#this post brought to you by a four video youtube series on how to make pemican

[julianalvarez9]

*:･ﾟ✧CHRISTIAN PULISIC MASTERLIST✧･ﾟ:*

updated: 16/06/2023

can't choose

instagram au, ft mason mount

When a group consists of 3 people it's kinda... complicated to choose how to spend your time, to say the least.

whipped

Christian only wants cuddles and attention when he returns home after an away game.

you over anyone

mount!reader

Being Mason's twin, it's only right that you are quite close to Christian too, much to his new girlfriend dislike.

we need to talk

You ended up hearing something you wish you never did. Maybe you shouldn't have been eavesdropping, or maybe you should have addressed the situation before it got until this point.

someday

After seeing you and his niece peacefully sharing a moment together, he starts to doubt whether he had been lying to himself about his feelings for you.

saw her first

bf!christian, bff!mason

Things get a little heated when your best friend starts rambling about his awful day and he feels like you aren't paying attention to him.

firsts

actress!reader

A journey of first times with your boyfriend Christian, while navigating your private but not secret couple.

you are in love

The four times he wants to say that he loves you, and the one time he finally does.

love's dead

social media au

Christian and you announce your breakup online, and Twitter mourns the loss of your relationship.

pick a side

x arsenal!reader, ft martin ødegaard

You don't think that knowing Christian since your childhood could jeopardize your stay at Arsenal, and above all, your new situationship with Martin. But it does.

supporting you

social media au, arsenal!reader

Although your love for the red team is very noticeable -a fact that doesn't slip from anyone's mind, your relationship with Christian remains strong because above all, you're always supporting him.

something unholy

smut

When you realize this friends with benefits relationship you had going on with him is hurting you more than its benefitting, you cut contact. When Christian realizes, six months later, that the only thing missing from the celebrations after winning the CONCACAF, is you, knocking on your door is the only answer.

fluff

the golf club

social media au

As a professional golfer, life can get kinda hectic, making you forget about your side hobbie, posting youtube videos. It's only right that the comeback is a video that no one really waits.

jupiter's diary

You're a YouTuber, vlogging your little getaway to the States to visit Christian's family, when you decide to reveal the news on your last day in Florida.

series

favour gone wrong

focus (pt 1)

you had brought christian, a friend, home to your parents due to your sister's wedding, hoping to stop the questions about your love life. you didn't think how hard it would be to make them believe your lies.

unfocused (pt 2)

tension grows impossibly heavy after your back and forth banter with christian. dinner's over now, so it's time to go to sleep. or is it?

miscommunication (ft enzo fernandez)

part one

christian and you had a special connection. some could say, relationship. what happens when enzo arrives to the club, and starts taking your focus out of him.

part two

the silent treatment continues. two certain players try to bring you back to your senses, but you’re still not convinced. maybe you need to talk to certain american to clear it all to you.

part three

soon!

break up and make up

war is on

| social media au

it seems like christian and you have called it quits. althought the reasons remain unknown to the public, speculation arises because of it.

battlefield

the backstory of what went wrong between christian and you which prompted your breakup. or, how the living room where you two used to live turned into a battlefield.

the fix up

you're back in london, right after christian gets injured. he can't help but call you again when you're all he needs.

war is over

| social media au

thanks to mason, the fans know you're back in london, and rumors start to spread.

[real-life-senshi]

10 (Mostly) Spoiler-Free Reasons to Watch Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon 2003 Live Action

A countdown to the 20th anniversary of Act 1 air date!

Speaking of the casting of UsaMamo, let's actually talk about the live-action cast!

Reason 7: The cast!

If you become a fan of the series, despite the show approaching its 20th anniversary and sadly not being greenlit for more than one season, your joy DOES NOT end there.

The love the Senshi cast have for the show and for each other is ABSOLUTELY legendary. If one dabs into Japanese entertainment news even for just a little bit, then it's pretty impossible for them to forget this show existed because it gets brought up yearly, especially because Rei's actress Kitagawa Keiko' is 's career took flight and became insanely famous in Japan's acting industry a few years after the live-action.

Seriously, please see the following clip subbed by me and hear how Ayaka (Venus/Minako) talks about the live-action Senshi team. <3

Without further ado, please see some other examples of their lovely ongoing love for the series, the overall franchise, and each other.

Cast Reunions/Gatherings

Senshi Reunion "戦士会" A well-known term coined for the live-action 5 Senshi gathering. As Ayaka said, it includes birthday parties, Bonenkai and Shinenkai, engagement parties, and more!

My record of their gatherings dates as far back as 2006, and that's NOT counting the times when any of these ladies meet up in pairs or smaller pods and post about them on their social media and then practically. yell into the writing that they want all five of them to meet up soon. lol For a more "structured" Senshi reunion, usually they manage to get at least four of them together, if not all 5, due to work scheduling clashes.

At Keiko (Mars)'s wedding ceremony, the Senshi cast also all sang the show's insert song Friend together. :')

The girls have so much fun together, they are also known for taking blurry photos because they laugh themselves silly. (Adorable!)

PGSM 10th Anniversary Cast & Crew Celebration (2014) *Logistics of the event organization and individual's work schedule delayed them from actually celebrating in 2013 October.

2016 Super Moon Sighting (Cast & Crew Gathering)

The Senshi-exclusive reunion (2015) The gang claimed all the news of the Senshi reunion was making them jealous and feel left out, so they chose to have their own gathering without the Senshi. For a while that led to a hilarious back and forth between them and the Senshi on Twitter about making it a regular thing and maybe they'll invite a Senshi one at a time for further gatherings. lol

Here is hoping we get a 20th anniversary celebration cast and crew gathering. If the 10th anniversary celebration was anything to go by, the event might not necessarily happen right on the dot of the anniversary. Still, if not the day-of, this weekend, or this coming weekend will still be a key period for live-action fans to monitor the casts social media and blog accounts for any celebratory posts!

Supporting each other's work

The Senshi cast, Naoki (Shingo), Akira (Kunzite), and Jouji (Mamoru) show support for each other's stageplay appearances across the years.

Miyuu guest starred in Ayaka's live broadcast, and Ayaka promoted Miyuu's stageplay as part of the broadcast

Ayaka joining Miyuu on her Japanese shave ice eating and promo Youtube videos. (Twice!)

The cast members are always excited when they get to guest star in a JDrama Keiko (Mars) is a main cast of.

Ayaka in Buzzer Beat (2009)

Miyuu and Jouji in Iie ru Onna (2016)

The Senshi cast sending flowers and showing up in person to Ayaka's own unisex apparel brand - 502EASY's popup store!

Ongoing Mentions of Their Time in PGSM Lovingly

Last but certainly not least, there is no lack of ongoing mentions and positive reminiscing of their filming experience from this cast!

Keiko (Mars) fangirling over meeting Usagi's anime voice actress!

Video here! (Tumblr keeps giving me error when embedding...)

Usagi, Mamoru and Motoki reunited in Ryusoulger

Miyuu's PGSM Viewing Party

Sawai Miyuu (Usagi/Moon) does periodic live broadcasts on her Youtube channel, and has been hosting viewing parties of her rewatching the live-action. She's done Act 1 - Act 18 already!

Ayaka's talking about PGSM and Senshi team in multiple of her Youtube Q&A videos

Ayaka at Brazil ANIME FRIENDS CON 2019

Ayaka & Miyuu as Guest in Sailor Moon events

Director Suzumura's Glasses Night Talk - Ayaka (Venus), Jouji (Mamoru), Mew (Jupiter)

Director Suzumura’s Glass Night Take.017 (Feb 26, 2022) - Komatsu Ayaka (Summarized Translation here)

Director Suzumura’s Glass Night Take.034 (July 7, 2023) - Shibue Jouji (Summarized translation to come!)

Director Suzumura’s Glass Night Take.037 (Oct 17, 2023) - Azama Mew (UPCOMING SOON!!!!)

Kitagawa Keiko spoke about her relationship with Sailor Moon franchise and the Senshi Team when promoting her voice role as Sailor Cosmos

And you can also find multiple fan-translation of Keiko's interview articles here on my blog!

This post got really long, but it's not even near all of the mentions and references this amazing cast have made, speaking positively and endearingly of each other and the show!

You can watch the subbed versions of the series at:

Miss Dream Fansubs

Sea of Serenity Fansubs

The series is also on other online streaming sites, but be cautious to only visit them with good adware and firewall installed.

Additionally, if you ever want to receive info about the PGSM cast without being bogged down by content with fanart, fanfic posts like this blog, I recommend following @pgsm-gal!

4 days till the 20th anniversary of Act 1 air date!

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |

[quantumshade]

hi i feel the question must be asked - thoughts on the soundtrack and scoring from 13's era as compared to murray gold's work?

sigh... honestly? complicated. i have a lot of feelings and many of them are contradictory.

i'll start with this: it's one of my personal favorite things about thirteen's era, though admittedly the bar is low. i think segun akinola is an incredibly talented composer and when his music is good, it's GOOD. i loved all the times he played with the beginning and end credits to suit the episode, like in demons of the punjab and village of the angels, that kicked ass every time. i really appreciate what he brought to the show, i just wish.... hm. how do i put this. i wish his talents had been utilized better.

like. here's my absolute favorite song from the era. it's unbelievably great. it slaps so hard when played in the show AND when listened to in isolation.

and thirteen's full theme? one of the most gorgeous character themes i've ever heard, and it suits thirteen really well.

but a lot of the other stuff.... i just feel kind of meh about. i've listened to all of the scores all the way through in order to complete my ultimate doctor who playlist, and one thing i noticed is that there's a lot of songs on the album that just kind of feel like four separate songs stitched together with like 30 seconds of one droning note in between. at one point, i took notes on one of the songs to try and explain my feelings about it.

that was in regards to this song:

try listening to the song with my commentary if you get the chance, it's kind of the easiest way to see/hear what i mean in this post.

anyway here's an example of a song with very little of the silence that was boring bothering me so much:

"I'm Not Giving Up" is over 3 whole minutes shorter than "All Is Ending". can you guess how much silence there is in "All Is Ending"? (hint: if you guessed about three minutes and fifty-two seconds, you'd be correct.)

i listen to a lot of different orchestral music. i haven't run into any other composers who do this with full album releases, and it just kind of confuses me? i'm not a music theory person, so if there's some reason for this i wouldn't know it, but it makes some of these songs kind of suck to listen to in a playlist. if they were cut down into separate songs, i'd be far more enthusiastic.

the other thing i'm not crazy about are the character themes. the doctor, the master, the cybermen, and the daleks all have recognizable themes, and they're pretty good. except... imo all of them except the doctor's are massively overused. i don't think this is inherently akinola's fault, nor is it a problem exclusive to thirteen's era -- i seriously cannot listen to murray gold's "I Am The Doctor" anymore because of how much the show overused it, despite it being objectively a pretty great song.

but other than those four, did you know there are character themes for the companions? because i didn't until a couple weeks ago, and like i said, i've listened to all of these songs front to back with careful analysis AND seen all of these episodes at least twice each. i never picked up on these character leitmotifs 😭😭😭 i would say that that's on me for not perceiving them, except i know i'm not the only one. pretty much everyone i've talked to has been surprised to hear there are character themes. if you're curious, here's a youtube series exploring those themes and when they're used. it's a good, informative series with well made videos, but the whole time i was just kind of frustrated that i wasn't able to really pick up on these motifs. even now, i can't remember what yaz's leitmotif sounds like. i honestly have no idea, i would have to go back to the video and check. it just doesn't stick into my brain in the same way, say, donna's theme or bill's theme do.

furthermore, this is graham's theme. the whole thing. this is all of it.

for comparison's sake, here's rose's theme.

and if that's not the perfect microcosm of how these characters feel to me like. in terms of complex characterization and interesting arcs and feeling like real people. complex themes aren't always better, that's not what i'm saying -- more that the companions aren't really allowed to be important in the same way that they used to be.

graham's theme doesn't appear until episode four. and then doesn't reappear until the last two episodes of the series. meanwhile rose's theme is like. so recognizable from the very first note & it plays at crucial moments (first example off the top of my head is the ending of The End of the World). clara's theme is so recognizable that it can play in a scene that doesn't feature her at all After she left the show and yet in a way that completely evokes her presence. you couldn't do that with the thirteenth doctor's companion's themes, and even if you did, the audience uhhh. probably wouldn't notice!

i struggle to articulate my feelings about akinola's music, especially in comparison to gold's. gold's music is so important to me and i genuinely rank him among the best composers ever. i really, really like segun akinola... when he's allowed to make any noise. but most of the time with the sound mixing his music just fades to the background to the point of silence, forgotten entirely, and it's a shame.

tl;dr i dislike how akinola's songs are cut in the released albums, i think a lot of those songs needed to be cut down a little bit from the versions in the episode, and some of it probably could have stayed unreleased. i do wish his character themes were more recognizable, and i wish the ones that were recognizable weren't overused to the point of annoying me. i think he's a fantastically talented composer, and most of my problems with how his music on the show is used are not inherently his fault. i vastly prefer murray gold's music, but that's more a testament to how much i love murray gold than any amount of dislike of segun akinola. i'm excited both for gold's return to who and to see what akinola does next. if you prefer his music to gold's, i totally get you and i'm kissing you on the mouth. most of this is just personal preference!

sorry for how long this got. the doctor who soundtrack is, like, the ultimate autism topic for me. i'd love to talk more about it, feel free to send me asks or whatever anytime :3

[federthenotsogreat]

Happy March 13th everyone!

Today's a very special day to me. Today four years ago my father brought home a game that the moment I started it, shaped me into the person I am today.

Words cannot describe the way I felt that day, and the way I still feel after all this time.

However, I'm going to try anyways!

Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga truly is an amazing game. The memory of playing it for the very first time is still engraved into my brain and not one day goes by where I don't think about what it did for me.

It may be hard to understand for some, but today four years ago my life changed entirely.

I fell in love with Mario and Luigi in January of 2019 while watching a YouTube video on hard bossfights in Mario games, a topic that I hadn't shown any interest in prior. That video served as my first introduction to the series, and the moment I did my research on it something new and intense had grabbed me, and it has refused to let go ever since, only growing stronger over time.

I never thought I'd actually get to play this game that meant so much to me the moment I first saw it, yet three months later it was mine. Over time I collected each and every installment of this series, every single one still making me feel this overwhelming sense of joy everytime I look at it. This game made me realize who I am, who I want to be. It taught me lessons, showed me how cruel yet beautiful and unexpected life can be.

Through this series I got the chance to meet wonderful people, people who I will never forget, people who have done so much for me, some without even realizing. You helped me when times got rough, you reassured me everytime I doubted myself and you inspired me. God damn did you all inspire me.

One year ago I made my first post here on Tumblr. A drawing of my sona to celebrate March 13th. I was scared and insecure.

But now look at how far I've come! How much I've improved! Back then I couldn't even think of drawing my favorite characters, and now look at me!

I'm still working on myself everyday, figuring out who I am and what I truly want in life. But I've come a long way.

And none of this would have been possible without that fateful day, exactly four years ago.

Thank you

[katieputnam18]

Idaho 4 Season 2.1. TAROT. Buckle up team. We’re going back to Moscow, Idaho.

HELLO MY LOVES! 

 The idea of following the money came from  @Justice_Serum ♥ I will apologize in advance, I began putting confirmations from Season 1 in and then had a huge project due and completely forgot to post it. 

Skip from minutes 20-29 because it's the same thing you've already seen. As long as you understand that this is a deep dive following the money then we'll all start at the same place next reading. 

00:00 Introduction 

00:24 A NAVY SEAL? We called it

04:14 Reading the Wiki page for Scott Green

08:28 Introducing the Queen of Swords

12:17 Pull up a chair Queen

16:41 What's Ethan's Trash Bucket Sister Doing

20:30 Back to the Cards

29:48 SKIP THIS PART, IT DIDN'T GET DELETED

35:52 Ethan's Mic Drop

39:56 The trash is back

45:05 World's Worst Birthing Vessel 

47:34 That Scholarship is SUS. It’s time to follow the money. 

Who is Scott Green? How did he get a job making almost $500k a year with no qualifications?

In October, Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador subpoenaed Green, demanding several records related to the University of Phoenix acquisition. I originally wasn't going to record it, but did at the last minute. 

I'm creating a timeline for the day an unqualified man accepted the position as the President at the Univeristy of Idaho on July 1, 2019 - November 13, 2022, the day our friends were betrayed. 

I'm also looking through the Idaho 4 https://youtu.be/zb6FgZ84vI4?si=SIXR7... series to grab the clip where we talked about following the money. 

****** 

Unraveling the Enigma Ethan Chapin’s Story and the Dark Web of Deception in Moscow, Idaho In an unprecedented revelation on the YouTube platform, Kate Putnam, renowned medium and tarot reader, has emerged as the voice of Ethan Chapin, one of the four students mysteriously murdered in their Moscow, Idaho home. 

The unfolding saga told through the lens of a 30-part “mini-series,” brings to light a chilling tale of deception, faith, and heartbreak that has captivated the online community. The Shocking Revelation On October 11, 2023, Kate Putnam dove into a tarot reading on “The Organization” in Moscow, Idaho. 

To her astonishment, the cards foretold that the U.S. Government would play a pivotal role in the case. Three weeks later, the FBI announced a halt to the Brian Koberger trial, redirecting attention to the house at 1122 King Road where the four college students were betrayed by the trash people they loved the most.

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE Meet Kate Putnam, President of Putnam Marketing (https://www.putnam-marketing.com), where innovation and profitability converge to propel businesses to new heights. 

With a steadfast commitment to driving sales, increasing revenue, and maximizing ROI, Kate is at the helm of a dynamic team dedicated to delivering transformative marketing solutions. As a visionary leader, Kate brings a wealth of experience and expertise to Putnam Marketing. With a background rooted in strategic marketing, design, and technology, she possesses a unique ability to craft strategies that not only elevate brands but also yield tangible results. Kate's leadership ensures that every project undertaken by Putnam Marketing is executed with precision and tailored to meet the specific objectives of each client. 

***** 

If you have an Angel Story to share, please reach out to my office at kate@putnam-seo.com This is all allegedly, in my opinion, unless I brought receipts. No facts here. Please do your own research. BOOK A SESSION HERE Follow Kate on INSTA I’m a newbie on TikTok Follow Kate on FACEBOOK CASHAPP https://cash.app/$KatePutnam last four: 1948 Leave a Tip: VENMO Subscribe to Kate’s YOUTUBE Join the Tarot Time Facebook group Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. 

Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). 

Moscow, Idaho, Ethan Chapin, Scott Green, University of Phoenix acquisition, Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, dark web of deception, college students, tarot reading, Kate Putnam, FBI, Brian Koberger trial, true crime, ancient mysteries, mini-series, YouTube, online community, deception, faith, heartbreak, local authorities, The Fool’s Journey, communication, dimensions, Tarot Time group, university, colleges, Idaho university, university of Idaho Moscow, colleges in moscow idaho, moscow idaho colleges, universities in moscow idaho, university in moscow idaho, colleges in Moscow, Ask Angels, Angel, Higher Self, Kate Putnam, Psychic Medium, Meditate, Shaman, Energy Healing, Spirit Guides, Reiki, Intuition, Psychic, Intuitive, Angel, Self Help, Spiritual, Rise, Enneagram, Tarot, Astrology, Soul Happy, Spiritual, Meditation, Zen, Life After Death, Light

[dovenymph]

a film by peter parker

authors note: this was inspired by another thinkerpete tweet that read "peter probably watches the bit from "a film by peter parker" where he's in the car with tony over and over when he misses him" and@peterparkers-bad-youtube-apology’s summer of love prompt list💛💛 also the video edit was made by me so please do not screen record/save and repost it even if you do credit me (also this is unedited so sorry for any typos, i’ll probably go through it sometime this week, i just wanted to post it first)

prompts used: 2. making the backyard/rooftop into a movie theater

my masterlist

warnings: mentions of tony’s death, other than that, nothing but fluff

word count: 3.9k

Peter hated the summer.

Peter hated not having anything to busy himself with; no homework, or academic decathlon, or seeing Ned everyday who could wrap him up in his graphic novel fan theories or the drama in his on and off relationship with Betty. It was petty drama and minor stimulation, but it was something to distract him momentarily. But now Ned was in Aruba with his parents for the entire month which meant Peter had to suffer through the scorching heat of Juy all by himself.

Peter knew he didn’t have to be alone each day, -Aunt May had spent many dinners trying to get him to join her at the movies or the mall, even offering to let him have free reign of the lego store (when he said no to that, she knew he was in worse shape than she thought)- he had a handful of trustworthy and dependable friends he could hang out with for the afternoon like MJ and Betty, or even Flash who had been uncharacteristically nice to Peter ever since he found out he was Spiderman; this having happened only a few weeks after Tony had died and Peter had let him in on his secret to console a sobbing Eugene who, honestly, seemed to be more broken up about the news than Peter was. But even with his expanding friend group, Peter had found the most his body could endure was the contents of his bedroom.

He tried to get back out there after Tony’s passing, he really did, but at the first Iron Man tribute he admired on patrol, his body completely shut down and he swung back home, tears dampening the material of the mask.

So a lonely summer was what Peter submitted himself too, and he’s come to terms with it. He’s rewatched his favorite old shows, started binging some new ones. He’s taken apart and put together his lego death star four times now, each time faster than the last. But he’s been particularly fond of staring out the window. His apartment complex was quite close to the building besides his and he could look down into the backyard everyone had to share. Peter’s building had one as well, but since he was pretty sure he was the only person under 35 who lived there, it went unused.

Next door, there was always a different activity occurring in order for the patrons to beat the heat, and Peter often thought about how easy it would be for him to just go downstairs and introduce himself, and ask to join. It’d really be as simple as that and he’d meet some new people, get a free lunch and a chance to swim in the plastic pool they set up; maybe they’d laugh at his jokes and clap when he did flips, but it was all just a maybe, just in his imagination because his brain never let him wander to far before squandering the idea of getting close to someone again, for if history has taught Peter anything, it's that anything he gets close to, is not meant to stay for long and will be soon snatched away from him in the cruelest of ways.

And this thought is what resigns him to slink back behind his window and pout the day away, as he was doing now, vision blurring as he stared at nothing.

“Hey!”

Peter jumped, his eyes focusing on the target of whoever pelted his window and they landed on your form, slumped against your open windowsill, chin resting on your hand as you gazed back at him.

“Can I help you?” Peter bit back after lifting his window half way, his tone unconsciously laced with annoyance. He really didn’t even notice it anymore since that’s how he’s been speaking to everyone in his life for months now, but when you flinched at his tone, guilt started to creep up his spine.

Before he could ever begin to stumble out an apology, you cut him off “Yeah, is there a reason you stare into my room everyday?”

Peter's face flushed red and he opened and closed his mouth like a fish. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had spoken so bluntly towards him, and honestly, he liked it. He was getting tired of everyone walking on tiptoes around him, he just wanted things to go back to how they were, where he was just Peter Parker, your friendly neighborhood student.

“Or could you at least give me some money for some curtains if you just can’t give up the beautiful view of a concrete wall?”

“S-sorry, I- I didn’t even know you were there.”

Lie.

Peter knew you were there, he always knew when you were there.

Peter Parker isn’t a stalker, though! Sure, he’s gone through some fucked up shit on Earth and in space, so yeah, he wouldn’t call himself the most …sane person he knows, but he really wasn’t a creep. With your buildings being so close and your rooms directly across from one anothers, he was bound to notice you at some point.

And at some point he did. It was the first day of summer and Midtown let out at 12 instead of 3 to mark the occasion, so Peter had been mulling about in his room for quite some time already, thinking about how he heard all his classmates amazing summer plans and how the farthest he was going to go was probably the Thai restaurant down the street, and even that was a maybe. Peter sulked in silence until a couple hours later he heard a door slam closed, thumps from things being tossed on the ground, and a loud groan as he peeked through his windowsill at you who was currently flopped on the bed, window wide open without a care, scrolling on your phone.

At first, he was taken aback by your beauty, a small, small feeling of intrigue spiked his system, but it flew under the radar due to the seemingly everlasting dread that’s been weighing down on Peter's shoulders for months. But he couldn’t look away. You’d been doing nothing but looking at tiktoks mindlessly, occasionally cracking a half smile if a video was particularly amusing, but you still remained cemented to your mattress with no plans on moving anytime soon.

This brought comfort to Peter as he fished his phone out from the bottom of his bag and pulled up Ned’s messages and started to look through the media he sent him, almost two months worth of funny memes and videos that he hadn’t been bothered to look at, and he sat there along with you, aimlessly letting the time pass by. He enjoyed it, knowing he wasn’t really alone in his lazy and distracting behaviors because the pretty neighbor girl was doing just the same.

Ever since then, he’s just been …aware… of your coming and goings. He figured you had a summer job as every other day you were gone for a few hours, a solid shift. But on the days you were home, you also spent it mainly up in your room, every now and then, playing music from your record player, and if he was really lucky, you’d, unknowingly, give him a private concert as you sung out whichever niall horan or ariana grande song struck your fancy that day. He grew quite fond of the music, having added some of the regulars to his own playlist. And he enjoyed knowing you were right there, and he was right here; each of you living your lives, as uneventful as they may be, but you were together in some sort of way.

He’d never spoken to you, the ability of being able to just push his window up and call out to you at any time was what he liked, and each day he thought he’d do it but chickened out, and now it seemed like he’d have to make introductions whether he was ready or not.

“Mmm, right, so you haven’t seen me change or anything like that?” You asked and the content of your question and the inquisitive tone brought a flush to his cheeks.

“N-no! Of course not! I-I’d never do that, why would I even want to look at you? I mean! I don’t think you’re ugly or anything I… I just…”

Peter’s ramblings were cut off with your laugh as it bounced off the summer air and into his room. You were fully leaning out your open window now, and Peter had found himself in the same position, as if he was drawn to you.

“I was only joking with ya, but it's still nice to have the confirmation. I’m Y/N, your neighbor! Obviously.” You trailed off at the end, knowing that information was unnecessary since the boy next door obviously already knew that.

He was like no boy you’d ever seen before, only read about in books. He had a sweet disposition and inviting brown eyes that matched his soft chestnut hair. But he was built like a man, a strong jaw and strong arms. You’d seen him leaving his building everyday on your way to school, and when he’d get dropped off in a big black SUV during the late hours of the night, but he walked in the opposite direction or darted inside so fast,you never really got a chance to take him in.

“…Peter?” His tentative tone snapped you out of your daze and you realized he was introducing himself.

“Sorry, Peter! I- I… got distracted… by your… death star!” You let out, eyes focusing on the black and grey figure resting on his bed.

Peter felt his cheeks heat up as he moved to push it to the ground.

“That’s pretty cool! I finished the star wars series last summer.”

Peter’s eyes snapped up to yours and the friendly smile you were giving him along with the genuine interest in your tone seemed to break something inside him, snapped the band of hesitation that wrapped around his heart. “You did? For the first time?”

“Yeah! I know I’m like super late, but there’s like nine movies!”

Your laughs melded into one as you leaned out your respective windows and began talking about your favorite movie series. Peter was aware that this was unnatural for him. He had been more open to this stranger in the past few minutes than he had to his own Aunt in months and the same guilt from earlier crept up on him. But Peter was having a good time talking to you and he felt his insides turn in excitement when he realized you really had no idea who he was. He had a clean slate with you and he could make any first impression he wanted, well he hoped your first impression of him wasn’t that he was a peeping pervert, but we move, as MJ would say.

You were about to start telling Peter about this new dystopian novel you began reading when you heard a woman call out to him.

“Oh, that’s my Aunt May. She must be home from work. I- I should go say hello.” He explained, a sad look crossing his face that you didn’t quite understand.

You felt your own sadness wash over you, though. You didn’t want to stop talking to Peter either. “Yeah, of course!”

“But we can talk tomorrow right?” Peter asked, his tone laced with uncertainty.

“Oh well, I work double tomorrow… so I probably won’t be home ‘til late.” You said and the way the brown haired boys face visibly fell felt like a punch in the gut and you were scrambling for a reason to make him smile.

“B-but hey! I also get paid tomorrow so if you want, you can come over on saturday and we can have a movie night and we can order a shit ton of take out?”

“Come over to your place?” Peter asked, and he felt himsef involuntarily tense at the idea of leaving his room for the first time in weeks. It was safe in his room. But the pleading look on your face and hopefulness in your tone encouraged him to take the chance.

“I’d love to y/n.” Peter said with a soft smile and you smiled back shyly at him before closing your window and making your way out your room, making sure you were safe in the hall, away from his prying eyes to do a little happy dance.

Peter was unable to wipe the grin off his face as he walked out his room to greet his Aunt.

She heard his feet padding down the hall as she was setting out dinner, “Sorry its not ready yet, Petey, today’s been crazy, but I’ll get started now.” She rushed. Recently, she’s been hoping food’s the key to lift her poor nephews spirits, so each night she’ll either order or make something more fattening, cheesy, and delicious than the last.

“It’s alright May,” Peter let out easily as he turned the counter and placed a kiss on her cheek, “why don’t you let me cook tonight?”

May’s jaw dropped and she blinked a couple times. She could barely get two words out of Peter recently, and they were always either a meak thank you for dinner or an it was good when she asked about his day. She felt her eyes tear up at the slight sliver of her old Petey back.

“O-oh, really, you wanna cook?”

Peter ducked his head down at the ingredients in front of him to avoid looking in her eyes, his heart dropping at the glossiness that overtook them. He truly hadn’t realized how closed off he’d been. “Well, how about we do it together?” He began and the face splitting grin that spread across May’s face was all he needed to know he was taking a step in the right direction.

“G-good idea, honey. Can’t have the house burn down, can we?”

“Hey!”

May laughed and kissed Peter’s head as they began winding through the kitchen, making casual conversation. It was just like the old days, May thought. Before the wave of devastation drowned Peter as he lost a father figure, once again.

“So what did you do today, P? Do you know when Ned get’s back? I’m sure you’re both excited to see each other.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, I am. I don’t know when he get’s back actually, but that’s okay-“

“I know you like your peace and quiet, I really do, but I do think it’ll be good for you to get out of the apartment for a little bit, see if Michelle is available. Oh! Or maybe that Lisa, Liz! I liked Liz, see if she’s available-“

“May! Its okay. I don’t need to hang out with Liz Allen,” Peter grumbled, “I- I made a new friend actually.”

May looked over at Peter in confusion since he hadn’t gone out or had anyone over in weeks, that she could remember; and Peter took her silence as an opportunity to continue.

“The neighbor.”

“Mrs. Wozniak?”

“No! Y/n, she lives in the next building over. And my room is right across from hers. We’re gonna hang out on saturday.”

“Oh?” May raised her brows at her nephew and bit back a smile, much to Peter’s chagrin. “Is she pretty?”

“And that’s relevant why?”

“I don’t know!!” May drawled and Peter just rolled his eyes and kept chopping the vegetables in front of him, the blush adorning his cheeks refusing to go down as he thought yes, yes she is.

.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．

You yanked the door open as soon as you heard Peter’s knocks against it. He jumped back a bit, his arm still partially raised from when he knocked and you silently berated yourself for being so eager, but the spreading smile across his face made you feel not so bad.

“Oh, sorry, I was just-“

“It’s alright.” Peter replied with a soft smile, and you let yourself trace the golden flecks in his eyes before he cleared his throat, once again, snapping you out of a daze. You seemed to be in a dreamy state around him alot.

“Can I come in? I brought my Star Wars DVD collection by the way, I know you’ve seen them, but this one has the director's cut which I thought totally changed the course of the first trilogy!” Peter explained, rocking on the balls of his feet in excitement.

You bit your lip at the sight, his cuteness was rubbing off on you. “Yeah, that sounds great, but actually we aren’t gonna be watching in here.” You said, grabbing the bag of Chinese food and snacks and stepping out.

Peter’s face sputtered as you both walked to the stairs. He’d spent all day building up his courage to just go six feet from his building, there was no way he’d be able to go around the city with you for the fear of seeing something that’ll remind him of the avengers or crime.

“Y’alright?” You asked, noticing Peter’s stony silence as you walked down the last flight and made your way to the back gate.

“Yeah, sorry, I guess I’m just nervous. I haven’t really hung out with anyone new in a while, well, with anyone at all really.”

You smiled in sympathy, “I get you, I haven’t either. All my friends are out of town, so I’ve mostly just hung out in my room, too.”

“But you already knew that, don’t ya stalker?”

Peter rolled his eyes and shoved your arm as you laughed, glad you got his nerves out of his system. You unlocked the gate and lef Peter to the back garden.

“Woah..” Peter let out. There was a large white sheet hung up between two trees, and a projector set up on the table behind where a blanket lay, covered in a mess of pillows. The setting sun lit up by strung lightbulbs.

“You like? I figured since we both seemed to be home bodies, we could have the fun of the movie theatre, but here!”

Peter felt his heart swell at your words. You’d only known him for two days, and you already treated him with so much consideration and kindness. “I- I love it, y/n. This is amazing.”

He saw how you tucked your cheek into your shoulder in bashfulness and felt his spirits raise even higher. You were adorable.

“I’m glad you like it. I hope the projector works though, it took me forever to translate the instructions.”

Peter walked over to it and gave it a once over. “It seems fine to me, but I can always look at it if you want.”

“Oh yeah? You good with tech?”

“Good enough to get by. I needed it a lot while working with Mr. Stark” Peter began, forgetting that he wasn’t talking to an old friend.

“You worked with Tony Stark?!?”

“Oh.. oh yeah, only for a little! I was an intern.” He said quietly, beating himself up for even bringing up the topic of Tony. The last thing he wanted to do was cry in front of a pretty girl.

“Wow, that must’ve been amazing. You, you must miss him a lot then, huh?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled lifelessly. “Yeah I do.”

“But no matter, we’re here to have a good time right?”

“Yeah, yeah we are!” You grasped his hand and gave him a sympathetic squeeze -neither of you blind to the sparks that shot from the place your hands met- and got settled on the blanket.

Two and a half moves later, the sun had set and the two of you were sitting in the darkness, the only light coming from the flickering of the projector as the abandoned movie played. You and Peter were sitting cross legged, facing each other as he told you another story about working with the Avengers.

“Yeah, it was so crazy!! We were in this airport and he went from being like two inches tall to two hundred feet, it blew my mind. But it was okay though, because I had this idea-“

“Wait, wait, wait. You were there? Why?” You asked, loving every adventure filled anecdote he told you, but it wasn’t all adding up. For just an intern, he seemed incredibly close to Mr. Stark himself, but then again, you’d only known him for less than a week and you also wanted to go everywhere with him.

Peter worried his lip, thinking about how he could worm his way out of this one. Why would a teenage intern be at the Avengers civil war? He figured he could lie, or even just run away and buy black out curtains. Maybe he could convince Aunt May to switch rooms with him even. But you’d already brought so much light to his life in multiple aspects, and he thought, just maybe, you’d be able to bring light to that aspect of his life too.

“You know what, lemme just show you! Wait here, I’ll be back!”

Peter ran back down, his Chewbacca flash drive in hand, adrenaline running through his veins. He plugged it into your laptop and dug up a folder he hadn’t touched in almost eight months.

“What’s this?” You asked as he sat back down next to you.

“You’ll see.” He said, eyes glued to the screen in front of him.

A Film by Peter Parker, read the title as a compilation of videos featuring Peter, Happy, Aunt May, the Avengers, and Tony projected before you both.

Peter heard you gasp as the camera flashed to the suit, and saw, from the corner of his eye, how your head snapped towards his as he backspringed across the battleground. The film continued and neither of you could tear your eyes from the screen. Peter felt his eyes well up with tears as a scene with him and Tony talking to the camera began and he thought that watching this was a bad idea and he was about to turn around and turn it off when he felt your fingers intertwine with his.

He sucked in a sharp breath at the warmth you brought him and he squeezed back, his brain nearly malfunctioning at the speed in which he tried to memorize the feel of your hand in his. But his senses were overloaded as he picked up on your accelerated heartbeat.

The two of you continued to watch the video, neither moving even when it autostarted from the beginning, and this time you laughed outwardly at the funny parts, and asked him questions about why Happy didn’t seem to like him.

“What did you do to him Peter?”

“Nothing I swear!”

“Likely story.”

And he felt the steel blanket of grief fall off his shoulders. The feeling of intrigue and excitement for going back to life was no longer a small trail buried deep within him, but now a firecracker that ignited his insides and aurated off of him. Things were going to be alright, he was going to make it out this summer with more than just the memories from his bedroom, and he’d make it through whatever else life would throw at him, as long as he had you by his side.

Because you didn’t make his heart beat faster out of fear, you made him feel flustered and full of affection.

And you didn’t hold him roughly, with the intent to harm him; you held him delicately, and he could only wait to be able to hold your heart the same way.

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O'Brien - NME Magazine Interview

Dylan O’Brien: “I was in this transitional phase – close to a quarter-life crisis”

From YA heartthrob to legitimate leading man – how the 'Maze Runner' star hit his stride after a whirlwind decade

Definitely!” hoots Dylan O’Brien when NME asks if he still has to audition. “I’m not Tom fucking Hanks, bro.” He’s clearly amused by our question, but forgive us for thinking the 29-year-old actor gets cast on reputation alone. A decade into his career, and he’s making an impressive transition from teen TV star and YA franchise hero to charismatic leading man.

New York-born O’Brien cut his teeth on MTV’s hit Teen Wolf series, before landing the lead in the Maze Runner film trilogy based on James Dashner’s hugely popular novels. Leading a band of bright young things that included ex-Skins tearaway Kaya Scodelario, Game Of Thrones’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, he honed his craft while racking up nearly a billion dollars at the box office. “My career is a constant acting class,” says O’Brien. “To be able to do the Maze Runner movies simultaneously with Teen Wolf was amazing in terms of getting in reps and working my [acting] muscle.”

Now for the sometimes tricky bit. Many actors struggle with the post-breakout period, but O’Brien is making it look easy so far. This year’s Netflix hit Love and Monsters proved he can carry an old-school family adventure, and new film Flashback (out next week) reveals an appetite for weirder, more cerebral work. He stars as Fred Fitzell, a young man reluctant to buckle down to life as a nine-to-fiver with a boring corporate job and a long-term girlfriend (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross). When he runs into a freaky-looking acquaintance from his teenage years, Fred becomes obsessed with finding an old high-school friend he used to drop a mind-bending experimental drug called Mercury with. It’s difficult to say any more without entering spoiler territory, but Flashback is a wild ride underpinned by the idea that we can exist in several realities at once. Even if you follow every plot twist, you might not fully understand the end. “Oh, it’s definitely a headfuck,” O’Brien agrees. “There’s not totally an answer to figure out. There’s a lot of different things that people can take from it.”

Speaking over Zoom from his LA home, O’Brien is bright, thoughtful and really good fun to talk to, especially when he relaxes into the interview, but he clearly knows where his line between public and private lies. When he first read the Flashback script, written by the film’s director Christopher MacBride, his “mind was blown” by just how much he related to Fred. “I felt like I was in this transitional phase of my life that was, you know, sort of close to a quarter-life crisis type thing,” he says. “For whatever reason, it was like me and this script were meant to be. I remember reading it and thinking: ‘I am this guy right now.'”

“There were a lot of things in my personal life that were neglected for a while”

When we ask why O’Brien felt as though he had reached a “transitional phase”, he gives an answer that’s vague but not exactly evasive. For understandable reasons, he doesn’t mention the incredibly traumatic motorcycle accident he sustained while shooting the final Maze Runner film in March 2016. O’Brien suffered severe trauma to the brain and said in 2017 that he underwent extensive facial reconstructive surgery after the accident “broke most of the right side of my face”. Tellingly, he’s never really revealed what happened on set or how it affected him.

Today, O’Brien dances around the details of the accident and other issues he was dealing with at the time, but doesn’t shy away from discussing his inner conflict. “You know, it was a lot of personal things combined with at-a-point-in-my-career things,” he says after a brief pause. He says he’d have been going through some of this stuff anyway, simply because of his age, but it sounds as though success intensified it all. “It was like this whole fucking storm of shit,” he continues. “I was simultaneously so fulfilled and happy about these, like, otherworldly and surreal things that I had experienced in terms of where my career had brought me. I had all this confidence and fulfilment and beautiful people [in my life] – such amazing things to experience at a young age. But at the same time, there were a lot of things in my personal life that were unchecked and sort of neglected for a while.”

O’Brien says that in time, he realised he had to “stop for a second” and “re-explore how I wanted my life to look going forward”. In fairness, you can see why he needed a breather: his career took off while he was still a teenager. After his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles County when he was 12, O’Brien contemplated a career as a sports broadcaster – his Twitter bio still bills him as a “no longer suffering Mets fan” – then began posting YouTube videos as moviekidd826. A funny, slickly edited skit titled ‘How to Prepare for the SAT in 45 seconds’, shared when he was just 17, shows he was a born performer and storyteller. YouTube success led to him getting a manager, but his breakthrough role in Teen Wolf still came out of the blue. At the time, he was treading water at a local community college and taking auditions on the side.

Still, he has since taken a rather fatalistic view of this career-making moment. “It’s totally weird because, when I think about it now, I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. I can’t picture myself doing anything else now,” he told Collider in 2011. “It was really sudden and a little random, and not provoked by anything. It was just out of nowhere. It wasn’t my intentional doing.” Today, O’Brien summarises his skyscraper career trajectory succinctly. “I guess I just graduated high school and started acting,” he says. “And then I felt like I was just flying by the seat of my pants and never got a chance to stop.” Thankfully, straight-out-the-blocks Hollywood success hasn’t taken away his sense of perspective. When I say how easy social media makes it to compare yourself unfavourably to others, O’Brien jumps in: “Yeah, that’s very true. I was watching the Billie Eilish doc the other day, and I was like, I’ve done nothing. I’m not an artist at all!”

“No one thought ‘Love and Monsters’ was going to be good!”

O’Brien is also self-deprecating when he talks about being cast in Flashback, suggesting it happened because he had such an intense connection with Fred. “I was honestly like, ‘Who is watching me right now?’ That is the best way I can describe how I was feeling when I came across this script,” he says. “Chris [MacBride, director] and I had this conversation that went so well in terms of [my] understanding this script that I think he’d sent around a lot and [that] very commonly wasn’t understood. I think Chris has even said that the night before shooting, he suddenly had this thought, like, ‘Wait, do I even think he’s a good actor?'”

Though O’Brien has firmly ring-fenced elements of his private life, he’s actually pretty frank about his acting vehicles. He readily admits he was expecting a snobbish response to Love and Monsters, a CGI-heavy hybrid of post-apocalyptic action and romcom that dropped on Netflix in April and topped the streamer’s daily most-watched list. “It means so much that Love and Monsters has gotten the response that it’s gotten,” O’Brien says. “No one thought this movie was going to be good.” His blunt honesty makes me laugh out loud. “No one did though!” he says in response. “And so, fuck that. You know, most of the people who say something to me about the movie, they’re like: ‘I watched Love and Monsters, and it was… good?’ And honestly, that just cracks me up.” For obvious reasons, we hastily decide not to share our response to the film – namely, that it was a whole lot better than expected.

In Love and Monsters, O’Brien plays Joel, a survivor of a so-called “monsterpocalypse” that has bumped humans to the bottom of the food chain. Though he’s known in his colony as a bit of a coward, Joel sets off on a treacherous 80-mile journey to find his high school sweetheart Aimee (Iron Fist‘s Jessica Henwick), which means evading the hungry clutches of various supersize grizzlies including a giant monster-frog hiding in a suburban pond. It’s a simple but pretty out-there premise that wouldn’t work if O’Brien’s performance was even slightly condescending. Instead, his unselfconscious sincerity really sells a film that has as much in common with the family-oriented Robin Williams movie Night at the Museum as darker fare like The Walking Dead.

His obvious affection for the project really comes across during our interview today. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so sweet and funny and smart and unique, but at the same time reminiscent of all these movies that don’t really get made any more,” he says. That’s a fair point: Love and Monsters is neither a fail-safe superhero movie nor a slice of classy Oscar bait. “And when they were talking about how to market this movie, it was so funny hearing all these conversations like, ‘How do we actually get people to watch it?'” he adds. “But that’s a big part of the reason I wanted to do this movie: because it felt like something I missed seeing.”

“I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who want to make something out of love”

So in a way, Love and Monsters was a risk for an actor seeking to establish himself outside of a bankable movie franchise and a hit TV show. O’Brien has only made four films since his final Maze Runner outing in 2018, and insists he hasn’t been tactical with his choices. “I don’t have anyone saying, ‘We need to get you in an Oscar vehicle’, or any of that kind of shit,” he says. “I’m really lucky to be surrounded by people who think like me: that you should do what you’re drawn to, and make something out of love.”

He’s recently finished shooting a mysterious crime thriller called The Outfit in London with Mark Rylance. Directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay to Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, O’Brien calls it “quite possibly one of the most special pieces of writing I’ve ever experienced”. He first read the script on a plane and says he “actually stood up and clapped” when he got to the end. Considering O’Brien probably wasn’t flying Ryanair, this reaction presumably attracted a few baffled glances.

Anyway, it must be pretty intimidating walking onto set with Rylance, a multi-award-winning actor revered by his peers – Al Pacino once said he “speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before” – but it sounds as though O’Brien took it all in stride. He says he’s confident in his abilities, but admits to having a slight wobble whenever he begins a new project. “I’m always sort of re-questioning everything – like, ‘Can I even act?'” he says. “But I think there’s something very natural about that. I think even Rylance could relate to that feeling. Acting is like starting a new year at school every single time.”

At this point in his career, O’Brien has made peace with the fact that some people will have preconceptions about him based on what he’s known for: Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. “People will put you in a box no matter what,” he says. “There was definitely a time when that would get to me, especially when it felt like somebody had a perspective on me that in my soul, I just felt wasn’t accurate.” Still, there’s no doubt he wants to show us what’s really in his soul with more films like Flashback. “If anything,” he adds bullishly, “it just makes me think: ‘Right, I’m really gonna show them now’.”

‘Flashback’ is out on digital platforms from June 4

[vashti-lives]

Due South Reversi AU

So I was telling @sweetfirebird last night that I really want a historical AU where Fraser is a mountie among mounties but instead of being “the last of his kind” or whatever he’s absolutely in his element at the hight of when his skills would have been needed. Meanwhile Ray K is an ex-pinkerton who goes to Canada hunting down the man who murdered his father and then stayed for reasons that are none of your goddamned business. 

So you have Fraser as a man who is in his element (and yet, at heart, still an outsider) while Ray is the fish out of water in the wilds of Canada who’s methods may be strange and new fangled (and occasionally perhaps overly violent) but they may have their merits in the end. 

So I was thinking all this over and I was wondering where Ray V fits into all of this when I realized. In the AU Bob Fraser isn’t dead. In this AU when Ray enters the wilds of Canada he doesn’t find Benton Fraser first thing. 

No in this AU he finds Bob. Bob who is a decorated officer past his prime, stuck in what his superiors assured him was a comfortable desk job in what passes for a city in the wilds of Canada (Ray scoffs). His son is off, doing what he used to do and by all accounts doing it very well. At this point pretty much all their interaction consists of infrequent painfully polite letters. 

And so in the midst of this he finds Ray, angry and grieving for a father he didn’t even like in life, disillusioned about the direction the Pinkerton’s have gone in, and with an extremely interesting mystery on his hands. Of course Bob would be instantly hooked. Ray is young and dynamic and in him Bob sees the chance to mentor a young man in the way he regrets not being able to do with his own son.

And thus for several years the two of them would solve a lot of crime and probably cause a lot of trouble while Ray gets used to Canada. And then Ray goes back to Chicago (Stella has met someone and finally wants their years long separation to be official. He can’t say no so though it breaks his heart he signs the divorce papers.)

AND THIS is where I think I would start the story. Ray is broken hearted with nothing left tying him to the States returns to Canada. He strolls into the station to greet Bob and what does he find?

Another man sitting at Bob’s desk. An exceptionally handsome man sitting at Bob’s desk. An exceptionally handsome man who is giving him a look of stern disapproval. Because while Ray was gone Bob Fraser fell ill and Benton Fraser came to take care of him and has thus gotten a more urban post. 

At first Ray and Fraser are wildly jealous and dismissive of each other but there’s crime to solve and they have to team up and then eventually they fall in love. 

It would be fucking great you guys.

[lovesanmotion]

yandere!ateez fanboy series: hongjoong

Saturday night and Hongjoong scrolled aimlessly on youtube. Every video on his recommendations, he’d seen all of them. Except, this one video. 

‘ Falling - Y/N ‘ 

That music video had been on his “Recommendations For You” for weeks. Before, he reminded himself how he would check it out. But he never did. With 850M views in just 3 weeks, he brought his cursor to your latest music video. 

“Falling, falling, falling

She’s falling, falling, falling “ 

Hongjoong sat up straight upon hearing the beat. The song had an 80s and city concept while the beat of the song was a mix of city pop and lo-fi. ‘What a great combination.’ he thought to himself. 

As the song ended, Hongjoong felt hooked with the song and singer. Typing in Naver and searching your name. Hundreds of articles shown about how you released your recent comeback song and new album. He learned that your name was Y/N and your new album was titled ‘The Void’ that had met success both in South Korea and in the West. And that you are signed under VS Media for four years. 

He then went to youtube and watched old clips of you in various variety shows. Along the way, he would pick up a lot of information about you. Like your ideal type, how you handle stressful situations and your little habit of eating. He especially liked it when you had your hair down and colored it black. 

The following day he woke up around noon and instead of getting up and washing himself, he picked up his phone and scrolled for anything new under your name. Nothing much came up, just the real time rankings of your songs. Setting his phone down, he finally got up and washed. 

Was it supposed to be like this? Hongjoong’s bugged him how he didn’t know what you could be doing. You could be whipping up another masterpiece and he wouldn’t know. He was bothered by that idea. Further scrolling through your searches in various social medias, he finally stumbled upon posts that caught his attention. 

“ Y/N real personality - $6 “ 

“ Y/N home address - $7 “ 

“ Y/N phone number and email - $20 “ 

“ Y/N IG email and password - $50 “ 

“ Y/N KKT - $5 “ 

“ Y/N Line - $5 “ 

This is it! A wide smile appeared on Hongjoong’s lips as he stumbled upon these posts. Finally ending his pain of waiting for something when finally he found these goodies and are now in his hands. He quickly searched for his credit card before contacting these people to make a purchase. That night, you were irritated how an unknown caller kept begging you while you tried to sleep. At the same time, there was an anonymous contact that kept messaging you in different apps. You sighed, leaving no choice but to remove the battery of your phone and finally getting some good night sleep. 

To say he was bored was understatement. He picked up his guitar and learned the strings to play Falling. In a matter of an hour, he had his equipment set up and started to record himself singing in an acoustic version. After a while, he polished his records and edited a few in his three minute video before uploading it on the same day. Hongjoong played another song from your recent album tilted ‘ Main Character ‘ this time, the song had a beat drop in the chorus, your honey vocals soothing the song. It was a song that's perfect for clubbing. He was truly blown away. ‘What a versatile artist’ he thought to himself. Switching his guitar for his piano, he recorded himself once more. 

500,000 views. Overnight, Hongjoong’s cover of Falling gathered that amount and his video was the talk under your search name. He felt giddy and excited, he was happy that a few fan accounts were talking about him. He conversed with them for a little while, trying to make his name a popular name among your fandom community. 

Much to his surprise, you had an Instagram live happening right now! Quickly clicking on your account. His heartbeat beating quickly at how sexy you looked. Hair sprawled all over, your bare but pretty face with a white shirt on. ‘ So fuckable, could shove my tongue down her throat and - ‘ his thoughts were halted when you played his cover in your background. 

“I like this cover so much! This...Hongjoong? Did I pronounced it correctly? Is a genius!” You smiled, your eyesmile showing. He began jumping around his room and throwing his pillows everywhere. Finally you noticed him! He didn’t needed to use his other phone to bug you while you were having a live chat. 

[jmnjmnjmn]

Celebrity crush | part 2 | JK x Reader x RM mini series

Pairing: Namjoon x Celebrity!Reader x Jungkook

Key words: christmas, celebrity crush, singer, idol.

Warnings: drinking, swearing, jealousy, slight panic attack

Word count: around 9,000

Writing this was something... There will be a part 3, there simply has to be... Please let me know if you would like me to write to endings - one for each ship. It is a lot of work, but I am battling with myself about doing it anyway hehe. 

For a better read play yourselves those songs:

When I Fell In Love: this song is a loose translation of When I Fall In Love by Primary

Not Bothered: heavily inspired by It’s Okay If You Forget Me by Astrid S, but I imagine it sounding more positive and upbeat like Thank U, Next by Ariana Grande

Private lounge song: Spoil My Night by Post Malone

Inspo board

Masterlist

Namjoon exhaled deeply as the song blasting through his earbuds came to an abrupt end. He locked his phone and wrapped the cable around it before throwing it into the depths of his black backpack beneath his feet. He was in a car with Hoseok, driving home from a recording session.

“What is it?” He asked, glancing towards him. Namjoon looked at him cluelessly as the sound of his friend’s voice brought him back to earth.

“Huh?”

“You sighed so deeply.” He explained. “Something happened?” Namjoon smiled lightly and shook his head.

“No, it’s just- (Y/N) released a new song.” They both chuckled at the effect this girl had on him. “But- I mean- it’s a very dramatic one.” Namjoon added quickly as if he was justifying himself. “It talks very bluntly about ending a long term relationship and being more than okay with it.” Hoseok nodded with a suggestive grin. “It actually made me a little sad, but also… It got me thinking that…” Namjoon gave himself a couple of extra seconds before telling him what really was on his mind the whole time he was listening to (Y/N)’s new song. “She’s probably single right now.”

“Gosh, this is just too funny.” Hoseok shook his head, stopping at a red light. “You should ask Jungkook to give you her number.” Namjoon felt his cheeks going red almost instantly at the thought.

“No…” He murmured looking down at his lap. “Should I?”

“Yes!” Hoseok exclaimed. “It’s right there. Try or you’ll regret it.”

“Okay.” He nodded, trying to encourage himself. “I’ll ask Jungkook when we get home-”

“No, ask him right now!” Hoseok cut him off. “You’ll chicken out when we’re home.” He urged him, knowing Namjoon well enough to be sure that that’s exactly what would happen if he didn’t act right away. “Do it.” Namjoon took his phone out of his backpack and weighed it in his hand for a moment before unlocking it. He tapped on the KakaoTalk icon and drafted a long message to his group’s maknae. “Wait, what are you- just ask him! You don’t have to write an essay about why you want it. It’s not like he doesn’t know.” Hoseok laughed as he glanced at Namjoon’s screen where he already managed to type up a three paragraph text.

“Okay, okay.” Namjoon sighed, deleting the entirety of the message and replacing it with a greeting and a simple question. His stomach raised to his throat when he finally pressed the ‘sent’ arrow. As the lights changed from red to green Namjoon’s phone buzzed in his hand. “He sent it.” Hoseok smiled, patting his shoulder.

“You see? Wasn’t that hard.” Namjoon felt his head beginning to hurt as he realised what was supposed to come next.

“But… What do I write to her now?” He asked, totally clueless.

In the meantime Jungkook was sitting on the couch in the BTS dorm trying to put a finger on how he was feeling and why. Namjoon just texted him asking for (Y/N) number and he sent it to him without hesitation, but as he did it he felt something. A bitter fiery feeling inside his chest that he couldn’t describe any other way. Before he could stop himself he already typed and sent another message to his group’s leader.

“Why though?” Namjoon viewed the message instantly and replied within seconds. “I want to congratulate her on the new single” Jungkook cocked his eyebrow, reading the words on the screen.

He quickly typed (Y/N)’s name into YouTube and opened the most recent video. Nodding he carefully eyed the dance choreography and couldn’t help himself reminiscing the time they danced together. He opened KakaoTalk again, but instead of answering Namjoon he scrolled down his chat list stopping at (Y/N)’s and his selfie she still had set up as her profile picture. Involuntarily he smiled to himself as he started typing.

-

“You have been chosen!” Taehyung’s loud cheers echoed down the empty hallways of the BigHit headquarters as he shook on Jungkook’s shoulder.

Seven of the boys were on their way to dance practice when their manager called them into his office for a quick chat. It ended up as more of an announcement than a conversation since all of them were in deep shock after hearing what he had to say.

“I just received a very interesting call.” Their manager started with a mischievous look on his face. “It was from overseas.” He continued with the same tone, wanting to keep them in suspense. “A proposition of collaboration with Jungkook from a very popular artist.” The boys looked at each other with cluelessness in their eyes. “It was (Y/N)’s manager.” He finally stated, not being able to withhold the information for any longer. Jungkook widened his eyes at him. “She’s going to be putting out a Christmas single this year and wants it to be in collaboration with you.” 

“Stop.” Jungkook told his friend off with a smile plastered on his face.

“It’s true you’re the one.” Hoseok chimed in. “She practiced with you, she asked for your number and now she wants you for the Christmas single.” He counted all their joint activities on his fingers.

“Such a popular guy. Jungkook’s in demand.” The group chattered teasingly.

“How do you do this, huh?” Taehyung asked, throwing his arm around Jungkook. His sweet smile quickly turned into a cheeky grin as he ruffled his hair. “You were just your charming self?” Jungkook laughed with the rest of the guys, as he felt his cheeks become hotter, minute by minute.

“I mean we talked. Once or twice.” He said, trying to sound nonchalant. Jimin raised his eyebrows at him.

“Once or twice?” Jungkook’s cheeks were visibly red by now.

“Twice.” He admitted happily. “Once in March and then she messaged me on my birthday, but I told you about that.” Jimin eyed his friends face with extreme interest.

“What did you talk about?” He pressed as they walked into the practice room.

���Well, first I congratulated her on the success of Not Bothered in March and we talked a bit and then she just wished me a happy birthday last week.”

“Gosh, I’m so jealous.” Namjoon whined, bending down to tie his shoes. He was the one that got the boys into (Y/N)’s music - or more accurately forced them to listen to it long enough they began to share his love for it as well. He was happy for Jungkook’s success, but he couldn’t help himself and felt a little bitter. “I mean a single with her is one thing, but birthday wishes..." He shook his head. ”That’s another level of familiarity."

“Your birthday’s in four days. Maybe she’ll message you too.” Seokjin joked, patting him on his shoulder comfortingly at which Namjoon chuckled.

“Doubtful.”

“Jungkook, ask (Y/N) to wish Namjoon a happy birthday.” Hoseok proposed with a laugh. “It would make his life.”

Tired after hours of going over different dance routines Jungkook lied down on the floor of the practice room panting. He brushed his hair back from his face. The hard feeling of the boards under his back got him thinking about the time he was teaching (Y/N) Boy With Luv choreography on the very same dance floor.

“Jungkook, your phone is buzzing.” Jimin called walking up to him with his phone in hand. He thanked him, grabbing the device. As his eyes met the bright screen he choked on his own tongue, earning a laugh from his friend. “Are you okay?” He asked, hitting his back with an open palm to help him catch his breath again.

“It’s (Y/N).” He finally croaked out. Jimin widened his eyes and squatted next to him.

“Guys, (Y/N) just messaged Jungkook.” He called out with excitement. “What did she say?” He urged him, looking over his shoulder onto his screen.

“Heard you said yes to my Christmas project.” Jungkook read aloud. “We’ll probably record in November. Can’t wait. Pink heart emoji.” With each word he read the boys made more and more comments regarding how lucky he was, how talented, how cool the whole experience was going to be and how happy they were for him. Even Namjoon, though still a little heart broken over (Y/N)’s choice, patted his shoulder with a sincere smile on his face. After a moment of staring at his telephone screen with disbelief Jungkook looked up to his hyungs from the ground. “What should I write back?”

From that moment on Jungkook and (Y/N) have been talking more frequently. It started quite professionally with her sending over information about the Christmas single and various samples of music and vocals. Within days though their conversations turned into long strings of messages with more of a personal note attached to them. Oftentimes when the members asked him what he was grinning about when staring down at his phone he would answer with a shrug, but after one more press he’d come clean, gloating about how funny or smart (Y/N) and showing them her messages.

“Saw you got nominated for BMA’s” Jungkook waited for the three moving dots to disappear before typing in an answer. Another bubble appeared on the screen and he smiled reading the simple message. “Congrats 💗”

“Thank you!! You too” (Y/N) immediately viewed his text. After less than two seconds another bubble from her came up on the bottom of Jungkook’s screen.

“💗” He smiled looking at the emoji she used with him so often. “We should meet when we’re all there. A little integration before we record next month 🎅” The smile on the boys face grew wider.

“Totally” He typed in quickly and chuckled at the answer she gave him.

“I’ll make sure my people set it up with your people 😉” He shook his head. She sounded so ridiculously famous.

“Can’t wait 😁” He typed back before locking his phone and reaching his hands up to touch his warmed up cheeks.

-

The black SUV slowly made its way down one of Los Angeles’s freeways. It was nearing two o’clock in the morning when it crossed the gates of a private estate in which (Y/N)’s house was located.

“Woah, this is crazy. Like from the movies.” The boys of BTS chattered between each other as they looked out the shaded windows of the car.

There were mansions left and right, long drive ways and high gates protecting whoever lived behind them. The car stopped and the driver rolled down his window. He said something to an intercom outside and the metal gate in front of the hood opened up, slowly revealing an insanely big house with a driveway the size of a whole parking lot, crowded with expensive vehicles. As the boys spilled out of the car a man dressed in all black approached their head staff member who just got out of the front seat. They chatted for a brief moment before he walked up to them rubbing his hands.

“You’re on your own now. We’ll head back to the hotel and pick you up when you call.” He explained with a thin smile. “Her security says she’s been informed of your arrival and that you should just go inside.” The boys looked at each other a little worried. Suddenly everything seemed so real and serious. “Go on. Have fun.” He encouraged them before getting back inside the company car.

“Ah, I’m nervous.” Jungkook sighed as the seven of them walked towards the front door of the house.

“Let’s be cool guys.” Namjoon said more to himself than his members. Inside he was trembling, but he desperately wanted to appear calm and collected in front of his celebrity crush. He took a deep breath before speaking up again. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“It’s like an american movie.” Hoseok chuckled when another man dressed in black jeans and a t-shirt of the same colour opened the door for them.

All of their jaws dropped when they entered the house. The walls seemed to go up for an endless amount of space until they reached the ceiling. The hardwood floors were so shiny they wondered whether they should take their shoes off on entering.

“Where do we-” Jimin started, but lost his train of thought somewhere in the middle of the question.

“Let’s just… Follow the music?” Namjoon asked unsure. The rest of the group nodded in agreement, but before they took more than two steps forward a small figure appeared in one of the doorways of the fourier. She smiled brightly as she walked towards them dressed in her signature look, oversized dress and thigh high booties.

“Hi.” (Y/N) dragged the word as she made her way to the group of boys. “It’s so great to see you, you.” She grinned opening her arms out towards Jungkook. Namjoon felt his heart break into pieces as he saw the shine in her eyes when she looked at the youngest of them. “Hi. I’m so happy you’re all here. Hi.” She kept repeating as she greeted the rest of the boys with hugs as well.

“Your home is beautiful.” Namjoon jumped in with a praising tone.

“Thank you.” She said, bringing both her hands to her chest. “I literally got here like fifteen minutes before you guys. The traffic- the whole event- well, it was hectic to say the least.” She stumbled on her words with a chuckle as she led them down a beautifully decorated hallway. “Some people are already here.” She explained gesturing to the open living and dining space where about thirty or forty people were hanging out in small groups. “It’s more of a low key kind of thing. It’s no concert afterparty.” She giggled, referencing the last party they attended together. She finally stopped in an area with a huge kitchen with white cabinetry and marble countertops and turned to face them, a sweet smile on her face. “I hope it’s okay with you.” They all energetically nodded and chimed some words of agreement making (Y/N)’s smile even wider. “Well, make yourselves at home. There’s drink here and the food’s there. I have to go be with my girls right now, but let’s definitely catch up later.” She let her gaze rest on Jungkook for a particularly long while as she was speaking earning a nervous smile from him. After exchanging see-you-later’s she joined a group of girls on the outside terrace grabbing herself a glass of chilled champagne on the way.

For the next hour or so the boys mostly stuck to themselves. They chatted with some dancers, some music producers, some people of whose professions they never heard of before. 

“I’m kind of tired.” Taehyung told Jungkook and Namjoon as the clock hit three o’clock. They went to get drinks from the kitchen as the rest of the boys stayed outside by the pool. “Maybe we should go-” His proposition of leaving was cut off by some person’s loud shout.

“Yes! We wanna hear you sing!” A girl in a branded tracksuit exclaimed as (Y/N) laughed uncontrollably, sitting beside her on the big white couch. “Where’s the remote?” The girl dug up a TV remote from under the coffee table in front of her and turned the device on. After a couple of seconds she connected her phone to it and everyone gathered inside saw her look up ‘karaoke’ on YouTube.

“Oh my god, no.” (Y/N) chuckled covering her face. 

“Come on, (Y/N). You promised you’ll sing.” Her friend begged jokingly until she finally looked up at her.

“Okay.” She sighed. She got up looking around the room at all the familiar faces when her gaze stopped at the boy standing by the kitchen island. “Taehyung, want a repeat of last time?” Suddenly everyone was looking at Taehyung, standing with his friends and a glass of red wine in his hand. He laughed nervously and scratched the back of his head. “You pick the song?” (Y/N) proposed with a cheeky smile.

“Okay.” He finally answered and set his glass down on the kitchen counter to go join her in the living area. (Y/N) took out two hand mics from the cupboard under the TV set and handed him one.

“So, what will it be?” She looked at him sweetly.

Taehyung ended up choosing Ariana Grande’s No Tears Left To Cry. Their performance turned out flawless which got everyone pumped up and set the tone for the rest of the night. After the two handed their mics to the next tipsy person wanting to sing their heart out (Y/N) grabbed Taehyung’s wrist and pulled him to the side.

“I really enjoy singing with you.” She looked up at him. “I think we have great musical chemistry.”

“Me too.” He nodded as they walked towards the two guys he earlier left in the kitchen.

“Boys!” (Y/N) called out as she skipped over to them. “I realised I never gave you the tour of the place. You want to go see my studio?” Namjoon quickly swallowed his drink to explain her proposition to Jungkook and Taehyung, but it wasn’t necessary as they immediately agreed and nodded energetically. “Great, follow me.”

She walked them around a house with a drink in her hand telling them about the renovations she had to do in particular rooms. After about five or ten minutes of that they finally got to the studio she earlier mentioned. The space was big, combined of multiple rooms. One a recording booth with plush couches, another a writing room with expensive guitars on the walls, another a fully equipped dance studio and so on.

“And here is where we’ll be recording next month with JK.” She pointed to an empty side of the recording booth. “The equipment is being delivered.” She explained with a chuckle as the three seemed to look a little surprised.

“I can’t wait.” Jungkook smiled at her and she averted her eyes to the floor before continuing with the tour.

“And here is-”

“Your dance studio.” Jungkook interrupted her at which she looked up at him with a smile.

“Yeah.” 

“I recognise it from the photos.” They stood there for a moment just smiling at each other, before Taehyung chimed in.

“Photos?” He asked walking into the middle of the squicky clean dance floor.

“I sent him pictures from here once or twice.” (Y/N) explained and Taehyung hummed in understanding for which Namjoon was deeply thankful, because it masked the heavy sigh that just escaped his lips. “We should dance something.” (Y/N) suddenly proposed with excitement in her voice.

“You and me.” Jungkook exclaimed, matching her tone. The alcohol made the nervous feeling rising up in his chest disappear. “Boy With Luv.” (Y/N) laughed running towards a computer in the corner of the room to turn on the music.

“I hope I remember the moves.” She took positions with Jungkook by her side in front of the floor to ceiling mirrors as the music started to play. They barely got through the first verse when (Y/N) stopped. “I can’t dance in these shoes.” She laughed, taking off her high heeled boots and quickly meeting Jungkook in the next move of the routine.

Taehyung chuckled and clapped his hands, sitting on the ground in front of them, watching the performance when Namjoon leaned on the wall behind them, looking sadly at the scene unfolding before him. After the song ended the three of them started freestyling to (Y/N)’s spring single Not Bothered.

“I don't feel sorry for myself or care if you're holdin’ somebody else. No, I’m not bothered. Ain’t bothered.” Taehyung pulled Namjoon in to join them and even though he wasn’t really feeling it he decided to try and pull himself out of this slump. “I don't feel empty now that you're gone. Doesn’t mean you didn't mean nothing at all, but I won’t get jealous if you’re happy. No, I won’t. I’m not bothered. No, I ain't bothered." Somehow Jungkook knew the entire choreography to the song and joined (Y/N) in singing the lyrics of the song. “From everything to nothing at all. From every day to never at all. But I’m fine. I’m not bothered.” As the speakers went silent the four broke into laughter intermittened with slight panting from the sudden movements.

“What’s the story behind this one?” Namjoon asked as (Y/N) passed them a bottle of Fiji water each from the glass fridge by the wall. The atmosphere seemed to have shifted as soon as he asked the question, but it was too late to take it back. She took a big sip of her drink before answering with her signature sweet smile.

“It’s pretty self explanatory.” She chuckled finally.

“But did it really happen?” He pressed before he could stop himself and she exhaled a weak laugh as she looked him in the eye.

“I wouldn’t be calling out such specific events if they didn’t happen.” She explained as she stretched her arms over her head. Namjoon nodded, knowing that one more question would probably be considered as crossing the line so he decided upon a compliment.

“It’s really good.”

“Thanks. I like it too.” (Y/N) took another sip of her water before nodding to herself. “It’s my own little self love anthem,”

-

“AH!” Namjoon exclaimed, dropping an eggshell into the pan for the third time this morning.

“Jeez, what is it with you?” Yoongi looked up from his phone at him. Namjoon just sighed, leaving his question unanswered.

The truth was he was too ashamed to tell anybody why he was so on edge lately. He dug out the shell from the pan and stirred his eggs furiously as he started thinking about it again, ‘it’ meaning Jungkook and (Y/N). Yesterday morning he left for a three day stay in the States to record his Christmas single with her and it drove Namjoon insane. He imagined them having a blast singing the song and shooting the music video together, laughing about how stupid he is for liking (Y/N) when she’s so obviously into the youngest member. 

“She chose him.” He repeated in his head. “She chose him. Get over it, Joon.” He scraped the burned eggs from the pan onto a clean plate and stomped over to the kitchen table where Yoongi was sitting. “No wonder. He’s a better dancer and singer. He’s closer to her in age, he’s more confident.” He started spiraling into a pit of despair when Yoongi spoke up again.

“You’re taller though.” He said without even looking up at Namjoon from his phone.

“What?” He asked in shock. “Was I- did I say all that out loud?” He stammered in embarrassment. Yoongi just hummed as a response and Namjoon felt his face burning up. That’s it for keeping his jealousy a secret. “Can you not tell Jungkook about this?” Yoongi exhaled loudly, shaking his head.

“Wasn’t going to.”

“Thanks.” Namjoon answered, looking down at his failed attempt of scrambled eggs on the plate before him.

“But you should.” His friend added out of the blue. Namjoon looked at him with his eyebrows raised high on his forehead.

“What?”

“It’s obviously eating you up from inside that he’s spending time with (Y/N).” He explained, still scrolling through something on his phone. “You should talk to him about it or stop it altogether." Namjoon put down his fork with a sigh.

“How am I supposed to stop them?” He asked, hoping Yoongi had some brilliant idea ready for him.

“Not them, idiot.” He scolded him. He locked his phone and stuffed it in his jeans pocket as he stood up from the table. “Stop yourself from thinking about it. Make yourself get over it or something.”

“Oh.” Namjoon looked back down from his friend onto his plate. Though the sight of its contents deeply disgusted him he decided upon forcing himself to eat at least a bite or two. The jealousy that started raging in him as soon as Jungkook left for America made him unable to eat so when he finally felt hungry he wanted to stuff himself with something healthy. Hence the eggs.

“Honestly, Namjoon.” Yoongi’s voice was serious, almost as if he was warning him. “You have to do something about it. You’ll regret it if you won’t.”

As his friend closed his bedroom door behind him he left Namjoon all alone in the common space of the BTS dorm. He exhaled loudly, letting his shoulders relax and his arms fall down to his sides. (Y/N) seemed to have taken a sincere liking towards Jungkook and he couldn’t do anything about it. Not now at least. Now it was too late. He stirred his eggs lazily, feeling more hopeless than ever.

“Woah! I love it!” He heard Taehyung and Jimin chatter in the next room. “Send it to the group chat.” One of them exclaimed and within a second Namjoon’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and opened the message in the BTS group chat.

“A little teaser of the Christmas single.” The text beneath a video file forwarded by Jimin read. Namjoon pressed the white triangle in the middle of it and instantly regretted his decision. 

“When did I fall in love with you? When did I start opening up?” Jungkook’s flawless vocals filled his ears as he watched him sing, standing in the middle of (Y/N)’s home studio’s recording booth. “Without hiding, without me knowing when I fell in love. When I fell in love.”

“It’s supposed to be a Christmas single, not a Valentine's one.” He scoffed to himself, knowing that getting over his infatuation with (Y/N) was going to be a harder task than he initially thought.

“She’s going to start posting the official teasers next week, the lyric video will come out on the first and the music video on the fifth of December.” Jungkook babbled with excitement.

The seven of them were having dinner at the BigHit office as they were busy with preparing for their group’s winter comeback. Their youngest member has just yesterday come back from his trip visiting (Y/N) in her Los Angeles home where most of the recording for her Christmas single took place and was now telling his friends about every little detail of the whole experience.

“I can’t wait for the release of the video.” He smiled brightly as the rest of the boys congratulated him once again on getting such a great opportunity. Namjoon just hummed in agreement with them, because he couldn’t trust himself to sound sincere if he decided to speak up as well. “Also she’s going to be in Tokyo in mid December.” Namjoon knew (Y/N) was going to be in Asia next month for the four-week-long promotional tour of her new album, but still his ears perked up at the statement. “And she invited me to join her during the live show to perform When I Fell In Love. Our PD says I should do it.” He felt his spirit getting crushed as Jungkook finished his sentence and the rest of the group erupted in words of surprise and praise directed at the maknae.

Looking up from his plate Namjoon noticed Yoongi giving him a meaningful glare. He quickly averted his gaze as he felt his head getting hot at the memory of the conversation they had not so long ago. Yoongi couldn’t take looking at his friend in that state any longer and decided to take the matter into his own hands.

“Ah, Namjoon’s handling this so well. Isn't he?” He asked nonachalantly. Namjoon looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Yeah, you always had such a huge crush on (Y/N) and wanted to work with her so badly.” Hoseok quickly joined in.

“If I were you I would be fuming with jealousy." Yoongi added, playing his part perfectly.

“It must be so hard for you, hyung.” Taehyung jumped in, patting Namjoon on his shoulder to comfort him.

“I’m fine.” He answered half-heartedly. The simple phrase proved to be enough for the five of his friends, but in one of their minds doubts started growing.

Jungkook looked at his group's leader, his friend of so many years, with a puzzled expression. He was so focused on making a good impression on (Y/N), so nervous when they were together that he totally forgot about the fact that it was Namjoon’s idea to go to her concert in the first place. He wondered if he really meant what he just said, if he really was ‘fine’. After all (Y/N) was just his celebrity crush. Everyone has one. He didn’t really know her, at least not like Jungkook did. They talked and connected, it was different with her for him he thought. They spent an awful lot of time together when he came over to shoot and record with her for her Christmas single. The romantic nature of the music video and the lyrics made it even more clear for him that he in fact had feelings for her. It also ensured him that she felt something towards him too.

Jungkook breathed in sharply and took another bite of his meal trying to not overthink the situation. The possibility of both him and Namjoon liking the same girl made him uncomfortable, but he wasn’t going to suppress his feelings because of that. He wasn’t a type to give up that easily.

-

(Y/N) sat in her dressing room looking in the mirror, watching herself become more and more perfect by the minute as her beauty team rushed around her, putting in her hair, finishing up her makeup.

“Three minutes.” Someone one the other side of the door called out.

For today's performance she was wearing the same outfit she had on in New York and Toronto, the same one she was going to wear in London and Moscow as well - a floor length, skin tight, white dress with long sleeves and a slit down the side. It was the look from the cover of her newest album, the one she was promoting with the four-week and five-shows-long tour.

“Two minutes.” Her new hair extensions were falling down her shoulders in long, lashcious cascades a couple of shades lighter than her natural colour.

“One.” (Y/N) tilted her head making them catch light and shine in the reflection.

“Show time.” She stood up from her chair  and walked out the door onto the backstage where she had to greet several people she never met before and thank them for coming to her show. In those moments she really wondered why she didn’t become an actress, faking smiles and deep interest in total strangers was practically second nature to her at this point.

After that little show was over she walked down the dimly lit hallway to meet with her friends and dancers hanging out in the private lounge. As she opened the door she noticed one person she wasn’t expecting to see.

“Jungkook?” She asked, eyeing the boy. He was dressed in black from head to toe, his dark hair styled to fall neatly over his forehead. He already met everyone present in the room when visiting her in Los Angeles to record the Christmas single. “How did you get in here?” He reached to the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a lineard with a plastic badge attached to it.

“I have uh- special pass.” (Y/N) smiled, opening her arms as she approached him. Jungkook mirrored her movements and they greeted each other with a hug and kiss on the cheek as they always did. “How are you?” He asked, letting go. (Y/N) looked around her friends' faces with a slight frown.

“Honestly, I’m a little nervous tonight.” She confessed, biting her lip and instantly scolding herself in her mind for it. She was wearing matte lipstick and didn’t want to go through another makeup touchup before the concert.

“Why? It’s going to be great. What is it? You’ll be fine.” They all spoke silmunaniously and she just chuckled, looking down to her feet.

She couldn’t tell them, or at least not all of them. Some of the people surrounding her right now - her closest friends, her dancers - knew why she felt the way she felt today, but some would be shocked if she revealed the whole story to them since she successfully kept it secret for so long. As she lifted her head back up she put on another one of those fake smiles and reassured everyone it must be just regular stage-fright, but in reality she was just profoundly sad.

Today was her ex-boyfriend’s birthday and although in just two months it would be a year since their break up she couldn’t stop herself and went to stalk his Instagram and Twitter profiles earlier in the day to see how he’s been celebrating. The fact that he wasn’t much of a public person and used his social media accounts mostly for liking others' posts made it so much harder for (Y/N) not to blow up when she noticed the black and white picture on his timeline.

“Spending my day with my boo 💑 ilysm” She shook her head at the memory of the simple caption underneath a picture of two people kissing in some restaurant’s booth. She hated herself for letting it influence her so strongly. She felt angry. She felt sad. She felt jealous, not necessarily of him, not really. At this point she was jealous of everyone who had a partner, everyone who could post pictures of them online without millions of hate comments appearing within seconds of posting it or without it hindering their public image, everyone who had the ability to call out ‘honey, I’m home’ when entering their house without lying.

(Y/N) sighed deeply trying to relieve some of the tension still pent up in her body despite being on stage for the past forty minutes. Having the setlist memorised she knew what song came next. The lights went dark for a moment before all the screens behind her back depicted falling snowflakes and snippets of the music video for When I Fell In Love. The audience cheered in excitement as (Y/N) took her position in the middle of the stage under the blinding spotlight and started singing the first verse.

“You and I. Did someone stop the time? ‘Cause it feels like I’m a child and you’re the presents underneath, underneath the Christmas tree.” Jungkook stood backstage, gripping his microphone tightly afraid it might slip through his sweaty fingers. He tapped his foot on the floor waiting for a sign from the sound guy to walk out on stage and join (Y/N) in the chorus. “Don’t know when, but at some point everything changed for me with you and I don’t know when looking at each other became this little habit of ours.” He felt a pat on his shoulder signaling it’s Jungkook’s queue. He breathed out and brought the microphone to his lips as he walked out on stage.

“When did I fall in love with you? When did I start opening up?” (Y/N) outstretched her hand towards him and he took it. “Without hiding, without me knowing when I fell in love. When I fell in love.” The two of them sang, still mirroring the scene from the music video streaming on the big screens behind them where they played two people realising they were in love on Christmas day.

A couple of songs later (Y/N) walked off stage for a sip of water before the encore. Her beauty team gathered around her tweaking individual hairs and straightening up her dress. The crowd outside roared as the first notes of Not Bothered played, the last number of the night.

“Fighting, (Y/N)!” She turned around, searching for the source of the encouraging words. After a couple of seconds of looking around she noticed Jungkook standing with a couple of people whose faces she didn’t recognise. He had both of his hands up with his thumbs and index fingers crossed, making two tiny hearts. (Y/N) smiled weakly at the sight and nodded his way. She was feeling everything but ready to perform this particular song, but still walked out in a confident strut, surrounded by her dancers.

“I’m sorry I need a moment. (Y/N) breathed out as she walked to her dressing room, her beauty team and assistant right behind her. “Alone.” She added and closed the door behind herself. She leaned on it and slid down to the ground with a muffled sob. After singing that song she felt far from Not Bothered. She hugged her legs to her chest, digging her nails into the soft material of her dress, trying to calm her breath down, but she couldn’t. She raised herself up and paced back and forth around the small room, covering her trembling lips with the palm of her hand. After some time she stopped, looking at herself in the mirror. “Stop it, stop it.” She whispered, shooting an angry glare at the reflection. She wiped her cheeks with her hands and breathed in shakily, walking to the door to let her team in. “I’ll be fine.” She stated at the sight of their worried faces. “I just need a makeup touch up.” 

-

“It’s official.” The sweet voice echoed through Namjoon’s ears. He looked up from his laptop in search of its source which he immediately noticed. “I’ll see ya’ll at Coachella.” Jungkook smiled fondly, looking down at his phone. “It’s official. I’ll see ya’ll at Coachella.” The voice said once again. The maknae tapped his phone’s screen twice, undoubtedly liking a video (Y/N) just posted on one of her social media accounts.

Before he could give it another thought Namjoon was already typing (Y/N)’s name into his computer’s search engine. He glanced over a couple of articles and pressed on the link taking him to her official site. 

“Delight World Tour” He read a title written in a thick font of the colour of baby pink. Mindlessly he scrolled down already scanning his screen in search of his city’s name. “Seoul, South Korea - 16th of June - Seoul Olympic Stadium.”

*click*

Namjoon’s head snapped back towards Jungkook. He stood by the living room window with his arm outstretched in front of him to take a selfie. He quickly brought the phone back down and started typing.

“Hyung, how do you say- how do you change the word ‘delight’ into a verb in English?” He asked looking up at him. Namjoon froze in place, wondering why Jungkook was asking about that particular word. He didn’t have to wonder for long. “I want to message (Y/N) about Coachella. You know she’s like a headliner or something? So far I wrote: How delightful. Is that okay? I wanted to do like a little word play with her album’s name since-” Namjoon slapped his laptop shut.

“Delightful is not a verb. It’s an adjective.” He cut him off. “And yes, it’s fine.” He added standing up from the couch and storming away to his room.

He threw his computer on the bed and shut the door behind himself with a loud thud. Right as he did that he sighed and quickly opened the door back up. Walking back to the living room he noticed confused Jungkook standing where he left him, looking down at his phone.

“I’m sorry.” Namjoon mumbled, scratching his forehead. This, though definitely late, was a perfect time to come clean to Jungkook and tell him how he really felt about whatever it was that was between him and (Y/N), but he opted for an excuse instead. “I’m just tired.” Jungkook muttered some words of understanding, but Namjoon couldn’t really hear much sincerity in them. All he could think about was his jealousy. “Are you going to be seeing (Y/N) when she comes to Seoul?” He asked, trying to sound as casual as he could.

“Ah, she 's coming? When?” Namjoon had to use all his willpower not to roll his eyes at the boy.

“Yeah, in June. For the Delight tour.” Jungkook opened his eyes wider in realisation. He quickly unlocked his phone and started typing again.

“I guess I could ask her about it while I’m at it.” He said with his eyes glued to the tiny screen before him.

“While you’re at it…” Namjoon muttered under his breath and Jungkook hummed in question. “Don’t you think it’s a little too early for that?” He asked, hoping to plant a seed of uncertainty in his friend's mind.

“No, the sooner the better.” He chimed and looked at his group’s leader with a smile. “She says we should totally meet up.” Namjoon’s plan not only didn’t work, it totally backfired on him. He nodded and went back to his room, quietly locking the door this time.

-

The boys sat in one of those monthly meetings where their manager went over the whole schedule set for them for the next four weeks. Halfway through the hour-long sit down they were already feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of appearances and live shows they have to do only the following week. 

“And going into the second week of June, on sixteenth Jungkook’s attending Delight-” Namjoon involuntarily slapped both his hands on his thighs in sudden shock. “Namjoon?” The manager asked.

“Yeah- no- sorry, I- could- is- is Jungkook going alone?” He finally stuttered out. As he received an affirmative answer he opened his mouth again. “I- could- could I go as well?” He asked, feeling the blood rush to his face. The manager stalled for a moment before he finally let out a simple ‘yes’.

“JK and RM.” Jungkook chimed, raising his hand in a high five motion towards his friend as if they just landed a good deal together.

On the day of the concert both Namjoon and Jungkook woke up with big smiles on their faces. They both hummed to themselves while washing their teeth, their feet felt light walking on the ground and went through their day feeling somewhere close to invincible. It was almost funny. Especially, because the reason behind their positive attitude was also the same and that was (Y/N).

“You think she’ll have time for us before the show?” Namjoon asked, checking the time on his phone for the millionth time since they got in the company car.

“Ah, for sure. Last time we hung out in the private lounge for almost an hour with the dancers.” He answered nonchalantly. Namjoon looked out the window of the car at the long line of fans in front of the venue. He unconsciously sighed which didn’t go unnoticed by his friend sitting beside him in the backseat. “Just be cool.” Jungkook stated, glancing his way.

The youngest member of BTS walked the backstage like it was his own concert. He greeted people that worked the show, some dancers and some staff, he grabbed himself a bottle of water from a stand in the corridor. Namjoon just walked behind him, hoping his nervousness will magically evaporate once he sees (Y/N).

“JK!” Someone called as they passed by a half open double door. Jungkook stopped in his tracks and peaked his head inside the room.

“Hey!” He exclaimed and walked inside.

Namjoon took a breath before entering the room, unsure what he’ll be met with inside. When he crossed the doorway he noticed Jungkook side-hugging some guy in a baby pink sweatsuit with the name ‘Johnny’ embroidered over his heart.

“This is my friend from my group, RM.” Namjoon stepped forward ready to give the guy a hand shake, but he went in for the hug and kiss combo.

While his hyung was dealing with Johnny, (Y/N)’s close friend and one of her main dancers, Jungkook greeted other staff already gathered in the private lounge. He didn’t have time to introduce him to them though, because the star of the night, one and only (Y/N), showed up right after them.

“Hey!” She called out, dragging the last letter of the word.

She was dressed in the same outfit the rest of the dance crew was wearing, only she had her own name embroidered on the front of the baby pink sweatshirt. Her hair was down, falling over her shoulders in light waves that reached over her waist.

“The tag goes with your outfit.” She joked flicking the baby pink ‘VIP’ tag Jungkook had pinned to his shirt. He chuckled and she opened her arms to properly greet him with a hug, that in Namjoon’s mind lasted a tad bit too long. As they finally let go of each other (Y/N) turned to Namjoon with a smile just as sweet and sincere as the one she granted Jungkook with. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Namjoon answered smoothly, mentally high-fiving himself for coming up with that.

“Are you performing in this?” Jungkook asked, pulling on the sleeve of her sweatshirt, making Namjoon wonder if they ever partook in any more skinship than the hugs (Y/N) gave him.

“No.” (Y/N) chuckled, waving him off. They seemed to be so comfortable with each other, so innocent and cute.

“This is just for the backstage, silly.” Johnny explained and reached for (Y/N)’s pant leg. “It’s tear-off. Look.” He pulled on the material undoing a couple of the top buttons and almost giving both Jungkook and Namjoon heartattacks as a bit of (Y/N)’s upper thigh was revealed.

“Johnny!” She scolded him, slapping his hand away and pinning the pant leg closed again. “I’ve got like twenty minutes to spare before I have to go get changed into my real outfit-” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and shot Johnny a serious glare. “-and the same goes for the dance crew.” Johnny just chuckled.

The four made their way to the couches located in the center of the lounge and sat down for some conversation and chilling before the big show.

“How’s Korea treating you?” Namjoon asked as they made themselves comfortable on opposite couches.

“Honestly, it’s been lovely so far.” Johnny answered with a dreamy look in his eyes.

“I agree. Both this time and last time...  It was great.” (Y/N) added. “I wish we had more time to explore though.” Johnny hummed in agreement. “Like, for example last year the only time I spent not working and properly taking in the city was when I went out with you guys.”

“Ah, we should do that again then.” (Y/N) giggled sweetly at his blunt proposition.

-

“(Y/N), 5 minutes.” Her assistant said popping inside the lounge quickly.

“Already? Damn.” She answered in confusion. “Time passes fast in good company.”

“Thanks, sweetie.” Johnny answered her, even though she was looking towards Jungkook and Namjoon who sat on a couch opposite from the one they were sitting on.

“Go get ready, Johnny.” She shut him down with a smile as the four of them chuckled at his comment. “Cheer for me.” (Y/N) said sweetly to the two boys as she stood up.

“Of course!” “Fighting!” They said silmutaniously, bringing a wider smile to her face.

-

“What time is it?” Jungkook asked. With his feet up on the table and a bowl of some candy by his side he looked like he was just hanging out in his own living room when in fact he was a ‘VIP’ guest on the backstage of (Y/N)’s Seoul live show. “What time is it?” He repeated his question as Namjoon was too engulfed in watching (Y/N) perform one of her sexier songs on the big screen in front of them to hear him the first time.

“It’s-” Namjoon looked at his phone screen.”A little after eleven.”

“Before I walk off this stage I would like to take a moment and thank some people.” (Y/N)’s voice echoed from the stage and through the speakers in the lounge. She had both her hands on her chest right now in a gesture of gratitude. “Thank you to all of you that came out tonight. This show is for you and you only.”The gathered crowd started whistling and cheering loudly. “Thank you to all the dancers and the musicians that are on this stage tonight. This concert would be nothing without you.” She gestured around the stage behind her. “And one more to all of the people working their asses off behind this stage. A round of applause for them. Thank you guys. Thank you so much.” She started clapping together with her fans. “Thank you, all of you.” She turned to the audience again. “I love you so much. I love you. Thank you.” The audience was shouting and applauding loudly as (Y/N) raised the mic back up to her lips. “This song is for all the girls and boys who just got out of relationships and need some good lovin’. Come on!” She exclaimed right before the first notes of Not Bothered started playing.

-

Tonight (Y/N) was looking to get drunk, in a respectable kind of way a famous person can get drunk and not lose their reputation. She walked into the club reserved for her concert afterparty somewhere in downtown Seoul in an intimidating formation - with her dance crew besties to both her sides. Her white sneakers shined in the UV lights of the venue contrasting perfectly with the black branded sweatshirt dress she was wearing.

“Six bottles of champagne, please.” She said to the waiter as they walked to the private lounge reserved just for them. It was a spacious room with a black leather couch shaped like the letter ‘U’ and a heavy marble table in the middle. Above the back of the couch hung a big TV screen and across was a venetian mirror, making it so her and her friends could watch the dancing crowd while remaining invisible.

As the night progressed (Y/N)’s friends, dancers, staff, ‘VIP’ guests came and went from the private room while she stayed seated at the bottom of the ‘U’ shaped couch downing drink by drink.

“I have to go to the bathroom.” She murmured more to herself than anybody else as she stood up and walked out the soundproof door. “Sorry.” She mumbled, squeezing through the corridor full of people to make her way to one of the club’s the bathrooms.

“(Y/N).” She heard her name being called by a familiar voice. Looking over her shoulder she noticed Jungkook and Namjoon standing awkwardly with drinks in their hands. Right as she looked into the first boy’s eyes an idea popped into her head.

“Hey, come with me.” She said, walking up to them. “You won’t be needing this.” She took the plastic cups out of their hands and set them on the nearby table. “Come on.” She grabbed Jungkook’s hand. “Don’t get lost.” She warned them and Jungkook grabbed Namjoon’s wrist as (Y/N) pulled him through the swarm of people.

In this weird snake-like formation they got to the top floor of the club where they could let go of each other and walk normally.

“This way.” She said chuckling and almost skipping as she led the two clueless boys to her private lounge. “Welcome to my little kingdom.” She said pushing the heavy door open and revealing a practically empty lounge. “Let’s drink together.” She plopped down on the couch. “Come on.” She encouraged the two as they shyly walked inside and took seats next to her.

It didn’t take much longer for (Y/N) to convince Namjoon and Jungkook to get pissed drunk with her. They started with ordering three half liter bottles of different flavoured soju, then came the bulgogi with tons of side dishes. After that they drank a whole bottle of pink champagne and ordered another serving of japchae, jajangmyeon and pepperoni pizza.

“I want to sing.” (Y/N) suddenly stated, her mouth full of delicious korean food she never ate before.

She stood up from the table and started meddling with the TV on the wall. After a couple of seconds of wrestling she had the remote in her hand. She sat on the counter of the table, her legs resting on the seat of the couch, eyes glued to the bright screen. She opened the YouTube app and typed in the title of one of her current favourite songs. As the music started playing slipped her sneakers off, still sitting on the table, body moving to the smooth beat.

“I don't have much to say, I'll be out front.” Jungkook pointed his arms towards (Y/N) and she stood up from the couch. “Won't you come spoil my night?” He joined in, standing up from his seat. “Feelings come into play-” She started walking towards the empty end of the ‘U’ shaped couch. “-and I'm thinkin' this happens every time.” She jumped down, joining the maknae in a purposeless dance, not caring that her white socks will turn black from the dirty dark carpeting by the end of the song.

They sang, danced, jumped around, twirled under each other’s arms, ran out of breath and laughed throughout the rest of the song. Tired from the sudden performance Jungkook fell back down on the couch, resting his head on the high headboard. (Y/N) slapped his shoulder so he moved to make space for her to sit next to him, Namjoon sitting across from them. 

Jungkook took notice of how close she was right at that moment. Their thighs touched, her shoulder brushed against his as she leaned over the table to get her drink. He looked down at the bare skin of her legs, then his gaze travelled up over the black crewneck to her neck and finally her lips.

“Is that lip gloss?” His lips moved before he could stop himself.

(Y/N) turned her face towards him, her long hair extensions slipped over her shoulder.

“What?” As she looked at him with utter confusion he thanked all gods as he realised he spoke in Korean.

“We should order some more pork!” He exclaimed, still in Korean and looked at Namjoon for translation.

“Uh- he wants to eat pork.” The older boy said eying his junior with suspicion. Did his ears fool him or did he just hear Jungkook ask (Y/N) about her lip gloss?

“Isn’t this pork?” She asked, gesturing with her drink to one of the dishes on the table.

“Ah, yes.” Jungkook chuckled nervously and ran his hand through his hair. “Silly me.” He grabbed his chopsticks and took a big bite of the remaining bulgogi.

Jungkook excused himself to the bathroom with a promise of bringing up at least one bottle of soju on his way back. Feeling his stomach turn from overeating and blurting out stupid comments he walked out onto the corridor and down the stairs to the bar.

Namjoon looked at (Y/N) from across the table. She rested her head in her hands, her eyelids fluttered open and closed slowly as if she was trying not to fall asleep. She looked stunning to him.

“(Y/N)...” He muttered, not entirely sure where this sentence would take him.

“RM.” She whispered back, batting her eyelashes and finally opening her eyes up to look straight at him. “What?” She leaned her head to one side.

“Go out with me.” He simply asked.

It wasn’t that alcohol gave him enough courage to actually say those words it was more that it made him care little enough to try and risk the possibility of getting rejected by his ultimate celebrity crush.

“Like on a date?” She asked unsure of what he meant.

Realising he had to explain himself to her suddenly brought him back to reality. What was he thinking? Asking her out? Asking her out?!

“No, like for dinner. T-to hang out.” He babbled scratching his head.

“Oh.” (Y/N) leaned back onto the headboard behind her. “Okay, sure.” The sweetness of her voice gave Namjoon enough of a nudge to look up at her again. “But I only have time in the late evening, like really late, ‘cause we’re doing some- I have a photoshoot for- and a- ah, whatever.” The amount of alcohol she consumed made it hard for her to form a proper sentence without going off topic. “I have work all day. I can see you in the evening.” Namjoon nodded with a faint smile making its way to his lips. “I’ll text you.” His agreeing answer was drowned by Jungkook’s loud exclamation as he stumbled back through the door.

“Look what I got!” He called with a laugh, raising up two bottles of cherry flavoured soju.

[holidaywishes]

our love story begins...

part seven: our love story begins...

  Summary: You keep your promise to Freddie on the flight from Denmark to Vienna; Wedding planning with your Oma and Opa gets a little stressful and baby Vita is finally welcomed into the world

  Warning: Fluff, some mile high club smut, a bit of a time jump from the last chapter, pregnancy but nothing descriptive

  Author’s Note: I haven’t added to this in over a year and I’m so sorry! I’ve been wanting to continue this story for months but I got caught up in Netflix and Outer Banks and writing those fics and requests and trying to find a job because of being laid off and then just submerging myself in YouTube videos that I haven’t been able to continue this one but I’ve gone back and read the most recent chapter of this series and I’m here to keep going. Because it’s been a year since I last added to the story, the whole pregnancy in this one might be a little jumbled and not so factually accurate -- as in, I’m pretty sure (Y/N) would have more than just a bump at this point and she would be in close to her third trimester and therefore, shouldn’t be flying -- but I know nothing about actual pregnancies so that’s where we’re at. With all the trade rumours constantly swirling, I’m always anxious when I see a new article, post or tag about Freddie and I think that everyone has some of that anxiety as well so I wanted to flood the tags with some fics about the Ginger Goalie. So, I guess what I’m saying is, prepare yourself for a good three or four chapters in this series in the next couple weeks. Lots of love <3 *GIF NOT MINE, DON’T @ ME. FOUND IT ON GOOGLE, SAVED IT, WENT BACK BUT COULDN’T FIND IT AGAIN. LOOKED IN GIF SEARCH AND IT WASN’T THERE EITHER SO 🤷‍♀️*

  masterlist

  the other masterlist

xx

  “We’ll see you soon right?” Charlotte asked as she hugged you goodbye

  “We-”

  “We’ll try,” Freddie interrupted before giving his mom a kiss on the cheek and a hug goodbye, “but we have to go now, Mom”

  “I’ll keep you up to date on the wedding planning and everything” you replied, smiling at Charlotte as Freddie made his way toward the gate

  “We love you both, have a safe flight” she smiled at you before you gave her a hug, squeezing her tightly until Freddie called to you

  “We’re going to miss the flight!” Freddie yelled, forcing you to sigh as Charlotte let you go

  “We’re fine!” you yelled back but when he scowled at you, you knew you had to pick up the pace

  “It’s okay, (Y/N), go ahead. We don’t want you to miss your flight”

  “I’m sorry” you whispered to all of them before you ran toward the gate to meet your fiancé. Once he got you to board the plane, he made sure to quickly hug his siblings and kiss his mom goodbye once more; making your heart flutter and melt all at once. When the two of you finally sat down in your seats, you stared at him with such devotion until he couldn’t ignore you anymore

  “What?” he said, turning his head to look at you, smirking at the look on your face

  “I just love you, that’s all” you said before leaning in to capture his lips in a kiss

  “Sorry,” the flight attendant said as she passed by, “just need to make sure your seat belts are on”

  “Sorry” you laughed, you and Freddie showing her that you had buckled your seat belts and she went on her way

  “You tell your grandparents that we’re coming?” Freddie asked as you got resettled

  “Yes, they’ll be there at the airport to pick us up” you replied, wrapping your hands around his arm as you leaned your chin on his shoulder

  “I love you” he smiled, kissing your nose 

  “I love you, too,” you cooed, leaning up to kiss him and whispered in his ear, “this is a short flight..”

  “Mhm” he hummed, skimming through his phone before he had to turn on airplane mode

  “Freddie...” you said again, biting his ear lobe to grab his attention, “I made you a promise didn’t I?” He finally seemed to clue in to what you were doing but, in his overexcited state, he was starting to draw attention to the two of you as your fingers traced across his chest

  “OH!” he whisper yelled before you shushed him, “Yes. Yes, you did.”

  “So, how do you suppose I keep that promise?” you asked, cocking your eyebrow at him when he finally looked you in the eye, “because I intend to keep my promise...”

  “Kiss me” he blurted out and you scoffed

  “What? No, Freddie. We can’t just...” He interrupted you by placing his large hand under your jaw and pressing his lips tightly against yours until the tell-tale ding rang through the airplane, notifying everyone that they were free to remove their seat belts.

  “Meet me in the bathroom in like 2 minutes” Freddie said hastily before walking away. You bit your lip as you laughed at how giddy he was, eventually unbuckling your seat belt to make your way to where he had told you to meet him. By some miracle, no one had gotten up before you to head to the bathroom, so it seemed like everything was in the clear but now came the tricky task of letting him know it was you who was there -- hoping no one was watching to see what you up to. You knocked on the door twice and Freddie opened the door just enough for him to know that it was you before pulling you in, “what took you so long?” he laughed, making sure to lock the door behind him.

  “I was making sure I wasn’t being too obvious,” you smile, bring his lips to yours as you wrapped your arms around his neck, “honestly, it got me thinking that it would’ve been much easier just to give you a hand job under a blanket...” You laughed when you noticed his eyebrows pop up and he jokingly went to unlock the door. His lips moved across your skin quickly until he nibbled on your collarbone, waiting for that moan he knew all too well to escape you.

  “Come on, baby,” he whispered, “we gotta be quick...” You brought his lips back to yours once more, biting down on his before you turned around to face the mirror, knowing that getting up on the tiny counter wasn’t an option. Freddie gave you a sly smile before unzipping his pants and gliding his hand up your thigh, under your dress, to push your underwear to the side.

  “Fuck” you breathed as he slid himself into you, kissing your neck in the process before he shushed you

  “Can’t let them hear us” he whispered, thrusting into you slowly while you gripped the edges of the sink

  “Shit, Freddie...” you moaned as Freddie pumped deeper inside of you

  “Shh” he repeated, this time placing his large palm around your mouth to muffle the sounds and you looked up at him in the mirror while he continued his movements. When he was nearing his release, he dropped his hand from your mouth to put both on your hips so he could guide you back onto him faster; you watched him as he watched you ride him and you could feel the fire inside you grow a more with each thrust. He caught your stare in the mirror before pulling your back to his chest to kiss you as he fucked you, collecting your harsh breaths in his mouth as he did so.

  “Oh my god..” you said as you came around him and he kissed your shoulders while you got your bearings again. He grabbed some napkins to clean you up, running a few under the water and gently running them across your thighs and your folds. Freddie was always great at after care.

  “Do you think we hurt the baby?” he asked

  “What?” you scoffed playfully and he shrugged as if to repeat the question, “No, Freddie, I don’t think we hurt the baby.” He placed a small kiss on your lips before telling you to wait another two minutes before going back to your seat

  “Got it?” he said

  “Got it.” You giggled, pulling him in for one last kiss before he left. You locked the door as soon as he left so no one would come in, and you decided to clean up a little to make sure that it could stay as inconspicuous as possible. When you finally made your way back to your seat, you made sure to straddle Freddie before you sat down and he grinned at you

  “Don’t play, (Y/N),” he whispered, “I’m very sensitive right now.” You smiled at his words as you got comfortable

  “Guess that means I’ve got you right where I want you.”

xx

  You and Freddie were met with a million hugs and kisses when your Oma and Opa came to pick you up at the airport. It had been so long since you were in Vienna that you spent the entirety of the journey back to their house admiring the city; from the greenery, to the architecture, to the colours of apartment buildings and shops in town, it all made you smile.

  “Oh, I’ve missed it here!” you finally said, curling into Freddie while your Opa continued to drive

  “(Y/N) used to spend every summer with us. Here, in Vienna. Her mother insisted she have culture in her life.”

  “Used to?” Freddie asked, kissing the crown of your head and wrapping his arm around you

  “I got older and so did everyone else. It became less... feasible for me to hop on a plane every year to come here. But we would go everywhere. We’d take day trips to Salzburg and sing the Sound of Music songs. Opa taught me how to swim and row a boat in Hallstatt. It was always all so wonderful.”

  “You two will have to come back and bring little Vita with you” your Opa smiled, peeking back to look at you and Freddie

  “Of course” Freddie responded

  “Our home is always open!” Oma added, making you smile before falling into a comfortable silence with the three people you loved most in the world, absentmindedly rubbing your baby bump. When Opa pulled into the driveway, you were flooded with memories from your childhood of your time of your grandparents home.

  “It hasn’t changed a bit!” you exclaimed as Freddie helped you out of the car and everyone smiled at you

  “Why would we change it?” Oma asked and you shrugged with a small laugh, walking up to the house and letting Opa guide Freddie to the guest room to put away the bags, “you’ve found yourself a good one, Liebe” your grandma said when she noticed you watching Freddie walk away

  “I know, Oma,” you giggled, “he’s going to be such a good father. I just.. love him so much”

  “And he loves you,” she said, “I can tell. I remember when Opa and I were as in love as you two are, you know?”

  “You still are” you countered as she took a sip of the tea she had made, shaking her hands quickly

  “No no no, that’s not what I meant. Of course we’re still in love,” she corrected, “I just meant, I remember what it was like in the beginning. When we first met, our first kiss, our first dates. Our wedding; I didn’t want to be away from him.” You smiled as you listened to the retelling of your grandparents love story and you thought to yourself how much you’d hope yours would turn out the same.

  “What are you two ladies talking about?” Opa asked as he and Freddie came back into the room

  “The kids wedding!” Oma replied and you laughed

  “Ahh yes,” Opa said, he and Freddie sitting down next to you and Oma, “why are you waiting until after the baby is born?”

  “Opa...” you sighed

  “Vita is expected in November,” Freddie started, “(Y/N) is hoping for a winter wedding. New Year’s Eve, right babe?”

  “Right..” you giggled, “but not necessarily this New Year’s Eve. We’re planning it now so that we have everything sorted but Freddie will be busy with the season and I’ll be at home with Vita...”

  “So get married sooner. Before the season starts, before Vita comes” he exclaimed, “you could do it here! In Vienna!”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Opa...” you hesitated, “we would have to send out invitations and get catering and I don’t have a dress yet...”

  “All things that can be done” Oma added and you tilted your head

  “And you don’t need all that fancy stuff. Catering? Expensive tuxes and gowns? Nah,” Opa interjected, waving his hand, “you can wear Oma’s dress!” You started to say something but the two of them seemed to be planning the whole wedding themselves

  “But the thing is...” Freddie interrupted, rubbing your back as he could feel your stress rising, “we want the fancy stuff. We appreciate you wanting to help and offering everything to us, we do. But we want the gowns and the tuxes and the fancy wedding.” You looked up at your fiancé as he explained his side to your grandparents, a feeling of ease washing over you as he continued to rub your back, and you smiled to yourself before noticing your grandma notice you

  “Are y--” your grandpa started only to be interrupted by your grandma

  “We understand, completely.” She smiled at both of you and, with a simple nod of her head, Opa seemed to take note and he fell silent as well. Shortly after that, the four of you went to explore the city before taking in a movie at the Haydn Cinema and stopping for a bite to eat on the way home.

  “I’m sorry” you said to Freddie when you both crashed onto the mattress

  “For what?” he asked, stroking your hair as you nestled into his side

  “All the wedding stuff. I should’ve known my grandparents would be like that”

  “Baby,” he said softly, “all grandparents are like that. They love you and they want to make it easier on you and Vita. That’s all”

  “You’re sure? Because it seemed to me like they wanted us to have a shotgun wedding” you laughed, looking up at Freddie, “I mean I love them. They’re two of my favourite people on this Earth. But they are... old-fashioned.”

  “They love you. They will do whatever you want them to,” he said and you scoffed before settling yourself under the covers, “and so will I.”

xx

  It had been three months since you spent the week in Vienna with your grandparents and your due date was fast approaching.

  “So, how’s the wedding planning going?” your sister asked as the two of you were shopping

  “Oh, great, Lauren, yeah. Everything’s all settled. Did you not get your invitation for next month?” You replied sarcastically as you were forced to waddle through the Toronto streets

  “I’m sorry,” she laughed, “I was just joking. You know, breaking the silence.”

  “I am supposed to be having a baby in two weeks and I have been so irritable these last few months that planning the wedding hasn’t been on my radar.”

  “It can’t be easy with Freddie away so much either” she added and you huffed at her, asking if you could just sit down for a minute

  “I mean it’s his job,” you said, “we both knew it would happen. And at least our place is comfortable for me to be while he’s away but, yeah, I’d rather him be here then.. not...”

  “He’s gonna be here when she’s born right?”

  “I don’t know...”

  “He better be or I’ll--”

  “HEY!” you yelled, interrupting her thought and her eyes went wide, “I can’t do this right now okay? If he’s here, he’s here. If he’s not, he’s not and we’ll deal. But I just.. I need to go home okay?”

  “Okay” she said calmly, helping you up from the bench and the two of you walked back to the car. Almost as soon as you buckled yourself in, you felt a pain in your stomach and you cried out to Lauren, “what? What’s wrong?!” she sounded panicked and you now had to keep her calm

  “Nothing’s wrong, I just had a bit of pain...” you replied

  “IS IT THE BABY?”

  “LAUREN!” you shouted before taking a breath, “everything is going to be fine, I think we should go to the hospital though, just in case”

  “Okay, we got this! We’ll be there before you know it!” She said before stepped on the gas and you screamed

  “OH MY GOD YOU’RE GONNA KILL US!”

  “CALM DOWN!” she yelled back

  “SLOW DOWN!” you screamed, clutching the side of the door for dear life before squeezing your eyes shut

  “OH RELAX, WE’RE FINE!” She continued speeding through to the hospital but you kept your eyes closed, “see, we’re here. We made it”

  “You’re never driving me anywhere ever again...” you chided as you opened the door and waddled into the hospital while Lauren got you checked in

  “Alright, let’s see what’s goin’ on here” the doctor said as she came into the room you’d be put in

  “There was just a little pain...” you answered

  “Your first?”

  “Yes”

  “When’s your due date?”

  “Two weeks. November 13th.” He nodded before looking at the results from the electrodes stuck to your stomach

  “Is dad here?” He asked

  “Uhm, no... He gets in tomorrow?”

  “Alright, well,” he smiled, “someone might wanna give him a call because it looks like this baby is coming early!”

  “WHAT?” You and Lauren exclaimed, leaving the doctor to scoff playfully at your reactions

  “This happens. There’s nothing to worry about”

  “But I’m not due for two weeks... I don’t have anything.. the car seat... blankets... I don’t even have a change of clothes. Did my water even break?”

  “That’s a bit of a misconception. Something Hollywood typically gets wrong...”

  “No I know.. I read the books, but I’m not in labour am I?”

  “You’ve had a few contractions since you’ve been here, which means, yes, you’re going into labour.”

  “I thought her water had to break first?” Lauren asked, confused at what she should be doing

  “It will break when she’s in active labour”

  “So what do we do?” Lauren asked

  “Call Freddie” you answered before the doctor could and Lauren did as she was told. As she ran outside, you felt a few contractions but nothing too painful and you thought maybe you’d be one of those women who had an easy labour. You were sorely mistaken.

  “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!” you screamed to your sister as your contractions got worse

  “You’re in labour...” Lauren tried

  “Where’s Freddie?” you whined

  “He’s on his way... with the entire team...” she whispered her second statement but you heard her as clear as if she were yelling at you

  “WHAT?! NO NO NO NO” you shouted, “I don’t want the whole team here! Please, tell them not to come, please” you were at that point where you were breaking into hysterics

  “I can’t, (Y/N),” she whispered, trying to calm you down but it just irritated you more, “they’re already on the-- they’re here...”

  “WHAT?!”

  “Freddie just texted me, he’s looking for the room...”

  “TELL HIM NOT TO COME BACK HERE!” you yelled

  “(Y/N)? Baby?” Freddie called when he got into the room

  “Freddie...” you whispered

  “There you are,” he smiled as he rushed to your side, “how are you doing?”

  “I hate this” you whined

  “Epidural?”

  “They said it’s not time yet.”

  “Well, I’m here now,” he said, rubbing your forehead lightly with his thumb, “what do you need?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think straight. She already hates me. The baby hates me”

  “She doesn’t”

  “You don’t know that. She’s not causing you this kind of pain. I feel like I would rather been run over by a truck right now.” Freddie laughed, forcing you to scowl at him

  “I’m sorry. The pain will all be worth it”

  “I love you,” you said sweetly, “but I hate you right now”

  “I know”

  “This sucks”

  “I know” he repeated

  “I want you to take my place. I’m too weak for this. You’re so much stronger than I am...”

  “I’m not. You just think that because I’m taller than you...”

  “No no, I know it”

  “(Y/N)...”

  “Just stop the pain...”

  “I’ll get the doctor” he said, placing a small kiss to your forehead before running out and finding a doctor, who then came back to see you and told you unfortunately it was still too early for the medicine

  “How much longer?” you asked, irritation on your tongue

  “It’s hard to say,” the doctor replied calmly, “could be an hour, could be 10. It could be 10 minutes. All pregnancies are different...”

  “I don’t like that answer”

  “I’m sorry,” he laughed, “you’re doing great.” He squeezed your arm once in reassurance before he left and you dropped your head back onto the pillow

  “Freddie...” you whined

  “I know, elske, just a little longer okay?”

  “No. Not okay. GET HER OUT OF ME!” you cried, looking up at your fiancé whose eyes seem to still be filled with love even though you were acting crazy

  “Wanna hear a story?”

  “What?” you said, shaking your head and squinting at him

  “The game got cancelled last night because a bunch of guys got sick on both teams and neither wanted to sacrifice the game so.. whatever it was a whole thing,” he rambled as he sometimes did when he told stories, “anyway, we hopped on a plane to head home and Mo was like ‘what if this was meant to be? what if Vita is early?’“

  “He did not...” you rolled your eyes

  “Did too!”

  “Freddie...”

  “I laughed it off, too, but it’s what he said. That’s why when I got the call that you were in labour, I knew I had to tell him”

  “You’re such a--” you started before another contraction interrupted you and you screamed so loud, you could feel it ricochet across the room. Not long after that, you were able to finally get the epidural and a calm rushed over you. Before you knew it, you were being rushed to the delivery room. As your screams filled the room, you clutched Freddie’s shirt

  “Make it stop!” you yelled at him

  “You’re doing great, babe, just a little more. Keep pushing” he said

  “I don’t wanna...” you whined, falling back against the pillows

  “I know, baby, but you have to” he said as he kissed your forehead before the doctor told you to push again. You cried a little before continuing to push, letting out sounds you never thought you would until all of a sudden, you felt a sudden relief

  “Here she is,” the doctor exclaimed, showing you your baby girl, “does dad want to cut the cord?” he asked Freddie, who nodded happily. They cleaned up your daughter and took you back to your room before letting Vita rest on your chest.

  “She’s beautiful” Freddie whispered as he sat in the chair next to your bed as Vita slept

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s here,” you whispered back, smiling almost uncontrollably before looking up at Freddie, “Freddie, we have a daughter!” You smiled at him as he kissed your forehead

  “I know, it’s amazing. She’s amazing,” he said softly, “you’re amazing.” For the first time since Freddie arrived at the hospital, you leaned in to give him a kiss

  “I love you so much”

  “I love you.” After you got a bit of a rest, you were greeted by friends and family; a seemingly endless carousel of people who wanted to hold your daughter. Once everyone cleared out, Freddie rocked Vita back and forth as you tried to keep your eyes open

  “You’re good with her,” you said, “I knew you would be”

  “I think she’s gonna be a really good baby”

  “What do you mean?” you laughed

  “I think she’ll sleep through the night and just be super easy..” he said, laughing at your expression as he sat in the chair next to you

  “I don’t know if she’ll be easy, she is still a baby afterall” you countered and he shrugged

  “You did great, elske,” he said, kissing your forehead, “you know what?”

  “What?” you whispered

  “I think our love story can finally begin now,” he smiled, “everything else is going to fall into place. You watch”

  “You’re such a dork,” you said, smiling at him and Vita, “but I think you’re right.”

[gracereadstoomanybooks]

answering questions I’ve been asked on TikTok✨

.

.

.

QUESTION: how did you get into reading?

So, when I was in middle school (many moons ago) we had this thing called AR Testing. Basically, you read a book and take a test on it—the questions were things that happened in the book, it was really simple. If you got a good grade, you got points. The more points you earned, the more eligible you were for the reading party at the end of each semester. Me, being the nerd I am, got top of my class because I went through 8th grade level books like it was nothing. The librarian at my school brought me books from the high school to read since everything was easy for me, and alas, my addiction began. And now that I have adult money, it’s a true addiction. Also, telling my father “I’m bored” and his response being, “go read a book or something” so thanks dad.

QUESTION: what’s one book you ALWAYS recommend to people?

This one is tough because I’ve read THOUSANDS of books, but if I had to choose one, it would probably be Confess by Colleen Hoover. I fell in love with her work in high school when I first read Ugly Love, but Confess is the type of book that pulls at your heart strings, y’all. It has everything people love: humor, sexual tension, drama, love. GO BUY THE DAMN BOOK. Or honestly any book by Colleen Hoover—she’s a fucking amazing author.

QUESTION: outside of making TikToks, what do you do for a living?

I currently work at a restaurant and hate every second of it. If anyone tells you to become a server, DONT. It’s not worth the hassle, I promise you. Sure, you can make decent money but the amount of rude customers and shitty tips you receive each shift is very disheartening. If you really need a job, do anything BUT work in the food industry.

QUESTION: what’s your wattpad story about?

First question: which one? I have about 30 drafts sitting there waiting to be posted. But, I’m going to assume you’re talking about the Harry Styles fan fiction I’ve been working on for the past 4 years and haven’t had the courage to post. I’ll tell you a little about it: Elaine Aldridge is forced into a betrothal to a man she’s never met & loathes. She goes to his court and realizes things aren’t what they truly seem. And the guard her future husband sticks on her??? None other than Mr. Harry Styles. Add in some magic & deaths and you’ve got my story— The First Prince. (Honestly, that’s an extremely shitty description so if you wanna check it out go to my wattpad account)

QUESTION: how old are you?

Ahem. . . twenty-one.

QUESTION: what is your dream career?

Being a published author and having people rave about my books. That’s all. Or, an editor for a publishing company. Imagine reading all day and being paid for it🤩

QUESTION: what was your least favorite read of 2020?

I already KNOW I’m gonna get shit for this but....... the wicked king. YALL I LITERALLY COULDNT GET THROUGH IT IM SO SORRY, I STILL HAVENT FINISHED IT

QUESTION: current favorite author?

Sarah. J. Maas. I don’t know what it is about her writing style, but it’s addicting. Throne of Glass is hands down the best series I’ve ever read. A Court of Thorns and Roses is the first book I’ve EVER reread. Her stories truly suck you in and hold onto you—you get lost so easily in her writing and it’s like once you’re done with a series, nothing will compare. Or, at least that’s how I felt after finishing Kingdom of Ash. Honorable mentions: Jennifer L. Armentrout, Penelope Douglas, L.J Shen, Elle Kennedy and Kennedy Fox.

QUESTION: any recommendations/tips to give to a new reader?

I’ve always given this advice to people who want to get into reading: find what you like and start with that. If you like romance, I’ve got a list for you to choose from. Mystery? Another list. Sci-fi? I GOT YOU. Fantasy? Yes! Sports fiction? It might take me a second but I’ll find you a book. Nonfiction? I’m zero help in that category, honestly. The point of the matter is that you’re never going to enjoy a book if you aren’t interested in the underlying topics.

QUESTION: do you ever find yourself comparing your life to fictional life?

Yes. All the time. I daydream about being apart of the Inner Circle and living in Terrasen with Aelin and Rowan. I think about what it would be like to have real powers and a mate. It drives my boyfriend crazy—but he loves me anyway.

QUESTION: what are your most anticipated books of 2021?

Here’s a list:

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

The Crown of Gilded Bones by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Gods and Monsters by Shelby Mahurin

Crescent City 2 (Untitled) by Sarah J. Maas

A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer (I just ordered this one & it arrives tomorrow)

Blessed Monsters by Emily A. Duncan

QUESTION: why did you start a Tumblr?

Honestly, I used to love tumblr when I was in grade school (way too young to be on here then but what else is new). I like having an extra space to get my questions and comments out without having to compress it into a 60 second video for TikTok to see. Tumblr is a good place to blog & post things like this.

QUESTION: what’s your favorite song right now?

I’ve listened to Carry You by Novo Amor every day for the past two months and I cry each time.

QUESTION: why write Harry Styles fan fiction?

Simple: I love Harry Styles. I’ve been a fan of him and One Direction since they were on X FACTOR. Read that again. X. Factor. I used to watch their performances on YouTube before WMYB even came out. Of course, I love all of the 1D boys but I was always a Harry gal. And I look up to him in a way—I’ve read things about people wishing they knew him personally and honestly? I would never want to meet him. I like the version of him I’ve cooked up in my brain over the past 10 years. I like the symbiotic relationship I have with his music. Fine Line is a ✨masterpiece✨. HS1 is a ✨work of art✨.

now, some topics I’ve been asked way too many times and want to finally get to:

QUESTION: political views?

the saying “anyone but trump” has been in my brain for the past four years. No, I’m not a republican. No, I’m not a democrat. I like to think of myself as a progressive (ahem, liberal) Did I vote for a democratic candidate? Yes, and I’d do it again and again until the US isn’t one of the worst countries—I’m sorry, businesses— to be apart of. I wanted Bernie but got Biden, and I’m alright with that. And my girl Kamala🥳

QUESTION: how did you feel about the BLM protests?

I went to multiple BLM protests and donated a lot of funds to BLM & other organizations. It’s 2021, people... stop being fucking RACIST. And don’t be afraid to call racist people out! Black Lives Matter, even if no one is posting about it anymore.

QUESTION: thoughts on abortion?

your body your choice, queen! not my uterus, not my problem.

QUESTION: there was a comment on an old video of yours talking about r*pe, why did you delete the comment?

I made a video when I first started my account on TikTok about reading in public and feeling “turned on” by it. Go watch it if you don’t know what I’m talking about. BUT, some ignorant male decided to comment and say “this is how girls get r*ped”. Whew. So. I deleted the comment because ....

I am a victim of sexual assault. Along with a lot of other women. 1 in 5 women have been victims of sexual assault. Talking about being r*ped isn’t funny.

No one else needed to see his comment. I reported it immediately and his account was shut down.

I never got justice for what happened to me, and the fact that some random male—who had never even met me or seen me before my video showed up on his FYP—had the nerve to comment that? Unacceptable.

this question isn’t as controversial but

QUESTION: what’s the best way to get out of a toxic relationship?

okay, let me just start off by saying that the people around you who love and support you are going to be your backbone. Leaving a toxic situation is hard, and every situation is different, but my best piece of advice to offer you is don’t be afraid to ask for help. Your loved ones are going to be there for you when you need them, even if you don’t believe they will. If you explain what’s happening, someone you know and love will drop whatever it is their doing to make sure you get out safely. good luck my babes.

now, back to our regularly scheduled program:

QUESTION: any tips on making tiktoks?

Literally none. I post what I think is funny and relatable and if anyone agrees, I’m satisfied. Even if it’s one view, it’s good enough for me. So I guess my one tip is to not base your life off of an app and followers.

QUESTION: favorite Harry Styles fanfic?

DONT MAKE ME CHOOSE. Duplicity is up there, along with Stall 1&2, and Kiwi. After? Absolutely not.

QUESTION: favorite WEBTOON?

y’all already KNOW. LORE OLYMPUS BY USEDBANDAID. Rachel is a genius and I have reread the series a million times. Hades is my soulmate and Apollo can rot in the fiery pits of the Underworld. also, if we’re talking about other webcomics, reading Walk on Water on mangadex...🤫

QUESTION: favorite movie?

Howls Moving Castle. I will be getting my “a heart is a heavy burden” tattoo very very soon.

QUESTION: I read your Elain theory on tumblr, can you explain a little more?

I thought I was pretty straightforward but I’ll say it again: she is always the “good” one and it’s too suspicious. SJM has already given one Archeron sister a happy ending, Nesta’s is obviously inevitable, but Elain? She has too many options for a happy ending. Lucien, who is her “mate”. Azriel, who is intrigued by her slightly. Her human guy—I don’t remember his name—who is disgusted that she’s not human anymore. Or, alone, planting flowers all day. BUT! My point is that she’s not truly happy. She was forced into the Cauldron just like Nesta. She was ripped away from the life she loved so dearly and didn’t want to give up. The man she was going to marry now hates her guts because she’s a High Fae. She has the perfect set up for a villain plot line and I’m all here for it.

well, that’s all I feel like doing tonight. hope you enjoyed my little q&a! be kind, and talk to you later! byeeee!

[shesclearlya3]

Dancing With Your Ghost p.1 (Request)

anon: Can u write a fic (or series if u want) where reader goes camping with some frens & she's the only 1 who can c the ded counselors. She makes friendly w/ Xavier & they get rlly close. They begin dating & no 1 knows y she's so happy. She has a whole other life when she's with the counselors & likes it more than her normal living 1. After some thinking, she pops the question & asks Xavier 2 find a way 2 kill her and keep her there with him, he asks y & she says it's cuz she's in love w/ him :o

I was going to wait until I finished “i loved you first” before posting, but the ideas kept coming and they won’t stop coming, so here it is!

pairing: Xavier Plympton x Reader

word count: 2,706

warnings: non (yet)

part 2

You scrambled out of the van, staring up at the faded sign of Camp Redwood. Your friends were laughing as they gathered their belongings, but you were too busy observing the abandoned murder sight from over thirty-years ago. You had read countless books and television documentaries of what transpired here. It was odd seeing it in all of its run-down glory.

"y/n! Catch!"

You turned just as your friend Winter tossed your bag of belongings. You caught it with one hand, shouldering it, while still looking around. As interested as you were in both massacres that occurred here, it wasn't your idea to choose it as a camping site. Your friends were real crime buffs, and this was their next stop, but taking it to the next level by staying overnight seemed a little much to you.

Winter trailed next to you, followed by Riley and Dorothy, who trailed behind with their phones at the ready. You stepped over the piles of leaves, tripping over random holes in the ground as Winter teased you.

"This place is awesome!" Riley said, taking a picture of a cabin with boarded-up windows and graffiti. "Why didn't we come here sooner?"

"I wanted to go to Briarcliff," Winter said, "After all the bodies they found there a few years ago, no fucking way!"

The four of you walked around, taking pictures, and enjoying the California sunshine on your skin. You and Winter had moved here for school almost four years ago now, meeting Riley and Dorothy in one of your classes. You were not looking forward to moving back to Michigan after graduation.

You had found a decent place by the lake, the one rumored to be bottomless. Riley wanted to sleep in one of the cabins, but most were boarded up entirely and inaccessible. It seemed like you'd be setting up the tents you brought instead.

Winter urged you to take off your clothes to swim. The swimsuit you were wearing was from the Summer before, but it still felt nice. You laid in the sun while the others tested the waters, yelling that it was cold, and their nipples were hard.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw movement in the woods surrounding the lake. It was very brief, but you knew you saw a dark purple shirt and shorts. You sat up, squinting against the sunlight. There was nothing there.

"y/n! Come and swim with us!" Dorothy splashed water your way, barely reaching the towel you laid out on.

You glanced back toward the woods, seeing a bird hopping along the ground for some food. You stood up, preparing to jump in with the girls. It was ridiculous, it was only the four of you here.

***

Some hours later, the coolers had been drug out onto the sand, and drinks were being passed around. Your belly was full from dinner, and you laughed as Dorothy and Riley were talking about how hot Captain America is.

"I'm gonna use the bathroom," you set down your drink, standing up. Winter laid sprawled out beside you, singing a Lana Del Rey song under her breath.

You grabbed the small bag of toiletries you had brought, planning on finding a bush to use. You felt slightly embarrassed, never imagining that you'd be relieving yourself surrounded by nature. The sun was starting to set, and very few lights worked around the camp. You fumbled with your phone, about to turn on the flashlight when-

"What's that in your hand?" You screamed, dropping your bag and phone, turning around to see a young woman with the blondest hair you had ever seen. She smirked at you, and you realized she had a striking resemblance to Winter.

"Who are you?" you wheezed, bending down and grabbing your stuff, keeping your eyes on her.

"I'm Montana!" she outstretched her hand towards you, "I'm a frequent visitor,"

You hesitantly shook her hand, seeing that she was kept nicely. "N-Nice to meet you, I'm y/n,"

"What are you holding?" she asked again, gesturing towards your phone.

"It's my phone, haven't you seen one?" you laughed lamely, showing her your smartphone.

"May I?" she asked.You hesitated before placing it in her hand. You watched as she toyed with it, her mouth falling open as you heard a random YouTube video playing. "This isn't a phone!" she exclaimed as she simultaneously smacked the screen a few times.

You were very confused as she handed it back to you. You forgot you were fighting the urge to pee yourself. Montana noticed the look on your face and grinned, before looking directly behind you. "Xavier!"

"What's going on over here?" you whirled around, starting to panic, thinking you were being ambushed. You saw a man wearing a plum shirt and shorts, a perfectly sculpted tuft of dirty blond hair on top of his head. You were entranced by his striking blue eyes that brightened at the sight of you.

"I'm talking to my new friend, y/n!" Montana grinned, "She's very nice, check out her phone!"

Xavier stepped closer to you, craning his neck as you showed him with a trembling hand. Montana was telling him about the random video that was playing, and he looked interested.

"Are you guys camping here too?" you asked finally, interrupting them when Montana wondered if you'd be able to find Aerobics tapes on them.

"You could say that," Xavier smirked at you. "Is this your first time here?"

"Yeah, I came with my friends," you nodded. Montana was grinning oddly at the two of you.

"You wanna hang out? You could tell me more about this device," Xavier handed your phone back that was running low on battery life.

You looked at the eager looks on their faces. Off in the distance, you could still hear your girls talking and laughing, probably getting drunk as you speak. A few minutes wouldn't hurt.

"I'd love that." you smiled.

***

The sun had set as you sat with Xavier and Montana under one of the only working lights in the camp. The subject changed from your phone to the current president, all the way to what exercises were popular. As odd as you found their questions, Xavier explained in a rather flat tone that they were people of nature and had quite the Amish existence.

Montana left after a while, talking about some guy named Trevor, leaving you alone with Xavier. He seemed very comfortable around you, which made you feel slightly better. He kept a safe distance, asking you about your life and the friends you came with. Xavier listened intently, a look of confusion appearing every once in a while when you mentioned social media.

He has to have some idea of what things are like now, you thought to yourself.

The more you spoke with him, the more he felt familiar to you. You couldn't quite put your finger on why or how. You never met someone like him; his beauty was one of the ages. He told you about his life before they moved out here, saying he was a gym instructor and was trying to break out into the acting scene that never worked out.

"It's getting cold," you commented, still wearing your tank top and shorts from earlier. Your now dead phone and bag sat at your feet.

"I'm sorry for keeping you this long," Xavier said, rubbing the back of his neck. His earring sparkled in the moonlight. "You can-"

"Y/N!" voices called your name, some louder than others. You had jumped, standing up from your spot on the wooden stairs when Xavier froze in his place.

"I'm over here!" you called, seeing flashlights heading in your direction. You saw Winter first, as she spotted you and skipped over, her cheeks flushed after the alcohol she consumed.

"There you are!" she gasped, bringing you in for a hug - a clumsy one at that. "WE WERE SO WORRIED!"

"Yeah, y/n, you've been gone for like an hour," Riley said.

"I'm sorry you guys, I was just talking to Xavier and Montana," you explained.

The three girls gave you a questioning look, despite being intoxicated. Winter stared at you, "Who?"

You frowned, pointing behind you with your thumb, "I met a camper, his name is Xavier-" you had turned around, only to stop in your tracks where the seat he once sat in was now empty. "Wait!"

"y/n, y/n, y/n, are you high?" Winter snorted at you. "There's nobody else here!" 

You turned around now, looking for a sign that you weren't making this up. There were no footprints, no butt marks on the seats beside your own, nothing. You stuttered, attempting to explain who was sitting with you while your friends gave you concerned stares.

"I think you've had a long day!" Dorothy cooed, gently grabbing your arm. "Let's go back to camp! We have a long day tomorrow!"

You grabbed your stuff, your mind reeling as you followed them back to camp. You glanced behind you one last time, not seeing either of your new friends anywhere.

You woke up bright and early the next day, quietly creeping around as you changed into your new clothes. You made some breakfast, the little fire providing some much-needed warmth. You had shared a tent with Winter, who hogged most of the blankets. You gazed around, trying to spot Xavier and Montana, but they were nowhere to be found.

You unplugged your phone from the battery pack you brought, thinking if you got a picture with at least one of them, they'd believe you. You made sure the fire was kept low before setting off.

The sound of small animals and birds was the only thing you could hear now that the girls were asleep. Xavier and Montana never explicitly said where they were standing. They couldn't be that far away from you.

You stopped walking, looking off in the distance, and seeing the incredible hills and valleys surrounding the camp. You took a few pictures, smiling at the beauty of it all when you heard what sounded like a branch creaking above you.

You looked up, seeing nothing.

You took a few steps away, hiding under the shade as you continued to admire your surroundings. It wasn't long before you heard it again, looking up with a scowl when-

"CAWWWWW!"

You screamed when a towering figure jumped down, threatening to squash you. You dodged it just in time, nearly tripping over a root when you heard hysterical laughter.

A young black man was holding his sides, his overalls red and clean as a whistle as he buckled over. You stared at him with wide eyes, your heart beating a mile a minute.

"Aw shit, aw shit, that was better than I could have imagined!" he cackled, before two figures appeared from behind him, laughing along. It was them.

"Ray, you could have killed her!" Xavier said through his quiet laughter.

"She's fine! Aren't you, darling!?" Ray laughed again before going into a coughing fit.

"I-I think my heart stopped for a moment," you said, starting to laugh a little yourself.

"I know what that's like." Montana sighed dreamily.

Xavier gave her a comical look, before turning his attention to you. "Don't mind her, she's one of the most morbid people I know."

You smiled a bit, shaking Ray's hand when he offered it to you.

"You're friends, I take it," you said, before realizing how stupid it sounded.

"For a long time," Ray tossed an arm around Xavier's shoulder, who shrugged it off. "Tough love..." he mumbled.

"Come on, Ray, let's leave them," Montana said, now putting her arm around Ray, leading him away. Ray waved at you before making kissy faces at Xavier, who glared at him.

"I'm sorry about him, he can be a little much," Xavier smiled awkwardly.

"Where did you go last night?" you questioned. Xavier's face immediately fell, looking towards the scene you were previously admiring.

"I get a little nervous around people, anxiety, you know?" Xavier replied.

"Oh," you frowned, deciding not to push him any further. "I'm sorry if my friends scared you off, they can be loud when they're drunk,"

Xavier laughed at that, taking a seat in the dirt. You were surprised at this, as his appearance always seemed to be impeccable. You followed him, crossing your legs as you strained your neck to glance down at the sparkling water below.

"It's fine, I used to be like that too," he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, "I stopped a long time ago, it didn't interest me anymore,"

Just like the night before, you started talking about many things. You once again showed Xavier your phone, attempting to bring up Instagram in what little connection you had on this side of camp. His eyes lit up when you joked about how influencers were treated like celebrities most of the time.

"You should make an account, you'd have a cult following," you laughed, making him smile.

"Maybe one day, I don't even have a Snapbook,"

"Facebook," you corrected, hiding your giggle.

"Oh, sorry," Xavier wrinkled his nose. "What's the other one?"

"Snapchat," you masked your laugh again.

"It's not polite to laugh!" Xavier teased you, squinting his eyes as you finally lost it, knowing you would remember this moment forever to tease him later.

"I'm sorry, but that was the cutest thing I ever heard anyone say," you admitted, not realizing the implications of your words.

"Oh, you think I'm cute, huh?" Xavier teased you again, "That makes two of us."

You playfully shoved him, before asking him to take a photo with you. Xavier seemed hesitant at first before you took his very first selfie. Xavier asked when the film was supposed to pop out, tapping around your phone case.

"No, no, phones don't do that," you took it from him, showing him the picture from the gallery. Xavier's jaw dropped again, and you told him to go ahead and swipe. He saw the pictures you had taken earlier, as long as a few photos of your car ride with the girls on the way here before he gave it back.

"That's unbelievable, when I was growing up they said we'd have flying cars, not phones with touch screens and cameras!"

You laughed, believing him to be joking, but Xavier really wasn't. He didn't say anything, only laughing with you to avoid the real reason why he was at Camp Redwood.

Xavier encouraged you to walk around with him, and you took turns taking photos of each other, individually and together. He got the hang of it pretty quickly, not making any burst shots after the first fix or six times.

As much as you didn't want the day to end, you had already spent nearly four hours with him. Winter had texted you, saying they had just woken up and wanted to go on a hike.

Xavier seemed to realize it was time to let you go. He led you back towards the lake, asking when you were leaving.

"We're supposed to head back tomorrow afternoon," you explained, "Our spring break is over in a few days," you sighed, thinking of all of the homework that would be piled on your desk in the coming weeks.

"You go to school here, right?" he asked, trying to remember their conversation from last night.

"Yeah, I graduate in June," you sighed, "Then it's back home to Michigan with Winter." you frowned a little, realizing Xavier would be one of the friends you'd be leaving behind now.

Xavier didn't say anything, only stopping near the same cabin you met him yesterday. He smiled at you, "Uhh, if you're free later, Ray said something about a full-moon tonight if you wanna see it." he said lamely, and you could see the amusement in his eyes.

"I'd love that!" you smiled, "I can meet you here?"

"Awesome!" Xavier smiled. You both stood there, staring at each other before Xavier finally said, "I'll see you later." you nodded, watching as he headed back the way you came. You stared until his back disappeared from view before you met your friends at the lake.

taglist: (feel free to ignore)

 @the-walking-daryl @trichy-knitts @shydragonrider @thefandomzoneisdangerous @lemonwhiskers @jetblackpayne @langdonsvcrd @okoktrinity22 @uwonman @stefanmikaleson1864 @sevenwonderwitch @rubbrninja @iamnotjesha @leatherduncan @imshakingandcryingrn @bratzblitz @goblackcat69 @brookethompsonownsme @bookoffracturedescapes @zodiyack @bitchchatter @guiltyfiend @psychobitchtess​ @aangrana​ @thexmancometh

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero

I guess I should provide my hottt takes on the new DBS movie.  A few days ago, they did this video for Comic Con announcing the title of the movie and teasing some details about the story.  

I gotta say, this is exactly why I’ve never had any interest in Comic Con.    They put this on YouTube, I guess because of the pandemic, but any other year they would have gathered an enormous crowd and made them stand in line for hours to watch all of this in person.   I live in the Midwest, and when I went to comic book conventions it was for the sole purpose of rummaging through back issue bins.   SDCC was always promoted like the biggest and most important convention in the U.S., but all I ever heard about it were trailers for movies and TV shows.   Or, like, you had to go to Comic Con because that was the only way to get an exclusive Orange Lantern Hal Jordan action figure or something.   They would always hype up all of this useless stuff and I just never heard of anything so important that I was willing to fly out to San Diego and stand in line for three hours for it.   So now SDCC peels back the curtain with this video, about something I’m fairly interested in, but it’s really not that big a deal.  I found out most of the information on Twitter before I even knew to watch this video.

But I’m just not that hyped about trailers or sneak peaks or sneak peaks at trailers.   Which is probably why I waited this long to talk about it.  

I’ll just go through the video.   The first four minutes are Hironobu Kageyama performing “Cha La HEAD Cha La” live on the stage.   That’s a pretty epic way to open this, but I feel like it oversells the importance of this event.  You finish watching him and you think you’re about to see the movie itself, instead of hearing from the people who made it.  

Next we have Sascha, the host of this panel.   He speaks better English than I do, but I’m not sure what the point was in having any of this in English since he has to talk to the guests in Japanese.   Pretty much all of the important information in this video is in Japanese, and I think everyone understood that going in.   I guess it does give an international feel.  If I spoke another language as fluently as Sascha, I’d want to show it off too.

4:56 is where Masako Nozawa comes out, and she’s just a joy to watch.   She looks like this sweet grandmotherly figure, all warm smiles and then she busts out “Ossu! Ora Goku!” and immediately sounds like a badass. 

Guest #2 is Akio Iyoku, Toriyama’s editor.   Not to be confused with the awesome editor who poo-pooed all the androids and Cell’s semiperfect form.    That was Yu Kondo.  Iyoku comes out dressed like Goku, but he can’t talk like him so he’s immediately second-tier. 

Guest #3 is Norohiro Hayashida, Producer from Toei Anaimation.   He is also rocking the Goku cosplay, which would be a faux pas in most fandoms, but he can just say that he’s cosplaying as Krillin or Yamcha, which gives him greater nerd credibility because those are more obscure references.

Around 8:30 we really start getting into this, and they show us a model sheet of Piccolo.  Is Piccolo being in the new movie a big surprise?   He had a dry spell in the mid-90s, but he’s been in every Dragon Ball movie made in this century so far.   And it’s not like they changed his look, like when they put Goku and Vegeta in those adorable coats last time.   I’m not complaining about any of this.  It’s nice to see that a) Piccolo is confirmed for new movie and b) they didn’t tinker with his appearance.  

All I’m saying is that they only brought up this model sheet to show off how they’re using his color scheme from the manga as opposed to the anime.   Hence the red belt and the yellower arm sections.   In the anime, the belt was always blue, and his biceps were hot pink instead of off-yellow.   But it’s such a subtle thing that even Sascha didn’t pick up on it.   It’s like they were hyping up the fact that it’s such a minor change.    I like it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a weird flex.   Also, he looks like he still has his five-fingered anime hands, so I’m not that impressed.   Give us four fingers, Toei!

Sascha asks Masako Nozawa what she thinks about Piccolo and she just starts off with “He was Gohan’s teacher,” and talks about how strong and cool he looks.    She speaks of him like he’s a family member, because she’s awesome.

Next up, we have Pan, and now we’re talking.  The scuttlebutt is that this was the character Toriyama was referring to when he spoke of an “unexpected character”.  And I guess Pan fits the bill, since I don’t think anyone expected her to be this old in the movie.   I understand this is her kindergarten uniform, so she’d have to be about five or six years old.  I love Masako Nozawa’s reaction here.   Throughout this video, you can see that Goku and Gohan aren’t just roles to her.   

I’ll put on my fanboy hat here and point out that Pan’s age may imply that this movie takes place after the final episode of Dragon Ball Z.    She looks older here than she did when she fought Wild Tiger, at any rate.   So far, the entire Dragon Ball Super franchise has been set during the ten-year gap between the Buu crisis and the finale of Z.    So everyone has been wondering if DBS would move beyond End of Z, or whether Akira Toriyama even still recognizes the continuity of those final chapters.   They were supposed to be ten years of peace, but all the battles in DBS say otherwise.   Also, I’m pretty sure Pan and Bulla’s ages in the DBZ finale don’t line up well with their appearances in Super, but I’ve never studied it very closely.  

So this might be set post End of Z, or this might be Toriyama retconning End of Z altogether.  I’m interested to see which way this goes. 

Here’s Krillin, still working for the police, although his uniform looks more like Bronze Age Lex Luthor than anything else. Like Piccolo, the “big” story here is that he’s been tweaked to resemble the coloring in the manga, so his sclera are now white instead of fleshtoned.  

Never mind that, here’s Piccolo’s house.  This is probably the breakout star of this video, because I think everybody is excited to see Piccolo’s house.   Because it’s new lore!  No one even knew if he had one or not.   It was a running gag in DBZ Abridged that he was homeless.   I mean, congratulations to Krillin for getting his eyes colored in right, but that doesn’t tell me anything new about the character.  But Piccolo’s house is a big friggin’ deal.   What’s inside of there?  What’s on the second floor?   Check out his mailbox.   What kind of mail does he get?  It’s exciting.  

Nozawa even points out that she and her co-workers would talk about this sort of thing in the recording studio.    That’s a big deal to me, that the voice actors think about the same kind of stuff that I do as a fan.   

Around 15:30, they start talking about Toriyama’s commitment to the making of this movie, which seems like a weird thing to focus on, because he wrote the screenplay to the last two movies.   Did anyone think he was stepping back? I get the impression that there’s still some hard feelings about the failure of Dragon Ball Evolution, in the sense that they want to reassure everyone that we’re still in good hands.   I suppose one of these days, Toriyama won’t be as heavily involved in a project like this, so maybe it makes sense for Toei and Shueisha to make it clear that today is not that day.

On the other hand, Toriyama was just as involved with Broly as he was with Resurrection F, and Broly was a much better film.  The Dragon Ball Super manga seems to have revived the old argument over who’s to blame when the story is a letdown, and I think that misses the point.  Look, the Zamasu arc sucked, and I don’t care who wrote what parts, or whether Toriyama had a bad idea or whether he handed a good idea off that was badly executed.   They can hash that out behind the scenes if they want to.  

About 19 minutes in, they show us this model sheet, and refuse to explain who these guys are or what they’re doing in the movie.   Are they villains?  Who knows?  I’d like to think they’re important characters to the story, but I have my doubts that Krillin will have a big part to play.  

At 20 minutes, they announce the title of the movie, and I’m not very thrilled with “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.” They can talk it up as much as they want, and maybe the title is relevant to the plot, but it’s just too many uses of the word “super”.   Especially when they’ve got another series called “Super Dragon Ball Heroes” on YouTube. 

Then we get this teaser trailer, or whatever you want to call it, with a CG Goku hopping around and doing his classic fighting pose.  Now, for some reason, lots of people concluded that this means the entire movie will be done in this CG style, which has led to a debate over whether or not that’s a good thing.  If they can make the whole movie look this slick, then I’m fine with it.  Hell, I’m not picky.   They could animate the whole thing in Yukio Ebisawa style, and I’d be thrilled. 

But I’m not understanding where people got the idea that it’s definitely going to be a 100% CGI movie.   They never spell that out in this video, and they even go out of their way to admit that this shot of Goku isn’t actually from the movie.   So is there some other source people are referring to, or did everyone just jump to conclusions?  

And that’s pretty much it.   I don’t mean to sound negative on this panel, but I don’t feel like they revealed very much, unless this is actually going to turn out to be Piccolo and Pan having an adventure by themselves.    I think Toei could make a movie like that and it would be a success, but I have my doubts that they’d go in that direction.  If this is going to turn out to be another big slugfest with Vegeta, then I’m down for that too, but don’t show me Piccolo’s house if the movie’s going to be about Vegeta punching a guy. 

Bottom line: I’m still looking forward to this, but I don’t feel like I know much more about the movie than I did before.   Well, except for the part about Piccolo’s house.  I’m looking forward to seeing the inside of it.

[bookworm-2692]

About a week ago I finally finished bookbinding @airdeari‘s beautiful Zero Escape fic The First Nonary Game. It took about a month (between all the waiting for glue to dry and also several days each week when I was unable to work on it), and was so much fun! It’s so satisfying to just... hold this book in my hands. 

Details about how I made it, along with additional photos (and commentary) below the cut.

So I came across this post on Tumblr, which immediately inspired me to try bookbinding myself. I spent a few days watching so many tutorials from the youtube channel linked in the post (I’ll link the specific tutorials I used in this post), and googling how to actually manage to print pages so they form proper signatures, because the inbuilt booklet creator in Word doesn’t exist in my Word apparently so that’s fun.

Anyway, once I started, I asked @airdeari for permission to print and bind his fic, and he immediately said yes, so that was good. Then I spent a good couple of days copying the entire fic into a Word document, and fiddling with formatting so it would look like an actual book (section breaks, page numbers, headers with the fic title on the left page and chapter title on the right page (this took ages to work and I kept on stuffing it up), and making sure things just... looked nice. I added in the art After The War that @keycrash created specifically for the fic (third pic above), and an “afterword” containing credit and links and the author’s notes from AO3 (because even if I’m the only one who will ever see it, it still feels weird to not add the credit stuff in so it’s there).

I then saved the document as a PDF, and used CheapImposter to correctly shuffle (impose, hence “imposter”) the pages so when folded into signatures, each page would be in the correct order. This program was the first free one I could find, and was great because you could specify the number of sheets you want per signature, rather than stuck with a default. I chose to have 11 signatures of 6 sheets of paper, since that was the amount that would have the least blank pages and the end of the book. The file was 261 pages, so with two pages per side, and two sides per sheet, you divide the number of pages by 4 to get 66 sheets of paper

I then printed. There was only one (1) paper jam in the process, which was great. Unfortunately, I realised after I printed that one of the headers for one chapter was wrong (I hadn’t properly disconnected the two chapters), but fortunately that only involved reprinting 4 sheets of paper.

I used the following tutorials to make the books: DIY Textblock, a general “how to make a textblock” tutorial; DIY Kettle Stitch, a specific look at the stitching for a textblock, since the first tutorial doesn’t focus on this; DIY Book Cloth, since I chose to use fabric for my cover; and DIY Hardcover Book, how to put all those pieces together.

So then I started folding all the signatures. I was watching so much Brooklyn Nine-Nine during both the folding and stitching sections, since it was repetitive actions I didn’t need to concentrate on that lasted hours.

It was at this point that I sliced each signature one by one to make the end smoother and less pointy. In future I recommend not doing it at this point - wait until the very end. Instead, move straight onto stitching. 

I don’t have any photos of the stitching portion, since my phone died the morning I started the stitching, and I wasn’t able to replace it until after all the stitching was done. In fact, originally all the photos from before the stitching were lost too. It was only about two days ago that magically the My Photo Stream thing kicked in and brought back all the photos - if it had worked two weeks earlier I would’ve had more. As it is, all photos from September to January are gone forever, unfortunately. But that’s another discussion entirely.

The above is the first book photo on my new phone, so as you can see, all the stitching was completed, the spine was glued, and the purple paper attached. I couldn’t buy two A4 sheets, so instead I had to buy one A3 sheet and cut it in half. Which was difficult cycling home from the city with an A3 sheet that didn’t fit in my bag on account of being A3 and not A4, but oh well.

I don’t have a book press, so I used a pile of DND books and my brother’s weights instead, as shown below.

I then had to re-slice the book after this point bc my first go wasn’t even, on account of slicing each signature separately. Next time definitely I’ll just do it at the end like this. I then also sanded it to make it smoother. It’s still not perfect, but it’s something that’ll take practice and patience so.

Next I made the book cloth, which involves using appliqué sheets to combine cotton fabric and tissue paper. But first I want to talk about the fabric I chose for the cover, because I’m quite proud of it. I spent ages wandering around the shop, trying to find something that fit the feel of the book. Spoilers for the content of the fic if you haven’t read it yet, and also for the source material (999/Zero Escape). I was thinking about some sort of blue swirl thing, because of the Gigantic sinking. I found that, but hesitated because it didn’t fully fit, and my favourite colour is blue so I always pick blue. I also considered flames/fire because of the incinerator thing, but couldn’t find any. I can’t remember if I just couldn’t find any four leaf clover fabric, or if I’ve just since thought about that as a cover. But instead I chose the butterflies below. They fit in several subtle ways that I’m proud of. The colours of blue and pink(/red) matching the receiver and transmitter coding all throughout 999, as well as the moments of purple as well (I don’t think I need to get into that, I’m sure it was analysed to hell and back when the game first came out). The butterflies also point towards the butterfly effect, and in turn the different timelines present in the series. So together it just works. /spoilers over

It’s also just a pretty fabric.

Now the making of the book cloth. I had to make it twice, because I was too impatient the first time, so the iron was too hot and it steamed, which wrinkled and warped the tissue paper, so the fabric was all wrinkly too. The second time took ages and was a worse quality appliqué sheet, but worked well enough anyway.

(My parents: did you have the iron out? what were you ironing? you never iron)

And then I cut the book board to size, using the measurements from the tutorial video. I’ll repeat them here: front and back cover: width = width of textblock minus 3mm, and height = height of textblock plus 6mm, and spine width = width of textblock spine, spine height = same height as covers

I then glued the board onto the book cloth, and put it under the book press. The dnd books are not large enough to cover the whole thing, and also I really wanted the board to stay flat and not curl, so I grabbed way more dnd books and way more of my brother’s weights. I also accidentally started putting the glue on the wrong side of the board (bc one side is smooth and the other is rough), hence the colour difference as well.

The corners were cut and folded and glued over...

And then the textblock was glued in, and put in my book press for a whole weekend. I added a sheet of paper to absorb the glue so the pages wouldn’t become wrinkly, but instead the sheet I added was fine and every other page in the book is wrinkly. So I dunno what happened there. After the weekend I took it out and looked at it, and then put it back for another week to be sure.

And then the complete book is shown at the top of the post!

As I was starting I was talking a lot about it, like about the process I had to go through, or how I was going to obtain what I needed, etc. Mum asked if she could read the story. I froze, like a deer in the headlights... because this is a fanfic. She saw my fear and immediately backed down, explaining she only wanted to read it because if the story was that important to me that I was going to literally turn it into a book, she wanted to read it to yknow like know me better or something? Which makes sense. And when I got over my initial reaction, and remembered that indeed it was technically my dad who introduced me to fanfic, and thought about it more, I said okay. Because since the fic is technically a prequel to the first game, and most of the characters are technically OC’s (like, from the first game we know that all eighteen children must exist, but most of them don’t have names or anything so they are effectively OC’s), then knowledge of source material isn’t strictly necessary. This fic can probably be enjoyed on its own. I mean I’ll probably have to explain the concept of morphogenetic fields, and the last four chapters might not make sense? But I’m okay for my mum to read it. So when she’s less busy at work I’m going to download the epub onto her phone for her - we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, this fic is a masterpiece, extremely well written and I highly recommend it. As said, most of the characters are effectively OC’s, and yet they are all given such rich histories and personalities. All of them have access to the morphogenetic field, so I’m just so glad that @airdeari​ explores nine unique relationships with the field - nine unique sibling dynamics, and esper powers and abilities. It’s just so good.

[blazehedgehog]

Sorry to ask this, but what are your thoughts on Dunky's "I'm Done Making Good Videos" with regards to content you aspire to author vs what the average joe actually searches for

I don’t know if I’m the best person to be asking this, really.

Let’s get fully inside baseball here. Let’s pull the curtain all the way back. Actually, let’s burn down the curtain. I’m going to overshare like hell right now. Get ready for the most stream-of-consciousness rambling ever, because a lot of this has been boiling in my head and dying to get out.

For the entirety of my Youtube channel, I’ve pretty much only ever done what I want to do. Very rarely do I chase trends, or do what’s hot, or even do what people want me to do. I do whatever I feel like doing.

I have paid the price for that. My Youtube channel is 15 years old as of this year, and only now am I slowly inching towards 25,000 subscribers. I am incredibly inconsistent. What’s my channel post? Well, a couple times a year, maybe I put together an edited essay/review for a game. But I also sometimes post random, unedited, uncommentated gameplay footage. Maybe it’s a fan game, maybe it’s a gameplay demo, maybe it’s Fortnite. Sometimes, I also post remastered video game music. Every Halloween, I dump a bunch of one-off horror Let’s Plays on to my channel. And then, there’s the podcast.

I know exactly what my problems are. I don’t specialize enough, and I don’t put content out fast enough. Because most Youtube channels are, like, “shows”, right. The Did You Know Gaming show. The Markiplier show. The Angry Video Game Nerd show. And you can point at those and say exactly what they are in two sentences or less.

Did You Know Gaming specializes in informative videos uncovering obscure facts you might not know about popular video games.

Markiplier is a Youtuber that does Let’s Play videos for video games, primarily horror games, but he also focuses on general comedy skits and things of that nature.

The Angry Video Game Nerd is about one guy’s over the top reactions to bad video games.

What does BlazeHedgehog do? Well, he does a lot of Sonic fan content, but sometimes he does horror let’s plays, and sometimes he does multiplayer compilation videos sort of like Criken, but he also does music, and sometimes he makes video games and puts out videos of that, and in general he’s really low energy and sometimes there will be three or four weeks between uploads. Also he sounds like Booger from Revenge of the Nerds Snot from Family Guy (apparently).

If you come to my channel for something specific, you have to put up with everything else I upload. I could start separate channels for that content, but the barrier to entry on Youtube is so massive now that I would effectively sending those channels to their death. Videos that get 200-500 views on my main channel would get 10 views or less if they were on their own self-contained alt-channel.

So I languish. I struggle. I suffer. Youtube shows me red down arrows to tell me just how much worse I’m doing now than my last flash-in-the-pan success.

I’ve tried to chase success. It just makes me sad. I have a sense of humor, but I don’t think I can make “funny videos” like some people can. My Sonic 06 glitch video did gangbusters ten years ago, but I don’t often like kicking games when they’re down. It was a struggle to make that Sonic Boom glitch montage and that’s the reason I never followed through with Part 2 like I said I would.

My only wish is that people appreciate honesty. My Youtube channel might be a scattered mess, but that’s who I am. And more than anything, I think that’s what Dunkey’s video was about. His whole joke was about switching from thoughtful or funny videos to becoming a content farm for whatever is currently popular.

I’ve brought it up a few times here and there over the last few months, but I’ve had several brushes with the Fortnite side of Youtube recently. And there are so many dudes over there who are what I would generously call “grifters.” I follow Hypex on Twitter and routinely check Firemonkey and ShiinaBR because they datamine future Fortnite updates and often have the scoop days, weeks or sometimes months in advance.

Near the end of season 3, all three of them mentioned they had datamined “the next season” but wouldn’t say what it was because they didn’t want to spoil what was coming (the marvel season). They mentioned there were “others out there” that were spoiling things, but wouldn’t say who. I wanted to spoil myself, so I turned to Youtube.

And Youtube was a nightmare. Over and over and over, I would encounter tons of people downright thriving on the same grift. It’s an open secret that Youtube prioritizes longer videos, so if your video is under ten minutes (or I think now 8 minutes), the algorithm isn’t going to be as nice to you and won’t promote your video as well, and you aren’t going to get as much advertising money because fewer people are going to sit through a video advertisement that’s a quarter of your video’s entire length. Longer videos are more profitable for Youtube, and by extension, for the user uploading them.

So it was video after video of these guys making big bold claims about how they had all the answers on what the next season of Fortnite was, and you’re thinking, “oh wow, it’s a 17 minute video, they’re going to spoil everything!”

You load the video up and it’s some guy in his streamer man cave, he’s got his webcam on, and he loads in to a match of Fortnite with his squad. Keep in mind, this video was pitched as a news report of sorts, a big spoiling of future content... and it’s just a guy playing Fortnite with a crew. In the few seconds between matches as he queues for the next one, he stops to deliver a single shred of information, most of which start with “Hypex said...”

The one thing you came to this video for and it’s scattered like breadcrumbs across a 17 minute video of a guy just playing normal matches Fortnite to fill time. It’s not information they acquired for themselves, they all just regurgitate what Hypex said, or what other channels reported Hypex saying. 17 minutes of padding for scraps of second-hand leaks. And I found dozens of these channels, all repeating the same format, all repeating the same specks of leaked information, and all of them had 150,000 to 200,000 views on each of their videos in less than 24 hours. That’s hundreds of dollars per video on a format to scam the system.

But that’s a content farm. Those dudes are vultures. I have a hard time believing their hearts are really in it. I know it’s not a term that’s really in vogue anymore, but I see that as “selling out.” They know what they are doing and it’s to make money, not to make a community better. I mean, one of those videos was a guy who was reading Marvel comic hero profiles off of Wikipedia because it sounded like he literally did not know who guys like Iron Man, Thor and Wolverine even were. How are you in touch enough with pop culture that you’re cranking out factory-fresh Fortnite content for Youtube but you don’t know who Thor is? Answer: because you don’t really care and you’re in it for the money. Gotta hit that 15 minute threshold and put in six mid-roll ad breaks.

I could be that guy. That’s kind of what I was hoping “This Kinda Sucks” would turn in to, which would be sort of a rant video series like The Jimquisition or something. But I did not have the interest or energy to keep that up. So you get a playlist with two videos on it.

I’m sure Dunkey was just funnin’ around. Dude has 6 million subscribers. But for me, like... what he said in the video is mostly true. Following your heart and making thoughtful content you are personally interested in won’t pay the bills. I mean, as I predicted, that Jurassic Park video launched to the sound of crickets chirping. My most hardcore fans and a few curious onlookers checked it out but that was it. I’ve been working on that video since August, and it’s something my viewer base did not care about. But I cared about it, and that’s important for the long-run, I think.

The other problem, sort of a disconnect, is that I’m lucky to be in the position I’m in. I think guys like Dunkey probably make all of their money from places like Youtube and Twitch and Patreon and that’s their career. That work pays all of their bills.

My work does not pay my bills. Or it does, but it’s not enough to pay all of my bills. I am lucky enough right now that I am in a living situation where I can make fractions of money in intermittent spurts. That won’t always be the case. But for now, I get to be honest, and I get to follow my heart in whatever random, chaotic direction it feels like going that particular day. Dunkey faces a different sort of pressure than I do.

All of this is to say I have no idea what I’m doing, I guess. I make the content I want to see.

That being said, I increasingly think about something I heard Woolie say early on when he went solo for his WoolieVS channel, and that was the idea of “One for you, one for me, one for us.”

Because I’ve had more than one friend burn out doing, like, Twitch streams and stuff. You hear about Youtubers who get sick of being shackled to new releases or whatever’s popular. At some point these people wake up and realize they’ve had this struggle, maybe made some money in the process, but they’re miserable because they don’t get to do what they want to do. They’re always being pushed forward by the fans that are behind them.

The “One for you, one for me, one for us” mantra does at least keep you a little more sane. Balance in all things, right? So that Jurassic Park video, it can flop. It’d be nice if it didn’t flop, given what time of the year it is, but it’s a video for me. I have other video ideas in the chamber that I know will be for my audience, or “for us.”

I just have to stay true to myself, and to my messy brain.