggests to me that, yes, the homophobia was a deliberate choice in the Japanese version of the game, as Momota consistently reacts this way to even the idea of another guy showing romantic interest in him.

The English version more or less kept the salmon mode comment, but removed the use of the slur in chapter 2 entirely. Which I have… mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I am an LGBT person myself. I don’t want to read slurs if I can help it. On the other hand, I really don’t think the slur was removed out of consideration to the LGBT community so much as Momota’s translator really wanted to downplay any lines that could make his character come across in a more negative light.

This is backed up by the fact that both Miu and Ouma’s translators added slurs to the game that weren’t present in the original Japanese. Where Miu only ever refers to Gonta as “baka” (idiot) or occasionally, “ahou” (a slightly ruder word that still more or less equates to “moron”), her translator decided to add multiple instances of her using the r-slur to refer to Gonta specifically, and on one occasion, even the word “Mongoloid,” a deeply offensive and outdated term. Ouma’s translator similarly took lines where he was already speaking harshly of Miu and added multiple instances of words like “bitch” or “whore.”

To me, this suggests that the translators were completely free to choose how harsh or how likable they wanted their characters to come across. Momota’s translator omitting just the slur could maybe pass for a nice gesture, so people don’t have to read it and be uncomfortable—except, that’s not the only thing that was omitted. Instances of Momota being blatantly misogynistic or rude were also toned down to the point of covering up most of his flaws entirely. His use of “memeshii” against Hoshi (a word which means “cowardly” in Japanese with specifically feminine connotations, like the word “sissy” in English) is simply changed to “weak,” and when he calls Saihara’s trauma “kudaranai” (literally “worthless” or “bullshit”), this is changed to “trivial” in the localization.

Momota’s translator even went so far as to omit a line entirely from the chapter 2 trial, which I touched on in an earlier post. In the original version of the game, Ouma asks Momota dumbfounded if he’s really stupid enough to trust Maki without any proof and if he plans on risking everyone else’s lives in the trial if he turns out to be wrong. And Momota replies saying yes, absolutely, he’s totally willing to bet everyone’s lives on nothing more than a hunch because he thinks he’s going to be right no matter what.

This is a character flaw. It’s a huge, running theme with Momota’s character, and it’s brought up again in chapter 4 deliberately when Momota really does almost kill everyone in the trial because he refuses to believe that Ouma isn’t the culprit. But the localization simply omits it, leaving Momota to seem considerably less hard-headed and reckless in the English version of the game. If anyone wants proof that this line exists, it is still very much there in the Japanese dialogue, but it has no translation whatsoever. This goes beyond “translation decisions I don’t agree with”; omitting an entire line for a character simply because you want other people to like them more is just bad translation, period.

3.) Angie’s Religion

In the original Japanese version of the game, neither Angie’s god nor her religion have any specific names. She refers to her god simply as “god” in the general sense, and clearly changes aspects of their persona and appearance based on who she’s trying to convince to join her cult. Everything about her is pretty clearly fictionalized, from her island to the religious practices her cult does.

Kodaka’s writing with regard to Angie is already a huge mess. It feeds into a lot of harmful stereotypes about “crazy, exotic brown women” and “bloodthirsty savages,” but at the very least it never correlated with a specific religion or location in the original version of the game.

This all changed when Angie’s translator, for whatever reason, decided to make Angie be Polynesian specifically and appropriate from the real religion of real indigenous peoples native to Polynesia. That’s right: Atua is a real god that has very real significance to tons of indigenous peoples.

In my opinion, this decision was incredibly disrespectful. It spreads incredible misinformation about a god that is still very much a part of tons of real-life people’s religion, and associates it with cults? Blood rituals? Human sacrifices? It’s a terrible localization decision that wasn’t necessary whatsoever and to be quite frank, it’s racist and insensitive.

As I said, the original game never exactly had the peak of “good writing decisions” when it came to Angie; there are still harmful stereotypes with her character, and she deserved to be written so much better. But associating her with a real group of indigenous people and equating a real god to some fictional deity that’s mostly treated as either a scary cult-ish boogeyman or the punchline to a joke is just… bad.

4.) Ouma’s Motive Video

Some of the decisions taken with Ouma’s translation are… interesting, to say the least. In many ways, he feels like a completely different character between the two versions of the game. This is due not only to the translation, but also the voice direction and casting.

A lot of his lines are tweaked or changed entirely to make his character seem much louder, less serious, and less sincere than the original version of the game. Obviously, Ouma lies, a lot. That’s sort of the whole point of is character. But what I mean is that even lines in the original version of the game, where it was clear he was being truthful via softer delivery, trailing off the end of his sentences, and seeming overall hesitant about whether to divulge certain information or not are literally changed in the localization to him pretty much yelling at the top of his lungs, complete with tons of exclamation points on lines that originally ended with a question mark or ellipses.

Tonally, he just feels very different as a character. The “sowwy” speak, lines like “oopsie poopsie, I’m such a ditz!”—all of these things are taken to such ridiculous extremes that it feels a little hard to take him seriously. Even in the post-trial for chapter 4 when Ouma starts playing the villain after Gonta’s death, a moment which should have been completely serious and intense, the mood is kind of completely killed when the line is changed from him calling everyone a bunch of idiots to him calling everyone…. “stupidheads.” These changes don’t really seem thematically appropriate to me, but overall, they’re not damning.

What is damning, however, is the fact that Ouma’s motive video is completely mistranslated and provides a very poor picture of what his motivations and ideals were like. I still remember being shocked when I played the localization for the first time and discovered that they completely omitted a line stating that Ouma and DICE have a very specific taboo against murder.

Literally, this is one of the very first lines in the entire video. The Japanese version of the game makes it explicitly clear that DICE were forbidden to kill people, and that abiding by this rule was extremely important to them. By contrast, the localization simply makes a nod about him doing “petty nonviolent crimes and pranks,” without ever once mentioning anything at all about rules or taboos.

This feels especially egregious in the localization considering Saihara later uses Ouma’s motive video as evidence in the chapter 6 trial and states there that Ouma and DICE “had a rule against killing people,” despite the game… never actually telling you that. It not only skews the perception of Ouma’s character at a crucial moment, it also just straight-up lies to localization players and expects them to make leaps in logic without actually providing the facts. So it winds up sort of feeling like Saihara is just pulling these assumptions out of his ass more than anything else.

I actually still have my original translation of Ouma’s motive video here, if anyone would like to compare. Again, translation is a tricky line of work, and obviously not all translators are going to agree with one another. But I consider omitting lines entirely to be one of the worst things you can do in a translation, particularly in a mystery game where people are expected to solve said mysteries based on the information and facts provided to them.

5.) Inconsistencies and Lack of Context

As I mentioned earlier, there are many instances of lines being completely mistranslated, or translated two different ways by multiple translators, or addressed to the wrong character. This is, as I stated, due to the way the translation work was divided by four separate people who appear to have not communicated with each other or cross-referenced each other’s work.

One of the clearest examples of this that I can think of off the top of my head is in chapter 3, where Ouma mentions “doing a little research” on the Caged Child ritual, and Maki in the very next line repeats him by saying… “study?”

On their own, removed from any context, these would both potentially be correct translations. However, it’s very clear that the translators just didn’t care to look at the context, or communicate with each other and share their work. The fact that characters aren’t even quoting each other properly in lines that are back-to-back is a pretty big oversight, and something that should have been accounted for knowing that four separate people were going to be translating various different characters.

This lack of context causes other, even more hilarious and blatantly wrong mistranslations. At the start of the chapter 3 trial, there is a line where Momota mentions that he couldn’t perform a thorough investigation on his own “because Monokuma disrupted him.” In the original, Ouma responds and tells Momota that he’s just using Monokuma as an excuse to cover for his own flaws. However, what we actually got in the localization was… this.

I don’t even have words for how badly this line was butchered (though I could make several hilarious jokes about Monokuma “over-compensating”). Presumably, this happened because Ouma’s translator saw Ouma’s line without any of the lines before it or the context of what Momota was saying, had no clue who Ouma was actually supposed to be talking to, and just ad-libbed it however they could, even though it literally makes no sense and doesn’t even fit into the conversation.

There are other similar instances of this, too. For example, did you know that the scene after Saihara faints in chapter 2, just before he wakes up in Gonta’s lab, is actually supposed to have Ouma talking to him? The narrator is unnamed, but there are several lines just before Saihara wakes up where Ouma tells him “come on, you can’t die on me yet!” and keeps prodding him and poking him to wake up. This is never explicitly told to you from the text… but it becomes pretty obvious when you look at the context and see that a huge CG of Ouma looking over Saihara as he starts to wake up is the very next part of the scene.

In the localization, however, Saihara’s translator pretty clearly had no idea what was happening or who was supposed to be talking to him, because they translated those lines as Saihara talking to himself, even though the manner of speech and phrasing is clearly supposed to be Ouma instead.

I could go on and on listing other examples: Tsumugi makes a joke in the original about Miu being able to dish out dirty jokes but not being very good at hearing them herself, but it’s changed in the localization to Tsumugi saying “I’m not so good with that kind of stuff,” and a line where Momota protests against Maki choking Ouma because she’ll kill him if she keeps going is instead changed to him saying “you’ll get killed if you don’t stop!” In my opinion, the fact that this is a consistent problem throughout the whole game shows that the translators weren’t really communicating or working together at any point, and that it wasn’t simply a one-time mistake here or there.

6.) Edited CGs and Plot Points

I have made an entirely separate post about this in the past, but at this point I don’t think anyone actually knows anymore: the localization actually edited in-game CGs and made some of them completely different from the Japanese version of the game. I’m not accusing them of “censorship” or anything like that, I mean quite literally that they altered and edited specific CGs to try and fix certain problems with them and only ended up making them worse in the process.

In chapter 5, Momota gets shot in the arm by Maki’s crossbow when trying to defend Ouma, and Ouma gets shot in the back shortly afterward when attempting to make a run for the Exisals. These injuries are relevant to how they died, but they’re not actually very visible in the CGs of Ouma and Momota shown later in the chapter 5 trial.

There are a whole bunch of inconsistencies with the CGs in chapter 5 in general: Momota gives Ouma his jacket to lie on under the press, but is magically still wearing it when he emerges from the Exisal himself at the end of the trial (I like to think he snuck back into the dorms Solid Snake style to get a new one from his room before joining the trial), the cap to the antidote is still on the bottle when Ouma pretends to drink it in front of Maki and Momota, etc. None of these things really deter from the plot though, and so I would say they’re fairly unimportant.

However, for some reason, NISA decided that “fixing” at least some of the CGs in the chapter 5 trial was necessary. They did this by adding bloodstains to Momota’s arm while he’s under the press, to better show his injury from the crossbow…. and in doing so, for some completely inexplicable reason, they changed the entire position of his arm. Here’s what I mean for comparison:

This is how Momota’s arm looked in the original CG from chapter 5, shown when the camcorder is provided as evidence that it’s “Ouma” under the press.

And this is how the localization edited it to look. I can understand and even sympathize with adding the bloodstains, but… changing the entire arm itself? Moving it to be sticking out from under the press? To put it nicely, this change doesn’t make any sense and actually makes it harder to understand Ouma and Momota’s plan.

The whole trick behind their plan was that nothing was supposed to stick out from under the press, other than Momota’s jacket. They waited until the instant when the press completely covered every part of Momota’s body, arms and all, and then performed the switch to mislead people. But the edited version of the CG in the localization just has Momota’s arm sticking completely out, hanging over the side, meaning it would’ve been impossible for the press to hide every part of it and the whole switch feels… well, stupid and impossibly easy to see through in the localized version.

Again, this shows a total disregard for presenting the facts as they actually appear and actually makes things more difficult for English players of the game, because they’re not being given accurate information. I really don’t understand why these changes were necessary, or why the bloodstains couldn’t have just been added without moving Momota’s entire arm.

7.) In Conclusion

This has gotten extremely long (nearly 10 pages), so I want to wrap things up. I want to specify that my intention with this masterlist isn’t to insult or badmouth the translators who worked on this game. I’m sure they worked very hard, and I have no idea what time or budget constraints they were facing as they did so.

Being a translator is not easy, and typically translators are not very well-paid or recognized for their work. I have the utmost respect for other translators, and I know perfectly well just how difficult and taxing it can be.

I am making this list because these are simply changes which were very different from the original version of the game, and which I believe could have been handled better. Personally, I disagree with many of the choices the localization made, but that does not mean that they didn’t do a fantastic job in other places. I absolutely love whichever translator was responsible for coming up with catchphrases and nicknames throughout the game: little localization decisions like “cospox,” “flashback light,” “Insect Meet n’ Greet,” and “cosplaycat criminal” were all strokes of genius that I highly admire.

I only want to stress that the Japanese version of the game is very different. Making changes to the way a character is presented or portrayed means influencing how people are going to react to said character. Skewing the information and facts presented in trials in the game means changing people’s experience of the game, and giving them less facts to go off of. Equating fictional gods to real-life ones can cause real harm and influence perception of real indigenous peoples. These are all facts that need to be accounted for before deciding whether a certain change is necessary or not, in my opinion.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Again, feel free to share this post around if you’d like, since this is probably the most comprehensively I’ve ever covered this topic.

#danganronpa #new danganronpa v3 #dangan ronpa #ndrv3 spoilers //#ask #anonymous #this isn't meta but it's IS a comprehensive masterlist of translation comparisons #so i think it's okay to post in the tag #okay to reblog

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blossom-hwa · 4 years ago

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You Look So Lovely, Darling (I’ll Love You for Lifetimes) - |BaL|

Kinda feels weird to be writing the proposal scene so early, but like? This drabble series is all out of order so whatever lmao :) enjoy some sweet nervous channie who just wants his proposal to be perfect <3

(and again, thanks to @deathbykpopboys for helping me work out this scene!! I LITERALLY owe you the world if you ever have ANY requests I'll be willing to write them :D)

Pairing: Chan x fem!reader

Genre: fluff, slice of life, single parent!au

Triggers: cursing

Word Count: 2.9k

Chan just wants to give you a picture perfect proposal - why is that so hard?

SKZ Masterlist | Breathe, and Live | Touching Stars (TBZ teacher!au)

Proposing, Chan comes to learn, is no easy task.

It looks so simple in movies. One of the couple pulls a ring out of their pocket, kneels down in front of their significant other, and pops the question. There might be tears, but it always ends in pure joy.

Movies make it seem like a formula, a simple algorithm that Chan just has to follow in order to get this proposal right. In real life, though, Chan thinks he’s about to lose his mind.

Because movies don’t demonstrate how to act in front of an older brother very protective of his sister. They don’t show him how to talk to his children or hers, how best to ask them if they’re all right with gaining new siblings and a new parent. They don’t give him insight on how to pick the perfect god damn ring, something maybe reminiscent of the promise rings you both wear on chains around your necks, but also not too similar because what if you think he isn’t being creative?

And the worst thing is, they don’t tell him how to pick the perfect moment. They don’t tell him where to go, what ambience is right, whether or not little kids in the room will ruin the timing.

At this point, just thinking about proposing turns Chan into a stammering mess. Even though you’ve discussed marriage before, you haven’t made any large moves beyond that. Jisung and Felix have been calling you Mama for a bit, but Hyunjin has only just started calling him Papa, and mostly on accident (though each time he does, Chan’s heart fills with this overwhelming happiness that brings tears to his eyes). What if you decide now isn’t the right time? What if you decide you want to wait a little longer?

What if you decide Chan isn’t the right person for you?

That’s a question that plagues Chan every time his mind even brushes on the topic of marriage.

He loves you, though, he loves you so much. And he knows you’re the right partner for him, even if in the end you might decide he isn’t the right partner for you.

Patience, he tells himself, taking a deep breath. He really should be working on this new track, but instead, he’s staring into his hands, trying to map out the perfect proposal. Not too fast, Chan. Take it in steps.

The only problem is, step one scares him out of his wits.

. . . . .

Chan is a full year older than Minho, and then some. By all rights, he’s the elder, and he shouldn’t be as terrified of the younger man as he is.

Minho’s a scary person, though. He’s driven, concentrated, focused – it’s how he’s gotten so far as both a dancer and a father. Chan knows he’s hardworking, but Minho is just as much, if not more, than he is.

And he’s very protective of you.

(When Minho found out you two were dating, he told Chan, verbatim, “I won’t hesitate to take you to international waters, chop up your body, and toss the parts overboard if you hurt my sister.” Just thinking about the blank expression Minho had on when he spoke those words is almost enough to make Chan lose his nerve.)

But here he is, standing just outside of Minho’s studio, ready to knock. He’s sweating, not because it’s hot or anything (it’s actually pretty cold because Minho is weird like that), but just out of sheer nervousness. His heart feels like it’s pounding a mile a minute.

Oh, God. Chan raises his hand again to rap on the door. Stop thinking. Just do it.

He knocks.

A few seconds later, the dancer opens the door in all his sweaty glory. “Chan?”

“Yeah.” Chan tries to smile, but he’s pretty sure it just looks like a grimace. “Can I ask you something?”

A glint comes into Minho’s eyes. “Of course, come on in.” He opens the door widely, smiling in a distinctly cat-like fashion that is literally scrambling Chan’s brain.

Why does he look like he knows what Chan’s about to ask?

The door swings shut with a soft but audible click, and with the noise goes Chan’s last chance to run away.

“So?” Minho looks over once Chan’s inside the room. He’s enjoying this way too much.

There’s no way he doesn’t know what I want to ask.

“I… um, so I’ve been dating your sister for a few years,” Chan starts.

Minho actually snorts. “Yes, I’m aware.”

Chan can feel the tips of his ears turning bright red. “Right. Um, I just wanted your approval for – I’m planning to – well, with your permission, of course –”

The smirk on Minho’s face only grows with each stuttering word that comes out of Chan’s mouth. And in all honesty, he actually has no idea what he’s saying. All of the sentences he rehearsed in his head before coming here seem to have completely flown out of his brain, and from Minho’s expression, he just sounds like an idiot.

He keeps going anyway, because nervous Chan doesn’t always make the best decisions to make himself look good.

“Well – um, look, I just really love her a lot.” Chan looks down with the admission, knowing he’s definitely rambled too much already, but he needs to get on with it and ask the stupid question. “I… wantedtoaskifyouwouldbeokaywithmeaskingtomarryher.”

Minho leans forward, eyes innocently wide. “Sorry, I didn’t get that, can you repeat what you said again?”

Lee Minho, you are a grade-A asshole.

Face burning, Chan clears his throat. “I wanted to ask if you would be okay with me asking to marry her. Your sister, I mean.”

Silence. Minho leaves him in silence for five whole seconds which feel more like five millennia. Chan thinks he’s going to crumble into dust on the floor out of terror and embarrassment.

“Do you have a ring?” Minho finally asks.

Chan’s cheeks burn redder. “Not… not yet.”

“So you’ll need help picking one, then?” The dancer raises one perfect eyebrow.

“… Yes?”

“Beautiful. I’ll be there whenever you need me.” Minho smiles. “Anything else you wanted to ask?”

Chan just stands there, dumbfounded. “So… is your answer yes?”

The smile immediately drops off of Minho’s face, replaced by an eye roll and a sigh. “Yes, Bang Chan, you idiot.” He punches Chan’s shoulder. “No one’s ever going to fully deserve Y/N, but you’re the closest I think anyone’s going to get. You really thought I’d say no?”

Rubbing his arm, Chan smiles sheepishly. “You can’t blame me for being nervous.”

“What? Nervous, around me?” Minho laughs, sharp and loud. Even though Chan knows he’s teasing, it’s still a bit frightening. “Never would’ve thought that.”

“You’re just proving my point,” Chan says.

“No, I’m not.” Minho smiles, close-lipped and slit-eyed. It’s terrifying. “Now, off you go. And don’t come back unless you need help picking a ring!”

It takes Chan five minutes of sitting in the hallway, garnering strange looks from several people passing by, before his legs are stable enough to take him back to his own studio. Heart still pounding, he mentally crosses a line through step one.

Next comes step two. Chan purses his lips. Step two is a bit less scary than step one (mostly because it involves children and not Lee Minho), but no less challenging.

Well, he got through Minho. Chan sighs. He just has to hope that the kids will be as receptive to the idea of a new parent as Minho was to a brother-in-law.

. . . . .

The kids know that you and Chan are at least, in some shape or form, together. They might not understand the nuances, like how you’re technically dating but don’t always refer to yourselves as boyfriend and girlfriend (because it just feels so much deeper than that, somehow), but they understand that you two “like” each other (Jisung pretends to vomit every time he hears the word “love,” so Chan just uses the word “like” to avoid that) and thus live together.

They love it, most of the time. Hyunjin was a little put out when he found out he would have to share a room with two other boys, but after Minho moved out and Hyunjin realized he would get his uncle’s old (and slightly bigger) room, he happily accepted the new plan. Jisung and Felix were mostly just happy to live with their best friend.

(Children, Chan just thinks. They’re so easy and so hard to please.)

Of course, there are difficulties. Jisung’s sensitive and has more than once broken down when he thinks Chan isn’t giving him enough attention with a new boy in the household. Felix’s tantrums are rarer, but they exist, and Hyunjin is still getting used to sharing his mom with someone else.

They’re a family, though, a messy, mostly happy family that can pull together at the end of the day and whisper “I love yous” to each other before bedtime. And that’s something Chan values more than anything in the world.

Which is why obtaining his kids’ approval for officially tying the knot is something so important to him.

He gathers them together one day in the apartment with the promise of watching a cartoon show after he asks them something. Three pairs of big eyes stare up at him from the couch, and Chan feels his heart melting with love and racing with anxiety.

Chan takes a breath. “Do you know what marriage is?”

“Yeah!” Jisung pipes up. “It’s when a girl and a boy get together and kiss!”

The laughter spills out of Chan’s mouth before he can even think. “Well, not quite, Jisung,” he chokes out, trying to stifle his remaining giggles. “It’s when two people who love each other very much get together officially. Marriage can be between a woman and a man, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. Any two people can get married.”

Three small heads bob their heads in understanding.

“I wanted to ask you three if you would be okay with me marrying Y/N.” Chan looks each of the boys in the eye. “Is it?”

Felix nods quickly. “Yes!”

Jisung furrows his eyebrows. “Are we still going to live together?”

Chan smiles. “Yes, Sungie.”

The other twin nods. “Okay!”

Hyunjin’s mouth pouts slightly. “Will I have to call you Papa?”

A little piece of Chan’s heart breaks, but he tries not to show it. “No, of course not, Hyunjin.” He smiles as brightly as he can. “You can keep calling me Channie or Uncle Channie or whatever you want. You don’t have to call me Papa if you don’t want to.”

Hyunjin’s round, dark eyes gaze into his with a solemnity Chan honestly didn’t know toddlers could have. “Do you want me to call you Papa?”

Oh, fuck.

What the hell does Chan say to that?

With a sigh, he decides to be honest. “I would love it if you did, Hyunjin, but like I said, you don’t have to. I’ll never force you to do something you really don’t want to.”

There are a few seconds of silence, then Hyunjin nods. “Okay. You can marry my Mama.”

A weight lifts itself off of Chan’s chest and he smiles, freer this time. “Thank you, kids. One more thing – don’t tell Y/N about this!” He looks into each of their eyes, trying to convey how serious he is but in a fun way. “It’s a secret, okay?”

“Like a spy mission?” Jisung bounces in excitement.

The smile on his face widens. “Yes, Sungie. Like a spy mission.” He looks at the other two boys. “Do you promise? Pinky promise?” He holds out his pinkie.

The three resulting shouts of “YES!” make Chan hope their neighbors won’t come knocking. But even if they did, Chan thinks, he wouldn’t care.

He’d go to the ends of the earth to defend these three kids, after all.

. . . . .

Step three goes by in a flash. Out of sheer anxiety, Chan actually takes a full day off from work and calls Minho for help in finding the perfect ring.

Miraculously, he finds something within his budget range – a silver band with a small diamond set in the center. It’s simple but elegant, and the diamond glints beautifully in the sunlight. Really, the ring matches the way Chan often finds himself summing up your existence.

So only the last step remains: the actual proposal.

Looking back, Chan has no idea why he thought each of the other steps was so stressful. This is pure stress, he thinks, waiting for the perfect time to pop the question. Should he plan something extravagant? Or should he just go with the flow? When is the perfect time, anyway? What constitutes “perfect” in your mind? In his?

Minho just tells him to wait for the moment he thinks is “right.” But what the hell does “right” even mean?

“You’ll figure it out.” The dancer gives Chan a bright grin, patting his shoulder. “And if you don’t, I’ll tear you limb from limb.”

Chan just puts his face in his hands and screams.

. . . . .

When Chan proposes, the sky is dark. The kids are already tucked in bed, and you’re sitting on the couch, leaning into his shoulder as you mindlessly scroll through your phone.

Absently strumming his guitar, Chan smiles down at your face, illuminated by your phone’s glow. As if sensing him staring, you look up as well. “Sing me something?” you murmur.

“Of course, love.” He leans down to kiss the top of your head. “What song?”

“Anything you choose,” you reply. “Anything.”

Chan thinks for a moment, then starts strumming the instrument.

Softly, with mood, tightly hug her

Use it once a day, every day…

When your eyes meet hers, smile.

The characteristic chords of one of your favorite songs make you relax even further into Chan’s body, a smile blooming across your face. He badly wants to stop playing and just kiss you good and full, but he keeps his fingers strumming the guitar.

Let her breathe under a different sky, a different wind,

Sometimes, kiss her without a plan…

Chan almost stops playing.

Without a plan.

He doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t have any proper plan on how he’s going to pull the little box out of his pocket and ask the question. But now…

Maybe he’s got an idea.

The final chords die away, and Chan finally gets his long-awaited kiss when you sit up lethargically, pressing your lips to his softly. “Are you awake enough for one more?” he whispers when you pull away.

“Mm, one more.” You nod happily, snuggling back into his side. “Then sleep.”

Chan takes a breath. One chance, Chan. This is your chance.

His fingers start strumming a song very familiar by now to him and the boys. From the way your eyes light up, you recognize it too.

It doesn’t have words. It’s just a collection of guitar chords, hastily arranged in a sweet, rough melody. In the track version, it would have piano, but because Chan only has two hands, he has to make do with just the strings of the guitar.

It’s the first song he ever wrote for his twins, the song he created that day so many years ago when they weren’t even born, when they were still kicking in their mother’s stomach. They think of it as their family song, the song he plays when the twins are sad, when they can’t get to sleep, or when they just want to hear something nice.

The last strains of the song fade away and Chan looks at you to see a tear glittering on your cheek. “You play that when the boys are sad,” is all you say. “It’s your family song.”

Chan smiles softly. “But you’re part of the family too.”

When he pulls out the box, your eyes widen. “Chan –”

“Shh.” He presses a finger gently to your lips. “Y/N, the past few years you’ve been with me have been some of the best of my life, and I can’t ever thank you enough for staying with me all this time.” There’s a tear welling up in Chan’s eye, but he blinks it away. “I would love to spend the rest of my life with you, if you would marry me.”

There’s a moment of silence that nearly gives Chan a heart attack. What if you say no?

“You – you stupid romantic sap.” The tears are really sliding down your cheeks now, but your mouth is smiling wide. “Yes, of course I’ll marry you, Chan. I’ll marry you.”

Chan can’t speak as he slides the ring onto your finger with trembling hands. Throat choked, he can only pull you close, burying his face in your shoulder as your tears soak his shirt. “I love you so much,” you whisper.

He pulls back just enough for to see your eyes sparkling with love, so much love. Your touch intoxicates him, with your fingers pressing gently against his skin as you press your lips to his in a sweet, sweet kiss.

Yes, he thinks. You’re the right partner for him.

The perfect partner for him.

Teary-eyed, he smiles. “I love you too.”

If you enjoyed, please don’t forget to reblog and leave a comment to tell me what you thought! Thank you for reading and have a lovely day <3

(1 reblog = 1 congratulations for the newly engaged couple!!!)

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pumpkinpaix · 4 years ago

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Hey, something I’ve been wondering since I first watched CQL: in ep 5, there’s a line where Wen Qing is talking to Wen Ning and says something like ‘Our family has been doctors for centuries, but I can’t cure my own brother’ (that’s verbatim from the US Netflix subtitles) and I’ve always wondered about that word, ‘cure’. As someone who lives with mental illness, I’m a little sensitive to the idea of a mental affliction being ‘cured,’ as though it’s a malady to be remedied, as though there’s something ‘wrong’ that can be ‘fixed’. The word ‘cure’ brings up all that discomfort for me, but I only know English, and I’m curious to know how accurate the concept of a ‘cure’ is to the actual conversation taking place there? I think a lot about the way neurodivergence is discussed in CQL, and I don’t want to misjudge connotation based on translation error.

hi there! so this ask is *checks* a month old yikes, but i’ve been thinking about it for a long time so here we go (finally)! :D

so here’s the scene in question:

[ID: two screenshots from episode 5 of the untamed. wen qing is speaking to wen ning. the subtitles read ‘我却治不了自己弟弟的病’ and ‘but i can’t cure my own brother’. /end ID]

with regards to your grammar/language question: 治 can mean both “to treat” and “to cure”. there are certain sentence constructions that can make it clear which it is, but not all of them do so.

for example, 治好 is definitely ‘to cure’ - the grammar there is [VERB + 好] can mean either “to finish VERBing” or “to VERB well”. so, to finish treating = to cure.

however, in this case, that’s not the construction that’s being used, and I would say it’s not clear-cut. “VERB + 不了” is “to be unable to VERB”. because 治 is ambiguous on its own, what she says here, “我却治不了自己弟弟的病”, comes down to “but I am unable to treat/cure my own younger brother’s illness”.

what I think is maybe a more complicated issue is the idea of mental illness and/or neurodivergence in CQL and how understandings of it impact our perceptions of the characters/narrative.

I’ve seen a lot of interpretations of Wen Ning’s affliction in CQL to be neurodivergence, but I’m actually quite surprised when I hear this. i believe the illness wen qing and wei wuxian refer to when talking about wen ning is his susceptibility/weakness towards resentful/yin energy, which manifests in fainting spells and long bouts of unconsciousness. to me, that is not analogous to mental illness or neurodivergence so much as something like epileptic episodes brought on by exposure to specific triggers. by CQL canon, we know that he has not always had this -- he contracted the illness after his encounter with the guanyin statue that sucked away part of his soul when he was a child, and this now gives him a weak constitution and makes him largely unsuitable for night hunting, especially unsupervised. this is what wen qing is trying to treat and/or cure. in mdzs, he does not have this condition, and wen qing never mentions anything about trying to treat or cure him at all.

given that this condition is most likely a creation for the sake of getting around censors at least in part (basically: a way to create a reason for why wen ning isn’t “dead” -- in addition, probably was also meant to increase wen sibs screentime/sympathy), I’ve always seen it as a bit of a handwavy physical condition that was tacked on as opposed to an actual statement about his character, if that makes sense.

in general, I’m hesitant to outright assign labels of neurodivergence or mental illness to mdzs/cql characters because I think that labels like that are inherently societally and culturally dependent. with the rise of identity politic rhetoric in the US and all of that kind of getting tangled up with our conceptions of being ND or mentally ill, I worry about trying to analyze mdzs/cql through such a lens because identities are so inextricably tied to environment. even if both i and a character could be “diagnosed” with the same condition, I think it would be undeniable that our experiences of such would be very different because we come from different cultural backgrounds. not just, chinese author vs american reader but like, fantastical xianxia chinese conception of a character vs chinese-american conception of identity.

alskdjfl idk if this even makes sense, but!! basically, I actually don’t think that CQL discusses or really portrays neurodivergence at all, not in such terms. I think it’s completely appropriate and valid to headcanon and interpret characters in ways that resonate with you! i certainly do, lol (morally scrupulous twin jades anyone? :D 🥃), but im nervous about asserting that any CQL characters actually are/have xyz condition because I don’t think that a discussion on that front is particularly meaningful. I know that this hesitance comes both from my own views on what neurodivergence/mental illness mean and how useful those terms actually are, and also from a very personal anger over some moral injunctions that I’ve seen people place on portraying characters’ “real” or “coded” mental states that are seriously misguided, harmful, and extremely culturally american in their claims (that will probably be a separate post though lol).

that isn’t to say there isn’t value in thinking about how one can interpret characters in one way or another, or that there isn’t value in discussing how unintentionally, a character might fall into archetypes that evoke certain identities and how that subtext might or might not impact a person’s experience or takeaway from the media! but I think all of that has to be contextualized as opposed to generalized. /o\

this.... came out a lot less coherent than i wanted it to be, but my brain is Not having it for some reason. I hope that I at least managed to answer your question/help you along in your continuing thought process!!! :D

(ko-fi)

#vulcansmirk #asks and replies #mine #mymeta #wen ning #mdzs #mdzs meta #cql meta #the untamed meta #the untamed #cql #neurodivergence #??#i guess

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angeldormante · 3 years ago

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Hi!! Im the Leo-withdrawal anon! I didnt ask anything prior to the one you just answered, but I'm so happy you responded! I'd honestly listen to anything you write--I think you have a wonderful way of expressing yourself, and the way you write is just... *chef's kiss* I guess, a question I'd have for you is this: What sort of hobbies do you headcanon our fearless leader to have? Quirks? Both endearing and... less so? I think that'd be a fun start!

hokay.... finally getting around to this!! sorry for the wait and thank you for bearing with me, anon! (ty for the compliment, too -- i'm very flattered jfjflk i just like talking about turtles ok (•̥ ̫ •̥) )

now... lemme talk blue to ya.

if we're talking about hobbies, well. stop me if you think you've heard this before -- leo loves training. for all of the guys, ninjutsu is a way of life; it's how they survive the world, how they connect with themselves and one another; it's their entire culture that the foundations of their family is built upon. and that's super neat. but watch 2k3 for like, one episode, and you'll very quickly see that the only one that fully leans into it is leo. mikey and don have their own interests that they often can't get to quickly enough once the day's training session ends. i think raph actually enjoys training recreationally as well -- but he's more interested in the physical aspect, spending his energy, bulking up, not necessarily focusing on skill or technique. i like to imagine that growing up, leo and raph spent a lot of time in the dojo together doing their own thing, kind of "separate but together"; before casey came along and raph got into hanging out topside with him.

leo, though, he throws himself fully into training. he's incredibly dedicated to it not only because of his sense of responsibility, but because he genuinely enjoys it -- he enjoys improving his technique, his skill. he enjoys the repetition of learning, which helps to calm and center him. he enjoys meditation, which helps him focus and clear his mind. as an introvert, and precisely because his family doesn't hang around the dojo as often as he does, leo's solo training time is his time -- it's his chance to relax and decompress. i think it's exactly why he spiraled harder and harder in season 4 no matter how much training he did: at that point, it was no longer a hobby, but an obsession. leonardo normally uses training as a healthy outlet, but when he channeled his exodus trauma into it, he removed his main method of decompression and replaced it with the intent to fuel that exact trauma. (sidebar, though i've talked about it before: i also feel like this is why fast forward is so excellent at showing leo's character growth. he is extremely zen and such a huge advocate of healthy self-reflection in the way he coaches cody and his clone. my sweet boy, so proud of him in that season.)

now i know what you may be thinking. and you're right. there's more to leo than his life in the dojo... so let's talk about some other hobbies i like to think he has!

so here's the thing, and i think it's something else i've touched on before... but i think leo actually has a very strong bond with donnie. their temperaments are very similar, they feel similar burdens when it comes to protecting the family, etc... and to be honest, i think they bond a lot over the same nerdy hobbies too! i think leo is a huge freaking nerd.

i legit think that donatello has probably absorbed his brother into more than one of his hobbies, both unwillingly and not. some things click for leo, and some things don't. some things he has a hard time getting into until he discovers a certain aspect of it or views it from a different perspective. but he is very often willing to try anything.

for example, i imagine that growing up, leo and don played a lot of chess together. don used to overwhelmingly win, until they got older and older leo got deeper and deeper into the tactical aspect, and soon he was beating don quite soundly more often than he wasn't. don started getting into engineering manuals and physics books, while leo started getting into history texts and military treatises, but both shared a love for novels and would swap their favorites regularly. and they still play chess, of course.

don got into nerdy sci-fi shows. like, really into them. and leo couldn't quite pick up the thread on that one, but he was content to endure every fourth movie night when it was don's turn to pick. and slowly he began getting drawn into it, the same way anyone does -- he enjoyed the campiness of the plot, how absolutely ludicrous the fight choreography was, how sometimes there were actually deep and thoughtful moments. it was both a welcome respite from the intensity of his reality and something he could put to practical use if he had to, like, steal a spaceship one day, though the odds of that happening seemed pretty low⁽ˡᵒˡ⁾. he was never able to quote any of the episodes verbatim like donnie, but it was something they could discuss and lightly bicker about during the times when leo is mindlessly helping out around don's lab. (more on that in a sec.)

also? i can absolutely. totally. easily see leo as a tabletop game enthusiast. i think i'll refrain from getting lost in the weeds on that once, since this is already starting to run long, but i just want to put that in your mind. tmnt dnd gaming nights. let that sit for a second.

okay moving on.

i genuinely think that leo just likes existing in the general vicinity of his family and extended family. not necessarily doing anything; just being there, doing something with his hands. if don is working on a project, leo may drift in, and don will ask him to hand him certain tools or read aloud certain notes on the screen, because he knows the deal. if raph is lifting weights and leo wanders over from his own training session, raph may ask him to spot, or set up the next pair of weights, because he knows how it is. if mikey is sitting in the living room playing video games and leo appears on the couch next to him, he might toss him a controller, or he may just start blabbering about what game he's playing and what level he's on, because he's got it. if april and casey are tidying up her shop for a new shipment of merchandise and leo just randomly appears in the window, feathered duster in hand, april smiles and puts on water for tea and casey teases him and throws him a broom instead without blinking. because that's just how leo is.

the thing is, leo is one of those people who have such a strong presence that -- as long as he's not trying to hide it, of course -- you know he's there because he carries such an atmosphere with him. on the other hand, leonardo is the type of person who is genuinely content to just be in the background. which may sound totally at odds with the whole leader schtick, but i think it's just kind of this duality he has: he can be both at the forefront and in the background, depending on the situation and what is needed from him. does this mean he doesn't have his own hobbies or interests? of course not! but even canonically, throughout the series leo is shown to be just as happy with his hands off the reins so long as there's not a mission in front of him. and i think it's precisely this lack of that constant need for control that shows just how whole and rich leo's inner life is, how he feels full and complete without his leadership/big brother role completely defining him, and how season 4 rips that carpet from under his feet to show the unhealthy side of that particular coin.

so as much as a cop-out answer it may sound like -- i think that leo just enjoys doing things with his brothers. he likes rooftop runs with them. he likes pizza and cards with them. he likes movies, sports, and games with them. but he's also his own person, and he enjoys being in his head, and he has hobbies that help him make his head a healthy place to be; his family absolutely respects that quality, and leonardo is a much more well adjusted person for it.

er.... i didn't really get into quirks or bad habits, but this has run really long already and it's getting late, lmao. so i think i will stop here for now. =w= thank you for letting me ramble again about my blue boy, anon; i know i'm slow, but hopefully i rambled enough to make up for it!

#tmnt #tmnt 2003 #leonardo #meta #long post #if u aren't sick of me.... ofc i'd be happy to talk about the rest sometime flkjfds

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todaysdocument · 4 years ago

Photo

Conversation between General Maxwell Taylor and others on the planning and execution of the Bay of Pigs operation, 5/6/1961.

File Unit: Papers of President Kennedy: National Security Files: Countries: Cuba: Subjects, Paramilitary Study Group, Taylor Report, 4/1961 - 7/1961

Series: Country Files, 1/20/1961 - 11/22/1963

Collection: Papers of John F. Kennedy: Presidential Papers: National Security Files, 1/20/1961 - 11/22/1963

Transcription:

[Redaction]

SECRETARY RUSK

(The following notes are not a verbatim record, but represent

the general substance of the statements made.)

At this point the Study Group reconvened in Secretary Rusk's

office in the State Department. Present were:

GENERAL TAYLOR SECRETARY RUSK

MR. KENNEDY COMMANDER MITCHELL

MR. DULLES LT COLONEL TARWATER

After a few introductory remarks Secretary Rusk was asked his

estimate of the probability of the success of the Zapata Plan.

SECRETARY RUSK: It was in the neighborhood of fifty per cent.

It appeared the landing might be followed by further uprisings.

If this failed the force could become guerrillas.

MR. DULLES: I think we all looked upon this as a pretty risky

operation.

SECRETARY RUSK: The risks of the operation were accepted,

however, because the importance of success was fully appreciated.

Time was running out. It was the last chance in some time to have

this job done by Cubans. Otherwise we might have to do this with

American personnel and this would be less desirable. Castro's

police power was increasing and he was also receiving a large

inflow of Soviet arms. Further, it should be pointed out that when

we talked about the possibility of failure we talked about far more

disastrous results than actually occurred. For example, we had

discussed the possibility of such things as being ousted from the

OAS or censure by the UN, and lively and adverse reaction by our

allies in Europe. The results that developed were not as serious

as those that we had considered.

QUESTION: What was the feeling of the likelihood of a popular

uprising following the landing?

SECRETARY RUSK: There was a very considerable likelihood of

popular uprisings.

- 7 -

ULTRASENSITIVE

[Redaction]

#archivesgov #May 6 #1961 #1960s #Kennedy Administration #Bay of Pigs #Cuba

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tiffdawg · 4 years ago

Text

Curriculum Vitae: Chapter Three

Gif: @javier-pena

curriculum vitae noun cur·ric·u·la vi·tae Latin. the course of one's life.

Pairing: Javier Peña x Reader (fem; no y/n)

Word Count: 3.1k

Rated: M | Warnings: Intense gazing. Mild language.

Chapter Summary: In this chapter, you start to see a different side to Javier Peña as he struggles to adjust to academia.

A/N: Thank you for your comments and support on the last chapter! I'm so excited that someone is actually enjoying this story and I hope you know that literally every comment takes me out for twenty minutes because they make me so stupidly happy. I love you all!

Read on AO3

CV Masterlist | My Masterlist

… . …

Chapter Three

When you entered your lecture hall on Wednesday morning, once again affording Peña plenty of time to clear out, the scene from Monday repeated itself almost verbatim. He was at the podium, shoulders slightly hunched and hands grasping either side of the cherry wood, surrounded by an excited crowd of students. You’d hoped you would miss him entirely – especially after what had happened in the library – but it seemed luck was not on your side. So, you sipped idly at the lukewarm remnants in your cardboard coffee cup, figuring you might as well watch the show. Speaking sure as hell never seemed to work well for the two of you.

The only difference was that this time, he noticed you right away. You suddenly felt self-conscious in your simple black trousers and modest blouse under his intense scrutiny, and you wondered what he was looking for as he stared at you for just a moment too long. You half-expected him to make some caustic remark. While neither of you had been particularly kind to the other the night before, you probably would’ve deserved it. His words had stung, but it was nothing you hadn’t heard a hundred times before. While you didn’t exactly regret anything you had said, you did wonder if you might’ve struck too deep a nerve. Instead, he turned to his students and told them to talk to him during his office hours.

“When are your office hours, sir?” a young man asked, the same overeager student from Monday.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I know,” he said dismissively, scratching his brow. With that, the students started to wander off and you parted the sea of stragglers to get to the chalkboard. You intended to use it for your lecture and there was a scrawling mess of some Cyrillic language, no doubt not from Peña’s class. However, he beat you to the eraser.

“I’ve got this, doctora.”

You actually felt your head tilt to the side and it strangely reminded you of the way Sunny cocked her head when you spoke to her. Like she recognized your voice, heard your words, but didn’t understand the language. His kindness surprised you and you weren’t sure if he was taunting you with his new diminutive of choice or attempting to apologize in his own strange way. At least doctora was accurate, and it was a hell of a lot better than sweetheart. “Thanks,” you offered hesitantly, “I think.”

When he finished erasing the first panel and moved to the second, you picked up a scrap of chalk and started writing a list of key terms and important names you didn’t want to have to bother with during your lecture. All the while, you hated the way your eyes kept casting to the side, stealing unintentional glances at Peña. Your hand idled as you lost your focus in favor examining the way he moved even as he did something as simple and mundane as clear a chalkboard. But, as ridiculous as it was, you found that you were unable to stop yourself from watching the pull of his light gray suit jacket around his body or the clap of his hands as he attempted to remove the chalk dust.

And in your folly, he caught you.

He smirked at you as he adjusted his boldly pattern tie that should’ve been left in the previous decade and you turned back to your vocabulary list with warm cheeks and added the last few letters to the word you’d abandoned. Then, just as you thought he was about to leave, he took a seat in the last row.

To say you were confused would’ve been an understatement. Bewildered or baffled might’ve been more apt descriptors, but even those words seemed lacking. Deciding not to let Javier Peña distract you from your job any more than he already had that morning, you pulled out your lecture notes and focused on what really mattered: your class and your students. Not the man intently watching your every move.

… . …

Apparently, even visiting lecturers had to attend the weekly Thursday morning faculty meeting.

As Javier sat at the furthest end of the conference room table, only half listening to the department chair drone on about the new graduation requirements for undergraduate sociology majors and minors, he seriously debated the necessity of his presence. Dr. Campbell, as he’d quickly learned the first time that he spoke with the man over the phone a few weeks ago, had a preference for five-dollar words and loved the sound of his own voice. It was amazing he was as long-winded as he was considering the tightness of the obnoxious canary yellow bow tie around his neck. Javier pulled at his own tie, already loose and askew, suddenly feeling constricted by it. Aside from the fact that Campbell’s rundown on the new procedures seemed unnecessary –the regular faculty looked like they’d heard this news a thousand times already – Javier knew he had very little function beyond drawing attention to the school of social sciences. Sure, he technically had to teach a handful of classes this year, which was itself a task proving even more difficult than he’d originally anticipated. But, at the end of the day, he was only there because of his reputation and to lend his name to the university. He only hoped that no one expected much more than that from him.

They’d only be disappointed.

He glanced down the table to where you sat taking occasional notes in between drawing something in the corner of your notebook. He wasn’t sure how, but you’d taken one look at him and figured him out.

You don’t deserve to be here.

Your words from the other night echoed in his mind. While everyone else seemed intent on showering him with empty flattery and undue praise, you saw him for what he really was. And you were right. He definitely didn’t feel like he deserved to teach classes at a prestigious university, to hold any sort of position of prominence or power at an institution like this. He’d retired from the DEA, given up the only job he knew how to do, without any inclination of what he would do next. Accepting this job was nothing short of an unhappy accident that was the result of some sort of second-career-meets-midlife-crisis impasse. Come to think of it, he might’ve been drinking when he called Dr. Campbell and accepted his offer.

“I’ve but one final announcement before I release you all for the day. As is tradition, the planning this year’s student conference will fall to two of our youngest and brightest professors, so it should be no surprise which of you will assume the responsibility.” Campbell finally caught Javier’s attention when he gestured down the length of the table to you. You smiled brightly at the department chair and the rest of your coworkers. “You, my dear, have done a brilliant job in the past and I expect nothing less this year. And I’m sure our newest appointed professor, Dr. Sheffield, will be more than happy to assist and learn from you.”

“Fucking ecstatic,” the man next to him grumbled under his breath. He followed the man’s gaze back to you and watched your smile vanish. Looking back at Sheffield, he noted that he was younger than Javier, although not by much, and sturdily built but soft around the middle. His belt seemed to be cinched one notch too many. Definitely a beer drinker. There was something inherently boorish about the man and although he hadn’t noticed him until that exact moment, Javier decided that he didn’t like him.

“I’ll have Debra set up a meeting for the three of us sometime next week to discuss the issue further,” Campbell added, “And with that said I think we can consider this meeting adjourned. I do believe the Anthropology department has reserved the room for the upcoming hour, so we best leave them to it.”

The other faculty and staff started filing out of the conference room, but evidently Sheffield felt Javier’s stare. He turned to him and offered a hand.

“Javier Peña, I presume.” The way he mispronounced his name was almost embarrassing. “Been looking forward to meeting you all week.”

“What an honor,” Javier drawled, shaking the sweaty proffered hand.

“I’m Andrew Sheffield.”

“I gathered that.”

Seemingly oblivious to his curt responses, Sheffield continued. “Let me know if you ever need anything, man. And, if you’re into it, a couple of buddies of mine from the other departments golf on Sundays. You’re always welcome.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Javier responded, knowing he’d wouldn’t go golfing if his life depended on it, let alone with this guy.

“Cool, and like I said, happy to help.”

“You didn’t seem so happy to help your other colleague a minute ago.” He couldn’t stop himself. He’d been talking to Sheffield for all of a minute and he was already on his last nerve.

“Well, I, uh– I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sheffield stumbled, clearly flustered, “Besides, that’s different. She’s, well, you’ll see.”

“I’m sure,” Javier said, gathering his things and pushing back his chair. He slapped Sheffield’s shoulder, maybe a little harder than strictly necessary. “See you around, bud.”

… . …

By Friday, your hectic first week of the quarter had caught up to you. You were more than a little tired and couldn’t wait for the weekend. Still, you put on a smile as you prepared to start your lecture. You’d made a vow to yourself years ago that you would never become that jaded, joyless professor that made student’s lives miserable. It was for your own benefit as much as theirs.

You knew Peña didn’t have a class on Fridays – the lecture hall had been empty when you arrived that morning – so you were more than a little surprised when he showed up for your class. Just when you thought you weren’t going to have to deal with him that day, he quietly slipped into the back row.

You couldn’t escape the man.

At the same time, as much as you hated to admit it, you’d been looking for him everywhere you went on campus ever since your Wednesday lecture. His actions confounded you – you were sure he hated you after that night in the library, but yet, here he was attending your class again. For what reason? You had no clue.

Deciding it would be best to simply overlook Javier’s presence in your classroom, you started your lecture. However, you quickly discovered he was impossible to ignore. Especially considering the way his dark eyes trailed you, followed your every movement. It didn’t matter that he was sitting in the back of the room. You could feel him watching you.

It should’ve been annoying. Aggravating, even.

But it was something else entirely. Something that ignited a slow, steady heat inside of you. Something you steadfastly refused to name.

Once again, he didn’t wait for you after your lecture, and you weren’t sure why that disappointed you.

… . …

“How was your anniversary?”

“It was actually really fun. We got a sitter and Henry took me to this fancy restaurant downtown he’d been to on business lunches. He’d mentioned wanting to take me before, but I was still surprised that he’d actually made a reservation on his own,” Beverly explained, forgetting all about her chicken salad, “I’m sure you can understand why – you’ve met my husband.”

The two of you were sitting at your usual bench near an especially green spot on campus. The shade of a beautifully overgrown Moreton bay fig tree shielded you from the bright sun and your feet rested against a sprawling root creeping under the bench. “That’s so romantic of him,” you gushed. You sighed dreamily, playing it up for her benefit.

“I know! I don’t think we’ve had a night out like that since our youngest was born. So, what? Two years ago!” She made an exaggerated exasperated expression and you snickered at her. “I didn’t know the man had it in him. But it was very swanky, and they had these little chocolate cakes that, like, oozed more chocolate when you cut into them. Apparently, that’s the new thing but I never get out so I’m behind on the times.”

“Don’t feel bad,” you said as you stabbed at your container of sliced fruit, “I haven’t been on a date in months so I’m right there with you on that one.”

“We gotta fix that.” Bev nudged you playfully.

You made a discouraging face and shook your head. “No, thank you. I’ve got plenty to worry about right now without having to deal with a relationship.”

“Doesn’t have to be a relationship,” she countered in a singsong voice.

“You really can’t be stopped, can you?” you asked with an amused laugh. She shook her head and took another bite of her lunch. “Relationship or not, dating is just too complicated. It’s too distracting.”

“Maybe,” Bev conceded, “But there’s more to life than work, sweetie. As much as I complain about Henry, I really do love the man. And he loves me. That’s something special. I can’t help but want something like that for you too.” You loved Beverly, but sometimes you hated how perceptive she was. Without ever having to voice your own thoughts or desires – sometimes without even admitting them to yourself – she always saw the truth to your words. Work always came first for you. Often at the disadvantage of the rest of your life. When you were quiet for longer than she would’ve liked, she lightened the conversation. “Of course, whoever your person is, would have to be someone as equally spectacular as you, so it might take a while to find them. But we’ll work on it.”

You returned her soft smile with one of your own. “We’ll see. But I’m not sure that person is out there, so don’t hold your breath.” You held out your plastic container. “Cantaloupe?”

“You know that’s my favorite,” she laughed as she skewered a few slices for herself.

… . …

After your lecture and lunch with Bev, you walked home to pick up Sunny before returning to your office. Friday afternoons were usually quiet on campus as students and professors alike preferred not to schedule classes that day of the week, for obvious reasons. You still had quite a bit of work to do before you were free to enjoy the weekend and your dog made for good company. Sunny was small and quiet enough that no one ever noticed her when you snuck her into the office. She was a mild-mannered dog, and that day she alternated between sleeping on your lap and watching birds and students alike from the window while you made a decent dent in the pile of work you had to get through.

She was as well behaved as always, but, unsurprisingly, a couple hours later she started to get restless and you took that as your cue to call it a night.

“Alright, let’s go home, girl,” you said to her as you gathered your things. You piled a few books into your tote, wavering for a moment on one particularly heavy tome you weren’t sure you wanted to haul back to your apartment before you tossed that one in too. You slide your flats back on, having had kicked them off while you worked, and reached for the door. As soon as it was open wide enough for Sunny to fit through, she sprinted out ahead of you.

“Shit!” you hissed taking off after her. She’d never done that before. “Get back here!”

Your eyes practically popped out of your head as she darted into an open office.

You burst into your colleague’s office, intent on dragging her out of there while apologizing profusely. Instead you froze at the sight before you. Sunny was perched on Javier Peña’s lap. To make matters worse, the devious little traitor was excitedly licking his face as he petted her, soothing her fur with a gentle hand. What was even more surprising than her wagging tail, was the goofy grin on his face. It was the kind of unrestrained smile that crinkled his eyes and made him look younger than his years. It was, for lack of a better word, charming.

“I take it this is your dog?” he asked, breaking you from your trance.

“Yeah,” you answered, shaking your head at the scene, “She– She really seems to like you,” you observed, not bothering to hide your confoundment.

“I can tell.” Sunny calmed down, panting happily as Peña scratched behind her perky ears. “At least one of you does,” he said, finally training his brown eyes on you.

“Eh, she likes everyone. Don’t read too much into it,” you said, shrugging off his insinuation. And it was true for the most part. Sunny was a friendly dog, but she did have a strong intuition when it came to people’s sense of character and she always knew who she didn’t like. Even you had to admit she was quite taken with Peña.

“What kind of dog is she?” he asked, turning his attention back to the dog on his lap.

“My best guess is some kind of border collie mix. All I know is Sunny is not a purebred and a bit of a runt, which is probably how she ended up on the street in the first place.”

“Sunny?” he said, cocking his head at you.

You huffed out a small laugh. “I found her on Sunset Boulevard. So, in a moment of sheer genius I called her Sunny as a temporary name before I found her owners or a new family to take her in,” you explained, “Turned out I was her new family and the next thing I knew she was responding to the name. It stuck.”

“She’s sweet. I’ve always liked dogs,” he said, quirking his brow as he looked up at you again, “You can trust their judgement.”

Pursing your lips, you made a noncommittal noise, not wanting to agree despite feeling the same way. With a final wet kiss to his cheek, Sunny hopped down from his lap and trotted over to your side, acting the part of the loyal pet. You glared at her as you quickly attached her lead to her collar, ensuring she wouldn’t cause any more trouble. She’d already provoked the first civil conversation between you and Peña – who knew what else she was capable of. You decided it was best if you took your leave before she caused another miracle. “Have a nice weekend, Peña.”

“You too, doctora,” he said with a smirk and a wink.

... . ...

Thank you for reading!

... . ...

Forever Tags: @leo-moon @readsalot73 @frietiemeloen @huliabitch

Curriculum Vitae Tags: @softpedropascal @roxypeanut

#javier peña #javier peña x reader #javier pena x you #javier peña imagines #narcos #narcos fanfic #fic: curriculum vitae #hey look! they're actually being nice to each other for once

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