#this blog is not new i just never bothered with an intro before since i didn't post much

[sworcerie]

hello there! welcome to...

My Blog

my name is sunny. i draw and write, though you'll have better luck finding that here where i reblog everything to archive it. this is my main blog, so just about everything goes here; my original work, offhand thoughts, lots of reblogs— even this really good picture.

i try to write image descriptions when i can, but i'm not entirely confident in my ability to do so effectively— corrections will Always be greatly appreciated!

i'm a university student right now so sometimes my replies/posting will be extremely sporadic! waxes and wanes with the day.. if you're a fellow student: take it easy T_T Holy Shit,

i really like connecting with others; whether that is meeting new people or striking up a convo with an old mutual, so please always feel free to send a message !! asks and dms are both lovely

what else do i like..? hm.. comics and manga are one of my greatest loves!! (please treat yourself to Laika's Comet, or Death of a Roommate, or Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou or ask for recs!!!!!!!)

buuut i also have a weakness for:

older animes like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, and Haibane Renmei

horror (as a genre but movies in specific!)

autobiographical writing + graphic novels

trying to teach myself various crafts..

pokémon and creatures of all kinds (real and unreal)

disease and pathology

poetry— i can't write any, though, so i stick to prose and idle pondering

my chemical romance, jhariah, glass beach, FLAVOR FOLEY, 11vein, and malice mizer

weird art

THE LOCKED TOMB SERIES .

[threeking]

... ⠀⠀יִיִ⠀𝃣 ⠀⠀ writeblr intro ⠀⠀ 💌 ⠀⠀ ── ⠀⠀ ;

hello ! my name is third king january but feel free to call me third or january ( or any other nickname you'd like ) ! i'm a twenty two year old black lesbian pursuing a graphic design major with a minor in art history and creative writing—considering media studies—who uses they/them pronouns !

ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧ :⠀ 🍓. i think this may be my third or fourth time trying out a writeblr, but the other attempts didn't go well since i was busy and didn't put a lot of effort into interacting with my mutuals </3. this time around, i really want to be a part of the community and be more supportive of everyone's writing! my goal for this account is to share my wips, any writing, and keep motivated to do more than just stare at a blank document for hours </3.

i'm a big reader and i plan to share some of my recently reads on this blog. please feel free to send me book recs if you think it's something i might like or if you just wanna ramble about something you read that you really liked! my favorite genres are horror, magical realism, fairy tales and fantasy. i love beautiful prose that's almost poetic and ambiguous writing that has you questioning everything until the grand reveal.

my favorite books are: bunny by mona awad, deathless by catherine m. valente, and how to win the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone. the last two books helped me understand the kind of writing style i want to strive for as did poetry !! i don't have a whole lot of fav poems, but worm king's lullaby by richard siken is one that's always spinning in my head.

alongside reading i like manga, webtoons, videogames, and anime. my all time favorite anime is hyouka followed by angel beats and clannad. my favorite webtoon is omniscient reader's viewpoint and i can't recommend it enough. it's soosososo good! ( i started with the webtoon before switching to the novel bc i was too impatient to wait for the updates ) my favorite games are the halo series and oxenfree.

other interests of mine include music, drawing, art, watching youtube videos, journaling, horror movies, and sleeping 😴. i have a few graphic novels / webcomics in my wips so i'm learning how to draw to make them a reality! i also have a video game that's tied to another wip so i'm getting into coding as well !

please never be shy / afraid to tag me in ask games, send me an ask, or even a message! i also have a discord ( username: thirdking ) if you'd like to add me and message me there. also never think or feel like you're bothering me or anything if you wanna say hi or ramble about your interests. i'm always looking to make new friends !! 😁

i ask that minors don't interact or follow !! thank you !!

i have a handful of wips that's been running laps in my head for some time now but these are the ones ( excluding shorter stories ) that aren't multimedia projects or animation ideas, but i may talk about those anyways 😋 since most of these are still in the outlining stage they're subject to change but i'll make sure to update anything to reflect those changes !

📝 𖹭 ⠀ֵ⠀ wip one ; spring ( technically untitled but springs gna be in the final title )

the story follows two ex band mates reconnecting in their adult years after they parted ways when their front man signed a major record deal.

📝 𖹭 ⠀ֵ⠀ wip two ; sisyphus

sisyphus stars three siblings at the center of a conspiracy 1!1!1 the oldest sibling, an astronaut, goes missing during a privately funded space mission embarking to a new planet found in the solar system. i wouldn't call this a greek retelling, but it does a feature a lot of nods to classic greek myths!

📝 𖹭 ⠀ֵ⠀ wip three ; atwe

atwe follows the mother of a teen superhero getting revenge after her kid is killed by an unknown villain. though it's my own special take on superheroes featuring my personal criticisms on teen heroes, it's also a study on family—in particular—distant family relations and saying i love you a little too late.

📝 𖹭 ⠀ֵ⠀ wip four ; march marchen ( title will definitely change )

march marchen is my sort of alice in wonderland / fairy tale retelling that follows an unnamed girl in what might be wonderland trying to figure out who she is and who she isn't. ft parallel worlds, escapism, the fear of childhood, and the fear of adulthood.

📝 𖹭 ⠀ֵ⠀ wip five ; neapolitan ( title will definitely change )

neapolitan is a magical girl webcomic / graphic novel. the story follows a trio of girls becoming the successors of a long line of ice cream inspired magical girls. ft a bright fun palette, gore, and cannibalism! though it's a webcomic, i intend to give it a novelization from the perspective of a different set of magical girls.

if you'd like to be added to a taglist please send me an ask! it'll be easier for me to keep track ! thank you for reading <3

[lixenn]

Overview

Since I’ve come out of my introverted gremlin cave and started to actually work regularly on my writing as well as posting my stuff on here, I’ve decided to structure my blog a bit. Mostly to prevent people from getting absolutely lost in this chaotic mess.  

I will try to keep this as updated as possible but there might be a bit of a delay between me posting new content and updating this, so please keep that in mind.

General info

My Ao3 account

My Kofi

Art commissions are open! More information here.

Tags

#lixy reports Lix' daily life in a nutshell #art nook art tag #crochet corner crochet tag #ask answered ask tag (<- might change in the future)

Ask box

If you have questions about any of my projects or just want to randomly scream at me about any topic that comes to mind, my inbox is open. Bother me anytime!

Katekyo Hitman Reborn

The KHR discord server is now online! It's a general server for the fandom. If you want to join just drop me a DM and I'll send you the invite link.

KHR writing prompts

Prompts are open, just drop them in my inbox and I'll see what the nonsense generator can fabricate!

Prompt rules/intro

Dan and Celeste

Dan and Vlasta

The Housekeeping AU

#the housekeeping AU #khr daniele costa #khr dave #khr valerie rebner #khr vlasta gast #khr marina costa #khr cilmi #khr yves #khr sam #khr blaze

This is me playing around in the Varia sandbox, come and join me in my weird delusions!

Witness how the Head of Varia Housekeeping (my OC) is slowly but surely driven insane by crazy Assassin bullshit, meddling assistants (aka Dave), mountains of paperwork and Mafia politics.

(Btw the concept of my Varia Housekeeping was inspired by Umei_no_Mai whose worldbuilding is absolutely Godtier. I kneel before their greatness.)

Character profiles

Chief aka Daniele

Dave

Ottavio under edit

Valerie Rebner

Yves

The Varia Housekeeping survival guide (WIP currently updating on Ao3)

When you are the overworked and underappreciated head of Varia Housekeeping who is sick and tired of cleaning up your employees’ corpses and decide to write up an instruction manual for dealing with Varia's insanity.

The Concept of Causality (ETA on Ao3: December 1st)

Current edited chapter count: 5/?

Chapter 6 WIP

Housekeeping Snippets (WIP currently updating on Ao3)

Snippets of my Housekeeping AU starring my various OCs which I posted on tumblr. These are in non-chronological order and mostly focus on character interactions and shenanigans.

Detective Dave is on the case (complete on Ao3 but might add something later on)

Dave has never been able to resist a good mystery, so when one of his informants was suddenly murdered under suspicious circumstances, what else is he supposed to do other than immediately stick his nose into other people's business? ("Can you for once in your life not poke the sleeping dragon with a stick?" "But Chief! A murder mystery! Delivered right to my front door!" "..." "Hey, we are you going? Chief? Chief! I still need you to sign these forms! Come back!" )

This is my crossover with Myell's Killer Whale AU, so if you aren't familiar with her 'verse this story might be a bit confusing, I recommend checking her stuff out first a then coming back to this one. (Shamelessly advertising my Buddy's story again hehehehe)

Fanfic recs

I've decided to indulge myself and finally make a list some of my favourite KHR fanfics, feel free to check it out!

Fic recs

Naruto

How Uzushio was saved by drunken seal shenanigans (WIP kinda on hold)

The story of how Uzumaki Ren – explosion specialist, seal master and everyone’s favourite mad scientist – saves his village from destruction, revolutionizes the medical field, adopts a puppy, and gives his Kage an aneurism. Not necessarily in that order.

Note: I still have stuff for this story prewritten (but nothing post-worthy just yet), but since KHR has overtaken all my brain space, I’ll probably won’t work on this for a while. I’m still super attached to my mad scientist baby Ren, so there will be more content! … Just in the very far future 😅

[angels444yuri]

im new on tumblr n idk how to mk frnds i feel like the new character tht no on realises exists

hiii omg this is so cute and I have a ton of tips for you !!!

so before anything else you'll want to work on your blog's aesthetic. this is mainly your pfp & banner (if you want those),, your background and your accent color.

an intro post is usually optional but since you're looking to make friends i would recommend you have one. it doesn't have to be anything spectacular,, just basic info about you & your blog and anything else you think is worth noting will do. if you'd rather keep it short then there's a decent character limit in the "about me" section

next you'll want to decide on a niche // spaces you'd like to be in if you haven't already & the tags you'll use. a good way to decide on tags is to look up your niche(s) (on tumblr ofc) and pick out the ones that sound good to you. remember to be mindful when you use them bc people will report you for spam (or just be annoyed) if your post is tagged with a character's name for instance but the character is nowhere to be found in your post

scrolling through other posts under your tags is a great way to find people to be friends (or mutuals) with. back when i used to do this,, i preferred to scroll the 'latest' section instead of 'top' because it made it way easier to find blogs i actually had a chance of becoming mutuals with seeing as they were usually small(er) blogs

if a post on your dash catches your eye check out the blogger behind it. if they meet your friend criteria,, i seriously encourage you to find out if they'd like to be friends/mutuals via an ask (or just give them a little compliment). i've done this countless times and have been successful pretty much every time,, if memory serves me well only three people never bothered responding to me. everyone else was happy to become mutuals w me,, even people i thought might not be interested.

this one's negotiable but don't be afraid to let people know you're browsing their blog (as in liking and reblogging a bunch of their stuff. maybe even replying to a few). if my response to having this done to me is anything to go by,, i think it encourages the person getting notifications to give your blog a (quick) browse in return & if you're lucky they'll take an interest in you (don't go around spamming people though. i didn't tell you to do that)

this took wayyy more time to write than it should've so i hope it's at least somewhat helpful 😭 my following list is public & i'm mutuals w most of the people on there so if you want,, you could use it as a starting point of sorts. i have excellent taste so you can trust that everyone i follow is super cool 🤭

[cookierun-guilds-gone-wild]

A short intro post since we never bothered to make one;

(Updated 2.10.2022)

-Non submissions/random posts by myself will be tagged as “Mod Blabber”, mute that tag if you don’t want to see those posts!

-This blog is run by now one person; Vac. The other mod has stepped down from the blog and game. My Ovenbreak IGN is MillennialPlagueDctr and my Kingdom IGN is Manakete.

-I use They/Them pronouns

-Submissions from Ovenbreak guilds, Kingdom guilds, and guild discord servers (given it’s ok to share screenshots) are all accepted here.

-I’ll post anything I get given it is not problematic. If I have made a mistake and post something problematic please let me know, I’ll l be quick to remove.

-Anything NSFW in the slightest will be tagged as NSFW. Nothing explicit will be posted

-Please do not send any kin/kinnie related things, nothing against it I just have a bad history with the community and it causes me great unease. Stuff regarding alters/fictives/etc. is fine though and I’ve posted them before!

-Posts tagged as “tales from CRSP�� are screenshots of my own guild, and posts tagged as “mod fave” are posts I like a lot.

-I no longer own an Ovenbreak guild as I’ve quit the game. The new one made by former members of the guild is called BootlegCRSP (will still be tagged as tales from crsp)

Lastly; pro-shippers please do not follow this account, it’s a matter of comfort  and I don’t want trouble

[miguel-manbemel]

Aspects & Fanfics Ep. 51: I Just Want a Normal Date Without Sides

Well, it’s been a month of rest and it’s time to resume the main storyline of the blog. In the last episode, we had just left Thomas and Nico meeting and starting a relationship and now we start seeing him involved in Thomas’ daily life. I hope you enjoy this new episode and I leave you with the story. Until next time.

SYNOPSIS: Thomas is about to have his first date with Nico, both of them alone, but he doesn’t feel truly alone if his Sides are around him all the time, so he asks them to enter autopilot and not disturbing him until the date is over. But something’s gonna go wrong in the Mind Palace and Patton is going to put himself in danger...

WARNINGS: Some moments of implied innuendo, romantic dukeceit and logicality. A scene of intense danger where some Sides’ lives are in mortal danger.

EPISODE INDEX

[Thomas is in the living room in his classic spot]

THOMAS: What is up, everybody!? Jeez, it’s been a while since the last time I said this… but if I’m saying it right now it’s because this is the moment when I’m gonna need to gather my Sides for one important petition. So… guys, all of you, could you please come here now!?

[All the Sides rise up around Thomas]

LOGAN: How may we serve you, Thomas?

THOMAS: I’m glad that you ask me that question, Logan, because there is one thing I want to ask you, all of you. As some of you may know, Nico and I are having our first date together tonight, and…

ROMAN: Yes, I’m so excited to see it!

REMUS: [suggestive voice, wiggling his eyebrows] I’m so excited in so many ways too!

VIRGIL: Please, Remus, don’t mention that. You’re rising up my expectations and I think I’m going over the roof!

REMUS: That’s not the only thing I’m rising up, I think…

VIRGIL: Remus!

REMUS: What? It’s not like any of us is naive enough to know that is one of our goals with him, is it?

LOGAN: You’re technically correct, Remus, but don’t forget that these things take time and if you go too fast you could be ruining any chances for Thomas to get into amatory physical intercourse with Nico.

REMUS: Ugh, Teach, only you could make it sound boring with that technical babbling of yours. The word everybody uses has three letters, you know, so it’s not so complicated for you to use it too. It starts with an S, ends with an X and has an E in the middle. Others use a word with four letters starting with F, but if I use it, the series director is gonna bleep me, so f… [bleep] him, I won’t use it.

LOGAN: You just did…

REMUS: I know, I wanted to catch him off guard. Didn’t work, sadly. [looking at the camera with a threatening glance and a low pitch voice] But I’ll keep trying…

VIRGIL: Please, if you don’t stop being so meta, I’m gonna get a headache…

THOMAS: [yelling] Enough! I know it’s me who’s thinking all these thoughts but will you stop verbalizing them and start listening to me for once!? Gosh…

[intro sequence]

LOGAN: Okay, Thomas, calm down. I know these can get on your nerves, but that’s no reason to…

THOMAS: [frowning] When I said “you” I meant all of you, Logan.

LOGAN: Oh… okay, I apologize, Thomas. Please, continue.

THOMAS: [sighs] As I was saying, tonight it’s my first date with Nico, our first date for us both all alone, and I want it to be perfect, without any trouble arising, and… most importantly, without distractions of any kind. I want us both to be alone for real. Do you understand me?

ROMAN: [beat] You lost me…

THOMAS: Well, all of you guys are married, right?

IAN: [dejected voice] Thanks for noticing me…

CHRIS: [same voice] Indeed. We should found a club for singles, right uncle?

IAN: Not a bad idea…

THOMAS: Sorry. Almost all of you. When you guys want to have some alone time with your husband, what do you do?

REMUS: Well, I…

THOMAS: I mean when you’re getting ready before starting the date, Remus, not when you’re on the last act.

REMUS: Oh…

ROMAN: Well, I prepare my room with warm lights, scent of roses, home made cuisine…

THOMAS: But even before that. What’s the first thing you do, so that you make sure nobody disturbs you?

ROMAN: Well, we usually enter autopilot, of course.

THOMAS: Bingo. You guys enter autopilot and in that state I’m completely unable to bother you because you can’t hear me, even if I call you. Unfortunately I can’t do the same, but I can ask you for a favor to achieve the same result. Guys, when my date starts, I want you all to enter autopilot, all of you without exceptions. I don’t want any of you guys to hear or see whatever Nico and I are doing.

REMUS: [mischievous smile] Why? Are you planning on… getting “super romantic”? [wiggles his eyebrows]

THOMAS: [blushing] No! [to himself with a silly smile] Well… not on our first date at least, although I wouldn’t mind if… [clears his throat, then with a serious voice] Anyway, whatever we end up doing is our own business, Remus. Guys, I never ever made a complaint about you entering my life whenever you wanted… [the Sides frown at Thomas] Okay, there was that one time, but you know I was under Ira’s influence when he was still Wrath. When I’m fully myself, I enjoy your company and you know I couldn’t live without you. But some things… require privacy, you know? I want to feel like a normal person having a normal date with a normal but wonderful guy, and I don’t want the sensation of feeling observed to ruin my date. It would be like having eight chaperons and the thought alone drives me hysterical. So, please, guys. I ask you as a friend. Do me that favor. Enter autopilot while I am on my date and do not disturb me under any circumstances until it’s over. Will you do this for me, guys? Please?

ROMAN: [groans, disappointed] I wanted to assist you in your date, but if you don’t want my advice, fine, do as you want.

THOMAS: Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll still be offering your help unconsciously, Roman, and I thank you for that, and for respecting my wish. Please, don’t be mad at me, Princey.

ROMAN: I’m not mad, I’m just… disappointed that I can’t see you triumphing in your romantic life after wishing it and pushing you into it for so long. But if you think I could be a hindrance for that, I’ll step back. Anything for your happiness, Thomas.

THOMAS: Thank you so much, dear friend.

VIRGIL: You know I hate to enter autopilot. I prefer staying alert or ducking out completely. Knowing I may be doing something to you but not actually knowing what I’m doing causes me a lot of anxiety, Thomas.

THOMAS: No, Virge, I don’t want you to duck out completely, I still want my sense of alertness ready to kick in should anything go wrong.

VIRGIL: Okay, Thomas. I hate to do this, but I’ll do it for you. You owe me one, Sanders.

THOMAS: Thank you so much, Virgil. I really appreciate your effort and I’ll make it up to you, somehow, I promise.

LOGAN: No problem on my part, Thomas. The only feelings I’m interested in studying with interest are Patton’s and mine. You can have your feelings all for yourselves if you like.

THOMAS: Thank you so much, Logan.

PATTON: It’s not gonna be that simple for me, kiddo. I’m literally your feelings. No matter how much in autopilot I am, I’m gonna experience your feelings, even if I don’t know the cause of your feelings. Is that okay with you? Cause to go any further, I’d have to inhibit myself, and then it would be you who wouldn’t experience feelings at all, not to mention I’d be putting my life at risk.

THOMAS: No, Patton, don’t you dare inhibiting yourself! I was expecting something like that. It’s okay if you blind yourself to whatever is happening as much as you can. That’s everything I ask, I would never ask you to put yourself into danger, and I certainly don’t want to put your life at risk just to please me.

PATTON: Okay, kiddo, I’ll do as much as I can, then.

THOMAS: Thank you, Patton.

REMUS: Well, you’re not my boss, Thomas, and I have no intention to…

JANUS: Don’t worry, Thomas, I got this. [seductive voice] Remus, honey, have you forgotten you had promised to dedicate a day to me and only to me, my love? I’m starting to believe you don’t care about me anymore, and I wanted to spend the day… and night… with you… so… badly…

REMUS: [to Thomas] You know what? Keep your silly date for yourself, I’ve got better things to do. Come with me, my love…

[Remus sinks down. Janus does too, not before smirking at Thomas, who smirks back and rises his thumb, mouthing the word “thank you” in silence]

IAN: I guess I’ll have to autopilot myself from Janus too to give him some privacy… Of course you can count on me in giving you some space, Thomas.

THOMAS: Thank you, Ian.

CHRIS: Same for me. Uncle Ian, why don’t we go to Sandersia to visit Ira? It’s been a long time since the last time we did.

IAN: Sounds like a plan. [to the others] Would you like to come with us, guys?

ROMAN: Nah, I have work to do, things to write, and stuff. Thomas may be on a date, but his mind never stops creating in the background, you know? Send my best regards to my brother Roland, guys.

VIRGIL: I’m going with you, guys. I really need something to distract myself from the huge stress I’ll be having today.

THOMAS: If you think it’s going to be too much distress for you, Virgil, I…

VIRGIL: No, it’s okay, I can take it, otherwise the one feeling uncomfortable would be you, and I already give you too much of that on a regular basis, so don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll find something to do with my friends to lift my spirits up.

THOMAS: I really appreciate what you’re doing for me, Virge. I promise I’ll make it up to you.

VIRGIL: You don’t have to, Thomas, but thank you.

CHRIS: [to Logan and Patton] What about you, guys?

PATTON: Well, as a matter of fact, we already had a busy day. Logan asked me to help him write some vocab cards so that he can understand better the subtle emotional charges of certain words and expressions, so that he doesn’t come out as rude or offensive by accident.

THOMAS: Oh, that’s very kind of you, guys.

LOGAN: Yes, I have set myself the goal of understanding feelings better so that I don’t hurt yours by mistake. I do care about you, guys, and your well-being, and I thought the next logical step was to learn that.

THOMAS: We know you care about us, Logan, and despite not fully understanding feelings yet, that doesn’t stop you from trying to adjust to them for us. That’s one of the many things that make you so cool, Logan.

LOGAN: I appreciate hearing that, Thomas. Well, we should be going. [sinks down] Bye, guys.

PATTON: [sinks down] Bye, kiddos. May your date be full of love and joy, Thomas.

ROMAN: I’m leaving now, guys, I’ve got work to do. [sinks down] You won’t believe what I’ve got in store for you, Thomas.

THOMAS: I can’t wait to see it.

CHRIS: Well, if no one else is joining us, we should be leaving. Thank goodness they finally fixed the royal carriages and now they’re as fast as they used to be. Ready, fam?

VIRGIL: Ready, son.

IAN: Me too.

VIRGIL: [sinks down] Off to Sandersia, then.

CHRIS: [sinks down] Bye, Thomas.

IAN: [also sinks down] Bye, Thomas, good luck on your date.

THOMAS: Thanks guys, have fun in Sandersia. [sighs] Well, this went better than I thought. I hope I didn’t hurt any feelings of them, and that they understand my motivations… For once, I don’t wanna be the Light Master or the Dark Master or any Master at all. I want to feel like a human again, like plain old Thomas Sanders. And what Thomas Sanders wants now is to get to know Nico Flores better, and I hope that we discover that we’re meant to each other. I… I really like that dude. Well, Thomas, you should stop talking to yourself, the Sides are gone and in autopilot and for the first time in a long time, you’re on your own. So you better get ready, Thomothy, today it’s your day… here I am, talking to myself again… I’ll better go take a shower so that I can calm my nervousness.

[Thomas goes upstairs heading to his bedroom bathroom. Time goes by and Thomas is already well groomed. He’s been cooking something which is now in the stove. There’s a ring at the door]

THOMAS: Oh, gosh! It must be him! [clears his throat] Calm yourself, Thomas. Everything’s gonna be all right. [takes a deep breath, then sighs] Let’s go.

[Thomas goes to the door and opens. Nico’s there smiling at him and holding a bottle of wine]

NICO: Hi, Thomas.

THOMAS: Hi, Nico. Did you have any trouble to get here?

NICO: No, not really. With a GPS, nobody can get lost these days, right Thomas?

THOMAS: Tell that to the pizza delivery guy, he always gets lost… What are you bringing there?

NICO: Oh, I bought a bottle of red wine. I thought it would be appropriate.

THOMAS: Gee, thanks, Nico. [checks the bottle] Oh, it’s a young wine… a… Rioja? But that’s an imported wine from Spain! That must have cost you a lot, you shouldn’t have!

NICO: It’s okay [tender smile] when you have a date with the best, you only wanna bring the best, right?

THOMAS: [smiles back] Jeez, if you say it like that, how could I argue back?

NICO: Then don’t argue anymore.

[Nico kisses Thomas]

THOMAS: [silly smile] Well, don’t stay there, come in. Should I put this in the fridge?

NICO: Have you got a wine cooler? It would be better to keep it there so that it stays cool but not too cold.

THOMAS: Yes, it’s right here in the kitchen. I’ll fill it with ice cubes and place the bottle inside. Dinner is almost ready, by the way.

NICO: It smells good… and I think the smell looks familiar to me… What are you cooking?

THOMAS: Well, I wanted to make a homage to you, so, after watching tons of tutorials and using my friends these past few days as guinea pigs while I was practicing, I’m making you… Pa… Parrish? Porridge? No, it’s not that… Perril? What is this word? [Nico chortles, Thomas smiles bashfully] Don’t laugh at me, I don’t know Spanish! Wait a second, I’ll check the recipe title… [checks his phone] Pernil!

NICO: Oh, I thought it smelled familiar! That’s a traditional Puerto Rican dish. It reminds me of Christmas with my abuela Carmen. I miss her so bad. She passed away a few months ago…

THOMAS: Oh, shoot, I hope I didn’t trigger any sad memories.

NICO: Sad? Maybe a few, but most of the memories you triggered are happy ones and that’s how I want to remember her. Thank you, Thomas, for taking the effort of honoring my ancestors and my family.

THOMAS: I only hope I can honor them properly and that I don’t mess up with the recipe. I’m not exactly the best cook, you know?

NICO: Judging by the smell, you’re doing great, don’t worry.

THOMAS: I hope so, it’s been five hours in the stove on a moderate temperature, as the recipe said. I hope it comes out right…

NICO: Thomas, relax. Everything’s gonna be fine. Besides, I’m not here to enjoy your food, but to enjoy my boyfriend’s company… What’s wrong? Are you crying?

THOMAS: [emotional] It’s okay, hearing you calling me boyfriend made me emotional. I… I still can’t believe that, after so long, someone decided they wanted to have me as his boyfriend. I had started to think that I would spend the rest of my life alone…

NICO: Well, I’m proud that you decided to have me as your boyfriend. And I’m glad that not other guys decided to give a chance to you… that way I had time to get you and make you all mine. They don’t know what they’re missing, but it’s too late for them.

THOMAS: Gosh… where have you been all this time and why didn’t I meet you sooner, Nico? My life these last few years would have been so much happier if you had been around.

NICO: I’m sorry you had a rough time, Thomas, but now that’s in the past. Let’s just focus on the present and the future, cause I’m not moving away from your side in a long time, if you let me, of course.

THOMAS: If I let you? You better won’t move away, Nico.

[the stove dings]

THOMAS: Oh, time’s up. The roast is ready, so you better sit down while I get the serving ready.

NICO: Thank you so much, sir.

[Nico sits down in the table, which is already ready, even with a red candle decorating in the middle and a bouquet of magas that Nico immediately notices]

NICO: Magas. The national flower of Puerto Rico! You really got set on giving a homage to my heritage, didn’t you?

THOMAS: [while serving the meal on the plates] Of course I did. And it wasn’t easy to find them around here. Most shops tried to sell me hibiscus instead.

NICO: Yeah, they’re pretty similar, but are actually from completely different species of flowers. And you got real magas. You gotta tell me where you found them.

THOMAS: Sure, while we’re having dinner. We’ll have a lot of time to talk about everything. [puts both plates on the table, then opens the bottle of wine and fills both cups and sits down in front of Nico] Well, everything is ready, so enjoy your meal.

NICO: Let’s have a toast first, shall we?

THOMAS: Sure.

NICO: To us. May we have the best evening ever, and may it be the first of many evenings together for the rest of our lifetimes. ¡Salud!

THOMAS: Cheers!

[they rise their cups and drink, then they proceed to eat their dinner. Meanwhile, in Logan’s room, Patton and Logan are writing vocab cards]

PATTON: And this is why you should say this and not that. Got the difference, Logan?

LOGAN: I… I think so, Patton. Wow, feelings are so complicated to manage. And so hard to understand logically. Sometimes it’s just a matter of trial and error. I don’t know if I’ll be able to learn about them as I should.

PATTON: Of course you are, Logan. You are capable of feeling just like anyone of us, and that just makes you able to understand feelings. Sooner or later, you’ll get the grip of it, you’ll see.

LOGAN: I hope you’re right… [suddenly scared] Patton? Patton what’s the matter?

PATTON: [grimacing as if in pain] I… I don’t know. I suddenly felt an oppression in my chest as if it was getting harder for me to breath.

LOGAN: Oh, no, Patton, what can I do for you?

PATTON: I don’t know… I don’t know what’s going on with me. It’s like I’m getting such a strong feeling that it’s overwhelming to me. I can’t literally cope with its strength… Wait, it’s starting to fade… yes… I’m feeling better now… [takes a deep breath] Gosh, that was intense.

LOGAN: But what was that?

PATTON: I can’t know for sure, cause I’m in autopilot, but I suspect Thomas is having a good time with Nico. Perhaps it’s been a sudden rush of true love what I just felt, so sudden and so strong that I got overloaded for a second. Wow… Thomas had never felt such strong feelings before, not even for his ex, who was his first love. Nico truly makes Thomas feel something, right?

LOGAN: Yes, you just said it Patton. But if this is going to put you in danger, I don’t know if…

PATTON: Don’t worry about me, Logan. I’ll get used to it. I better will, because a feeling like this of true love only grows stronger over time. Wait…

LOGAN: What? Another overload?

PATTON: No… someone’s talking to me.

LOGAN: What? I can’t hear anything.

PATTON: Not with words, directly into my feelings… I think it’s the Core. It’s calling me. It wants to tell me something. I must return to the Mind Palace Center.

LOGAN: If you must go, then fine. But this time, I’m going with you.

PATTON: You can’t. We need Thomas to send anyone other than me up there. And he specifically asked us not to bother him tonight.

LOGAN: But it’s too dangerous, I can’t just let you go all alone, just because the Core has suddenly felt the need to chat.

PATTON: Don’t speak about the Core so disrespectfully, please, Logan. It’s the source of everything that Thomas is, was and will be, including us both.

LOGAN: Sorry, I’m just nervous. I can’t just leave you.

PATTON: [sighs] If only there was a way to know when his date is gonna be over without breaking the autopilot… Logan?

LOGAN: Yes, Patton?

PATTON: Could you go to the bedroom and bring me my old cardigan, please?

LOGAN: Your old cardigan? For what, Patton?

PATTON: I need it for something I gotta do. Please, would you be kind and bring it to me. I feel a little weak from the earlier rush and my legs could fail me if I try to climb the stairs.

LOGAN: Okay, as you wish, Patton.

PATTON: Thank you, Logan.

[Logan starts walking to the stairs]

PATTON: Logan?

LOGAN: Yes, Patton?

PATTON: I love you. You know that, right?

LOGAN: Yes, I do, but why do you say that now?

PATTON: Just because. That’s something you must learn about feelings, Logan. It’s never a bad moment to say I love you. And I love you so much.

LOGAN: I… love you back, Patton. I’ll go get your cardigan.

[Logan walks upstairs]

PATTON: I’m sorry, Logan. But I gotta go see the Core, it could be important. I hope you can forgive me.

[Patton stands up, then looks at the ceiling and floats upwards, disappearing in the ceiling. Logan comes back down the stairs]

LOGAN: I can’t find the cardigan, Patton. Is it in your closet or… Patton? Patton, where are you?

[Logan gets scared and starts looking for Patton all around the place and can’t find him]

LOGAN: What have you done Patton? How could you do this to me? I need help… The others are too far away or too busy, so I can only count on him… Roman! Roman, please, I need your help!

[Roman rises up]

ROMAN: What’s wrong, Logan? You must be really distressed if you decided to call me. What is it?

LOGAN: Patton is gone, and I don’t know what to do. To be honest, I don’t know if you can be of much help, but still…

ROMAN: Hang on, Teach, what’s wrong? Where did Patton go?

LOGAN: To the Core. He said the Core called him. I asked him to wait until Thomas was free, so that we could go together, but he wouldn’t wait.

ROMAN: But the Core is dangerous! He shouldn’t have gone on his own!

LOGAN: That’s what I told him. How could he do this to me? He tricked me.

ROMAN: Well, this is a desperate situation, so I’m afraid we have no choice but to call Thomas.

LOGAN: But Patton left like this so that we wouldn’t disturb him.

ROMAN: I understand and that’s brave on his part, but also temerity. It’s too dangerous. Last time he did it, he had no choice because Thomas was unable to help, but now he’s here, there’s absolutely no justification for what he’s done. I’ll call Thomas.

LOGAN: But…

ROMAN: Thomas? It’s me, Roman. Don’t speak or do any gesture, just listen. Thomas, do you hear me? Blink if you do.

[Meanwhile, Thomas is having dessert with Nico, and they’re talking lively, laughing at one of Thomas’ dad jokes. Suddenly Thomas loses his smile, then blinks]

NICO: Thomas? What’s wrong? You suddenly went so serious.

THOMAS: It’s… it’s fine… I just got a little… stomachache. Would you excuse me if I go to the bathroom for a sec? I’m so sorry.

NICO: Of course, you’re in your home. I hope you’re okay.

THOMAS: Yes, I’m… I’m fine, perhaps something is not agreeing with me, but I’ll be fine, don’t worry. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

[Thomas goes to the bathroom and locks the door]

THOMAS: [angry] I just asked you for one thing, Roman, and not that complicated.

ROMAN: [voice in his head] I know, Thomas, and I’m terribly sorry. I would have never bothered you, but this is an emergency… probably a life or death emergency.

THOMAS: [scared] What? What do you mean life or death? What is going on?

ROMAN: Can you go to Logan’s room so that we explain?

THOMAS: I can’t, Roman. Nico is out there and you know that time in the Mind Palace runs faster than in the outer world. Ten minutes there are like one hour here. Nico would get scared if I don’t give signs of life for so long.

ROMAN: Okay, I’ll tell you, then. Patton has gone to the Mind Palace Core on his own.

THOMAS: What!? Why!?

ROMAN: That, I don’t know exactly, Logan didn’t have time to explain the details, but he’s gone on his own and you know how dangerous the Core is.

THOMAS: Gosh, of all the days he could do something like that, he had to choose today?

ROMAN: If you think you can’t come with us, that’s okay, Thomas. We just ask you that you help us travel to the Mind Palace Center so that we can join Patton. Only you can do that, and you can do it from the outer world.

THOMAS: Really? How?

ROMAN: Just picture us in your mind standing in the Mind Palace Center. You know the place, right? If you imagine us there, we’ll be there.

THOMAS: That’s it? That easy? All the effort and struggle to get there the first time could have been solved with me just imagining us there?

ROMAN: You are the Mind Palace itself, Thomas. From the outer world, you can take us wherever you want just with your imagination. And about the previous struggle, the first time we went there, the Dark Master had placed a barrier in the form of a labyrinth, a barrier that no longer exists, so traveling there is not that complicated anymore, as long as you intervene, that is. Ordinary Sides can’t travel there on their own except Patton as a former Master Side.

THOMAS: Okay, then, I’ll do that and hope it works…

NICO: [on the other side of the door] Thomas, are you okay? I hope you didn’t get too sick.

THOMAS: I’m fine, Nico, I’ll be out in a minute, don’t worry.

NICO: Okay…

THOMAS: [low voice] We gotta do this fast. You guys ready?

ROMAN: Ready when you are, and thank you, Thomas.

[Thomas closes his eyes. Meanwhile, Roman and Logan are in Logan’s room]

ROMAN: Okay, Logan, hold my hand. This is gonna be quite a ride.

LOGAN: Okay…

[suddenly the room around Roman and Logan starts getting blurry until it goes completely out of focus and turns into a series of colors without any shape or form]

LOGAN: Whoa, it feels like when I don’t wear my glasses…

[after some seconds, the place around them starts getting sharper until they realize they’re in the Mind Palace Center]

ROMAN: It worked! Thanks, Thomas, you can go back to Nico now.

LOGAN: Patton!

[Roman and Logan get startled by a yell behind them]

PATTON: Guys! Help me! I’m slipping!

[Patton is holding to the rope tied to the stake Patton placed the last time, too close to the Core, so much so that it’s sucking him into it, he’s grabbing the rope with his bare hands]

LOGAN: Patton, hold on! Don’t let go!

PATTON: Watch out! Don’t get too close or you’ll be sucked into the Core too! But help me! Pull from the rope, please! I don’t know how much I’ll be able to resist!

ROMAN: Okay, hold on, padre!

[Roman and Logan start pulling from the rope]

ROMAN: The Core’s attraction is pulling hard from the other side of the rope. It’s very difficult to pull back.

PATTON: Guys, please! Help me! I don’t wanna go!

LOGAN: Hold on, please, Patton!

[Roman and Logan start pulling from the rope at the same time with all their might. The rope slowly starts giving in, but soon they notice that the rope has started deteriorating and breaking apart]

ROMAN: [struggling] Nnnggh! If we don’t pull harder, we’re not gonna make it!

LOGAN: No, I won’t give Patton up!

PATTON: Logan… I’m so sorry… If only I had listened to you…

[the rope starts breaking]

LOGAN: No, no, no! I’m not gonna let this happen!

[Logan approaches Patton carefully while Roman keeps trying to pull, then he extends his hand towards Patton]

PATTON: Don’t do that, Logan, you’ll put yourself in danger!

LOGAN: I don’t care, I gotta save you!

PATTON: But you could die!

LOGAN: [yelling with tears in his eyes] I can’t live without you anyway! Try to hold my hand, Patton!

PATTON: I’ll try…

[Patton tries to hold Patton’s hand. Then the rope snaps and Patton starts flying towards the Core]

PATTON: [screeching] Oh, no-no-no! Logan!

LOGAN: [yelling] Patton!

[suddenly, in an act of instinct, Logan stretches his arm and holds Patton’s hand. This way, he stops Patton’s flight into the Core, but then both start getting pulled towards it. Logan stretches his other arm and holds the stake where the rope was tied]

LOGAN: Nngh! With the stretchy arms I lose almost all of my resistance, I can barely hold on!

PATTON: Logan, there’s no hope for me anymore! Let me go, or you’ll be sucked into the Core too!

LOGAN: Never! We both will be saved, or we both will end into the Core together!

ROMAN: Both of you, hold on! Now that Logan is standing mostly still, I can conjure a rope tied around his waist and that could be the solution, but try not to move, Logan!

LOGAN: The Core is pulling hard but I’ll do my best.

[Roman tries to conjure a rope, but in he critical moment, a sudden force pulls from Logan and makes him shake, so the rope appears untied]

ROMAN: Dang it!

LOGAN: Sorry, the Core pulled from me.

ROMAN: [making the rope disappear] It’s okay, I can try again, but try not to move, Logan.

[Roman tries again. This time, Logan manages to stand still and the rope appears securely tied around his waist]

ROMAN: Yes! That’s more like it!

LOGAN: Well done, Roman! Now pull.

[Roman tries to pull with all his strength, but the rope doesn’t move an inch]

ROMAN: [struggling] I don’t know if I can do this all alone, guys… it’s too hard… But I won’t let you go!

LOGAN: Roman, your hands are bleeding! It’s from the chafing of the rope!

ROMAN: I don’t care! I won’t let go, even if I lose my hands in the process!

[suddenly, Thomas and all the Sides appear in the place]

THOMAS: Hold on, guys!

ROMAN: Guys! Oh, for the love of Aphrodite, I’m so happy to see you!

LOGAN: Good timing, guys!

[they all start pulling from the rope at the same time. With the combined strength of all of them, it is a much easier task, and soon, Logan and Patton are out of danger. Logan’s arms return to normal as he hugs Patton tightly]

LOGAN: Patton, goodness gracious, I thought I was losing you…

PATTON: [whining] Logan, Logan!

ROMAN: Thank you, guys… But Thomas, what happened with your date?

THOMAS: I heard Logan’s yell about Patton before you closed the mental connection. I couldn’t just stay there enjoying myself on a date. Even if that date was important to me, there are chances for many more dates, and your safety, guys, is the most important thing to me. So I told Nico that I was feeling really sick and asked him if he would have any trouble in ending the date sooner, promising him that I’d repay him as soon as I felt better, and he accepted. He’s such a wonderful guy. I hope I didn’t upset him.

PATTON: I’m so sorry, Thomas. That is exactly what I was trying to avoid…

LOGAN: [angry and yelling] You nearly killed yourself over this stupidity you have just incurred into! What were you thinking? I told you to wait and you tricked me so you could go on your own! Do you have any idea of how you made me feel? I felt like a fool, but worst of all, I felt left behind! I’m your husband, I’m supposed to be by your side in good times and bad, but you left me behind! I…

[Logan starts crying]

PATTON: I’m so sorry, Logan. I was just so worried… and the Core just kept calling and calling… I couldn’t just ignore it… but you’re right, I shouldn’t have done this. I put myself into danger and I almost dragged you with me. I have no excuse and I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me, Logan. All of you, guys.

LOGAN: [still crying] Don’t ever do that again… I thought I’d never see you again. I love you. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved and I don’t know if I’d ever be able to learn to love again if you disappear from my life. Please, don’t do that again, Patton. I don’t wanna lose you.

PATTON: [emotional, hugging Logan] I promise, Logan, I promise. And I love you too.

THOMAS: Was all of this worth it, though? Patton, you mentioned that the Core was calling you. I presume you went to talk to him like the last time. Did you get something from it?

PATTON: Yes, before the rope I tied around my waist suddenly got untied, probably because the Core’s influence slowly deteriorated it, as it was the same rope that I left here from the last time, I got to communicate with the Core again.

THOMAS: Well, and what did he say?

PATTON: Virgil, Roman, the Core has revealed to me a way to bring your son Dillon back with us and away from the Paladin’s control.

VIRGIL: What? Really?

ROMAN: Oh, gosh, Patton, if that’s true, I’d be forever grateful to you.

PATTON: However, Thomas, this comes with a risk for you.

THOMAS: A risk? What do you mean?

PATTON: A risk for you… and for Nico.

[Thomas looks at Patton, not knowing what to say]

[ending card]

THOMAS: I don’t understand, Patton. What does Nico have to do with all of this?

PATTON: The Core spoke to me, Thomas. He told me that something has changed inside of it the moment you first put your eyes on Nico. A force, stronger than anyone, has started filling it and it is a force strong enough to overcome the Paladin’s control over Dillon. But, in order to make use of that force… we need Nico to enter the Mind Palace and stand by your side when you face the Paladin. The two of you together are completely unstoppable.

THOMAS: But I didn’t want to reveal my secret to Nico. What if I scare him? What if he refuses to help me and at the same time breaks up with me? And what is more important, I don’t want to put him into any kind of danger.

PATTON: I don’t think Nico would really be endangered, as long as he stayed with you all the time, as I told you, you two are unstoppable. And about the rest, Nico loves you, Thomas. It only has taken you two a few weeks to build a love so strong that could banish the forces of darkness inside your mind world. I doubt he would break up with you, Thomas.

THOMAS: You doubt it, so you think there’s a chance he could do it. I… I don’t know if I’m ready for such a risk.

[Roman looks at Virgil and they both share a glance of agreement]

ROMAN: We understand, Thomas. We would never put your happiness on risk. We’ll find another way.

PATTON: Sorry if I’m pushy, but there’s one more thing the Core said. Dillon is running out of time. The possession that has happened to him is in some aspects similar to when a Sprite bites someone of us. Once the Paladin has spent enough time inside of his body, the real Dillon will be no more. It is a much slower process than with Sprites, because the Paladin doesn’t have a real physical form like them, but the process is still going on and if you don’t hurry, there will be no way to undo it.

VIRGIL: That’s something that breaks my heart, dad. But still, it’s Thomas’ choice. It kills me to think of such fate for my son but… I don’t want to make Thomas miserable.

THOMAS: No, guys, I have thought about it. If I am to start a relation with Nico in the hope of making it last for a lifetime… there can be no secrets between us. Nico needs to love me as I am, with all its consequences. Besides, if I have shared my secret with a lot of my best friends, it’s only natural that I share it too with the love of my life, isn’t it? I’ll talk to Nico.

ROMAN: Are you sure, Thomas? Don’t feel forced to do so just for us.

THOMAS: Yes, I’m sure. I have to tell him. For Dillon, but also for myself. I need to tell Nico my secret. And I really hope he still loves me when he knows the truth about me.

ROMAN: Okay, Thomas. Thank you so much.

THOMAS: Don’t mention.

PATTON: And Roman, there’s one more thing the Core told me. It was a message… for you.

ROMAN: For me?

PATTON: It wants you to know that what you wrote on the last page of your diary… is true. It was him. I don’t know what that means but the Core told me you would understand.

[Roman looks at Patton, at first without any reaction, then streams of tears fall down his cheeks as he shows a bittersweet smile]

ROMAN: Thank you, Patton… You have just made me… the happiest prince in the world. Happiest and terrified at the same time, but you have given me so much hope. Gosh, I love you so much, my dear friend… no, my dear father.

[Roman hugs Patton and Patton hugs him back]

PATTON: Happy to help, my dear son-in-law. Whatever I did, I’m happy to help.

[everyone looks at them with an expression of emotion]

VIRGIL: Am I the only one who is completely lost or is it just me?

[no one seems to hear Virgil as they’re busy cleaning their own tears]

VIRGIL: [shedding] Oh, never mind, he’ll explain later, I guess. Now it’s time for panic and or crying… or even better, just plain crying…

[they all stay like that, emotional, looking at them]

[hetalia-nordic-trash]

The Heart Gambit (Dennor): 5-Too Clever by Half

Word Count: 1,460

Description:

Lukas and Mathias agreed to go to the park together, but are bogged down thinking about personal issues.

Author’s Note:

Yessss more Dennor.  I’m having so much fun writing so I hope you guys like it.  I’m so excited to write more this summer so let me know what you want me to write more about!  Notes, asks, and comments mean so much!

Also check out my new writing blog @thechosenburrito where I post all my writing both Hetalia related and original writing!

Previous: 4-Treat me like a Fool

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The sun peeked between the curtains in Lukas's room.  He stirred a bit, regretting the promise he made to Mathias.  He pulled himself out of bed and started heating some water for coffee.  It was, unfortunately, instant coffee but it was the best thing he could do considering the circumstances.  He threw open the curtains to let the light fill the room and was met with complaints from Emil.

"You know, just because you get up at the ass crack of dawn, doesn't mean the rest of the world does." Emil groaned as he rolled over in bed.

"I'm making coffee."

Emil set up and started pulling on some day clothes.

"I hate you."

Lukas poured two cups of instant coffee and left one on the nightstand next to Emil.

"I hate you less now."

Lukas sat at the edge of his bed and looked out the window.  He sipped his coffee and began thumbuming through the book at the foot of his bed.

"I take it you're up this early because you're going to the park with Mathias," Emil said, blowing on his coffee?

"You heard that?"

"I had my ear pressed to the door of course I did."

Lukas closed the book.

"Well, I did promise to go.  That doesn't mean I wanna go," Lukas replied in a bit of a huff.

Emil stood up and pulled on a shirt.

"Yeah but you can still say no."

"I know that."

Emil sat back on the bed and started trying his shoes.

"Well, then if you don't wanna go, call him and cancel."

"I'm not gonna do that."

"Why not?"

"Because..."

"Because you wanna go."

"I didn't say that-"

"Admit you wanna go with him!" Emil almost screamed, pulling on a jacket.

"Why are you like this!?...and where are you going?" Lukas said, looking up from his book to see that Emil was fully dressed and heading towards the door.

"You need to admit that you have feelings for 'that asshole' because you keep repressing it and messing with your brain!   It's just gonna make your life worse to ignore it."  Emil said opening the door.

"And I'm going sightseeing.  We're in Italy, and I'm probably never coming back here again so I'm gonna enjoy it."

"Have fun on your little park date or whatever."

Emil stepped out and closed the door behind him.

Lukas stood up from the table and threw himself back on the bed, burying his face in his hands.

"What's wrong with me?" he muttered under his breath.

Was this a date? No, right?  Definitely not a date.  It was just two people going to a park to hang out.  Two people who just so happened to be competing in the biggest Chess competition in the world.  Two people who also happened to share an oddly intimate moment yesterday.  Wait that sounded wrong.  Not like that.  He rolled over in the bed.  It's fine, they're just friends.  What's the worst that could happen?  If Mathias didn't have feelings for him then everything would be fine.  Lukas would just keep living his life and after the competition, he would never have to see Mathias again.  But if Mathias did have feelings...things would be much more complicated.  As much as spending his life with Mathias, maybe getting a house somewhere, or traveling the world, it just wouldn't work out.  The media would be all over it.  Not to mention what would happen to Emil.  But most of all, when Lukas really thought about it, he just had too many flaws to be in a relationship.  Maybe but Mathias did like him, but not really him, some kind of strange idealized version of him.  Maybe that's what happening, Lukas didn't love Mathias, did he?  Was it even real?  If it wasn't real, would he think about him this much when the literal biggest match of his life was only days away?

Lukas let out a long sigh and rolled out of bed. He pulled on his clothes and made his way to the door.  He wasn't getting Mathias out of his head by sitting around in his room.

- - -

Mathias rolled over in bed to snooze his alarm.  He'd already done this 3 times and regretted telling Lukas to meet him so early in the morning.  But he figured that Lukas was probably more a morning person and would think he's weird for getting up at noon.

Mathias groaned and dragged himself out of bed.  He hissed, half-jokingly, as he drew open the curtains to see that the sun had just barely risen completely.  He made his way to the bathroom, catching a glance at a notepad he had been writing on the night before.  Last night's phone call with Alfred came back all at once.

"So you're telling me you DIDN'T talk to him yesterday."

"I...no I didn't get to.  His brother showed up, but Lukas never did."

"*sigh* ...you're killing me here Mathias."

"Hey, I tried!  It's not my fault he didn't show!"

Mathias started brushing his teeth.

"I know I know...look you just need something on him!"

"I thought this was about getting in his head and figuring out his strategies.  You know, so I can actually win?"

"Look there's been a change of plans."

He started styling his hair.

"What kind of change?"

"Well...I've been thinking about it, and you don't have to win the match on Sunday."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look, if you win on Sunday, everything will be great!  You'll have the title, maybe you do a few commercials, a couple of brand deals, the whole shebang! ...but if you lose... it doesn't have to be a deal-breaker anymore!  If you can dig up something on the other guy we can maybe... um... make it so that... you know..."

"You want to frame him for cheating?"

"Woah Woah Woah!  That's your idea, not mine haha...  Of course, we wouldn't frame him for cheat... but we could sure take the wind of his win you know... make you look like you were against the odds..."

Mathias started pulling on his clothes and putting on his shoes.

"Look I don't need that, man.  I'm a good player."

"No yeah no I know that.  I'm not talking about that.  I'm talking about finances., deals, the money!"

"And I'm talking about me winning the match."

"Since when did you care about winning?"

"I don't!"

"Well, you don't care about winning, and it's sounding like you don't care about money, so what do you care about then!?"

Mathias checked his reflection and headed to the park.

- - -

Lukas was huffing and puffing.  He hadn't realized how much walking with going to the park would involve.  He looked around and came to the realization that he was so far into the park that he had no idea where he was.  He just kept wandering around until he eventually saw a small lake.  There was a bench at the edge of the lake with someone sitting on it.  Lukas didn't care who it was, at that point, he knew his knees were about to buckle.  He made his way over to the bench and sat down on it.

"Sorry... if I bothered you... I just really... needed a break," Lukas said, trying to catch his breath.

Lukas turned to see that it was, in fact, Mathias.  He was digging in a paper bag for a slice of bread.

"I mean, you're not bothering me!  Considering I asked you to come!" Mathias beamed, passing him a slice of bread.  "I was getting a little worried 'cause I realized that I forgot to tell you where to meet me.   But hey!  You made it!"

Lukas smiled a bit.  He looked at the slice of bread Mathias handed to him.  It was a bit stale, but he wanted to be polite.  He took a bite of the bread.

"Woah what are you doing!"

"...eating..."

Mathias laughed.

"No silly!  That's for the ducks!"

Lukas swallowed.

"Oh."

Mathias started tearing pieces of bread and tossing them into the water.  Ducks and their ducklings paddled their way over to the edge of the small lake and started picking at the pieces of bread.  Lukas did the same, occasionally holding his hand out to Mathias for another piece of bread.

Lukas yawned, remembering that he only had one sip of coffee.  Was he really sleeping that badly all the time?  He rested his head on Mathias's shoulder and felt himself blush.

"Heh... uh... you know I think I heard somewhere that you're supposed to feed them seeds and not bread.  I think bread is bad for them or something..."

Mathias's voice faded out as Lukas drifted off on Mathias's shoulders.

.

.

.

Next Chapter: 6-Someone else’s Parasite (Coming Soon)

A/N:

This is technically late but I had fun writing it that’s all that matters!

I’m going to take this time to plug my non-hetalia work “ Intro to Love ” (on Wattpad) about a college student who struggles to keep her superpowers a secret and while making new friends.  How much of her normal life will she give up to save her friends from a mysterious villain that drains students’ brains and turns them into zombies?  The complete Chapter 1 is out NOW AND so is Chapter 2.1-'The last of the Good Days’!  Go read them!  Right now!   They’re waiting for you!  Chapter 1.1 is here on my tumblr!

Thanks again for reading! Send some feedback my way! Can’t wait to continue this story!

Also, again, check out my writing blog @thechosenburrito!

Quotev link: here

[rrrawrf-writes]

lordy lordy loo it’s been a hot minute since i’ve made an original post, i forgot where the button was

so. some of you may have seen the stuff running around about violetvineyard and mvcreates, some of you may not have. i’m just gonna lay out my experiences here, now that other people are talking about it and now that the server has been deleted. i’m gonna try to present a fair and nuanced version; i’m not gonna include screenshots (right now) bc i’m lazy, mostly.

there are several other people who are putting up way better breakdowns than i am. i just figured i might as well toss mine onto the pile bc why not? but if you’re hoping to hear from me a story about how i’ve been wronged, per se, you won’t find much of one, because i played mainly a spectator role, and never had much trouble there. i will have a vague, lukewarm defense of some of the people involved that other people may not agree with, but again, this is all just the whole VV deal from my point of view.

@nuwuhorizons (i haven’t said how dang much i lOVE your url) and @sapiencenotes have very good receipts and breakdowns. if you want a more in-depth (and dramatic, forgive me for using the word, i’m not trying to downplay this), check them out. @time-to-write-and-suffer also has some great stuff on their blog about all of this.

all righty. so. i joined VV not right at the beginning, but soon after it was started. there was an application process, i got accepted, i was looking for a community to help me start writing more. (it didn’t help, but that’s not their fault, that’s mine.) the person who owned the server was called mina, and on tumblr, mina’s url was mvcreates. mina is a nonbinary Muslim woman of color, a professional who i believe works at harvad and deals a lot with things like infectious diseases, iirc. she was doing a whole lot of work when the pandemic came around, and so the past few months wasn’t quite as active as she had been at the start, both on the server and tumblr. 

the very first time mina came on my radar, before i joined vv, was because she had corrected someone’s typo on a post, and it stirred up a minor drama about “don’t give unsolicited criticism” and “is pointing out minor errors like that okay” and blahblahblah. i ran across that on a friend’s dash, and also ran across the promo for vv from that friend’s dash, as well, and joined bc y not.

everything was p cool for a while. it was nice to meet some new people and some of my mutuals on there. mina seemed like a fun person. she was about a year, year and a half, maybe, older than i am. the first things that kind of started rubbing me wrong at the start was how she would kind of dismiss suggestions for the server than i and a friend had, and how she kept bringing up her age - she would often say things like “well i wouldn’t do that but i’m an Old(TM) so maybe i just don’t get it” and i can’t really explain why that bothered me. i think it felt dismissive, like Younger Folks Don’t Know How Things Should Work. also, like. she kept bringing it up. as if it meant something, as if plenty of us on that server weren’t actually around her age. there was a convo on vaccinations where i wanted to make the point that a lot of anti-vaxxers should be educated instead of ridiculed and shamed, but i never really got to making that point bc she jumped in very sharply and explained that anti-vaxxers all come from a class of people who are generally educated. i didn’t bother saying anything else. 

at the start, it was tiny little things like that. i chalked it up to her personality and mine just not quite matching up. i sat down a lot and examined my own internal biases, bc i knew something was bugging me, but i couldn’t tell if it was legitimate, or if i was jealous and petty, or if i was being discriminatory towards her identity. i still wonder that a lot; i want to be careful that i’m examining her actions here, and not the person who made those actions.

because the other thing that bothered me was that she was perfect at pretty much everything. she was a decent, if not good, writer, from what i read. i thought her “art”/edits were neat, even if sometimes i looked at them going “that just looks like an edit, not your own art, but u kno, edits are art too, so i’m not gonna say anything.” she had a lot of motivation, a lot of ambition. soon, this kind of transferred over into me feeling like she acted like she had to be perfect at everything. i think this is probably one of the more “lisa is just being petty” things, rather than a judgement on her character, but she seemed to flaunt her own skills and accomplishments a lot. not that no one is allowed to brag sometimes! but it was just another layer of “this bothers me.”

then there was the hero worship.

people in the server loved mina. i liked her. i had no problems with her, even if there were a few things i was a little “ehhhh” about. vv got pretty big, pretty quickly, and i assume there was a decent amount of turnover and people who just joined to lurk or sometimes share things in the promos channel or elsewhere. but the most active folks just. they adored mina with every fiber of their being. mina could do no wrong. no one ever called her out on anything; everything she did was hailed as fantastic and wonderful. and honestly, for the most part, it wasn’t like she was doing crappy stuff. some of the praise was well-deserved, imo, but it just bordered on embarrassing for some of these people, how much they just worshipped the ground she walked on.

and she didn’t really like, discourage it. like, at the start, i think i remember her being more modest, but in general, she just let it go, and so did i, bc like. i aint that kinda jerk.

the stated purpose of violetvineyard was to have a community that valued reciprocity. reciprocity was mina’s biggest thing. there was a channel for people to post their stuff on, so the rest of us could browse and read and reblog. i, admittedly, didn’t do as much of that as i wish i did, but part of it was because i do have a life outside of the internet, a memory and attention span the size of a gnat, and because like. 90% of the stuff that people put in the promos channel were things like edits, writeblr intros, wip intros, etc etc, when all i wanted was to just read some actual writing. but that’s neither here nor there. what got hilarious to me, though, was whenever mina’s fervent admirers would talk about how mina was, quote, a pillar of the community. how vv was doing something No Other Writeblr Group Had Done Before. how Important and Special this server was.

folks. i’ve been on here for several years now. we don’t have a community. we have a bunch of little cliques who reblog from their friends and complain about people not reblogging them. noah fence, but come on. vv got pretty dang big, but it was still a small corner of a small section of tumblr. like. sorry, all y’all, but them’s the breaks.

also, this was hilarious to me bc there are several big writeblrs who have been running around long before mina and vv showed up. yet, according to these people in the server, mina had Single-handedly Brought Hope To This Desolate Wasteland.

in the end, vv became just another little clique whose members reblogged from their friends. i don’t want to devalue the good that did come out of vv. a lot of the picture being painted rn was that the majority of the server were scary dog-piling people. the majority of the server were just writeblrs looking to promo their stuff and talk about their writing. unfortunately, few bad apples, bad rep, negatives outshine positives, etc etc. but i think it did do some good re: exposure for a few folks, even tho it didn’t turn into what it could have been. 

another one of the things that was a minor irritant to me was that they eventually started archiving the vent channel, which was probably the most-used channel. that didn’t sit right to me, but as always, i was a coward had nothing to say about it, so i didn’t. the reason given was that there were often things in the vent channel that people might regret being there, so it was periodically archived and a fresh channel started.

so i’m rambling a lot about stuff that’s probably boring and inconsequential. that’s 90% of this whole vv thing, tho, you need to understand that. 

the biggest thing that bothered me about mina, i think, came about from the constant hero worship from her adoring fans. and i know there’s a whole argument to be said about expecting labor from people with marginalized identities, which is an argument i agree with - don’t expect someone of a minority group to educate you or to face trauma or to shut down bigots, etc etc. but by now, mina had a lot of followers in general, and in specific, she had quite a few people who would defend her at every single perceived slight.

she made a lot of those fun writeblr reblog games, like “send me a fruit that says this about my writing.” those were cool, i’ll admit that. but she was super into “you have to send an ask to the person you reblog from, RECIPROCITY!!!!!!!!!!!” and seemed to struggle with the fact that sometimes, people don’t follow her established rules on her posts for these games. she’d complain about it every single time that happened in the vent channel, which, again, that’s fine? that’s what vents are for, it’s annoying to not get cool fun asks when you do these games, but also, that’s life for you. she could depend on her fans to send her plenty of asks, whereas the much smaller blogs who reblogged these games would probably get f-all, half the time. if you’ve gone through nuwuhorizons or one of the other blogs i mentioned earlier, you’ll have run across the incident where mina’s friends harrassed an 11 year old for not doing her ask game right.

an eleven year old. 

and this is my biggest grief with mina. she only stopped her friends from dogpiling people... once? maybe twice? that i remember. and not only that, but there were SEVERAL occasions where she would get on the vent channel, complain about someone who had said something wrong on one of her posts (and sometimes, again, these were legitimate!), and then ask if someone in the server wanted to reply to them. reasons for such ranged from “i’m too busy rn” to “they would probably listen more to a white person than me.”

again. this, on occasion, is not necessarily a bad thing. we cannot expect labor and response from minorities. my issue was that she kept doing this. and sometimes it was fine, just someone who would drop a note on the post or send a polite anon. but this, to me, the whole asking someone else to fight your battles for you? that really bothered me. mina is a grown adult. either ignore it, like the rest of us chumps, or deal with it yourself. having friends support you is not a bad thing - if i was attacked on tumblr and my friends jumped in to defend me, i’m cool with that. but i wouldn’t ask them to, and then not do anything myself.

to me, this attitude just encourages dogpiling. this felt like she was taking advantage of the people admiring her so whole-heartedly, and using them to deal with minor grievances. (again, i don’t want to downplay some of the actual racism and xenophobia she experienced on this website, because there was some pretty sketchy stuff that did need someone else stepping in to object to. but then there was “ugh this person asked me what program i use to make my music and i don’t want to answer them bc that’s rude,” and stuff of that caliber. like, mina, you built yourself a pretty big following here on tumblr, you don’t get to complain when people are trying to ask you questions and engage with you when you set yourself up as a knowledgeable person on a subject.)

i’m going to mention @gingerly-writing because she already made a post on the subject, but there was an instance where we were in the vent channel and watched a lot of mina’s friends send anons and reblogs of a hurtful nature to one person. eventually, ginger stepped in to say “hey, i don’t think we need to keep doing this, they are a minor,” and after she did so, i also jumped in, saying something along the lines of, “yeah, i’ve seen this kind of stuff blow up in another server and end in a really regrettable situation where no one was happy, can we stop.” both ginger and i received a private message from the mods (individually) saying that we shouldn’t police the chat, etc etc. not during that message, but on the vent channel, another mod jumped in to say that the people dogpiling the blogger were also minors. as if that makes it okay, and isn’t actually extremely worrying in its own right.

after that, i pretty much took a stance of “all right then i just won’t say anything at all.” i stuck around vv because i hated myself actually really liked a few of the others in the server, including a couple of the mods who are actually really cool people, not all the vv mods are sketch, and because honestly? i lowkey knew that vv was going to crash and burn sometime, and i wanted to be there to watch what happened. due to the pandemic, and her line of work, mina became less active, and the whole server died down a bit. 

then someone reblogged one of mina’s ‘art’ posts and accused her of tracing. mina’s admirers immediately jumped into action. nuwuhorizons has it pretty well documented on their blog. there was nothing in the server about it, except one of the others said “oh man i saw that and it pissed me off,” there was some minor chat, and then i woke up and wanted to know what had happened, and was told “don’t worry about it.”

so, naturally, bc the only thing i thirst for is water and Drama(TM), i went looking for it.

found it on some of mina’s friend’s blogs, where i found who had reblogged and said mina was tracing, and followed those reblog chains, where several of mina’s followers attacked the accuser and made fun of their name and age and defended mina, pulling out progress videos and stuff of mina’s work. the accuser was trans and still a teenager, even if technically an adult, so that made things a lot worse. mina eventually posted something explaining that she was pencil tracing and had a very cheery, false-positive tone to the whole thing.

things sorta ended at that, but then maybe the same day, or the day after, user hyba made that big ol post about the Big Scary Tumblr Mirror Website Copying All Your Good, Hard Work. mina and her friends jumped on this. they threw it in the server and talked about things like intellectual property rights and “i don’t like how this makes me feel :(” and from there, went in to how tumblr was a terrible garbage site and then mina and most of the mod team decided that it was time to pack up VV and leave tumblr completely. 

pretty much everyone i know were mina’s besties have vanished off tumblr. mina made an announcement that VV was “migrating” off tumblr and discord(???) and dropped another application to join the great vv migration. i did not apply bc i just have too freaking much going on in my life and needed to get out of this for the sake of my own mental health. it was tempting as hell, tho, i will say that. 

a couple things about this - at the time, mina is also having some pretty bad things going on in her family. she was very vague on the details, but i think that really contributed to wanting to leave; on top of the pandemic and everything else, she was probably heckin stressed. but also like. she never called out her followers for attacking her accuser. she never made any sort of post talking about it. she never told her friends on the server “hey don’t do that.” she never took accountability for it, or, honestly, for anything else she or her friends have done that didn’t feel too good. the mirror sites aren’t really a big deal. 

after the server was archived, it was left up a couple days so everyone could grab contact info, etc. during this time, i was checking the ‘violetvineyard’ tag and saw someone post “what happened to mvcreates they haven’t answered my application to vv,’ and i responded with “oh, the server closed down bc of the copy cat sites.”

the same day, i got a tumblr DM from one of the former mods asking me not to give away any details about vv leaving tumblr. it was very politely worded and everything, but it was still just like

okay? vv is over? why are you asking me not to say anything. and it wasn’t like i was even spilling any hot goss, i was just repeating the excuse (and i do mean excuse) mina gave us. 

anyway, that mod is off tumblr, too, as far as i know, or else they stealthin. which is fine, u do u, buddy.

uhh conclusion time, i guess? i have a few scattered screenshots of things, but i’m not posting em bc i’m lazy and also running late for a thing. but really, for me, i didn’t have a whole lot of beef with mina or pretty much any of the other folks on vv. i thought that mina and her friends were a bit too eager for blood, and that really bothered me. i’m annoyed they shut down vv completely, because it could actually have been something great. if mina wanted off writeblr, i wish she had given the whole network over to people interested in running it; instead, what was a good thing for a lot of people is now completely gone, with no existing framework for people to build on. sure, anyone can go make their own network/family for writeblr, but now it’s just going to splinter into a bunch of different, smaller groups, and we’re all back to square one.

but whatever. i didn’t get to see the server go down in flames, instead it just ended with a hasty retreat and a few whimpers, and quite honestly i wished my staying in had paid off.

i do want to reiterate - there were quite a few people in vv who i think are great, and this does include some of the mods themselves.

i’ve also gotten a couple messages from a few other folks who had been in vv who have their own real, real sketch stories, which are making me rethink how i feel about mina and her friends, and all the good credit i gave them. i just wanted to present this bc it’s my blog and i do what i want, fight me.

and if anyone wants to chat about vv, hit me up. i keep things as private as you want them to be, and i love love love talking about this nonsense. Give Me The Deets.

[pl-panda]

Damienette arranged marriage: part 16

Credits: Miraculous Ladybug team for the elements I take from MLB show. DC for their characters, @ozmav for the AU, @maribat-archive for giving me access to so many different stories to have take inspirations from, @thyladyanput for idea for Chat Damian and me for the plot.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

Part 12 Part 13 part 14

part 15

Damienette arranged marriage: part 16

NEXT

-------------------------------------

“Maman! Papa! I am home! There is someone I wanted to intro…” She walked into the living room, still holding Damian by his hand. The sight was as scary as it was amusing.

Sabine was standing next to Talia Al Ghouls, who sitting there… tied with heavy ropes. 

---------------------

“Maman!” Marinette shouted in panic and wanted to jump and push her mother away from the dangerous woman until Damian stopped her. He was actually chuckling.

“Seriously mother?” He pulled his phone and took a quick photo which he immediately sent to his brothers. “I did not expect you to get beaten by....”

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng! What the fuck is the meaning of this?!” Sabine interrupted Damian. The girl in question shivered. Her mom never cursed. Never.

“Uh… We planned on talking with you and papa today…”

“You are married!” She shouted. Suddenly, before either Marinette or Damian could react, someone grabbed him and lifted him in the air. Tom was having a very serious face.

“tt. Drop me!”

“I don’t think so young man.”

Papa! Maman! He is innocent! He didn’t want to go with this either!” Marinette actually feared for what would happen to Damian. I just hope that having one Akuma today would be enough for Hawkmoth…

“Sweety… Do you know who he is? Who his mother is?” Her mother’s voice was a bit more caring and worried instead of angry.

“Yes.” Marinette stated firmly. “He is my husband and she is a bitch.” She explained, remembering the excruciating pain in her heart that was caused by the ritual. The bluenette fully expected her mother to scold her for cursing. Instead, all she received was a shrug.

“Maybe you do know her then…” Sabine looked a bit amused.

Bewildered, Marinette looked at Damian, who was still hanging in the air held by the neck. He only shrugged. “You are not wrong Angel.” He winced as Tom tightened his grip. 

“Mmfmfmfmf!” Talia gave a muffled sound. Only now Marinette noticed that she had her mouth plastered with silver tape.

“It doesn’t change the fact that you are married! This is serious Young Lady!”

“I know!” Marinette lost her patience. This day seemed to just go on and on and she wanted to finally lie down and rest. “Do you believe I chose it?! I did not! I woke up and was told that it was this or mass genocide of monks who apparently considered me their leader!”

“Oh sweety. I am sorry. This must be so hard for you too.” Her mother walked and hugged her. A tear formed in Marinette’s eyes. Her parents were harsh sometimes, but they truly loved her.

“Why would this monks believe you as their leader.” Tom asked confused.

“Because… I am ladybug.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The baker exlaimed.

“No Mr. Tom. She is saying the truth.” Tikki decided that this was the right moment to show herself. 

“AAAAAH!!! Flying bug mouse!” Tom screamed and dropped Damian in surprise. The teen fell with loud THUD!

“That could have gone better…” He commented.

------------------------------------------------

Three weeks ago

“Father…” Adrien walked into Gabriel’s atelier. “Can I… ask you something?”

“Yes son. What is it that bother you?” Since they revealed their identities to each other the two of them became much closer. Gabriel often enclosed the details of his plans to Adrien and the boy gave his opinions. Chat Noir stopped going out to help Ladybug, but he didn’t attack her either. They wanted to retain the element of surprise.

“Well… My Kwami said that Black Cat holder and Ladybug holders are always supposed to be soulmates, perfectly complementary, made for each other. And yet my Lady is married to someone else. She never felt anything for me…”

“She is not a true Ladybug then.” Older Agreste said dismissively, not looking up from his designs.

“What?” Adrien exclaimed surprised. 

“You said it yourself that she is married.” Gabriel still didn’t look up from his designing board. “So she should have already unlocked her full potential by now. If she didn’t, it means she should have never been chosen as Ladybug in the first place, much less a guardian.”

“So she was never really my Lady…” The boy almost whispered. This time his father actually bothered to look up. He saw the dull look in his son’s eyes and walked to him. He placed a hand on his shoulder, making Adrien look up to the older man

“There is nothing wrong with being mistaken.” He started. “You are still young. Once we take the miraculous away from the imposter and restore your mother, you will be free to give the earrings to the girl that is truly made for you.”

“But… How will I know her father?”

“You already do. She has a true soul of creation and pure heart. That girl… Mari-ann or something.”

“Marinette?!” Adrien beamed

“Yes. I suspected her for being Ladybug for a long time until you revealed the truth. She is a true Ladybug, one made for you.”

“But she is… You really think she is the best for me, Father?”

“Yes son. I believe that you two should be together. But she needs your help.”

“Is it about Lila father? I am sure you know that the girl is a liar, but you always taught me to take the high…”

“Lila is part of the plan. Your Ladybug suppresses her emotions constantly. She avoid my grasp. Out of her class my Akumas can never reach her and her alone. She always push it away. But I know she will be my strongest akuma ever. I believe she will be able to take away Ladybug’s earrings, partially because they belong to her.”

“So you made Lila do all those things?!” Adrien raged.

“Son. Remember why we are doing it. Remember what is at stake.”

“Forgive me father. I… I allowed emotions to take better of me.”

“I do not fault you son.” Gabriel comforted him. “But for my plan to succeed, she must succumb to her emotions. And look at the class. They abandon her the moment they get better alternative. Are this really the friends she should have?”

“I guess not Father. You are right.” 

Gabriel grinned. His son was so pure and gullible. It was too easy to earn his loyalty and compliance. The boy would believe anything he said. Soon, he would have his greatest Akuma and both Ladybug earrings and Black Cat miraculous. He would even get all the other miraculous since Ladybug was the new guardian. All he had to do was play his pawns right. 

“I know this must not be easy for you my son.”

“No Father…” Adrien’s expression changed and for the first time Gabriel saw himself in the boy. This was not the gentle, naive boy. It was almost like he looked in the mirror. Cold and calculative eyes and malicious smirk. “She will be mine. And we shall have a perfect family together, like we always dreamed.”

——————————————————————————————————–

Taglist (sorry if I missed you)@pheonixashtree @sassakitty @unabashedbookworm @vixen-uchiha @maggiecc12 @actualdisasterwoman @tired-butterfly @shizukiryuu @floralfi @imanerddealwith @northernbluetongue @krispydefendorpolice @toodaloo-kangaroo @dast218 @bluesoulblueheart @theatreandcomicfreak @disneyfoxuniverse @mindfulmagics @alwaysnumberonetruth @nyaabinch @jardimazul @lenamau @rosep16 @dramatic-squirrel @sonif50 @daminett4life @lulutheawkwardess @weird-pale-blonde-person @mooshoon @jeminiikrystal @mochegato @moonlightstar64 @dragonflyswing @silverwhiteraven @shamefullove @magic-miraculous @valeks-princess @heaven428 @mlbchaosqueen @winter-gardenflower @spicybelladonna @emo-elaine13 @vetilora @karukofox21 @my-name-is-michell  @sturchling @lokiifriggasonn @redscarlet95 @melicmusicmagic @interobanginyourmom @the-fusionist @razzledazzle247 @miss-mysterys-blog @darkthunder1589 @i-is-mysterious @catthhay @the-one-woman-army @zestyzealot @dahjokester @write-for-your-life2 @mermaidreject @peachedpocky @sassakitty @dahjokester @crazylittlemunchkin @novicevoice @justafanwarrior @eliza-bitch @schrodingers25 @tired-butterfly

[partnersatfazbear]

My thoughts on the SB trailer

Speculation [aka please don’t take any of this super serial; I just want to share some ideas] for Security Breach and William Afton’s plot threads going forward:

So, to preface, this only really focuses on William (since this is a Willry blog).

100% it’s William talking in the introduction. I’m skeptic about the voice later on in the trailer. I say it’s either AlmagAfton or that Beefcake animatronic / human role that we saw in the VA auditions.

Transcript: "When I first found you, you were nothing, you were small... pathetic.. but now.... you are more... are you ready?"

People are discussing that William lost his British accent. I think it's his voice is too distorted to come through. Or maybe I'm in denial.

Having said that, my wife pointed out we don’t have a Glamrock Bonnie. Yeah, it’s probably because we have two rabbits running around already... but I have a small suspicion, also based on the second voice / hand at the end of the trailer, that we will be getting AlmagAfton as our “Bonnie” for this game. I feel Fazbear Frights sort of alludes / lines up to this (as well as Princess Quest). We’ve had the FF books basically comparing the games; I think this is going to get reversed.

Image credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/fivenightsatfreddys/comments/lsijyz/i_always_come_back_springtrap_returns/

Someone did point out this is a Nightmare Animatronic hand. I think it’s a callback, but... who knows? Someone also pointed out that this could relate to some things William said/did in TFC, like moving his body piece by piece to something new. Not sure if this confirms the Nightmares are real things [personally never was fond of this idea] but it’s noteworthy.

Twitter user shared the fact that ScrapBaby’s hand is also a resemblance: https://twitter.com/CircusLizard/status/1365067673076453376

THAT is intriguing!

I mean, I wanted to say I thought the voice at the very end of the trailer sounded like Baby. I could very easily be mistaken, but now I’m wondering...

Maybe AlmagAfton is made of scraps from the Scrapped? We can safely assume parts were salvaged if they got Springtraps circuit boards in VR. The souls are all gone (except William because of TOYSNHK) so...

Now, for something that is even more speculative than that, I just want to discuss how certain things from VR make me wonder about the timeline. I don’t think there’s a way this could work (specifically because of VR showing FNAF 4, SL gameplay, FNAF 3, ect. AKA anything that takes place after 1983, but... It always bothered me that Vanny’s mask is located during Fall Fest ‘83 and that Glitchtrap’s design looks like a prototype for Spring Bonnie. The mall is 80s themed, too. However, little things like the aforementioned games being used in VR (which, SB is obviously a sequel to.. and I guess you can include some AR emails also... and the technology) really debunk the idea that I just kinda had, that SB is set in the 80s. I don’t believe this theory, but it would be interesting. Another interesting point to note is the Foxy Pirate Ride being shown in the newest SB trailer, too, which was part of the Fall ‘83 “Halloween” DLC. I dunno. I don’t know how to make sense of all of it. My rationale would be Vanny (or Glitchtrap) put the Vanny mask into VR just because / maybe to foreshadow [as it is included from a IRL standpoint]. The mall is just retro. Glitchtrap’s design is just a revival of what was probably an early design William never widely used.

I’ll have more thoughts after watching Fuzion’s second-by-second run through and I have yet to see William’s text in FF: The Cliffs’ epilogue], maybe, but for now... I’m one of the happy [few?] that is really excited to see William with voiced lines and the possibility of AlmagAfton.

That does make me wonder where we would go from defeating AlmagAfton... I feel like William doesn’t have anywhere to go from here before going into full corny slasher stereotype. I really would rather his plot thread was settled here than see that.

He will either be defeated or possess someone new. I will say if this ends up being the end of him, then we better get Into Madness [and it better be about Fredbear’s Family Diner]. Otherwise William’s story just feels incomplete to me.

Thoughts after Fuzion’s video:

- The Vanny mask in the intro is the one seen in the Fall ‘83 DLC.

- The hand at the end is bathed in purple light. It’s William 1000% [and I’m convinced it’s the start of AlmagAfton]

- There is a rocky area that is very reminiscent of William’s “lair” in The Twisted Ones (I described it, after reading the book, as “Springtrap’s Rainforest Cafe”) There’s also a jungle themed area in the trailer.

- The ballpit. Maybe we can get a reference from Into the Pit? =:3

- There’s a main hub leading to each animatronic area. Seems we will probably need tickets or something to progress.

- There’s a wristwatch / camera. We finally get an inventory, so that’s cool! Also, it’s very reminiscent to me of Alien: Isolation. I think we will have to be careful using the wristwatch as the animatronics are seen wandering outside the hubs.

- 2021 release date. My money is on October or December.

Thanks to this Reddit thread:

We have a reference to Fredbear’s: https://www.reddit.com/r/fivenightsatfreddys/comments/lsju7r/that_color_scheme_seems_oddly_familiar/

I really wanna toss this into my “thoughts about how SB relates to 1983″ but I don’t know what to think of it.

More thoughts:

Why is William after Gregory? 1: he knows something important and must be killed. 2: William wants to possess his body (too Childs Play like, hate this idea) 3: William needs remnant to restore his body (imo, most likely)

There's a lot of old references in the trailer. The Pirate Ride ('83), the Cupcake ('83 on), ect. I think the mall could be a mini museum too, as some people have discussed.

This next suggestion is my own headcanon which I'm using for a fic BUT if Sammy is the CEO I could see him honoring Henry by trying to preserve the legacy of Freddys and this includes old animatronic parts (particularly this supports the fact that ScrapBabys hand is part of what I suspect is AlmagAfton). I think this is also how, say, Scraptrap's circuit boards were used for VR.

[smolie]

in december i wrote a 2020 year music review for myself that i intended to post here BUT...because i was infamously restricted twice last year, i didn’t bother since you wouldn’t be able to read it anyway because it was not possible to view my blog hjfdhfd

now that my restricted era is (hopefully forever) over i just want to post it here for the sake of completion since i want to do the same thing this year

this is really long so if you actually read it ... idk you are insane in the membrane and i love you... but i genuinely don’t expect anyone to read this hjfdhjf i just like reflecting on the music i have listened to and be able to look back on what i enjoyed in certain stages of my life! okiiii bye 💗

january

mac miller - circles (album) it’s a bit funny that i worried putting my thoughts down about this album and now it turns out to be first on the list, chronologically of course … oh bittersweet irony </3 listening to this album is such a double edged sword, either way i am always hit with a truckload of feelings when i turn to this release.

this album came to me in a time of my life where i was slowly but surely sliding down towards rock bottom again just after i got out of it and thought i was okay. the times i’ve listened to this crying in the bathtub with a glass of wine….girl let’s not lol…. it’s almost strange how much i can relate to the thoughts another person brought to paper. the comfort this album brings me is otherworldly, i feel so understood by mac’s words and it’s my go-to “wallow in self-pity for a bit then come out stronger than before” album. then again, i feel a little sting when any of mac’s songs come on shuffle. a friend of mine said she cannot listen to artists who have passed because it feels too strange and most of the time i agree but this time, it’s so so different. this album would have been mac’s salvation, i can feel it. everything would have been a bit brighter and lighter for him after this, it would have had to be. i feel like i would do him a disservice if i did not listen to this album, so i will cherish this final gift from him as his legacy and my comfort. i miss him incredibly and am all the more thankful he shared his heart with us.

album favs: circles, good news, surf

tiny meat gang - broke bitch (single) MAN I TELL THAT BROKE BITCH IF YOU WANNA GET IN TUNE BETTER CHANGE YOUR WHOLE PITCH LIKE WOAH !!!!!!!!!! did that give you whiplash? hehe funny to say this about a song called broke bitch by a duo called tiny meat gang but this song actually means a lot to me! it came out shortly before their show in berlin and i almost exclusively listened to it on my 7+ hours train ride from one side of the country to the other to see my meat boys. this played out of the fat ass speakers at the venue when they stepped on the stage and i will never forget meeting them :’) also the song fucking slaps obviously

february

loona - [#] (mini album) ah yes, the most controversial loona release to date! i’m not gonna lie and say this sounded anything like i expected it to. but also, i have come to terms with the fact that loona release noise music now and personally i am here for it. why not did not have the endless energy of hi high or otherworldly vibe of butterfly, but it’s a hype song and i am always there for hype. i also have to say the b-sides were not as strong for me as on previous releases but i think i have to come to peace with the fact that loona will never top their debut mini for me. though if i can wish for one thing…… let loona have title tracks with a chorus in 2021? pls? crumbs?

album favs: so what, oh (yes i am)

tame impala - the slow rush (album) *lights cigarette* i’m listening to pretty underground music….i don’t think you’ve heard of this band….they are called tame impala *intro of the less i know the better starts playing* yes i am a basic white bitch and listen to like 3 alternative bands but damn i listen to them religiously. like any other basic bitch on this planet i found out about tame impala through the less i know the better and checked out their music. i wasn’t too much into this album as i was into currents but towards the end of the year, i was in a moody alternative music slump that took me back to this album and i like it a lot more now! most importantly, tame impala fulfills my primitive urge to listen to songs that exceed the 4 minute mark. something clicks in my brain when i see a song that is like 6:34 and chances that it ends up as one of my faves on a album are high. i enjoy tiktok like everyone else but this trend of 2:50 long songs needs to be stopped immediately.

album favs: borderline, lost in yesterday, it might be time, is it true, posthumous forgiveness

honorary mentions: onlyoneof - dOra maar, everglow - dundun

march

nct 127 - neo zone (album) ah, yes. the album that fundamentally changed me as a person <3 i’ve been listening to nct for a while, matter of fact i checked my top tracks 2019 playlist on spotify and cherry bomb was on there lol. i remember trying to get into them in 2018 when they released their regular-irregular album but the endless member & unit concept scared me off, so i only listened to a handful of songs without looking into them march 2020, the fateful month in which they released kick it and screencaps of jaehyun’s sexy ass tiddies in the kick it mv landed on my tumblr or twitter and i HAD to look up who this man is…...remember when i thought jaehyun was my ult for like, 2 weeks? me neither, johnny suh only in this house <3

anyway, i checked out this album and by god, is this pure kpop perfection. last time i listened to a god tier no skip album like this was … maybe the perfect red velvet? hype songs, well crafted ballads, love songs that make me wanna learn the lyrics, genuinely fun and interesting pop songs, this album has it all. somehow, the way this album is crafted greatly reminds me of brown eyed girls’ sound-g, it has the same vibe, concept and mix of genres to me, i’m not entirely sure how to explain. anyway, this album is one of my favorites of all time and even though i’ve obsessively listened to it (lastfm says 1.4k scrobbles as of today, december 7th…) i am still not tired of this. i recommend this to anyone who loves kpop tbh, you will have a good time with this!

other than being just a musically solid album, the emotional ties i have with this are …. isabel stop making albums your emotional support 2021 challenge. i’ve listened to this release all spring lockdown, this basically played at every waking hour for all of march and april. the promotion time of this era and lockdown are deeply intertwined for me and so i am always remembered of all the nct content i consumed during that time which inevitably cheered me up so much. this album really means a lot to me :’)

album favs: kick it, mad dog, love song, boom

honorary mentions: itzy - wannabe,

the weeknd - after hours (album) my dear melchanoly, was one of my favorite releases of 2018, so i had been desperate for a new release by abel and boy did he not disappoint. the perfect thotty, dirty emo 80s, making it clap while crying in the club album! this is a no skip from top to bottom and all i can say is that the grammys can go to hell <3 abel aoty! there is really not much i can say about this album, the flawless production, lyrics and sound speak for themself. my only criticism is that i feel overwhelmed by 14 songs, especially when some of them are really long. a few songs greatly overshadow the weaker tracks on the album for me but i still love this to death.

album favs: escape from LA, blinding lights, after hours, faith

dua lipa - future nostalgia (album) after the weeknd’s masterpiece of an 80s inspired pop album i was really looking forward to this. i greatly enjoyed the pre-releases, i played don’t start now and physical up and down, they are still some of my favorite songs released this year! when i first listened to the album i really liked it, songs like boys will be boys or pretty please sound like fillers to be but the rest is solid. yet a month after release you couldn’t catch me listening to this and i cannot even really tell you why. i think it was a combination of the following: 1) i greatly overplayed dsn and physical to the point where i didn’t want more of the pop 80s sound that the album has 2) there were other releases at the time that caught my attention and interest more like neo zone or after hours 3) dua herself….girl….she really gave it her all this year to make herself as unlikeable as possible. nationalist propaganda and the constant traveling during a fucking pandemic were really the kicker. i can barely stand seeing her on my instagram feed anymore, much less listen to her album. her having the nerve to go “we’re in a pandemic lol” when people asked about an animated music video …. if you don’t shut the hell up lmao … also, she takes the crown for the corniest album opener of all time. i nearly closed spotify when i heard future nostalgia (the song) lmao

album favs: don’t start now, physical, levitating, hallucinate

honorary mentions: megan thee stallion - savage

april

apink - dumhdurum (song)

listen, i’m not gonna sit here and pretend like this mini album interested me in the slightest but god, the title is such a banger.i’m so sick, eung eung and dumhdurum are a holy trilogy that i will defend until the end of time! i really hope apink stick to this mature, elegant concept, it suits them so well and goes well with their new sound. come back soon queens <3

rina sawayama - xs (song) i feel like i’m gonna catch some hands here … xs is an absolute banger, the guitar riffs and disruptive sounds really get me going every damn time! but the rest of the album … tell me why it doesn’t catch me?! i literally cannot explain. i need to take an hour, sit down and do nothing but listen to the album from top to bottom once again and see if my thoughts change but right now i only care about xs.

chungha - stay tonight (song) drama! vocals! dance break! choreography! this release served it all. i listened to this obsessively during the time of the release and it still holds up today. can we talk about the run chungha had with gotta go > snapping > stay tonight? lord have mercy.

honorary mentions: april - lalalilala, nct dream - ridin’

may

lady gaga - chromatica (album) the immense disappointment i have in this album is tough to put into words lol. any other artist might have gotten away with this release but gaga having the discography that she has, well … she doesn’t get away with it. this has underwhelming all over it. i enjoyed the pre-releases and my hope was high but the rest just doesn’t live up what i expected, i can’t even say why. it’s just underwhelming pop for someone of gaga’s calibre. i listened to this album during release week and then never again till december to write this list and i can see why.

album favs: rain on me, sour candy ft. blackpink, stupid love

baekhyun - delight (mini album) it’s confession time … this is a name i never would have expected on any of my music lists to end up. exo has always been one of those boy groups i casually listened to. i greatly enjoy their title tracks and a handful of side tracks, i have a few members that i keep an eye on more than others but that’s about it. baekhyun was never one of those members i had any interest in, matter of fact i always thought he was kinda vanilla and boring 😭 i didn’t even plan on listening to this release if it wasn’t for his association with superm and thus nct, so i gave it a shot and we have no choice but to stan. his voice is like butter and can cut sharp at the same time, his versatility is insane. i dived a bit more into baekhyun related content and he is so likeable, it’s almost ridiculous. this production is absolute god tier, not a single skip on this mini. late spring/early summer i had this weird urge to listen to songs with mellow voices but still a banger instrumental and i wholeheartedly blame this release. matter of fact, this album is so good, i had to buy a physical copy. Y’ALL. THIS IS A BIG DEAL. i haven’t bought a kpop album of anyone that’s not holy top 3 (brown eyed girls, loona, nct) in like … idk, 5 years?! baekhyun’s impact. i’m a fan now <3

album favs: candy, r u ridin’?, love again

ak aussenkontrolle - in meinem benz (song) this … is very unrelated to this entirely list but i had to put it on here. i miss my ex boss and our 3 hour drives to meetings in the south of the country where we would blast trashy german rap music </3

nct 127 - neo zone: the final round (repackage) *airhorns* REEEPACKAGE TIIIIIME!!! my first nct era that i experienced from start to finish! i remember watching nct 127’s beyond live with luna where these mfs performed punch and we finished the concert having no idea what this song sounded like. the structure is so unusual and the intro catches me off-guard every time just to hype me up beyond compare. not gonna lie, the fact that johnny has exactly one (1) line hurts but! it’s my favorite line of the entire song! possibly related to the fact that it’s his line but let’s ignore that ….

album favs: punch, make your day

kim woo seok - red moon (song) i’m not even gonna lie to you. i have not a single idea who this man is. you could put him right in front of me and i wouldn’t know … all i know is that he has a banger song. i saw him perform this on a music show that i watched for nct and i ended up loving the song … thanks for your service sir, whoever you are ...

june

stray kids - go live (album) 2020 was kind of the year of boy groups for me, i’m so sorry … stray kids promoted simultaneously with nct 127 so i ended up hearing their title track and holy hell, is that a song. god’s menu is hype from start to finish. it reminds me of good ol’ 2nd gen noise boy group song a lá b*g b*ng fantastic baby. just pure hype and fun noise. i am forever grateful to witness the birth of the line cooking like a chef, i’m a five star michelin. the title track impressed me so much that i ended up checking out the entire album which i rarely ever do with boy groups and what is even rarer is that i enjoyed the b sides lmao!!! it’s not an album that i would put on and just enjoy from start to finish but it has some really solid tracks! this release made me want to keep an eye on stray kids, they seem like a really fun bunch.

album favs: god’s menu, TA, airplane

seventeen - left & right (song) the boy group run continues … same thing with stray kids, seventeen promoted during punch era so i heard their song while watching some music station show for nct and i heard this and was sold. solid, fun pop with the catchiest pre-chorus in history and a banger chorus. i listened to the entire mini and can’t say it really caught my interest so this is a title track only release for me.

dishonorary mentions: twice - more & more (i hate this song so much lol)

honorary mentions: ryu sejeong - tiger eyes, monsta x - fantasia, chloe x halle - do it

july

irene & seulgi - monster (mini) this is a weird release because it’s good. the title track is fun enough, the b sides are dope. but my issue with this is that it’s nothing new. this sounds exactly like a red velvet release. i get that they didn’t want to a  joy, seulgi, irene, yeri release only and went for the sub-unit route instead, but why not be experimental and stray away from the usual sound of the group? also, whoever made monster and not naughty the title track deserves to be spat on. at least the choreography here is more interesting and “experimental” for kpop standards. also, why only a seulgi solo and no irene? i have no idea how reveluvs reacted to this release but this has rushed written all over it.

album favs: monster, naughty (i’m counting this to the mini idc), uncover

exo-sc - 1 billion views (mini) doing my part as a filthy casual exo listener. this release goes in the same category as baekhyun’s delight where i like the album so much that i HAD to get a physical copy. i don’t know what they put in the title track for it to be so diddly darn addictive but it clearly worked. the only bad thing about this release is how criminally mismanaged it was by sm, when i get you lee sooman ...

album favs: 1 billion views, on me, say it

baekhyun - garden in the air (song) i told you i’m a loyal baekhyun fan now <3 king releases and i listen, that’s just how it goes now! this is a cover of a boa song and i really love his version. there is not much to say except that it’s a really smooth song and his voice absolutely carries the track. i enjoyed this much more than i thought i would!

hyoyeon - dessert (song) YOU KNOW WHAT I DESERVE??? DESSERT!!!!!!! *insert tik tok challenge here* imagine if miryo featured on this instead of the ethnic hip girl … why can’t we have nice things. anyway, a banger!

johnny - sunny side up episode 1 set (spotify playlist, actual set) johnny being the skilled, talented, multi-faceted king that he is has been dj-ing since before debut (not me acting like i was around at that time lmao) and thus he decided to bless our quarantined, lockdowned asses with an online dj set! that was the most turned up sunday morning i ever had in my entire life. this set kicked off an edm/house/techno affinity that i had for the following couple of weeks. this set is an absolute banger, i would go insane to this in the club. he has an amazing ear for transitions and drops and i still just put on this set on the regular when i have cleaning to do or so. he could fill the void that rona and thus no clubbing in 2020 left in my heart and i’m so happy he decided to share this with us <3 now … john … sunny side up episode 2 pspspspspsps

honorary mentions: gfriend - apple, jessi - nunu nana

august

cardi b ft. megan thee stallion - wap (song) late summer 2021. we are vaccinated, icu beds are free, barely any new cases, clubs are open, this song plays and i can finally make it fucking clap.

troye sivan - in a dream (mini album) a cute mini album! nothing life-changing or as exciting as previous releases but easy (haha!) to enjoy. i really, really enjoy easy, can always count on troye for a dreamy sound.

album favs: easy

honorary mentions: itzy - not shy

september

wonho - love synonym pt. 1: right for me (mini album) honestly? i know like, 3 monsta x songs. i never bothered to get into them and maybe i never will, but it was difficult to ignore the whole wonho & monsta x mess that went on. i have absolutely no memory of why i decided to check out this release, i guess i was curious what he was going to do and … i was positively surprised lol. open mind is the exact time of song i had been so desperate all summer (remember mellow vocals with banger instrumentals? yeah) and uhm … can’t ignore the obvious … mr wonho is fucking fine. sir, you just gained a fan … now, where is love synonym part 2?? huh?????

album favs: open mind, i just, losing you

joji - nectar (album) this one is on tiktok. i heard gimme love in a bunch of tiktoks and had to look up the song and here we are. what an album! it came right as seasonal depression started to hit and accompanied me for a good chunk of autumn. at this point one has to ask if joji can ever really miss? the entire album is a no skip, it’s almost difficult to narrow down my favorites if my favorites weren’t so damn god tier!!!

album favs: gimme love, ew, tick tock, pretty boy, your man

super m - tiger inside / 100 / drip (songs) okay, listen. technically tiger inside & 100 were already released in august. instead of those three songs i was gonna write about the entire album until i realized i really don’t give a fuck about it 😭 i really only care about those three songs. and YES, i unironically like 100. is it a good song? no. but neither is jopping and that fucking bangs. i don’t turn to superm for life-changing, profound music, i turn to them for a good time LOL and that’s what they deliver every time! that being said, taeyong’s VROOM VROOM, UHMM UHMM, GRRRAHHHH verse is life-changing and profound! speak your truth king! also i wish drip was a b side for nct 127 that song is so damn sexy

taemin - never gonna dance again act 1 (album) this isn’t kpop, this is taemin pop. taemin never misses and the fact that hw*s* won dance performance over taemin is a literal hate crime. i will never forget the industry for this daylight robbery … anyway, nice album!!!!

album favs: criminal, black rose, waiting for

stray kids - in life (repackage) *airhorns* REPACKAGE TIIIIME 2.0!!!! i was on the edge of my seat waiting what stray kids were going to deliver after i greatly enjoyed god’s menu. i was still not over listening god’s menu when the repackage came out so i didn’t listen to it right away and now i greatly regret the few days i could have listened to back door earlier </3

album favs: back door, any

jackson wang - pretty please (song) i’m not gonna pretend like i ever listened to a song by jackson ever before. he is short king from got7 in my head and that’s all! i don’t even remember why i listened to this song but all i know is that it slaps severely. i love the wong kar wai inspired music video and the choreography is fun too! i’m gonna check out more of his music <3

honorary mentions: fromis9 - feel good, knk - ride

october

blackpink - the album (album, duh) i don’t even know what to say about this … this might be the weirdest release on the list for me. there are song i absolutely fucking hate (ice cream …) and songs i get my life to (pretty savage) on here and the discrepancy just gives me massive whiplash. i would never put this album on and listen to the whole body of work, i just cannot with the brain damage it gives me. i am still stuck in 2016, begging for bp to release music like whistle/boombayah/stay/playing with fire but i think i need to give up on that wishful thinking … i am just grateful we a got a title track with actual lyrics in the chrous for once.

album favs: pretty savage, lovesick girls

nct - nct 2020 resonance pt. 1 (album) this era was … a ride. nct 2020 happening was near inevitable but with covid it got pushed back so far, i started to believe it wasn’t even going to happen. i was semi-terrified of what was going to happen during a comeback with 21 (now 23!!) member group since i only experienced nct 127 comebacks so far and uhh … a LOT happened lmfao but let’s keep this about the album … i had no idea what was going to hit me. johnny having effectively 3 lines in nct 2018 did not give me much hope and after he got denoted to no line treatment in punch again, i was ready to not even have any expectation but this release changed everything. make no mistake that most of my favorite songs are units with johnny, we knew that was gonna happen lmaooo they dropped the teaser video for misfit and i thought i had my favorite song in the bag and then faded in my last song happened. y’all. JOHNNY SINGS? LIKE? ACTUALLY SINGS? DOESN’T GET FORCED TO RAP OR TALK-SING? MY MAN’S VOCALS??? OH MY GAAAAHD! this song is dramatic, theatrical, emo, it serves vocals and rap, it has catchy english and korean lyrics, this is THE song, the ULTIMATE song. i love this song so much, i want to belt it on top of my lungs in the pouring rain. apart from fimls, i also loveeee misfit, that was to be expected after i was going completely insane over the track video. johnny has like 3 lines but again they are iconic (WARNIN’! NCT WE MOBBIN’!) and i just enjoy the track too much to be upset over that. nectar. holy fuck. nectar!!!! wayv never disappoints with their thotty songs, they now have an absolute god tier hoe-ly song trinity with love talk > bad alive > nectar. the first chorus and hendery’s first verse (CHOP CHOP CHOP!) get me every time, this song is so insanely good i am severely upset i cannot sing along to it :( music, dance has nct 127 written all over it in bold letters, it’s so inherently 127’s sound!!!! i love this song so much, it’s so fun, upset and has massive dance-ability, i wish we had gotten a stage for it but i guess you can’t have everything in life </3 make a wish……………………………..the cursed unit. i don’t want to say anything about this except that, unfortunately, the song is fun and i enjoy it. the end. overall, this album is so insanely solid. i know i talk about my favorites A LOT but i genuinely do not dislike a single song on here, this is an absolute no skip album! that’s it. see you for resonance part 2!!!!!

album favs: FADED IN MY LAST SONG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, misfit, nectar, music dance, make a wish

loona - 12:00 (mini album) controversial loona release 2.0! i don’t know what it is, but somehow they managed to lace the words di da dam di dam di dam dam dam dam di dam (yeah) with pure crack. i fucking love why not, i would even go as far to say it’s my 2nd favorite title track. that is right, i think it’s better than butterfly (btw: hi high > why not > butterfly > so what). so much was strange this comeback, from the inexplicable concept + teasers, the outfits, the styling (yves….i mourn your hot girl era) but the title track is just SO good, SO fun, SO catchy that i am willing to ignore it all. i also enjoy the b sides much more than on #, they are much more memorable to me. and now … HASEUL RETURN…………….i purely live to see the next loona comeback at this point

album favs: why not, voice, universe

twice - i can’t stop me (song) thank fuck twice released a good song this year. if more & more had been the only 2020 release, that would have been the real tragedy. not gonna lie, i still haven’t listened to the full album, it just keeps slipping my mind. but! i’m going to! until then i’m gonna bop to i can’t stop me.

ariana grande - positions (album) the way this album has people upset is so funny. i am a huge dangerous woman fan myself, it’s my fave ariana album to date but she has said repeatedly that this is not the sound she is striving for. now she has her coin and can do whatever she wants in music and if that is r’n’b then fuck! we have to live with it! lmao! i can live with the sex theme of the album because it’s delivered in a fun way? but it’s getting a bit old...if the next album is about riding dick only too idk how much i would enjoy that. i would probably always come back to ari because i like her voice so much but girl, there are other topics to sing about, i promise! anyway! i like this album, it’s one of those where i can hit shuffle and enjoy it in the background while doing other stuff.

album favs: positions, 34 + 35, love language, my hair, pov

tiny meat gang - sofia (song) ayyy, it’s my meat boys :’) ending the year the same way they started it, with a banger! i absolutely love the guitar instrumental, the melancholic love song type sound paired with the theme of singing about loving a robot … yup, that’s creativity and talent right here! this makes me so freaking desperate for a new ep and i genuinely have no idea how far or close we are to one but!!! i am always waiting!!!

noel - push (ep) this is something i absolutely did not expect. noel (of tiny meat gang!) released his first ep ever and i was absolutely wowed. noel has it all, the voice, the talent, the creativity and all it took him was the confidence to finally put something out and i’m so happy he did. he gets real personal on bus back, more than ever before and i always get a bit emo listening to this track </3 this man is gonna go places and i’m so happy to witness his journey.

album favs: crow, head sunk, bus back

honorary mentions: sam smith - diamonds

november

taemin - never gonna dance again act 2 (album) i’m gonna say it. idea is better than criminal. the chorus drop???? when he goes MY AH AH  MY AH AH MY AH MY IDEA MY MY IDEAAAAAA A-A-A A-A-A???? bitch … tell me you can sit still, i won’t believe you. i like part 2’s title track more, but part 1’s b sides are more interesting to me. either way, taemin delivered as expected!!

album favs: idea, impressionable, exclusive

nct - nct 2020 resonance pt. 2 (album) part two, baby! we made it! part 2 had more mellow, ballad-y songs with my everything, i.o.u. and all about you, overall less drama than part 1 but i still enjoyed it. work it is one of those controversial songs where you despise it with your entire being or you defend this top tier noise till the end and i am absolutely the latter. the agony of not being able to listen to it and seeing the timeline so divided nearly killed me, but i have concluded that people who hate work it have never felt joy in their life <3 honestly my opinion cannot be counted because i eat up anything johnny participates in … biased ass… what i’m not gonna talk about is resonance (the song), this absolute mess of a “remix”. the audacity sm had to release this as a single is insane. anyway!! this era was a rollercoaster ride. all the interactions truly made me interested in members of other units more. hendery (the rise and fall …), yangyang my beautiful son, jeno aka blue hair guy, chenle the chaos kid and xiaojun after he made make a wish his bitch in particular! all the interactions between the units were so fun to witness and it was fun while it lasted but i am … so glad it’s over lol. i miss nct 127, i miss some peace, i hope the boys get to rest for a bit and so does my bank account.

album favs: work it, 90s love, i.o.u., raise the roof

miley cyrus - plastic hearts (album) not in a thousand years would i have expected a miley release to be on here. this girl does everything to be absolutely unlikeable in my eyes but after severely banging out to her heart of glass cover, i was really excited for this and it did not disappoint. what is disappointing is that it took her so long to find a sound that fits her like a glove. i believe many people miss out on this release after her previous history and i nearly would have done the same. this alt/rock influenced pop does her voice so many favors and i really hope she sticks to this direction, i love this album greatly!!

album favs: heart of glass, midnight sky, night crawling ft. billy joel, wtf do i know

kai - kai (mini album) just. imagine debuting with an album like that. lol. what a god tier big dick move. we all knew whatever this release was gonna be, above all it was going to be sexy and boy were we RIGHT!!!! mmmh is exactly as thotty as i needed it to be and the b sides give me everything from r’n’b to trap. i love this release and i love that it’s only the beginning of kai! like!! he is only gonna gain even more experience and become even more powerful!! what the fuck!!!!!

album favs: mmmh, ride or die, hello stranger, nothing on me

honorary mentions. gfriend - mago

december

nothing? wtf?? 😭 no interesting release happened,,,,half the time i listened to christmas songs anyway lol

pre 2020 releases i only found this year

mgmt - little dark age (album, 2018) & oracular spectactular (album, 2007) another tiktok serve. i found little dark age through a tiktok trend and ended up really liking mgmt. they fit perfectly into my autumn/winter moody alt/rock mood that i had going on and i’m happy they have so much more music that i can check out!

artist favs: little dark age, electric feel, time to pretend

tame impala - currents (album, 2015) everyone’s favorite basic alt bitch album! i enjoyed this more than the slow rush for a good chunk of time, it also fit right into my alt rock autumn mood. i really love this album, like previously mentioned it has my favorite long ass tracks on there but also a good amount of short or medium long tracks. i’m still busy enjoying currents and the slow rush but i can’t wait till i finally take the leap to dive into their other releases because i’m loving everything i’ve heard so far.

album favs: the less i know the better, let it happen, new person same old mistakes

joji - ballads 1 (2018) after liking nectar so much, checking joji out was a given and i just love this album. only when i listened to this i realized i heard slowly dancing in the dark a few times on tiktok lmao that cursed app man … i would say i love nectar a bit more but this is still a fantastic album!!

album favs: slowly dancing in the dark, attention, test drive, yeah right

jus2 - focus (mini album, 2019) in my “mellow moody bangers” phase i was scouring playlists for more songs and i think i found focus on me first which fitted right into the niche i was looking to fill and i ended up enjoy this whole release! only later i realized this is a sub-unit from got7 lmao how come i enjoy solo or unit releases by got7 members but their group discography never interested me? anyway, very sexy ep!

album favs: drunk on you, focus on me, love talk

knk - sunset (song, 2019) part of my mellow bangers playlist. very sexy, i can imagine this as a runway song! i have no idea who knk are but given the fact i enjoyed two of their songs so far maybe i should look into them lol

baekhyun - city lights (mini album, 2019) i am repenting for my sins of missing out on baekhyun releases by consuming his music at an exorbitant rate. un village is one hell of a title track that i didn’t appreciate before, but i feel like in 2020 my music interests started to vary and i love the groovy r’n’b and string sound of this song so much. i also love stay up to death, the vocals baekhyun serves here are unreal. his BABY WE CAN STAY UP!!!!!!! gets me every single time!!!! what a mini!

album favs: un village, stay up

mac miller - swimming (album, 2018) i’ve listened to this album before 2020 but i had the urge to put this on here. this is going to sound so corny, but if i had to pick one song to be my life’s title track, it would be ladders. the hope this song gives me is unreal, it feels like a light at the end of the tunnel. this album is so fantastic, i love the upbeat instrumentals paired with sometimes gloomy lyrics are so incredible, mac was truly one of the greatest artists of our time. this album is  so outstanding and i miss him every day.

album favs: ladders, jet fuel, 2009, self care, perfecto

doja cat - hot pink (album, 2019) i can never decide if i like doja or not but the album slaps lol that’s it come on tiktok queen

album favs: say so, juicy, like that, streets

my fav 2020 playlists

slapping mellow

neo culture technology

malcolm

why go to therapy when this playlist exists?

top songs 2020

(by spotify)

[yue-muffin]

I am finally (finally!!) finishing Yuri on Ice. I started watching it when it first came out, then got impatient of waiting week by week for the next episode, so I figured I would binge watch it when it finished airing. Long story short, got busy and never finished it (I did listen to the soundtrack a bunch though).

So, I figured I would finally finish this show! I’ve been a super casual fan of figure skating since the 2014 Sochi Olympics and I knew a skating anime was going to come eventually, after Hanyu won the gold, so I was really stoked to watch YOI too, haha. Life just happened and I forgot about it.

(Not going to lie, I hate watching sports, except for equestrian events and archery occasionally, but I sat down for a brief moment and that so happened to be when Yuzuru Hanyu was skating his SP. It was the most serendipitous moment of my life haha.)

(But I really do mean “super casual fan”. I never dedicated the time to learn all of the terminology and don’t expect me to name any of the jumps. This will also be a super casual live blog.)

Episodes 1-2

Episode 1

When the animation for this anime is good, it really is good. I feel like skating is a bit tricky. If it’s not done right, it’ll probably look rather choppy since so much of the sport is flowing lines and the amount of athleticism it takes to make good performances look almost effortless.

I really like the opening sequence for this reason. The transition from their child-selves to their adult-selves and the reflection of one person’s career. I feel like I have no comments regarding the opening song. It’s got a catchy beat, the animation is gorgeous, and it’s one of the more memorable anime opening songs I’ve heard. It just fits the theme of the show so well, too.

The Makkachin phone cover is so cute. The amount of detail that went into this show really astounded me. The lanyard clasps and the words on his ID? The website? 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to really hate chibi-cut-ins and those little interlude infodumps/intros that are common in anime (I think they work best in a manga medium, personally...), but that’s a personal thing.

First time I watched this, my reaction to Russian Yuri was “lol what’s your problem?? edgy little brat”. Still is haha. “I greatly object to sharing a name with a LOSER” is the vibe he gives off. He’s also lucky Yuri is a nice guy and didn’t just punch him for getting so up in his face and screaming at him.

Well, now that was just cruel. He’s having one of those “can it GET any worse” days, to which the universe answers “yes, yes it can”. I’m sure we’ve all had those days where nothing goes right and you just want to curl up and die (aka sleep) until it’s all over.

If there is one thing this show really did well as early as the first 3-4 episodes, it’s depicting Yuri’s mental state. His crushing disappointment in himself, everyone around him trying to cheer him up or talk about what comes next while he’s still just living in the moment, trying to get through the rest of this day.

Ha, my name is pretty common where I grew up, especially at the time I was going to school, and I relate so hard to turning because you hear your name only to realize no one was actually talking to you. Even worse for Yuri because it’s Viktor talking! His idol! Also, I felt it when he froze and walked away after Viktor asked if he wanted a photo with him.

Not going to screenshot everything, not going to screenshot everything...

Yeah, even in my hometown I never knew anyone who skated - ice or roller skating, aside from birthday parties. I personally have two left feet and I’m lucky I managed to stand on the ice without falling, but I never did figure out how to move. My dad had to pull me around (I was 10 or so?). But also, that scene adds some perspective to how Yuri is seen by others, which is important given we live in his head as the watchers of his story. It’s clear that his thoughts of himself don’t necessarily reflect what the public or his friends/family think of him.

A large part of the charm of this series, for me, was that Yuri feels like such a real person - him and his story, his doubts and his hopes (even his weight gain haha), are really relatable even if ice skating is so far removed from myself.

I’m only screenshot-ing dogs now.

Tiny Yuri is so cute though, with his little doggo! 

Haha! And his little blush watching Viktor on tv.

Cuteness overload haha Yuko is so cute?? I love how everyone in his life is supportive in their own way.

Doggos only! Utterly adorable.

Ah, as usual, the live commentary over the skating that I half like because I have no clue what’s going on, but the other half of me just wants to listen and watch in peace lol

No comment on the double performance aside from: ALL THE BUDGET. But honestly if you’re not going to go ham on the performances (especially the best ones) in an anime about ice skating, why even bother lol.

Yuko had triplets. Triplets. I cannot even- (haha I love kids, I work with them for my job occasionally but having THREE of my own to go home would sound like a nightmare).

Doggo! But actually I just really like his apartment. I really like that they gave Viktor a standard poodle Yuri a miniature poodle because I feel like everyone including myself forgets the big floofs exist and in fact are the “standard” size, not the tiny guys.

HERE COMES THAT SCENE. The one that made the internet explode. I kind of still remember the night it aired, lol. I also can’t believe they got the green-light for that, haha.

I also love the social media posts in the ending. Social media in anime is always fun, it’s such a huge part of our lives nowadays. The little glimpses into the lives of the other skaters is not only fun, but makes them feel a little more alive, especially because they won’t be the center of the story.

Episode 2

I promise this one isn’t going to be as long.

This “farewell” gives me live action drama vibes. It’s hilarious.

Under the table! I can’t with the adorableness. Also, now I’m hungry.

I-Is it ok for him to be scratching the tatami like that.

It took me forever to figure out that the random English is likely because they’re supposed to be speaking in English to each other lol. It just makes sense.

At least one of the kids learned their lesson and asked before uploading haha.

Viktor not so subtly trying to find out if he likes or is dating anyone is hilarious. 

And Russian Yuri has a cat! I forgot about that. He does give off alley cat vibes.

Yuri, you literally just had an “ah-ha!” moment, but then couldn’t resist posting a pic of your new buy on social media lol...

I feel like people either like him or hate him (Russian Yuri), but to me he’s just such a teenage boy. They can be assholes sometimes, you know?? And hopefully they grow out of it haha.

I love Yuri’s smirk haha. Yup, don’t engage. He’s an angry 15 year old, you’re a grown ass adult. It’s really hard to forget age differences in anime but what self-respecting adult is actually going to have it out with a teenager being unreasonable?

I also totally forgot they nicknamed Russian Yuri, Yurio in the actual show lol.

OUCH that self-doubt.

The Makkachin tissue box...

Anyways, the first unofficial competition of the show starts next episode! I did see that one when it came out, but I think I stopped after episode 3...

[jamiecostello]

(DEAKEN BLUMAN, CIS MALE) - Have you seen JAMES COSTELLO? JAIME is in HIS JUNIOR year. The PSYCHOLOGY MAJOR is 21 years old & is a AQUARIUS. People say HE is ATTENTIVE, CHARISMATIC, CLOSED-OFF and SARCASTIC. Rumors say they’re a member of KINCAID. I heard from the gossip blog that HE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR A HIT AND RUN THAT HIS GIRLFRIEND DIED IN. (Olive. yea luv xx)

his pinterest is here :)

Uhhhh so if you want to know much more about the family in detail just check out dear Anna’s will intro bc im too lazy to type it out

He was raised Catholic, in an Italian family in New York. His family was involved wit the teamsters and he had kind of a classic, old New York upbringing in Brooklyn. Born on January 25th, he’s an Aquarius

Him and his older brothers ran circles around each other growing up. From a young age they pretty much had figured out how to live independently in New York.

In school, Jaime was the kind of kid that got in trouble for reading under his desk during lessons. He was naturally smarter than most of his peers, but in a way that his teachers didn’t really appreciate. He always cracked jokes in class, smart ones, but he was still a distraction. He was like the kid in class u didn’t want to laugh at but u did. BUT he was also like. Very focused on his grades. If he got anything less than an A he would panic

The one time he and his brothers got caught doing shit as a kid he cried :/ but he was teased for it most likely and then just never cried again

He grew up and his older brother Sean became a cop and he was like wtf?? the last time he saw sean Jaime spat in his face literally

So once he got to high school he was relatively normal?? But then he met like. The love of his life junior year. A girl named Alexandra in his class. They quickly started dating and tbh they were like that. gross couple drawing hearts on each other’s hands and making plans to get married at age 17

But it was okay bc she was Italian too and his family was like?? Nice. And she felt the same way about him. It was honestly fucking gross. But they were in love.

But he also started drinking around this time and experimenting with drugs so?? He was kind of a mess. Not the best boyfriend. He’d abandon her all the time in the middle of parties bc some dudes with fake ids were going to a bar. He’d text her the next day like sorry xx

He’s not the best with emotions be to him they’re like weakness?? Anyways

Uhhhh one day Jaime was driving both himself and Alex back form a party, drunk. He t-boned another and Alex died on impact. Miraculously, or funnily enough, the other driver involved was also drunk. As the man stumbled out of his car they assumed he was at fault. Jaime never bothered to clear up the situation and this other man? Yeah he’s in jail even though it was Jaime’s fault

SO SURVIVOR’S GULT YEAH!!! he sucks

UHH SO PERSONALITY!!!

He’s kind of like.... anal... idk another way to put it... for a guy that jokes around a lot he has a very particular way of doing things

For instance he keeps an excel spreadsheet of everyone he’s slept with :)

but HIS humor is more sarcastic than like himbo which also makes him most likely to get punched in the face

Very hardworking!!! uhh drinks as hard as he studies. Most likely to go to the library with a hangover

He’s a weird dude! Acts like he’s on spring break all the time. Or alternatively like he’s 40. It’s an odd balance

Grumpy.

Stubborn too. If you tell him to do soemthing he Does Not do it

HC TIME!

okay so going to church growing up he would always make gaggin motions when he thought the priest wasnt looking

He can cook! Mostly pasta. He makes Sauce. A Sauce Man.

Uhhh its a hc for me that he’s dated one other person since Alex so WANTED CONNECTION ALERT

HOOKUPS!!!

An awkward Tinder hookup that he expected to never see again but oops now you’re in the same class

Uhhhh give me someone who lives across the hall from him in Kincaid that he’s secretly simping for

um an ex that he actually cared about?? but then he was like nope bye out of fear of hurting someone and broke up with them with no explanation

NY friends!!!A good influence.

Blease… someone tell this boy to study

A drug dealer!!!

Someone he’s a bad influence on….

Ok but give me someone that actually knew his gf before she died

[outspokens-ar]

new  york’s  very  own devin  bahar was  spotted  on  broadway  street  in  louis  vuitton  ankle  boots.  your  resemblance  to  bella  hadid  is  unreal.  according  to  tmz,  you  just  had  your twenty-third birthday  bash.  while  living  in  nyc,  you’ve  been  labeled  as  being  a  workaholic,  but  also  loyal.  i  guess  being  a  libra  explains  that.  three  things  that  would  paint  a  better  picture  of  you  would  be  messy  silk  sheets,  red  wine,  and staying  in  on  a  saturday  night.  (  female  &  she/her  )  +  (  katie,  21,  she/her,  est  )

I’m incredibly excited for this to be back so, hello, hello, I’m Katie and here’s a long ramble about my bby bean Devin !

BACKGROUND ;

Devin I. Bahar was born to Isabella Corine Bahar, an ex-model who retired when she got married, becoming far more attracted to the ‘rich housewife, bow down to me’ aesthetic than continuing to work, and Damian Ethan Bahar, a lawyer coming from a long line of family lawyers that were known for working important, high-profile cases.

The relationship she holds with her mother is strained due to the woman’s materialistic nature and her goal of marrying off her daughter for as much money as possible. Her eyes are always on a far bigger and shinier prize, no matter how good her life already is.

Her relationship with her father, miraculously, is healthier than the one she has with her mother, simply because she has absolutely no relationship with the male. He took off when she was younger, cutting off all contact with his daughter without a second thought and he hadn’t bothered to make any effort to try and have a relationship with her.

In fact, when she had attempted to start some form of a relationship with him after she turned eighteen, he completely rejected her and wanted nothing to do with her and it ripped her apart far more than she was willing to admit to herself or anyone else.

Even now, she isn’t sure if the complete cut in contact is due to her mother or if it was simply because she didn’t live up to his expectations, didn’t deserve his love. Either way, she has attempted to move on from it after the rejection, even if she still has that small hole in her heart over it.

Due to how strained her relationship is with her mother, she moved out of the household the day she turned eighteen, having managed to save up enough money to support herself, wanting to get away from her as soon as possible. However, the woman is still her mother and she does still attempt to have some form of a relationship with her, even if it sends her into a horrible mindset whenever she has a conversation with the woman.

CAREER ;

She first began modeling at the age of 16 for a commercial project. She also starred in the "Swan Sittings" by Lesa Amoore, alongside actor Ben Barnes, before appearing in "Smoking Hot" by Holly Copeland. She also modeled for Hanna Hayes' F/W 2013 collection, alongside various other commercial projects, including campaign work for Chrome Hearts during 2013 and 2014.

She was then signed to IMG Models in 2014 and her career started shooting off from there.

She never actually planned to become a model, she actually wanted to be a photographer when she was younger and planned to go to school for it. When it came to the point where her focus turned towards college, she ended up heading towards visual arts, fashion design, and graphic design. Out of that, she discovered her passion for clothing and that’s what began her journey of designing clothes, a project she started along with her modelling career.

Since the start of her career, she has won over a dozen different awards that range over her multiple different career-interests. Managing to make a name for herself as a model and fashion designer.

As much as she enjoys photography, she puts most of her focus onto modelling and continuing to add to her own clothing line full-time. This leaves photography for her spare time as more of a hobby, however, she does step in to help other high-profile photographers from time-to-time.

PERSONALITY ;

She identifies as pansexual and has always been very open to sharing and talking about her sexuality.

Has always put her foot forward to support charities, organizations, and projects that support the entire LGBTQ community. Along with making sure to put her focus into other charities and organizations, she’s always been the type of person to ‘give back’ and to put her support into the things she believes in.

Devin suffers from intense depression and anxiety. For the most part, you would never know, she does well but, every once in a while she goes into a deep rut. She won’t talk to anyone, doesn’t want anyone around, generally entirely depressing and doesn’t want to bring other people down when it comes to it. It takes a lot of trust and a special type of friendship for her to allow you to be around during that time considering, most of the time, she’ll go completely off the grid the entire time. However, at the same time, she openly talks about her battle with depression and anxiety. She doesn’t ever want anyone to feel alone and she tries to involve herself with as many campaigns and projects that involve supporting those with mental illness as possible.

Along with this, she also has this back and forth with affection. She either hates being touched or gravitates towards it, it really depends on her mental state at the time and the general relationship she has with the other person involved. It can be difficult, one day she’ll be ready to give you a bear hug and the next day, she’ll shake if you try to shake her hand.

On a more positive note, she tries to be as positive as she can, to a reasonable extent. She never wants to take life far too seriously but, obviously, doesn’t want to take it for granted either. She’s the type of person you go to if you want clear-headed advice but you don’t want to be talked down to at the same time. Or if you want ridiculous jokes while also getting some kind of pep-talk.

Really the mom-friend but probably won’t ever admit to being the mom friend.

EXTRA INFORMATION LINKS ;

blog’s full navigation;

you can find links to just about everything here.

full about page;

if you want statistics, a more in-depth background, extra facts, and some other things, you can find a bunch of stuff here.

spotify playlist;

a mess but, ay’ check it out.

pinterest board;

a highkey mess but, ay’ check it out too.

connections page;

my page with connection ideas, some are specific but most are really used as templates for plotting. i’ll also update this with any taken-current connections.

wanted connections tag & side blog;

i’m also terrible with coming up ideas so, I have a sideblog to reblog things for wanted connections ( the top link will lead to the tag ), but it also has a tag for extra muse posts if you’re interested.

This is officially too long for an intro so, I’m gonna’ end it there, but if there’s anything else you’d like to know about my bby bean that wasn’t on here or on any of her other pages, absolutely hit me up because I can ramble for hours tbh. And if you’d like to plot, 100% slide into my dms and we can figure something out, or if we had a plot before the revamp and you want to keep it — let me know and we can keep rolling with it ! Also, feel free to hit me up here or on d*scord @ katie#7666 for plotting and such ! 

[rigelmejo]

Advice I’ve found helpful:

1. For ‘easier’ immersion materials, pick things you have some familiarity already with. So: shows/books you’ve already read in your native language, or watched/read in the target language with some kind of context (seen subs before in your native language, a summary, you’ve looked up lots of words etc). I definitely find immersing in stuff I have some context for much easier, because at least sometimes I can place what certain unknown words mean/what is going on in the plot, even when I don’t actually ‘know’ all the words. 

Personally: I like using some absolutely new unknown materials for immersion, just because I like to test how much I’ve ‘improved’ with something I’m sure I have nothing to rely on ahead of time except for what I have learned. But when I’m immersing with something I want to find more comfortable/easier to immerse with, its easier for me to use things I’m already familiar with - otherwise I have to pick graded material/learner materials instead of using target language native materials. 

2. Once you find some study materials that work for you, stick to them. Specifically if they progressively teach new stuff - like textbooks, grammar guides, apps with lessons, teaching podcasts, flashcards that add grammar points/new words, etc. Anything that builds up knowledge over time. 

I used to have a bad habit of switching these kinds of materials often, and would keep ‘restarting’ myself in beginner materials, when really I should have been moving on and studying new things. I have found that even if my ‘book/guide/tool’ is imperfect, if I stick to it then I make more progress and improve at a more dependable rate.

3. For immersion material, feel free to pursue things based on interest. You don’t have to finish one material before moving to the next.

I’ve noticed that I tend to get demotivated or disinterested sometimes in materials (which happens in english with my hobbies anyway too), and its definitely better for me to just move to new material that’s interesting me in the moment (so a new show, new story, new audio). I’ve found that as long as its target language native material, its all exposing me to common things I should review, and new things I ought to pick up/learn, so regardless of the material its going to challenge me and solidify what I’ve studied already and teach me new things. Meanwhile... graded readers would fall into point 2 -  but with a special caveat - if the graded reader has a Subject i’m not interested in, I need to just switch to a new novel at a HIGHER difficulty level at a certain point. Basically - regardless of if I stick to a graded reader all the way through, or if I drop it and move to another, once I’m very comfortable with that reading level, I need to move to prioritizing higher difficulty level material. This might apply to immersion content a little - as in, its better for me to work in some dramas/audios/books with more words I don’t know, so I get more comfortable. But with target language content made for natives its less of an issue since pretty much everything made for adults is constantly teaching me new stuff right now. 

4. Its BETTER to do something consistently, than nothing. So better to study any minutes a day then never. Likewise - its better to study using ANY method that’s helping you make progress, than to not study at all because its not ‘the best way.’ 

I’m sure I’m not the only learner who’s had this issue studying languages, but its easy to wonder if you’re doing things right or doing ‘enough.’ And in the end? For me it boils down to ‘anything where I make any progress, and don’t give up IS enough.’ No method’s perfect for everyone, not everyone can stay engaged in the same methods, etc. Yeah some advice says ‘don’t ever speak before X time’ but some people only stay motivated if they speak from day one, so they might as well speak! I’ve seen plenty of advice for chinese to ‘focus on listening/speaking first’ instead of focusing on reading so early on. But I get motivated/interested by reading, so here I am doing more reading from day 1!  It’s worked well enough for me! It got me this far!

5. At some point, focus on all for skill areas because eventually you need all of them: listening/reading, speaking/writing.

This seems basic as can be but I’m guessing its still easy enough to overlook. There’s a reason good textbooks/teachers try to make sure they cover all these skills for the level you’re supposed to be comprehending/communicating at by the time you finish their class. I self-study mostly, and its easy to forget about one or multiple of these areas, especially if they don’t align as well with your goals/interest areas/preferred study methods. It’s just important to cover them all eventually, if you want roughly balanced skills in the language. I personally think its okay to have imbalanced skills - depending on your goals, and your preferences. For example: if you want to read but do not want to prioritize speaking due to low need to speak to anyone, it seems fine to spend more time on reading and work on speaking more later when its a goal or need to. Or, maybe you specifically need to speak regularly to people in your workplace/living situation/life, then it would make sense to prioritize daily needs conversation study and skills way before you bother dedicating a lot of time to reading etc.

Thankfully, there’s usually a variety of study methods to improve each skill. Though unfortunately, usually to improve in production you must eventually practice Producing language, and to improve in comprehension you must eventually practice comprehending materials. By this, I mean that even with textbook grammar drill sentence exercises and repeat-after podcasts, you must eventually practice speaking to people and writing messages/paragraphs. Even if you study sentence flashcards or read graded readers, you must eventually try to listen to real conversations/audio/shows and try to read materials you’re planning to one day engage with (newspapers/websites/novels/games/whatever your goals are). 

6. Prioritize learning the most common 500/1000/2000 words as needed. 

(Unless your goals and needs are very specialized on other vocabulary needs - who knows, maybe you only need X language for mechanical engineering words?) I ran into this tip when studying French, and then variations on this tip from a lot of polyglot blogs. I’ve also noticed a lot of the youtubers who try to learn a language in ‘x days/x months’ tend to cram in a lot of vocab early on - I saw two successful learners who studied 2000 words in the first 1-2 weeks. Then they moved onto reading grammar points, reading actual books, immersing in television, trying to speak their conversational requirements etc. What boosted their speed-run intro to the language is usually a bunch of common words - which will be their foundation for comprehending some gist when immersing, and their source of words when forming sentences as they work on speaking skills. Now, of course, these people generally get into maybe A1-A2 level-ish knowledge in a month etc. But they still make a lot of rapid progress in that first ‘uncomfortable’ hump, at least from what I can tell. There’s many a article out there about how for most languages 2000 words covers 80-90+% of words in everyday conversation, and in many media like shows (and sometimes books). 

Basically, usually at 2000 words you know enough words to start communicating anything you need to with at least basic words/ideas, and have enough words to start learning some new words from context in immersion (and will in general find immersion much less overwhelmingly difficult). I’ve personally found that it’s just a starting place - but its often a really Great starting place, at least for me. Usually its more than enough to make immersing in shows doable, and to make reading with a dictionary bearable. Its also usually enough, with a few months grammar practice/exposure too, to start expressing a lot of my basic thoughts/needs at least. I did this to some extent with French (maybe 1000 common words), then jumped into immersing and grammar books mostly. I do think if dropped into an all french country, I could read signs and forms/speak my basic needs if I were lost/needed help with X/thought something/wanted to speak with someone. I would probably sound like a wreck (since I didn’t work on pronunciation much and one day need to) but I think I could navigate having to go to a hospital/get a plane ticket/buy something/make a friend/ask how to get somewhere/read any book for gist main ideas/read the news. I could get by. And the foundation for that started with just around 1000 words to start me toward that. Ever since I’ve tried to learn common words with any language I study, and each time I’ve noticed it substantially make target language materials more % comprehensible, and make it easier for me to start having a foundation to express a lot of basic ideas (think maybe 5-8 year old that can start talking about a lot, but may need to ask for a lot of ‘what’s X word mean/what’s X thing about?’). 

Its not a lot obviously, since there’s still much that’s incomprehensible, and there’s still lots that’s hard to discuss/follow the details of. But its enough to build from more easily. And I think its a great way to direct self-study before you start specializing - it prioritizes a ton of useful words before you start moving onto words with less ‘payoff’ because they show up less frequently and not in as big a variety of situations/topics. Even if using a textbook, I find using a frequency list too helps - since some textbooks teach pitifully little like 200 words, and some teach very focused on topic-specific words like ‘my classroom’ and ‘my job’ and ‘shopping’ when you may need words that show up in ‘news’ ‘social media’ ‘shows’ too based on whatever your goals are - a frequency list helps make sure words that show up in more places get learned, even if they don’t always fit in specific topics.

7. Read through a grammar guide. (Adapt this depending on where you get the advice: read a grammar summary, or just look up grammar points once for reference when you run into one that confuses you, or just skim through a guide before you learn, or just read a grammar guide later on if you need a stronger foundation etc).

I don’t think everyone needs this. Lots of people really LOATHE grammar, or think its ‘wrong’ to study it at the wrong point in time, whenever they think that is (beginning, or later on, etc). I personally find my life gets way easier when I read at least a grammar guide/summary on AT LEAST the basic past/present/future tense way of expressing things, on adjectives, nouns, verbs, conjunctions/notable grammar particles and features, as soon as possible. Covering this stuff makes my attempts at producing language SO MUCH EASIER since I’ve got at least a rough framework of how to express things basically. And immersing likewise becomes just SO MUCH EASIER with at least a rough idea of what I’m looking at that I can break down into meaningful parts. Even if I don’t know 1 word to even 80% of words in a sentence: if I can tell which words are nouns/verbs/particles/conjunctions/what tense the sentence verbs are in/if there’s any gendered nouns/if there’s any plurals - then I can figure out a LOT about the meaning of the sentence. 

Take “Na no le mayy, ter le henent.” Here’s a sentence I just made up. Let’s say you know that ‘na’ means “there is” in this language. You know “no” is a particle meaning belonging like the japanese ‘no’ or chinese ‘de’ or english ‘s. “le” means masculine ‘the’ and is put before nouns that are masculine if a person, or objects/etc if another kind of noun. ‘ter’ you know means ‘is/are’ as a super basic verb, conjugated for a masculine person not object - now you know maybe this ‘le mayy’ is a person not an object - so the sentence so far means “this is my ‘person’.” You know le also goes before adjectives in this language to match the noun to which it refers, and ‘ent’ is a super common adjective ending in this language. So now you can guess the sentence means “This is my ‘person,’ (they) are ‘adjective describing them’.” Its possible the le henent is a noun spelled with this ending, so it could also mean “this is my ‘person,’ they are ‘noun probably describing them’.” This has narrowed down what the unknown 2 words in the sentence could mean by A LOT. Now if you understand some other context from the Surrounding sentences, you might be able to guess if the ‘person’ is a student/husband/friend/enemy, and maybe if the descriptor is something positive/negative more specific etc. Without any grammar study or overview ahead of time, the grammar pieces like ‘le’ and ‘ent’ and ‘no’ may have confused you or helped you less.

“Na shi wo de pengyou, ta hen hao,” might be how you say this in chinese, or, “Ill y a mon amie, ton est tres intelligent.” But this kind of grammar-helping-comprehension stuff translates to bigger more complex sentences, and sentences where you have less words you know and can rely on. This helped me a TON in french when i just dived into reading when I only knew a couple hundred words at first, and its constantly helped in Chinese - especially since i have no spaces to help me separate words, so recognizing how the grammar breaks down the sentences helps a lot. 

8. Don’t be scared to immerse in interesting things over high comprehensibility things, if you want.

While I do think, absolutely, that things with high comprehensibility will be easier for you to relax and enjoy, and MUCH easier for you to pick up new stuff from context - i think its possible to learn from harder materials if you want. I do it all the time. Like that higher up tip about any study better than none - if engaging with more difficult stuff keeps me interested, then it helps me more than a boring material i would give up studying and therefore stop learning from. Also, personally I really both enjoy occasionally challenging myself to really push what I can do and prove to myself what I’m capable of versus where my ‘safe zone’ is, and I think I personally learn better when I regularly get difficult bursts that challenge me. I do think for some other people, this may have the opposite effect and possibly cause them to burn out/want to give up studying. But for me, while it makes me sad I’m never as ‘competent’ with real material as I wanted to be, I’m always better at it then I was before or at least confident in knowing I’m practicing/studying something I actually want to do one day. (In comparison to me doing like podcast lessons or self-teach beginner books, where I often feel demotivated because it starts with a lot of basic convo drills, often a bit unnatural, whereas I don’t plan to have those convos much, and for my goals want to do other kinds of stuff that those podcasts may not prepare me for after months if at all...). I’d much rather get a quick foundation then be thrown into the deep end, then a slow foundation with baby steps where I have little new material regularly pushing me. 

Who knows how much this is a legacy of me being in all those honor classes/AP, and then being an engineering student in a bunch of accelerated/condensed courses taking way too many credits, studying too many hard classes at once ;-; - honestly studying anything I actually enjoy and am passionate is eons better than that past schooling. But I do think I developed a lot of my study habits back then around ‘do quick effective stuff to get basically competent then MOVE ON CAUSE THERE’S NEW HARD MATERIAL YOU GOTTA AT LEAST GET THE GIST OF IN LESS THAN A WEEK’.... aahhh. So um... I’m really skewed toward do bare minimum needed, and push difficulty asap constantly. NOT everyone is going to be able to do this, or even Want to do this. So, I’d say in general if other people apply this tip about immersing regardless of difficulty if you want to: you do not have to get the same benefits as me. I think even if the only benefit is that you’re enjoying the parts you do understand, or having fun even if its something you only do once in a while because you’re curious on how much you’d understand, that’s absolutely fine. A lot of people who do this focus on ‘comprehending the gist’ - which I guess would be me. And a lot of people who do focus on harder stuff sometimes, instead prioritize ‘focus on just getting used to it’ aka don’t worry if you can’t follow what’s going on, its okay to only catch a line or word once in a while, the familiarity you develop over time is also a benefit itself.

I do personally think, at the bare minimum, doing this does get you more okay with being dropped into situations that are harder for you and being okay with that. I imagine in language learning, eventually you run into a convo where you get lost, reading where you barely understand anything, or a show where you catch zero words! It’s nice to have the practice of not understanding but being comfortable, so that when you’re stuck in those situations you are less bothered and have possibly some other methods you’ve developed to help you cope/get by/tolerate it until you get through it or can grasp something comprehensible again or can find a way to redirect the convo/look up key words etc. In some languages there is just a huge amount of time you’ll deal with materials less than 98% comprehensible (which is comfortable level for most people), or less than 90% comprehensible (which is difficult but bearable in short bursts for most people). Also, the earlier you immerse/engage in conversation, the longer you’ll hit this ‘difficulty’ curve and either need to get used to it or else it��ll feel uncomfortable.

9. Write your GOALS down. Also, preferably, plan some SMART goals - or some study plan that roughly includes WHAT you plan to do, how you could measure it or it’s progress and test if its working or not-actually-helping-the-goal, how it contributes to your goal, and what smaller-step of your goal you want it to get you to in X time. 

Writing goals, and plans for smaller achievable steps, helps in any goal achieving process. Helps a ton with language learning too, especially when self studying if you’re not sticking to a textbook or course with very clear definited steps/goals you can just copy and aim for. There’s been studies that literally just writing your goals down makes it more likely you’ll achieve them. Its also just much easier to stick to a self study plan if you know what you’re doing, where you’re heading, why, how to check that what you’re doing is actually making progress, and have something to hold yourself accountable to study (since there may be no one else expecting you to hit your smaller-goals or bigger ones). Also personal goals will motivate you - what do you want out of this study? Personally? 

10. Make it enjoyable to you, again any study that you can keep doing and make progress is better than none. And any goal you personally will USE and Enjoy/will help you, is much better then some external goal (like oh X people will be impressed).

The enemy of progress is you giving up. Even if you Do give up - skip the being mad at yourself or feeling guilty, it is what it is and if you gave up there was a reason. Likewise, if you start studying or pick up from an absence, make sure you know what is driving you to study. Think about things you want to DO in the language - how do you want to engage with people, culture, language, that sphere of the world. 

If you are studying it for some external goal - say you want to learn it to ‘be more appealing as a job applicant’ make sure there’s something you’d DO with it (do you plan to speak to those language speakers at a job? translate? read articles in the language to improve your knowledge in the field? work in that country? do you also want to chat with friends/make friends? do you work with that country a lot and want more bg on the culture and want language to use social media/watch shows/chat online/read their news more etc?), or do you have no plans to actually use it concretely - if the second is the case, maybe a different ‘job skill’ would also help your resume and would personally be more valuable to you (maybe coding would help your job prospects, and you also think you’d use it to make an art portfolio website, for yourself or some fun little games or text-choose-your-adventure stories, maybe you would like a job specifically that codes as a part of the regular tasks, or you want to do website/portfolio coding commissions on the side even if you don’t end up getting a job that codes). 

If you’ve got some hobby reason - same things apply. Will you actually use the language if you could? How? These questions will help you form concrete goals, and possibly even help you pick the study methods you’ll want to use more. If convo and chatting is a big goal, conversation skills and practice will be way more important earlier on and also motivate you since you’ll be making friends sooner etc. If say chinese or japanese novels are a big interest of yours, and you even read painful machine translate messes of novels just to get updates or read ones never-translated that you’re into, it might really pay off for you to prioritize reading and maybe even be practicing translating yourself (for yourself) earlier on - since you may end up at the least, learning to translate fics you want to read a bit better than the machine translations you rely on (or at least so you’ll be able to double check the original writing when mtls are painfully incorrect). 

All these goals will have pretty clear smaller-milestones you’ll already know you want to aim for, and those smaller goals will make what study methods you’ll need to use for them a bit clearer. If your goal one day is to chat with people about all kinds of things, a good small step is to learn small talk, introductions, then start branching out one by one (or by depth of convo) into things you want to talk about. If it’s to connect with people, language partners might be a fantastic thing, and you might study a lot by helping someone else with your language, then they help you with theirs, the whole time you get to chat and share ideas and develop friendships. If its to read novels, small steps are learning maybe to skim novels for key information - so if a mtl novel is painfully wrong, you can pinpoint what line you want to word-by-word translate yourself for yourself. Maybe you prioritize learning a lot of words, and characters, and basic grammar, quickly, so that skimming gets easier - and so that picking up details gets easier piece by piece. Maybe you start with more basic topic novels (or comics), get to read novels you’d want to read anyway in that language, then move onto harder stuff as you progress. If you watch tons of dramas, and already know you sometimes watch no-subbed and just desperately try to follow it anyway because you want to watch it NOW or you wanted to watch THAT SHOW but it has no existing subs in your native language... now you know a major long term goal of yours, that you’ll use. You can plan smaller goals that build up to it, and also allow you to accomplish things you enjoy. Maybe first you work on following short fanmade videos with scenes, or following trailers, or watching youtubers/etc that you like watching and would probably try to watch without subs anyway. You compare the subbed versions to no subs or target language subs, you look up common unknown words that come up, common phrases etc. You work up to episodes of shows you’ve already seen and had subtitles for, and try to follow it this time without subs. Etc. 

Yes, with all of these goals you’ll eventually need to do the less fun less your-goal oriented more basic tasks, like grammar and vocab acquisition and pronunciation learning/listening etc (whatever you personally like more or less).  But you’ll have reasons WHY you’re doing it that motivate you. You’ll have a REASON you’re willing to slog through vocab flashcards or a grammar guide or a pronunciation/convo learner podcast. Because it will directly help you do something you WILL like. And you’ll know at least a PIECE of your study, WILL be some tasks you do know you’d do/enjoy anyway - like trying to chat, or reading, or watching tv, or listening to music, or browsing the internet, etc. 

[slytherinbangchan]

Ryuusei Chap 1. (Stray Kids Benders AU)

Blog’s Masterlist

Benders Masterlist

Pairing in this chap: Firebender Hyunjin x  Airbender ‘Sky’ >Original Character< . (It’s a girl but there’s no mention about her appearance aside from the obvious clothing tattoos etc... from Air Nomads so you can imagine her however you like best I only gave her a name).

Warnings: Not in this chapter. Well?? There’s Woojin here cause I started writing this a loong time ago :’)

Please enjoy my new story and let me know what you think about it💖

<<Hyunjin-ah, if you had known by then...Would that had changed anything?

             When I look at the sky now...I only see our stars no matter what.

                                                        Can you see them too wherever you are?>>

Chapter One: Intro and Leaving the Air Temple.

Mainly composed by Air Nomads, my family always traveled around the world. My dad belongs to the Southern Water Tribe but he is not a bender at all. He met my mom as she was exploring the world and they fell in love.

Growing up I too met other kids from different nations as we travelled up and down.

I met Jisung and Felix at the Northern Water Tribe while I met Seungmin and Jeongin at the Southern one. Woojin at the Earth Kingdom, and Changbin, Minho and Hyunjin at the Fire Nation.

I've got a brother named Chan also, he's a year older than me but he hasn't shown any bender abilities. That's my dad's fault I guess. I don't think that bothers him tho, he's always seemed plenty happy watching me practice my airbending and play with the other kids. I had the most fun as a child hanging out with Jisung and Felix playing with snow. Jisung would build a huge snow castle for us to play inside which is a very complicated thing to do even for a waterbender kid but he never was even a bit like any other person I’ve ever met so I wasn’t really surprised.

Playing with Changbin and Minho was kinda tougher. They always wanted to practice bending fights and even if I enjoyed them I would get hurt sometimes and it was the same for Hyunjin. He didn't like fighting that much either so, often we would sneak out and just talk about what we did while we were apart. I would tell him about the guys and how different every nation was from the others. Then he would cry and tell me how much he hated it there. He had a lot of pressure from his family to be the best. Also the other kids would mock him saying he would just have anything handle it to him for free. That he didn't need to get better at bending or fighting only cause he was the son of someone kinda important there so he'd be given a nice occupation anyway. 'What if I don't want to do any of that? What if what I really want to do is to sail away from here?'. He'd say. And I would encourage him to do so. Even if we were just eight years old back then,  the world was already being cruel to him. I wished I could take him with us in our travels. I wanted him to meet Jisung and the others. I beg my parents a hundred times but it was too risky taking a Fire Nation kid of his position with us. If something would had happened to him while he was traveling with us...

In any case as we grew older he seemed to adjust to that place. Normally it would be seven to eight months between visits to the Fire Nation but there was a time when we couldn't visit in two whole years. And it was in the winter of my fourteenth birthday when I first noticed a slight change on Hyunjin. He stopped talking as much as before and apparently he started to enjoy fighting against Minho and Changbin. At least we would still run across that city surrounded by all those houses with the red roofs till we'd reach the lake. Then we'd sit and look at the starry night sky. We did that every night for a month that time but the day me and my family had to move again was right next to the corner.

I was talking about Jisung once again that night. Mainly cause by then I had noticed it kinda pissed him off and  I'd found it amusing. I had no idea back then why he'd get all sulky when I'd mention Jisung cause I used to tell him about all my other friends too. But now that I think of it probably was cause I laughed and smiled the most while talking about him.

As a kid I had always wanted for Jisung and Hyunjin to meet and be good friends cause they were the most special to me. But as I grew older I stopped hoping for that.

After all, water and fire was never a good combination and Hyunjin didn’t seem like he was very excited about it either.

But as I was saying, I was talking once again about Jisung when Hyunjin held my hand after standing up, helping me stand up too. Then he started walking quickly not releasing my hand till we were at the top of a cliff. 'Why have you brought me here?' I asked as I chuckled. He just pointed at the sky. A little sweat running down his cheek after all that running. Still the moonlight would make him look so ethereal before my eyes. 'I've been coming here every night since you last left'. He said and I blushed without completely understanding. 'Last time you visited you said those stars looked like a flying bison and I couldn't see it. You got so mad at me. So I came here every night and finally I got to see it'. He was so serious talking about that. 'I was so happy cause now maybe I could see the same stars you're seeing even if you're so far way'. He said. 'That's what I thought when I got to see the flying bison all these months ago and I've been waiting to tell you so'. My heart kinda hurt back then even if I wasn't sure why. 'Sky, when you look at the stars after you leave... Will you think of me once in a while? Even if Jisung is around'. My heart skipped a beat. 'Hyunjin... You're the person I always have in mind no matter where I go'. He smiled then and I felt how my heart hurt even more. 'I'm glad to hear that... Cause I don't think I'll ever be able to get you out of my head'.

I didn't know what to say in that moment but he was leaning over me anyway so apparently the only thing I could do was mentally prepare for my first kiss. Guess the universe had other plans for me though cause Minho and Changbin came out of nowhere laughing at us. 'You idiots, so this is where you come every night'. Changbin said. Minho playing with some fire on his hands. Hyunjin let out a frustrated sigh and I was feeling like crying. I thought it was unfair. Who knew if I'd be able to see Hyunjin like that again? Everytime I'd leave the Fire Nation I wasn't sure when I'd be back. If my friends would still be there... I didn't know how much their lives would change while I was away. And the universe just took my first kiss away from me. It wasn't just any kiss either. Even if I was just fourteen I had been in love with Hyunjin for as long as I could remember.

I went back to my family that night feeling like I would never get that chance back.Then four years passed since that night and so far I was right. My family stopped traveling that much when my grandmother got sick. It was hard at first for Chan and me staying at the Air Nation. We didn't want to leave till our grandma got better but after those nearly five years it was about time we did and explore the world by our own.

I would be lying if I say I wasn't afraid of meeting the guys again after all those years. Maybe they didn't remember me at all. Jisung tended to forget anything that wasn't interesting to him so what if I wasn't interesting anymore? After all he had plenty of time to find something far more interesting than me. But what about Seungmin? He probably forgot too right? He was only interested on pranking me all day and playing around with Jeongin. Woojin would spend most of his time just chatting to Chan as Felix used to do too when he wasn't playing with Jisung and me. Changbin and Minho... Maybe they remembered me, cause we used to fight a lot but also we had so much fun. And then Hyunjin... I could feel my heart hurting so bad as I thought of the posibility of him forgeting about me. He said he wouldn't be able to get me out of his head right? But it had been so long. Only a fool like myself would still be thinking about its first love.

I could feel how Chan was watching me as I gathered my stuff and secured it on 'Ddalgi', that's my flying bison's name and Chan's called 'Racha'. We were taking both in our journey cause we'd split at some point. He'd go to the Earth Kingdom while I went to the Fire Nation, which terrified me cause Chan had always been such a support for me. I was going to miss him like hell and I thought I'd probably feel so lost without him. Still I didn't want to be a burden. I wanted him to be able to do the things he wanted to without worrying about me.

He was smiling at me so I smiled back. 'What?' I asked. 'Don't forget the food'. He said and I chuckled. 'That's practically all I'm gonna carry with me apart from the gifts for the guys. I don't need anything else'. He chuckled too. 'Right, you don't need snow wear or stuff like that cause you're an airbender'. I proudly smiled. 'Exactly. Ah, but I do need my staff'. I said as I went to get it.

Half an hour later or so we were ready to go. Saying bye to our family wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. (As much as I was dying to get out of there.) But it was okay. I was mostly excited about seeing how much the guys had changed in those years. We looked back one last time to the Air Temple as we flew away, and I couldn't help feeling some kind of way. I got used to stay at one place for nearly five years and then suddenly we were back to moving around. Thankfully when I looked at Chan and he smiled at me, all my worries went away. I was ready for this. And wether the guys would remember me or not I was planning on hugging them and don't let go till they asked me to. I sighed as the Northern Air Temple became blurry in the distance. 'Hyunjin-ah, do you still think of me from time to time?'. I mumbled to myself as I looked at the horizon feeling the same pain in my chest I felt years ago, when I waved him goodbye as we both cried, wondering if we'll ever see eachother again.

Chapter two: The Northern Water Tribe.