#though I don’t think the old me would’ve gone for Conrad. I didn’t go for Peter in TATBIB either | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

littleemptyspaces · 7 years ago

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a glimpse of me & you

A city wide lunar new year festival planned by Orchid Events brings joy to all of Seoul, the heirs to some of Korea’s biggest companies included. Dealing with their own issues of and with succession within their own families, seven young men have only really had each other to share their problems with. They all had similar backgrounds; no one outside of their world would understand.

But the Year of the Rooster has other plans.

one | two | three | four | five | six

The business of eventually inheriting a multi-million dollar corporation one day was not for the faint of heart - even if it was all you've ever known. Away by Kim was a thriving hotel chain that had already lain foundation in Korea's city centres - 50 storey, glittering towers to quaint and homey inns - Japan, and mainland China. It was founded on the idea that one should always feel welcome, no matter where they were from, where they were going, and everywhere in between. These days Kim Yong Chul was negotiating talks to bring Away across the pacific. Today in particular, though, the potential Canadian business partners came to him.

Seokjin and Jeong-Guk sat in the boardroom, on either side of their father, bearing witness to the meeting that was taking place in front of them. At 24, Seokjin was gradually learning how the company was running and how it should be run for the future to come, and was paying keen attention to conversation despite his English being a little subpar. His younger brother, however, would've happily been anywhere else but this boardroom, enjoying the things that 19 year olds did. Whenever Jin looked over at his brother, Jeong-Guk was looking everywhere BUT at their esteemed guests; out the window, at the texture of the leather folder in front of him, at his nails. The senior hotelier would certainty have words for his son later that evening.

“Mister Conrad, we are very thankful that you have travelled so far to meet with us,” Yong Chul said, standing and conveying a bow to the men across the table. Jin hastily stood to bow as well, bumping the table ungracefully as he did. “The pleasure is ours, I assure you,” Mr Conrad answered with a smile, looking also at Yong Chul's sons. “I hope we get to talk again soon.”

With the guests gone, and the requirement to put one’s best face forward relieved, Kim Yong Chul turned his attention to the other two males in the room. “I hope you have learned something from this meeting, boys.”

“Of course we did,” was Jin's answer, covering for his younger brother whom he knew had absorbed nothing at all. Except for perhaps more disregard for the position that he was born into. Nonetheless, Jin didn't want to be caught in an argument this early in the morning. Behind their father, he saw Jeong-Guk scoff and roll his eyes.

“Don't think that I don't know the kind of face you are making, Jeon Jeong-Guk,” Yong Chul snipped, rather incensed that his youngest son didn't feel like negotiations were something he needed to learn. He turned to face the boy. “You may not be the one to inherit Away, but you will be inheriting Jeon Design Group one day. It would do you well not to forget that.” Jeong-Guk grimaced. How lucky for his father and mother to be blessed with two sons. When the Kims of hotel chain fame married their eldest son to the younger daughter of Jeon Design Group, the ultimate business partnership was born. But fortune was not done with this union yet; Jin and Jeong-Guk's grandfathers agreed that it would be best to split the respective company inheritances between the boys.

Yong Chul gathered the folders - his own with ample notes, Jin’s that bore efforts of understanding the meeting, and Jeong-Guk’s that had never been opened - and left the meeting room without another word, sparing no time for his children to get a word in edgewise.

“Jeong-Guk,” Jin began, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “How long do you think you’re going to be able to get away with acting this way?”

Jeong-Guk shrugged, already scrolling away on his phone, catching up on the social media that he’d ‘missed’ in the last two hours. “Hopefully it won’t matter. Hopefully Uncle will find his way in life and take over Jeon Design Group instead of me.”

“You know that won’t be the case.” Jin’s own phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t need to check look at to know who it was from. It was from Yoongi, and it was going to be one of three things: an email, a text message, or a voicemail - all pertaining to the latest prank that their friend, Kim Namjoon, would have executed on the poor guy. Yoongi was the only person who would be trying to contact him this early in the morning, other than his father.

“Are we done here?” Jeong-Guk looked impatient now, more than bored. Jin waved him off while he switched his attention to dealing with Yoongi’s problem. Turning on his heel, the younger brother left, aiming to put as much distance between the company building and himself.

It wasn’t that he was ungrateful for the luxurious life, Jeong-Guk reflected, as he drove towards an apartment that was clear across Seoul. He was meeting up with some friends and would hopefully not be called back to either Away or Jeon Design Group for the remainder of the day. The idea of inheriting a company like Jeon Design Group was entirely too daunting for him, at 20, to happily agree to. His friends in high school didn’t have this kind of weight to bear. Jeon Design Group encompassed architectural design, landscape design, as well as interior design, and it was all helmed by one person. His maternal grandfather.

It wasn’t always like this; his mother had a brother that it all would have gone to, but the man drank too much, gambled too much, debauched too much and his succession in the company was promptly shirked. Jeong-Guk knew that his grandfather wouldn’t live forever, but the man was doing quite well for how old he was, and would likely see the day that all of the group’s assets would be signed over to his grandson.

Giving his head a shake, Jeong-Guk pushed the complexities of inheriting the family business from his mind and sped forwards towards his friends.

“You don’t get it, Jin!” Yoongi hissed into his phone, trying not to draw attention to himself from where he sat in the sun-filled cafe. “He set me up on a blind date!”

Min Yoongi was the kind of person who wanted so badly to fall into the background, but either didn’t know how to achieve that or just was bad at doing so. He sat in his dark, high fashion coat and couture turtleneck, sunglasses on, and hand covering his mouth in hopes that he wouldn’t be heard. In short, he stuck out like a sore thumb against the otherwise light surroundings. “Why does he do this to me? Doesn’t Namjoon have anything better to do with his time?”

“Is that all? A blind date?” Jin chuckled back. “I thought he had sabotaged your car again.”

“I think I would have preferred that.” Yoongi looked out the window, at the people enjoying the sun of a clear January day. “I don’t have time for blind dates.”

“Don’t have time? Is Daegu Prime all of a sudden taking up all your time?”

A grimace. “Don’t joke about that; you know I don’t want any part of that.”

“So go on the date.”

“No.”

“Then go to work.”

“No.” “What do you want me to tell you, Yoongi?”

“Get him to cancel it!”

Jin sighed heavily. Yoongi could hear his friend’s shoes moving across the immaculately polished floors of the main Away offices, undoubtedly going to manage his own staff before the lunch service began. “I’ll see what I can do,” he answered, hanging up afterwards.

Somewhat satisfied, Yoongi returned to drinking his coffee. ‘Go to work’ Jin had suggested. He scoffed at the thought. His father was going to make him take over Daegu Prime - an import and export venture - whether he liked it or not. As it stood, he did not like the idea. He wanted more for his life than to track freight in and out of Korea; he respected his father for what he did, what he built, but Yoongi often found himself wishing he had an older brother that would be the one inheriting Daegu Prime.

His cell phone vibrating on the table pulled the discontent young man from his reverie, but he name that appeared on the screen did nothing to lift his mood.

IDIOT NAMJOON: You’re going to like her, I promise.

IDIOT NAMJOON: Just go meet her.

Yoongi scowled. Yoongi: No. I don’t need to be set up on dates by you of all people.

IDIOT NAMJOON: You’re never going to meet a nice girl. I will help you.

Yoongi: I have other things to worry about.

Not long after Yoongi’s last reply was sent, Namjoon was calling him. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“You’re at that coffee shop again, aren’t you?” Yoongi was silent. “You shouldn’t drink so much coffee, bro. Your heart will explode.”

“What do you want Namjoon?”

His friend laughed on the other end. “Jin just called me.”

Yoongi smiled; he could always count on Jin to help him out. Jin was the oldest out of the group of them, and was very much the big brother. If something wasn’t fair, or was rude, or if someone needed help, or just didn’t seem right, Jin would be the one to talk to about it. “What did he say?”

“He wants me to cancel your date.”

“Did you?” Yoongi was already feeling triumphant.

Namjoon sighed. “Yes. He told me that you don’t need help with this. You just don’t want to try.”

“I ‘don’t want to try’?!” the Daegu Prime heir balked. “I don’t have time for a woman in my life! Why don’t you guys get that?”

“What else are you doing with your days, Yoongi? You’re not exactly spending your days in the head offices.”

Again, Yoongi was silent. His friend was right - they were both right - but he would never admit it. “I don’t have time to listen to you preach right now.” Having ended the call quickly, he wasn’t surprised to see a text from his father waiting for him. Sighing heavily, he decided that he should go see what the old man wanted. If his mother was also at the office, it would be nice to see her as well. Yoongi often made himself scarce at home, setting himself up in the guest house rather than in the main house; it was better that way. He couldn’t get into arguments with his father if they never crossed paths. But this of course meant that he rarely saw his mother as well, and he did miss her.

Taking the last sip of his coffee, he stood and straightened out his coat, doing up a couple of buttons to keep the January wind out. As he left, he nodded to the barista behind the counter, as he did whenever he visited the cafe, knowing that it was likely that he would be back later.

“Jae Eun, where’s the invoice for the catering company?” a woman called, across the roughly five cubicles between them.

The young event planner took a deep breath at her computer before grabbing a pad of paper and a marker. It’s been submitted to finances already. You’ll have to ask Won Jae Soo, she scrawled before standing and holding up her sign for the other woman to read.

“Oh! Thanks!” she hollered back, much to Jae Eun’s dismay. She had really be hoping the woman would get the hint and not yell across the office.

Returning to her work, Jae Eun was in the final steps of planning the city wide lunar new year festival. Her agency, Orchid Events, had been employed by the city of Seoul - personally by the mayor himself, actually - to put on a grand event that all the residents could enjoy. He wanted all the vendors and entertainment to be local to Seoul, from Korea, or as close to that as they could get. The budget was enormous and the amount of stress that was placed on the small firm was just as large. All of this planning had started 10 months ago, after people had rested well after the new year celebrations of last year. Jae Eun’s boss, who had hired her right out of university, put her as the second lead, set to oversee a good chunk of what the festival was to offer.

“You’re very good at what you do,” Sun Tae Woo, her boss, had told her at her annual performance review two years ago. “You’ll do very well in this industry if you keep this kind of performance up.”

Jae Eun had beamed. Her boss was seasoned in event planning, having personally planned weddings for some of Korea’s most high profile couples and even a few abroad. On top of that, he started Orchid Events in his last year of university, appealing to the right people, and having the portfolio to back up the plan. Orchid was just him and a classmate at first, but now, it was a healthy forty-five people strong, and that classmate was now his wife. Jae Eun admired the man. She wanted to see that kind of success in her life. This would be her first time taking a key role in an event of this scale. She was put in charge of catering, entertainment, and venues, and so far, she had been successful.

Seoul’s pillar companies had answered her correspondence with enthusiastic ‘yes’s when she approached them about participating in the city-wide festival. Gwangju Sound would send their new upcoming artists to both get exposure and provide entertainment for their would-be fans. Away by Kim was to lend a few ballrooms that were not already booked for events when the weather fumbled. SweetPea would provide the customary new year’s treats en masse, and would also bring in a separate business partner for more savoury selections. Seoul Style, a restaurant run by the family of her dear friend Mi Sun, also agreed to have a vendor booth featuring their popular menu.

Now, with the festival kicking off in less than a week, Jae Eun was double and triple checking the distribution lists, the approved addresses, times, and menus, and the itinerary for the closing ceremony. At times she felt overwhelmed, but it was quickly taken over by the excitement of seeing something she had a hand in go off without a hitch.

Kwang Miiiiii Sun: Hey! What are you doing for lunch?

A text from her best friend vibrated the phone in the pocket of her blazer. Jae Eun pulled out her phone to answer: Jae Eun: Not sure yet. Why?

Kwang Miiiiii Sun: Can you bring me something? I can’t get away from the office at all today.

Jae Eun frowned. She didn’t like that her friend wouldn’t have a proper lunch break, but she also knew that Mi Sun loved her job. Or, she loved yelling at people and telling them they were wrong. It was hard to tell sometimes.

Jae Eun: Sure. You’re going to have whatever I decide to have though.

Kwang Miiiiii Sun: That’s 100% fine! Thank youuuuuuuu <333333

Jae Eun: Take care of yourself Mi Sun.

Jae Eun looked at her watch. Mi Sun’s law firm was 10 min away from Orchid Events. Saving her work, and opening up her internet browser, she began to look for restaurants that were on the way.

Two young men sat silently in plush armchairs, coffees steaming on the table, mid-morning sun flooding the living room of the apartment, and the sound of pages turning intermittently the only thing to be heard for the better half of forty-five minutes.

“The male leads are always so cool,” Jimin sighed, stretching, the manga he was reading high in the air

Hoseok laughed, looking up from the manga he was reading. “Yeah, but they’re always so mean to the girls.”

The two of them looked down at the covers of their mangas; a bright eyed girl with flowing hair and a bright smile filled most of the space, surrounded by bright colours and cherry blossoms. Behind her, a man with mysterious eyes and a cold expression cast a sideways glance her way. “ Winds of Spring” : a popular shojou manga amongst the female population. The males studied the cover a few beats longer, each thinking their own thoughts, before Jimin looked up at his friend. “Do you think we should read manlier books?” Hoseok smiled. “I enjoy these. I like that there’s a happy ending.”

“Yeah…”

Jimin’s father was quietly infamous among the business conglomerates. He had been disowned for both screwing up a huge business deal and trying to cover it up, and having an affair with his assistant. Jimin’s mother was understandably furious, but more infuriated was her father, a congressman, and an influencer in Jimin’s father being disowned. As a result, as Jimin grew up, his grandfather made it clear that he would be the one to inherit the family real estate company. But he also made it impossibly clear that Jimin’s decisions were being deeply scrutinized and compared to those of his father’s. On top of all that, his grandmother was ever prompting him to get married, regularly setting him up with the granddaughters of her friends. His mother was no help on this front either, setting up dates for her son from time to time.

But there was a bit of a problem - Jimin was immensely shy around women. He wanted to be a proper partner, to treat his lady as she deserved to be treated. He just didn’t know how. He read a lot of advice online, and in magazines about “what women liked”. To be honest, it was all steering him in the wrong direction, and now he was painted as a bit of a player, which is the opposite of what he wanted. However, consistency is key, and that was the personality that he maintained in public. It was exhausting - but his mother and grandmother were leaving him alone these days. All he wanted was the kind of romance like the ones he read in manga.

Hoseok clicked his tongue and leaned further back into his chair. “Wouldn’t it be nice to fall in love like this?” he asked, his phone buzzing as he did. He looked at the deviced that sat on the coffee table between him and his friend. The caller ID said it was the front door of his apartment building. “Hello?”

“Hoseok. It’s Jeong-Guk.”

“Ohh! JK! What brings you over?” Hoseok was always happy to have his friends to his place, and equally happy to have a conversation on the phone. “What are you up to today?”

“Can you buzz me in?”

“Huh? Oh! Yeah - one sec.”

A harsh buzz on the line and a loud click. As Jeong-guk rode the elevator up to Hoseok’s tenth floor apartment, he stared absently at the numbers climbing as the metal car ascended. He ignored the near constant vibrations in his pocket. It was likely that there would be voicemails and text messages from his father and mother, and probably even his grandfather. He had been avoiding all business related matters with all of the above as of late; the conversations with them always ended the same. “You will inherit this company Jeong-Guk. You need to learn this. You need to know that person” blah, blah, blah. He’d had more than enough of hearing those groups of words over and over.

The elevator stopped, and the door opened, revealing a waiting friend on the other side. Hoseok provided a warm smile to Jeong-Guk before turning and heading back to his place without another word.

The apartment was on loan from Hoseok’s uncle, the CEO at Gwangju Sound. He intended to leave the whole company to his nephew, having no family of his own, and for now the young man was the contact point for talent agents in Seoul, and would manage a new talent when he found someone that he believed in. These days, Hoseok often opened his doors to his friends when they needed somewhere to escape to. The wide windows offered as much healing sunshine as possible, and there were no such things as obligations there. Even his proudest of friends showed up at his front door from time to time.

Jimin handed a coffee to Jeong-Guk when he entered, also offering a smile to go with it. “How’d it go?” he asked, knowing about the meeting that had occurred hours earlier.

“Don’t be nosey,” Hoseok huffed, sitting back down with his manga. “Just let him be.”

“Let’s just say that my father wasn’t pleased with me by the end of it,” was Jeong-Guk’s casual answer. He took a sip of coffee. “Jin wasn’t thrilled either.”

“You shouldn’t cause so much trouble for your brother. He’s just trying to help you out,” Jimin advised quietly as the two of them moved to sit with Hoseok.

“He’s not going to be able to do that forever,” Jeong-Guk commented flippantly. “Since he’s going to inherit away by kim in a few years.”

Jimin frowned. He had always been a little jealous of his friend for having a big brother that wanted him to do well, who took the time to try to teach him things. JK often took it for granted that Jin was available now, because he was right. Away by Kim was going to belong to Jin soon, and then there wouldn’t be any hiding behind big brother anymore.

“Are you guys reading this stupid manga again?” JK asked, picking up the book that Jimin had previously been engrossed in. He flipped through the pages. “Didn’t we finish this series already?”

Mi Sun tapped the end of her pen on the stack of papers that she was currently going through. Preparing for a litigation was not the most enjoyable part of her job but it was a part of her job nonetheless. Witness statements were starting to blur together when the young associate realized that she hadn’t taken any sort of break in the last three hours. She laughed inwardly at herself; her friends would be furious at her if they knew she was taking such poor care of herself. Her older brother would be even more furious.

As if sensing her exhaustion, Park Min Sung, a senior associate, knocked on the doorframe of her small office. “When was the last time you stood up, Mi Sun?” he asked, hands casually in the pockets of his custom suit pants, looking at her through his eyelashes.

Mi Sun’s head snapped up, blinking several times because she had apparently stopped doing that some time ago. “I…” Her brow furrowed. “Not for a while I guess.”

Min Sung chuckled and entered her workspace. “You’re a good assistant, Mi Sun, but you’re no use to me if you work yourself to exhaustion.”

The young woman rolled her eyes and looked back at her work. “You’re the one who put me on this case with you, sir . You’ll have yourself to blame.” She could hear twittering of a few paralegals going by her door, as they always did when Min Sung emerged from his office. He was the office idol, apparently, and it was a hobby of the ladies to try to catch is attention throughout the day. It was common knowledge that he was single and from a good family, which made the twittering near constant when he left the confines of his office. But it made for a very noisy work day if he strolled around too much. It didn’t help at all that Min Sung was fairly attractive - she often had someone visiting her to ask her what he liked and what he didn’t like. As if Mi Sun knew, and if she did, she would never tell. “You should hurry up and get yourself a girlfriend, Min Sung.”

Min Sung’s eyebrows rose substantially. “Wh-what?”

She pointed the end of her pen towards her door. “If you do, they’ll stop bothering me.”

“Who?” “Them. The girls. They all want to be Mrs Park Min Sung.”

The senior associate cleared his throat and looked away. He didn’t have time for dating, and if he did start dating… He looked at his assistant that had gone back to underlining and highlighting important parts of a transcript. “Ha - I have have no time for that, especially if --”

“Especially if you want to become partner. Yes. I know.”

Min Sung sighed heavily, trying to hide his smile; he always enjoyed their banter. It was a refreshing departure from constant formal interaction. He leaned and snatched the sheet of paper away from Mi Sun, streaking neon yellow down the page. “Get up, Mi Sun. We’re going for a walk.”

Even on a break, Mi Sun didn’t have anything on her mind other than the work that she still had left to do. “We’re not going to be ready by the hearing date if we keep taking breaks like this.” She had her phone out and was obsessively checking the calendars she had set for various cases. “This is such a waste of time.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle, shaking his head at the silliness of someone younger than him being so worried about their job. “When was the last time you took a breath?” Mi Sun shrugged, obviously not hearing the question. “Let’s go get lunch, shall we?”

Mi Sun was about to answer that she had Jae Eun bringing lunch for her, but as they rounded the corner, they ran into Cheon Min Ho, the current and more amiable of the partners at the firm.

“Ah! Such good timing!” Mr Cheon said, ushering to Min Sung and his young assistant. “Come here. There’s someone I want you to meet.” Min Sung and Mi Sun stepped forward and bowed politely. “This is Kim Hyun Seok and his son, Namjoon. They are looking to hire our firm as their legal representatives.” Mr Cheon gestured to his employees. “This is Park Min Sung, our brightest senior associate, and his diligent assistant, Miss Kwang Mi Sun.” Mi Sun extended her hand to Namjoon for a formal handshake but he looked at it like she had an extra finger. Instead, he locked eyes and said “Yo” which was followed by a wink.

“Same… to you?” He laughed at her response. She clenched her jaw and turned her attention to Namjoon’s father instead. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Mr Cheon beamed like a proud father. “I hope you will be hearing from Mr Kim soon, Min Sung.”

“He shall,” Mr Kim said with a laugh, pleased with the joviality of the associates. He was a serious businessman, but knew very well that balance was imperative to maintaining a happy life. “We’ll talk to soon, Senior Associate Park. Miss Kwang, a pleasure. Let’s go Namjoon. Let’s have lunch.” As father and son turned to leave, Mi Sun cast a sideways glance at Min Sung. He knew that glance - the ‘I don’t like this client’ glance.

“You could use some faster elevators, Mr Cheon,” Namjoon’s father joked, while they waited.

“We could give them some as a gift!” Namjoon chimed, covering his laugh with his hand. The elevator arrived just then, the doors opening for the passengers. Jae Eun happily hopped out, Mi Sun’s lunch in a bag, but stopped in her tracks. “Oh! Mi Sun! Were you waiting?” Mi Sun’s expression brightened exponentially. “Nope! Let’s go!” She grabbed her friend’s arm and steered her back towards her office.

“Thank you Mr Kim!” Kim Taehyung said, holding his pair of chopsticks happily. “Thank you for inviting me to lunch!”

Namjoon’s father laughed. “Eat up!” He slid a bowl towards his son and to his son’s friend. “You boys should eat enough to not have to worry about being hungry.” Kim Hyung Seok shuffled more dishes into the centre of the table. He watched as the two young men - boys still in his eyes - picked bits and pieces out of bowls and took turns putting them into each other’s rice bowls. He built Kim Group Seoul from the ground up, sometimes forgetting to eat until his wife - girlfriend at the time - said something to him. He didn’t want his son to feel that emptiness in the pit of his stomach as he had. He would give his son something that he wouldn’t have to miss dinner at home for.

“Taehyung, how is your grandfather these days?” Hyun Seok asked, helping himself to more veggies.

“He is well. Still making candies.”

“And your parents?”

“They are also well. They’re on a cruise right now.”

“Wow!” came Namjoon’s interjection. “We should go on a cruise, huh? See some of the world.”

Taehyung cocked an eyebrow. “Who’s going to look after SweetPea then?”

Mr Kim waved his hand dismissively. “You’re too young to worry about things like that.”

But he wasn’t. Taehyung was the CEO of SweetPea, the confectionary empire under the umbrella of SilverLux, and it was specifically left to him. His father sat on the board of the main company, and his grandfather and his grandfather’s brother both occupied the role of chairman. For the size of company that it was, it was incredibly harmonious; all disputes were settled fairly, every decision was considered as a board, rather than executively. This method of operation was the source of the corporation’s overwhelming success. With branches in pharmaceuticals, construction, business enterprise, and, of course, culinary and confectionary. Taehyung was around SweetPea for as long as he could remember, sneaking candies as a child, and now managing it. He wanted to do more for SilverLux, but he and the candy company had become synonymous.

“Well, what about Namjoon? Can he just leave?” Taehyung asked, chopsticks tapping his bottom lip thoughtfully.

Namjoon scowled at his friend - all he wanted was a vacation. He looked at his father who seemed to be wheeling the inconveniences of an impromptu cruise around his head. “Ah - he probably couldn’t go either.” Mr Kim gave his son a healthy pat on the back. “Too much for you to learn these days.”

Namjoon sighed, flicking some rice at a smug looking Taehyung across the table. Being the heir to the family company was so much responsibility, and not to be wrong, Namjoon would fully accept that responsibility when the time came. But right now, he and his friends were in the prime of their lives - despite each of them being set up to inherit their family business. All he wanted to do was enjoy this time with them, before duty dragged them away to board rooms and late nights at the office. Kim Group Seoul was up to its eyeballs - in a good way - in business ventures. It was best known for supporting new businesses, putting them under their company umbrella, and making them international successes.The group had made quite the name for itself and it wasn’t at all uncommon to see their simple logo place on nearly everything that could be consumed by the public.

Kim Hyung Seok brought his son with him on nearly all his business trips abroad, having him be taught English on the plane rides across time zones. Now Namjoon was fluent in the western language - better than his father - and was efficiently making correspondence with partners overseas. He excelled in his studies and was passionate about whatever project he took on; Hyung Seok was incredibly proud of his son’s accomplishments and knew that Kim Seoul Group would be in good hands. But as the happy father watched the two young men squabble over the last pieces of kimchi, he couldn’t help but worry. Namjoon had always been carefree despite the weight that sat on his shoulders - would he stay that way? He wouldn’t quite be Kim Namjoon without that particular trait.

“Why don’t you boys find yourselves companions?” Hyung Seok said, his bout of fretting having passed.

Namjoon and Taehyung exchanged looks. “Like… I have Namjoon?” the younger of the two mumbled.

Mr Kim took a casual sip of tea. “No, like girlfriends.”

The young men stared for a moment, trying to find something to answer with. “I… I have lots of girlfriends!” Taehyung blurted, the tops of cheeks turning pink.

Both Namjoon and his father looked at him; Namjoon trying not to laugh. He knew for a fact that Taehyung was not as smooth as he liked to believe. Mr Kim, on the other hand, wore a frown. “That’s not a good habit to have, Kim Taehyung.”

Poor Taehyung’s face flushed a few more shades of red at being scolded by his friend’s dad. “W-well Namjoon isn’t even looking!” He pointed aggressively at his friend beside him.

Namjoon shrugged as he leaned back in his chair. “It’ll happen when it happens.”

Mr Kim harumphed into his tea cup. “Is it going to happen before I’m dead?”

“Dad, don’t you have work to do?”

A slightly inebriated young woman sat at the bartop of Lotus Bar, gazing dreamily at the bartender behind it. He looked over at her and flashed her a winning smile. “Is there anything I can help do for you?”

She sighed and giggled bashfully. “Has anyone ever told you you look just like Kim Seokjin?”

The man’s smile dropped for a moment, but he replaced it with a much faker smile. “No, I’ve not heard that before.” He picked up a few empty glasses from the end of the bar and walked away, peeved.

“Can you believe that? She thought I looked like Kim Chin,” the bartend hissed quietly to his friend who sat on the other side of the bartop.

The young woman he spoke too looked up from her phone and furrowed her brows. “Kim Chin?” She sighed and picked up her drink. “She’s drunk, Se Jun. Let her have her delusions.”

Se Jun glowered. “Do you really teach children with that attitude?”

The woman put her glass down a little more aggressively than she perhaps meant to, causing the ice inside to shift. “Listen, you, dealing with drunk women is a lot like dealing with children. Let their imaginations run their course.”

The bartender coughed out a laugh and went back to work, leaving her to return to whatever it was she was doing on her phone.

Soo Jung sipped on her drink, watching her friend talk to his clientele - both the regulars and new visitors. She liked to watch adults interact with each other. As a school teacher, that average age of the people she talked to was about 10. Children were straightforward. There were no coy games or mistruths. It either was or wasn’t with kids, and the young teacher couldn’t appreciate that more than when she was sitting in a bar at the end of the work week. It was a regular occurrence for Soo Jung to sit at Lotus Bar alone for a while and watch the comings and goings. The school she worked at was closeby, and Se Jun was good company while she waited for Mi Sun and Jae Eun. She had stumbled upon the place when it had first opened, and thought it would be a nice place to meet up with her friends on a weekly basis. It wasn’t too fancy, but it wasn’t too grungy. It was cozy inside without become claustrophobic after a few drinks, and usually the crowd didn’t get too rowdy as the night went on. When she had brought the girls here, and Jae Eun walked through the doors, Se Jun looked as if he had discovered a star.

Once neighbourhood friends, Jae Eun and Se Jun had been very close, sticking next to each all through elementary and high school. But as it does, ambition drew the friends away and their paths hadn’t crossed again until Soo Jung had brought them all to Lotus Bar. She had been very proud of herself for reuniting long lost friends, not failing to remind Jae Eun of her great deed. The teacher’s phone buzzed on the bartop, sliding a bit on the smooth surface. “Hello?”

“Soo Jung? Hey! It’s Jae Eun.”

Soo Jung looked at her phone; it was Mi Sun’s number. They must be on their way, and Jae Eun was calling from the hands-free in Mi Sun’s car. “Are you on your way?”

“Yeah yeah. We’re almost there. Mi Sun just wanted to call you to say sorry we’re late.”

“Min Sung can be a real tyrant when he wants to be!” Mi Sun chimed. “Okay okay okay, we’re like five minutes away. See you soon!”

The girls hung up and Soo Jung smiled. She loved her friends; they were all so different. It was a wonder they got along at all.

“I know that smile,” Se Jun chimed, coming back around to Soo Jung’s side of the bar. “The girls are on their way.”

Wearing ballcaps and keeping their heads down, Jimin and Taehyung chatted quietly at a corner table, as far out of sight as they could be. They were doing a better job at this than Yoongi had, earlier that day.

“Namjoon’s father wants us to find girlfriends,” Taehyung sighed, pouting and resting his chin in the palms of his hands.

“Mr Kim is so nice,” Jimin commented absently, scrolling through the Naver image results of the search he just did. He held his phone out to his friend. “Does this look like I went out and got bottle service tonight?”

“Uh…” Taehyung squinted at the picture. “Not really. It looks like a stock photo.”

“Hmm… maybe I’ll just post a picture of something else then. I don’t have to go to the club every Friday night.”

“Doesn’t your grandmother know a bunch of girls we could date?”

“Don’t even start on that, Tae.” Jimin was scrolling through pictures of the Busan night sky, looking now for a more laissez-faire social media post. “You wouldn’t like them anyway.” He thought about the last female that his grandmother had suggested. Her father was a surgeon, and she was pretty; he had taken her for coffee and was absolutely blown away by how incredibly boring she was. Like she didn’t have any interests at all, outside of what she was told to say.

Taehyung’s phone screen lit up, a text from Jin in the notifications. Jin-Bro: Have you heard from JK at all?

He frowned and nudged Jimin. “Have you seen JK at all? Jin is looking for him. Again.”

“He’s being such a brat.”

“Yes or no.”

“... Yeah… he was at Hoseok’s this morning.”

Tae: Jimin says he was at Hobi’s earlier, Tae typed out. Don’t worry too much, bro. You’ll get grey hairs. When he looked back up, Jimin was still scrolling for a picture. “Do you have any new articles on how to casually talk to girls?”

Jimin looked at Taehyung, and then back at his phone. He did have a new article, but he still couldn’t figure out why this whole ‘meeting women’ thing was so difficult. Neither of them were unattractive - quite the opposite really - and neither of them were incapable of having a conversation. Maybe it was because all their interactions with the opposite sex were, more often than not, incredibly structured, and it didn’t leave a lot of room to actually be a human being. “Yeah. I have a couple new ones.”

#bts #bts fic #chaebol au #kim namjoon #kim taehyung #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jeon jungkook #jung hoseok #park jimin #i don't know what i'm doing #kpop #writing #glimpse of me and you

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amorremanet · 7 years ago

Note

OC asks/questions: 8, 15, 21, 25, 32? Also if that's not already too much: finish the sentence meme for Lucy?

Okay, I did intend to do the finish the sentence meme, but as it stands, it’s almost 4AM and I’ve been binge-watching old Outside X-Box list videos to stay awake, so…… I’ll get back to that one

8: What’s the most common physical characteristic of your OCs? What about personality trait?

Physically, a lot of my OCs are ridiculously tall. I blame having my concept of average human heights skewed when I was a child, due to having several ridiculously tall relatives, and then having my ideas further skewed in my adolescence by a mix of shoujo and magical girl anime/manga (where the hottest characters, like Tenou Haruka, or designated love interest characters, like Chiba Mamoru and Kashino Rei, the “troubled but cute” pretty boy from MARS, are tall), and the Vampire Chronicles (where most of the vampires are tall, beautiful, and incredibly gay or bisexual)

Personality-wise, “troubled but cute” is probably my most overused character type. Even more specifically, “troubled, but cute, and they have a good heart, they’re trying their best, but they’re still troubled and sometimes (often) make incredibly bad decisions because I felt like it would be a fun time to make them do so”

15: Do you have any AUs? — Short answer: yes. Longer answer: yes, and some of them are going to be canon, because I have the self-restraint of a magpie, and figured that…… eh, whatever, screw it, I’m nixing several of the other more credulity-straining and ridiculous elements of the by-its-very-nature ridiculous and credulity-straining superhero genre, so I can have a canon multiverse if I please. Which I do, because it’s fun. For me. Anyway, some of the canon AUs are:

The AU where most of the major points are still the same, but also, Silent Hill. Not that it will actually be called, “Silent Hill” because of blah blah copyright, but I primarily got the idea of, “horrible demonic monsters conjured out of people’s guilt and psychological issues” from the Silent Hill series, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t.

Also, unlike Silent Hill proper, the nasty pieces of work in this universe do not have the decency to just stay confined to one small town in Middle of Nowhere, Maine. They’re everywhere.

Anyway, some of the characters from this AU get dragged into the prime timeline (tentatively) in book three, as part of a Totally Brilliant (not really) scheme by a handful of the fascist supervillain douchebags to distract that annoying ragtag band of misfit anti-fascist heroes from the actual evil plan going on. Nobody is happy about this.

Especially not when some of the monsters decide to join in on the universe-hopping fun-times. Whoops.

The AU where a lot of the major points are more or less the same, but human technology is more advanced and, in keeping with some of the more idealistic mid-20th century sci-fi concepts, while our cast in the prime timeline are dealing with neo-fascism and shit, humans in this AU are getting welcomed into It’s Not The Federation From Star Trek Because I Don’t Want to Get Sued, But It Is Basically The Same Idea, and dating aliens.

Pete’s AU counterpart got into what is basically an alien university’s MFA program in theatre. He’s the first Terran to do so, period. He has an alien boyfriend, he has never been to rehab (though, uh. He’s still an addict. And still using. So, there’s that), and his prime-timeline counterpart is going to initially think he’s pretty awesome, and progressively get super sick of basically everything about him.

The AU where Seb, Pete, Stephen, Josie, and Todd are essentially a boy band. Because of reasons. Anyone who gets dragged into the prime timeline from this AU is going to be really confused by literally everything else, because this AU is probably the closest one to how our own universe works, so like…… Imagine that you abruptly get yanked into [pick a superhero comic book universe], after a lifetime of believing that it’s all, “just stories.” It would be confusing and more than a bit alienating.

Which is not to say that this AU is all rainbows and kittens or whatever, but the problems facing the main cast are things like, “Everyone in the band has to be closeted because there’s still homophobia and transphobia,”

“Pete and Josie have probably never gotten treatment for their respective eating disorders, and Stephen may well have developed one from the fact that, boy bands are generally not allowed to have fat members, which would also mean that he’s ridiculously unhealthy since his body’s happy, healthy place? Just so happens to be fat,”

“On one hand, Todd and maybe Pete have probably never had substance abuse problems. But on the other hand, Seb still has and it’s probably very seriously exacerbated by several factors,” and so on.

Which isn’t to say that those things aren’t important and complicated problems, or that the prime timeline characters DON’T have to deal with similar things just because they’re in a superhero world (since…… they DO have to deal with those things or at least very similar ones)

But there’s a pretty significant difference between things like, “trying to stay clean” and, “trying to prevent a bunch of neo-fascist supervillain douchebags from staging a bullshit fake attack at a debate between potential Republican nominees for the US presidency, which will probably end up killing a bunch of people if it’s allowed to go on, and is part of a longer-running, slow-burn scheme to essentially make this dickbag senator from Virginia the President-in-All-But-Name”

And the boy band AU characters are super-unprepared to deal with the latter sort of problem

The AU where it’s a vaguely cyberpunk dystopia because I felt like it, that’s why.

The AU where instead of superpowers, everyone has magic

Which is going to frustrate Lucy to no end, when she has to meet her AU self from this universe, because sure, this AU has different systems and rules for how the magic works, but no one can tell her what the Hell makes it go aside from, “idk, it’s magic” and that’s not an acceptable explanation to her

—But, as she’s going to hear from someone, this isn’t actually any different from how superpowers work in the main timeline, like? They know that the superpowers are caused by genetic mutations. They can figure out different ways of handling said superpowers and systems of how to approach and understand them……

But if we look at Josie’s telepathy/empathy, Lucy’s hemokinesis, Sara Grace’s super-speed and neato super-voice tricks, Seb’s “they don’t call it lycanthropy but only because that’s already a thing; it’s essentially lycanthropy with a shot of therianthropy, animal empathy, and a healing factor that would make Deadpool jealous,” Yael’s ferrokinesis and magnetism powers, All-Star Doctor Delphi’s status as the resident flying brick with heat vision, Elizabeth’s telepathy/telekinesis, Conrad’s telepathy/mental manipulation, Julian’s empathic abilities and emotional manipulation that can be a super-effective Jedi Mind Trick and then some when used effectively, Sylvia and Vince’s essentially omni-shapeshifting, the fact that Annie can turn her own tears, saliva, and blood into all kinds of fun chemicals (from toxins and acids, to myriad medicines), ET CETERA?

……Yeah, uh. In the end, the best explanation that anyone has for why any of that works, in-universe, is essentially, “Because it just does.”

So… essentially the same explanation as, “A wizard did it,” but it’s pretending to be scientific.

Lucy does not like being confronted with this hypocrisy, but she’s just gonna need to put on her big girl shoes and deal with it.

The AU where I don’t actually have most of the details about it worked out, but in the prime timeline’s December 2007, it abruptly became the new home of All-Stars member Penumbra (nee Victoria Brandt) and supervillains Dr. Neutron and Necrotara. They all got dumped in it when Penumbra stopped them from unleashing a super-plague on New York City… by opening up a rift in space-time, throwing them into it, and plunging after them because that was the only way she knew to seal it before it ate New York.

This AU will also get dragged into the prime timeline, though: 1. that’s more of an accident because Titus, Dezi, Eddie, and Tamsin have no goddamn idea what they’re doing and are meddling with forces they can’t control (especially not Dezi and Eddie, who have no powers to speak of and are miserably inept at pretty much everything);

and 2. It’s a bigger deal to the All-Stars than to the main cast, especially to Ruby Marvel (Penumbra’s on-off girlfriend), Zephyr Haze (who really looked up to Penumbra, and she was one of the few team members who believed that he was ready to be anything more than Doctor Delphi’s sidekick), and Slingshot (her on-off boyfriend, who has totally failed to move on from what happened, and if not for Captain Firebrand and Platinum Man revoking his ability to get into R&D without a babysitter, he likely would’ve broken space-time to get Penumbra back years ago)

Like, I’m not saying, “He has handled this like Silver Age Spiderman trying to kill the Green Goblin as vengeance for Norman Osborne murdering Gwen Stacy.”

I’m saying, “Slingshot has handled Penumbra’s effective death like that thing I just said magnified by a power of ten because, as far as he knows, getting her back into the prime timeline could potentially be cataclysmic, and he does not care. He has also spectacularly failed to listen to any and all attempts at getting him to respect her choice here, and the only reason he hasn’t gone full grimdark like a mid-90’s to mid-2000’s Dark Age drama-bomb of toxic masculinity and manpain? Is that he isn’t allowed into R&D at All-Stars Tower without a babysitter.”

However this AU works, Adelaide’s AU counterpart is going to be kind of a mess at getting dragged into the prime timeline, on one hand because her prime timeline self doesn’t have powers but decided to affiliate herself with a bunch of heroes anyway (while dumpster fire AU!Adelaide has superpowers and has been a hero and it’s gone Other Than Well for her), and on the other because her prime timeline brothers are alive and haven’t gotten killed by her supervillain nemeses

Dumpster fire AU!Adelaide is going to be more of a mess over a lot of things like, “On one hand, her little brother lived past 20 and swears he’s got a good life and his boyfriend is nice (yay!), but on the other, he’s a mentally ill recovering addict and also a superhero and for some reason, her prime timeline self is, as far as dumpster fire AU!Adelaide can tell, just okay with this”

And, “Her prime timeline self has a niece who actually knows what it’s like to have a father in her life, because dumpster fire AU!Adelaide’s Max got killed off while Linda was pregnant and Linda is probably a great single mom, but dumpster fire AU!Adelaide wouldn’t know because after Seb and Ambrose had both gotten killed (albeit by different villains), the common theme that emerged was the boys getting killed by supervillains and having a superhero sister, and okay, Linda did not explicitly blame Adelaide (Linda’s feelings about all of this are conflicted and messy)

“—but dumpster fire!Adelaide decided that the best thing to do was to basically cut herself off from friends, family, and loved ones, barring her AU’s Pete, who has become her co-hero, and a dog, because like her baby brother, Adelaide loves dogs and sometimes uses them as a substitute for interpersonal contact and connections”

Prime timeline Addie is seriously weirded out by her AU self’s complete lack of chill. Which says a lot, because Addie-prime actively repels anything that even vaguely resembles chill.

The AU where Margot and Seb didn’t get to be friends in undergrad, and her parents never disowned her, and she wound up filthy rich in her own right and having far fewer near brushes with death…… but also wound up: closeted and basically leading a double-life to keep from getting outed; very lonely; more miserable than she would like to think; and taking more than a few cues from Adrian “Ozymandias” Veidt of Watchmen

—Which is to say that, while she still doesn’t have any literal superpowers, she is deeply closeted and convinced that the only way to save humanity from itself might just need to involve doing something extreme that successfully makes humanity put aside their differences and unite against a perceived larger threat (and also distracts them so that Margot and her loosely affiliated AU associates can, “solve the underlying problems” unimpeded)

As prime timeline Margot will definitely point out: ideas like that literally only work on paper or in theory. In practice, humans are chaotic and messy and impossible to predict with any real accuracy, so there is no possible way to guarantee that killing a bunch of people and blaming it on aliens or whatever will make everyone decide to get along and sing songs underneath of a rainbow like some vintage Coca-Cola commercial.

Oh, and if Ozymandias AU!Margot actually thinks that nobody will notice if she and her cohorts, what, like…… use the world banks to redistribute the world’s wealth and make sure that the 1% can’t get it back (which would include AU!Margot herself and her cohorts, even though most of them don’t know she’s planning to do that), change a bunch of laws and policies they don’t agree with, and institute some kind of secret shadow government over the entire world?

Here’s a hint, Ozymandias AU!Margot: people will definitely notice that, and a lot of them won’t be too keen on letting you get away with it.

Furthermore, not only will people definitely notice that, but it won’t actually fix things as much as you want it to do. It would have some benefits, sure, and some of the ideas you’re trying to put into practice here are not inherently bad — like redistributing the wealth and putting hella restrictions on the same patterns of capitalist exploitation that made you rich in the first place — but one of the underlying flaws in AU!Margot’s approach is that, again, she’s ignoring the human element of everything

In other words: sure, redistributing the wealth is a nice idea and it would definitely have some positive benefits, but you cannot magic away the scars of aforementioned capitalist exploitation by throwing money at them, nor should you expect people who have been exploited, dehumanized, murdered, etc. under said patterns to not be upset about their suffering just because they now have money.

More generally, expecting people to always react in predictable ways is a bad idea. Expecting people to be okay with things that you erroneously think you would totally be okay with, if you were in their position is a bad idea. Behaving like a supervillain, even if you think you’re doing it for the right reasons and even if there might be some temporary short-term benefits? Is a BAD IDEA (especially when your plans have some major, egregious oversights).

Also, ew, Ozymandias AU!self, but out of all the ladies with whom you could be having a secret affair, why the fuck are you having it with your AU’s Melanie Drake (the firstborn daughter of the guy who the prime timeline Biggest Bad wants to put in power as his puppet, who is, herself, an active and enthusiastic participant in fascist supervillain hijinks).

In Ozymandias AU!Margot’s defense, her universe’s Melanie still has the conviction that everything she’s doing is for the Greater Good, but although she hasn’t gotten away from her nuclear reactor meltdown of an abusive shit-show family, she did come to believe in a different vision of, “the Greater Good.”

I mean. The nicest thing that can be said about it is that her vision of, “the Greater Good” isn’t a fascistic one and is, much like Ozymandias AU!Margot’s entire scheme, largely born out of good or at least okay-ish intentions, but really fucked up wrt the execution. But it’s not like Ozymandias AU!Margot is having a secret sexy affair with a neo-fascist supervillain.

She’s…… uh. Having a secret sexy affair with someone else who, in their AU, considers herself to be, “one of the heroes that this world needs but won’t accept,” and both of them are pretty fucked up, morally and ethically speaking, though not so much so that they wouldn’t be horrified by the Melanie of the prime timeline (who is, in fairness, pretty horrific. She’s also engaged to Titus, who is equally horrible but for some different reasons)

Anyway, the point is that Margot-prime super doesn’t expect any Melanie to be the secret girlfriend for any of her AU selves, and she’s really not happy about it, but also biased due to shit like, “Melanie-prime is an actual facts fascist supervillain”

And shit like, “Melanie-prime has hurt Margot-prime’s friends, and no, she doesn’t care that it was always in a superhero vs. supervillain fight, or that Seb has a healing factor, or that Pete accidentally made shit get violent on at least one occasion by running his mouth when he knew that he should have shut up, or that Lucy has run headlong into situations where a little bit of chill could’ve gone a long way and then people started throwing punches, la la la, go away context, Margot can’t hear you, Melanie has hurt her friends And That’s Terrible”

The mundane AU where, in addition to not being superheroes, Seb and Stephen met each other about ten years earlier and were a lot less gun-shy about being super into each other, not least because neither of them had been burned too badly in romance before (even given that they’d both had some negative experiences with it), and while both of them still had some big deal underlying issues with self-esteem, neither of them played any weird little head-games with himself to the tune of, “Oh, I shouldn’t voice my interest because he’s probably not interested in me because reasons, he’s probably just being nice”

On one hand, this AU wound up sparing both of them certain shitty experiences that their prime-timeline counterparts dealt with in their 20’s (not all of them, granted, and like — this AU’s Seb is still a recovering addict, and this AU’s Stephen has still dealt with a ton of bullshit about body image and fatphobia).

But on the other, they broke up and it’s…… amicable? Mostly? But still kind of emotionally tense for several reasons, not least of which is how instead of playing any, “he’s probably not really interested” head-games with themselves at the outset of their relationship and working through it, they were together for a long time, and danced around the idea of getting married…

…but neither of them told the other about wanting to get married because each of them thought that the other would never be into that idea because Reasons. Presumptions were made, miscommunication ensued, they eventually split up, each of them took it as a definite sign of, “I was right, he never would’ve been into getting married,” and they’ve mostly moved on and repaired the non-romantic friendship parts here.

Until they get dragged into the prime timeline and find that their counterparts are significantly more messed up as individuals but actually making a relationship work, but also at a point of, “They’ve been having some issues that have nothing to do with the superhero thing, and each of them is kind of seriously thinking about proposing but keeps getting cold feet about it”

Watching your alternate universe selves get engaged in the middle of a drag show on one of their birthdays is…… special.

Doing so after telling one or the other of them why you ever broke up is…… uh. Let’s just call it, “double special” and move on.

Also, powerless AU!Seb…… will be really conflicted about his prime timeline self being a superhero, partly out of concern (since this hero business seems to be working out okay, but it all sounds stressful and dangerous, and yes, Seb-prime literally can’t get intoxicated anymore — at least, not on any of the, “normal stuff,” i.e., “psychoactive substances that were not created by other mutants” — but…… how is being a superhero NOT a relapse trigger waiting to happen. To paraphrase Joan Watson, how is being a superhero NOT a giant gun filled with drugs and alcohol, pointed right at Seb-prime)

…partly out admiration (because the superhero stuff actually is working out decently, and powerless AU!Seb has to respect his prime timeline counterpart’s hijinks and dedication to helping people)

……and partly out of jealousy and getting kicked in the, “you’re kind of a worthless fuck-up, aren’t you?” feelings

because yes, powerless!Seb has found his own bliss in academia, and he is more or less at peace with it, most of the time……

but he’s torn because he wants to be helping people, and he largely went down the academic track to help himself

—which, in this case, means, “to something to work on and do with himself that wouldn’t feel like a complete waste of time, even if it didn’t exactly make him feel fulfilled, because he needed something to do other than, ‘try to find peace and sobriety by isolating himself from as much of life as possible,’” so it’s not like he is being selfish in a way that actively screws over anyone else; he is being selfish in a way that displays self-preservation—

—and okay, powerless!Seb has a list of things that he tries to tell himself about how this life-choice isn’t antithetical to the idea of helping people because he mentors students, and his research helps in X or Y or Z convoluted fashion, and he uses his access to academic databases to get around paywalls for other people who don’t have that access and to then hook them up with what they need……

But that’s still not the kind of helping people that he wanted to get into and it doesn’t really feel like he’s helping anyone, and it’s a pretty big kick in the stomach for him to get yanked into the prime timeline and see Seb-prime… actively helping other people as a superhero and ostensibly doing better at staying sober because of the superhero thing, rather than in spite of it, and what the fuck, how is this FAIR, how come he can do that and powerless!Seb CAN’T)

Even without the part where Seb-prime literally can’t get intoxicated on, “the normal stuff” anymore, the situation is a lot more complicated than powerless!Seb thinks it is, but in fairness to him, he’s probably only been stuck in this unfamiliar timeline for two weeks, max, when he has this little jealousy-induced meltdown

He probably ends up getting helped to chill out by Stephen-prime, which is its own messy and confusing kettle of monkeys for both parties because of intricate, complicated ontological questions like, “Is it cheating if I don’t actually do anything with my (ex-)boyfriend’s alternate universe counterpart, but feel attracted to him and definitely THINK about doing things with him?”

……The sad part is that all four of these losers WOULD actually make that complicated question, but it would be less because of the actual thorny issues about being and the nature of existence, and more because all of them would have a mental double-standard like, “Well, if I did it, then it would definitely be wrong, but it wouldn’t be wrong if my boyfriend did it because of reasons”

Seb and Stephen-prime may not need to deal with that specific question but the whole underlying, “Things that other people are allowed to do are wrong when I do them because of reasons” business is something they have to suck it up and work on, as individuals and in the context of their relationship

The AU where Josie actually got to go into fashion design, because they didn’t have their entire career ruined before it began by a mix of a douchebag ex-boyfriend whose parents were in good with Anna Wintour, and an abrupt, stress-triggered anorexic relapse that led to an even more stressful superpower awakening

Keeping with the, “mirror mirror on the wall, it’s fuck with my characters o’clock, let’s go…… all” theme among a lot of these AUs and the different respective versions of the characters, fashionista AU!Josie has a lot of things that Josie-prime wants and a lot of aspects of their life make Josie-prime jealous, but they are actually a huge mess in their own right

I’m still working out how, exactly, they are a huge mess, and so far, all I’ve really thought of is that it would amuse me if they were dating their AU’s Todd, but I’m not sure where I want to go with that and it’s also not actually going to be an issue for a while yet, so the idea has time to percolate

and the canonical coffee-shop AU.

The canonical coffee-shop AU is a horrifying dystopia where the bad guys won before most of the main cast were even ten years old — like, that AU’s Lucy and Sara Grace literally have no conscious memories of life ever being any different, they were that young when everything went to Hell — and that AU’s version of Senator Huntington (R-Virginia), the aforementioned Biggest Bad, took a lot of cues from Brave New World about how to run his dystopia

Like, there are several things that he would nix

e.g., the ostensible sex-positivity and alleged sexual equality of Aldous Huxley’s dystopia that is, in its own way, just another way of creating sex/gender-based INequality and blah blah blah

That would go right out the window because as far as dystopias go, wrt sex and the (im)morality thereof? Huntington thinks that Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gideon from The Handmaid’s Tale had more or less the right idea, though he would also acquiesce that, if you want it to work, you’d need to build up to that, rather than dumping it on everyone all at once

He would also nix some of the more scientific aspects of the BNW dystopia, because he realizes that they’re not actually as likely to work out decently as Huxley seems to have thought in the novel

Like, Huntington would definitely still want there to be several strata of social inequalities that all serve to support a big pyramid that he can be on top of

……but he wouldn’t want to have those things artificially created in a lab because he thinks that sex is the best way to control a lot of the people under his power because even the ones who aren’t “perverts” — which, to him, means basically everyone who isn’t a heterosexual who only ever wants to have sex in the missionary position for the express purpose of procreation — are still “weakened” by their dependence on human connections (read: any desire to have meaningful human connections), and all of them inevitably want those connections to be expressed through sex because they’re all idiots in the end

For the record: Huntington’s attitude about sex is derived from the attitudes of real-world right-wing Christians in the States who love to play the game of shaming anyone who has any sexual desires, ever, because even though they also say that said desires come from God because they’re expressions of love and whatnot, they could just as easily come from Satan if the preacher in question doesn’t approve of them, personally.

The religious aspect only seems pasted-on whenever Huntington talks about any of this because…… Well, for him? It is. He doesn’t actually believe in God, or Jesus, or much of anything beyond his own power and his own right to have whatever he wants because he showed up and decided he deserves it.

Any time he talks about God or religion, he’s merely catering to his constituents by playing a version of himself who DOES believe in God because he’s reasonably certain he would never hold any elected office if he didn’t project the image of being a righteous, God-fearing man who is filled with the love of Jesus. But I digress.

So, yeah. Brave New!Huntington wouldn’t want to have all of his social inequalities baked into the population due to how people are grown in laboratories, but the general idea of, “keep the populace medicated into submission, throw them some bread and circuses and maybe a bit of pasted-on happiness, don’t let them think for themselves but give them the illusion of thinking for themselves, etc.”? Huntington is all about that.

Another reason why he vetoes the, “let’s grow all humans in laboratory test tubes lmao” idea is that he figures he can better play into the idea of all people being essentially equal, which helps keep the populace docile as long as they believe in it, if he lets them handle their own relationships and procreation. Like, regulate it in certain ways, and only give The Gay Agenda (i.e., everyone who isn’t straight) as much wiggle room as will keep them from noticing that equality is a lie, but don’t interfere too much because getting hung up on all that interpersonal drama keeps them from noticing the actual problems

Either way, the canonical coffee-shop AU is a horrid, dystopian hellscape and the main cast’s counterparts in that AU are okay with their lots in life — where, for example, Conrad actually is just a wacky eccentric uncle and not using that façade to try and teach Marie a kiddie version of Why Fascism Is Totally Cool, just in case she ends up being a mutant too, and Julian is a provocateur in that he argues with anyone who tries to sit in His Spot at the coffee-shop, rather than because he uses his platform and charisma to pick at prejudices and stir the pot in ways that incite violence — because they’re all drugged, they’re all being lied to, some of them don’t remember life ever being anything else, and when some of them get yanked into the prime timeline, uh.

Well.

That will be interesting to me, personally, because there’s going to be a lot of disagreement among all involved parties about all of this and what it all means

But ngl, this canonical AU literally started because I was reading coffee-shop AU superhero fics, looking at my own ragtag bunch of superheroic misfits, and going, “God, what WOULD it take for them to actually exist in a coffee-shop AU? Because the conventional coffee-shop AU set-up wouldn’t even allow for any of them to be recovering addicts or abuse survivors, much less actively upset about any injustices in the world (beyond maybe being a Soapbox Sadie type for a scene or two before getting swept up in the inevitable romance that will dominate literally everything about the fic) or affected by shit like homophobia, racism, ableism, sexism, etc. (because if we dealt with those issues, it might not be sexy or romantic, or at the very least, it would seriously distract from the OTP and their amazing love story). The most anyone is ever allowed to be in a coffee-shop AU is pleasantly eccentric or Troubled But Cute With The Emphasis On Cute”

Which is all a long-form way of saying that I came up with an entire canonical dystopian coffee-shop AU in a thought exercise that came out of being tolerant of coffee-shop AUs but also really bored with them and low-key frustrated about their dominance of fanfiction things for the past few years because while I understand the appeal of the escapism that’s inherent in most of them (and there are some that I even enjoy), I find it kind of depressing that so many of them end up being such that you could probably find and replace the names of one fandom’s characters with another fandom’s characters and it would essentially be the same story, and all of the things that drew people to the original stories will be gone while almost none of the problems of the original stories will actually be fixed (—and at that, the most likely, “fixing” is probably going to be, “a white cis M/M otp is injected into things where, in their respective canon, they are Just Dudes Bein’ Bros”)

……Which is a long-form way of saying that I did the thing out of frustration with coffee-shop AUs (and probably a bit because rereading all the classic dystopian lit pieces at once isn’t really the best idea ever, whoops)

21: Describe each of your OCs as shittily as possible.

okay, I did these all out of order, and after going in so hard on the AUs and polyships questions, it’s 3:15 in the morning and I’m just going to phone this in

Sebastian: yes, he’s a human disaster and a serious mess, but at least he’s trying, okay

Pete: local man delivers scathing verbal smackdown and makes you say, “thanks” for the honor

Margot: the mean chain-smoking lesbian with a heart of gold that your parents didn’t warn you about but should have, probably

Josie: local goth makes everyone else look under-dressed, feels bad about things

Todd: hipster garbage who isn’t nearly as underground as he thinks

Lucy: okay but have you guys considered how superpowers could be used to address public health crises

Stephen: the human embodiment of that moment when you get so excited about the punchline of the joke you’re telling that you laugh at it preemptively and can’t finish the joke but hey, at least everyone is smiling now, right

Sara Grace: local ballerina princess will probably never get over her physical inability to cuddle every cat on the planet

Conrad: “hey why are you getting upset i’m just trying to deny your right to be considered fully human unless you fit my specific ideas about what that is lmao”

Julian: sinnamon roll that you bought at a backwoods gas station at three in the morning, then lost on the floor of your car for two years, and now it’s all grody and probably a biohazard

Annie: perpetually screaming, just at life in general

Adelaide: she’s not telling you what to do, she’s just saying that her way is probably better even when it likely isn’t

Yael: is probably your favorite Jewish lesbian grandma, unless you think that she should chill, in which case not so much

Max: had his younger sister be his best man when he got married, out of his depth with most things, *glinting glasses of intimidation*

25: What sorts of symbols/items/~aesthetics~/colours represent each OC?

and it is now 3:30 and I’ve got absolutely nothing for this one beyond the fact that Margot, Josie, and Pete all wear a lot of black

Josie because they’re still something of a teenage goth queen at heart despite being a responsible adult

Margot because it’s both professional and somewhat intimidating, which she likes because she’s compensating for only being 4’11”

and Pete says it’s because he works in the theatre, which isn’t wrong, but even if he didn’t, he’d still wear a lot of black because he thinks it looks good on him (which is fair enough because it does)

Conrad and Max are associated with gray (though Conrad is also associated with white and “that annoying shade of blonde that is very nearly white but not exactly; the Draco Malfoy or Any Given Member Of House Targaryen shade of blonde”)

Sebastian gets a lot of dog associations (partly because he has six of them and partly because he is, as mentioned, essentially a werewolf though that does slightly depend on your definition of, “werewolf”)

and Stephen loves hot pink and eye-searing acid green, sometimes simultaneously

32: Do you have any polyam ships with your OCs?

Well, I already sort of went there in the AUs question, but personally, I would love Seb-prime/powerless!Seb/powerless!Stephen/Stephen-prime — but in general, I always love any and all ships that involve selfcest, whether they’re polyships or not, so I don’t really think this one counts

The polyship that I’ve probably given the most thought to so far is Seb/Stephen/Todd, and ngl, I’ve given it said thought largely due to the fact that……… well.

I wouldn’t call them a love triangle, exactly, but let’s be real: SMeyer and SCollins didn’t want to call Bella/Edward/Jacob and Gale/Katniss/Peeta, “love triangles” either, and while I’d agree that the latter case is a bit more complicated due to how Katniss spends the majority of the series having no interest in either one of the boys involved, the Twilight example is definitely a love triangle, and anyway, my point is that I’m no better than SMeyer and SCollins about going, “Oh, it’s not a love triangle!” because I fear the messy associations that come with accusations of writing love triangles even when I am blatantly doing so

And in general, I do believe in the sentiment of, “Less love triangles, more functional polyamory” — but the, “functional” part of that is a big reason why Seb/Stephen/Todd is not going to canonically go in the polyamory direction. It could, and given the canonical multiverse, there are definitely a few universes where it does

But in the prime timeline, a polyamorous relationship with those three would probably be a disaster — and frankly, a lot of it would be on Todd because Seb and Stephen both also have issues with communicating, self-esteem, honesty (with Stephen’s issue being more that he encourages everyone else to be honest while also trying to at least partially censor his own feelings in the interests of keeping the peace, while Seb’s issue is that he constantly lies to himself to try and convince himself that everything is fine because he feels like he’d just muck up everything for everyone by ever being Not Fine), and a laundry list of other things

But they’re also trying to work on those things.

Stephen is at a better place, wrt self-awareness and working on things, than Seb is, but he’s also been working on it longer and, for all the missteps he’s admittedly had in it because that’s just a part of this process for everyone, he didn’t have to deal with things like, “the aftermath of being kidnapped and shot by ecoterrorist ex-boyfriend who was not happy about getting dumped by a junky”

Or things like, “help, my brother’s unctuous brother-in-law keeps trying to befriend me after I drunkenly sucked his dick at my brother’s wedding reception and unwittingly broke up the marriage that I didn’t know the brother-in-law had, he keeps trying to befriend me despite my vocal lack of interest in being friends with him, also he’s been telepathically fucking with me for about eleven years”

Todd, on the other hand, has the self-awareness of a toothbrush, and that is a massive insult to toothbrushes.

He has worked on SOME things about himself, but usually only to the extent that he needs to work on them in order to feel like he’s doing an okay job on his own sobriety (which, in fairness, he is, but acting like sobriety is his only problem ever is disingenuous as Hell), and he isn’t working on most of his non-sobriety-related problems because, bless his heart, he doesn’t realize that they are problems.

I mean, this is a guy who is going to crash Seb and Stephen’s first morning after by showing up on Seb’s doorstep on a Sunday morning with a bunch of junk from his apartment, going, “Hey, so, I don’t mean to be a buzzkill when you look weirdly happy for once because it’s good that you look happy, I support you being happy, but also I might be getting kicked out of my place tomorrow and may also have been lying to you for several months about whether or not I needed money because I was totally sure that I could get everything figured out and then I didn’t but I didn’t want you to worry or try to pay for everything like a sugar daddy just because you CAN pay for it, and anyway, is one of your spare rooms open and…… oh. Hi, Stephen. ……He’s pretty shirtless for coming over for breakfast, isn’t he. Why are you wearing a shirt and he’s not.”

“Because he wasn’t cooking bacon and I was?”

“…………*slowly puts two and two together and realizes what he’s crashing* Ohhhh. Um. ……I can go bug Pete or Margot—”

“They don’t have room for you at their places—”

“So, can I stay?”

“Yes, obviously, but can we also talk about this? Like, maybe not right now, but in general, there are a lot of things that I’d like to talk about here???”

“………Why? Do you want to, like, charge rent or something?”

“No, god, why would I want to do that to you, but????”

So, yeah.

In fairness, Todd has a lot of good points. But he is also really bad at a lot of the things that you NEED if you don’t want a polyamorous relationship to completely implode — like communication, honesty, self-awareness, etc. — and he’s only going to start working on any of this when he finally realizes that…… oh. He’s jealous of Stephen and has been jealous of all of Seb’s previous boyfriends too, but in most of those cases, he also had some other reason to dislike them

For example: Harry was cheating on Seb with a Julliard violinist (who knew that Harry was also sleeping with Seb, but Seb had no idea that Harry’s violinist friend was his “real boyfriend”);

Francis was an ecoterrorist and admitted as much on their first date (though, as Seb has pointed out to several people, what kind of ecoterrorist actually admits to being one on a first date, so he feels he was justified in not believing Francis here), then shot Seb in the back, after kidnapping him and holding him for ransom in a basement in Ossining, all because Francis didn’t appreciate being dumped, especially not by a junky;

Josh didn’t really see the difference between rough sex and domestic violence, and was inadvertently responsible for Seb being the first family member to show up for the birth of his niece…… because he took Seb to the ER after giving him a concussion that made him seem to lose consciousness during sex (not that Josh stopped fucking him during), and then left him there “because he had something big to handle for work” (i.e., because he didn’t want to be there in case anyone called the cops), and while Seb was going to leave, he happened to see Max and Linda checking in and decided to just stay;

Rémy liked erotic asphyxiation but did not like asking for consent, and also had a thing for giving his partners rohypnol (again, without their consent), and he got away with it with Seb because, by the time they dated, Seb was no stranger to having intoxication-induced blackouts, and it was easy to tell him that he must’ve had too much to drink (and because of the way his half-latent healing factor and toxin filtering handled rohypnol, it was basically impossible for him to tell the difference between that and any of his more usual mixes of intoxicants);

Byron was a supervillain henchman-for-hire and also had a stunning lack of boundaries;

and Julian was mostly just annoying when he and Seb dated, and the worst part, at the time, was that they both tried to be helpful and supportive for each other but actually wound up exacerbating a lot of their respective issues, and now, he’s one of the less-bad exes but only because, “sends drunk texts to a recovering addict and unsolicited dick pics” is clearly on a very different level from, “gave Seb a concussion and ditched him at the ER” and, “literally shot him in the back”

(and then, when his involvement with the baddies comes out, he sort of skyrockets up the list of bad idea exes, but in fairness to Seb here, Julian didn’t get recruited by said baddies until after the second time that they broke up).

So, yeah, Todd has not been short on legitimate reasons to hate a lot of Seb’s boyfriends, and said legitimate reasons have allowed him to avoid dealing with his own jealousy for a while.

The fact that he and Seb have full-on dated before also helped for a while, as did the standing friends with benefits/“it’s complicated” that they’re in at the start of the story…… but see, Todd has always kind of been hoping that this would turn back into romance at some point

See, for all he isn’t self-aware about most things, he’s done enough work on himself to know that he is still in love with Seb (who does reciprocate but has an easier time reading Latin, or Proust in the original French, than he does of knowing what his feelings are doing and being able to verbalize it effectively)

So, Todd’s been leaving their relationship open-ended so he won’t have to feel like he’s tying Seb down to something Seb might not want. The idea that Seb might actually want it does occur to Todd, but he also dismisses the idea as completely ridiculous and silly, all out of some ridiculous idea that of course Seb wouldn’t want to be with him again for real, not until he perfectly self-actualizes in some completely unattainable way (which he doesn’t realize is completely unattainable because, bless his heart, Todd doesn’t get that he will never be satisfied with his ridiculous and ill-defined goalposts on the path to becoming his idea of what Seb’s perfect version of him is)

This is made all the worse by the fact that all Seb wants Todd to be, and all that he has ever wanted Todd to be, is himself.

He has said so practically since their first ever conversation, and the romantic subtext was there for him from the start of it all because when he went up to the cute bespectacled chubby guy in the Pink Flamingos t-shirt after the freshman orientation week meeting of the campus LGBTQ student union, Seb totally meant to ask Todd out.

Unfortunately, he got nervous, excited, an odd and potent mix of tongue-tied and rambling, and overwhelmed by how starved he was to make more friends (seeing as his only friend, at that time, was Pete, who was about an hour or so north, once you factor in getting to Grand Central, taking the Metro North to the right stop, and then either meeting him at the station or getting to his campus)

So, the romantic intentions got rather garbled and turned into a platonic-sounding coffee invitation, and as much as Seb had wanted to ask Todd out, he was okay with this at the time because he was en eighteen-year-old extrovert who’d spent his last two years of high school with only one real friend, who wasn’t even at his school because Pete was already in college, and in a school environment that was so emotionally shitty that his parents saw facilitating his trips down to see Pete and all their weird misadventures in the City not as a special treat but as what they needed to do for the sake of their son’s wellbeing

Either way, Todd misses the, “be yourself, that’s it, that’s all he has ever wanted, you colossal tool” point by a long-shot

So, by the time the story starts, Todd is working (he thinks) on his amazing and totally foolproof plan to become exactly what Seb deserves even if (he maintains) Seb doesn’t realize that he deserves it, Seb feels like there’s no way that Todd is still into him and feels like Todd is probably only hooking up with him until someone better comes along and is a hopeless romantic who’s pessimistic about love but also about most things in general, and their lack of talking about things is a Problem

It’s a Problem that Pete calls Seb out on, though in fairness, he brings that up less as a dig at the relationship and more because it’s part of Seb’s larger problems

But then, as part of his, “I am totally going to get my shit together, yeah!” “““plan””” (read: half-baked notion that he is at least really committed to), Seb decides to ask Stephen out (because Pete was just going down a list of things Seb could work on and one of them was, “Figure out your shit with Todd and either work things out with him or move the fuck on instead of mooning over him like you’re fucking twelve,” and Seb did the impulsive thing to go, “Oooh, look, not mooning over Todd now, am I”)

Seb doesn’t expect it to go anywhere because he doesn’t think Stephen could actually be interested in him literally ever, so he’s trying not to get his hopes up or end up feeling anything — except he does both of those things AND, due to how the events play out leading up to things, Seb’s just realized that he does still have feelings for Todd, and now, he’s not sure what to do and has to figure out his shit

The final nail in the coffin is that Todd, after several weeks of blowing off Seb’s attempts to talk about things (because you don’t need to talk about things if you just pretend they’re fine and stay the course, right?), gives him what is essentially an, “It’s not you, it’s me” line, and because, “It’s not you, it’s me” is so often used to break up with someone gently (including by Seb in different previous relationships), Seb takes it as them being done romantically and decides that they should stop having sex, too, so he can get serious with Stephen.

So, Todd has to live with the fact that he’s the one who opened the door to let Seb get serious with Stephen, and deal with his jealousy, which he can’t get out of at least recognizing because he can’t find a single thing about Stephen that indicates that he isn’t as kind and good as he seems. It’ll be good for him. He gets to grow as a person thanks to fucking this up for himself and unwittingly getting one of his best friends to commit to an actual decent relationship.

Then there’s the issue of Todd and Stephen’s leg of the relationship, but once Todd sorts his shit out about being a jealous little turd, they will actually get along just fine

They will probably end up having a bonding moment where they get laughing about weird or mildly irksome but not troublesome things that Sebastian does, because I love scenes like that

But, still. As a poly ship, I don’t actually see them working out in the prime timeline.

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