#though I wish I didn’t have to — but the depiction middle school aged girls made me feel ill

[blueish-bird]

watching Bakemonogatori was like this:

-beautiful shot composition

-closeup of a high schooler’s suddenly-lipglossed mouth as she says a single word

-resonant and emotionally literate conversation

-high schooler’s boobs or underwear

-rapid fire shots of typed script/summary/internal dialogue on solid-colored background

-main character beats up and gropes a middle schooler. isn’t he silly? this is normal and friendly behavior

-the world is empty except for us (the narrow lens of adolescence)

-this time it’s snakes— what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck

-SHES LIKE 12

-STOP IT

-martyr complex

-why am I relieved that we’re back to objectifying high schoolers?

-cool action sequence

-I’m serious cut that shit out

[pinkhairedlily]

Alone With You

For #KakaSaku Month 2021

Week 1, Day 4, Same Age AU

Rating: G

Pairing: Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi

Summary:

Kakashi was the misunderstood pariah, and she was the school’s takane no hana. He comfortably pined for her from afar until prom when all he wanted was – at most – a dance.

Note: Takane no hana is translated as flower on a high peak. It depicts someone as out of anyone’s reach. This AU is loosely inspired from Hibi Chouchou.

Maybe it was the long scar on the left side of his face or the atrocious beauty mark. Maybe it was the menacing way he looked at his classmates or the sarcastic quips he gave in conversations. It couldn’t be his hair – silver, smooth, and the length of a mullet. They should have loved him for that, but instead, they set him a level above eccentric bordering on deviant. Nonetheless, he was their school’s pariah.

And what can a pariah actually do to get close to a takane no hana? Haruno Sakura - pink hair, jade eyes, rosy cheeks, and plump lips. She was a cherry blossom tree growing in the highest mountain, and to get there one has to go through multiple quests and surrender treasured items. He would have set on this journey a long time ago if not for her making it clear that she didn’t intend to date. He remembered her announcing it in the middle of general assembly when a guy confessed to her on stage for the umpteenth time. So that was how it came to be, stealing glances and moments she doesn’t even know of.

He had this hiding spot in the shrubbery and the big camphor tree beside their building. No one bothered to go there because someone got bitten with a snake some years ago so he took advantage of its notoriety. He made it his sleeping abode, his reading nook, or his eavesdropping spot. That was where he also had his first interaction with Sakura.

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

She just jumped out of nowhere and into his lap where a book was still open for his consumption. Red flush took over her cheeks, but she stayed where she was, and hands went to his mouth when he attempted to say something.

“I swore I saw her run towards this area.”

“You’re so stingy. Her actions were pretty clear that she didn’t want to hear your confession.” She was visibly annoyed, her brows furrowing and meeting in the middle, but even so, she was a sight to behold. Her hair was done up in a bun, but stray locks escaped during her unintended rendezvous, and they curtained her striking jade eyes and softened the glare on them.

“I don’t even want a yes. I just need a definite no.”

This other voice was mocking. “I don’t want a yes, but you kept on pestering her for weeks.”

“My pride was hurt. Everyone told me I was the most handsome and yet I got rejected? I had to make sure she wasn’t blind.” They heard further shuffling of feet and then several dejected sighs. “Yeah, she’s not here. Maybe I should set my eyes on another school’s muse?”

Kakashi eased down her hands still clamping his mouth shut and peeked at the retreating figures. “They’re gone now. Maybe you should also rethink what provocations this position has.”

Sakura slid down to the ground next to him and pulled her knees closer to her chest. “Thanks.”

“You don’t see me as part of your cult following?” He surveyed his already crumpled book – he was just getting to the good part.

“If you have, you would have kissed me by now.” She wasn’t pulling punches. She was straightforward as a line, and she startled him with a direct, unwavering gaze. “Hatake Kakashi.”

“Congratulations. I’m guessing you noticed my calling card.” He pointed to his scar, almost sure of his assumptions.

But she smiled at him – spring blooming in indian summer. “We ride the same train every day.” Shock must have been apparent on his face since she started to leave, but not without chuckling within his hearing.

After that, he finally noticed her – a pink blob in the morning crowd. Sometimes, she was far away from his seat, but more often than not, she was just on the opposite side. Earphones in, hair undone, and in joggers instead of skirts. The first time he saw her disguise, if she could even call it like that, he laughed out loud. The people around him shifted nervously, but it was her reaction that amused him. Her eyes widened, questioning him a few feet away what the hell did he see. Every time they reach their school’s station, however, he lost her, and he knew better than to loiter. She was the takane no hana.

Across the school terms, he made sure to keep her within his sights and out of the prying hands and attention of boomers and men with no self-respect. He intervened only when she would signal, but truthfully, he didn’t need those. He just needed to see her eyes. His attention during his morning train rides shifted from the books in his bag to the pink-haired girl bopping her head to music.

In the middle of winter finals, she sat beside him and shared her other earphone.

Isn’t it odd the way we try to tell ourselves we got limits?

You’re beautiful, but you just don’t see it sometimes

And I don’t know why, you’re the shape of my days

Oh, you’re my holy place

And I know everything’s good, everything’s just as it should be

When you’re alone with me

Everything’s good, everything’s just as it should be

When you’re alone with me

When I fall, I’m fine

All I wanted was your time

Everything’s good, everything’s just as it should be

When you’re alone, alone with me

“Hmm. You should stop doing this.” Kakashi took off the earphone and gave it back to her. A glimpse of disappointment flashed across her face. “Because I might just fall in love with you.”

He proceeded to move away from her and into the end of the compartment. He still got her in his periphery, and it didn’t escape his notice that she smiled, the red flush creeping into her cheeks, the winter cold serving as a good excuse. He hoped then and there if he could bet everything on that one expression.

She didn’t have her earphones on when they met again for the next school year, but she made sure to be within his proximity, the distance closing in every train ride – two seats apart, an arm’s length, and finally shoulder to shoulder.

“I wonder why I don’t see you in my afternoon train rides.” She also stopped wearing joggers.

“I work part time after class.”

“Is that why you try to catch some reading while traveling?” Her eyes pointed to the opened book on his lap, the passage swirling in his thoughts, and he read instead the many phrases in her eyes.

“You’re oddly distracting,” he murmured and shoved the book bag into his bag.

“Well, sorry. It’s because you’re not talking to me in school.” In all honesty, he heard the pout in her voice, and his heart only further melted into a pool of adoration. “I need some book recommendations though, and I’d appreciate it if you would pick them with me in the library.”

My God, she has become braver. Kakashi looked at her and saw the pointed lip and furrowed brows. “Are you serious?”

“Classics because I need more than a Romeo and Juliet.”

In the afternoon, they met in the library in between dusty shelves and long forgotten volumes of books. He gave her the usual – Pride and Prejudice, Tale of Two Cities, Wuthering Heights, Scarlet Letter, Little Women, and his favorite and definitely not a classic yet – The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Having done what he was asked to do, he took his leave, quietly and quickly, not wanting to associate with her in this open space.

The next few weeks she immersed herself in those books and did not enjoin him in conversation. When she finally did, he was caught offguard.

“Does that have a violent history?”

He gestured to his scar and she confirmed it with a short nod. “It was from a cat.” She laughed out loud when he gave that answer, earning weird looks from other passengers. “Aren’t you gonna ask me if that’s true?”

She was still reeling from his reply and gave herself a few seconds to calm down. “No. it’s very typical of you.”

“Huh?”

“I bet you just carried it and hugged it like you would a dog.”

“That’s why I’m a dog person now.”

“What’s its name?”

“Pakkun.”

Again, she laughed, unrestrained melody intertwining with the noise of the crowd, the screech of the rails, and the whistles of the train.

When summer came, she cut her hair short, but that only made her more beautiful. It emphasized her jawline and brought more focus to her eyes. But his hair was long, almost a mullet, and some strands were disrupting his vision. It didn’t help at all in this heat, but he’d rather maintain that odd reputation of his. She quietly tapped his shoulder and gestured for him to turn around. He did so within the limited space they were allowed, and she tied his hair up for him.

Before he could glance back and thank you, the train suddenly stopped, and she was pushed forward and against his back. He hoped several times now and yet he hesitated. What more certainty was he asking for when he could literally hear her heartbeat. For a moment, he imagined her arms enclose around his waist and pull him in, safe in the wall of the crowd, alone with each other’s feelings. But it was nothing more than a brief respite from a faraway dream.

Last year of high school, and he has yet to resolve his feelings, let alone confess. When prom season dawned, he wished he didn’t have to go to school. There wasn’t a day that she wasn’t being confessed to or invited to be someone’s date, but Sakura stood her ground and rejected all offers. That made his chances dwindle down to zero as well. After all, what did a takane no hana have to do with a school pariah?

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

“Kakashi.”

He looked up from his book and saw her nervously twirling her fingers. “Sakura.”

“Are you going to prom?” she asked, her voice ladened with faint insecurity.

“Not my vibe,” he replied. He turned to another page, and another, and he finally finished it. Yet she still hasn’t reacted. “So do you have a partner yet?”

She smiled at him. “I guess I’m going solo.”

“Your suitors not up to your standards?”

She shook her head and scrolled through her phone. She opened a picture of her trying out her prom dress and showed it to Kakashi. “Too bad I really wanted to dress up.”

She embodied a princess with an agenda, the front almost a heart-shaped bralette with butterfly sleeves and the back with a low cut, ending just above her waist. The bottom was a mermaid’s tail with colors blending in shades of green. Dear God, please have mercy on me. “Have fun, Sakura.”

He should have just kept his mouth shut because when the prom day itself came around, he decided to go for it, especially after seeing the downcast look on her face when he told her to go have fun.

Indeed, she went alone, with a dignity like a takane no hana only has. She was distant even to her friends, and she put on an air of defense that drew everyone away from her sphere. He wondered what expression she’d wear if he closed in that gap.

And then, he heard the whispers, the gasps, and the not-so-subtle pointing fingers.

No use in hiding now. Kakashi stepped out from the back, donned in white, his silver hair tied like how she did it, and walked towards the still unsuspecting Sakura.

His steps fell in tune with the opening song – the one that made him bet everything on that tiniest possibility. At most, for tonight, he only wanted a dance.

“Is he serious?”

“That’s Hatake Kakashi, right? He’s that handsome?”

“Wait, I don’t want to see this. He’s gonna ask Sakura for a dance.”

“The secondhand embarrassment is real.”

All I want is your time. “Sakura.”

Her breath audibly hitched in her throat when she heard his voice. She turned to him with an intensity that almost made her fall, but he caught her in time in his arms. “I was just about to ask you for a dance. This saves me time, I guess.”

“About time, you slowpoke.”

Kakashi smiled at her and led her to the center of the ballroom, his feet and arms guiding her in the dance, amid the gasps of onlookers, and the conversations that spread like wildfire. But with every step, he pulled her closer to him, slowly muting the noise with the sound of her heels, the rush of her train, and his own loud heartbeat. “I wonder if this is all right.”

She closed whatever gap was between them and laid her head across his chest, her nose on his collarbone, and almost, almost, he could feel her lips on his skin. “What’s all right?”

“You, takane no hana and all. Me, pariah and all.”

“I made a plan in my head – that the next time I see you, I’m gonna confess.”

Kakashi chuckled nervously, almost choking on his own saliva. “There was a minute possibility of the off chance that you liked me.”

“Because I do. I really do. And you didn’t make it any easier. Avoiding me, only talking to me in the train? I shared my favorite song with you, for goodness’ sake. I don’t care about takane no hana. I don’t do half-hearted feelings, and I’ve been trying my best to meet you halfway.”

He brought her closer, not anymore dancing, but hugging in the middle of the room, unaware of anyone. “I mustered whatever courage I have to stand beside you today in this crowd. I’m sorry it took this long.”

Sakura briefly loosened from his embrace, and in the midst of those dim lights, and cacophony of shoes, glasses, shutter clicks, champagne pops, and gowns, she recited a quote off his favorite book. “It would be the saddest thing to me. To walk separately from you, when the ground will let us go as we always did.”

“That would make for good marriage vows.”

“That….escalated a lot more quickly than I expected.”

“Come here.” He pulled her in back to his embrace, and they danced with such abandoned happiness – so evident that the strangers backed off, and everyone started to accept as such.

And when the confetti fell and the dim strobe lights turned off momentarily to give way to the bright light, Kakashi searched for her lips and found them waiting just below his chin.

“I was aiming for the beauty mark.”

“You’ll get more chances later.”

[dwellordream]

“In theory, Victorians concerned with troublesome issues on the margins of respectable fiction for girls could deal with them within the family reading circle. Reading aloud was perhaps the most common domestic entertainment within the Victorian family, used as reward, improvement, or therapy for life’s challenges. The sisters taking turns reading to accompany their needlework, the matron at the sickbed, the daughter reading to her father at the end of a business day—there were myriad arenas in which families used reading to ease, amuse, and instruct.

At its most basic, reading aloud enabled the sharing of resources (a book, or a fresh installment of a periodical) among many. But beyond that, it was a profoundly social way of responding to the lessons of history, current fiction, or poetry. The critic Andrew Blake suggests that the novel, in particular, was ‘‘a most important point of contact between the public and the private’’ because ‘‘it gave people a chance to discuss domestic ideology in public without touching on domestic secrets.’’ The semipublic sphere that was the family circle provided an important venue for the discussion of reading. Within this context, instruction in morality could be accomplished informally, gently, impersonally, with reference to fictional characters rather than through direct criticism and rebuttal.

The convention of the family reading circle generally restricted polite novels from treating illicit sexuality or immoral characters, but if any lapses occurred, the family circle could deal with them most effectively. Thus Elizabeth Gaskell said of her own novel Ruth, which features an orphan who has been seduced by an aristocrat: ‘‘Of course it is a prohibited book in this, as in many other households.’’ The one circumstance that would change its unsuitability for young people, she opined, was if it was ‘‘read with someone older,’’ perhaps with an older female relative within a family reading group.

The kind of family conversation which could improve all who participated was explained by Sarah Browne in a private diary in 1859. ‘‘Albert brings [Harriet Beecher Stowe’s] the Minister’s Wooing. We sit quietly and hear how James is brought back to the living, we calmly rejoice with Mary, plan and maneuver with Miss Pressy, call Parson Hopkins in very truth a Christian and wind up the evening by wishing to see Mrs. Stowe, knowing how she would seem and if she would talk at all, like other women.’’

Albert Browne Sr. was generally the reader in the Browne family, sometimes of ‘‘superior articles in the Atlantic Monthly.’’ In these moments of quiet, Sarah Browne most idealized her shared family life, ‘‘sitting as we do in our little western chamber, Father, Alice and I storing in the rich thoughts of others as a life element of our own.’’Reading aloud enabled a submersion of family tensions in a focus outward on the problems of others.

The idealization of the shared reading experience suggested stylized familial communion to daughters as well as parents. During the final days of the Civil War, as she anticipated her own marriage, Helen Hart thought to memorialize the evenings reading aloud together. ‘‘I think I never enjoyed evenings more in my life. First Bertie reads, then Hady, and then Mother and I; from History, Shakespeare, the Atlantic, and other miscellany. Such peaceful, happy winter evenings at home! Something for us to look back upon in after years when we are scattered. I have treasured up each one as it passed, as a sweet and sacred memory.’’ The pleasure came from the contrast between ‘‘our quiet harbor’’ and ‘‘the world with its commotions, its struggles.’’

Never did home seem so secure and safe as when implicitly contrasted with the adventures and misfortunes of fictional characters, warring nations, or past princes. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s biographer noted that Charlotte and her destitute and emotionally distant mother were at their best when reading aloud to each other, their fraught intimacy dissolved in their shared focus on the lives and feelings of others. Those moments of community might even be resurrected by rereading books so experienced. (‘‘It seems as if we were gathered around the nursery fire again. I can almost hear Aunt Mary’s voice.’’) The pleasures of reading aloud were those of reading mediated—reading mediated by the fiction of shared purpose.

Reading aloud did not have a single simple meaning, however, nor did it model only one kind of power relationship. The Browne family’s shared reading was patriarchal, with father reading and other family members (according to the hardly impartial mother) celebrating familial harmony. Alice Stone Blackwell, in her irreverent and spritely diary, offered another example of paternal reading aloud, lightly satirizing her father, the noted reformer and women’s rights advocate Henry Blackwell:

‘‘Papa sat with his feet on the top of the stove, saturated with laziness, and rated me for enjoying stories [fiction], and formed plans to give me a taste for instructive literature, and ended by making me bring Plutarch’s Lives, and beginning to read them aloud.’’ This depiction of a well-respected father indulging in playful tyranny of his only child suggests a quite different emotional shading—if a similar actual structure—to the idealized portraits of patriarchal reading circles.

Daughters also read on their own, though, and given the risks of immoral reading and the gains from uplifting reading, good parents attempted to mon- itor what they read. The goal in choosing reading, as in all the lessons of character, was to instruct gently and surely so as to encourage daughters to make familial lessons their own. Advice to parents ranged from the relatively cut and dried—‘‘Parents should choose the books that their children read until the age of 15’’—to the more subtle: ‘‘Wise parents put so many good books in the way of their children that the taste for them is formed unconsciously, and there is never any feeling of restraint.’’ (The latter piece of advice, made in 1901, was clearly advice for the book-wealthy.)

Ellen Emerson’s correspondence with her mother while away at boarding school suggested the appropriate supervisory relationship of parents over girls’ reading. Explaining that she was reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, which she found ‘‘a very funny book,’’ she went on, ‘‘I never read any that I am not sure you would be willing to have me,’’ and recorded her assumption that Scott, Gaskell, and several others were ‘‘not forbidden.’’ She went on to query, ‘‘May I read [Margaret Oliphant’s] ‘Head of the Family’?’’ Middle-class or elite parents who participated in genteel Victorian culture assumed an important role in controlling the reading of their daughters—its quantity, its contents, and its circumstances.

In the elite midwestern Hamilton family, a family with a strong and eclectic reading tradition, novels were doled out prudently like candies during vacations from school, so as not to interfere with schoolwork. When her daughter was fifteen, Phoebe Hamilton gave her ‘‘Ivanhoe for my holiday reading, she always gives me one of Scott every vacation.’’ The next year her mother was more liberal, providing Scott’s Quentin Durward for a Christmas book and giving permission for the reading of Dickens’s Little Dorrit and Jemima Tautphoeus’s The Initials. As January arrived, Agnes lamented, ‘‘I have finished the latter but I am afraid as I go back to school next Monday I shall have to let Little Dorrit wait till summer.’’

There was a hierarchy within Hamilton family reading, and despite her voraciousness, Agnes felt that her tastes fell short of her family’s preferences. ‘‘Oh! why haven’t I the love of learning of the family?’’ She indicated what was expected in her next breath: ‘‘Knight’s England vol. III has been read all but two chapters since last fall and during two months I have read but four books of the Odyssey.’’ She forced herself to be realistic. ‘‘During this next week [probably a school vacation] I want [to] finish half a dozen or more books which I have begun but I dare say the novels are the only ones that will be looked much in.’’

Like the Hamilton reading regimen, other family routines, too, involved matters of both quality and quantity. There were appropriate ages for the reading of different books. At fifteen, Margaret Tileston wanted to read George Macdonald’s Alec Forbes of Howglen, an homage to the dignity of Scots country life. The author was certainly approved, but Margaret’s mother didn’t want her to read the book ‘‘yet.’’

At eighteen, Margaret was still reading under adult scrutiny. Sick at home she was ‘‘allowed’’ to read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, considered excessively charged for young girls, and polished off 340 pages on the first day. Reading was one way of being inducted into family ideology; when Margaret reread Pilgrim’s Progress in 1883, she was conscious that she was reading a book that had been important to her mother when she was young.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Reading and the Development of Taste.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

[ayuuria]

Yashahime Translation: Da Vinci Magazine December 2020 Edition

Please do not repost this translation without my consent! This includes screenshots. If you wish to share this translation, simply link to this post.

“Hanyou No Yashahime” Tripartite Cast Talk

Matsumoto Sara X Komatsu Mikako X Tadokoro Azusa

Inuyasha and Kagome’s daughter and Sesshomaru’s two daughters play an active role in “Hanyou No Yashahime”. As an original anime with no original work (translator’s note: As in not an adaptation of something like a manga or light novel), the subject is the next generation of “Inuyasha” done in the same style. Being “Inuyasha” fans themselves, we had the three lead voice actresses talk about the charm of the series.

The main character design was done by Takahashi Rumiko!

Towa

A 14-year-old middle school girl. 10 years ago, she time traveled from the Feudal Era to the Modern Era and became the adopted daughter of Kagome’s little brother, Souta. Upon reuniting with her younger twin sister, Setsuna, after she time travels to the Modern Era with Moroha, Towa decides to return to the Feudal Era. She is Sesshomaru’s daughter.

Setsuna

14 years old. Towa’s younger twin sister. A member of the demon slayers led by Kohaku. She has lost her memories of her childhood and is unable to fall asleep. She has the gold rainbow pearl in her left eye. While she does not believe Towa is her older twin sister, she travels with her as she tries to take back Setsuna’s memories and sleep.

The 3 of you reacted shocked with “What you mean daughters?!”

Moroha

Commonly known as “Monster Killer Moroha”. A 14-year-old bounty hunter. When she puts on rouge stored in a shell with the red rainbow pearl on it, she becomes “The Country Destroying Beniyasha” and goes on a rampage. While she is Inuyasha and Kagome’s daughter, she does not know her parents and has lived mostly on her own apparently.

Komatsu: When the work was announced, the world was shocked like “Sesshomaru has a daughter?!” and we were the same. When I opened the audition documents, it was written that the setting takes place over 10 years after the conclusion of the original work and that Setsuna, who I was auditioning for, is Sesshomaru’s daughter. I thought “What does this mean?” and reflexively grabbed the last volume of the manga.

Matsumoto: I was handed Takahashi Rumiko-sensei’s character design and a simple correlation diagram. In regards to Towa, who I auditioned for, it was also written that all that was known was that she is Sesshomaru’s daughter. I was given lines without knowing the context or anything so I wondered what to do. However, at the same time, I was so happy to the point that I was like “The “Inuyasha” world is coming back!”

Tadokoro: I completely freaked out (laughs). Also, my manager knew I was big fan of “Inuyasha” and calmly told me before I looked at the audition documents “Azusa, you absolutely can’t miss out on this. This a huge opportunity.”

Komatsu: A lot of pressure!

Tadokoro: Then when I looked at the documents, I saw that Moroha, who I was auditioning for, was the daughter of Inuyasha and Kagome. After getting excited like “They had a child~!��, I saw Towa and Setsuna and screamed “I will be upset if they’re not XX’s children!” (translator’s note: they’re referring to the mother)

Komatsu and Matsumoto: I know!

Tadokoro: As a fan, I worried endlessly but as a voice actress, I thought I couldn’t miss out on this. However, when I went to the studio audition, I was told “Keep the base but try to say these lines a little more like a middle-aged man”. I became flustered like “Even though she’s a 14-year-old girl?” … I felt like I didn’t respond properly and was really down going home.

Komatsu: Me too. Maybe it was because I was pulling too strongly from Sesshomaru’s image but I was told “Not only coolness but we would also like for you to show the cuteness of a 14-year-old” and I couldn’t make the switch the very well. I didn’t get the reaction that I got the part at all.

Matsumoto: I over considered the setting of (Towa) wearing a boy’s uniform and I was told “Don’t make her a boy”. After that no matter how many retries I did, the direction I took didn’t match up… I cried a lot when I got home like “I totally bombed it”. That moment, I realized that I had really wanted the part and was surprised. “Inuyasha” was a work that was more special to me than I thought.

Overcoming different boundaries, their feelings melt together

Komatsu: For me, “Inuyasha” was also a textbook on love. Especially the relationship between Inuyasha, Kagome, and Kikyou. It’s a little hard for kids to understand and I thought, “Why does Kikyou always get in the way?” and “Inuyasha too, make up your mind” but in a certain scene, Kagome asks Inuyasha “I… What exactly am I to you?”. In between the feelings of it can’t be helped that he overlaps her face with Kikyou’s and this has nothing to do with her, she properly checked what her existence meant to him. Seeing that, I realized. Not only in love but that’s important in life in general as well.

Tadokoro: It’s so cool isn’t it? She acknowledged all her feelings of jealousy and hate towards Kikyou and still saved her on top of that. She showed us her resolve to properly face her heart and Kikyou and accept them. It was so cool that I cried. Then when I became an adult, I came to understand Kikyou’s feelings and it hurt.

Matsumoto: Well she was also a victim… I think when you read “Inuyasha”, you become emotionally attached to each individual character because depictions that give you a sense that they’re “alive” are inlaid in all sorts of places. For example, the scene in volume 1 where Kagome offers food to Inuyasha whom she had just met. While Inuyasha makes his wariness known, he takes a bite of the radish in the next frame. I always laugh like “Even though you say it’s annoying, you’re still eating it!” but at the same time I feel that it’s really “like” him. From those ordinary depictions, over time we accept “something” without realizing it. That accumulation turns into a big emotion that overflows when you get to the important scenes.

Komatsu: At times when those complexly wrapped emotions sublimate, even sad endings become beautiful. For example, Kagura. Even though she was born from Naraku, she was guided to good through Inuyasha and the others who were supposed to be her enemy. Kagome and Kikyou’s relationship too but ally or enemy, good or evil, all sorts of borders are crossed and seeing drawings of humans and demons coming together I think is the charm of “Inuyasha”.

We haven’t been told the answers to the mysteries

Matsumoto: Continuing onward to “Hanyou no Yashahime”, the character I play, Towa, passed through space-time and got sent to the Modern Era at age 4. However, possibly because she was raised by Kagome’s little brother, Souta, even though she is Sesshomaru’s daughter, I feel like she’s also similar to Kagome.

Komatsu: While blood inheritance is important, the person who raised you has a big influence as well. Also, what environment you were raised in. Setsuna lost her childhood memories due to certain circumstances. So of course, she doesn’t remember her older twin sister, Towa, whom she got separated from at 4 years old. Due to that hole and being raised in an environment where you could be killed by anyone at any time, she gives off an air of not allowing others to get close to her. But just when you think that, there are times where you can feel that she’s actually kind and that makes it heartrending.

Matsumoto: Feeling she (Towa) needs to fill in the 10-year void with Setsuna who became like that, the highlight is seeing their relationship change as Towa closes the gap between them. Add Moroha in and there’s a lot of chattering.

Tadokoro: Moroha speaks in a vulgar manner (translator’s note: it actually translates to abusive language but abusive didn’t sound right to me) but in reality, I have a feeling that she truly enjoys traveling with the two of them. To her, those two are probably the first friends she has ever had. That form is so precious and I feel lonely when I wonder what sort of environment she grew up in. I wonder why she’s desperately earning money by slaying demons. We were only told who she was raised by but at this time, we have not been told things like happened to Inuyasha and Kagome.

Matsumoto: This includes who Towa and Setsuna’s mother is. This is something fans have been wondering the most but the answers will be revealed eventually and I have faith that this work will properly continue on what was drawn in “Inuyasha”.

Tadokoro: That’s why we would like everyone to watch over them until the very end and love the 3 Yashahimes as they survive with each of their individual strengths.

Komatsu: While there are a lot of cheerful episodes, there will be times when the inlaid depictions within those episodes will be collected in an instant which I think people will enjoy. For that, we will give it our all!

We Asked Takahashi-sensei!

Q: What did you especially focus on when doing the character design?

A: Series composition writer Sumisawa (Katsuyuki) requested me to draw the image of Towa as a white Sesshomaru and Setsuna as a black Sesshomaru. Upon reading the scenario, I designed them incorporating their father’s facial look. Moroha was the same, being Inuyasha and Kagome’s child. As such, I made it so that Inuyasha’s mischievousness came through.

[priorireverte]

Congratulations Storm!

Your application for Molly Weasley has been accepted. Of all the Weasleys I ever thought we’d get, Molly was not one of them. I am delighted to have been proved wrong.

Please look to the checklist for the next steps and reach out if you have any questions!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME & PRONOUNS: Storm, they/them

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I should be able to post a few times a week and keep up with the activity requirement! I wouldn’t apply if I didn’t think I had the time to actively participate.

ANYTHING ELSE: Graphic depictions of gore ( more of a squick than a trigger; it just makes me uncomfortable, but if I see it it’s not the end of the world! This would apply mostly to gifs and images / aesthetics though )

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Molly Elizabeth Weasley

BIRTHDATE: October 30, 1950

DEATHDATE: n/a

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Female ( she/her pronouns ); bisexual – Molly has always been comfortable with who she is, and her sexuality is no different. She realized she liked both men and women from a young age and was unashamed of the fact because, unlike muggle society, sexuality wasn’t deemed a problem like blood status would be. It didn’t matter in the end, though, because once she laid eyes on Arthur Weasley, she knew he was the one for her. No crush could compare to the pure love she felt for the bumbling redhead who stole her heart.

BLOOD STATUS: pureblood

HOUSE ALUMNI: Gryffindor

OCCUPATION: Unemployed. Molly, at one point, considered returning to school as either a professor at Hogwarts or an educator for young wixen children ( sort of like muggle pre-school ), but after her marriage and many children, work was never in the cards. Now that she’s older, she’s once again considering offering a daycare of sorts for young children – she has time to spare with her children all grown up, and she’d rather be looking after and teaching children than left to her thoughts.

FACECLAIM: Amy Adams

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

POSTBELLUM

Molly had the disprivilege to live through not one, but two wars started by the same sick man, and they both had no small impact on her. During the First Wixen War, Molly wanted no part of it, staying firmly neutral even though her beliefs were aligned with the Order of the Phoenix. She and Arthur were married with a small brood of children by the time it picked up in earnest, after all, and her primary thought was to stay by her little boys to keep them as safe and innocent as possible – going out to fight and possibly die would do no one any favors. Her point was only proven in the death of her younger brothers, something that was a catastrophic blow on her soul. She and her brothers were close, after all, or as close as they would let her; Molly would have done anything for Gideon and Fabian. It was their deaths that made her question whether or not her choice to stay out of the war, as logical as it was, ended up being the right one after all. What if she’d been able to save them somehow? What if she’d been at least somewhat involved in the order and privy to their plans? Maybe she could’ve convinced them to stay home that evening. None of those regrets mattered, in the end – her brothers were dead, and soon after you-know-who was dead as well. Things were over… or so everyone thought. The Second Wixen War was unexpected, but Molly was more involved that time around. She didn’t volunteer to go out on missions; she still had children to look after. She was involved, though, particularly once Ron brought home young Harry Potter himself. Molly cared for Harry like her own son, and he was smack in the middle of the war to start with. She hated that her children were involved in a war, but this time would be different – this time, she would do all that she could to keep her family safe like she couldn’t with her brothers. Fred’s death took that resolve, chewed it up, and spat it right back at her. How foolish was she to think that her family, so involved as they were, would not be drastically impacted by the war yet again? Five years did little to ease the pain of losing a child, and she was certain she would be burdened with that pain for the rest of her life. She could still see her darling Fred’s face, still in death with the ghost of his last smile as she sobbed over his body just as much as she could see him alive and playing tricks on the family with George in her mind. Encumbered by grief like she was, Molly hardly paid much mind to the first report of the Returned making its way around. The second report piqued her interest ( and her confusion ), and despite herself, she kept watching and waiting for those she lost to return to her. She got her wish in the form of Fabian, young as the day she lost him, but that only made the Returned become something of an obsession of hers. If one brother was back, surely Gideon would be right on his heels? If her brothers were back, then surely she’d see her little Fred again, back from the dead and finally home? She knows the obsession isn’t healthy and is only making her grieving process worse, but Molly can’t bring herself to give a damn. She just wants her loved ones to finally come home.

PERSONALITY

Molly is and always has been a homebody. Family has always meant the world to her, the Prewetts having been a loving family who could lean on one another through thick and thin. While some would appreciate that and move on, Molly took that as a core part of who she was as a person and became what people dubbed “the mom friend” to her friends during school and beyond: she fussed over those she cared about greatly, to the point of being an annoyance, and worried over strangers if they looked like they needed a friendly face or shoulder to cry on. This tendency made her a rather outgoing person, and she was rarely judgmental if she could help it; Molly just wanted others to be happy. Some, however, saw this more as annoying than anything else. her caring nature backfired half of the time, painting her in the light of being far too nosey rather than concerned and wanting to be helpful. She’s guilty of eavesdropping on others, and while she says this is out of concern, she secretly knows it’s because she loves to listen to gossip as well. Molly likes to be in the know, whether she’s told directly or not. This has led to more than a few fights with friends, family, and strangers, but it’s always been part of who she was. Molly is unapologetic about who she is. These arguments are never small, either; Molly is short-tempered and can get easily annoyed when she’s not watching herself, and arguments where she’s been accused of something bring up this fiery part of her more than anything else. Despite her flaws, Molly tries to, first and foremost, be kind. Everyone needs a smiling face to look toward, and in a world as cruel as theirs, she tries to be that person for whoever needs it. If someone needs somewhere to stay, she’ll open her home up gladly; if someone needs to vent, she will lend an ear. She’s particularly fond of children ( if her own seven didn’t give that away ), and taking Harry and Hermione in whenever they wanted or needed to stay at the Burrow wasn’t even a question in her mind – of course they were welcome. war has taken much from Molly Weasley, but she refuses to let it take her kind heart.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY

The Prewetts were a loving, if loud and obnoxious, family, and Molly wouldn’t have had it any other way. She was the daughter of upstanding ministry workers, Mr. and Mrs. Prewett both being respectable in their departments and showing their children to be so as well. Respectable, however, didn’t necessarily mean disciplined, and most of Molly’s early childhood was filled with the yelling of her brothers, the soft croons of her parents’ voices, and the mewling of a stray cat Molly begged to keep ( creatively named Cat ). It was through her parents that she learned the value of truth and the power of words, learning from a young age that her greatest weapon won’t be her wand, but the words that come out of her mouth. A debate is just as deadly as a spell, her father would say. Speaking the truth shows the true value of a person, rather than lies that anyone can spill from their tongue, her mother would add. Molly took both to heart, making her quick-witted and stubborn to a fault when she knew she was right. As a Weasley, life was quite similar, though her role was reversed. Her home was still loud with the sound of screaming children, the heavy thundering of footsteps running through the house echoing what she experienced as a girl. Instead of partaking in the running, however, she was instead the one to scold like her mother did, but never fully discourage. Her family was part Prewett, after all, and Prewetts were nothing if not a little wild. It was she that taught her children the power of words, rather than the one learning them, and listening in as her husband taught their children how to be kind and judge others based on character rather than anything else. Life as a Weasley was dancing in the kitchen with her husband in the early hours of the morning, breakfast cooking while the radio crooned in their ears. Life as a Weasley was just as full of love as life as a Prewett was, and Molly cherished every moment. She always would.

HISTORY

Life was a series of moments, and Molly’s was no exception. Those moments formed her into who she was, after all; who would she be without being sorted into Gryffindor? She never would have met Arthur, whom she swore to this day that she fell in love with at first sight ( that wasn’t quite true; no first year knew love like theirs at such a young age – she fell hard, but love didn’t come until later, when she knew she would marry him before they both left Hogwarts ). Hogwarts introduced her to her friends, people who would become close enough to family that she’d introduce them to her children as aunts and uncles alike. Hogwarts made her a Prefect, though not Head Girl, and brought out her motherly side even more as she helped first years adjust to being away from home in an overwhelming environment. Being a Prefect prepared her to care for young children, though she still fumbled her way through Bill and Charlie’s infancy – she was much more prepared by the time Percy came around. Her children introduced her to their friends, who would grow their family even further ( both in marriage and in simple friendship; all friends were family in Molly’s book ). Each person she was introduced to expanded Molly Weasley’s capacity to love and to be loved in return, which made the Battle of Hogwarts that much harder as she saw others that she knew lying dead in the rubble. She mourned for Fred, but she mourned for the friends of her children as well, and for the friends she made through the order. It all hurt so much, but she’d rather take that hurt than lose that capacity to love.

OOC EXPLORATION:

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? I was introduced to this rp by Nic, aka Fabian Prewett, and it looks absolutely phenomenal! The plot is super intriguing, and I honestly can’t wait to start playing in this verse with everyone.

ANYTHING ELSE? https://pin.it/23mXrSb <<< I wrote Molly elsewhere too who had a connection to Bellatrix, so ignore that section! Every other section is relevant to Molly here however.

EXTRA FOR NON-BIO CHARACTERS:

This section is only if you are applying for a character that does not yet have a biography written (i.e. a character not listed on the character page). Any character can be applied for, so long as they can realistically fit into the plot and add substance to the roleplay! It may be a good idea to send a message to the main before applying to a non-bio character so we can work with you.

CHARACTER CONTRIBUTION: Molly has a ton of connections to characters both already in play ( Fabian, George, Ginny ) and available to play ( Bellatrix, the golden trio, potentially Fred and Gideon if they’re brought in down the line ), so I think it would be interesting to have her there to bounce off of others and let her bounce off of them in return. She’s a pillar of support to many people and is happy to offer that support to many more, but I plan to make her more than that. Molly is dynamic as a person: she’s kind and warm, yet fiery and firm in her beliefs. She has an obsession with the Returned because of how many people she’s lost in such a short span of time, to the point where she might use her free time to try and figure out how they’re coming back even though she’s not part of the Ministry and is missing a lot of critical information. Whether that goes anywhere is up to the admin team, of course, but it’s a line i’d love to look at in more detail.  

PRESENT: Though life has improved slightly over the past five years, Molly is still very much riddled with grief and a shadow of who she was a decade ago. She still has her warm heart and does her best to be who people expect her to be, but sometimes she’ll see a shadow, or see a flash of red hair, and fall into herself once more while she mourns Fred’s loss. News of the Returned only made this grieving process worse, because instead of learning to move on, Molly clings to the fact that she’ll see her loved ones once more – something that intensifies once Fabian returns to them. Now it’s more akin to an obsession than anything, and Molly wouldn’t stop the obsession even if she wanted to. She just wants her loved ones to finally come home where they belong.

[willexxmercer]

Fic Masterlist

WIPS

Felix Culpa

(Legend of Korra) (Varrick x Zhu Li) (T)

Varrick is the intimidating boss at Varrick Global Industries, and Zhu Li is his ever dutiful assistant.  When Varrick is faced with being deported back to the Southern Water Tribe, he makes a split second decision that affects both his and Zhu Li’s lives.

Riptide

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo) (G)

Octavia has Diyoza on her knees and Bellamy tries to convince her not to go through with killing her when Clarke arrives with shocking news.

Puppy Love

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo) (G)

When Bellamy brought a puppy into their already complicated life, Echo was a little confused.  How would their rigid schedules work now?

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo) (T) (moodboard)

When Roan dropped Echo off at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, she didn’t know what she expected.  Meeting Bellamy Blake certainly wasn’t on her radar.

Things I Almost Remembered

(Star Wars) (Rey x Ben) (T) (moodboard)

Former Senator Lei Organa is offering a large reward to whomever can return her long lost son to her.  Rey and Finn decide to find someone on the streets of Chandrila who looks like the lost prince and teach him to play the part so they can get rich… but this Kylo Ren seems almost a little too perfectly matched to the part.

Something About the Sunshine

(Game of Thrones) (Sansa x Theon) (T) (moodboard)

Three years ago, it was a simple summer beach romance.  Now, Sansa is navigating a rocky relationship with Joffrey, and Theon is trying to break out of Ramsay’s iron grip, and they barely remember each other, at least until circumstances throw them back together.

They Picked Us

(Once Upon a Time) (Emma x Killian) (T) (Major Character Death) (moodboard)

When tragedy strikes, Emma finds herself raising her best friend’s infant son with the help of the devil incarnate, one Mr Killian Jones.  Will they be able to put aside their differences long enough to make sure little Leo has a good life?

Ocean’s Roar

(Game of Thrones) (Sansa x Theon) (T) (moodboard)

Sansa begins her latest research expedition, not realizing it will lead her to possibly one of the greatest scientific discoveries of her career.. and turn her personal life upside down.

Camera Flashes and Magazine Covers

(Julie and the Phantoms) (Julie x Luke) (T) (moodboard)

During a trip to Hollywood for a music competition, Julie meets rock star Luke Patterson, completely by chance.  After spending time with him, she starts to realize he might not be the jerk she thinks he is, until an interview changes all of that.

Luke has the chance of a lifetime, to land a movie deal, but there's one catch - he needs to stay out of the tabloids.  Meeting Julie Molina, the one person in the world who isn't obsessed with him, complicates things.

A Juke AU based on the 2010 Disney Channel Original Movie Starstruck

Completed Multichapter Fics

N/A (yet)

Completed Oneshots

The Laundromat

(Glee) (Kurt x Adam) (G) (1399 words)

After losing a bet to Rachel, Kurt has to visit the Laundromat to do her laundry for her. Thankfully, Adam surprises him and keeps him company, despite the fact that they have a date that night.

Zhu Li Doesn’t Dance

(Legend of Korra) (Varrick x Zhu Li) (G) (515 words)

Zhu Li doesn’t dance, except when Varrick convinces her to.

The In-Laws

(Legend of Korra) (Varrick x Zhu Li) (G) (1094 words)

After his marriage to Zhu Li, Varrick faces the biggest challenge of his life… meeting the inlaws.

Roleplaying

(Legend of Korra) (Varrick x Zhu Li) (T) (461 words)

Zhu Li tries to spice up her married life with Varrick, except he doesn’t seem to notice.

Nobody Does It Like You

(Legend of Korra) (Varrick x Zhu Li) (G) (808 words)

While trapped in prison, Zhu Li and Varrick enjoy some tea, and have a certain moment…

I’m Here

(Once Upon a Time) (Emma x Killian) (T) (1899 words)

Killian thought he was going to lose her to that ice cave, and now that he has her back, he isn’t about to leave her alone.

A Little Help is Easy to Find

(Glee) (Kurt x Adam) (G) (817 words)

Kurt vents to Adam, and Adam offers a solution.

Iced Caramel Latte

(Once Upon a Time) (Emma x Killian) (G) (3191 words)

The coffee shop was his safe haven, so when it was disturbed by a group of students, he was rightfully offended… that is, until one girl sticks in his mind.

Changes

(The 100) (Harper, minor Harper x Monty) (G) (1113 words)

Harper and Monty’s fling results in the action girl’s body going through some interesting changes that are very much not welcome.  Yeah, she’s not happy with the idea at all.

A Leaf on a Breeze

(The 100) (Harper & Echo, minor Bellamy x Echo, Spacekru) (G) (3232 words)

Years later, Echo realized something in hindsight.  She should have known that of course it would have been Harper, the girl with so much heart, who reached out first, and she was forever grateful for it.

Or, Echo feels alone on the ring, and Harper is the one who brings her out of her shell.

I Love You a Latte

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo) (G) (4044 words) (moodboard)

Echo didn’t do Valentines Day… until she did.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo) (T) (Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings) (8480 words) (moodboard)

It’s Purge Night and Echo gets stuck in more ways than one.  Over, and over, and over again.

Like a river flows surely to the sea

(The 100) (Harper x Roan) (G) (2804 words) (moodboard)

She was drawn to him, and his presence helped her during what could have been a nightmare.

Or, Harper, the Girl Under the Floor, finds someone she hasn’t seen in months while being chased by an Azgedan warrior.

Hello Mr Blake

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo) (E) (4143 words)

He was a frequent flyer due to his job.  She was a flight attendant who always seemed to be working on his flights.  Eventually, joining the mile high club just seemed like the right thing to do.

Sail into the Moon

(The 100) (Raven x male!Luna, Spacekru) (G) (5867 words) (moodboard)

After an accident leaves her unable to sail, Raven hated the thought of being close to the water.  Her friends somehow managed to convince her to go to the beach with them, though, and there she met the most attractive guy… except she might have met him before.  Who knows?  It’s a mystery.

Burn

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo, Spacekru) (T) (2886 words)

Bellamy wakes up in the lab, only to find that the Lightbournes are planning on injecting Echo with Nightblood as a test.

Not Goodbye

(Dynasty 2017) (Steven x Sam) (T) (2112 words)

With Sam feeling a bit down, Kirby takes it upon herself to plan a date that he won’t forget.

The Butterflies

(The 100) (Octavia x Lincoln) (T) (4383 words) (moodboard)

It was as though the universe kept trying to tell her something.  Every time she felt the butterflies, it was because of him, and him only.

oh, if the sky comes falling down, for you there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do

(The 100) (Octavia x Lincoln, Blake Siblings) (G) (2085 words) (moodboard)

“You shot him?” “Not fatally, but it was a good distraction.” “You’re developing quite the habit.” “I guess I have.”

What if Bellamy had made the right choice back in season 3?

where the love light gleams

(The 100) (Murphy x Raven) (T) (7664 words) (moodboard)

Raven hadn’t been home for Christmas in four years, but the one year she did, she met Murphy, new in town since she had last been there, and learns a very important lesson about the holidays.

We’ve No Place to Go

(Once Upon a Time) (Emma x Killian) (G) (3520 words) (moodboard)

While making a last minute trip to Storybrooke for Christmas, Emma and Henry come across a number of problems… including one very attractive traveler.

On Sister My Sister

(The 100) (Blake Siblings) (T) (5754 words) (moodboard)

After years of estrangement, Octavia waltzes back into Bellamy’s life and helps him take down one of the biggest drug rings in New York, all while making all his friends think they’re in a relationship.  Lovely.

Gunning for Glory

(The 100) (Bellamy x Gina) (T) (5119 words) (moodboard)

While on a routine mission for Kane, Bellamy comes across a mystery girl who points him towards a treasure trove that might prove useful for Arkadia, but danger lurks up every spiraling staircase.  It may just be the distraction he needs, though, to get over Clarke leaving.

like dust behind the wagon

(The 100) (Harper x Monroe, Spacekru) (T) (Major Character Death) (5470 words) (moodboard)

Harper and her family were in search of a better life in Oregon when tragedy struck.  She didn’t think she would ever recover, and then she met Monroe, a lone traveler looking for a ride to Fort Bridger.

In the Middle

(Harry Potter) (Harry x Draco) (G) (1178 words)

Draco and Harry attempt to navigate their two worlds as their relationship continues.

make a wish (count to three)

(The 100) (Murphy x Emori) (T) (5485 words) (moodboard)

In Alpha City, anyone who isn’t a Prime, the top tier of society, is claimed by a factory to work for a meager living at the age of 18.  When Murphy is selected for the factory overseen by the mysterious Alie, he thinks life might finally be getting better…

if you choose to fly

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo x Raven) (M) (5498 words) (moodboard)

It’s always been the three of them, for as long as she can remember, and she’s happy.  Bellamy kisses her forehead and Echo raises a hand to her cheek, reaching across and pressing a featherlight kiss to her lips.  A week later, she finds herself missing the tranquility of the moment.

Or the origin story of Raven Reyes.

Promise

(The 100) (Luna & Octavia) (M) (Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death) (4974 words) (moodboard)

During the Conclave, Luna and Octavia find themselves in another version of Polis where vampires have been terrorizing what’s left of humanity.

Strawberries and Cream

(The 100) (Octavia x Niylah) (E) (3015 words) (moodboard)

Sure, Niylah Keene was freaking gorgeous, and every time she passed her in the hallway, her throat went dry and she had to quickly duck into her apartment before she did something she would regret, but would Octavia admit she had a massive crush on her new neighbour?

No.  The answer was no.

time has brought your heart to me

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo) (E) (9309 words) (moodboard)

High up in the mountains that towered over Eden, where the snow swirled around in the wind, lived the last pocket of elves in the kingdom.  When Echo made the journey to the ground to spy on the humans, she had no idea that her story was only beginning, and that the man she met would remain in her heart for centuries to come.

warm me baby

(The 100) (Miller x Bryan) (E) (2012 words) (moodboard)

When the heating system on the Ark goes offline, Miller goes to check on his boyfriend… and then they end up in Bryan’s private quarters with nowhere to be for an indefinite length of time.

Reality Check

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo, Spacekru) (T) (2204 words) (moodboard)

It wasn’t real, she kept reminding herself.

Except it was real.  Bellamy had kissed her.

Or Echo tries to cope with the fact that her relationship with Bellamy might actually be real (and Spacekru knows more than they let on).

Healing AIs, Healing Hearts

(The 100) (Octavia x Raven, Raven & Echo) (T) (Major Character Death) (8989 words) (moodboard)

Raven and her mother were a perfect team, working with damaged and mistreated AIs and tech.  When tragedy strikes, however, Raven has to figure out how to make it on her own.  And then there’s that new assistant her mom hired, making things interesting.

talos bless us

(The 100) (Space Sisters) (T) (5358 words) (moodboard)

When Bellamy gets himself captured by Imperials, sisters Raven and Echo plan the ultimate heist to break him out of a closely guarded fort, aided by a dark elf and a khajiit.

until the next, my beloved

(The 100) (Luna x Raven x Roan) (T) (2798 words) (moodboard)

Luna and Roan set off to find the legendary city of Eden, where it is said there is gold stretching as far as one can see.  As Raven cannot come due to her blindness, Luna takes it upon herself to keep sending her updates on their journey.

Onwards

(The 100) (Spacekru) (G) (2033 words)

Echo makes the ultimate choice: does she fully transcend or does she take a chance to live out the rest of her days with the ones she loves the most?

Upwards

(The 100) (Echo x Raven) (G) (1692 words) (moodboard)

She had always been there, Echo realized.  She was her home.

it was only a dream?

(The 100) (Spacekru) (T) (3726 words) (moodboard)

It’s just another ordinary day on the Ring until someone points out that it’s Halloween.  That’s when things get weird.

de omnibus dubitandum

(The 100) (Lexa x Josephine x Echo) (M) (3740 words) (moodboard)

After vampires took over the world, the Hunter Association was the only thing that stood between the creatures of the night and the rest of humanity.  Lexa, commander of the association, was determined to bring the world to a better place, no matter the cost.

And then she met Josephine Lightbourne.

a new and glorious morn

(Game of Thrones) (Sansa x Theon) (G) (10358 words) (moodboard)

He needed a date to the Yule Ball.  She needed a fake boyfriend until after the Yule Ball.  Seems simple, right?  At Hogwarts, nothing is that simple.

nice and rosy and comfy cozy

(Once Upon a Time) (Emma x Killian) (T) (5263 words) (moodboard)

Four times Princess Emma is helped into a sleigh by a nameless naval officer, and one time she goes on a sleigh ride with him and learns his name.

bound to be talk tomorrow

(The 100) (Echo x Raven) (E) (4074 words) (moodboard)

When Echo gets a call to clean up some broken glass in a cabin at the resort on Christmas Eve, she meets Raven, a girl who’s just had her heard broken.  Things get spicy when they get snowed in for the night.

Drummer Boy

(Julie and the Phantoms) (Alex x Willie) (G) (1777 words) (moodboard)

Alex has the perfect gift prepared for Willie for Christmas, but his nerves keep getting in the way leading up to the big day.

toward brighter days

(The 100) (Raven x Luna) (T) (5067 words) (moodboard)

Dear Harper,

I am ridiculously out of it this morning.  Last night, when we reached the campsite, Luna suggested we give Echo her own bedroll, since she gave hers up the night before.  Which meant Luna was sleeping with me.  Beside me.

Excerpts from Raven’s journal as she travels to Polis for the Winter Solstice Festival

when life gives you shit, you make kool-aid

(The 100) (Bellamy x Echo) (M) (12017 words) (moodboard)

Bellamy used to have it all, and then one screw-up cost him his career and his fancy life.  Now, working as a bodyguard for alcoholic businessmen and their families, he gets a call from his sister for a job… escorting a hitwoman to testify against a man convicted of crimes against humanity.  What could possibly go wrong?

your package has been delivered

(Julie and the Phantoms) (Julie x Luke) (G)  (5688 words) (moodboard)

Julie was pretty sure she didn't order guitar picks.  Luke most certainly did not order monster slippers.  Clearly, the delivery driver mixed up their houses.  But, delivering packages to each other becomes a ritual, and the fact that they each can't get the other out of their mind?  Surely, nothing will come of that. 

i feel in my heart the start of something new

(Game of Thrones) (Sansa x Theon) (G) (2823 words) (moodboard)

Sansa isn't feeling New Year's Eve so she hides and reads.  And then she (re)meets Theon, and shares a few moments with him, making her night that much better. 

never meant to leave unsaid

(Julie and the Phantoms) (Gen Sunset Curve) (T) (3760 words) (moodboard)

Reggie goes to a band rehearsal after a rough day at home, only to find his bandmates equally on edge.  When tensions rise, he can't handle it any more.

Reggie runs.

[szopenhauer]

If someone has bad breath, do you tell him or her? doubtful, I don’t wanna hurt anyone, it’s awkward and a lot of ppl can’t change how they smell

Do you have an item that comforts you when you are sad/scared? used to have one special object, I still hold it sometimes, I suppose I might again at night from Friday to Saturday 

When are you likely to hide your emotions? when I’m face to face with an authority figure like boss, teacher or doctor, policeman too but I never been in a situation like this with them, I also hide my emotions from abusers at times to not show I’m afraid of them and to not provoke them more as well

Which is scarier: Dying of thirst or of starvation? I guess starvation as it takes longer

Have you ever tried to help someone quit smoking? it’s their decision to smoke, I don’t approve but I won’t get involved, I can only avoid them

Have you ever had to talk anyone out of suicide? self harm more likely, I mean... I was talking with suicidal people about them wanting to kill themselves but never at the moment when they were doing it so I don’t know if that counts

When you think of tomorrow, what feelings come to mind? packing, last day with my parents before I go to the hospital

What is the last thing you complained about? probably health related issues

What was the last curse-word you said? kurwa

When you fake sick to get out of school, what do you say or do to convince your parents that you are sick? I don’t fake sick, I might exaggerate but I won’t lie, I don’t want to worry my parents and because I’m chronicall ill I often was going to school even though I didn’t felt like it

Do you still talk to your very first best friend? no

When was the last time something went terribly wrong? basically everything goes wrong

How do you console someone when he or she is upset? depends

Choose one: Trip to outerspace, or trip underneath the oceans? no thx

How often do you feel overwhelmed? all the damn time

How do you deal with everyday life? poorly 

Who in your family do you act like the most? my dad

What is the most romantically sweet thing someone has done for you? my gf is doing many sweet things 

Have you ever been confronted by a mall cop for your behavior? I’ve never been confronted by the store guard - elseway I would never go back there out of anxiety

Is there someone that makes you feel like you’re walking on eggshells? my mom

Were you ever afraid of one of your past teachers? sorta XD

Have you ever been in a physical fight on school grounds? I was attacked but I didn’t fight back so...

A homeless man asks you for 50 cents; how do you respond? dunno

When was the last time you visited a thrift store? recently

Can you handle constructive criticism? I can’t handle any criticism :(

Who is the most sensitive person that you know? me?...

When was the last time you wrote someone a note? few days ago

Do you tell your parents before you go somewhere, or just leave? I always tell

What was the last thing you tried to get out of doing? not sure what was last hmm...

Which season do you dread the most? winter

Is there a foreign culture you’d like to learn more about? maybe

Have you ever seen a famous painting and thought “I could have done that?” abstract art

What is the scariest thing about attending your school? which one?

Are you a good judge of other people’s intentions? I got better with time 

Shopping: best with friends, parents, bf/gf, or alone? depends

When was the last time someone told you to turn your music down? my mother sometimes asks me to because she has migraines

When you don’t know how to spell a word, do you look it up? not always *ashamed*

Are you one to spend a lot of time in the bathroom? nope but I’m the one that often goes to the bathroom 

Do you ever consider the challenges other races go through? sure

When was the last time you doubted your abilities? I have... abilities? :o

What was the last thing you wished for? health... not gonna happen tho :(

How many times a day, on average, do you look at the time? several, when I wake up then when I eat and between meals and then when I go to sleep and in the middle of the night if I go to pee

Where do you first remember living? I never moved

First fandom? woah I don’t remember 

First otp/ship? neither

How old were you when you first when on a plane? -

What was your first tattoo?  -

Do you remember the last movie you saw while on a date? show - She-ra, movie - A lot like love

Did you lose your virginity before you were sixteen? nooo

How many purses do you own? too many lol Are you bi? am not Who was your prom date? I never had one, I didn’t go to prom

Who was the last person to see you cry? parent[s]

Have you ever been used? yep

Do you like when girl takes you by surprise and kisses you? I like consent but... those were the best kisses ^^’’

Have you ever gone for someone despite knowing they were bad for you? I didn’t think about the future nor that I deserve love What kind of gift can win you over? what do you mean by WIN ME OVER? Are diamonds really a girls best friend? not mine, I don’t care for diamonds 

Have you ever dated someone with a child? no way  Have you ever dated someone shorter than you? Sarah was shorter

Who has made the biggest sacrifice for you? my parents and my current partner

What sound is annoying you right now? it’s quiet :3

What gives you a peaceful feeling? sleep?

Would you rather live in the city, suburbs or the country? country

Are you more of a maker and giver, or a taker and user? taker and user I suppose

Do you buy holiday gifts early or at the last minute? early

If someone else were to describe you what would you hope they would say? the truth

Do you think it is harder for a parent to outlive their child or for the child to outlive their parent? parent to outlive the child because it’s not common

When do you do your best thinking? evening/night

What was a choice that you didn’t want to make but you had to? majority of decisions are smth I’d prefer not to make

What age do you think it is most difficult to be? to each their own

Do you think you could handle a day in jail? who knows

Have you ever been on a trampoline? I have not

Do you pretend to be something you’re not to make friends? I’m being myself and that’s why I’m friendless :P

Are you more of a shy or outgoing person? I’m introverted antisocial and a loner but I’m not shy, I can be loud and talkative

Are you more of an athlete or artist? artist Are you the type to procrastinate? I put PRO in procrastination  Do you believe that you’ll always be a kid at heart? ;) What is something you want to improve on this year? health, I’m trying  How many times a day do you get angry? uh oh... If you could eat any food you want right now, what would it be? personal Can you sleep with your eyes open? I’m no Gandalf

Do you still have any living grandparents? If so, how old are they? I don’t wanna talk about that

What’s your favorite computer game genre? simulations Do you have any exes your parents never liked? pfft Do you ever keep things just because they might be useful someday? we are hoarders

Are you frequently in a bad mood? sorry... Do you ever fill out surveys while in a bad mood? I go through soooo many moods before I finish one survey  Are you a fast or a slow eater? slowest among my friends, fastest in my house  How old were you when you had your first relationship? no idea what I should call a relationship and what not  Do you get dental checkups at least once a year? yup Is there anyone in your family/household whom you frequently argue with? mom, sister before she moved out Have you ever used chewing tobacco? tha hell? that’s disgusting!

Do you play Pokemon Go? If so, what level are you and who’s your buddy? not applicable Do you ever sit indoors and wear sunglasses or a hat? hat Are you putting off doing something right now? If so, what is it? drying my hair, drinking water and going to sleep mostly

Are you like me and hoard notebooks and pens? pens now, I stopped buying notebooks... oh wait... no... I just got one because I wanted to save bees, nvm... Are you sitting in front of or by a window? What can you see out there? by, it’s dark but there’s my neighbor’s house Are there any coasters on your table? If so, do they have text or pictures? flowers Do you have a song playing in your head right now, too? not really Don’t you hate it when people answer to surveys with one word answers? lame *I realized I did that myself *facepalm* Ever watched a cat or a dog sleep and run/twitch in their sleep? adorable <3 What’s something we do every day but they don’t depict in movies? it bothers me that in fantasy/sci-fi movies there are no toilets and meals are rare

Is your style feminine, masculine or somewhere in the middle? in the middle, childish yet of an old person haha Do you usually carry a backpack, a shoulder bag or something else? shoulder bag or tote  Do you wear glasses? If so, have you ever tried to fix them when they’ve broken? helped my dad fix his glasses couple of times Are there a lot of dragonflies around your house? they don’t show up frequently

[recentanimenews]

The Beauty of Takako Shimura's Queer Slice-of-Life

Fumi takes Sugimoto's hand

  When I was a teen, I wanted stories that “represented me.”

Or — let’s say it differently. I was growing up and my tastes were maturing with me.

I never really considered myself much of a fan of slice-of-life anime. To be honest, I didn’t see the appeal in watching characters do the same things I could in real life, right now. But that quickly changed when I became familiar with the work of Takako Shimura.

  Shimura’s manga mostly centers on the lives of LGBTQIA+ adolescents. Tonally, her work draws heavily from the slow burn of classic novels like Jane Austen’s Emma or Higuchi Ichiyo’s Takekurabe. Despite writing about children and teens, Shimura’s stories are rife with psychological richness and an acute attention for age-appropriate sensibilities. That’s to say that before I read any of Shimura’s manga, I didn’t see much value in stories that, on the surface, didn’t have any world-shattering stakes.

Nitori writes notes for Romeo and Juliet late at night

  Of Shimura’s manga, two have been adapted into anime so far: Sweet Blue Flowers and Wandering Son. Adapted in 2009, Sweet Blue Flowers is a yuri series following two teen girls as they navigate their feelings for each other and their peers. Wandering Son, adapted in 2012, is a coming-of-age story about two transgender adolescents in middle school. Shimura simultaneously published both manga series, with Wandering Son beginning in 2002 and Sweet Blue Flowers in 2004. Both concluded serialization in 2013.

What are the stakes in telling these otherwise mundane slice-of-life stories with queer characters? Under their pastel and watercolor aesthetic, I quickly learned both of these adaptations promised something far more fulfilling than pure warm fuzzies: realistic, and emotionally poignant portraits of a fully realized queer childhood.

“Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy”

Sugimoto texts Fumi

  Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights is a classic novel all about tragic love. Sweet Blue Flowers is a similar story: sensitive and bookish Fumi Manjōme comes to the world-changing realization she is a girl who likes girls. And her dear childhood friend, Akira "Acchan" Okudaira, who attends the prestige Fujigaya Girls Academy, doesn’t have the slightest clue. Fumi is tall and has a soft voice; Akira is short and can be heard from miles away. Set in historical and beautiful Kamakura, Sweet Blue Flowers has a cozy literary vibe that reminds me of curling up with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as a kid. Literature itself is a recurring theme throughout the series — with Wuthering Heights and The Little Prince constantly referenced, it’s hard not to feel like this high school puppy love tale has something bigger to say about the world at large.

  Sweet Blue Flowers only covers parts of the manga, so you will have to read the series to find out how and if Fumi and Akira get together. But the anime wonderfully covers one of my favorite arcs: Fumi’s relationship with the heartthrob senior Yasuko Sugimoto, who is cast as Heathcliff in Fumi’s school play. For as much as the series is implicitly about Fumi and Akira, Sugimoto’s strenuous relationship with her family and her sexuality get lots of compelling screen time. The two have a dramatic kiss in the school library and lots of pining. But Sugimoto is hopelessly capricious and after Fumi falls for her, both get humiliated by Sugimoto’s family after she attempts to introduce Fumi as her girlfriend.

Sugimoto's sister chides her for relationship with Fumi

It’s a complicated scene. Fumi and Sugimoto are sitting while one of Sugimoto’s three sisters backtracks Sugimoto’s confession and asks if she really is a lesbian — if she really loves Fumi right now, really. Fumi is embarrassed and Sugimoto is scandalized, rushing up to her room to sulk and eventually breaking up with Fumi right then and there. It’s about as bad of a family introduction as you can get, and frustrated and confused, Fumi leaves and wonders what such a disastrous outcome could possibly mean for her romantic life.

To be honest, I was a little shocked. Rather than take the easy and escapist route, Sweet Blue Flowers isn’t afraid to take the reality of discrimination and family disapproval head-on. Thankfully, it isn’t so tragic that Fumi gives up on dating forever. We see real character growth from Fumi, who at a later point builds up enough confidence to tell Sugimoto that her behavior was wrong and that she’s much happier without her. There are even hints that Fumi and Akira might date. Shimura’s depiction of Fumi gradually becoming aware of her identity as not only a lesbian — but as a young adult capable of maturely advocating for her own needs — is one of the most exciting things I’ve seen in an anime about young LGBTQIA+ life.

  “What’s In a Name?”

Nitori accidentally runs into Takatsuki on a bridge after running away

  Wandering Son is sometimes clumped together with a genre called “gender-benders” — a story where the protagonist is a boy who becomes a girl or vice versa. That comparison has always been both funny and fascinating to me. Funny, because older series like Ranma ½ definitely have something to say about gender in their own roundabout way. But fascinating and true to the spirit of Wandering Son as well. This idea of one day “switching genders” is the only way young protagonist Shuichi Nitori can even begin imagining a future as a girl. It’s the wonderful opening of a door.

Unlike Sweet Blue Flowers, which draws from a well-established tradition of conventional yuri tropes, Wandering Son is an anomaly simply for being about transgender life in Japan. The anime adaptation picks off with Nitori and friend Yoshino Takatsuki, a masculine “girl who wants to be a boy” entering middle school. Early in the series, Takatsuki and Nitori have already made a habit of going on day trips into the next town over in clothes suiting their chosen gender identities. Takatsuki makes friends with Yuki, an adult trans woman who inevitably ends up becoming a mentor for both Takatsuki and Nitori. They shop for cute clothes, browse at gender-affirming underwear, and just hang out. Up to this point, the two middle schoolers are oblivious of the LGBTQIA+ community and innocently enough, frame their coincidental feelings as simply wanting to “switch genders” — a sentiment at odds with the realities of nearing puberty.

  "It's a play where you and I are the stars ... A play that represents my wish. Where a male Takatsuki and a female me live happily ever after with the people we care about."

  All the while, Nitori and classmate Saoirin are busy writing a "gender-bent" school production of Romeo of Juliet. This plot point is a loving reference to the Takarazuka Revue, Shimura’s love for literature, and Nitori’s colorful conceptualization of gender identity. I like to think this is a means appropriate for middle schoolers who don’t have an adult’s vocabulary to address the fantasy of “gender-bender” stories versus actual lived realities. It’s an incredibly smart way to simultaneously navigate the story from these character's ages, and to ask the older viewer directly: What assumptions do you make about gender and what do you take for granted about it?

  Even though Wandering Son doesn’t capture the entire scope of Nitori and Takatsuki’s adolescence, I think that’s okay. The real sweetness of slice-of-life anime is exactly what it says on the can. The series makes no overt gestures as to whether or not these kids will transition, leaving it ambiguous and open-ended. But besides that, it’s also a story about navigating temperamental middle school friendships, siblings, and getting into petty classroom fights. At the end of the day, Wandering Son is a deeply sympathetic but not overly idyllic or nostalgic depiction of childhood. For as much saccharine Nitori and Takatsuki have to offer, they are both anxious and afraid about what their future holds. They are learning just like us.

Dream A Little Dream Of Me

Acchan comforts Fumi

What can we get from shows essentially about doing homework, being in the school play, getting dumped by your first girlfriend, and going through puberty? Not some otherworldly enlightenment but something far more mundane: learning that most of us, regardless of sexuality or gender identity, are just normal people. Even more — that there isn’t anything inherently scandalous or “adult” about being an LGBTQIA+ youth. Everyone’s story deserves to be told.

Shimura’s world is exactly the kind of fiction I wish I had access to as a fed-up teen. Sure, there’s something widely liberating about seeing yourself depicted in the media, but it only begins there. Seeing protagonists like Nitori and Fumi gradually become more confident in themselves helped me realize the real stakes of slice-of-life dramas: even if we think we’re grown-up, we always have a little bit more growing to do.

    Blake P. is a weekly columnist for Crunchyroll Features. He likes old mecha anime, computer games, books, and black coffee. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[hanistarxx]

Against Elysium - Chapter 1

A Modern Greek Mythology AU with Fem!Hades & Fem!Persephone

Summary: All Omisha ever knew was death. She has never felt the warmth of the sun or the breeze of a stormy wind. She has never seen beauty in her kingdom of desolation, or heard the soothing music of assurance. Seraphina wanted to change that. All in the name of love. And Gods forbid anyone who dared to separate them. For if anyone did,a war is what would become of it.

Pairings: Zoe Kravitz x Adria Arjona (Fem!Hades x Fem!Persephone) 

Warnings: None, Mention of Pedophilia, Mention of Molestation and Attempted Rape 

Word Count: 1.5K

Against Elysium - Masterlist

“YOU’RE getting old, Willy,” 

Thana taunted, her focus on the opponent ahead, her hands clenched tightly on the carved hilt of her sai. Her feet steady on the ground, as she circled William, ready to strike again. 

Leaning against the stone walls that encircled the fighting arena, stood her sisters Saskia and Kiara. Both of them eyed viciously at the fighters, curious to see who would come out of the battle victorious. 

As Thana lifted her hands to land yet another blow on her competitor, William stuck his left leg out, tripping her as she advanced onto him. She fell front face to the ground with a cry, while her sisters merely winced. 

“Old, yes. Out of tricks? Never,” he said, with a smug smile plastered on his face. Thana turned, violently pushing her hair out of her face, displeased with the fact that she had lost a fight because she lost her balance. 

“Yeah, keep glaring at me like that. Maybe my head will explode, who knows?” he sarcastically continued. 

For a middle aged man, William Chavez sure did not look like it. Neither did he act like it. Alongside Naya, he was the royal advisor to the Queen. 

If Omisha was ever in doubt, she would turn to her most trusted compatriots. And while Naya advised through words, William was in charge of vodka shots and a whole lot of crying. 

At all times, William and Omisha would be the ones most drunk after their advisory meetings, resulting in a disgruntled Naya carrying them both off to bed. 

As for the Erinyes’, days in the Underworld passed by routinely. If they were not sent to the mortal realm, punishing criminals, they would waste their time hanging around Omisha.

Though this was strongly disliked by the latter, for their presence could sometimes be exasperating. 

On other days, when they were doing neither of those things, they could be found training and fighting in the Arena. 

“You’re a Fury and you lost another fight to the God of Non-Violent Death,” Saskia stated, “Non-Violent Death, Thana, could you be more humiliating?” 

“Shut up,” Thana replied seethingly as she pushed herself up from the dirt, her sai aimed towards her sister. 

“停下来,” Kiara intervened, stepping between them. “You two are acting like fools. It’s just a practise fight, calm down.” 

“Easy for you to say. You always win your fights,” Saskia mumbled. 

Kiara laughed, grabbing her katana and taking her stance, challenging William to another mock battle. 

Just as they were about to begin, they found themselves mysteriously shackled to the ground, They were bound and frozen by something unseen. 

Naya walked calmly towards the group. A sardonic smile on her face, clearly proving herself as the source of the mischievous magic. 

“Omisha needs us. The number of souls you’ve collected were too many. She needs a few more pairs of hands to sort them out,” Naya said to William.

“You three,” she continued, pointing to the Lins’ this time. “Someone on Earth is being a sick bastard. Go show him what happens to a pedophile, would you?” 

The sisters smirked, eyes turned menacing. It was time for them to have some real fun. 

They grabbed their weapons, headed to their garage and sped off on their matching black motorbikes. All ready to maim and torture. 

"Men. Dead or alive, they're bothering us," Will said, dragging himself back to work. Naya sighed, agreeing with her friend. 

Another day, another thousand souls.

----------

“BUT Mama, it’s not that far away,” 

Seraphina persisted. She was worn out after a long and tiring day. She had accompanied her mother in the paddy fields. Then after, the two went back to their greenhouse to continue gardening.

All she wanted to do for the rest of the evening was to enjoy a little summer breeze by the lake situated a few minutes away from her home. She wished for some time alone, a breather. A break from her mother. 

“It’s getting dark, miha,” Isabela said, “What did I tell you about going out after dark?” 

The mother daughter duo started walking back to their small house. It wasn’t much, but to Isabela it was home. A single story brick cottage, it’s exterior’s beige paint chipping off at some areas. Small little trails of vines, creeping around the edges of the windows. 

Their home nestled within numbers of tall trees in an indistinct forest. Cloaked and unseen by mortals, it was the perfect safe haven for her. Away from the bustling metropolitan city, where danger lurked in every dirty alley. 

Seraphina sighed, rolling her eyes discreetly behind her mother’s back. She knew her mother was going to deny her the freedom to go out, but she couldn’t help but to at least try.  

As they approached their house, a familiar figure stood, leaning against the archway pillar of their porch. Illyana Vince. 

With a gleeful smile, Seraphina skipped past her mother, to greet her friend. Illyana took her hands out of her signature denim jacket to welcome her with a hug. 

Seraphina would always be visited by her huntress friend, almost every day. Her social circle was extravagantly small, all thanks to her mother, but she liked it. She wasn’t, however, entirely content about it. She knew she could make more friends. 

If only she was allowed to go further past the picket fence that surrounded her realm. 

“Where were you?” she asked gingerly, their hands still intertwined.  

“I had a meeting with Moerani. I thought I’d drop by and spend some time with you.” Illyana winked. Seraphina turned to her mother and pleaded for permission with her eyes. 

“Fine, you can go. But, be back home by eight and Illyana has to be with you at all times,” her mother retorted. With that, Seraphina tugged her friend and they went off their way. 

Upon reaching the lake, the girls sat on the big rocks by the bank. They took their shoes off and dipped their feet into the cool water below. The sun had already started to descend making the sky looked as if it was on fire. 

“What was the meeting with Mr. Moerani about?” she asked, tearing her gaze away from the sunset and towards the girl beside her.

“I had to debrief him about what happened this morning. Some scum excuse of a man attacked a girl in a school. I heard her prayers, she sounded so terrified.” 

“What did he do to her?” she asked, slightly angered.

With a heavy disappointed sigh, Illyana said, “He molested her. He didn’t get that far. As soon as I got there, the Erinyes had him already. Pinned down on the floor. All bruised and bloodied.

I found the little girl hiding under a table. Brought her home and informed her parents. Poor girl, she was only seven. Men are really disgusting.” 

There was no secret that Illyana had a strong dislike for men. They had dicks for brains, as she would say so. The only three men she didn’t mind associating with were her brother, Jacob and William. 

Illyana talked about how she returned back to the school to finish the Erinyes’ work. If it was one thing the blonde loved doing, it was protecting the young, especially if it gave her the chance to beat up some second grade douche.  

Seraphina felt anger boil in her veins. How could anyone even think of committing such heinous crimes? She had heard countless stories from her friends about the world outside. Mortals were either killing each other or forcing themselves on others. 

That made her understood why her mother is keeping her within the cloaked abode of her realm. But she would not render herself weak or afraid. If she were to encounter such cruelty, whether it be upon her or someone else, she would raise Hell itself. 

“Raise Hell huh? I don’t think Omisha would like that. That lady took a thousand years to organize the chaos down there, ” Illyana spoke, smugly. 

Seraphina smiled sheepishly, realizing she had just spoke her mind, yet again. Curiosity sparked the goddess at the mention of the Underworld. Of course, she was curious about a lot things, but the Underworld called upon her the most.

In her mother’s eyes, it was a dark, gloomy and misty place. It was a place she was determined to keep Seraphina away from. But the stories told by her friends made her depict it in another way. 

Jacob mentioned the castle that housed the Underworld Gods and Goddesses, as ancient, yet sleek and stylish. Ilyana and Israel referred to it as the perfect hub to get wasted. Even Xander would often go there for sparring practice with the Lin sisters. Not a single one of them acted as if the place was a spook land. Just another world to hang out in.

She longed to experience everything outside of her mother’s boundaries. And visiting the Underworld was at the top of her list. 

----------     

tag list: @futureauthor-mabye @artwriteanimationinspo

----------

Chapter 2 (COMING SOON)

[my-words-are-light]

Starflower

Dear friends of mine and followers that know me very well despite the fact I put out barely any content at all will probably be aware of my eternal and undying love for @damedaffodil, a webcomic by @sakura-rose12 that I simply can’t get enough of. I grew up with Sailor Moon so it sits right with me intrinsically but it’s also intelligently written while still being lighthearted and charming.

I’ve thought from time to time about Charo Flores, a shining beacon of optimism and heroism and joy, hanging out with Destiny Pride, a grumpy and snarky bystander who wants nothing to do with anything. So I wrote this crossover to satisfy me. So, without further adieu, I introduce you all to my crossover between the Ngawooin Project and Dame Daffodil!

---

She was not comfortable in a busy city. Going from what was a sleepy town (‘was’, anyway) to here in Birmingham, she was ill prepared for the utter hive of people she was to dwell amongst. She couldn't even go down an alleyway without seeing someone she’d never seen before. Walking through the main roads was like a kaleidoscope of faces she never saw twice.

It felt very weird, and a smidge unnerving; so many people walked to and fro at the shoulder, even in groups, but no one knew or acknowledged each other, or even made a stoic nod of greeting. Maybe the English were reclusive sorts by nature. But she was used to knowing everyone back home, even if only their names. Here, the patterns in the seas of people kept changing and she knew she’d never see one person again.

She decided she should relax more in the apartment before going on a walk. She only just got here today; familiarising herself with the city could wait. Fresh air could only do so much for a high school girl travelling overseas for the first time. So she was on her way back to the apartment, navigating the sea of Englishmen and women as she went.

She found herself fortunate to find a space at a corner where she could sort of isolate herself and get her bearings. As she relaxed, she saw a poster. Big and sturdy, the sort that made you think a hotshot from Hollywood was in town. Must’ve been professionally made.

The poster depicted a girl with flaring orange hair decorated with a striking yellow flower accessory that held a high ponytail in place. The yellow dress followed the flower motif with a petal skirt with orange ruffles underneath and a green bow on the back that looked like a pair of leaves. The flower girl was shooting a beam of light from her hands at some black furry animal, tearing it up like a high pressure hose. Printed at the bottom of the poster with very bold text was THANK YOU, DAME DAFFODIL!

Alright, so... What was Dame Daffodil? It sounded familiar but nothing was coming to her. Was it a play? Some movie? Maybe some local model or something? The poster didn’t have any release dates or studios or... well, anything on it anywhere. Was it...

Okay, bored now. She turned away from the poster but found a girl looking at her. This new girl was a bit shorter, had dark skin, and her short brown hair was tied at the back with a high ponytail held in with a yellow flower hairpin. Quite a contrast from her, with her short blonde hair that fell down around her head and really pale skin. Then there were the stranger’s clothes, a navy blue jumper and sky blue shirt. She’d seen a few other kids her age wearing them; probably the uniform of some high school around here. It’s a shame the clothes were unkempt and messy. Much like the hair, actually. And her eyes were unfocused and red at the edges with bags underneath them.

“Hey,” the schoolgirl greeted. Her voice was like that of a receptionist who started her job bright and eager to help everyone have a pleasant day but wore down with the passage of time, yet still determined to bring joy. “Like the poster?”

She glanced at the poster once more. “It’s a’ight.”

“I think it’s amazing.” The schoolgirl walked up to the poster and looked at it with her heavy eyes. Her smile was weak and tired but it wasn’t forced. Must’ve been a fan, if the hairpin was of any indication. “What do you think of Dame Daffodil?”

“I don’t really know who she is.”

The schoolgirl’s eyes rose as she looked at her. “Really? She’s a superhero around here. She fights monsters and helps...” A yawn interrupted her, “... people.”

“Wait, what?” The tourist blinked a few times, which would’ve helped get the sand out of her eyes if she was dreaming. “A superhero? Like, a bona fide, fair dinkum superhero? Powers and all?”

“I dunno what fair dinkum means but, no joke, she’s the real deal. She basically protects the city.”

Wait a minute, she had heard about Dame Daffodil once before...

“Hey, did you hear about in England?” Penny asked her, spinning her art stylus idly.

“Mm.” She herself was content to rest on her arms crossed on the table.

“There’s a superhero now. Some girl called Dame Daffodil.”

“Mm.”

“Fires laser beams. Also really upbeat. She’s like a TV show presenter for kids except she’s cooler than that.”

“Mm.”

“Long night?”

“Mhm.”

“Alright, I’ll leave ya.”

Probably should’ve paid more attention. “Huh. Well, I just got here. I don’t know much.”

“Oh. I was wondering if I ever saw you before. Are you a tourist?”

“Nah, on holidays with the family.”

“Well I hope you have fun here.” The schoolgirl showed her teeth as she donned a smile. Kind of forced but she was definitely trying to be nice. “I’m Charo. You?”

Oh struth, the most dreaded part of meeting new people: introductions and sharing names. “Uh...” Ugh, she hated this part. “... Destiny.”

“Huh?”

“My name,” such as it was, “is Destiny.”

Destiny could see a gear stop in Charo’s head. Well, one more than those that had already stopped. Maybe Charo could stand to get a few winks too.

“Destiny?” Charo said, either as a question to Destiny, herself, or perhaps a cruel God.

“Yeah. Destiny.” Her shoulders slumped. “Parents, huh?”

The footsteps around them were so much clearer and distinct with the new quiet.

Remarkably, though, Charo didn’t blink. She beamed. “That is so cool...!”

Okay, that was new for Destiny. The top two usual reactions for her were pity and incredulity. Sparkly-eyed excitement was a completely new experience for her. It was kind of nice but it was more kind of weird.

“Oh, sorry.” Charo proceeded to stop being awe-struck. “I gotta go. Just remembered I’m visiting a friend... See you later.” With a parting wave, Charo turned and walked away.

“Bye,” muttered Destiny as she half-heartedly waved back. “Don’t trip on the way.”

That wasn’t the worst first encounter she could’ve had in this new country. She was kind of weird but kind all the same. Too bad they ended on Charo knowing her name but at least she thought it was cool. She couldn’t imagine anyone else being like that.

Wait, where was she going again? Oh yeah, home. Anyway, it was either—

BOOM!

Destiny whipped around as an explosion burst from a ways behind her. She couldn’t feel any aftershocks but it was definitely loud. What was that? A meteor? A bomb? Those never happened back in her hometown; the only big problems were...

Wait...

Oh no. This was bad. Someone was in danger.

---

Destiny didn’t stop sprinting until she reached a lamp post on the corner of the road where all the commotion was. Only then did she collapse against and wrap her arms around it, taking deep breath after deep breath to try and ease the burning in her ribs. At least she got much farther than she did in last year’s beep test.

It took a moment but her torso stopped feeling so much like it was burning that it would keep her from moving. She lifted her head to the intersection ahead. Only a bit more to go. She put one foot in front of the other, breathing cyclically as she went to ease the burden on her lungs, until she reached the corner. She peered around it to survey the damage...

There was a black dragon.

No joke, there was a real dragon. In the middle of the street, in a deep crater that splintered into fissures that reached the sidewalks, battered cars, shattered windows, and topped streetlights, was an honest to goodness, to scale, living and breathing dragon.

Sort of. Maybe.

It definitely had the silhouette of a European dragon. Long snout and neck? Check. Four clawed legs? Check. Two massive wings? Checkity. Tail? Checking check. But it was in the details how the dragon was just kind of... wrong. Its body was covered not in scales or a leather hide but some kind of furry black moss. Its wings reminded her of flower petals. The two horns growing out of the back of its head looked like stalks and the fangs and claws resembled thorns. The tip of its tail, weirdest of all, looked like a budding flower.

A closer look would probably clear up a lot of details but Destiny was not one to get herself in harm’s way for curiosity’s sake. The same could not be said for the citizens around her, as it turned out; from the corner behind which she hid, she saw folks out in the open taking pictures of the thing with their phones. All their survival instincts taught them to do was to keep their distance a bit. Given three wishes, Destiny would wish for the bystanders to rack off, decent Internet for home, and a tray of Tim Tams.

Actually, she could just use the first wish to get the dragon to go away.

Speaking of, the big brute had yet to attack anyone. Actually, it had yet to even move from its crater. It stood right in the middle as it surveyed the crowd. She could hear a low growl coming from the thing; it was probably wary of everyone, ready to strike at the first sod that tried any funny business. So was it being defensive or...? What’s going on here?

The crowd itself got caught up in the speculation, murmuring to each other.

“Oh God, I’m actually looking at one...”

“Did it just fall from the sky?”

“My car!”

“If that damn glare would get lost...”

“I’d love one as a pet.”

“Where’s Dame Daffodil?”

That last one was said quite a few times. So Dame Daffodil was really real, as were the monsters on that poster. She should’ve gotten the hint after Penny and that girl she met—Charo, that was her name—told her about the hero but an impartial bystander saying her name gave it that impersonal quality that assured her she wasn’t nuts and talking to imaginary friends. Not that superheroes were hard to digest but you never know.

Damn it, though, she just wished everyone would go away. The dragon was only growling in a warning manner but that could change in an instant. Why was it even here? It wasn’t attacking so what’s the dea—

A warm yellow glow came in through the air and landed in the middle of the street like a heavy flower petal. It was a human—no, a superhuman. The dragon directed its now dangerous snarling at her as she stood up. She was a bit shorter than Destiny. She had a green leafy waist bow. She had a yellow dress. Her hair was messy and orange and long with a ponytail held in by a daffodil accessory. No prizes for guessing who she was.

Dame Daffodil turned around and waved at the bystanders. “Hey...!” she called, not quite putting her all into it because of fatigue but she was putting in as much as she can. “Is everyone okay?”

“DAME DAFFODIL!” cheered what sounded like the entire country condensed to a single street with all the enthusiasm of a bunch of fireworks getting married.

The local superhero wore her biggest possible grin and waved at those gathered. Many of them thrust their phones higher and forward to catch her image.

Destiny, on the other hand, stood frozen at her corner. Of course she recognised Dame Daffodil. The shocking part was how she recognised her more as Charo, who she encountered only minutes ago.

How did she not put two and two together before? She was right next to the poster. One simple comparison of their faces and boom, she could tell Charo was the very superhero she herself admired in a sort of narcissistic way. Yet it never crossed her mind. Why? Well, she supposed Dame Daffodil’s face on the poster was kind of fuzzy and hard to focus on for some reason. In the flesh, Dame Daffodil had something a bit... weird... going on with her face and Destiny recognised her just fine. Was this because of the poster? Maybe cameras only saw the fuzz like a regular would and carried that across...

Oh whatever. She could figure it out later if she was still interested.

“Everyone, please get away from here!” called Dame Daffodil after the spectators had finally settled down. “It’s dangerous! Please get to safety!”

The blaring of sirens followed right after as a couple of police cars arrived, bringing with them four men. “You heard her!” they shouted into megaphones. “Evacuate immediately for your own safety!”

Finally, the civilians left. Or some of them, anyway. Destiny would bet her toy collection that some of them were staying behind after pretending to leave.

She could probably go too, really. She ducked back and turned down an alleyway. Here’s hoping Dame Daffodil could deal with that dragon in her state...

---

The hero looked at the dragon cautiously. She regarded it not as a monster but as a dangerous but ultimately innocent animal, like an angry dog. It was a bit nerve-wracking how the dragon looked so annoyed at her but she kept it together. “Easy, easy...” she said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you...”

But the dragon was not easing up. Its nostrils flared and its brow furrowed as Dame Daffodil spoke. It growled at her and bared its thorny teeth.

“It’s okay...” Dame Daffodil continued, even if she was a bit anxious. She took another step forward...

And the dragon stood on its back legs and roared to the sky with such ferocity that the superhero had to back away while covering her ears.

“Uh oh,” she said.

The dragon threw its head down and blasted a cyclonic stream of what looked like glowing green pollen at her. It was as wide as a single line and faster than a speeding car; a regular human would have to be lucky to dodge it only partly.

Fortunately, Dame Daffodil was no regular human reliant on luck; her baggy eyes portrayed a false weakness as she used her super speed to spring onto a wall and then jump off to leap back over the street, which was now stained down the middle with an acidic green. Even the asphalt was smoking. At least she evaded it in its entirety.

The dragon began to raise its head to her airborne body, the lines of its mouth starting to glow green.

“No...!” Dame Daffodil thrust her palms out together and light coalesced in between them before she fired it as a bright beam.

The attack struck the top of the dragon’s snout with an earth-shaking boom as the pollen breath spewed out, now pointed at the dragon’s feet. Smoke burst from the laser’s impact and obscured the monster and the street from view. Pollen continued to kick up at the ground for a few more seconds, whirling at the base of the smoke.

Dame Daffodil landed on her feet in the middle of the road. She looked at the pollen breath as it continued to spill out even after the dragon was blasted on the face. “It’s tough. I’ll need to hit it more than once.”

With a roar, the dragon beat its wings and dispersed the smoke. Even if it was covered in black moss, it was easy to tell the face was burned rather savagely. Same went for its front feet that endured its breath. Yet, for all the damage, it looked even more ready for a fight. It kept its glare focused on Dame Daffodil as it growled.

Dame Daffodil groaned. “I wish things would be easy for once these days…”

The dragon roared and lunged towards her in a single bound with its front feet raised. Dame Daffodil quickly bounced to the side as the dragon’s claws slammed into the spot where she just was, shattering it like a plate.

Dame Daffodil rolled as she landed and righted herself with one hand braced against the road (bare skin against asphalt and pavement hurt, by the way, especially when a dragon just puked magic acid pollen on it) while she aimed the other at the dragon. A one-handed laser was less than half as strong as a two-handed one but it was faster to aim and fire.

But not fast enough, sadly. The dragon followed up its attack immediately with a swing of its tail, which she only caught from the corner of her eye, and she hurried to duck and roll under it. She raised her head to get her bearings again but she noticed the dragon’s other immediate follow-up in the form of it opening its glowing mouth.

“Oh come on...!” she grunted, bouncing away right before another stream of pollen could engulf her. Finally, she was out of range of its melee attacks. She quickly turned and fired another one-handed laser, which she knew the dragon was too large and slow to dodge, and scored an impact. Although the blast was smaller, there was enough smoke produced for her to use as a smokescreen while she put more distance between herself and the dragon.

But she didn’t get far before the smoke cleared and she saw, to her dismay, that the dragon blocked the blast with its wing curled around its body.

“What does it take to hurt you?!” Dame Daffodil shouted.

The dragon rotated its head ninety degrees and lunged forward with an open maw. With an upper jaw to the left and a lower jaw to the right, Dame Daffodil’s instincts drove her to backflip into the air.

One vertical rotation later, her eyes were in position to see the dragon’s mouth glow green once more.

It was going to fire.

She was stuck in the air.

She couldn’t dodge.

She desperately pushed her hands together. The light was barely forming in her palms as the stream of pollen rushed her way. It still wasn’t ready to fire as the stream got close enough for her to feel how hot it wa—

Something slammed into her side and caught her and... carried her off? One second, she was about to bathe in dragon not-fire. The next, she was being carried while the stream rushed by above and behind her. What saved her with super speed rivalling her own?

She looked up and her breath caught in her throat. A blue bodysuit, glinting with stars like a brilliant night sky. Long, sparkling silver hair. A transparent blue visor. A pink skirt glimmering like a nebula. And she could never overlook the thin steel gauntlets that held her carefully, as grey as the rest of the hero’s armour that covered her torso and feet.

The new hero smiled at her. “Never thought I’d be saving you, Dame Daffodil.”

Dame Daffodil’s energy had been in tremendous decline that day. It was a miracle she could make herself go out with how much she needed rest she wasn’t getting. And yet, seeing the hero she never thought she’d meet holding her in her arms brought her to life. “YOU’RE SAVERSTAR!” she yelled, beaming.

“Saverstar...?” murmured the voice of a civilian that didn’t have the sense to run away when he was asked.

“Isn’t she from Australia...?” asked another one.

“Four of them now?”

“Here? In England?!”

“Saverstar?!”

As Saverstar lifted her head, she saw the citizens moving out of hiding to get a closer look at the new arrival. Their astonished murmurs died as their breaths were taken away from their eyes confirming the amazing; Saverstar was here in the flesh in England.

The civilians, unsurprisingly, started shouting.

“Saverstar!”

“Oh my God!”

“She’s actually here!”

“WE LOVE YOU, SAVERSTAR!”

First things first, Saverstar placed Dame Daffodil back on the ground. With her arms free, she stood up straight and waved to the forming crowd that hollered and waved back.

“Alright, that’s ENOUGH!” she shouted as she stopped waving, and it was great that the crowd acknowledged her by being quiet. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a DRAGON here! We’ll take care of it! Now, as Dame Daffodil said, BUGGER OFF!”

Everyone in the crowd yelped before turning around and running.

Dame Daffodil chuckled. “I wish they’d listen to me when I said that.”

“I’ll give you tips after this,” said Saverstar as she turned to face the dragon. All things considered, it was rather patient to just sit there while she introduced herself. That said, it was a lot more agitated now than when it was just Dame Daffodil; its eyes quivered and shook as it beheld her. Was it just measuring her as a threat?

Saverstar held her left hand out in front of her. Small glimmers of light sparkled one after the other in the air, getting faster and faster, as they coalesced and came together in her hand. In a flash, the lights became one and formed into a stringless bow that looked like it was made from diamond. The dragon reared back, provoked by the bow’s appearance.

She placed her right fingers on the grip of her bow and pulled back. An arrow of light appeared with the action, shaking with energy just aching to be unleashed on her target.

The dragon’s mouth glowed green before it fired a stream of pollen at the aiming archer and Dame Daffodil. Both magical girls jumped out of the way in opposite directions. Saverstar still had her magic arrow nocked and fired it into the dragon mid-leap.

The arrow of light shot right through the dragon… and it had no effect, aside from a slight shudder. All Saverstar had to show for her efforts was a slightly peeved dragon that took the moment to roar at her.

“Look out!” cried Dame Daffodil as she fired a double-handed laser that landed directly on the side of the dragon’s head. It kicked up plenty of smoke as usual, obscuring the heroes from the dragon’s view as Dame Daffodil raced to Saverstar’s side. “Are you okay? The arrow didn’t do anything!”

A faint green glow shone through the smoke. Saverstar and Dame Daffodil immediately recognised the danger and jumped out of the way as a pollen stream shot out of the smoke. The breath expelling the pollen dispersed the smoke, making the dragon visible.

“I didn’t expect it to do anything,” said Saverstar. She grabbed the end of her bow’s limb with both hands, holding it like a club. “The arrow doesn’t do damage; all it does is exorcise possessed people. If that dragon’s not possessed, the arrow won’t do anything.”

Not that she cared. The enemies of Dame Daffodil weren’t like hers back in Ngawooin; back home, the monsters were possessed townspeople wracked with grief and needed counselling on top of a beatdown. But here? They were just monsters. All she needed to do was crush them.

Dame Daffodil looked at Saverstar with concern. “Then what do you do?”

The dragon pounced towards the two heroes. Both of them stepped back before the dragon landed right where they used to be, breaking the ground with the force. Dame Daffodil’s footing shook but Saverstar still stood.

“I’ve got more than one string to my bow!” shouted Saverstar, bludgeoning the side of the dragon’s head with her weapon, eliciting a pained cry from the creature. The dragon swiped at her with a claw only for Saverstar to evade it by flashing away down the road with her super speed. Dame Daffodil joined her at the same time.

With a bit of distance between them and the dragon, they took a moment to catch their breath.

The dragon regained its bearings as well. It glared at them, snarling, and then it spread its wings wide and roared at them more viciously than ever before.

Dame Daffodil and Saverstar sped towards the dragon head-on. When they got right in front of it, they split off to either side. The two heroes jumped from road to wall, from building to building, and back to the dragon, attacking with laser after club after laser after club, alternating between the two and speeding away.

Try as it might, the dragon couldn’t keep up with them both. It lunged at Saverstar with tooth and claw, only to miss and be distracted from Dame Daffodil’s two-handed lasers taking the moment to strike it. It blocked Dame Daffodil’s lasers with its wings and whipped at her with its tail, only to be completely exposed when Saverstar ran right into it with kicks, punches, or bow clubbings.

Saverstar appeared in front of the dragon, leaping forward and kicking down at the dragon’s snout. She leapt over the dragon’s back… and the dragon promptly clapped the back of its wings against Saverstar. She raised her hands to push against the wings but that only trapped her right behind the dragon, which lifted its tail and whipped her, knocking her down to the road in front of the dragon.

The dragon’s mouth began to glow green.

Dame Daffodil appeared in a flash in front of Saverstar, pushing her palms together and building up energy between them.

The dragon unleashed a stream of pollen at the exact same time Dame Daffodil fired her two-handed laser. The laser split the stream, the pollen rushing harmlessly beyond Dame Daffodil and Saverstar on both sides, and shot right into the dragon’s maw with an explosion.

The smoke cloud was enormous. Dame Daffodil and Saverstar nervously stepped back in defensive stances, wary of a surprise attack.

But the smoke wasn’t dispersed by the dragon’s actions; it dissipated on its own, revealing the dragon slumped on the road, its face viciously burned and damaged and lying in a puddle of its own acidic pollen.

There was no mistaking it. It was down and out.

“WooHOO!” cheered Dame Daffodil, pumping her fist in the air. “We did it! We finally beat…”

Her enthusiasm drained rapidly from fatigue and her legs gave out.

“Oi, careful!” Saverstar caught her as she fell. “Gotta get home before you sleep.”

Dame Daffodil chuckled with what little energy she had. Her baggy eyes looked at Saverstar with appreciation and tired triumph. “Right, right… But I need to take care of the dragon once and for all, first. Just one more attack should do it.”

“Alright, just take it easy.” Saverstar helped her to her feet and walked with her to the lying dragon.

Dame Daffodil broke away from Saverstar and stood in front of their fallen foe. It didn’t twitch in the slightest; it wasn’t getting back up with a surprise attack.

She pressed her hands together to gather energy. She took more time to gather more energy for a laser larger than those before, something that would annihilate the animal.

She fired her final laser. It created a dust cloud big enough to engulf the entire street and both Saverstar and Dame Daffodil. It lingered for a long half minute before it dispersed.

The dragon was completely gone. From the scorched black road where its body once lied, a dark flower with six wrinkled petals and a light centre bloomed. It was hauntingly beautiful but uncomfortable to look at.

“Finally,” grunted Dame Daffodil rubbing the back of her head.

With a shake of her hand, Saverstar vanished her bow in a flash of light.

“YEAH! GO DAME DAFFODIL!” cheered a bystander from the side of the road.

More citizens gathered and cheered with congratulations for Dame Daffodil and quite a few for Saverstar as well. The crowd was electric with enthusiasm, probably due to the new hero on the scene all the way from Australia.

As exhausted as she was, Dame Daffodil smiled and waved at the crowd. “Thanks guys but I really gotta go…”

“Excuse me…! Pardon…!” muttered a man with a microphone as he pushed his way through the crowd, followed by a man carrying a camera. A field news team, no doubt.

Saverstar frowned. Dame Daffodil needed rest more than she needed an interview (and Saverstar just plain wasn’t in the mood). She ran to Dame Daffodil’s side. “Don’t suppose you want to hop it out of here?”

“Don’t you know it…!” Dame Daffodil nodded.

“Alright then.” With a roll of her neck, Saverstar picked up Dame Daffodil like she was a bride. “Buckle up.”

“What—Wait!”

But Saverstar didn’t wait for the surprised Dame Daffodil; in a flash of blue, she took off running across the city, far away from the happy fans and reporters.

---

The two of them stopped in one of the many alleyways of Birmingham. No prying eyes or curious sorts to follow them in here. They’d be safe to take a breather, even if just for a moment.

The exhausted Dame Daffodil slumped against the wall and slid down to the ground. Not the most hygienic place for that but it worked. “Whew… Jeez, I was lucky you came around today. Best luck I’ve had these last two months.”

“Looked like it,” said Saverstar. “You really look out of it.”

Dame Daffodil nodded. “It’s been rough. Monsters have been appearing more often than ever before and I’m having a hard time keeping up.”

“Well it’s good that I’m here then. I’m happy to help.” Saverstar took a moment to think and recollect. “… You’re Charo, right?”

Dame Daffodil froze. She looked at Saverstar with wide, fearful eyes. “Uh, what makes you think—”

Yeah, that was coming on a bit strong. Saverstar took that moment to detransform. Her brilliant and shining form dimmed as her hair went from long and silver to short and blonde. Her visor, bodysuit, armour, skirt, gauntlets, and greaves all vanished, leaving her in just her civilian getup.

She smiled at Dame Daffodil. “My full name’s Destiny Pride. So now we both have a secret to share.”

[deliadexaerisofficialuniver-blog]

I was reading the Wikipedia article about transgender people and it talks about what it refers to as "early onset dysphoria," and "late onset dysphoria," like, okay... if you experience dysphoria that started later in life, or you came to terms with your identity, or had a change in identity later in life, that's valid, but reading the descriptions in the article, I can't help but feel like they might suffer a bit from a lack of trans input...

The way they read, it acts like trans women who experience dysphoria and feminine identity and gender early in life are all shouting about it and trying to cut our dicks off in the shower/tub, and trying on our mom's clothes and begging for dresses at the age of 3, and like, no..

I have experienced dysphoria as long as I can remember. I didn't ever try to cut my penis off back then, but I was intent on hiding it, wishing it would go away. My parents thought this was weird and tried to encourage me to be "proud" of it. I thought this was weird When I found out my mom didn't have one, I wanted it gone even more. I could no longer rationalize it away as awkward, and weird feeling, but necessary for peeing. When I asked what had happened to hers, my parents said "Girls don't have those." This broke my tiny heart, because according to them, it meant I was a boy, which was the last thing I ever wanted to be. I hated boys. I thought they were gross, mean, and all around horrible. When my parents made me socialize and spend time with little boys my age, I hated it. I wanted to be away from them, back home where I could cloister myself in my room. At the time, I felt like my older half-brother was just the worst. When my older half-sisters got to take time away from their mom to come visit, it was the best. They didn't feel like bullies. They treated me like a little person. 

When I started school, I immediately ingratiated myself with the other girls, and distanced myself socially from boy-world as much as possible. Most of my friends were other girls, and I avoided socializing with the boys like the plague. To me, they seemed gross, mostly dim, and like bullies. There were a few boys in the gifted program with me who seemed different, but they were the exception rather than the rule. Basically, I saw the majority of boys as less like me in every way, and the other girls as more like me, and much more pleasant and safe feeling to be around. It's my understanding that a lot of other girls feel this way too, so I guess this makes sense. And for the record, yeah, I absolutely wished I could've asked my parents for clothes and jewelry like the other girls wore. I was jealous as all get-out. I wanted belly-shirts, jelly shoes, skirts,chunky bracelets and necklaces... I just knew better than to ask...

Going to the Sanrio store at the mall with my sisters when they visited was like a dream. I wanted everything cute and girly in the store, but the only thing that felt gender-neutrally safe enough to ask for was a foam lizard on a walking wire with pink sunglasses. Going shopping anywhere was still torture. I remember vividly, seeing the girls' clothes, feeling this aching inside, wanting to ask for any of it, all of it, for skirts, jelly shoes, bracelets, necklaces, Lisa Frank backpacks... I just knew I couldn't. I knew that if I did ask, I'd be punished, or that at the very least publicly reprimanded and made to feel like there was something wrong with me, because boys didn't get to wear those clothes, or get those accessories, no matter whether I *felt* like a boy or not. All the same, I wanted it all, inside, I *needed* it all. I felt *ANXIETY* inside. I could feel my heart *POUNDING* in my chest, at my silence, *BEGGING* me to break my silence and ask before it was too late and we passed it by to go to the checkout. My whole body felt weak, wibbly, staticy... but I knew better. I just *KNEW* better so I never did. I managed to ask for one notebook with rainbow-space dolphins on it. That was about all I felt safe asking for. I don't remember if it was Lisa Frank or not, but it made me happy.

Anyway, growing up, my parents never really heard me voice my dysphoria, aside from a simple nod of my head when they asked me if I was "ashamed" of my penis in response to the way I always covered it whenever I was naked, and rushed to put on underwear. I remember crying about it once when they basically detained me from my usual rush to cover myself in the fabric, seemingly trying to figure out what was "wrong" with me, why I was so averse to my bottom-half being naked after bathing when they were both naked But aside from that, they got none of the "typical" "signs" that cis people seem to think are somehow just *UNIVERSAL* to a trans youth. I didn't try on *either* of my parents clothes when I was little. To this day, I still don't get that whole concept. I guess maybe I just saw myself as my own person and less like I was destined to grow into a copy of one of them or the other.

Growing up, I didn't really know much about trans people existing, I didn't know there was a word for it. I remember hearing a joke about a "Sex Change" once in some movie or TV show, and because it was treated as a joke, I didn't think it referred to anything *real* I remember watching a Crocodile Dundee movie, I don't remember which one, and seeing a scene which depicted the main character as heroic for sexually assaulting a trans woman in a bar, grabbing her painfully by the testicles until she collapsed... This only reinforced the idea that people with my kind of body weren't allowed to wear dresses. As the movie put it, she wasn't a "real" woman, she was "really a man," and her genitals served as proof, again, reinforcing to 5 year-old me that I wasn't "allowed" to be a girl. I found story-writing, art, video games, and eventually role-playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends in high-school as my only outlets for the girl I was, who felt trapped inside a cage of a body I hated, not only for feeling wrong, but for denying me my identity.

I was lucky again to be surrounded by other female friends. When I was about to start 4th grade, my parents decided to move, so I changed schools, and when we did, I was forced to socialize with boys and make male friends. Looking back, it makes me wonder if my guidance counselors had said anything about my chosen feminine socialization, essentially if they had "found me out," for almost exclusively making friends and socializing with other girls. I don't know if that was the case or not, but they were intent on pushing me into friendships with the boys in the neighborhood we were moving into. It didn't work though. A girl moved in next door, and she became my closest friend. I guess my parents left me alone about it because they, and all the kids on the bus figured we were dating, and yeah, I thought she was cute, but there was no return interest. We were just friends, and I loved it that way.

We started hanging out playing this game with all my dinosaur toys where we would give them all names and complex personalities and characters and life stories, and basically role-play out their lives as though they were in some soap opera/reality show. I guess it was kind of like the way a lot of girls play with dolls, we just used dinosaur toys. It was kind of my idea at first, but she got really into it with me and we'd play like this basically every day after school until we got more interested in video games. Even then, we still split time with the dinosaur toys, and I don't think we ever really stopped until late in middle school.

Middle school was a weird time for me. I had started to feel like a social reject/outcast in 4th and 5th grade, but Middle School just got worse. I got these bar-framed glasses that didn't really help matters either. The other kids had started bullying me for my feminine mannerisms, the way I walked, talked, cocked my hips out standing and leaning, used my hands when I talked, carried them in front of me, etc. back in fourth grade, but it just got worse in middle school. Everyone assumed I was a gay boy, and they treated me with that violence. Often it was social, sometimes it got physical, until at a point, I'd had enough, and decided to beat the crap out of one of my bullies to say enough was enough. Everyone said I fought like a girl because I attacked with my legs, but I really didn't care. People compared me to a girl all the time, and I guess it was supposed to bother me, but it never did. Nothing in me wanted to be masculine, or saw femininity as a negative.

When I got to high school, I sort of made my own crowd with a few of the other nerds, two guys I'd known in elementary and middle school, with the addition of one of their older brothers I met, and 3 other nerdy girls, two of whom were goth like me, and we formed a D&D group. I was especially close for a time with one of them who rode my bus, and when we were turning 16 (her birthday was the day before mine), she convinced her parents to let us have a slumber party. We went to see Underworld, and came back to her place, where we hung out and listened to goth rock, burned incense, I got to try some of her hemp chapstick, and in the morning she asked if she could put me in some of her clothes and makeup. Hanging out at school, she and a few of my other friends would remark in a non-bullying, more neutral way on how they felt like I was "such a girl," and I'd just reply that I felt like a "Lesbian trapped in a boy's body." It was something I'd heard one of my older half-brothers say jokingly to his friends once, but I meant it sincerely. When she'd finished dressing me, putting me in makeup, and straightening my hair (something my parents wouldn't let me do), she showed me to myself in the mirror, and said "This is how I see you on the inside." I felt a way I had never felt before in my life. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt beautiful. I didn't hate what I saw and wish I was different. It felt right, I felt at home. I wanted to stay in that dress and that makeup forever. I told her she was right. She started taking pictures though, and I couldn't deal with that. I cried and asked her to delete them, which she did. She was upset by this, and looking back I wish I hadn't, but I was afraid. Her parents caught us and disciplined her, saying it was inappropriate, and acting like they thought that being dressed up this way was why I was upset. The real reason was I was afraid of being bullied at school, punished by my parents, even kicked out of school.

I still didn't know trans people were a thing, anything at all about transitioning. At school I drew myself as a girl when one of my friends had drawn herself as a boy, and called it a "gender-bend." I made no secret to my friend that I wished that girl I drew was me.

When we played D&D, I started with a male character, a halfling druid, but when he suffered an untimely fate, I switched to two new characters, a female halfling rogue named Sarah, and an Elven witch named Delia, and I never went back. Delia had actually been written up, drawn, and played in a solo campaign before the death of my druid, but as time went on, she became my main in preference to Sarah, though they inhabited two separate campaigns, and really became an outlet for self-expression. I was goth, and obsessed with the paranormal, so was she, I wanted to be sensual, so she was a very sensual woman. I enjoyed swordplay, so she was a fencer. I loved dance, and wanted to dance, she was a dancer. If I'd been assigned female at birth, I wanted to grow to be a sex symbol, like Britney Spears, so she was. She was even a part time dabbler in music. Arguably she had more character and personality than any other character I ever played at the table. I loved playing the campaign she was in. When we did, I jumped up from the table. I threw on an accent. I threw on her personality, and walked around and basically played her actions in role-playing situations, and even in combat, when she did something really cool. My gaming group decided she was a "self-insert character" the Player's Handbook 2 for D&D 4E described as a character meant to represent a fantasized and idealized version of the self, and... she was. True, a lot of her is fantasy, I can't step into the Feywild to hop across a battlefield, or summon undead spirits or turn into a wraith, but for all intents and purposes, she was meant to be the woman I would be in a world where all that was real. She even carried my airheaded lack of common sense, my love of reptiles, books, getting drinks and having a good time, she was more of a rule-breaker, a rebel, and an all around "Bad-girl" than I would've ever believed I'd become in life, but eventually I did. My Dungeons and Dragons Group stayed together through college, and that was the place where I was most comfortable showing myself, even in this limited way, but still not knowing trans people existed, or anything about them until college when I got to go to a gay bar.

One of my friends brought me to Emerald City in Pensacola to see a drag show, and told me that she wanted to do drag king performances, and that I should try out drag performance as a place to unleash my "inner woman," or as she put it my inner Tarja Turunen. I always envied @Tarja. I wished and dreamt of a life where I could be a singer for Nightwish or some other similar woman-fronted hardcore fantasy metal project. So I agreed. I was so excited.

We weren't quite ready to perform ourselves, but the next show we went to, my friends asked if I wanted to dress up and I was thrilled. I borrowed some of my gf's clothes, which she was super-excited about (She had a thing for trans girls), did my makeup and we went. We had been talking about what my drag persona's name should be and my friend suggested that I use "Delia," the same name as my D&D character. She said it was obvious that character was basically me, and it was fitting, so that was my name for the night. I had the time of my life. I felt beautiful, I felt sexy, I felt free. It was a crowded show followed by a dance party. Lesbians were hitting on me, I felt like I could dance and move on the floor the way I wanted without being judged... I felt alive.

When we started doing shows, it felt like a night of the week to get out of my skin, and be myself. I wasn't a traditional queen, I didn't do camp makeup, or wear the outfits they wore, sometimes I even wore pants... I dressed goth, the way I wanted. I did my makeup in goth style, other queens called me "fish," said they thought I was "a real girl," when I did my first routines, tried to teach me the "right" way to do things, suggested I do some Cher instead of Nightwish and Within Temptation. I didn't care. I did things my way. I rocked goth metal, and Dresden Dolls pieces as Harley Quinn. I used it as my stage to either be myself and live my fantasy of being a metal vocal goddess, or portray my favorite characters. To myself, I wasn't a queen. I was me.

I remember one night in my early days I felt I was looking particularly bomb, looking in the mirror saying "Hello You," A hello to myself. I felt like a blossoming woman, opening up like a flower to my little Thursday night life. I still didn't really know what trans people were though. There was a bigender AMAB person working at the bar who had gone through some transitioning procedures, but we didn't really ask her about herself. I felt like it was private, and just used she/her pronouns for her, having been taught it was a sign of respect to do so for the other queens, and to expect other people to do so for me.

Eventually when my coworkers at the mall, and their friends working in the food court found out about my performances, they introduced me to a trans woman named "Debbie" who worked in the food court, and explained that she was born assigned male. The way they described her transition was a bit transphobic. "She used to be a man but then she got her penis turned inside out and now she's a woman." It set the stage for creating an fear of genital reconstructive surgery that would plague me for 6 years.

They didn't say anything about hormone replacement therapy or other procedures, and she never brought it up when we met. I felt it was impolite to ask about her business, and just treated her like any other woman. She gave me makeup, said "hi" when I saw her at the mall, but we didn't interact much outside of that. She called herself my "drag mom." I never learned anything about being trans from her, but she was the first trans person I ever met and knew was trans.

As time went on, I met another trans person named Sammy. She was a friend of a friend, they'd met at University, and I found out a little bit more about being trans. She had no plans on surgery, didn't talk about HRT, or anything like that. She gave me some old wigs. I learned about social transition from her, and my friend suggested that maybe a social transition might be right for me. I gave it some thought, started occasionally going out in public presenting as female. The first time was exciting and scary... It wasn't something I continued very much outside of going to night classes at Pensacola State before drag shows. I was afraid people would think I was weird. In addition my girlfriend at the time started expressing a desire to incorporate feminine presentation into our sex life, and it made me incredibly uncomfortable, and drove me away from female presentation. I didn't know what to call it at the time, but it was dysphoria triggering. Dressing up the way she wanted me to for sex, stuffed bra and everything would just remind me of how much I wasn't a "real" girl, and how much I wished I had been born a cis woman. At the time, I spent a lot of time talking to my friend about my feelings, and she suggested transitioning, but I remarked to her that I was sure it wouldn't feel real. Again I still had no knowledge of HRT, complete misconceptions of surgery... I told her that the only way I thought I would ever be happy would be if I could wave a magic wand or kill myself and be reborn as a "real" girl. (I didn't know the word "cis" at the time. I considered the two trans women I knew as women and respected them as such, but I felt like the only way I could be happy was if I'd been born cis. I wouldn't learn the realities of transition and hormones and surgery for another 6 years.

Eventually the drag shows at EC lost popularity though, and eventually stopped altogether. I lost my outlet, and felt like a chapter of my life had closed. Eventually the drag shows at EC lost popularity though, and eventually stopped altogether. I lost my outlet, and felt like a chapter of my life had closed. My girlfriend and I had broken up shortly before the shows stopped, and I started seeing a new person, who eventually came out as non-binary, but identified outwardly as a cis woman at the time.

We had actually first met through my nextdoor neighbor right before high school started. We went to a football game together in high school, flirted a bit here and there, they'd gone off to a career in adult film and dance after graduating and had just come back home. Eventually, when I came out, they were very supportive, but at the time we started dating, they wanted to "man" me up. When they brought me home to her parents, they said "Are you sure that's not a girl," and they set to work altering my wardrobe. They pushed me to be more masculine in behavior, treated my feminine behaviors less like they were part of my femininity, and were instead something I needed to "outgrow." Wanting to please them, I started trying to put on a mask of masculinity, but I never felt like it stuck, never felt like it was anything but a transparent act. Eventually they left me for a super macho marine, and I spent many nights crying myself to sleep. I couldn't figure out what to do. I told them I could be more masculine for them, that I'd do all sorts of things to make myself more manly, beef up, whatever it took, all the while hating the very idea more than anything. I just wanted them back. At the same time, I cried myself to sleep thinking that maybe I should just "get a sex change" as I put it, but bemoaning the idea of walking around, feeling like a freak, with a boob job and a sensationless inside-out penis that looked nothing like a vulva/vagina. I thought I'd still smell "like a man," my boobs would look fake, my "vagina" would just be a sensationless hole, I felt like bottom surgery was just for people who wanted penis-owners to be able to have sex with them. I didn't think my vagina would be "mine." None of this was true, but it was what I'd been taught about trans people, and it left me in despair. In addition, dating them had been such an intense psychological experience for me, specifically with regard to my transness. I saw in them everything that was the woman I wished I was. They were bold, sexy, shameless. They were a dancer. They had this dominating power and presence when they walked in a room. They knew what they wanted in life, and they got it. At the same time, they were a free spirit, they went where their whims and the wind took them. They dreamed big and lived big. I wanted to be them, so much, on every level, I felt like I had begun to just live through them, wishing I was them, and being apart, it was like I had lost my sense of self. Being with them was like I had found myself, living in another person, being away from them, too scared to be the woman I was inside, the woman I wanted to be, the woman I saw personified in them in so many ways, I was broken, and I almost killed myself.

Instead of transitioning, I turned back to dating to see if I could found what I lost in another person, and it began an incredibly unhealthy relationship I eventually married into. While we were together, I wanted her to be me for me, I wanted to mold her into the woman I wished I was. I wanted to live vicariously through her. It's something I'm incredibly ashamed and not at all proud of. While we were together, before we got married, I became re-acquainted with a friend I'd had in elementary school gifted who had come out as a transgender woman and was planning her own transition. Other friends of hers had seen or heard about my drag performances while that was a thing, and referred them to me for tips on clothing and makeup, but I honestly had a lot more to learn from her.

Other friends of hers had seen or heard about my drag performances while that was a thing, and referred them to me for tips on clothing and makeup, but I honestly had a lot more to learn from her. Even though she hadn't started HRT, she was the first person to teach me that hormone replacement therapy was a thing, and direct me to websites where I could learn more about HRT, and vaginoplasty, and even see my first actual photos of actual vaginoplasty results. It was life changing. For years, all that had held me back were fears rooted in ignorance and misinformation spread by a transphobic society. Those results I saw weren't just a penis turned inside-out. That surgery was more than a science, it was an art-form.  got to read up on vaginoplasty and learn that it was carried out with care, and attention to detail, that my parts were the same basic building blocks, built into a different shape, and that my vulva and vagina would feel, look, and function normally. I learned that nerves were preserved and sensation was there, aesthetics were there, that I'd have a clitoral glans, labia, external sensation, internal sensation, muscular control, and even some wetness from hormones. I learned that hormone replacement would help me grow natural breasts, and change the distribution of my facial and body fat, and even change the way my body smelled. I went to my (then) fiancee, and was so excited to share all this news. She'd been respectful of my friend's pronouns and very friendly with them, and I thought she'd be supportive of me too. She wasn't.

She told me she'd "signed up for a man," and to "shove it back in the closet or else." I'll never forget those words. We got married a little over a year later, but a few months in, when I came out as bigender her family got violent and things started falling apart. She grew distant and cold, snappish whenever she came home to find me presenting as female, it was obvious she was displeased and wanted me to know it. I told her there'd be more days like this coming, and before long she wanted a divorce.

The up side is that I was free to explore myself more, and I very quickly fore-went the idea of being bigender, as it just wasn't me. There are tons of valid bigender people, but no part of me wanted to continue living as a man. I came out as a transgender woman shortly thereafter once I had decided that I wanted to transition socially, and medically with HRT and GRS. That started it's own rough road, but just coming out and making the decision to transition gave me such a sense of wholeness. I guess you could say I'd known who I was for a long time, really on some level my whole life, but I'd been ignoring it, running from it, trying to compromise it, and at the age of 26 I finally accepted myself. To my closest friends, it came as no surprise. "About time," "Took you long enough," They were happy for me and supportive. For some people in my life, denial was the chosen route of coping. For some, who hadn't known me on as deep a level, somehow even for my own mother, the easiest route was to deny it, write it off as something I was doing to please the new partner I started seeing after my ex-wife, act like it was out of the blue, couldn't be true. I feel like that's similar to the experiences of a lot of trans women who come out in life, whether they experience "late onset dysphoria," or whether they simply didn't have the knowledge that trans people existed, the words to use, didn't feel safe expressing...

For me, my dysphoria was there as long as I could remember, I knew I didn't want to be a boy, my body felt foreign, especially my penis. Any idea of becoming traditionally "masculine" hit me with a sense of dread. I just imagined that all boys must want to be girls. Maybe I just had early onset dysphoria, and didn't have the knowledge to identify what my feelings were, the words to express it...

I know I didn't feel safe even once I found some level of expression in High School, even before I knew what transitioning was, outside of confiding in my closest friends. When kids bullied me thinking I was a gay boy, I couldn't stand it. When they just called me out for being feminine/girly, I never really cared. I didn't see it as a negative. I saw it as me. I saw nothing to be ashamed of, but for them it was a cause for violence. To a lot of cis people from the outside though, especially people who don't know me as well, I feel like it would be easy to look at how I came out later on in my 20's and mistake me for experiencing "late-onset" dysphoria. Really I don't like the term...

I don't like the term, or the way it's defined, or talked about. I feel like it erases experiences of dysphoria that many trans people have experienced for a lifetime and simply not had the language to express. When the Wikipedia article on transgender people talks about "Late-Onset" dysphoria, it makes note to say that trans women who come out in their adult life may be more likely to associate sexual feelings with presenting in women's clothing... And I feel like that needs to be addressed, because a lot of women's clothing that you find in adult life is *DESIGNED* *SPECIFICALLY* to sexualize women's bodies, and frankly I find nothing wrong with a woman who's trans feeling sexy in sexy clothes.

And I feel like that needs to be addressed, because a lot of women's clothing that you find in adult life is *DESIGNED* *SPECIFICALLY* to sexualize women's bodies, and frankly I find nothing wrong with a woman who's trans feeling sexy in sexy clothes. Plenty of cis women feel sexy in clothing that are designed to look sexy, and I find nothing wrong with either of these things. There's nothing wrong with being confident, or a woman feeling like she can own her sexuality and be sexy.

Women are the only gender who literally have clothing designed and marketed at us specifically FOR SEX. Let me say that again: We literally have entire sections of clothing at the store designed JUST for sex. At the same time, women's clothing in general, especially for young adults is made specifically to evoke sexuality. It accents curves, fits tight in all the "right" places. It shows off assets. It's covered in symbols of sexuality and romance. And this is also the culture young women are brought into. To look at ourselves, and the clothing rack, and ask "How can I make myself sexy?" "How can I make a mate want me?" "What accents my tits? My ass? My legs?" When you grow into that slowly, I feel like it's a bit less of a shock, but when you just get thrown into that world of skinny jeans and push-up bras and plunging necklines, stockings, fishnets, leg-shaving, and adorning accessories, where even the baggy sweatpants are fuzzy and say "Juicy" on the ass... It's pretty easy to see where one can have a bit of a shocking "Damn, I feel sexy like all the time" reaction, especially before HRT, and you know what, there's nothing wrong with that...

It's perfectly acceptable for a woman to feel sexy in her own skin, and if she's wearing clothing she feels confident and sexy in, then fuck, it's even perfectly normal for her to feel arousal with that confidence... The problem is that society is too quick to demonize women's sexuality, discourage us from *owning* feeling sexy, or enjoying it. Unless it serves a man's pleasure, our sexuality is taboo. We are allowed to be sexy as eye candy, but if a woman *feels* sexy, that's too much. If a woman looks in the mirror and feels confident, or aroused, that's too threatening for a patriarchal society to deal with, but it's a perfectly normal female experience. Straight women get it, lesbians get it, cis women get it, trans women get it. "early onset," or "late onset" has nothing to do with it, but if someone is just finally delving into that world of sexy clothes as a young adult, or even an adult, It's an adjustment. On top of that, women who are trans who come out later in life may not necessarily know the taboos. They didn't grow up in a world of sexual repression the same way that other women have, where sexuality is shamed and shackled from the moment of puberty.

Frankly I feel like we shouldn't care. I feel like no woman should care. I feel like we should all feel free to rebel against the taboos and be as sexual on our own terms as we want.

Another bigger problem, however, and where I severely take issue with the way a likely cis author has chosen to talk about this as though it were in any way abnormal is that society *LOVES* to hypersexualize trans people, specifically trans women, and make it *weird.* And I really feel like all of this stems from the fact that cis people *DO* in fact see us as sexually attractive, which is perfectly normal and acceptable, but can't deal with it on the basis of ingrained transphobia, and have to blow it out of proportion.

That's why trans porn is one of the highest ranking search categories, that's why trans women all over the internet have our inboxes *FLOODED* with men sending dick pics and going on and on about how much they want to "worship a girl-cock." That's why even cis women end up thinking it's okay to just sexually harass trans women out the wazoo with "best of both worlds," bullshit. The truth is that cis people, even when they won't admit it, can't get enough of us and the sexual fascination they experience over the idea of a woman with a penis, or a man with a vagina, and from this side, let me tell you, it gets fucking old. The problem is that because of institutionalized transphobia, even though cis people *DO* find trans people sexually attractive, publicly, y'all aren't *ALLOWED* to. It's taboo, it breaks social conventions, it shakes the idea of cisheteronormativity to its core, and like many sexual taboos, this leads to fetishization, whether closeted or open, and hypersexualization of trans people whether we want it or not. So that when y'all choose to talk about us, or write about us, the focus is on anything and everything sexual y'all can find, and often, in order to maintain a transphobic status quo, to try to make it weird. Literally the way the article reads seems to say between the lines: "Trans women who come out later in life sexualize themselves and women's clothing and experience a fetish and that's weird." It seems *INTENTIONALLY* skewed to portray the sudden but normal adjustment to feeling sexy in clothing specifically designed by a society that sexualizes women to accent everything sexy about us that it can as something *BIZZARE* and *SEXUALLY DEVIANT*

It's normal to feel sexy in clothing designed to sexualize your body. All women experience this to some extent. It's just less of a sudden shock when you've had an adjustment period, and not something that's talked about all the time when it's normal. Basically, it seems like it's trying to portray this so called "Late-Onset" Dysphoria as being synonymous with a cross-dressing fetish, and that's just not okay, not at all.

Trans women who feel sexy in clothing designed to evoke a woman's sexuality aren't experiencing a cross-dressing fetish. They are experiencing a normal part of presenting as female in a society that sexualizes women and designs our clothes to evoke that.

The article also notes that so called "Late-Onset" Dysphoria experiencing trans women are more likely to identify as lesbians... OH BOY. Seems like they are legit *TRYING* to feed into the autogynephelia myth here...

First off, PLENTY of trans women experience attraction to other women, regardless of when our dysphoria started, or when we chose to recognize it as such. I have experienced dysphoria my whole life, and yet I also like women, and my experiences are far from abnormal. *MANY* trans women with early onset dysphoria are lesbians or otherwise sapphic. The problem is that our society is homophobic, and literally associates liking men as a trait of femininity, and liking women as a trait of masculinity, which is wrong. Orientation has no bearing on gender, or vice versa.

Because of this, a trans woman who likes men is more likely to be recognized as trans early on by her parents, friends, and family members, because liking men is one of those things that society looks at and says "OH! You like men! That's a WOMAN thing!" And this is a load of homophobic bullshit. Many men like men, many women like women. Not to sound trite, but we're here, we're queer, and trans or cis, we'd appreciate it if you'd hurry the fuck up and finally get fucking used to it. Conversely a trans woman who likes other women won't have her orientation flagged as a "reason" she should be looked at as more female, so it's easier to escape recognition by her family and friends.

Upon coming out, family and friends may even respond with confusion: "Wait, you like women? So why would you 'want' to *BE* one?" again, a load of homopohobic and transphobic bullshit. Cis gay men aren't gay because they want to be women, otherwise they'd be straight trans women. Lesbian women aren't gay because they want to be men, otherwise they'd be straight trans men. These are two totally different things. Trans people are sick of it, cis queer people are sick of it, and it's about time society stopped conflating who you like with what your gender is. Liking women isn't an inherently male trait. Liking men isn't an inherently feminine trait. Who you like isn't gendered.

Anyway, PLENTY of trans women who have known dysphoria and identified as women since an early age, whether internally or externally like women. So do many who come out later in life. Acting like it's some special artifact of "Late-Onset" dysphoria is erasive, transphobic, and when coupled with bullshit making it seem weird that a trans woman who comes out later in life feels sexy in sexy clothes, it's problematic as fuck. It seems hand-tailored to split trans women into two groups: The *REAL* trans women who wear our mommies' clothes and try to chop off our penises and demand dresses when we are 3 years old, and the *fake* sexual deviant "trans women" who come out later in life.

The reality is that *ALL* trans women are valid, some of us are lesbians, bi, or pan, and *ALL* women have a right to feel sexually empowered when we put on an outfit we feel we look bomb AF in. So, yeah. This "Late-Onset" Dysphoria bullshit is exactly that, bullshit. Not saying that some trans women don't start experiencing and recognizing our identities later in life, so not saying that late-onset dysphoria isn't real, some trans women don't experience dysphoria at all, and that's all valid. What I *AM* saying is that the way the Wikipedia article on trans women has been written (probably by a cis "expert") is dubious at best, ignorant, and transphobic at worst, and furthermore that the only people who have any right *AT ALL* to be *TALKING* or *WRITING* about late onset dysphoria are *SHOCK*: Trans people who experienced it and embrace that concept/narrative. You may notice that I put the "expert" in "cis expert" in quotes earlier. This is because there is no such thing as a "cis expert" on trans people. We are the only experts. Every trans person has more experience with transness than any cis person ever could.

We live trans lives, we experience them from day one. *WE* are the experts. *WE* are the ones who should be in charge of our narratives, and *WE* are the ones who should be deciding whether our dysphoria was "Early-Onset" or "Late-Onset," or even experienced at all.

For trans women who experienced dysphoria later on in life, came out later on in life, for those of you for whom it took years  to come to terms with your gender, you need to know you are valid. You're allowed to be who you are and love who you want. There's no time that's too late to know yourself, to come out, to start your transition, and you are allowed to feel sexy in whatever clothing you want, and should be free to do so without cis people acting like it's a fetish. You deserve to know that it's normal to feel sexy in clothes that your body rocks, and that you're no different from any other woman, "early-onset" dysphoric trans women, cis women, or trans women who experience no dysphoria, and just know their identity as women.

For cis people... Seriously, cut this bullshit out and stop acting like trans people are weirdly hypersexual or sexual deviants just because y'all want to hypersexualize us out of your own insecurities with finding us attractive. And stop acting like you know what is and isn't "normal" for trans people, or how we experience and express dysphoria. If anything a lot of what y'all term "Late-Onset" Dysphoria is more likely stories like mine... Stories of trans women who knew dysphoria early, but had no language for it, who knew we weren't boys, but also knew that we weren't allowed to be girls, who knew on account of y'all's transphobia that there were *CONSEQUENCES* to asking for the clothes we wanted... consequences for announcing that we were girls, that we felt like we were girls, that we were uncomfortable in our bodies and wished they were different...

Literally, I'm willing to bet that 90% of the time that a trans person comes out later in life, it's literally cis people's fault for creating an environment of hostility and violence towards trans people who do come out. If any repression comes with that, it's similarly also y'all's fault. If you want to fix it, then change trans-focused media to hire trans actors to depict trans people, and trans writers to write our characters and stories. Change the education system to teach about trans people in schools at an early age so that even if we don't learn at home, or have parents who want to prevent us from knowing ourselves, we can learn that we are valid, and be able to acknowledge that and communicate it early.

Seriously, you don't have to make us sexual. It can be as simple as "Some people who are labeled as boys at birth feel like girls and are really girls. Some people who are labeled as girls at birth feel like boys and are really boys." Very G-rated. and even better, throw in "Some people don't feel like either of those labels fits, and might be nonbinary, or not have a gender at all and be agender." "Some people feel like where they fit changes from time to time and are genderfluid." Actually talk about the word "gender" and what it is and means instead of copping out saying "it's a polite way to say sex," when sex and gender are two separate constructs. Let trans people be the ones who tell *Y'ALL* what our experiences are like instead of trying to guess from the other side of the fence based on what your existing transphobic institutions have spoon fed to you to make us seem "weird" and wrong.

Basically, if you're not trans, and you feel like going and typing on a public resource what you feel like we are and aren't, and how you want to define our narratives that you don't experience, kindly shut up, and let us speak for ourselves. We aren't yours to categorize and define, we categorize and define ourselves. It's kind of the essence of being trans. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Wan High Weeping (Part 32)

Her father always knew just when to strike. Azula was almost certain that he had go through various social media pages and came upon one of many pictures.  It had only been a day and both Usha and Kori’s accounts were flooded with images of her eating what was probably half of the concessions. Chan and Chu-Leng posted their own share of them. She didn’t know why she had looked, she knew what she would find. She knew that seeing herself like that would bring color to her cheeks all over again. She knew that reading the comments would be the death of what was left her self-esteem but she was so morbidly curious. Or perhaps, maybe she read them with the hopes that someone would say something in her defense.

She should have known better.

No one ever came to Katara’s defense when she had posted things like this about her.

 Her eyes burned with tears that she was fighting to hold back. Yes, Ozai had definitely seen the images or at least a few of them. Frankly, even one was enough to send him into a rage. He had seen them alright, and for it he was shaming her with more rancor than ever.

 Azula was in the middle of getting dressed, she only had a chance to pull on a pair of pants, when he threw the door open. She hadn’t even gotten to button them, not that she thought doing so would have been easy anyhow. He grabbed her at the bend of her arm and practically dragged her to the bathroom. He did it with a surprising speed that had her tripping over her own feet as her tired mind struggled to keep pace.

He threw her into the bathroom and pointed at the scale.

 Quietly, she shook her head. That was the last thing she wanted to do. She had done herself so much damage. In a fit, she ignored the alarm bells screaming at her to throw up her last meal. She had made a spectacle of herself at the party and she was going to punish herself for it. She had seen no better way to do so than letting the food settle for a change.  

It was a decision she already regretted without having her father demanding her to step on the scale.

 He shoved her closer and she shook her head again. She really, truly didn’t want to know this time. She looked at him with a pleading so uncharacteristically tearful that even he hesitated for a moment. But in a flicker, he regained his angry demeanor. He pointed to the scale again, “Now, Azula.”

 Again, she shook her head.

 He drew in a sharp breath and she knew that she had tested him.

 His hand found her cheek and left a stinging. “Don’t make me ask again.”

 Shaking and with tears falling freely down her cheeks, she stepped on the scale. She died her best to look everywhere but down. Agonizing seconds came and went.

 “Read the number to me.” Her father commanded, his voice slick and dangerous. Azula almost wanted to chance another slap. Reading that number would certainly have the power of one. “Read. It.”

 He was losing patience. So, with another muffled cry, she looked down and quietly relayed the number to him.

 “What was that?”

 “O-one hundred and…” She trialed off. “And thirty-eight.” That put her up a good three pounds. She whispered an apology. Whether it was to herself or to him, she wasn’t sure.

 “One hundred and thirty-eight.” He repeated. “Have you been trying at all?”

 She stepped away from the scale and leaned against the wall, it was all she could do to keep herself upright. “Yes.” She replied softly.

 “Have you really?”

 “Yes.” Azula repeated.

 “Then why is it that you weigh more than before.”

 She swallowed. “I don’t know…I.”

 He slapped her again and pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is embarrassing. Do you know what it looks like for my company to have pictures, like this, of my daughter plastered all over the internet?” He held out his phone.

 “I’m sorry.”

 “You should be. This is disgusting. Disgraceful. I don’t even want to look at you.”

Neither did she.  

 Azula expected him to throw the phone down on her. Instead he tossed her a shirt and grumbled, “put it on and figure out how you’re going to fix this.” Without another word nor glance in her direction, he walked out of the bathroom.

 She let herself sink to the floor and wrapped her arms around her middle. It felt much too soft. It looked equally so and she didn’t know how to fix it. Why couldn’t she fix it? She buried her face in her hands, maybe she should just get it over with and go under the knife after all.

 .oOo.

 Azula had never dreaded returning to school so terribly. She hadn’t even feared her first day this much. She stared dully at her keys, watching them sway from one side to the next. She set them down and rested her head on the dining room table. Ozai was already unbelievably pissed. She was already an embarrassment. Her grades were already taking a dive. She might as well just stay home. Her belly was as empty that morning as it had been full on the night of Chan’s party. Her father had put locks on the pantry door and on the fridge.

She would only be getting food when he gave it to her and maybe that was a good thing. If she couldn’t control herself, she’d let him do it for her.

 She found herself crying softly again. She had done a lot of awful things, said a lot of awful things. But she didn’t think that she deserved this. Or maybe she did; maybe this was the world’s way of showing her exactly the kind of position she had put others in. And she decided that, yes, she did deserve this.

                      “Am I going to have to drive you to school?” Ozai asked. “Or do you think you can handle that on your own?”

 She flinched. She stood up rubbing the tears out of her eyes. She hoped that she could get a handle on her emotions before she reached Wan High’s doors.

 Azula picked herself up and made her way to the door, it was bitingly cold for the first of second of November, but she didn’t have the will to go back in and fetch her coat. She didn’t want to risk ruining her father’s morning coffee.

 She was still feeling terribly faint. The drive to Wan High was hazy, in a sense it felt as though she hadn’t driven at all. One minute she was in her driveway and the next she was in her parking space simply sitting and staring. Sitting and staring until the bell rang and she knew she was late. Still she sat and stared as the grey of late autumn settled over the sky. She wasn’t sure how long she had sat there but she finally pulled herself out of the car and into the building. Whatever lecture principal Roku was giving her about the importance of being on time was going in through one ear and out the other.

Because she knew that she would repeat herself the next day and the day after that. The emptiness of the hallway was too much of a comfort to pass on.

 But that didn’t do anything to stop the degradation. They were persistent, creative. They always found a work around. She knew that they would.  She had when she was one of them. She opened her locker and a tumble of notes cascaded forward. Notes and print outs of the images posted on Usha’s page. She didn’t pick them up, she didn’t want to read the commentary. She didn’t want to look at them, at the scene they depicted.

 Her walk to class was numb. She took a seat, ignoring June’s, “glad you can join us.”

Katara’s seat was as empty as she wished she could make hers.

She could hear Chan and Chu-Leng whispering and chuckling behind her. Maybe one day she’d be thin again, like she was before. Maybe one day she’d be thin enough to disappear, to wither away and not be noticed at all…

 .oOo.

 She wandered the halls with no aim in particular, no aim save for avoidance. She spent her lunch hour dodging teachers and hall monitors until she was stopped by someone she hadn’t spoken to in ages. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Coach Ming asked.

 Azula shrugged. “No.”

 “Lunch?”

 Her silence was answer enough.

 “If you get to the cafeteria right now, I’ll pretend like I didn’t see you and you won’t get a late strike.”

 “I’m not hungry.” Azula lied.  

 “You don’t have to be hungry to go to the cafeteria.”

 Azula gave another half-hearted shrug.

 Coach Ming’s smile dropped as she led Azula down the hall. “Ya know, I’ve missed having you on our team, Azula. Usha is a strong player but she doesn’t have…the spark that you did.” She came to a halt. “How are your ribs?”

 She couldn’t see them, couldn’t feel them beneath a very prominent layer of flesh. Other than that, she hadn’t put much thought into them since her accident. “Fine, I guess.”

 “Well then, why don’t you stop by my office after school and we can talk about getting you back on the team for next year?”

 She ought to have been thrilled. But she couldn’t dig up the enthusiasm. Coach Ming had probably only extended the offer out of pity and that alone. “Maybe.” Azula replied. Truth be told she wasn’t much into the prospect of making a fool of herself in front of her former coach. They reached the cafeteria doors.

 “It doesn’t have to be today, Azula.” Ming set a gentle hand on Azula’s back. “Whenever you get time.”

 She stole herself away in the corner of the lunchroom. From there she observed Mai—perhaps it was just the dismal lenses she was viewing the world through that day—but her former friend looked paler and grimmer than usual. Evidently she looked some thinner, and she envied Mai, wishing that her own mood would reap her appetite away instead of increasing it.

 She couldn’t pick Katara out, and decided that the girl must be absent. Suki was not present either. Mercifully, neither was Chan. She wondered when he had left, he was there that morning. Another small mercy was that she did not see Jet. But Chu-Leng, Usha, and the rest of her volleyball team were.

 Azula caught sight of Teo, wheeling himself to a lonely table. A good lot of her wanted to join him, but she decided that ultimately it wouldn’t be fair to the boy to burden him with her anymore. Save for that table there were no seats available so she sat herself down on the floor of that corner, drew her knees up to her chest, and rested her head against the wall.

She was terribly hungry and she had some money left. But she didn’t feel like dragging herself across the lunchroom to food line. Doing so would mean crossing paths with Usha. Anyhow, it was probably for the best that she skipped again. Her father would be happy with the decision.

 She didn’t notice Teo until he greeted her with a very quiet and meek, “you’re not doing too good, are you?”

 She stared at her palms, wishing that he would just do himself a favor and stop conversing with her. And he did. He stopped talking, but he didn’t leave her. He didn’t leave her after the bell rang either, he followed her in silence until he had to break off to go to a different classroom.

 The only mercy Azula had, was that the day was almost done. It was only a mercy until she remembered that she would be returning home to Ozai for her nightly reminder that she was deteriorating his good image.  And that between she and Zuko, he was looking like a fool and a failure.

Perhaps he was, somewhere very deep down, she decided that he must be a fool and a failure to have a missing son and a miserable daughter. She supposed that it took a disappointment to raise two more of them.  

 The waterfall of photos and notes were still scattered on the floor by her locker, she stepped over them and put her books away. After a few newer pieces of paper flooded out, she decided that she would just bypass going to her locker altogether from there on out. They could write her up from coming to class unprepared if they wanted to.

 She noticed a piece of paper still caught in the topmost slit of her locker door so she tore it out. Just one more mistake on her list of them. That one wasn’t a not but a drawing. An exaggerated caricature version of her. Chu-Leng so kindly signed his name on the bottom. A museum worthy piece like that needed a signature.

She let the image fall from her grasp and wandered down the hall.

 “Do you think that Jet really did it?” She overheard.

 “Well the slu—Katara wasn’t at lunch today and neither was Jet…”

 Azula hesitated for a moment.

 “TyLee wasn’t here either.” A different girl put in, if Azula remembered correctly, her name was Meng. The girl who still liked to play with dolls and, occasionally, follow Aang around. “I like TyLee, I hope she comes back soon.”

 “What does TyLee have to do with anything?” Asked the first girl.

 “I heard that she was the one who caught Jet doing…you know.” Answered the second.

“Doing what?” Meng asked.

 “Don’t worry about it.” Spoke the first girl. “You wouldn’t get it.”

 “Just because I’m a freshmen!”

 “No, because you’re you, Meng.” The first girl laughed.

 “Rumor has it that he raped TyLee too…”

 Azula didn’t stick around to hear the rest. But she did manage to catch, “yeah, at one of last year’s parties.” And that was enough. It was enough because she had taken TyLee to those parties. She would have known if something was amiss. She should have…

And so she rationalizes that it had to be more school gossip.

She hoped it was just more school gossip.

 It kept her awake, the possibility that it could be true.

 .oOo.

 Ozai was true to his word the next morning. Just like the night before, he made a point of turning his gaze away from her when they crossed paths. Perhaps that was more of a mercy than anything. At least he wasn’t forcing her to step on the scale again. He only paid her enough attention to toss a single pop-tart her way and a small water bottle.

 It was a parting gift as she left for school.

 Like the day before, Azula sat in her car, waiting for the flow of people to trickle into nothing before making her way into the building. A soft sprinkle of cold rain fell upon her, it caught in tangled locks. Locks that she couldn’t be bothered to comb these days. She wouldn’t have gotten dressed at all if the school didn’t require her to wear a uniform.

 She slumped in her chair. Katara sat next to her giving her ample competition in regards to who was in a bigger state of disarray. It chilled her through and through because the bedraggled appearance so heavily implied that the rumors weren’t just fiction this time.

And she had been calling the girl a whore.

Azula buried her head under her hands.

 When the bell rang, Katara rushed from the classroom with a considerable amount of haste.

 .oOo.

 She supposed that there was no harm in going to the lunch line anymore. Everyone knew who she really was, what she was really like. She was woozy and Ozai wasn’t there to stop her. She would just get rid of everything anyways. She acquired more than her share of  a meal, in seating herself she had lost her nerve. Because it did matter, she didn’t want more pictures to surface. So she finished her meal in the privacy of a bathroom stall. It was so easy to overindulge after being so deprived and easier still when the kind tastes took her mind away from TyLee and Katara.

It was only kind until she remembered what it felt like when her father had her on the scale. After that it was pain and shame all over again and she was glad to already be in a stall. It had been a while since she had to do it. She emptied her stomach and stood. But her knees buckled and she found herself hunching against the stall, waiting for the spell to pass.

She wanted to scream or to cry, or perhaps both. It would draw too much attention though. So she dabbed at her mouth with toilet paper and flushed again. Finally the fuzz in her head began to clear and she stumbled her way back towards Teo’s table.

 He opened his mouth and closed it again. He did so a few times before finally mumbling, “I’m worried about you.” And then he spoke in a near whisper, “Actually, I’m scared. You’re scaring me and I don’t know what to do.”

 Neither did she. So instead she forced a smile and replied. “You don’t have to do anything, I’ll be fine.” Even so, she ached all over and her thoughts were overfull with horrible notions and vile reminders. She couldn’t put it out of her mind that she had been so close to Jet. That there had to have been some point where she had hung out with him and had a good time the morning after he had victimized TyLee. It dizzied her just as well as her physical condition.

 .oOo.

 She waited by the doors, taking a slew of verbal abuse. But she had to catch her. Her focus lapsed in and out and she hoped that she hadn’t missed TyLee because of it. At last she picked out the girl’s flouncy braid. She reached a hand out.

 “Oh, hi Azula.” There was no enthusiasm in the greeting. Her eyes were as bleak as Azula’s own mood.

 And Azula found that she didn’t know what to say. So she said the wrong thing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 “Because, you’re you.” TyLee mumbled. “I saw how you treated Katara and you were close to Jet. Why would you believe me? You didn’t even answer your phone. You and Mai…you both left me.”

 “I thought that you were ignoring your texts.”

 “You didn’t think that something could be wrong!? You’ve known me since we were kids and I always replied to your texts right away—because I knew you would get mad if I didn’t, by the way. So, were you?”

 “What?” Azula asked. It began to settle in that this was a horrible idea after all. She must be some sort of masochist, constantly throwing herself into situations she knew wouldn’t end well for her. But in some sick way, she craved the torment. The least she could do, after everything, was allow TyLee to speak her mind.

 “Were you mad? That night. Were you mad that I didn’t text you back right away? Is that why you just left with Mai? Well sorry, I was a little busy.”

 “I don’t think that I was mad. I just knew that Mai needed a ride home and that her mother would have a meltdown if I didn’t get her home.” That much was true. Genuinely, she hadn’t meant TyLee any destruction. Truly, she had just been trying spare Mai trouble. She thought so anyways, but the longer TyLee stared at her the more she felt as though there had been a malicious undertone to it. “I wouldn’t have talked to him if you would have said something. I wish that you would have said something…”

 “I wish that you didn’t make me feel like I couldn’t.”

 “I also wish that I didn’t.” She replied quietly. It seemed so insufficient but it was the best that she could do. She didn’t know of anything else to say, especially when an apology seemed so hollow. She also wished that she could offer more, offer help and support. But she could support herself, much less try to lift another person. Like most other things, it was a useless effort so she muttered something of a goodbye and an apology and slinked off to her car.

 For a good long while, she only eyed the steering wheel, longing for the car to drive itself. She certainly didn’t feel like taking the wheel. She heard a tap on her window, she only rolled it down because it was TyLee who had done the tapping.

 Azula unlocked the door and let TyLee take the passenger’s seat. It brought a sense of familiarity to have the girl sitting there again. That was how things used to be when her phone blew up with messages and plans to go to the mall.

She would love to do that again one day.

 “I don’t want you to be mad at me.” Azula confessed.

 “I don’t want to be mad at you…” She trailed off. “I. It’s not your fault, you didn’t know. If it makes you feel better, I was mad at Mai too for a while.”

 But it was her fault.

She knew TyLee well enough to know that the girl was just being generous.

 “It’s Jet’s fault. All of this is Jet’s fault. I blamed Chan too, but he was just the host.”

 Somehow her words still didn’t alleviate any guilt. Because she had, had it right the first time. If Azula had been a more approachable person, then things would have gone differently. So many things…

 “I think that, that’s what Jet wanted. He wanted me to blame you guys because…” she swallowed. “Because that way, I had no one to talk to. The worst part is, it worked. I was so alone…”

 “And then…”

 TyLee smiled and dabbed at her eyes. “I found Katara.”

 “You saved her?” Azula asked.

 “I guess you can say that.”

 Azula smiled, this time it was genuine. As true as she could muster anyhow. “That counts for something, right? At least you didn’t let it happen to someone else.” She paused. “From the sound of it you were pretty fierce, glad I was able to teach you something.”

 TyLee laughed. “I guess so.”

 “Do you need a ride home?” Azula offered, she thought that it would do her well to have the company.

 “I would take your offer, but I kinda can’t just leave my car here over night.” She rejected, sheepishly. “But, uh, maybe you can come by tomorrow…if the police to pull me in for more questioning again.”

 Azula nodded. At least she had tried. She couldn’t blame TyLee for keeping her distance.  She watched the girl walk to her car before starting her own.

 .oOo.

 She forced herself to take a shower, she was in pretty dire need of one and she wanted to take one aspect of criticism away from her father. But all she could manage to do was sit on the floor of the tub and overthink.

Overthink until her brain finally went numb.

 She had washed her hair out well enough, but when it came to lathering the rest of her body, that was where she had given up. Sweeping her hands over the length of herself made it all too apparent how soft she had grown. So she chucked the soap at the wall and opted to simply sitting there instead.

 The water was beginning to run cold, and still she remained until her father hollered at her for taking too long.

 .oOo.

 She didn’t know if she was reaching out for help or if she was sticking to her masochism, whatever it was, she dropped by her father’s office on her way downstairs. “I talked to coach Ming the other day. She said that I could join the team again.” She elected not to tell him that she never actually dropped by the woman’s office.

 “Did she?”

 Azula nodded, itching for even a twinge of approval.

 “I suppose that they’re letting anyone join these days.”

 Her world crumbled a little further.

 She left the estate feeling empty. She entered Wan High feeling foreboding. Unable to afford a phone call home, she decided that she would try to get to class on time that morning. Her locker is a mess again, more photos and doodles. This time with a sprinkle of terrible photoshops, mostly of her face on the bodies of various sumo wrestlers. It was almost laughably petty. She knew they came courtesy of Usha, they bore such a striking resemblance to the style of those ridiculous images of Katara’s face on different sexy costumes.

This time the inside of her locker was a mess too. Someone took it upon themselves to spill what smelled like vanilla soda through the slits. It was a sticky mess that she hadn’t had time to deal with, and she recalled her plan to just avoid her locker.

 Before she had the chance, someone else slammed her locker shut. “Thought that you could use a drink.”

 “Very thoughtful, Chan.” She replied dryly and with little spunk. She headed in the direction of June’s class. If only he wasn’t going to the same place. It didn’t take much effort for him to fall in step with her.

 “So, are you going to pay me for eating half of the food at my party?”

 “I provided entertainment, you should pay me.” Her words still lacked any bite.

 “That’s true, it’s a gift that keeps on giving.” Chan replied. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone eat like that! I don’t know how you can eat so much at once.” He was openly laughing as though he had just said the wittiest thing. As stupid as it was, it stung just as well. “There’s something wrong with you.”

 She could deliver a low blow, could remind him that he let his party guests assault other party guests. She could swoop lower still and tell him that he had a really strong hand in Ruon’s death. Instead she replied, “I am aware,” and dropped herself into her chair.

 “Careful, you’re going to break it!”

 Chu-Leng gave him a high five.

 “Probably.” She muttered. Chan stopped laughing.

 Katara found her own chair a minute or so after the bell rang. Her eyes were puffy and red. Even June skipped her usual remark about tardiness.

 .oOo.

 She decided to switch things up at lunch. She couldn’t say where the compulsion had come from, but it drove her to take a seat next to Katara. Katara who was sitting alone, Suki at the other end of the table. She could sense the tension from a mile away.

 “I heard about the party.”

 “Heard about it? You were there.”

 “I left early…”

 “Right.” She wondered if she sounded as deadpan to Katara as Katara did to her.

 “If it’s any solace, he tried feeling me up.” She didn’t exactly know what point she was trying to make. Perhaps, an acknowledgement that the attack it wasn’t anything Katara had provoked? “I was just laying there.” Maybe a sense of comradery?

 “I wish that, that was all he did to me.”

 “He didn’t actually…?”

 “No, TyLee stopped him.”

 Azula nodded. “TyLee can fight when it matters.”

 “Unlike some people.” It was spoken with a volume that carried to the other side of the table. Azula caught Suki’s head dip. “Why do you care?”

 “I don’t think that you’re a slut.”

 “Then why did you say it? Over and over again.”

 She couldn’t give an answer because she honestly didn’t know. ‘It seemed fun at the time’ didn’t sound like a great answer. But it was the truth. Katara repeated herself.  Perhaps she was just going along with everyone else. She liked to think of herself as a ringleader, and perhaps she was. But really, they fed off of each other. She and Usha and Chan all bouncing vile ideas off of each other. It felt safe, it felt untouchable. It gave them common ground. “I don’t know.” Azula muttered. “I guess I’m just a bad person.”

 Katara’s face scrunched and then softened. “You’re not a bad person…”

 She could say it all she wanted, that wouldn’t make it true. Azula didn’t want to talk about herself anymore so she diverted the subject. “I liked your costume, it suited you.”

 Katara smiled some, “thanks, my mom made if for me.” As soon as she said it, her cheeks flushed.

 Azula didn’t have anything witty to say that time. Truth be told she would have loved it if Ozai would have helped her make a costume. “Is she a seamstress or something?”

 Katara shook her head, “no, but Gram Gram was. Sewing is just a hobby.”

 Azula nodded. “That’s one hell of a hobby.”

 “Yeah! It’s fun too, sometimes we do some sewing together and mom teaches me about different traditional patterns!”

 There was something about her enthusiasm. That momentary glimmer of happiness—something of the old Katara, that cheered Azula. She clung to that. It settled in that she was rather happy herself, because she had found a solution. A way to fix things for herself and for Ozai, just as she had promised.

 “Have you ever done any sewing before?”

 Azula shook her head.

 “Maybe, if you want, I can show you how. I could use a distraction.”

 “Maybe…”

 “Uh…yeah…”

 “I am going to talk to Teo.”

 “Oh, yeah, okay.” Katara replied. It looked as though she wanted to say more, but instead she returned to her lunch. She wondered if she had instilled some sort of false sense of hope. She didn’t allow herself to dwell on it.

 “What did you and Katara talk about?” Teo asked upon seeing her sit.

 “I told her that I don’t think she’s a slut.”

 “Oh, uh, well. That’s progress.” He responded rather awkwardly.

 “She is mad at Suki.”

 Teo glanced over at the table. “That explains why they’re sitting miles apart.”

 “Maybe you should sit with her.” Azula suggested.

 “Sure,” he stood up only for her to tug him back down.

 “Tomorrow.”

 “Alright…” he knitted his brows. “Tomorrow.”

 She stooped down and picked ruffled through her backpack, she pulled out a decently battered volleyball. “I won my first game with this one.” She handed it to him.

 “I wish I could have seen that. It was probably a really great game.”

 Azula smiled. “It was, my father was…he was really proud.” She watched Teo rub his fingers over the greying white fabric.

 “Thank you, Teo.”

 “For what?”

 “For talking to me. It meant—it means a lot.”

[mptyblgplsignr]

•mountains•

prologue | prologue 2

full story details

synopsis: you can't tell if being a huge popstar has more pros or cons. Wait - yes you can. There are way more cons.

main characters: Chan (Stray Kids), You, Seongwoo (Wanna One), Jinwoo (Astro)

genre: Angst with a hint of smut

warnings: mentions of substance abuse, eating disorders, depression, neglect, losing loved ones and friends

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prologue details

synopsis: after moving in with Chan and his sister and living with them for years, you learn new things about yourself and develop new relationships. A bit of envy for Chan's talent and popularity sends you on a journey to become idol material

characters: you, Chan, and Jinsoul

genre: angst with a hint of fluff

warning: some scenes depicted allude to neglect

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a/n: this is a mess, I'm sorry lol. I promise the next parts won't be as all over the place. this prologue is just setting the scene.

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According to biology, water isn't a living thing. That always sucked to you, because you used to pray to be a body of water in your next life. It was appealing from a young age. To move from city to city, state to state. Being one of the many reasons that life thrives on Earth. You always thought 'water must have no worries'.

Now you know it's because it's, well, not living.

You just didn't want to go through what you went through all over again.

You prayed and prayed and prayed. Blocking out the sirens. The yelling. The crying. The slam of the gavel. The hand cuffs.

It felt like forever since you actually took in your surroundings instead of blocking them out. Your eyes stung as you watch your mother get restrained and dragged away.

"I love you baby. Please remember that I love you. I love you so much."

You wanted her to stop. Stop struggling and to stop yelling. You just wanted silence for once.

Your godmother always told you she had never met a child a silent as you.

Your godmother, Hannah, didn't have any kids, only a brother. He was a lot younger than her and a year you get than you. He had shaggy, curly black hair and the sweetest smile.

"Channie, be nice to ___."

You always hated that sentence. It usually meant that kid was an ass and served as a warning. But Chan was surprisingly bright and caring.

The silence became unbearable after a while. It felt like they were looking down on you. They weren't, but it felt like it. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

After a while of living with Hannah and Chan, you and Chan were inseparable. Pretty soon you started to break out of your shell. The unbearable silence was finally gone.

Chan was bright and caring, but that wasn't why you loved him so much. There was something warm about being around him. When you told your friend, Jinsoul about it in middle school, she teased you and was convinced it was a crush.

That wasn't it, though. It was more. Chan had a special place in your heart.

Apparently that applied to all the other girls at school too. He was a natural when it came to anything musical, and not to mention his endless charm and kindness. He had so many friends and so did you, just by association.

"I can't wait for Chan to make it big so I can tell people I knew him!" Jinsoul joked as you both swayed back and forth on the swing. You roll your eyes.

"Don't roll your eyes, it's a win for you too. You'll be so famous when you're known as THE Chan's girlfriend."

At that time, it gave you butterflies when you thought about being with Chan. You smiled to yourself, cheeks flushed as you thought about it.

"But then again, he probably sees you as a sister."

You gasped before kicking your feet at her.

"Take it back!"

Jinsoul's face lit up, "See!? You do like him!! How adorable!!"

You bit your tongue. Explaining your feeling would only make her tease you more.

"Fine. I like Chan."

Saying even that out loud made your heart race.

That all changed once you got to high school. Everything seemed to fall into place then. You still felt that warm feeling around Chan, but you started to realize that it had nothing to do with romance. You cared a lot about Chan. Hell, you love him. He and Hannah were your only family.

Chan's crazy popularity hadn't died down, though. In fact, it got stronger. It seemed like you couldn't get two seconds alone with him. Someone was always stealing him away to do or talk about something.

At home, Chan was always studying or writing music. He'd occasionally come to you to get your opinion on something but that was it. Soon enough, you and Chan rarely hung out with each other. You'd get a few words in, then it was back to your own lives.

You couldn't lie, you were a little upset. Other than Jinsoul, Chan was the only person you felt comfortable around. When he wasn't with you, you felt awkward. The classes you took (stupidly) because of him became unbearable as you awkwardly idled near him. You lost a lot of "friends" because of it.

What you were more upset over was his talent. Listening to him sing gave you goosebumps, and his lyrics spoke to you. You'd always wanted to be an idol, but you didn't have enough talent or confidence.

You never really sang since your life fell apart, but curiosity got the best of you. You began singing one of your favorite songs written by Chan. You were quiet and shy at first, but the more you sang the more you were having fun.

You stretched out the last note playfully, vibrato prominent. You smiled to yourself as energy buzzed throughout your body.

"What in the world?!"

You nearly jumped out of your skin at the exclamation. You turned to see Chan approaching you with a big smile on his face.

"I didn't know you could sing! Maybe we can be a duet." You couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but you hoped he was.

"That would actually be amazing."

"I know right? We'd take over the world. So are you planning on going anywhere with this?"

"No, I think I need more practice."

"You're missing your opportunity to go big." He shrugged as he walked out of your room.

-

Jinsoul's jaw dropped to the ground as you finished. It was the first time you ever sang for anyone

"You sound like-"

"Please for the love of God don't compare me to anyone. I'm not worthy."

"I don't think you understand how good you are! You're a natural! Imagine how good you'd be if your were trained!!!" Jinsoul flopped back onto your bed dramatically.

"KPT would drop everything to sign you."

Your heart swelled with new hope. You didn't even think about that. Your dream agency, signing you? You'd just combust.

"K-KPT? Stop teasing me Jinsoul."

"I wish I were teasing you! I don't want you to become a trainee at KPT because then I would lose my best friend." She pouted.

You had to admit that you were being selfish. You weren't thinking of your friends and family. You just thought about being a trainee at the biggest agency in the world.

"Do you think vocal coaches are expensive?"

-

They are. Well, at the least the good ones are. Working two jobs was worth it, though. You had the best vocal coach money could buy. She was tough, but she was helpful and effective. You heard and felt a difference within a week.

Two months in, you were ready to record your audition video. You clicked on the camera for your laptop and hit record.

"Wear a big smile and kind eyes. Show good energy and be confident."

You filled your head with nothing but the song lyrics and that advice. Your lips stretched gingerly, your teeth peeking out under your lips. You took a deep breath, your lower abdomen expanding.

Channeling your voice into that exact spot, you let your voice flow out serenely from your lips all while maintaining agility and control. You gave it your all, trying harder for this than anything else in your entire life. This was it.

After you ended the recording, your body slump from exhaustion. That song was much harder than anything Chan ever wrote, but your coach said it was a good pick.

Your fingers quivered as you registered. Your cursor hovered over the button:

Choose File

Should you re-do it? You decided not to after thinking about the exhaustion you felt. You quickly upload the video and send in the form before you could second guess yourself again.

-

Months upon months. No answer. Just emails telling you to keep faith.

Months turned into years. It was your senior year of high school. You didn't tell anyone you went through with the online audition for this very reason.

'It was probably that stupid old fashioned song' you thought.

A new girl group debuted from KTP. You couldn't help but compare yourself. Why weren't you in that group? Let alone a trainee.

You felt a hand on your shoulder but you couldn't tear your eyes away from the screen.

"Theres still nothing for you in the mail. I hate to be that person right now, but you need to check your emails. Colleges might be reaching out to you!"

Hannah could tell you were distraught, though she didn't know why. She was extremely bad at cheering people up. You didn't want to make her feel bad, so you smiled up at her before promising to fulfil her request.

By now, you had already tagged any KTP emails as spam. The folder was piled up with junk and it was an eyesore to see such a large number of emails in there. It was time for a cleaning.

You tried your hardest not to read any of the subjects of the emails sent by KTP, but your eyes betrayed you. Your eyes flickered towards one.

Dear ___,

That was a different subject from the rest. Finger trembled over the mousepad, scrambling to click on the email.

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have been shortlisted to attend on-site auditions!

[personas-against-antis]

My experience with anti-ism and back

Inspired by @huntypastellance's interviews with ex-antis, I decided to post my own story of how I became an anti and how I got out.

My inbox and messages are open in case anyone has any questions or wants to say anything.

Apologies for any typos, my typing is not the greatest.

Names have been changed to protect my friends’ privacy and to prevent certain antis mentioned from coming after me again.

Where It All Started

So back in middle school I fell in love with an anime called Hetalia, about the interactions between anthropomorphized versions of various countries. I had been in fandom for a while (my first big fandom was Sonic, but that was before antis went mainstream), and I was a pretty big follower of "don't like, don't read/look". When I joined, I immediately latched on to the ship AmeCan, or America/Canada.

They were cute and it was my OTP for a long time. The only problem with AmeCan is that, by a large majority of the fandom, America and Canada were considered brothers. I personally didn't see them that way, I saw them as adopted brothers at most, and I was always pretty squicked out by shippy fanfics that depicted them as biological brothers. The ship itself was still pretty big in that fandom, so I ignored the haters and immersed myself in fanart and fanfic.

I met a girl at my school (let's call her Duchess) who also liked Hetalia and we quickly hit it off. We soon asked what each other's OTPs were.

Me: Oh, I ship AmeCan.

Duchess: ...

Me: What is it?

Duchess: You realize they're brothers, right?

Me: Oh, I don't see them that way because [insert reasoning that I don't want to have to explain to non-Hetalians, just know that I explained that I didn't see them as brothers.]

Duchess: But it's canon. They canonly see each other as brothers.

Me: Oh...

In hindsight, I probably should have asked what she meant by “it’s canon”. Either way, I began to drift away from AmeCan due to lack of interest, and towards other ships (Romerica and AmeBela), and then to other fandoms. She still remained one of my closest friends.

Down The Rabbit Hole

I began to get really into kawaii culture and browsed the tags pretty regularly. Over time, I came across CG/L content. It squicked me out at first, but due to some sort of bile fascination, I began browsing CG/L blogs and began learning about that subculture. I actually enjoyed it quite a lot, but I knew that it would be inappropriate for someone my age (around 13-14 years old) to participate in kink, so I kept my distance and admired it from afar.

Soon, Duchess brought it up at lunch.

Duchess: I really hate seeing DDGL stuff everywhere.

Me: Haha, yeah...

Duchess: I mean, It's practically pedophilia!

Me: Mhm...

That's what I had thought at first too, before researching it. But she kept talking about it.

Duchess: They're sexualizing children, and children's toys! It's so gross! I actually made a blog against it.

Me: Whoa, really?

Duchess showed me her anti-CGL blog and I quickly followed it because she was my friend, and slowly began to follow other anti-DDLG blogs as well, even making my own: rise-against-ddlg. I took it down due to lack of interest, but antis had already grown on tumblr, and I was torn between my "don't like, don't look" policy, and wanting to "help" survivors. So outwardly, I became an anti, while guiltily reading "problematic" fic and playing "problematic" games in secret.

One such problematic game was Yandere Simulator, and I began to browse those tags too, when I discovered another anti blog, this time against Yandere Simulator and Alex Mahan, a.k.a. Yandere Dev. I learned he was fairly homophobic, sexist, and transphobic, especially in his own private chatroom, and began to idolize that anti blog. Suddenly, they released an invitation to a Skype group chat. Eager to meet my heroes, I quickly applied and was approved.

The Group Chat Incident

I loved that chat. It started with 15 people, but slowly trickled down to nine, including myself. I found myself isolating myself away from my real life friends and family, too focused on the group chat, as they made dropping out of high school and staying online all day sound cool. I kissed up to them, desperate to be seen as a good person. But, soon, I began to question myself and the group. The mods were very against "problematic" content, like Killing Stalking, and NSFW depictions of minors, but were also quick to draw NSFW of minors (specifically Budo and Senpai from YS). I introduced them tot he game Boyfriend To Death, and one of them quickly latched on to the character of Rire, who brutally rapes the protagonist in game, despite them being against rape. The main mod even introduced the group to a game called Artificial Academy 2, in which you can rape others and be raped.

...There was a lot of rape and NSFW in that chat.

But, there was also a hierachy. At the top were the two main mods of that YS blog, Mod H and Mod J. Joining them at the top was a very cool person and a good artist who acted very much like an older sibling to all of us, Member M. Then, there were three more people who tended to kiss Mod H, Mod J, and Member M's asses, and at the bottom was me, my friend Foam, and Member C. Mod H was the ruler of that chat. Anything they said, went, and if you disagreed, they'd suddenly play victim, manipulating and gaslighting you into apologizing. They loved Dragon Age, and now that game has been forever tainted for me, considering how much they shoved it down my throat. They would also tease me and my interest in Persona 5 (saying that the protagonist looked like The Onceler, subsequently calling me a "Onceler Fucker" for finding him attractive, along with making fun of when my tongue slipped and pronounced "Goro" as "Gort"), only stopping when I had Foam address the group to tell them to stop. There was a livestream that I was really excited for, talking about it since it was announced and they seemed hyped for me as well. Only when I placed a rabb.it link in the chat so we could all watch, only Member C showed up. When I returned to that chat, they were watching Yuri On Ice, and they wouldn't even let me talk about my livestream.

During that time period, I created a group chat for me, Foam, and another internet friend I will call Emilia. I though Foam and Emilia would get along really well, so i formed a Skype chat with them, and allowed them to talk. Slowly though, me and Foam began to use that chat to bitch about the group chat behind their backs, because we were terrified of the backlash if we tried to criticize them to their faces, due to Mod H's tactics of avoiding conflict. We soon added Member C to the chat as well, after they were constantly getting dogpiled by the rest of the chat.

That December, the Bode meme was in full swing and Foam mentioned in the group chat that he didn't get it. The group chat immediately began to make fun of him and I, sick of letting them control our lives, stood up for him. The group chat just continued to dogpile and we continued to try and fight until Mod H eventually left the chat, in one of their methods to get us to apologize to them. I was feeling overwhelmed and also left, and Foam tried to surrender and tell the chat to stop, but they wouldn't let up and he left too. Member C was the only member we remained on good terms with who was still in the group chat.

I made a post on my blog saying that i didn't want to interact with those people anymore and they got mad and began to try and message me. I eventually messaged an official statement, citing their abuse of me and Foam, and blocked all of them across social media.

They created a fake blog to get around the block, and I was dumb enough to fall for it.

Member C even turned on us, revealing me and Foam's messages with her and claiming we were abusing and bullying them. Suffice to say, I cut off all contact with Member C and changed my main blog's URL.

I was harassed and stalked and I carried that fear of them looking at my blog for a long time. I still worry about it sometimes.

The worst part, in my opinion, was that I changed my own name that I had chosen for myself because it had become a trigger for me hearing them say it so many times. And I really, really loved that name.

There was so much hypocrisy, so much fear in that chat. Now, looking back, I wished I had never joined, but in those months after I left...I felt empty inside. Aimless.

Out of curiosity, I looked up cult behaviors, and that chat hit nearly every single one. It's scary looking back on it. Even writing this, over a year after I left, my heart hurts.

But even leaving a cultish group chat didn't knock me out of anti-ism.

Villain Ships and Past Revelations

Remember how I mentioned that I love Persona 5? Well, I ship a ship called ShuAke, which a very loud subset of people claim is abusive.

Spoilers for Persona 5 up ahead.

ShuAke is a ship between the protagonist (shujinko in Japanese, which is where the "shu" comes from) and Goro Akechi. I shipped ShuAke since before Goro's name was announced, when all we knew was his design. Goro turned out to be a detective hunting the Phantom Thieves, the protagonist's group. The cat and mouse aesthetic really suited my fancy, with the protagonist's thief alter ego, Joker, seducing the naive Detective Prince. Swoon.

Of course, the ship shattered when the game was released in Japan and it turns out Goro tried to kill the protagonist, was working for the bad guy, and betrayed the whole group.

I was shocked and essentially went through the five stages of grief. I was torn between abandoning the "abusive" ship and evil character...or ignoring the haters and shipping it anyway. After way too much debate, I chose the latter and stuck with it.

The anti-ism died down quickly due to a lot of the fandom hibernating until the English release, and I happily shipped ShuAke and supported Goro Akechi with little objection. Even when the game was released in English, I stood my ground and even argued in support of Goro with anons.

And yet, I still considered myself an anti.

Late May of last year, some repressed memories came to light. I had been sexually abused by a close family member and a few girls at camp when I was younger, with other fragmented and questionable memories in my brain. It put my past into light, as I had also had a self destructive habit of attempting to seduce older men online, due to low self esteem. That was not a fun week for me, and I found myself diving into dark fic, particularly rape fic, in order to make sense of it all. I even wrote some in an effort to just get it out of my brain.

And it worked. It was really therapeutic for me.

And yet...

I still considered myself an anti. Every word I read or wrote was mixed with guilt over what I was doing, even though it worked. While I'm still a sexual abuse survivor, as I always will be, I'm much more well-adjusted by participating in those dark activities, rather than wallowing in self pity and slipping into a depression, like my old group chat would have expected me to do.

I dropped anti-ism later, with the help of one blog.

Back to "DL,DR"

The blog @anti-anti-survivor was recommended to me, and anti!me, looking for a laugh, clicked on it...and soon found that pretty much everything they said made sense to me. I saw Mod h in the people they argued with, Member C in the people they called out...and I realized that I had never been an anti, just hiding behind that label.

I sent an anonymous message to them (though I guess it isn't so anonymous anymore, ha), thanking them for opening my mind to it, and created my own anti-anti blog. I realize I'm not very active on here, but, well, I'm lazy and I'm more of a reader than anything else.

And of course, there was another problem.

Antis are fucking everywhere.

I'm terrified of posting pro-shipping stuff on my main, and I'm terrified of admitting I like problematic ships. I'm in a Discord server that keeps spouting anti-kink and anti-ship stuff, and I have to keep my mouth shut or risk being banned, just because most of the time they're really nice. Duchess even messaged me one day, absolutely shocked that I admitted to shipping Shidge.

I'm happy now that I don't have to feel that guilt but, reading what antis do and then finding out that people I hang out with are antis...it's horrifying. I'm not a confrontational person. I never have been. But I'm sick of rolling over and accepting what everyone else deems is problematic fiction.

I'm mentally ill, a sexual abuse survivor, and dark fic and dark shipping helps me cope.

Deal with it.

[myasianbloggg]

Korean Drama Reviews

Last Update: 3/5/19

I was running out of space in adding more reviews on here, so I decided to separate them to different posts and just add the links here. Sorry for the inconvenience, but blame Tumblr (nerd alert) for creating a file size limit for each post. lol I’m still in the process of moving everything so bear with me, please! 😉

This lists all the Korean Drama shows I’ve watched and what I think about them! They are in alphabetical order. If you’re looking for a specific title, press CTRL + F for PC or CMD + F for Mac. I’ve used the apps Viki and DramaFever to watch them. Some of them you can find online for free. 

How to watch dramas for free

[korean drama name] watch online

1% of Something (1% of anything)

Boys Over Flowers

City Hunter

Healer

I hear your voice

A young boy can hear people’s thoughts in his head. One day, he and his father get into a car accident. While he and his father were injured inside their vehicle, furious, the man in the other vehicle took a bat and hit his father because he still wasn’t dead. Two female students (one of them was the lead female) witnessed the whole thing and the murderer saw them.

The lead female runs in the middle of the court hearing as a witness and they got the culprit locked up. A few years later, the female lead became a lawyer, the boy becomes a high school student, and the murderer gets out of jail. The murderer’s target is now the lawyer.

At first I didn’t like the age difference of the couple. I kind of got over it when I stopped seeing the lead male in his high school uniform, though haha. 

Romantic Scenes: 6/10

Story: 7/10

I remember you

The story is about a criminology Professor from the States and a cop in Korea. The Professor tries to find a person who escaped from prison who killed his Dad and his missing brother. He was receiving messages from the person through cases coming in. He meets the female cop this way. The story reveals how the Father’s related to the criminal, and where his brother went.

He finds out that his brother and the criminal is closer to him than he thought. The story also reveals that the criminal killed the female cop’s father since he was on duty that night. Together, the Professor and the cop try to find the culprit. Along the way, the man falls in love with the woman. (The woman was already in love with the man. She used to be his stalker when he was still in Korea).

I was intrigued by the story of the two brothers. I initially wanted to watch this because I thought that the lead male was cute. The female is supposed to be a strong one but I feel like they could’ve chosen someone who is a little bit taller? The lead female looks tiny. Anyhow, after I found out who the brother and the criminal was I kind of got bored the remaining of the time I watched it.

Sweet Scenes: 5/10 (There were only a couple) 

Story: 7/10

My Love from Another Star (My love from the Star)

Guy lands on earth from a different planet and forgets to come back. Now he has to wait 400 years before his planet gets to be closest to Earth again. Girl falls in love with this God and she soon realizes that he has powers and isn’t from Earth. They fall in love and spend time before his last days on Earth.

Them spending their last days together is what made me keep watching this series. I feel like the man could have been a better actor, as he always just has mono expressions. Good thing he’s hot. There are a lot of reminiscing scenes. I also enjoyed seeing all the clothing they wore. The girl was an actress, so she always had paparazzi following her and was always wearing fashionable wear.

Sweet Scenes: 8/10

Story: 8/10

My Secret Romance

Chaebol goes to his Father’s hotel to work as a busboy because he’s a lazy worker and doesn’t appreciate what his family has given him. The lead female goes to the same hotel to attend her mother’s second wedding, who happens to be a precious porn star. Both meet and she stirs up a scene.

The lead male feels depressed and goes to a nearby beach and drink wine. The woman happened to go there too feeling embarrassed about the previous scene. Both drink wine and they have a one night stand.

Fast forward a couple of years later the woman works at a successful company who sells briefs as a nutritionist. The CEO of that company happens to be the guy she had a one night stand with. He finds out about her and makes her work with him since he has lingering feels about her.

My oh my were there a lot of sizzling hot scenes on this one! The lead male is a drop dead, gorgeous hottie. I have never seen him in any dramas where he’s not hot. Watch him get a few kisses out of her and touch her sensitive spots. I wish the female was a better actress though. Sometimes I feel like she was emotionless. It’s a good thing that she’s pretty.

Sweet Scenes: 10/10

Story: 8/10

Pinocchio

An orphan gets taken in by an old man who has lost his son through fishing. The orphan (lead male) gets mistaken for his real son. Now, this old man also has another son (with a daughter, who happens to be the lead female) that decides to live with them. By law, this means that the daughter is now the lead male’s niece. 

The daughter’s mother is a news broadcaster, and she wanted to be the same when she grew up so that she can meet her mother. She tries to get into a competition to be a newscaster, and his uncle (lead male) decides to join her as well. The only problem is that the lead female is a Pinocchio, someone who can’t tell lies otherwise they start hiccupping. Nevertheless, they both get chosen and start doing an internship. The story reveals the ups and downs of getting to be a news broadcaster, and how the mother reacts when she finally meets her daughter that she hasn’t spoken to in years. 

I initially wanted to watch this because I wanted to see more of Lee Jung Suk. I fell in love with him after watching W. The lead female is pretty and there are plenty of sweet scenes because the couple both like each other but are too afraid to say so. 

Sweet Scenes: 9/10

Story: 9/10

Playful Kiss

(coming soon!)

Please Come Back, Mister

Two men who happen to be strabgers get into an accident and die. They meet on the train to go to heaven. While they were on their way to heaven, they jumped off the train. The lady in charge gives them a second chance to go back to earth to settle things. One of the men comes back as a handsome and rich young guy, while the other comes back as a beautiful woman. Together, they settle with the people they care about before going back.

There are no super sweet scenes in this drama, but the story’s great. There are some funny scenes, especially because the man came back as a woman. The story’s a bit universal, meaning, first time Korean drama watches won’t feel awkward watching this as there aren’t a lot of Korean-centered culture around it.

Sweet Scenes:

Secret Garden

A CEO of a mall falls in love with a stuntwoman because he is fascinated by her. They obviously have different backgrounds but he falls for how she glares at him, smacks him, and screams at him. His cousin (a famous singer) falls for her too, as well as her boss at work. The man and his cousin do a bike race and the man bets on the stuntwoman while his cousin bets his house. The stuntwoman decides that she wanted to tag along so she did. Along the way, the woman gets lost in the woods. As the lead male tries to find her they encounter a restaurant in the middle of the woods. They take homemade wine from the restaurant and drink it that night. In the morning, they SWITCH BODIES. The story entails how they deal with each other’s lives, and the lead male’s Mother, who disapproves of her. He creates miracles for her which has made her fall in love with him.

What I like about this drama is that the lead male is handsome, rich, and sweet. He would do anything for her, even if it means leaving his rich lifestyle and his life. There are a lot of action scenes because she is a stuntwoman, but I wish there were sweeter scenes. I figured, the lead female is a strong one, so expect not to find many “damsel in distress” scenes. Overall, I could not stop watching this drama.

Romantic Scenes: 7/10

Story: 9/10

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

(coming soon!)

Suspicious Partner

Guy meets girl on a train while she is on her way to a hotel where her cheating bf is at. Guy is mistaken for a pervert and she gets mad at him. They hookup that night. The next day, she goes into her prosecutor internship and he happens to be her boss! The ex dies and she ends up being blamed for his murder. Together, the guy and girl find out who the real killer is.

I love how funny the girl is. She can be a little crazy, but she sure is entertaining. Of course, I’m a big fan of the male lead, Ji Chang Wook. He’s super hot. Anyways, they have the greatest and hottest kissing scenes around. If you’re looking for modern love then this is it.

Sweet Scenes: 9/10

Story: 10/10

The K2

(coming soon!)

W (War of the Worlds)

(coming soon!)

While you were sleeping

A reporter can see the future by having dreams of them. One day, a man(male lead) and his brother move next door to her house. The man one day dreamt of the girl getting into an accident. He saves her, and they become friends. 

It finds that the reporter quit her job because she dreamt of herself dying. She starts spending time with the man and together they save people from getting hurt until the day comes where she dreamt of dying.

I was still on a hunt for Lee Jong Suk’s drama, so I watched this. At first, I didn’t like it because the female lead cut her hair, which made her look younger (don’t judge me. The woman needs to look pretty for me to like a romantic series lol). Their adventure of trying to save people was interesting though. The romance depicted in this story is not only through gestures but also through words. 

Romantic Scenes: 9/10

Story: 10/10

[sopeinthesink]

SoulEnemies // MYG

Prompt: By the age of 10, nearly everyone has developed two tattoos, one on each arm. Each one is a date and a time, and one is when you’ll meet your soulmate. But the other is when you’ll meet your worst enemy. Until the closer date, most people worry about which will come first, but not you. Because your dates and times are exactly the same.

Pairing: Reader x Min Yoongi

Words: 5321 

This will probably become a series, so let me know if you guys want more!

You never asked for this. None of your friends had double numbers, so why were you one of the unlucky few in the world who did? What had you done to deserve this? It drew people to stick their noses into your privacy, wondering for the fiftieth time that week when your date would arrive.

As a young child, the discovery that you had double numbers was earth-shattering. You had always dreamt of how you would meet your soulmate first, and when the day arrived that your enemy came around, the two of you would be ready for them. Your partner would be there to protect you from your enemy and would be your knight in shining armor.

Instead, the universe decided you were the one in a billion that it would play jokes on. The day your first tattoo appeared, scripted on the inside of your left wrist, you immediately ran to your mother and father, eagerly awaiting the day that your second tattoo would appear.

It was over a year that you waited with bated breath. When you felt that somewhat familiar itching beneath your skin, you were in the middle of a silent reading period. However, you were anything but silent as your heart stopped in your chest at the sight of those numbers. The whole class whipped around to look at you as you sat there, your young mind grappling with the reality set out on your wrists.

The teacher rushed back to scold you, before stopping in her tracks as she noticed what you were gaping at. You were excused for the day, which then turned into a week off from school. You spent that entire week crying about how unfair everything was, and your parents tried to comfort you, but nothing would ease your pain.

Now, tomorrow was the date that had been written on your wrists for the past 12 years. You had grown somewhat numb to the whole idea that, no matter where you went tomorrow, your soulenemy, as you had wittily called them for the last 11 years, would find you at the exact time on your wrist, no matter the location.

You wished you felt something other than a bundle of nerves at the bottom of your stomach. Your friends had wished you luck, but you knew ever since the age of nine that luck had never been on your side. You simply laid in bed that night, contemplating what you would do tomorrow, how you would carry yourself. You could be standoffish and cool, but that might cause unnecessary hostility. You could be quiet and polite, but that might allow them to walk all over you.

Pushing away these thoughts, you took a deep breath. No matter what happened tomorrow, you were stuck with them, and they were stuck with you. So you would have to find a way to make it work.

The weather was awful the next morning, at least in your mind. It had snowed overnight, and the white flakes still fell silently from the sky. You hated winter and everything cold, and you were oh so reluctant to leave the warmth of your bed. Sliding on a pair of thick socks before your feet touched the cold floor, you slowly stood from your cocoon of blankets.

You went about your normal morning, making yourself a cup of tea because coffee was too bitter for your taste. Rummaging through the cupboards of your small kitchen, you found a box of breakfast bars and grabbed two before setting down on the crappy couch in front of the crappy tv. This apartment had been the only thing you could afford on a living made only by small gigs in coffee shops and the occasional college party. It had come fully furnished, and though the furniture wasn’t nice by any means, you weren’t complaining.

Turning the television on, you flipped through the eight channels you had access to without a working cable box, stopping on a news channel. It depicted a nearby record label, one that you knew well. It was known as Monster D Records, co-owned by three of the most successful rappers in the game: Kim Namjoon, aka Rap Monster, Jung Hoseok, aka J-Hope, and Min Yoongi, aka Suga. The three men had once been part of a successful group that had had since disbanded, and their music was nothing that interested you, similar to their label. Every artist they came out with was an R&B or hip-hop star, and that had always been one of your least favorite genres.

The news anchor’s voice drew you from your thoughts. “In other news, the owners of Monster D Records are holding their biannual company dinner party tonight. Stars from all over the world have been invited, and we will be back later tonight to bring you exclusive coverage of the event, so tune in at six o’clock tonight for our special program!” Scoffing, you took the remote and turned the device off. Gazing down at your arms, you traced the date and time on your left wrist.

November 18, 2017

6:19 pm

They obviously hadn’t changed in the time you had them, and you didn’t expect them to change. You just wished they were different…

Moving off the couch, you went to go shower and change. After turning on the water to hopefully warm it up, you put on your favorite playlist, placed your phone on the bathroom counter, and got undressed. By the time you got in, the water was lukewarm at best, but you’d come to expect that. Singing along quietly with the music from your phone, you grabbed the bottle of shampoo on the little ledge on the wall and began to wash your hair. However, mid-line your music was interrupted by your ringtone. Shampoo still in your hair, you reached out of the shower to check who it was. Perhaps our best friend wishing you luck for the day? Or your mother giving her condolences about what you’d have to go through today?

It turned out to be neither of those, but instead a number you’d never seen before. You hesitated, debating if you should answer. The only thing that made you press the answer icon was the fact that this number had the same area code as you. You quickly turned the shower off and turned on speakerphone.

“Hello?” you answered reluctantly.

“Hi, my name is Adelaide Bryce, I’m calling from Monster D Records,” came a bright female voice from the other end. It took a moment for her words to register, and by the time they did, you realized you had missed the second part of whatever she just said.

“Pardon, what was that?” You felt your breathing pick up slightly. Why the hell would someone from Monster D be calling you, especially so early in the morning?!

“I asked if you were Y/N Y/L/N?” she repeated kindly.

“Uh yeah, yes I am. Is there something I can help you with?” You tried not to sound flustered but did a terrible job of it.

“Actually there is,” the girl replied, sounding slightly relieved. “You may or may not have heard, but we’re hosting our company party tonight. I know it’s very last minute, but the previous act we had lined up isn’t going to be able to make it tonight…” She hesitated before continuing. “We were wondering if you’d like to fill in and play some music for the guests. It would be worth your while and you’d probably get the attention of several big-name producers if that’s what you’re looking for in the future.”

You stood there speechless. They wanted you? At their company dinner?! “How the hell did I get picked?” You thought aloud. “Oh my gosh I’m so sorry, I’m just… a little flustered.”

The girl chuckled. “I’m sure. We’d love to have you, and you were personally recommended by one of our staff. I believe he watched you perform at a coffee shop?”

“Yes, I do a lot of those,” you smiled slightly. Then, a pit formed in your stomach as you remembered what day it was. “I… I’m not totally sure if I’ll be able to. I have somewhere I have to be tonight, even though I’m not really sure where that is…” you muttered the last part.

Though apparently, it was loud enough for the girl to hear, because you heard a sharp inhale on the other end of the line. “Is today the day for you?”

“Yes, it is. And I’m not sure if a company dinner is where I’m meant to be tonight…” You bit the inside of your cheek, goosebumps raising on your skin.

“On the contrary, I think this is exactly where you’re supposed to be!” she exclaimed. “Please, just know that you were personally recommended by someone who has a lot of experience spotting new talent, and he believes you have what it takes to be successful. Give this a shot, I’m sure everything will work out tonight!” She sounded like she knew something she wasn’t telling you, but you decided not to push it.

Following your heart, and what it said was right, you nodded to yourself. “Alright, I’ll do it. What do I need to know?”

“Alright! Arrive around 5:15 tonight at the private lot in back, just tell the guard your name and he’ll let you through. Someone will be waiting by the back door to escort you to the stage where you’ll be performing. I hear you play guitar so you can bring whatever instruments you would like, but we can provide hardware such as cables and mics. Oh, and wear something nice, y’know, business formal. I’m sure you’ll do great tonight, both on stage and with your first meeting,” she added reassuringly. “Thank you so much!”

“Thank you as well, have a good one,” you replied before hanging up and turning the shower back on. Only this time, it was steaming.

You found yourself on the metro at 5:09, a deep blue dress with a modest collared neckline that ended just above the knee hidden beneath your winter coat. Around your neck was a single diamond on a delicate chain, a graduation present from your mother who claimed: “Every woman needs a good diamond.” You had decided when you received it that you would not wear it until this day, and it felt almost heavy against your chest to realize that today really was the day. Your life would change forever based on what happened today.

Guitar case in one hand, you gripped the overhead bar for dear life as the train slowed to a stop. A surge of people moved to the exit, and you followed close behind, stepping onto the familiar platform. You had busked here many times before, and been fairly successful considering this was the more creative part of town. And since Monster D was only a block away, it was a common spot to get noticed by the staff there.

Making your way to the stairs leading to the street above, you tried your best to get around people. Emerging on the sidewalk, you had slightly more room to walk. Crossing East 71st, you approached the building you had passed so many times on your way to venues. Monster D Records stood a bit shorter than the buildings surrounding it, but had much more curb appeal, with its sleek exterior standing out on the corner. You shook your head slightly in disbelief that this was actually happening as you made your way to the front door before pausing. Didn’t she say to enter through the back door?

Turning, you hurried to the side of the building toward the gate you could see behind it. You hesitantly approached it, noticing the guard inside the booth. Stepping toward him, you double checked your phone for the time, finding it was two minutes till.

“Can I help you with something miss?” The guard called, drawing your attention.

“Um, yes actually. My name is Y/N Y/L/N, I was told to come through here for the dinner?” You explained somewhat skeptically.

“Oh yes, of course. Come right in,” the man smiled, stepping out from his booth and opening a smaller gate beside the one meant for cars. “There’s an assistant by the back door, good luck!”

“Oh, thank you,” you smiled as you stepped through the opening. Sure enough, you spotted a young woman holding open a door and hurried across the parking lot full of expensive cars.

“Welcome to Monster D Records!” The woman greeted you with a smile.

“Thank you,” you replied gratefully, stepping inside out of the cold.

“So I heard you’re the new entertainment for tonight huh?” You nodded as she entered behind you. “Well, you’re right on time. That’s very appreciated here. I’ll take you to the stage right now, you can set up there and soundcheck if you’d like. The guests should start arriving around 5:45 or so, and there’ll be a brief introduction, but after that, you’re free to play whatever you’d like.”

“Nothing too loud though right? Just background music,” you sighed slightly. You were used to gigs like this. You’d played enough dinner parties and restaurants to know that people liked to talk at the table, and couldn’t be expected to pay perfect attention to the entertainment playing quietly on the stage.

The girl leading you through the confusing hallways glanced back at you with a sympathetic look. “Unfortunately, yes. I’ve been in your position, as have most of the employees here. So I know how it feels to be on stage getting ignored. But I have a feeling you’ll do amazing and you’ll impress a lot of important people here. This could be a break for you, so do your best,” she smiled encouragingly as she came to a stop before a black door. Opening it, you found a small side stage. Stepping out, you found backstage areas to both sides, and heavy drapery framing the center, where a mic and stool were set up.

“Is there any hardware you need?”

“I was told you guys could provide a cable for my guitar?” You turned to face her again as she nodded and headed to the area to the left. Returning a moment later, she handed you a jack and nodded to the stool ahead of you.

“Go set up, I’ll plug you in,” she held onto the other end of the cord and released the middle to head over to the soundboard behind the curtains to the right. As she moved out of sight and you made your way to the stool, one of the doors on the opposite wall opened and three men in suits entered, deep in conversation. Deciding to ignore them, you leaned down to pull out your guitar from its case which you then went to place behind the curtains. Plugging in, you set down on the stool and adjusted the mic. Awaiting the ok to soundcheck, you realized you still had on your coat but decided you’d remove it just after the introduction since it was a bit chilly in the auditorium.

You took the moment to survey the space. To your right was another larger stage, probably where the intro would be taking place. Before you were about thirty circular tables covered in crimson cloths. The chairs were dark wood, and the walls were a light gray. The entire room would soon be full of important and famous people, though at the moment it was just the three men who still paid you little attention.

“Alright, go ahead and mic check,” the woman called. You nodded, speaking softly into the microphone at your lips. You continued to say meaningless things as she adjusted the volume. You heard yourself over the speakers and noticed the men across the room glancing in your direction. “Ok, now the guitar.”

You hesitantly strummed a chord, worried the speaker would be up too loud. She adjusted the volume again as you continued to strum a simple G chord. Curiously, you glanced at the men and found them all turned toward you, though still speaking with each other. “Try singing something. It’s a little hard to do them separately,” she called from the right. For whatever reason, you began to feel nervous. It felt strange to play a song with only three people before you, even if just for a soundcheck, but you did as she asked and began a random song that came to mind.

That is what truly grabbed the attention of your three audience members. They almost immediately faced you, watching intently. You couldn’t bring yourself to continue looking at them, so you let your eyes wander everywhere else. Until one of them started toward you.

He had bleached hair that had obviously been neutralized to make it silvery, and his black suit had probably been tailored because it fit him flawlessly. His eyes narrowed slightly as he approached as if he were curious about you. Coming to a stop as he reached the stage, he placed his hands on the edge and looked over to where the woman stood to adjust the soundboard.

“Turn it up a bit, Erica,” he called authoritatively. “We can hardly hear her on the other side as it is, so there’s no way they’ll hear her later.”

“Of course sir,” Erica replied, apparently adjusting the sound accordingly. You realized you had stopped playing as the man glanced up at you with a small grin. Eyes darting away from his, you resumed the song you’d previously been playing as he turned to the other two across the way. One of them pointed up, and he turned back to Erica again.

“A little more, please.” With another look back, he got a thumbs up from the same man as before, then with a nod, he turned back around one more time. “Perfect! Good work getting her set up. Go check that the carpet event is going smoothly alright?”

“Alright,” she agreed as she emerged from the curtains. The man nodded and moved to return to his friends without another word, leaving you wishing he had at least introduced himself. Erica placed a hand on your shoulder, drawing your attention. “Y/N, your voice is gorgeous. I’d be surprised if you made it through the night without at least one producer showing interest in you. I know you’ll do wonderfully, so break a leg out there,” she gave your shoulder a reassuring squeeze before heading out. You turned to ask who the three men were, but you weren’t fast enough, and as you turned back around to take another peek at the men on the other side of the auditorium, you found they had disappeared as well.

It wasn’t more than five minutes before guests began entering. Once there were about twenty people, you decided it couldn’t hurt to play music until the introduction speech. With only about five minutes to go, you would just play one song then you’d sit quietly on your stool for the intro. Your stomach was doing flips, and you tried desperately to lose yourself in the song. But all too soon it was over, and as you opened your eyes afterward, you found the auditorium nearly full. Pulling out your phone for a moment, you found it was 6:10, and you wondered when the speech was going to take place. Sure enough, after a moment the curtains on the main stage were drawn open to reveal the speakers.

Your jaw nearly dropped as you found the same three men from earlier on the stage. The silver-haired one stood to the side further from you, and the three moved toward two microphones set up before them.

“Welcome,” began the one in the center. He was the tallest, with peachy hair and full lips. “As you probably know, my name is Kim Namjoon, and this is Jung Hoseok and Min Yoongi. The three of us began Monster D Records 6 years ago, and in the time it’s been around it has become one of the most successful record labels in the game. Thanks to all of you, among others, our business has been able to blossom and realize its full potential. So please, raise your glasses in a toast for a moment.” You hadn’t noticed before, but all three men had been holding glasses of champagne at their sides, and they raised them carefully. “Here’s to another successful year and to all of you, for your constant support and love!” And with that, cups were brought together all throughout the auditorium and people took a sip. After a few more comments, the three thanked everyone once more and made their way off the stage.

One of the servers who stood before your stage turned to give you a thumbs up, and you prepared to strum your guitar before you remembered you had to take your coat off. Carefully placing your guitar against the stool, you hurried to where your case was stored and unzipped your coat. However, thanks to your awful luck the zipper caught on the fabric, forcing you to struggle with it for a moment before finally freeing it. Placing it atop your case, you glanced at your phone, and you found the screen read 6:19 pm.

At the same time, you heard the stage floor creak behind you, closely followed by a hand gently placed on your shoulder. You gasped, attempting to turn around to see who it was, but another arm snaked around your waist, securing you against a warm, solid chest.

“So it was you all along,” came a whispered voice in your ear. “You’re the one who put me through all those years of confusion and longing…” The mystery man’s fingers trailed slowly down your arm, his touch light and careful. He grasped your wrist gently, bringing it up to read it. “November 18, 2017. 6:19 pm. Double numbers…” You brought up your other wrist slowly, wondering if this was really happening. It seemed too good to be true, that the universe would do whatever it took to get the two of you in the same place at the right time. There was a soft sigh in your ear as you revealed your other tattoo, and you could have melted right then and there. Even without having seen his face, you knew this relationship would be…interesting.

You removed your hand from his grasp but took his hand in yours. Needing proof that this was, in fact, the man you were destined for, you pushed up his sleeve enough to see the mark on his creamy skin. As expected, it was the same as yours, and you couldn’t help but place your wrist beside his to find them identical. Your breath hitched in your throat as you felt hot lips on your neck, and you leaned back against him.

A gasp escaped your mouth as you were turned around to face him, only to be met with a face you had already seen several times tonight. “Min Yoongi…” His name fell from your lips, nothing more than a whisper that was eaten up by the thick fabric surrounding you. Your hand came up to his face as your stared in disbelief. His skin was smooth beneath your fingers as they traveled down his jaw to stop at his chin.

“Thank you for accepting the job tonight,” he smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “I’m not sure what would have happened if you had declined.”

“Well you wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure,” you grinned. “You’d probably be in my part of town, where guys like you wouldn’t go if their life depended on it.” The words came out differently than you’d heard them in your mind, but a smile appeared on his lips nonetheless.

“You need to go perform, people are waiting on you.” He gently pulled you closer, leaning his forehead to yours. “Can I drive you home once this is over?” He almost sounded unsure, like you might actually turn him down.

You hesitate for a heartbeat, before nodding slightly. “Of course. I’m sure whatever fancy car you have is better than taking the metro, especially at night.”

He chuckled, standing straight after a moment. He was taller than you, but not by much. “Alright then, I’ll see you after.” He pressed a chaste kiss to your forehead, bringing heat to your cheeks as he took a step back. “You look beautiful tonight, Y/N.” And with that, he was headed out the door through which you originally entered, leaving you blushing like a lovesick schoolgirl.

The murmur of the room just on the other side other the curtain pulled you back to reality. You stepped back out onto the stage, settling down on the stool and nestling your guitar on your lap. You thought for a moment, before strumming the first chord of the song “Rhythm of Love.” As you played, you noticed Yoongi enter once again, his eyes finding yours as he greeted some guests. Smiles lit up both of your faces, and the rest of the night was a bit of a blur.

“Y/N,” came a voice from behind you. It was one you’d heard several times that night, so before you even turned you knew it was Yoongi. The event had officially ended, but guests still lingered and got in their last bits of conversation. “We can leave whenever you’d like,” he smiled as he stood by the door leading off stage.

All night, you’d exchanged glances and smiles, and at one point he had introduced you to his co-founders, Namjoon and Hoseok. They had both complimented you on your voice and wished you luck with Yoongi, which made you chuckle slightly nervously. Now, he stood before you, a smile on his lips as you placed your guitar in its case and put your coat back on. He insisted on carrying your instrument out to his car, claiming that chivalry wasn’t dead as long as he was alive. Along the way to the exit, his hand claimed yours, a pleasant surprise just before you stepped out into the frigid night air.

“I’m right here,” he gestured toward a black Range Rover parked in the first spot to the right. When you glanced at him with one eyebrow slightly raised, he grinned. Perks of owning the place, I suppose,” he shrugged and went to open the trunk.

You gingerly climbed into the passenger’s seat, legs raised slightly to keep from making contact with the cold leather seats. A few seconds later, the trunk was shut and he climbed in next to you, swearing under his breath at the cold leather. You couldn’t help but smile and laugh softly at his reaction, drawing his attention to you. As he narrowed his eyes, you smirked playfully retrieving your phone from your pocket. He shook his head and started the car, immediately turning on the seat warmers.

“Damn, heated seats…” you commented, thoroughly impressed.

“And a heated steering wheel, but I won’t brag,” he chuckled, backing out of the spot. The same guard from before was at the gate, and he waved as he opened it to let you pass. You smiled back, before realizing the windows were probably too tinted for him to see it.

“See, I don’t have any of this.” Your voice was quiet as you spoke up after a few silent moments. “None of this glitz and glamour, the dinner parties, fancy cars… I came from nothing, and that’s what I’ll be for who knows how long. Nothing. And that’s alright with me.” You added the last part quickly when you realized how ungrateful you sounded.

Yoongi chuckled quietly. “You’re not nothing, Y/N. You’re everything, you just don’t know it yet, and the right people haven’t discovered that.” His fingers slipped through yours and settled on your left leg. “I just realized….” he trailed off after a moment.

“What is it?” You looked at him curiously.

“You never told me where you live,” he laughed as the light before you turned green.

Giggling, you ran your thumb absentmindedly over the back of his hand. “You’re going the right way. I’m on 37th and Eastwood.” This got a skeptical glance out of him as he kept driving.

“Would you care if I spent a little time with you tonight?” He sounded hesitant like he didn’t want to push it too far tonight.

“Of course. I can order a pizza because I’m kinda starving,” you grinned. The thought of him wanting to spend time with you was so foreign, but it warmed something in your chest. After a minute or two, you were pulling into the garage beneath your shitty apartment complex. He parked, and as you walked past your old Subaru you decided not to point out that it belonged to you. In the elevator up, he placed his arm around your shoulders and pulled you close, seemingly not wanting to ever let you go. Together, you stepped out onto your floor and made your way to your apartment.

After opening the door, you turned on the lights and welcomed him inside. “So sorry it’s not the neatest, I wasn’t really expecting to end up here with my-” You caught yourself just before the word soulenemy came from your mouth. He didn’t need to know you thought that all these years. “I wasn’t really expecting to end up here with you, so I didn’t clean up before I left.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s perfect.” He turned to you quietly, lips quirked up slightly and eyes soft as he stepped forward. “There are some moments in life that are meant to be captured with cameras,” he began, his words raising your curiosity. “You pose in front of a lens, and hope that the photographer can make you look good.” He brushed his knuckles along your cheekbone. “Or you arrange a setting, and hope it doesn’t turn out looking staged and dull.” You wondered where he could be going with this as his hands made their way to your shoulders, where he began to push off your coat. “Then there are some moments too astonishing to ever be captured in their full glory through a lens. The colors too vivid,” he smiled at the blush flowering on your cheeks. “The lines to delicate,” he ran his thumb down your jaw as your coat slid from your arms onto the floor.

“The image would never be quite the same through a lens than it would be to simply take it all in.” His body was nearly against yours, his lips merely inches away. “This is one of those moments. You look so beautiful, and I can’t decide if it’s this awful fluorescent lighting or the fact that now I finally know you’re the one, but you’ve never looked as beautiful as you do right now.”

Your heart did flips in your chest as you tried to work up the courage you needed right then. However, Yoongi beat you to it, bringing his lips to brush against yours. The next thing you knew, your fingers were tangled in his silver hair and you lay beneath him on your bed, fervently kissing one another as though you had been without each other for years, and perhaps some would say that was the case. He tasted faintly of chocolate fondue and smoke, and the feel of his lips against yours was enough to turn you to putty beneath his fingers. Everywhere he touched, he left tracks of liquid gold beneath your skin, and you nearly came undone as his teeth grazed your bottom lip.

He was absolutely intoxicating.

And it made you wonder what could be so bad about him…