#though those i kinda get why they happen so much since sometimes i change the end of quotes around

[thecodeveronica]

The amount of typos I find when rereading through a WIP is nuts. I've been rereading this one constantly because I'm a little stuck heading into the ending (just like last time, surprise surprise aha) and am kinda procrastinating, and every single time I find new typos.

The most frequent thing I do is just straight up skip words. Like, sometimes more than one word at a time in the same sentence. How do I not notice some of these until 5+ reads through lol

[ak4e7a]

sweet disposition – psh

notes: high school au, slice of life, scifi, jay lives to torment sunghoon, angst, hurt, comfort, i learned quantum mechanics to write this, also the first draft of this got me into grad school so #slay i guess

wc: 10.7k

cw: mentions of violence, SA, su1c1de attempt (not actually, it's a metaphor), parent trauma

trailer: you were always stuck in your ways. what happens when you decide to change out of love for someone else?

starring: park sunghoon, lee heeseung, park jongseong, sim jaeyun, and aespa karina (yu jimin)

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿˚₊

“just desserts” arc — episodes 1-4

You never liked your name. You thought it didn’t suit you. 

After all, it was supposed to mean something like “sound of the heavens”, and you hadn’t spoken in three years. It wasn’t like you were mute or anything. You just didn’t have anything to say to anyone. Like, ever.

Yu Jimin was the closest thing you had to a friend, often acting as a translator between you and the rest of your classmates. You got along well with Jimin because most things she asked would be in the form of a yes or no question, and if she wanted more, it only took one look into your eyes to get an elaborate answer. And you were glad Jimin wasn’t pushy when it came to the subject of your intentional silence.

“I heard they’re playing ‘Silent Penalty’ next week! Those boys are crazy, don’t you think so? Especially Jaeyun and Jongseong,” Jimin cried, clutching her textbooks to her chest with her free arm. You were on your way to your family's cafe, where you worked part-time—Jimin as a waitress, you in the kitchen (where you wouldn’t be bothered).

The month of April tinted the otherwise muted color palette of the outskirts of Shibuya in blushed hues. You always walked home together; the stories of the Hello Kitty murder and the Setagaya Family and the Junko Furuta case so deeply ingrained into their memories that neither of you would allow the other to go anywhere alone. You and Jimin even carried dainty pocket knives in their bags; these were mostly used to open boxes at work or cut slits into the packaging of snacks from the convenience store by your school. But it never hurt to be too safe, especially as teenage girls in a big city.

You nodded, the wind blowing through your high ponytail, tousling several strands out of place. Sometimes you took pity on your friend, wishing you could be better company to the girl who had not left your side since you first moved to Shibuya. You often wondered if you should just tell Jimin how much you appreciated her, and how you wouldn’t leave her unless Jimin explicitly told you to do so. 

Tamago to chikai wa kudake-yasui, you thought to yourself as you continued to walk hand-in-hand. Why not just show her?

It wasn’t like you were a “bad” friend. You often helped Jimin with homework (you did it for her) and you were the one who taught her how to ride a bike. You prepared the best bentos, often shaping the onigiri to resemble the cats from Sailor Moon, and always brought an extra fruit jelly stick for Jimin, who would never fail to still be hungry after lunch.

You wondered if that was enough for Jimin. You supposed it was, since Jimin had never once complained… at least, to your face. But you also wondered how long that would last.

“But, I mean, their leader… he’s kinda cute,” Jimin trailed off. The boy in question was Heeseung, the quiet half of the Fox Club twins. Said “club” was known around Kokusai High School as a sometimes-rowdy, always-mischievous gang, whose members were all brilliant in their own right. “And I heard they’re looking for new members! We should try joining them! Even though… even though we’d be the only girls.”

You exhaled sharply, forcefully — your way of laughing with as little effort as possible. Sometimes, if you felt up to it, you would even treat Jimin to a smile. You followed the pebble you’d been kicking since you left Kokusai before stopping to pick it up and rub it clean with the hem of your sweater. Then you handed the polished stone to Jimin, who took it happily, saying she’d add it to her jar at home.

“I think joining them would be a good idea, even if we’d be the only girls… Maybe they’ll find a way to get you to talk again,” Jimin mumbled as you walked ahead of her. 

Sometimes, you mused, Jimin would say things and forget that you weren’t deaf, just quiet. Extremely, deafeningly quiet.

“Oh! Did you see that new experiment on TV last night?” Jimin asked, catching up to you. “The one about the snails getting their memories erased.”

You raised your eyebrows, and Jimin continued recounting the details from the news report she watched with her dad.

“I bet they taste gross. Don’t know why people have tried eating them. But you could probably find some way to fix that, huh?” she chirped, opening the back door of the cafe. “Since you’re so good at cooking.

You looked up, turning to Jimin with a playful gleam dancing along the outer corners of your normally blunted affect. You shrugged, as if to say, maybe, but it’s anyone’s guess, and helped Jimin tie her pink apron up.

It was a slow afternoon, the usual customers trickling in one at a time like the dregs of a coffee machine after it’s finished brewing. You noticed that Jimin was especially chatty at the register today, and sighed to yourself as you refilled the almond flour jar slower than your grandmother would have liked. How you wished you could join in the conversation.

It was a shame you were still convinced they’d hear you, but no one would truly listen.

When you finished every random task you could think of doing, you peeked out of the little window between the kitchen and the front counter. Its position was perfect for you to watch the television above the customers’ seating area without being caught by whoever happened to be working the cashier shift.

The program on the television that afternoon was a replay of Yuzuru Hanyu’s record-breaking short routine in figure skating at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. Yuzuru had since become one of Japan’s permanent darlings, on and off the ice.

You frowned. That could have been you, had you not torn your right Achilles tendon right before high school started; had you not disappointed your entire family in front of a national audience; had you not landed on your ankle on purpose, because you didn’t know how else to tell your mother that your coach had been touching you in the locker room ever since you put your first pair of skates on. It’s not like your mother would have believed you. She was dating him, after all.

Maybe you would have been an Olympian had you not done any of those things, because no one gave medals out for lying and saying everything was fine.

“Y/N-ie,” Jimin called. “Where’s the milk bread?”

There was no answer, but that was a given. Jimin turned around to find your attention fixed to the television, eyes following Yuzuru’s every movement. If you still spoke, you would have been excitedly calling out each triple Axel and Lutz jump as you saw them.

But no sound came out of you, aside from the slow, deep breaths you took.

Jimin immediately grabbed the remote and changed the channel.

You snapped out of your maladaptive daydreaming, picturing yourself on that podium, and went back into the kitchen without any hesitation, and the milk bread was out of the oven several minutes later.

“Hello!” Jimin said. That was odd, you thought. You were about to close for the night. Usually, in the time you’d been working there, this part of your shift went interrupted.

“Oh… Is halmeoni not here?” went the soft, low voice.

Why are they looking for Grandma?

“No, not today. She hasn’t been feeling well lately. Can I get you anything?”

You crept toward the little window again, peeking behind the vase of lavender flowers that sat on the left side of the shelf that ran along the bottom. You recognized the person speaking. He was wearing the Kosukai boys’ uniform: navy blue blazer, a white shirt, burgundy and mauve necktie, and navy trousers. He was quite tall, with full, messy, dark-brown-almost-black hair parted down the middle, framing his tired, upturned eyes.

He was one of the Fox boys—but not one of high ranking, to your knowledge.

“Oh… um…”

“I’ll give you a moment to decide what you want. Pardon me,” Jimin said sweetly, before walking into the kitchen. The sound of the door swinging open startled you, causing you to nearly knock an open sack of flour over. You ducked down under the window before the boy could spot you. Jimin laughed. “What are you doing? Are you spying?” 

Pause. 

“Do you know who he is?”

No, said your pursed lips. You grabbed a sheet of scrap paper and a pen from the pocket of your frilly black apron and scrawled something down quickly. Jimin took it from you. 

I think that’s the boy Grandma told me about. The one she gives the unsold pastries to at the end of the day.

Jimin giggled. “Oh, no shit. He’s cute! But not as cute as Heeseung.”

You rolled your eyes at a specific tempo that Jimin perfectly recognized to mean shut up, he can probably hear you.

“Well, I’ll clean up here. You go give him the bread.” 

And with that, she pushed you through the swinging door as if she were moving a stack of heavy crates.

It was times like these that you wished she still had the will to speak, so that you could scream at your friend in disbelief. Jimin sometimes liked to take advantage of the fact that you would only physically protest if she thought it was worth fighting about. 

Your eyes softened when you looked at the boy, whose complexion had suddenly tinted the color of pickled plums. It was an uncanny look for someone who was seemingly so reserved and collected, from the times you’d seen him in passing.

“Oh. you ’re the granddaughter, right? Y/N? you ’re in class 3-A, right?” he said, his hands behind his back as he bowed. You nodded.

“I’m in 3-B… So it’s true, huh?” 

Pause. 

“You don’t talk?” 

Another nod.

“You can call me Sunghoon. Nice to meet you,” he said, to which he received a decidedly polite nod. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. I guess you can call me that in your head. Are you the one who does all the baking? If you are, it’s really good.”

You smiled like your muscles weren’t used to the strain before heading to the display case, a brown paper bag in hand. You slid the metal door open and used a pair of tongs to transfer the baked goods into the bag, deftly maneuvering each piece so as to not crush anything. You tied the bag closed with a piece of white ribbon and handed it to him, not allowing yourself to linger on how his cheeks had not let up on their rosy hue.

Sunghoon offered to walk you and Jimin home, out of politeness (and genuine concern for your safety, he said). Jimin accepted before you could even so much as blink a strong no, thanks, and so he waited as the two of you finished closing the cafe before heading in the direction of your apartment building. You tried your best not to panic. Being around the opposite sex was not high up on your very short list of favorite situations.

“I’ve never had a conversation so one-sided and yet only mildly uncomfortable,” Sunghoon said, having since regaled you with some of the more tame stories about the Fox Club. He told you about the time the twins came to school dressed in the girls’ uniforms, when he and three other boys (Park Jonseong, Yang Jungwon, and Nishimura Riki) got into a fight on the train after catching someone nonconsensually taking an upskirt picture, and the famous incident in which more than half of the Foxes ended up in the swimming pool, still fully clothed. “Y/N could hate me for all I know.”

You scowled. He adjusted the strap of your bookbag on his shoulder, clearing his throat. “No, wait, that’s not what you think it means. I meant that because you don’t say anything, you can spend more time judging me.”

You gave him a variation of the same exhaled laugh you only reserved for Jimin, shaking your head. You could already tell Sunghoon was kind by the way he walked on the side closest to the road, and never pushed you to speak the way others tended to do.

“You aren’t?”

I am, but I don’t think poorly of you. It’s the opposite, really.

Jimin chuckled. “She has other things to do besides complain. Like be my best friend. Right, Y/N?”

You nodded.

Of course. you’re pretty much all I have left, and that makes me more pathetic than ever.

—

The next Friday, you took the challenger’s seat at the Fox Den’s lunch table, on an otherwise bleak, foggy afternoon.

The entire cafeteria was in shock. The aforementioned seat was more of a symbolic gesture than anything; the Foxes rarely, if ever, gained new members because of how rough their games could get. The reward, however, was respect, notoriety, and the unyielding loyalty of seven teenage boys.

“Alright, hold on,” Jaeyun, the outgoing one of the twins and de-facto second in command, interrupted as the other boys cheered and swooned over you. He ran a hand through his dyed pastel pink hair cooly, eyeing you in front of him; your posture indicated that you were not scared in the slightest. 

You were everyone’s hallway crush, despite your cold exterior and refusal to even consider any confessions of their affection. Not one day could go by without you hearing usually-innocent comments about how pretty you were, garnering comparisons to different shoujo protagonists.

And to exacerbate those remarks, that week, you’d heard the boys giving Sunghoon shit after finding out he walked you and Jimin home; it was all they talked about in their free time since Monday morning, bombarding him with questions about what your voice sounded like and if there were really scars on your ankle and how you smelled. 

Everyone froze, waiting for the next words. Jaeyun looked at you as if you were a particularly difficult sudoku puzzle. “You sure you want to do this? I won’t go easy on you just because you’re a girl.”

You nodded metronomically.

Jimin cried out a sharp “No!” before covering her mouth in what you thought was a mix of devastation and realization, tears pooling in her eyes like spring dewdrops on blades of grass. When her eyes locked with yours, the universe was put on hold for a moment. You wished you could hold her hand and say it out loud.

I’m doing this for you.

Beside Jaeyun, Park  Jongseong, another one of your fellow third-years, brandished two long needles, previously wrapped in his white handkerchief. He towered in front of you like the Tokyo Skytree, his long black hair covering one eye, the other glinting playfully under the fluorescent lights of the cafeteria. He’d abandoned his blazer over the back of the empty chair in front of her, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, exposing the prominent veins along his inner forearms. “Who’s going today?”

“I’ll do it,” Sunghoon said over the voices of the other club members, easing his way through the slowly-growing crowd of students. “Let’s make it quick.”

“Who has the stuff?” Jongseong asked, spraying something onto the needles that made the club’s seating area instantly smell like a hospital. You grimaced only for a second, pushing back the memories of being in the emergency room.

There was an exchange between two closed fists, and before any more objections, Heeseung was announcing the rules to Silent Penalty, tossing a pair of dice in the air as he spoke.

“A roll of eight means you take a penalty mission. If both parties have eight at the end of the same round, both will face penalty. We’ll do two penalties. Keep a straight face through both, and you win. Back out, and you forfeit the whole game. Consequences will be decided later on.” He shot a glance at Y/N. “If you win, you will be the first girl in the club. Do you accept?”

You shook your head slowly. The boys whispered furiously behind you. You pointed at Jimin.

“Oh… She means that I get to come, too,” Jimin piped up, half-hidden behind Yang Jungwon’s broad back.

The dark-haired twin snickered. “Fine. That doesn’t bother me. Anyone against it? No? Then let’s start. Good luck, Y/N. Sunghoonie is our best Penalty player.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘best’,” Jongseong argued. “Luckiest, sure.”

Round one: you , 7; Sunghoon, 4.

Round two: you , 9; Sunghoon, 7.

Round three: you , 5; Sunghoon, 11.

“Shit, Seung,” Jongseong murmured to Heeseung as they stood behind Sunghoon. “Maybe you should have picked a different penalty number.”

Heeseung grinned, patting his friend on the back with a heavy hand. “It’s a thirteen-point-eighty-nine percent chance of rolling an eight. Not zero. Just be patient.”

Tensions mounted in the tenth round, but neither Sunghoon nor you were fazed. Not even when both of you rolled your first eight.

Jaeyun clapped, earning him a glare from his twin brother. “Oh, finally.”

“First penalty,” Heeseung announced, nudging Jaeyun aside. “Jongseong, the needles, please.”

Jimin gasped. “No, wait, what are you doing?”

“Ear piercings,” Jongseong answered with a grin as he began to sanitize two silver studs in his handkerchief. With his free hand, he held Jimin firmly in her spot by the cuff of her blazer. “Don’t worry, Heeseung is good at it.” Still clutching her, he used their joined hands to point to his right ear, a diamond earring in the center of his lobe. “Got this one last year.”

“Ready?” Heeseung asked, taking the alcohol-soaked handkerchief from Jongseong, hands already gloved up.

Everyone watched in silence as Sunghoon allowed Heeseung to confidently push the needle into his cartilage. Sunghoon blinked once, twice, then licked his lips all while the earring was inserted and the backing locked into place.

Taking the other needle, Heeseung sauntered over to you. You looked at him before turning to Sunghoon, brushing your hair away from your face.

“You already have a piercing,” he frowned, gingerly pinching your right ear between his pointer finger and thumb. “I’ll just pick another spot… is this okay?”

You nodded, feeling him graze over the protrusion covering the opening of your ear. You inhaled what could have been construed as the last breath of a dying woman, then exhaled as Heeseung pushed the needle through the thick cartilage of her tragus. He screwed the earring into place, smirking.

“Brave girl.” He turned to his brother. “Did she flinch?”

“Didn’t even blink,” Jaeyun praised. “Fucking sick.”

Sunghoon bit his lip, taking the dice out of your cold hand.

Round fifteen: you , 8; Sunghoon, 8.

“Damn, again?” Jongseong remarked. “That’s either very lucky or very unlucky.”

“The special lunch, Sunghoon,” Heeseung commanded. The boy ducked under the table to retrieve a bento box, blowing his bangs out of his face as he came back up. He looked like he was going to throw up. You thought the pain in his ear couldn’t have been that bad for him.

“Do we have to?” he asked. “Can’t we do something else?”

You answered on Heeseung’s behalf, leaning forward, propping your chin up with your hand, elbow resting on the tabletop as you looked into his eyes. Whatever it is, let’s just get it over with. Unless you’re too scared.

“No.” Jaeyun opened the box, revealing two snails and a small clear container filled with white crystalline grains. Sugar, you hoped, although it was most likely salt. “Here. We’re running out of time.”

You each reached for a snail, Sunghoon opting for the larger of the two.

“Wait,” Heeseung ordered, eyes narrowing to the point where he resembled the nickname he was often called—snake. You and Sunghoon waited, still clutching their own snails. “Sunghoonie, give yours to Y/N. She’s the challenger, not you.”

You resisted the urge to squirm as you felt a jolt run up your arm, like you’d accidentally touched the prongs of a plug that was halfway out of an electrical socket.

Sunghoon scowled. “This isn’t going to be pretty, regardless.”

Amane put her free hand over his, with an expression she hoped he would understand as  don’t worry, it’ll be fine, and they switched snails.

“Put some sugar and eat it,” Jaeyun chimed in.

Amane let go of his hand as he glared at the shock of pink hair sticking out in the crowd. “The shells, too?” he drawled.

“Don’t be a smartass, Hoon,” Jongseong laughed.

It was slimy and bitter, even with the sugar. You kept your focus on Sunghoon as your lips wrapped around the opening of the shell, sucking on the body until it slid into your mouth. you r first mistake was chewing, the snail guts oozing onto your palate. you r vision blackened around the edges, and in the span of several milliseconds the Sunghoon that sat in front of you was replaced by the image of a younger boy, with the same dark black-brown hair and dark eyes, albeit thinner, almost haggard-looking.

All you could do while you were frozen in place was swallow, watching the boy as he was pushed out of the front door of an unfamiliar house by someone who could have only been his father, a silver second-place trophy thrown after him. It clattered to the ground, smashing into several pieces that the boy gathered up into the hem of his black sweater. He ran through the old, worn-down neighborhood until he reached another apartment, knocking on the glossy red door until a dark-haired woman with glasses answered, letting the crying boy inside.

You felt the unwelcome but familiar sinking feeling of parental disappointment gather in the pit of your stomach, its endless tentacles swirling and wrapping themselves around the chunks of snail entrails that slid down your esophagus.

You guessed that Sunghoon was experiencing something similar, which meant that he saw the memory of a young girl gliding across a sheet of ice in a skintight jeweled red leotard and matching skirt with all the elegance and grace of a koi fish in water. Out of the corner of the girl’s periphery, a group of people gathered at a section of the plexiglass that framed the entire ice rink; one man smiled, and he saw you skate into a jump before landing with a resounding crack that caused every spectator in the stadium to get on their feet for a closer look.

He would have then seen that man run onto the ice and pick you up, cradling you too close to his body even if he were your father. His hands were in the wrong places, and Sunghoon would have to have wondered why no one was saying anything. Perhaps their focus was all on the blood that began to seep through your nude-colored tights.

“Congratulations, Y/N,” went one of the twins—your focus was too far elsewhere to distinguish or care about who it was. “Welcome to the Fox Club.” 

You ran out of the school building as soon as the dismissal bell rang, Jimin and Sunghoon calling out after you.

— 

“Umiushi,” Sunghoon said, pointing to the creatures at the bottom of the metal basin. You were in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with his aunt, who just so happened to be a marine biologist studying these so-called “memory snails”. “That’s what we ate. But it’s a special type. Jimin said she told you about them.”

You watched the sea snails in a curious disgust, afraid that they would somehow leap out of the water and down your throat. You nodded to affirm him.

“Yeah. Basically, they have some sort of molecule that can be blocked so that their memories can be blocked, too. There’s not much else we know about them… and I asked Aunt Mina—don’t worry, I didn’t tell her what I saw or anything, it was a hypothetical question—I asked her if it’s possible to transfer memories, and she said it’s impossible right now. Something like that would be magic.”

You grimaced. Magic was for children.  

It had been two months since that Friday afternoon that changed everything. Since that day, Sunghoon had followed you home, knowing full well what you’d seen from the snail he’d first touched, the one you ended up eating. He told you how his Aunt Mina took him in after his father disowned him for losing the chess tournament, and how they hadn’t spoken since. 

The next morning, you showed up at their house and handed him an origami crane with Why the bread, then? scrawled inside.

Sunghoon explained to you that he was saving all his pocket money to one day pay for a chess “tutor” to whip him into shape, so he could win enough matches for him to go home—the promise his father had made to him the last time they’d spoken, almost a decade ago. You appreciated the honesty of a mere acquaintance so much so that you returned to school after that weekend with a photocopy of several diary entries that pertained to the memory he’d intercepted.

Inside, you confirmed his suspicions. The man was your coach, and, incidentally, your mother’s boyfriend. No one believed what was going on, and your furious mother sent you to live with your estranged father’s mother in Shibuya. It was almost five hours away from Sendai, where you had grown up and trained with one of Japan’s future Olympic figure skaters, Yuzuru himself. Before the incident, it was pretty much guaranteed that you would reach that level, too, since everyone said you were blessed by the gods with such talent. But as your mother said, it was you who ruined everything. Not the gods, not the universe, not fate.

You stopped speaking, Sunghoon learned in your handwriting, because you felt as though no one would listen if you did. You said it was easier that way, less effort on your part. It was harder for you to make promises that you didn’t even want to consider keeping. It forced people to be direct, otherwise they’d get nowhere with you. You didn’t like talking, anyway. It was worth less than acting upon things.

The final page of the diary entries was a single line, a proverb you lived by. 

Tamago to chikai wa kudake-yasui.

Eggs and vows are easily broken.

— 

You stood on the rooftop, the frigid night air whipping your cheeks the color of the sakura trees below. You and Sunghoon had snuck to the top of one of the Tokyo skyscrapers way past midnight, on a whim. Now, as one of the Foxes, you would agree that life was a bit more fun with some trouble.

You were more than happy Jimin had finally confessed her feelings to Heeseung, and he’d reciprocated, even if it meant you and your best friend spent less time alone together. While Sunghoon could never take Jimin’s place exactly, he fit into your life just fine. Maybe it was because you made space for him to be there.

He loved fruit jelly sticks just as much as Jimin, so you started bringing an extra one for him as well. You noticed that when he took the leftovers from your grandmother’s cafe, the taiyaki in the bag excited him the most. He told you that they were called something else back home in Korea, but he thought yours tasted better. After that, you would always “accidentally” make too many, and give him the rest when you thought no one was looking. You once found him in the library playing chess against himself, and the next day you sat in front of him and played until the lunch bell rang, having learned the rules the night before.

You found out Sunghoon spoke the same language as you. Acts of service. He carried around a pack of Salonpas because you were prone to muscle cramps and the occasional shooting pain in your ankle. you ’d always blush and look away when he’d hand you a clip to keep your hair out of your face, ignoring how his fingers lingered on yours just a split second too long to be platonic. When the boys would tease the two of you about being constantly together, you would text your snarky comeback to Sunghoon, and he would say it out loud for you. And everyone would laugh.

You truly were practically inseparable, though. You couldn’t bring yourself to shut him out, not when he’d already seen what you considered to be the worst part of you and why you were the way you were, and still chosen to think the best of you. On Friday nights, when Jimin and Heeseung were out on yet another city expedition, the two of you would sit on the plastic-covered couch in your grandmother’s living room and watch Yuri On Ice, the anime about a competitive figure skater’s return to the sport. And Sunghoon wouldn’t make you feel embarrassed about crying, only comforting you after making sure it was okay to touch you.

You liked him. He could doze off at times, but he never made a big deal about it. You admired that. And you also appreciated that he never said he felt sorry for you and what happened when you were thirteen. It was unnecessary, you thought. The important thing was that he was there.

The Foxes always traveled in packs. For the boys, it was a sign of friendship. To you, it was protection. Being one of the two girls in the club meant they were extra protective over you, and Sunghoon was no exception. In fact, he was the rule. Every day, without fail, he and Heeseung would walk you and Jimin to school, then to work, then back home.

The world felt a little less lonely to you. And maybe, just maybe, you could stop running from it with one good leg to stand on. Maybe you could find it in yourself to forgive a world that took, since that world had Sunghoon in it. Almost as if it were trying to make it up to you.

His black scarf was wrapped around your neck, flooding your nose with the scent of clean laundry and musk. He’d let you wear it on the train ride over to Shinjuku, and you wondered if he was falling in love with you, too. You hoped that he knew you weren’t scared of being so close to him. Not when he was everything you needed from yourself.

“It’s time we started living for ourselves, don’t you think?” you asked, staring down at the city lights in all their neon glory. Every single speck represented another disappointment, another broken heart, another fruitless wish. None of it mattered. But it still did. “Maybe start chasing a different dream. Maybe the same one. But be in control this time. It’s more fun that way, isn’t it?”

The wind blew your pleated uniform skirt upward, and when you turned to see if Sunghoon was looking, he was. At your face. You had just mustered the courage to speak again, voice raspy from years of unuse. You leaned ever so slightly over the edge, arms spread out wide, feeling the strong breeze catch your body in the current. The tickle of the urge to free-fall played around in your mind.

“Y/N!” Sunghoon yelled before grabbing your wrist at the last possible moment and pulling you back hard enough for you to fall on top of him. You clambered off after a moment’s hesitation, sitting beside him and smoothing out the hem of your skirt.

You looked down, almost ashamed of your impulse. “You….”

“Y/N,” he wheezed, pushing his bangs out of his face as he tried to collect himself. “Are you crazy?”

Your brow furrowed as you examined the worried expression that painted his delicate, sculpted face. “What… What’s wrong, Sunghoon?” The roll of your tongue felt nice in your mouth; yes, you could get used to saying his name out loud. “Are you okay?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Sunghoon retorted, to which you answered with your usual breathy laugh.

“I don’t think killing yourself is that funny—did I miss a joke or something?”

You smiled at him, taking his hand into yours. His was much bigger, and warmer, but felt right all the same. “I wasn’t going to kill myself at all,” you said. “At least, not literally.”

Goodbye, silent Y/N.

–––

“under the moon” arc — episodes 5-8

It had been four months since the snail incident. And while you certainly would have not preferred to have someone who was a stranger at the time witness the worst thing that had ever happened to you, you didn’t regret having the sticky ooze of entrails coagulate in your body.

Because you would have never guessed you would gain a whole new family out of it.

The boys could get rowdy at times, but they meant well—for the most part. Those occasional instances when they didn’t were usually because someone had decided to bother you  and force you to speak for them. You didn’t mind talking most of the time now; all that mattered was that you got to decide when you’d open your  mouth and to whom you’d speak to.

Being one of the two girls in the group certainly had its drawbacks, but you liked to think you balanced them out just fine. After all, their detention rate had gone down in the past couple of months thanks to you insisting they stop throwing water balloons off the gym’s roof and they stop sneaking into the basketball team’s gym to deflate all the balls.

“Y/N-ie,” Jongseong chirped as he sauntered over to the Foxes’ table with his bento in hand. He was the only one besides Jimin who used that particular honorific, and you only allowed him to do so because of how stupidly tall he was compared to you. “Where’s Hoon?”

You looked up from your food, stony eyes glancing at the other boys—and Jimin, who sat beside Heeseung—and everyone shrugged. You blinked slowly at Jongseong before answering, “He’s going to enter the cafeteria in… five seconds.”

“You’re just bullshitting at this point,” Jaeyun laughed, mouth full of rice. While he was certainly more in-your-face than his twin brother, the Foxes’ vice president was surprisingly still pleasant to be around. You would never say it to his ridiculous pink hair, though, because he’d never shut up about it if you did. “Damn, you eat one snail and suddenly you’re Yuuji Itadori or something.”

“She’s not making it up, Yunie,” Jimin chimed in from where Heeseung’s arm was around her shoulder. She pointed in the direction of the double doors. “Look, there he is.”

You lifted your bag out of the chair next to you without even looking to see if Sunghoon had already reached the table. It was like you had a radar for him and him only, and you’d spent the last few days staying up late thinking about how that was possible.

You both seemed to be able to sense what the other person was feeling, which meant that neither of you were ever hungry, tired, or in a bad mood for long. You often would run into each other during times you normally weren’t supposed to be together, the rare occasions where you would spend your weekends alone always seemed to change the moment the both of you left your houses. At one point, you two discovered that not only did Sunghoon have an insane talent for drawing, but he could accurately guess what you were wearing and how your hair was styled without having seen you prior to his sketches.

Thankfully, however, you couldn’t totally read each other’s minds. You would be embarrassed for Sunghoon to find out you’d come to love him if he could hear your thoughts.

It couldn’t have been the snails that did this to you, right?

“Sorry, Hiroto-sensei was chewing my ass out,” Sunghoon said as he shrugged off his uniform blazer and sat down. He placed a carton of mango juice beside your hand, the straw already punctured through the foil seal.

“You were sleeping in class again, weren’t you?” you asked, handing Sunghoon the bento you spent the morning preparing for him. It had all his favorites—pork curry, rice, natto, a soft boiled egg, and the taiyaki from your family’s cafe.

“At this point, I don’t know why he even tries,” he laughed. You smiled at him softly. You were glad you found it in yourself to speak, because your new family actually paid attention to you. They didn’t possess Sunghoon’s attuned nature towards you, but you appreciated them all the same. “I need my nine hours one way or the other.”

“You had nine hours last night.” You paused, chopsticks in midair. “Jongseong, why are you staring?”

The black-haired boy looked at you as if you should have known the answer. “It’s like you two have powers or something.”

“Why would you say that?” Sunghoon asked.

“You two are so connected, it’s romantic.”

You tried to hide the blush spreading across your face. “Shut up.”

You and Sunghoon both agreed that God—at least, the one from Christianity—wasn’t real. Something from a World War II history documentary they’d watched together said it best—a line carved into the walls of a jail in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

“If there is a God, then He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”

Certainly, that God was all sorts of fucked up to grant free will. To allow your figure skating coach to violate your body for years. To be unable to stop Sunghoon’s father from beating him for every game of chess he lost. To give the worst pain to the least deserving.

That is the problem of evil. That if there were such suffering in the world, and yet God could not prevent it, then He is not omnipotent. Maybe He didn’t even come close to the power that Izanami and Izanagi or any of the other Shinto deities held, and they were far from perfect.

Sunghoon once told you that he would destroy the whole world for you if he could, to which you simply rolled your eyes and said that that would be no fun. This was, incidentally, after he’d gifted you a painting he’d done of the ancient lotus garden in Kumamoto. Making art was his new hobby that you made him pick up so he wouldn’t be so burnt out playing chess all the time.

“And why not?”

“Because our suffering helps us delight in everything else that much more,” you answered, resting your cheek on his shoulder. You knew you wouldn’t have said that two months ago, that you would have instead told him that humans are put on Earth to suffer and nothing else, but after being around friends who didn’t take life so seriously (if they ever did at all), you’d learned to have fun with your finite existence as it was.

Of course, you appreciated Sunghoon’s sentiment all the same. It held you close and told you everything would be alright, that the way your life had turned out was not your fault like you’d believed it was, but rather a consequence of things you could not control. In your physics class, Hiroto-sensei had quoted Albert Einstein during a lecture on quantum mechanics.

“God does not play dice with the universe.”

That was to say, Einstein never believed in the idea that atoms were governed by randomness. He turned his nose up at the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which itself stated that there was no way to accurately predetermine the speed and position of a particle at any moment. He asserted that there was no way that anything could be certain, that it wasn’t possible to describe things in terms of probabilities. He thought that the course of all events was fixed, that God formulated and prescribed a certain set of laws and sat back to watch the universe evolve in accordance with those laws.

You would have to disagree with him.

After all, what kind of vindictive God would— 

— 

“Sunghoon,” you said as you laid on the floor of your living room, listening to music in English because you promised each other that one day you would get out of the country together. On this particular night, your album of choice was Radiohead’s Pablo Honey. 

He had mentioned that the band, at one point, refused to play “Creep” live because it was the one song the audience came to hear. You knew what that felt like. 

Sunghoon turned his gaze away from the ceiling to look at you, his eyes softening. “Hm?”

“Do… do you still like chess?”

You knew that he would understand what you meant by that. In the past few weeks, you’d had to practice with him after it turned out that you were a better opponent than anyone in Kokusai’s chess club. Sunghoon was still dead-set on going back to playing competitively, all in the name of being allowed to return to his childhood home, to his father, one day. At least, that’s what you thought.

Something about that made you uneasy, but you knew you were in no place to cast stones. After all, you had your own share of disappointing your parents. Your own mother had not come to see you in Shibuya since the day she abandoned you there, effectively handing over any parenting duties to your grandmother. The phone works two ways, and she’d never acknowledged that fact of the universe. And, unlike Sunghoon, you had never been offered the opportunity to go back “home” to Sendai. As if that place had ever been your home to begin with.

The nuances between your circumstances were only sparing, to say the least.

“You’re worried about me,” he declared. “You think I want to win a tournament so I can go home.”

You hummed in agreement.

“Well, yeah. I want to go home. But only to drop that stupid trophy off at my father’s door and be the one who never speaks to him again. Besides, why should I return to that place when I’m completely fine here?”

Maybe Jongseong had a point, you thought. Maybe you two did share something more than a lunch box of snails. Maybe it’s romantic, after all.

“Are you really okay here?”

He returned his gaze to the ceiling, avoiding your eyes. “Yeah. Because it’s where you are.”

— 

Sunghoon knelt down at your feet, lacing up your ice skates.

However, your legs were bouncing uncontrollably, and it wasn’t because of how cold the indoor rink was. Part of you wished that your Achilles tendon didn’t heal completely.

“Look, you made it this far,” Sunghoon said quietly, brushing his fingers against your supposed bad ankle. The doctors had said you’d be fine to skate on it, that it was your mind that wasn’t allowing you to try again. “We can come back another time.”

You shook your head. How you’d longed to be back, pining for a time where you would be free from the prison of invisible hands gripping her limbs, pinning you down on the ground. “No. I promised you we’d do it today. I need to do this for myself, too.”

“If you can’t—”

“Don’t tell me you doubt me, because I’ve already got that covered,” you snapped, the words flying out faster than you could control them. Your hand came up to cover your mouth. “I’m sorry, Hoonie. I didn’t mean—”

He shook his head, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Don’t worry. It’s nice to finally hear what you think. But I disagree. You are so much more than you realize. I’m proud of you.”

Your eyes closed gently before you allowed herself to momentarily soak up those four words.

Then you shrugged off your coat and took his hand, letting him guide you to the rink. The frigid air tried to seep through your fleece-lined stockings but it was nothing to you as you began to wobble on the ice. You scolded herself internally and forced her muscles to relax. It was unbecoming of you to say you should have been an Olympian before the accident and then proceed to look like you needed a walker. 

It took several moments before you began to glide carefully, the blades of your skates just an extension of your body.

You didn’t need to go back to Sendai anymore. You could stand on both legs now, head held high.

For the next few minutes, you took your time getting used to the feeling again, silently willing all of your faith in yourself to return. You were different now. You could trust yourself. Protect yourself.  Being a Fox brought that out of you—your bravery, determination, the unabashed desire to take what the universe threw at you and spit it back in its face.

Of course, you had to thank Sunghoon for showing up when he did. Before then, you were what some people would call just waiting to die. Waiting for the possible day in which you would stop being who you were.

He never forced you to do anything you didn’t want to do. He never forced himself on you. The first time you ever held hands, it was you who reached for him in your sleep as you napped on the floor next to him, the space heater keeping the two of you warm.

Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared.

You didn’t need to, anymore. You glanced over your shoulder to find Sunghoon watching you intently, head propped up with his hand as he leaned on the railing.

One, two… three… jump.

You closed your eyes and leapt, spinning three hundred and sixty degrees before landing with only minimal strain, the skirt of your dress fluttering. You could hear Sunghoon’s overjoyed cries faintly as you continued to swim through the air, feeling the rush that used to overcome you when you were younger, although this time, there was nothing looming over you like the shadow of the Grim Reaper. Your entire body vibrated, all of your electrons dancing along with you.

Sunghoon didn’t hesitate when you came to him, pulling you in for a tight hug.

It was short-lived, though, because as soon as you came into contact,

you passed right through him.

“What… what the fuck?” he whispered, turning his head around to see you standing behind him. You were staring at your own hands, wondering what the hell just happened. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It didn’t hurt.” You looked at him with a mirrored wide-eyed expression. “I think we need to call Jongseong.”

“I knew it,” Park Jongseong said smugly, strolling into the lobby of the ice rink with his hands in his pockets and an unlit Seven Stars dangling from his lips. You and Sunghoon sat one seat apart, in fear that it would happen again.

“Don’t be crazy,” you muttered as you crossed your arms. You uncrossed them when you considered the possibility that your hands could go inside your body if you weren’t careful. “There’s no such thing as having powers.”

“Sure,” Sunghoon added. “But there has to be some sort of explanation for this.”

Jongseong grinned, pushing his black hair out of his face. “Yeah. You’ve heard of quantum theory, right? Atomic principles? Hoon, you weren’t asleep during that lecture, were you?”

“Maybe I was. What do atoms have to do with any of this?” Sunghoon asked, rolling his eyes.

“Well, basically… how can I explain this easily… uh… your atoms and Y/N’s were so perfectly aligned that you… y’know… passed through each other.”

You frowned. “But Einstein said—”

“He was wrong. People can be wrong. Shit, even the gods were wrong sometimes. Damn, do you sleep in class, too?”

“I—”

“Nothing,” Jongseong said, “is a guarantee. Except death.”

Take that, Einstein.

— 

“You’re beautiful. I wish I could draw you right now,” he said.

You let out a soft, nervous laugh. “Cameras exist. You could just take a picture.”

“That’s not nearly enough.”

Your hands trailed shakily along the lapels of Sunghoon’s blue blazer, fingertips grazing the hem as he edged closer to you. You wondered if the accident would happen again.

“H-hoon…” you whispered as you attempted to sink your head deeper into his scarf wrapped around your neck. “I’m scared.”

They were on the rooftop you’d killed herself on—in the metaphorical sense—all those months ago. Since then, everything as you knew it was different, from your voice to the way you presented yourself all the way down to how you felt. 

“Nonsense,” he quipped in the same hushed tone. Your eyes were locked on your shoes, feet pointed toward one another. “You’re damn well the bravest person I know. It’s contagious, actually.”

“This is different,” you replied. You rubbed the fabric of his blazer feebly. “I…”

“I love you,” he said, tucking his index and middle fingers beneath her chin to tilt your head up to look at him. “I really love you.”

I love you. I love you a lot.

“No! you  can’t just… you can’t just say it like that!” you protested, hands flattening against his broad chest and attempting to push him away from you. It was no use. Despite how lanky he appeared to be, he was built like an iron wall.

Sunghoon chuckled, wrapping his fingers around yours. “How would you rather I say it?”

You froze as heat rose to your face. They’d just discussed this in class; the story went that Souseki Natsume, a famous writer who once taught English, said that because the Japanese did not declare their love so loosely the way Westerners did, the most appropriate equivalent of the expression would be “the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?”.

And the most appropriate “literary” response to that came out of your mouth smoothly, like melted ice cream. “Shindemo ii wa.”

I would die happy.

–––

season finale: i know the end — episodes 9-12

When observed under a microscope, two particles both affected by one experience will no longer exist as individuals thereafter, but as two halves of one whole. This phenomenon is known as quantum entanglement, and had been used by several of your closest friends to describe the way in which your life had flipped itself over its axis on one April afternoon in your third and final year of high school.

Five years had passed since you’d graduated. Since the day you grew a spine and ate a snail with Park Sunghoon, the day you stopped living on autopilot. Since you’d fallen in love with him and regained the mastery of your own voice, both of these things you’d done over and over again, day after day. And it had been three years since you finally returned to competitive figure skating to prove that you could do more than just fine on your own, without your mother and certainly without a coach who would violate your physical existence.

But in those years, Sunghoon still hadn’t made it out of Japan like he said you both would someday. At least, you hoped, not yet. Not yet, but soon. You knew it had to be soon.

You sat in your small apartment in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, an expensive neighborhood you were only able to afford because of the amount of endorsements you’d taken on. Your little black cat, Tai, as in taiyaki, as in the dessert Sunghoon loved so much, purred contentedly in your lap as you stared out of the window and into the street below. 

You’d agreed to adopt a cat together one day. You wondered if he already had one of his own by now. You assumed he did; on several occasions you could sense his presence, encouraging you, making you push forward and keep fighting against the universe, against Izanami and Izanagi, against God Himself.

This was what you did in your free time. Miss your life back home. You didn’t want to make any new friends. It was useless. No one could take or come anywhere remotely near Sunghoon’s place—or Jimin’s, or Heeseung’s, or Jaeyun’s, or Jongseong’s, for that matter. 

Soon, you promised yourself, you could show Sunghoon all that he’d missed out on. In your second year in America, you finally mastered the quadruple lutz after several doctors quelled your anxieties and confirmed your ankle really had healed miraculously. 

You decided you would also take Sunghoon to Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, where you’d go every time you felt like getting on a Boeing 747 to give up on this dream once and for all and go back to him, your other dream—if he’d still have you, that is. You didn’t know for sure.

You played with your phone in your hand, turning it over in your palm. You knew he was only a call away, but you were starting to go back to your old self, unsure of whether or not he’d even pick up. There was also a newfound sense of pride you had, not wanting to be the first one to cave in. If he was the one who pushed you forward, why should you be like Eurydice and turn around to look back?

But Sunghoon was the one who put it best, every single time you asked him why he gave up on playing chess in favor of going to art school after graduation—even though his victory in the championships would win back the respect of his father: “I don’t need to go home when you’re right beside me.”

Liar. Where are you?

That night, like many other nights spent lonely, you could feel him beside you, when everything was still except your own chest, aching for some sort of reprieve from the constant gravitational pull of your personal sun and moon, and the monotonous whirr of the electric fan that sat watch beside yoiur bed. You felt the ghost of his fingertips along your spine, and since you happened to be super lucky and lying extra quietly this time—you heard his voice, soft and low and warm like whiskey down your throat. It played on a loop until it lulled you to sleep.

“We’ll go together. I promise.”

He’d said that the night he admitted he loved you.

You also knew that he always knew where you stood on things as flimsy as words:

Tamago to chikai wa kudake-yasui.

Eggs and vows are easily broken.

And since he knew, why would he say that—when he was the one who could read you without even so much as a perfunctory glance? Why would he stand with you in Terminal 1 of Tokyo Narita without his own boarding pass? Why would he tell you to break up with him right before you got on that plane to California?

Stupid plane. Stupid distance. Stupid Y/N. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You had no patience for idiots. You weren’t excluded from your own disdain.

The only thing that kept you sane was the fact that somewhere deep inside you, in a place whose existence you were reluctant to acknowledge, you knew that one day, you’d see him again.

You had to.

You just hoped you’d still be able to recognize each other.

— 

To change the polarity of an electromagnet, two people are required. They use one snail for each person. Their most repressed memory will transfer over to the snail once it’s been touched. In order for the magnetic fields to switch, the parties must switch their snails and consume them.

The result should not end in repulsion.

The day Sunghoon’s atoms had lined up with yours so perfectly that you passed right through him was an indicator that some things weren’t just theories that could be disproved with a fallacy or two. That much was true.

You sighed, trudging through the farmer’s market in search of your favorite stand, which was run by a group of friends who reminded you so much of your beloved Fox Club back home. They sold baked goods that your trainer would frown upon if she saw them, but you believed that you deserved to eat them every Sunday.

And without fail, Sunghoon’s voice popped up in your head, reassuring you that you could eat them every day if you wanted to, just as long as you did it in moderation.

“Thank you,” you whispered quietly, still unsure as ever if he could hear your reply.

You paid for the decadent salted chocolate chip cookies and walked the four blocks home, debating for the millionth time over why you and him had to be forced apart. Did it mean you had to grow alone first? Would you be able to ever feel whole again?

You were able, however, to feel him missing you. So it wasn’t as completely one-sided as it seemed to be sometimes. It was always there, a slight tug in your heartstrings like a thread on its last life. It sat in your chest right beside where you missed him. On this particular day, it was strong. Stronger than any of the other days that came before, so overwhelming that you had to stop halfway home and sit on a bench to catch your breath.

Could quantum theory explain how he could feel whatever you were thinking? Or how you knew, back when you two were still together, what he wanted for dinner before you even asked? Or how your anxieties would disappear just as fast as they came, replaced by a flood of reassurances?

You had had a feeling that he failed his Visa interview on purpose, six months before you were slated to go to America. In the embassy’s lobby, he’d told you that the interviewer said he would have passed if you were his wife and not just his girlfriend.

Liar.

He’d assured you that he did want to go with you. He could find a job working for Pixar or Illumination or anywhere that would hire him for his talent. So why was the universe making it so hard for you to be together now, when the first two years of your entanglement were so easy?

Nothing, you learned, was supposed to make sense. You could spend hours asking “But why?” to every answer and there would be nothing to shut you up. In fleeting moments you would reconsider your decision to speak again, because the one person you spoke for was a little more than five thousand miles away.

So how am I able to be happy when he isn’t right next to me?

Not as happy as you knew you could be, but happy nonetheless. You were running after your first dream, after all.

Your phone rang when you got home.

“Jimin?” you asked, squinting at the screen. You were met with the image of your best friend, bouncing her seven-month-old baby on her lap, a little girl named after you. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“Hey, Y/N,” Jimin’s husband, Heeseung, called, waving to the camera. It was so surreal for you to think that Jimin ended up with her high school boyfriend while you were twenty-three and still pining over yours.

“Have you seen it?” Jimin squealed over the sound of the baby’s giggling. A TV in the background could be heard, the voices speaking Japanese. “The first episode just came out!”

“Seen what? What are you talking about? It’s literally only ten in the morning here.”

“Sunghoon’s anime! It’s so good!”

Your heart stopped pumping for a split second as you heard the double saccharine syllables of his name. The little communication you had with him while you were gone were only simple, fond exchanges over congratulations. The last you’d heard from him, he’d gotten a job at a big animation studio. Of course he was too humble to tell you everything. “What… What's it about?”

“It’s a romance. Everyone in the world is assigned a soulmate and the main characters experience a lot of crazy shit the closer they get to each other. Sorry the summary’s so bad, I promise it’s way better than I just made it sound.”

Soulmates, huh?

— 

It has been said that the atoms of the universe have been rearranged to create the world as it is known now. Should that be true, two people can be born of the same star and not realize it until the moment presents itself.

You knew Sunghoon was there before you even saw him in the crowd. The air suddenly felt different, like you’d just dragged your bare feet through carpet and was just millimeters away from touching a brass doorknob.

On normal competition days you would have attributed the charged atmosphere to nerves or the ten-thousand volt energy of the spectators cheering on their favorite skater. But it wasn’t a normal competition day, unless the winter Olympics in Seattle was just some regular thing. 

You knew it: Sunghoon had made it out of Japan this time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, in third place, USA: Allison Steadmeyer!”

Cue music. Polite wave. Applause.

“In second place, Russia: Irina Khodorkhovsky!”

Music. Wave. Applause.

“In first place, Japan: Y/N!”

The single cheer of one person drowned out the rest.

“Why did you walk away from me?” you asked quietly; anyone around would have chalked up your tears as those of victory, of making a comeback worthy of an Oscar-nominated film. That was because they couldn’t feel the way you instinctively latched onto Sunghoon like an oxygen atom receiving its electron pairing. “Why didn’t you go with me?”

“I didn’t want to get in the way of your dreams,” Sunghoon said into the apple scent of your hairspray. You trembled in his arms, the dazzling Swarovski crystals of your midnight blue spandex dress digging through the wool of his coat. “I knew I would only be a bother to you in the end.”

“Liar.” Tears swam in your vision, blurring his face until he was only the galaxy of vanilla and cinnamon you saw every night behind your eyelids. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t you know that you were a part of them?”

“No.”

You were even stronger by then. The first time you ever tried to physically push him away, he was confessing his love for you. This time, he stumbled backward, albeit only by one step. “Liar!”

“I’m sorry. You know I love you and that hasn’t changed. I just wanted you to be free, I didn’t want to be a burden on you. But it seems as though we’re really meant to be together. I didn’t do what I did to hurt you. I tried so hard to make it not hurt. ”

“What do you mean?”

“As long as I tried to be happy, I figured that you would feel it, too. You know, like what Jongseong said when we were younger. We’re connected. But it was difficult. Every day, I felt you missing me as much as I missed you.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That even if we were across the entire fucking universe, we’d still be tied together. And nothing could come between that. I know it now, and I’m sorry.”

“I never want to hear you apologize to me ever again,” you mumbled.

— 

“Y/N?” 

You were lying on your hotel bed, one of his arms wrapped around your shoulder as his hand aimlessly played with your hair that was still wavy from being knotted in a tight bun for your performance that day.

One side of your face was pressed against where his heart beat in synchronization with yours. “Yes?”

“Did you ever feel… alone?”

You shook your head. “No. Just lonely.”

“Do you still feel it now?”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

He pressed a kiss to the bony ridges of your knuckles. “And I’m never leaving unless it’s with you.”

a/n: surprise surprise! y'all thought SSV was gonna be my debut on here? well i lied. here's arguably one of the saddest things i've written so far besides that one angst i wrote in stella's dms last week. i hope you love it as much as i loved writing it. thank you to nia for encouraging me to post this :D taglist: @karinasbaby @enha-stars @intromortal @heeslomll @venomhee @heeheeswifey

[ahgasegotarmy116]

The Art of Etiquette Part 7 | Jeon Jungkook

Summary: Going gown shopping is proving to be a bit more difficult than you had expected and Jungkook doesn't make it any easier Pairing: f!reader x Etiquette instructor Jungkook Word Count: 4.7k~ Warnings: I don't think there's any need for warnings but so much teasinggg a/n: Sorry this too so long to get out 😭 I've lost motivation to write these days so it's been taking a bit longer for me to get chapters out but I hope you guys like it! p.s. kinda sorta edited lol I just wanted to get it out already Start from the beginning

After talking to Jesse last night about everything that happened between Jungkook and I, I've been even more confused than I was to begin with.

"HE KISSED YOU?!?!" Jesse yells into the phone making me cringe as I pull it away to save my hearing but ultimately fail. 

"I don't know, kind of but not really. He leaned in and kissed my cheek but his lips did brush up against the side of my mouth so I don't know. I'm just so confused because at the start I thought he hated me. He was rude and demanding and always tried to intimidate me. I will admit that it worked sometimes but I just never know what he actually wants from me" I complain while switching to my airpods so I can walk around my room and talk to him while looking for an outfit. 

"I think you're over thinking things. I think it all comes down to the fact that he found you challenging at first so that might've been why you thought that he hated you" he explains. 

"Challenging? What's that supposed to mean?" I question, flipping through the clothes in my closet, struggling to find something that's comfortable but not too casual, easy to take off so it makes trying on dresses a bit easier but doesn't make me look like I didn't put in any effort. You would think I was getting dressed for a first date or something based off the existential crisis I seem to be having. 

"He probably thought you were some bratty rich kid that needed a real push to break out of that mold. I bet he's had to deal with a lot of divas in his time. Don't take it personally though, I'm sure that he just goes into those first few lessons with that mindset and then loosens up a bit as you go along. Or at least that's what I would think based off of what you've told me" he explains. 

"You're probably right" I agree while trying to choose between two colors of what sweater to wear. "Pink or Blue?" I question and without hesitation he chooses pink. "What did you end up putting together?" he asks, eager to know what I've settled on. 

"Pink sweater, white skirt with nude colored leggings and some white boots. Oh and I'm pairing it with the white pea coat James got for me last Christmas" I relay, going through the outfit in my head, leaving everything on their hangers so I won't have to worry about too many wrinkles tomorrow.     

"Why are you dressing so...girly? I mean you're a girl obviously but I figured you would go with something a little more...black" he chuckles, thinking about my usual choice in attire. 

"Jungkook would send me back upstairs to change before he would take me somewhere dressed in all black clothing. He wants me to remember to dress like a lady so I might as well go into it right off the bat so I can avoid another scolding. Plus I figured a skirt would be a lot easier to take off and put back on again since I'll be trying on a few dresses" I say while finally getting myself ready for bed.

"Fair enough. If I were you though I would tell him that the only way I'm taking these clothes off is if you take them off of me if he had a problem with your outfit" he teases, making me roll my eyes at him, amused but embarrassed by his nonsense. "Jesse he's my teacher" I point out for the millionth time, hoping to get him to back off but I know it's pointless. 

"As much as you would like me to jump his bones I need to remember the purpose of our relationship. I don't want to cause James any trouble with messing around with him. I could just see the headlines, 'CEO's step daughter sleeps with her etiquette teacher', I do not  want to have to deal with the backlash from my mother either. If something were to happen between us it could ruin his reputation, making people think that he sleeps with all of his students. Plus who knows, he could've slept with his past students based off of how forward he has been with me" I say while throwing myself onto my bed and staring up at the ceiling. 

"He may be an adonis but I don't think he's the type of guy that would do that. Like he's an etiquette teacher girl, if he was to have had a scandal with a student in the past I'm sure it would've come out by now" he reasons with me and I hum in acknowledgement. 

"I guess you're right" I mumble and soon wrap up our call so I can get some 'Proper beauty sleep' according to Jesse but for the life of me I can't sleep a wink. With all of these questions spinning round and round in my head I just can't seem to ease my mind until I'm jolted awake by my alarm. 

'I guess I was able to sleep a bit' I think to myself before jumping into the shower and rushing to get ready. This'll be the first time Jungkook has seen me bright and early in the morning and not run down after a long day at school so I guess it's best if I make a good impression. 

After putting on my lip gloss to complete the look I'm met with my mother barging into my room. "You do know that Mr. Jeon is going to be here soon and oh-!" she nags quickly spewing out her speech before finally taking a look at me. 

"Look at you! I guess you really are my daughter!" she says while walking over to my mirror to stand behind me. "What's that supposed to mean?" I say crossing my arms and giving her an unamused look through the reflection. 

"It means that you look very beautiful and you're showing off your femininity and assets very well" she says referring to the shorter skirt that she hasn't ever seen me wear before. "Very funny mom now can you please leave so I can finish getting ready?" I ask, shooing her away so I can get her out of my hair, literally since she had started running her fingers through it from the back. 

"Okay okay I'm going. Would you like me to let you know when he's pulling up outside?" she asks and I nod my head and at that she's off to no doubt stand and wait for the first glimpse of him by the door. 'She's more obsessed with that man than Jesse is' I mumble to myself and quickly slip on my boots and take another look at myself before I hear my mother yelling for me to come downstairs.

I open my bedroom door and hear that Jungkook is already somehow inside the house and speaking to my mother when I had anticipated for him to just wait for me by his car. "Oh good you're here! Hurry along I heard you have a very long day ahead of you so behave yourself and do exactly as he says" she lists off and I don't bother giving her an answer. 

"Don't worry Mrs. Hart, I know she's a good girl" Jungkook shamelessly responds for me. My eyes bug out and I watch the amused look spread across his face but it's gone in a flash when my mother turns her attention back to him. "Shouldn't we get going? I know how much you hate being late and I'm sure she's waiting for us already" I say in regards to the modiste that we have an appointment with. 

"Oh yes, I'm sorry I'm holding you up. Have a good day both of you and I'll see you later tonight" she says with a smile while opening the door for us. "Oh I don't think it'll take that lo-" "I won't keep her out too late" Jungkook jumps in and I shut my mouth at his response, knowing I really have no say in the matter but also losing my wording when he places his hand on my waist to guide me over to the car. 

Walking over towards it I realize that he's switched from a four seater car to a two seater and I can't help but wonder if his motives were to not give me any other choice but to sit next to him. "I didn't realize you had another car" I say while he opens the door for me and I sit down and almost squeak at the feeling of the seats sinking down a lot lower than expected and he smirks at my reaction. 

"I have a few but I tend to take this one out every once in a while since it does best on longer trips" he informs before shutting the door for me. I nod my head while he walks around the car and gets in a lot more gracefully than I had which makes me roll my eyes and turn my face away from him. 

"Here" he says handing me an iced coffee "Oh thank you but I don't drink coffee, it makes me anxious" I say politely rejecting. "I know, Matthew told me so I got you a chai latte since to his knowledge, tends to be your favorite" he says. I thank him and receive it with both hands, my cheeks showing a dusting of pink at the thought that again he bothered to make sure he got me something that I would like. He even got me an iced one since I like those better even when it's cold outside. 

I take a couple of sips as he pulls out of the driveway and onto the street before taking notice that I had forgotten something. "Mr. Jeon I'm sorry but do you think we could turn back around? I forgot to grab my coat" I admit, cringing at the thought of inconveniencing him and messing up the schedule for today. 

"It's alright, you can just borrow mine" he says with a slight smile, no hint of irritation or condescension. "But I don't want you to be cold I-" "Y/n it's fine, I don't mind. If anything we can get you another coat once we go looking for the shoes to match your dress" he says and relaxes into his seat. 

His left hand on the wheel with his right placed on his lap where I notice that he's spreading his legs a bit further than I've seen him do before, making me gulp at the sight and turn my face away from him. 

"Is that alright with you?" he questions, making me look back over at him. "What?" I ask, not sure if I had lost track of the conversation or not. "Do you feel comfortable borrowing my jacket or should we turn back around?" he questions glancing over at me. 

"Only if you're sure" I say, wanting to give him the option to change his mind. "If I wasn't sure I wouldn't have offered. I'm asking if you're alright with it" he says and I reply simply saying yes but that's not good enough for him.

"Yes what y/n? I thought we had agreed upon using our words" he taunts and my breath hitches at the fist sign of his flirtatious attitude for the day. "Yes Mr. Jeon, I would feel comfortable borrowing your jacket" I say but he presses further. "I thought we had agreed on being more informal with each other as well" he teases and I look over at  him with a confused face as to why it would make a difference for him.

"Say my name" he says darkly causing a fluttering sensation to bloom in my stomach. "I-, what?" I stutter, not expecting this sort of behavior from him this early in the morning. 

"Say. My. Name. Or would you rather us go back to addressing each other formally?" he questions while he stops at a red light and cocks his brow at me. "Yes Jungkook, thank you for letting me borrow your jacket" I say quietly after a pause, my brain not being awake enough to come up with any smart remarks.

He smiles at that and focuses back on the road and offers me the aux to play some music since the drive is so far. "Try not to fall asleep on me again like last time. Wouldn't want to have to clean the drool off your face again" he teases while holding the chord up for me and making our hands touch since he doesn't seem to want to let go right away. 

I bring my hand down to plug my phone in and he lets his follow mine, keeping them connected for a second, letting his warm hand rest on my thigh before bringing it back towards himself and placing it back on his lap. I clear my throat to get my bearings again and quickly plug it in and play some low fi music which gets him to glance over at me again. 

"What? You don't like it?" I question feeling insecure about my choice since I don't really know what his taste in music is. Unless it's just the ballroom music that we've been dancing to for weeks now but I highly doubt that. 

"No, I do. I'm just sure that a playlist like this one would be the exact thing that would put you to sleep" he says with a crooked smile. "Well I just wasn't sure what you would like and so I figured low fi would be a safe choice" I explain and see that he's still smiling.

 "What?" I question and he glances over at me, making me suspicious of him and all of his reactions. "It's just cute that you put thought into choosing something that you thought I might like as well" he says with a lilt in his voice. 

"I just wanted both of us to enjoy the music that's all" I say, crossing my arms over my chest as a defense mechanism to hide the fact that he's made my heart rate pick up with his simple words. "And that's what I found cute about it" he says, rubbing it in since he can clearly see that it's making me shy. 

"You know, you can be quite irritating sometimes right?" I say as a way to defend myself and make him stop teasing me. "Who me? Am I not allowed to compliment a pretty girl for acting cute?" he plays coy and before I'm able to respond he corrects himself. "Excuse me, a beautiful woman from acting kindly towards me" he finishes and I can't seem to come up with any response to it so instead I choose to angle my body away from him and look out the window. 

"You can put on something you like instead. I tend to enjoy all genres of music" he says, reeling in the teasing and giving me a break thankfully. I in spite, choose to go with one of my angsty playlists full of artists like Simple Plan, Blink 182 and Linkin Park, thinking that it would be something he wouldn't enjoy but to my surprise I catch him drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel to the beat. 

As the playlist shuffles through the songs I catch him singing along to the opening of Bring Me to Life by Evanescence and it's then when I turn my body to face him again. "You know this song?" I question, my eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "You didn't think that you were the only one who had their emo phase did you?" he laughs and again I'm given another reason to see him in another light. 

As the song progresses we end up doing the call and response of it, with him settling on the guy's part and myself on the girl's and somehow it all just clicks. It's as if we were just two friends on a roadtrip together and it feels, nice? Right? I don't know but it's as if we'd known each other for our whole lives.

There's a comfortable silence once the song comes to a close and we both glance at each other a few moments later and laugh it off. "You weren't kidding when you said you had an emo phase" I tease and he laughs in response. 

"We promised to be honest with each other have we not?" he chuckles after calming down a bit with me, wiping away the few tears that had fallen in the midst of my laughter. "You're right, we have" I respond and again we settle into a comfortable silence before he asks me a question to keep me talking. 

"Penny for your thoughts?" he questions, glancing over at me before turning his attention back towards the road. "I mean there's not much to tell" I say, not having anything in particular stick out to me but he unsurprisingly presses nonetheless.

"There must be something going on in that pretty little head of yours" he teases I take in a sharp breath, his compliments always catching me off guard. "Why do you always compliment me and tease me like that?" I say quickly without giving my brain a second to stop me. "Tease you like what?" he asks with a huge smile, not expecting me to just come out and say it. 

"Why do you do that Jungkook?" I ask, using his first name to show him I'm serious about this question. "Do you not like it when I compliment you?" he deflects. "Answer the question Jungkook" I reiterate since he doesn't have a care in the world at this point. 

"Because you're beautiful" he admits as if it would have no effect on me. "I-" "What? You expect me to spend this much time with you and not come to notice how beautiful you are?" he asks, looking over at me as we reach a stop light. I sit there without an answer, not knowing whether I should acknowledge his words or just brush them off. 

We had agreed to be less formal with each other but did he think that was a green light to trying to pursue me? I've gotta talk to Jesse about this. 

"Looks like we made it just in time" he states a few minutes later as we pull up to the modiste, seeing that the kind woman that had helped us out before waving at us through the window. 

"You ready?" he asks, scaring me at the sudden concern in his voice. "You're scaring me" I laugh off and watch as he gets out of the car and comes around to open my door for me.

"Let's just say it's going to be a long day" he explains, holding his hand out for me to take and I graciously do. Seeing how low these seats sink down I would probably make a fool out of myself if I were to try and get out on my own. 

Once I stand up I stumble a bit and lose my footing leaving me bracing myself on his chest, my hands pressed firmly against his pectorals but I push off of them once I feel them flex under his incredibly tailored dress shirt and again lose my balance but he pulls me in close by the waist before I can manage to tumble back down into the car. 

"You alright?" he smirks with his hand still firmly against my waist and his hand pressed against the car behind me, placing us in a similar position we had been in just last night. "I'm fine" I say after clearing my throat and placing my hand on top of the one he has on my waist as a way to request for him to let me go. 

"Hey, are we okay?" He asks, tilting his head to meet my downward turned gaze. "Why wouldn't we be?" I question, felling on fire being this close to him. "I just hope I haven't made you feel uncomfortable. I really do think you're beautiful" he says, placing a hand on my cheek and bringing my chin up to face him. 

"Can we talk about this later? She's watching" I ask, nodding toward the dressmaker inside who is clearly enjoying the show. "I don't mind, I just want to make sure that we're okay" he says, deepening his gaze if even possible and I just nod and utter a quick yes before slipping out of his grasp and speed walking to the door. 

He braces both of his hands on the roof on the car I had just been leaning against and lets out a dry chuckle before pushing off and closing the door, catching the last glimpse of me scurrying into the shop. 'Cute' is the only word that comes to mind for him at our whole exchange and my reactions to it all and it would continue to be his reaction throughout the whole day as he watches me try to find the perfect dress. 

~~~~

"Welcome back dearie" she greets me with a knowing smile, not even bothering to pretend she hadn't seen everything that transpired between Jungkook and I. "Good to see you again" I say, meeting her with a shy smile, hoping she won't address the topic, or at least with Jungkook right on my heels. 

"I'm sorry ma'am in all of the excitement from the first time I had been here I never managed to catch your name" I say, scolding myself for forgetting to even ask. "You can call me Genevieve dear. And remember, I said you could lose the formality with me, especially since I would love to have some girl talk with you about Mr. Jeon" she teases with a wink and before I'm able to protest she's already greeting Jungkook right behind me.

"Mr. Jeon how lovely to see you again. I see you've both become better acquainted with each other since the last time you were here" she says, stopping Jungkook in his tracks and leaving me clearing my throat and awkwardly requesting that we get started. 

I glance back at Jungkook and see how the tips of his ears have turned red, not having expected her to come right out with it but it makes me smile nonetheless, seeing once again that I'm not the only one that gets shy in this dynamic we have going. 

~~~~

After trying on dress after dress after dress we can't seem to find the right one. "What about the dress you picked out when we first came here? That one won't work for this event?" I yell to Jungkook from behind the curtain as Genevieve helps me out of what feels like the hundredth dress. 

"It doesn't fit the season nor the occasion. Just try on a few more and if we can't find one we can look through the catalogue and order one and come back for a fitting later on this week" he responds without a care. 

"It'll be a bit of a tight squeeze in terms of time if we were to do it that way though" she warns me as she zips up the next dress and before I can even take ten steps out of the dressing room Jungkook has already disapproved of it.

"You don't like this one?" I question looking down at it, but then after having seen it in a different lighting realize that I hate it too. "You really want to ask me that question again?" he cocks a brow at me. I let out a sigh and my whole demeanor droops as I walk back into the dressing room. 

"Hey" Jungkook says, walking up on me before I'm even able to close the curtain. "Don't scare me like that" I say, placing a hand over my chest as an automatic response. "Why don't we take a break? There's an Indian restaurant down the street from here so we can have lunch and then come back. That sound alright to you?" he asks and chuckles at seeing my face light up at the idea.

"I'll take that as a yes" he says with a smug smile. "Can you help me get out of this? Genevieve had a hard time with the zipper so I think her hands might be getting a little tired of doing this" I ask, turning my back to him and giving a perfectly innocent excuse as to why I'm seeking his help but I can see his amused smile in the small mirror that he doesn't seem to notice that's placed right in front of me.

"Of course Pretty" he smiles and he takes his time dragging the zipper down and his brows shoot up at the realization that I'm not wearing a bra with this dress and once he's finished he runs his finger along my spine, seeing a slight red mark from the constant rub of the zippers of multiple dresses and I see his brows draw together at the realization.

"Let's get you out of here. We can come back another day to continue but I think you've had enough" he says running his finger along the line once more, causing a shiver that I had been trying to hold back to run up my spine but at his concern for the slight marks the dresses had left on my skin he decides to ignore it.

"It's okay, let's go eat and once we're done I'll try on a few more. I feel like the both of us will be able to think a bit straighter on a full stomach. Don't you think?" I ask, turning around to face him with one arm placed over my chest to hold up the dress being the only space between him and my bare skin. 

"If that's what you want" he says, his eyes tracing the slight bit of bare skin he's able to see on my chest and up to my eyes. "I'll just ask her to get a few more dresses ready for us while we're gone" he says and tells me through the curtain minutes later that he'll meet me outside. 

"You're a sly one love" Genevieve says as I come out of the dressing room fully clothed. "What makes you say that?" I question, tilting my head in confusion. "You knew I was coming back in a few seconds but asked him to unzip the dress for you anyway" she says and I widen my eyes, surprised that she has seen that exchange. "Nothing goes on in this shop without me knowing love" she chuckles at my reaction and gives me a little jar of salve. 

"What's this?" I question curiously, turning the jar over in my hands. "Mr. Jeon noticed the red marks the dresses left on your back and got worried so he asked me if I had anything that might with that" she says giving me a quick wink. "Now hurry along love and I'll see you soon" she says ushering me out and watching as I walk up to Jungkook leaning against my side of the car and looking up when he hears me coming. 

"You sure you want to come back today? I can ask her to schedule another day for us to come back" he says, still leaning against the car with his arms now crossed over his chest and observing my form to see any signs of discomfort but the only thing that has me nervous are his wandering eyes.

"I'm fine Jungkook I promise" I say while looking down and pulling on the sleeve on my sweater in an effort to warm up my hands a bit and shield them from the cold. He hooks his finger under my chin and brings my eyes up to him and studies my features before making the decision that I'm still up for the task. 

"Okay" he agrees, caressing my face for a second before using that same hand and places it on my waist and turns to open the car door and helps me in again. He places his coat over my lap, noticing that I'm shivering. I murmur a quick thank you before he closes the door, going around the car to get to the driver's side, waving at Genevieve before getting in the car as well. 

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[epickiya722]

So I just read a meta about how Yuji is not at all parallel with Getou. "Because Yuji is really kind from his heart unlike Getou...." Can I ask, is there really an interview where Gege said that Getou is too kind in the cruel JJK universe? Do you agree with the parallel between Yuji and Getou?

[I apologize beforehand, this kinda got long because I got into the topic and I'm running on low HP. So this may be a little all over the place. 😅]

Okay, so I don't know if there is an interview of such a topic (I'm still "new" to JJK, like I'm just being more active again enough though I had been into the since it premiered and picked up the manga, not important right now though) but I can answer that second question!

I disagree with the fact that Yuji and Suguru can't be compared because Yuji is "too kind". Don't get me wrong, my boy is so kind. And the same be said for Suguru once upon a time.

So I do agree with the parallels.

The thing is, Suguru didn't start off as some evil guy. And even if he did, that doesn't mean him and Yuji can't be parallels to each other, let alone be compared.

Sometimes, it seems forgotten that Suguru was just a child, too, when his life took a whole different course. He was just a year older than what Yuji is when he witnessed the death of Riko. At 17-18 years old, he finally snapped.

Sure, they're totally different characters on the surface. When you see Suguru, you wouldn't think Yuuji and vice versa. It takes sitting down and letting your mind wander and seeing those similarities.

If there are hero characters that serve as parallels to their villains, I don't see why Yuji being "too kind" would be an issue to why he can't serve as a parallel to Suguru.

Now, I don't know if Gege wants us to see them as parallels, but I do see that the characters share some similarities. Wrote a post of said similarities way back when, but I'll do a recap here!

Small details are that they're both are/have been in a trio that consists of them (Suguru and Yuji), a girl with a bob (Shoko and Nobara) and another guy who comes from a high-status clan with a string technique born in December (Satoru and Megumi). They both lost a limb (Yuji lost a hand and Suguru lost a whole arm), fought some old guy, has fought Yuta, and has a thing for loose clothing.

Now, I see those more as coincidences. But there are bigger details that more-so dwell into and shape into their characters.

They have witnessed someone die in front of them and someone's death had set them off somehow to the point of Suguru and Yuji being enraged and questioning how things work.

Suguru was less than a yard away when Riko was killed in front of him and moments later, Toji tells him about Satoru. Suguru was already still in shock with Riko's death since it just happened and then Toji pushed him further with Satoru's "death" (yes, Suguru didn't see Satoru die, but his "death" was a trigger for him, like that's his other half right there). There's also Haibara's death. Haibara's death was definitely another tragedy for Suguru given that Haibara was kinda the hope spot for their group. He was literally the sunshine and then that dreadful mission happened.

Yuji witnessed both deaths of Junpei and Nanami at the hands of Mahito. And as had death had been for Suguru, their deaths affected him greatly. Junpei's demise kicks off Yuji's hatred for Mahito and it's just the beginning of how his character begins to change. Yuji starts off more optimistic in the story, by the time the Shibuya Incident Arc ends, he has pretty much dulled. He already accepts his death in the beginning, doing what he can to save people. But then, he lost his fight against Choso, Sukuna did what he did and then Mahito came and killed Nanami and (seemingly) Nobara.

Both characters came to the realization that the jujutsu world sucks. They're just tools ordered by others (the Higher Ups 🙄) who don't do a damn thing really, to kill curses that will just keep coming. They accept that, but in different ways. For Suguru, he deflects and decides to "fix the problem" by killing the cause of Curses. Which is humans, or to be specific: non-shamans. For Yuuji, when he accepts it, it's when he has his final battle with Mahito. He doesn't decide to kill humans. He just accepts that "Well, Mahito, you're right, I am you. I am a killer."

Crazy thing is, when both Suguru and Yuuji hit their breaking points and kill/attempt to kill someone (Suguru with the village and Yuji with Mahito), it wasn't like they're enjoying it for revenge purposes or anything. They're both emotionally drained and just act on the simple nature of being a jujutsu sorcerer/curse user. They have those dead looks in their eyes.

Another trait they share is swallowing cursed things, which, again, plays into shaping their characters.

Suguru swallows curses and does not enjoy the taste at all. And it's something he has to do over and over and over. Curses are nothing but trouble for him. In his past, he uses his technique for saving, to do good as he believed he should do. When he chooses to be a curse user, he uses his technique in exchange for money. As a teenager, he pretty much was using a technique that slowly was mentally destroying him for people who wouldn't even know he was saving them and for people who wouldn't care less about him. If he's going to swallow the thing that he hates most just as much as he does for non-shamans, he might as well do it benefit himself.

His technique, piled on with the deaths he witnessed as well as the ugliness of people changed Suguru for the worse.

Same could be said for Yuuji. While he doesn't have to do it as often Suguru does, he still gets just as much mental damage as Suguru. At first, he handles it a little better, it's even played for laughs a little. When he first swallows one of Sukuna's fingers, it's to save his friends and Megumi. He doesn't think about it, he acts on it. When he swallows the second finger, it kicks in how gross it is, but he brushes off the taste. The third finger, he wasn't even conscious for. Sukuna swallowed that one. Four finger, again, Sukuna did that. However, even though Yuuji is aware that the more fingers he swallows, the closer his execution date is, and isn't sure how many fingers it would take for him to lose control of Sukuna, he just asks "should I eat it"?

It's when fingers 5-15 are consumed when things really hit Yuuji hard. He loses his fight against Choso, and is unconscious and close to death, which allows the Hasaba Twins to feed him finger #5. Jogo comes along and feeds him the next 10 fingers.

Sukuna takes over and we know what happens after that.

After Sukuna destroys Shibuya, he dumps that trauma on Yuuji who blames himself for the destruction. It goes down even further down hill for him.

Speaking of Sukuna, that's another thing they share. Not Sukuna, but body possession.

Both Suguru and Yuuji's bodies become vessels for 1000+ year old beings that cause nothing but problems for everyone else all while they're being used for other's advantages.

Kenjaku possesses Suguru's body to use his technique. Sukuna possess Yuuji's body as a way to be brought up into the world. Although he doesn't have control of Yuuji's body all the time, whenever he does, he makes sure to make the most of it.

(And if you're a manga reader, you know he definitely have done that.)

It also strikes me as interesting that both characters have a connection to Kenjaku in some way. As mentioned, Suguru's body is possessed by Kenjaku and Kenjaku is responsible for Yuuji existing. And I just know that had to be foreshadowed, too.

That part when that the Worm Curse Toji had comes in contact with Suguru can calls him "mommy"? Yeah... Suguru becomes a mom, alright. Adopts twins a year later, dies years later after that, body gets possessed. And what do you know! Suguru's body gets possessed by Kenjaku... who just before taking Suguru's body had been parading around as Kaori Itadori... Yuuji's mother!

Really, what sets Suguru and Yuuji apart is that Suguru ended up from being a hero character to a villain.

For two characters to never had interacted, they do have similar stories.

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

What do you think Charlie's main flaws are? I see her not listening to others especially when she's close to what she wants, naivete, impulsiveness, and overly trusting nature.

meeeeehhhhhhhhh, seeing a crappy world and deciding to believe it can be better and that you're gonna treat it that way no matter how many crappy people call you stupid for it isn't a flaw in my book.

She's energetic but I wouldn't call her impulsive. Every major thing she does in s1 is usually part of a bigger dream she's been working on for a long while now.

She admits to Vaggie that she thought things would be easier but that still means she's been THINKING about it. She plans out group activities ahead of time and adjusts them depending on what's been going on- coming out from the Angel Dust thing with the idea of talking about boundaries and stuff. Same thing after the thing on the roof with Vaggie.

Sometimes she makes what feels like an well planned choice, go try to work out more hotel time for Angel Dust, put Vaggie in charge of trust building since she's (supposedly) also a sinner but one who's already learned this. Then she realizes in the middle of it that there's more here than she thought and she's suddenly a horrified bull in a tea shop trying to figure out how to get out without breaking more stuff.

Socially she's eager and wants to listen to people, she's just not a natural at it or at reading between the lines- at least not in hell where everyone's got trauma and most of the population is actively inflicting more of it on everyone else.

I can't call her overly trusting either.... she chooses to trust, sure, as part of her belief people can change, but it takes her being at her LOWEST POINT before she makes even ONE small deal with Alastor, for example, and she does NOT take that lightly. She expected him to ask for her soul, she warned him she wouldn't hurt people for him. She knows those are things he's capable of, and that he'll probably try twisting the deal somehow anyway.

And she's not unware her friends have done are doing and probably will do bad things. That's where the redemption thing comes in.

Her whole thing is knowing souls did horrible stuff to end up in her home, and not liking that horrible stuff at all, and thinking sinners sTILL shouldn't get destroyed over it.

Her not listening to people- well yeah, she's used to being told she's an idiot and her ideas are hopeless and she should care less about others and lie to people more. Now though her ideas are actually starting to become real things with real results like a hotel and people staying at that hotel and the people staying in the hotel actually starting to get along instead of just hating or murdering each other-

so s1 is her swinging between massive highs of confidence and decisive action and then crashing down into guilt self-blame and misery whenever the ideas that seemed to be working suddenly stop working for her.

and then she corrects course and tries again. It's not like she doesn't REALIZE when she oversteps or fucks up, she just doesn't notice it while it's happening, so it takes her a pretty normal hot second to reflect and go Oh and work on avoiding that specific thing next time.

if it's something she's actively managing or adjusting for then for me that's not a flaw, it's a personality trait.

Kinda like how Vaggie's personality is being strict and sharp tempered but her flaw is being so shamed of her secrets not even the threat of blackmail can pry them out of her until it fucks up the one thing she cares about most.

For Charlie the only real "flaw" I see is she's not got much experience actually figuring out WHAT she's feeling and why. Hence the occasional bursts of actual flaming fury and needing Rosie's help looking at and processing the Vaggie secret reveal thing.

She copes with the whole "mom missing people dying no one will listening to me dad disconnected" mess by ignoring how that makes HER feel and pouring herself into how she can make OTHERS feel, aka

"Don't worry, mom. I'll make you proud"

That's not a very sustainable way to cope with bad things happening to and around you.

I think Charlie needs a good long break down. Full on sobbing. Not about having failed anyone (her crying outside Angel's door) or losing anyone she loves (Sir Pentious, Dazzle) or being scared she'll lose them (curled up in bed angry and terrified vaggie might have been lying about loving her too).....

for once I want her to be sad just about herself, her sadness, her pain, her loneliness, her feels as a person named Charlie instead of the princess of hell who's trying to save the souls that heaven has already decide to damn.

Lucky she does have Vaggie and Vaggie gave a small nudge in this direction with the whole "and in the end if it's only me you've saved" thing, so odds feel good Charlie'll get there someday.

....buuuut that's just me an what i see when i look at her XD bubbly dramatic repressed girlie on main~

[mintsuwu]

Midnight Mysteries AU Q&A!

Hello! I´ve been opening asks on Twitter recently and a bunch of people asked stuff about the AU. So I thought it would be fair to share the information here as well to keep everynyan updated! I´ll also take the chance to reply to asks that I have pending in my inbox as well.

Which Midnight Mysteries characters would be magical fellas, like "madoka magica, smile precure"?

Probably Poppy or CraftyCorn, the latter was a unicorn after all 👀

Detective Bubbaphant looks like he needs serious therapy /aff

Oh trust me, HE DEFINITELY DOES.

Every single Critter in that AU needs therapy. That´s partly the reason why Rosie (Bobby) became a psychologist /hj

Can I give Officer Kicks a hug?

Sure you can!! Don´t approach him when he´s angry though.

Do you allow OCs/Fanfics or such for your AU?

Yeah, I absolutely do and it makes me so happy that people would like my AU that much! 😭🙏💖

Does CatNap have a tragic backstory or personal goal or is he bad just for funsies? :00

He sort of has a tragic backstory, not too much, but he definitely has his motives... And even though his intentions could be sort of good, his ways are not the right ones (?

Chat, what happens if Officer Kicks is angry?

Dear user, I pray that you never encounter an angry rooster in your life because one nearly attacked me when I was little and it was... Quite the experience-

That aside though, he has an awful temper and can even get violent at times. Kickin´s character development simply hasn´t kicked in yet.

Are LoolaLamb and CatNap dating or does he just like messing with her?

They have been engaged for years. They married out of convenience and their relationship isn´t fully romantic, but CatNap actually cares about her in a way and is kind of possesive of her.

How did you come up with the Midnight Mysteries AU?

Funny enough, the idea simply came to me one day in which I was listening to the Spy X Family openings, and since my previous hyperfixation was The Great Mouse Detective my mind suddenly thought "What if I made an AU inspired on both things?" That added to the fact that I always kinda imagined Bubba as a detective and knew I had to draw it sometime.

Does CatNap just manipulate or make deals with the Sugary Scoundrels to cause trouble?

Sort of! As those two grew up in the orphanage that he runs, it´s more or less their way to repay him the favor, even though they spend most of their days out on the streets roaming around. But they are also lowkey intimidated by Catnap... Though, Bunzo has it worse with Mistress LongLegs in comparison. PD: The girls, specially CatBee, really admire Loola! And the latter is quite fond of them too.

Will the Midnight Mysteries AU have a similar story to Poppy Playtime, or does it only have the characters in common with the original source?

It will most likely have a slightly different route as PPT´s story is not done yet, but there will be events of the AU based on it! For example, The Hour Of Joy took place as well, but the motives behind it will be different.

What year does the Midnight Mysteries AU take place in?

Historically wise, it would take place around 1930-50, I don´t have an exact year but I know it would hace to end in 5 given how Poppy Playtime takes place in 2005.

What was MM Catnap´s childhood like?

I still have to think better on it, but he was a wondering performer! Perhaps specialized in acribatics.

What sort of things did Huggy and his siblings do before working for the railroad? What were their parents like, were they even around?

Their parents died when they were still yound, so Huggy had to raise his siblings by himself. They were later taken into a circus, but things weren´t very nice in there... After leaving the circus he took part on several crimes, being the brute force of the villanous gang while his siblings were unaware of their brother´s felonies. But when he took part in The Hour Of Joy, Huggy decided to change his ways from then on and did his best to leave the past behind along with his family.

What are Angel´s pronouns in the AU?

He/They!

Is Angel close or affiliated to any of the characters from the AU (DogDay for example?)

Yeah! He is allies with Poppy, Kissy and DogDay. Angel shares a parent-son relationship with the latter as they practically raised the poor dog after he had gone through a negative moment in his life.

Is CraftyCorn in the MM AU, or does she have yet to be revealed?

... She used to be(?

Is Billie actually a boy looking for his dad, or a kid playing innocent to help CatNap?

He´s mainly looking for his dad! But I love that twist ngl...

Did DogDay get that scratch from CatNap or something else?

Yes, he got it from CatNap in a fight.

Is Billy´s mom, by any chance, Mistress Long Legs? Does she know?

Yes, she does know but perhaps she wouldn´t recognize him at first as she didn´t raise him and Billie wouldn´t even know how she looks like. Darwin tried not to tell him much about her and her deeds, or at least he wanted to wait and tell him until he was old enough.

How did Darwin go missing, did Billie witness it?

He got kidnapped, and Billie did witness it. He caught sight of the kidnapper but couldn´t catch up to them when he tried to go after his dad.

What happened to Angel?

Many things...

Does Angel have the ability to die and revive in the past before they died? The Angels from the other universes are able to do that too.

No... Or at least, they haven´t tried out yet, so who knows!

"Traitor"? Did Angel used to work for the Prototype before rebelling against them?

Indeed, Angel betrayed their comrades in a very critical moment and since then they all have been searching for him... CatNap mostly. Which is why they usually remain hidden, outcasted and only keeping contact with selective people.

[astroficss]

Abby Anderson x fem!reader (fluff/light angst)

SUMMARY: Abby and reader share a moment together while on the road to track down Ellie.

WARNINGS: kinda angsty. idk tbh lol

NOTES: this was really hard to write ngl LMAO also abby and reader are not officially together. (sorry for any spelling mistakes i was typing this on my phone)

~

You weren’t sure how she was staying so strong. Abby had found her friends and dog dead because of Ellie— and she did break down, throwing up even. But she has yet to show any kind of reaction. it was like she went numb. Her eyes never lied to you, though. You could easily tell she was tired of fighting, tired of chasing Ellie, tired of losing people she loves. Tired of everything.

“i get why you’re doing this. but we can always go back home. you don’t have to go through all this.” you tried offering her a way out of this, you’d be more than happy to take her back home and do it yourself if she asked.

Abby was silent for a minute. “i can’t just go back, its not that simple. you know that.” her tone was a bit harsh but deep down you knew she was only feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. “do you want to go back?” she turns to look at you, searching your eyes for an answer. her heart started to beat faster as if she was afraid of you wanting to leave her because of this.

“no,” you sigh out truthfully, reassuring her with a soft smile. “i just.. i don’t know. i don’t want this to be the thing that takes you down, you know?” it was hard explaining how much she meant to you without stumbling over your words and avoiding eye contact.

abby smiled back at you. it was a real smile, probably the first one you’ve seen since this whole thing started.

“i think it’d take a lot more to take me down.” she teased, nudging you gently with her shoulder. you couldn’t help but blush, any physical closeness with abby made your knees weak. you knew she knew that as well.

“yeah, you’re right.” you laughed softly, looking down at your shoes. you can still feel her eyes on you.

“thank you for coming with me. i couldn’t do it on my own. i hate to admit it but you saved my ass more than i saved yours.”

“i wouldn’t let you do this by yourself, abby. what happened to.. your dad was messed up. i understand why you started this. the least i can do is help you finish this and get us back home safely.”

your words stuck to her heart and lingered in her mind. you’re always so gentle with her, always sweet and so unbelievably understanding of her traumas and reactions because of said trauma. feeling understood and appreciated was all abby wanted, and she has it with you. sometimes she wonders what it’d be like to date you. would it change anything? abby is terrified of ruining the friendship. that’s why she’s never made a move on you. she can’t lose you.

“i adore you.” abby smiled at you again after seeing you act all bashful from her loving gaze. her eyes twinkled and her aura radiated with love. those three words were her way of saying i love you.

[askuemki]

So I have no idea if I’ll keep this post up, but…

A little rant abt re8?? (And cod.. kinda) maybe venting (just a mess :,)

Disclaimer, take my opinions with a grain of salt I just wanna ramble lmao

Also spoilers, maybe (update, definitely)

So I’ve been having fun dipping my toes into Donna Beneviento (god her last name is hard to spell) content. After watching the gameplays and to at least have a basic understanding for the game, I find myself really drawn to her, maybe more than Alcina tbh

By no means i’m a diehard fan or anything, recently it’s been hard to find a new fandom to get attached towards. As much as I adore cod, there isnt really much to get attached too… like sure, task 141 is a fun group and the there is some GREAT art about the ships- but I only got attached because of Valeria, I won’t deny it at all. I’m a diehard lesbian, but there isn’t really much cannon content of her?? It’s really damn disappointing sometimes, man… same with Laswell. I appreciate all of the fanartists out there though, I adore all of the content here, fanfics or fan art. With Farah, she’s a diffrent story.. personally I never really got attached to her, but as a character she’s pretty neat. Her story sort of brings to light the horrors happening today which is a bit of a benefit…?? But ever since I found out things about both Valeria’s and Farah’s actors I’ve been a little off about things here and there. I don’t think I’ll stop posting Valeria content at all, it just might be a little less offen to indulge in different things.

Some personal things have been happening to make me feel really disconnected from like.. fucking everything for some reason?? Like I’m drifting away from fandoms, I’m drifting away from people and I’m like alone again.. I’m lost in a damn dumpster fire. AI art doesn’t help with this at all.. like why do I draw?? I’ve been drawing since I was in kindergarten like I never really thought of the specifics of perusing art, more or so just that I want to. Like hey, I wanna make a game or movie series, and something in me doesn’t realize I need to put in the effort to learn shit with just ends up in me doing nothing but self pitting on something I can change and ugh.. wish I can slap myself to get out of it.

So I think I’ve been kind of finding myself relating to Donna. Not in her extreme way, more or so just her aspect of being isolated, and just being known primarily for one thing. Like.. our side of art? Damn. Shit. I think I’m worth nothing.. and with Donna we don’t really know much about her besides her being a cursed Dollmaker, and the bare bones of her past. And we both barely fucking speak man… both hide our faces too !! maybe I kin this woman or something I don’t know

But as I was looking through her tumblr tag, I saw a rant about how headcannons and stuff has been stripping away the interesting stuff about the re8 villains… and with the things I’ve seen so far?? I can kinda agree, honestly.

Don’t get me wrong, if it’s not too.. insane? (I know those boundaries are hard to define at times, but maybe REALLY immoral shit for our “normal” world) and people aren’t forcing these headcannons into other people? I don’t mind headcannons. You do you, boo!

But the fan content I’ve seen, people reduce Donna and Alcina (I’m surprised it was pronounced as AlCHIna and not AlSIna, but side tangent over) from the potential they really have. Yeah it’s definitely nice to see Donna more, especially in those intimate moments.. but sometimes I feel like people just depict her as some shy, easily gullible, girl, and not really the mentally deprived woman she is. Like I’d love to see ideas of the different dolls Donna could create, or unique imagery of her mental state outside of having porcelain skin. What about the kinds of plants she takes care of? Or the dolls she makes? I’d love to see more of it, whether she has favorites, or if it’s a situation where she has doll replicas of her deceased family. Man, I really wanna see Donna do more creepy shit, basically.

With Alcina however? She’s kind of reduced to that (I’m going to cringe at these words so terribly, god help me) “hot vampire mommy”.. I’ll take fault for not looking into her content as much, I’m sure there’s great content out there !! (I’m not sure if anyone would do this but.. feel free to send me any fic recommendations or art) With what I want to see for her? I’ve heard from the rant post as a man-hating woman she had primarily female statues in her castle, it would be fun to see what else she has cause of this worldview, as well as more whitty remarks from her; I really enjoy her throwback with Heisenberg. Just in general.. her being a comical villain.

Okay so, the reason why I made this post in the first place before all of this shit threw up from my brain. Belladonna. At first, this ship really interested me, I like the character dynamics, the art was neat. But then something came up in my mind.. (as well as another rant post on the ship..) isn’t the Dimitrescu bloodline related with Donna? Both are failed experiments from Mother Miranda, and technically adopted by her. Though from what I know, Donna is the only one officially adopted. So would that be family..? I’ve seen a few places where Alcina called Donna her sister, and it makes me feel really off.

And I’ve seen in a few fanarts, Donna technically older than the Dimitrescu sisters posed next to them like another sibling??

I would like to endorse the ship, but just the morality of everything is off centered for me. I rather not support weird incest…

So please if people could maybe clarify for me whether it would technically be okay for support this ship.. I’d appreciate it. If it isn’t okay, I have plans on making a fan character anyways, or I can take current characters and make a resident evil au or something, and ship them when Donna. (I have a character that honestly looks like a mix of Alcina and Bela, but by no means she’s relates to the franchise, lmao)

By no means I’m experienced in resident evil lore or the fandom, this is just coming from a newer fan of the series, and what I’ve seen so far.

If you read all of this.. thank you?? I apologize if I sound ridiculous here, this is like the only place I can rant abt things without being brushed off for other shit

Good night now!!! I need to stop pushing my sleep boundaries ugh

[trigunsbbygirl]

Human Things that Confuse Knives Part 2

Made a second one since I had more ideas lol

content warnings: teeth, use bomb in an analogy, mention bruises. this one gets more into the body/anatomy idk what all people are comfy with so just in case

•Knives already thinks dreams are kinda weird, but those surreal ones and the utterly weird ones that just make no sense or seemed so real you wonder if it actually happened? he wants to know what's going on in your brain. Knives will listen to you as you recount your dream, he won't say much or make any facial reactions, but part of him is kinda amazed that your can brain come up with the weirdest, coolest and/or creepiest things ever.

•the concept of having baby teeth and adult teeth weirds Knives out. when Knives learns that you do lose your teeth as a kid he's staring at you like you've just grown a second head. don't tell him that you have wisdom teeth that usually need to be taken out via surgery as a teenager. (Vash is kinda grossed out by it. found out when a kid he was playing with ran up to him and was like 'look! my tooth fell out!:D' he panicked, thinking they got hurt, but it's replaced with horror, disbelief, slight disgust and concern when he finds out every human looses a set of teeth. he hates it a little. has no idea what to do when a kid tells him that a tooth fell out. help him)

•also. imagine Knives surprise when he learns about the appendix. you had been talking with a friend when you mentioned appendicitis and that you had to have surgery. it peaked his interest and when you're done talking, Knives asks about it. he stares at you in uncertainty and disbelief the further you explain. what do you mean there's a small pouch in your stomach that serves little to no function that can essentially become a bomb? Knives doesn't actually believe you until he looks it up. he wonders how humans have survived with bodies like that.

•same wonder when it comes to you having to take vitamins and other supplements because sometimes a body won't produce enough of something or too much.

•the fact the humans shed/lose hair. Knives knows that, but it kinda grosses him out a bit. he hates seeing your hair strands, makes you clean them up. (I hc that the twins just have little to no body hair and they don't actually lose hair strands.)

•double jointed people also weirds Knives out. what do you mean you can twist or bend a joint further than normal? it doesn't exactly creep or gross him out, but he doesn't like it. he'll never admit that, but he won't look/talk to you for a bit after you show off that flexibility.

•Knives is fascinated by the way your skin can change colors. (don't mention that he can turn a lovely shade of red, he gets all huffy.) but, anyways, he loves examining your face, watching as your face gets darker with certain things he does. (also likes seeing your facial expressions. humans are so expressive..) he also likes seeing your bruises and watching as the bruise changes colors over time as it heals. you joked one day that you could give him a bruise of his own that he can watch. he didn't like the joke (he prefers to give you (consensual) bruises.)

•now let's get into reverse Isekai for a bit.

•Knives does not fucking understand social media lmao. why the hell do you have to tell people you've never met what you did or thought that day and why are so many people interested? why do people do stupid things for views??

•he hates online discourse and always tunes you out when you try to talk about something that happened online. he doesn't care and thinks it's stupid.

•do NOT let him find out about stan culture or chronically online people. he's gonna lose any faith he had in humanity again. I wouldn't worry about that too much though. he has zero online presence, never uses social media outside of YouTube and even then he only uses it to watch documentaries or how to videos.

•memes confuse him a lot, especially how fast they come and go. you don't even know how to explain them to him. "why is this picture of a man just standing so funny?" "it just is? I don't know either." how do you even explain memes and internet culture to someone who's never been on the internet lol

•Knives thinks you're really weird if you've got a skewed sense of humor where something dramatically falling over makes you laugh(thinking of that waffle video.) he watches those types of videos with a straight face and when the video ends he just stares at you, wondering if you seriously think that's funny.

•he hates those youtube poop and deepfried videos. not only does he find them stupid and doesn't understand them, but they just bother his ears.

•bonus: Vash thinks the circadian rythym is pretty neat and that some people just know when to wake up. it took Vash a while to develop one, or at least, something like that since he doesn't technically need sleep. it'll never quite be the same though since he doesn't exactly get tired like humans do. it took decades for that type of tiredness to become present, but even still, he doesn't need it to survive.

[blitzxiiru]

I loooooooove your future 2012 AU of the boys. They all look so badass and cool but still them and its so GOOD. I wanna consume them.

I also had some questions if thats okay? What happened to Leo's leg? Did his knee injury gradually get worse and he was like "lol im gonna cut it off" or did he get reinjured in that spot and that was basically the end of the entire leg? Also how old are they in this AU? I know they are supposed to be adults but like in their 20s? I'm just wondering cause their character sheets dont have ages. ALSO LEO BEING THE SHORTEST MADE MY ENTIRE LIFE. (Props to Mikey for finally gaining some height). And I LOVE Donnie's long ass bandana tails, he looks so cool but so dramatic with them its great. Anyway thank you for your time and this beautiful AU!

AIHDDJHDJD THANK YOU SO MUCH IM HAPPY THAT YOU ENJOY THE FUTURE 12 GREMLINS. as traumatised as they are, they’ve worked through it despite some really rough patches. they definitely still have their bad days and nightmares, but they’ve learned to grow together and help each other through those bad times. they’ve changed and grown in their own way ofc, but they needed to relive the teenage years that they’ve lost, that’s why they’re still somewhat themselves in my au :)

LEO’S LEG

it’s actually a mix of both! leo kept pressuring his knee and over the years it gradually became worse — since he kept pushing his knee beyond it’s limits it keeps getting re-injured. the final straw was him snapping his knee again (completely this time) during a nasty fight and had to chop it off. the phantom pains he gets from his missing limb is… horrible, to say the least.

(BUT THAT FIRST SCENARIO YOU MENTIONED WOULD BE SO FUNNY THOUGH. imagine leo waking up one day and going, “oh wow. this knee injury hurts really bad, maybe i should chop it off. lol im actually gonna do it.” cue him barging into donnies lab like “DONNIE. I DEMAND YOU CUT MY LEG OFF” “WHAT?!” “CUT MY LEG OFF IT HURTS” “OF COURSE IT HURTS WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU’RE THE ONE WHO KEEPS INSISTING THAT YOU SHOULD ‘TRAIN’ IT.” “yeah but i think my blood circulation isnt working look my leg is pale” “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK LEO” and boom. leg no more.)

AGES

they should be around their late 20s in this au, i hc that for every season of the show they age one year. so at the start they were like 15, and the show had 5 seasons (granted s5 was a bit messy and was full of aus and past flashbacks, but there was that demodragon arc and stuff) so they would be 20 at the end of the show. specifically they’re like 28 :) they are kinda old but hey at least they don’t have to pay taxes in the sewers…

HEIGHT PROBLEMS

oh god, when raph suddenly had a growth spurt it was horrible for leo. he was relentlessly being teased every single day and raph would NOT let off. and then when MIKEY hit being 1cm taller than leo, the teasing fucking doubled and he was downright miserable. they kept growing while leo was barely getting any height. he’s still their sensei though — and he makes them do extra training as punishment for the relentless teasing :) donnie doesn’t join in on the teasing (sometimes he does) but he does snicker when raph and mikey make jokes about leo’s height. it’s funnier for him because he’s been the tallest out of all of them since day one.

MORE ABOUT DONNIE

and yessss i loved designing donnie! since he was tall everything about his design had to compensate for his height so i figured long mask tails and a long lab coat would do the trick. his brothers were concerned over him tripping on his mask tails but he hasn’t, not even ONCE. he is one graceful, careful boy. he braids it or ties it into a bow whenever he does lab work so it doesn’t accidentally slip into one of his chemicals somehow. sometimes he lets mikey do it for him :)

thank you for the questions anon!!! these were super fun to answer and i hope it helped clarify a little more about the au :))

[mdhwrites]

I saw a post a while ago lambasting Amphibia for having its characters 'do the most horrendous shit imaginable' for the sake of comedic plots and get off far too easily for it. In their view, Amphibia took slapstick comedy way 'too far' sometimes. I thought this was quite hyperbolic; the protagonists made serious mistakes, but rarely anything I'd call unforgivable, especially since they'd almost always show a level of remorse. But it did make me think about the way immoral acts are portrayed in comedic shows, and how we, as viewers, can tolerate and forgive things we probably wouldn't in real life because of the way these acts are presented to us.

I mean, think about Hop-Pop using mind control on Anne, Sprig and Polly in Children of the Spore. If anything like that happened to you in real life, chances are you wouldn't react to someone violating your body and mind by shrugging your shoulders and going 'well, guess we pushed you pretty far.' You'd probably beat the shit out of HP and never talk to him again. But that episode is kinda self-aware about the awfulness of it all (which I love). Polly flat-out says the old frog crossed all kinds of ethical and moral lines XD

Going back to the whole 'too far' accusation, though, I'm pretty sure we're smart enough to understand the difference between a silly frog show and real-life crimes. I don't think there needs to be super realistic consequences to everything (as the post I mentioned was suggesting) when your focus is on writing a slice-of-life fantastical comedy. I guess the only real argument you could make is 'but it's teaching kids to forgive absolutely atrocious, unforgivable things!' And...maybe? But I'm pretty sure any kid with their head screwed on straight understands not to replicate or forgive immoral behaviour too easily.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is, do you think characters doing awful things for the sake of comedy or plot can go too far, in that they can unintentionally make characters far too heinous to sympathize with, or do you think complaints like those of the post I mentioned above are a result of taking something far too seriously? Is there even such a thing as 'too far' when it comes to slapstick comedy?

So let's talk about intent, tone and framing because these things REALLY matter to a story. It's actually part of the problem with fandoms wanting everything to be realistic, darker, etc. because they're really asking for one thing: For them to all be the same. To not be what they are because, you know, the fact that these are comedy cartoons for kids MATTERS.

But first let's actually shift gears AWAY from cartoons for a second to talk about things being genuinely irredeemable for comedy. MANY people are really against prank style reality tv because it preys so completely on human suffering. Because these people are doing terrible things to just normal people. I personally don't like the premise... But I like Impractical Jokers. That show frames it DEMONSTRABLY more about terrible things happening to these four friends, by these four friends, and usually the worst they do to others is leave them a little confused or a bit uncomfortable. One of the big elements to changing this is that all the challenges are effectively dares. Someone either commits to the bit or if it becomes too much, they dip out but they are ALLOWED to dip out, minus the final jokes which are always pretty much purely at the Joker's expense.

Are these four people bad people? No. But part of why we also know that is because it's television and they're doing it to entertain as part of being comedians. Bizarrely enough, a lot of modern cartoon fandoms seem to want to act like fiction IS reality. It's where you get people going "Oh, you're being so cruel to a 14 year old, nuerodivergent girl!" and me going "I'm being critical of a character in a narrative. Can you please stop telling me, an actual human being in the real world, to kill myself because of a fictional character?"

Because shock of all shocks, PEOPLE CAN TELL REALITY FROM FICTION! In fact, even kids can! The fucking video game industry had to go through this hell HARD to prove that killing people in a video game is not the same as having psychopathic tendencies in the real world. Do you know how many kids play CoD? And those kids are fine. At least most of them.

So with all of that preamble out of the way: When can a morality focused show fuck up?

It's actually incredibly rarely in the terrible things the characters do because the show USUALLY addresses these elements as part of the moral of the day.

For the example given of Hop Pop's mind control, it is shown as... Eerie to put it mildly. Even from go, Hop Pop only enjoys it so long as he doesn't have to interact with it. It is never framed as a positive besides a bit selfishness. However, Hop Pop is a good enough person to show genuine remorse and try to fix this. He puts in a lot of effort, is admonished as the lesson of the day is learned to not try to control people and to potentially compromise and then it MOVES. ON. Because they live in a fantasy world where anyone could die at any second. A day of none thoughts is not actually that big of a deal, especially since it wasn't done out of malice or even really on purpose. It's a part of the fun of the setting and of the fantasy genre as a whole that you can just do these weird concepts like this and move on because magic happens sometimes. You might grumble for a day or two but hey, at least it was your neighbor and not the king, am I right!? Hail King Andrias.

A big part of this though, and why so many morality driven shows can have characters do terrible things without imparting the wrong lessons, is because it's addressed. Pretty much explicitly. It is framed as wrong, addressed as wrong and then fixed because it was WRONG. Even if it gives momentary gain, that gain is almost always also included in being wrong.

It's actually a formula that Amphibia purposefully breaks for an episode, carrying it over from directly the one before, because there genuinely was one crime committed that hadn't been addressed and by the time it was, that sin had grown to a point where it was too reasonable to have a character still be mad to ignore it: The music box. Hop Pop hiding it is actually an AWFUL thing to do because it dooms Anne, it means her parents will never get closure, dooms the rest of Anne's friends, etc. etc. Hop Pop has to be okay with Anne never quite being fully happy because of always wanting to go home while also living with this false hope that he implanted into her. A trust he has not earned because of the lie.

So even after they theoretically have their morality episode about the box, Amphibia takes this time for such a PERSONAL attack on Anne to stick with her for another episode during The First Temple. It actually acknowledges that you don't get over everything immediately. That sometimes you need space. I don't even like that episode but the break in formula is actually meant to make the message more powerful, and does so successfully, especially because the crime was different. It wasn't of indifference or something quickly fixed. It was of long term AGONY and a complete breach in trust that would make one question what relationship they can have with another person. There's pretty much zero other crimes in the show like that besides Sasha/Marcy's betrayals, which aren't treated as easy fixes, and Andrias' betrayal is the heel turn that makes him the primary antagonist. These crimes, these personal, genuinely awful things to do to other people that could be replicated, unlike so much of the fantasy violence, are usually seen as something you do have to work on. It's a great, nuanced take on being a morality one off show while also being able to elevate some issues to being dealt with more seriously and consistently.

Also, quick note from someone on my Discord: They NEED to do bad things in order to teach! They are meant to be the bad example so when their actions lead to things going wrong, you understand not to copy that behavior. This is honestly storytelling 101 for most... Plots. Not just morals but plots. If the characters do NOTHING, nothing happens and nothing will be learned.

You want a show that will teach kids bad lessons and then reinforce there are no consequences for those? WELCOME TO THE OWL HOUSE! Specifically: The show that tells you to lie and keep secrets because your fear justifies keeping them!

I know that sounds shitty but like... Luz is the main character. For half of the show, she is portrayed as the second most moral character in the show behind Willow. She admonishes stealing, cheating, etc. as her contrast with Eda. Then after Yesterday's Lie... She literally can't stop lying and never faces consequences for it.

The closest actually comes in Falls and Follies where Amity at least forces a promise out of Luz to be more open with her. This actually though doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it WAY WORSE because one of the main targets of these lies, that kids can easily replicate, especially because Luz is almost always lying about things that might upset others which is the most common thing kids will lie about, is Amity. So now we have both lying and breaking promises. You know, two of the most basic morals any kids show should impart on the audience!

In Reaching Out though, Amity gets a little mad but then it's excused because of her dad! In Thanks to Them, no one gives a shit that Luz has been keeping secrets and lying for months. Camila makes sure Luz DOESN'T tell her friends the truth either about her plans. You know, Luz's MOM who should want her daughter to be an honest person. The show then constantly keeps cutting Luz off from telling anyone anything because it literally can't without revealing how bullshit what she's doing is until by the end of the show... Luz hasn't been punished in any way and the lies just... Drift away.

Completely unaddressed.

This causes a problem because while the lies theoretically hurt Luz... They hurt less than losing her friends. Hurt less than disappointing a parent. Hurt less than making her look bad. And this is the main character. The one kids are supposed to connect with the most. The one who usually most explicitly defines the morality of a show. And she is never punished or stopped from all. Of. Her. Lies.

(As a note: This is also how you get a lot of guys taking the wrong lessons from anime perverts. Sure, this guy gets smacked but he never loses his friends. Never faces real consequences. In return... He gets way more ass than the main character does, doesn't he? *gags violently*)

THAT is how you impart bad morals. It's not surprising to me that the fandom for TOH hides behind excuses so much for their show because their literal main character was justified, in fiction, to have all of the terrible things she did, all the choices she didn't have to make or the people she discarded, because she ALWAYS had an excuse. And so long as you have an excuse, by what TOH says, you can get away with fucking anything.

And mind you, that last part is NOT Luz specific. Have a bad uncle? Don't worry Hunter, the fact that you literally hunt, oppress and potentially kill wild witches can be entirely forgotten and ignored. Have a mean mommy? Don't worry Amity, we literally never have to properly address the literal years of bullying you did to another character or even how attempting to kill Luz was wrong. Collector? COME ON! You just had bad friends/family so now you just need good ones and we can forget all about you oppressing people for fucking months!

This isn't addressing these problems. These are excuses. And excuses can seem REALLY appealing to people. After all, how many hide awful acts or statements behind: "Come on, it was just a joke." Shields are useful for trying to avoid criticism after all. If you never acknowledge you were in the wrong, you don't have to feel bad for having done something mean, let alone terrible.

Just to bring it back to Amphibia: Sasha tries to do this. She believes she knows best so she feels justified in all she does because it will make everyone the happiest, at least in her own eyes. Then in Turning Point, she realizes the folly of her ways, addresses that she was a terrible person and plants her foot down FIRM. No more acting the part of protector while actually being a tyrant. She will risk her very life in order to right these wrongs. And we see it also in Commander Anne where she is taking the change seriously. These are two half episodes, a single episode in full, that lets us know that her actions were inexcusable and that they were wrong and now she is allowed to be a part of the good guys now that she has made sure the audience knows that they can look to her as an example.

One full episode to ADDRESS the fact that what Sasha did was wrong and to not excuse it but to learn from it.

That's why all these terrible things protagonists do in shows is fine. They learn from it. They genuinely regret their actions. They show the audience why they shouldn't have done it. It's never okay to the show that they did. Not that it can't be forgiven, because people should be allowed the chance to grow, but that it still wasn't okay.

For a kid's show, that is pitch perfect. It's why moral of the day storytelling exists and I can't really think of any huge errors in this department on Amphibia's side. It's pretty damn good at smacking someone over the head when they act like a jackass. At bare minimum, there are WAY worse examples out there.

======+++++======

This is absolutely one of those criticisms that has me look at the person making it and go "Just admit you don't like cartoons. Or children's media in general probably." Admittedly, there's actually plenty of adult stuff just as childish, no one stays mad in Family Guy, so it's probably just "You don't like cartoons." It's the sort of bad faith criticism that just reveals you as not having actually wanted the product but whatever you thought the product should be.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[ravenwitch45]

Hello, Could you do an imp servant reader x Crimson Knolastname?

Thank you

Ah Crimson my ol bread and butter at this point XP Sure thing! Not sure what exactly you mean by 'servant' so I'll just write as essentially your a staff member like the maid, like actual employment instead of like a slave, cause I prefer it that way personally.

Crimson with an Imp Servant Reader.

Well you might not expect it with his general demeanor with his lackeys, Crimson actually treats and pays those who handle the day to day tasks of the manor pretty well, good treatment encourages loyalty and tight lips after all.

He's not all lax with them though, he wants them to do their job and to him that's their sole purpose. As long as they do that and don't bother him unnecessarily he pays them little attention.

That's how it was with you too until, who eventually helped the other staff around the house with everything at times, before Crimson eventually decided it might help him to have a personal assistant of sorts. Picking you out of the blue and seemingly at random.

You of course had interacted with Crimson before, he was your boss and you talked at times. But your job going from sometimes catching a glimpse and maybe conversation from him, to being on helping him specifically was a change for sure.

You handled it okay, you kinda were a general helper around the manor so you knew how to do a lot of stuff. You kept notes in order, made sure he got fed, readied baths and picked out clothes. Managing to do it all with lukewarm thanks from the mob boss.

He eventually warmed up to you, slow as a sloth but still. Starts asking you stay to talk with him at times, and generally being more friendly to you. Which you appreciate of course.

But eventually you realize that he's brinking you along on more things then necessary, and also being very irritable if anyone messes or even questions you, which while you appreciate, confuses you considering his pretty uninvolved approach with his staff.

Eventially he ends up not only asking you to stay with him for dinner, but also getting the chefs to make you dinner as well, a meal you realize you mentioned it once, saying you liked it during one of your chats. And then your alot more suspiscous at the care he puts into treating you.

You eat with him, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it keeps happening, you also recieving some gifts from him too. And the third time you have dinner with him, you question why he's being so nice to you. Him dismissing it with a blush you notice, despite his red skin making your curiosity peak.

"If i didn't know any better I'd say you were trying to be romantic with me Crimson sir."You state matter of factly, making his eyes go wide before he shrugs with a sigh

"I think I'm allowed to be nice in my home, if I want things to be pleasant with someone I happen to spend so much time with"Is the answer you get, not being a no or yes which frustrates you, but you shrug it off as you get up, it's the end of the day anyway, late dinner and all and your finished, saying goodbye as you put your coat on before stopping and turning back to him.

"By the way, since your feel so generous to treat me to dinner multiple times, if you feel like it, show up at my place tommorow at seven, I'll give you some dinner if you want." and with that you leave, leaving a very flustered mob boss in your wake. Okay there you go, probably one of my weaker ones If I'm gonna be honest, but tried my best with the idea XP Hope you enjoy!

[this-is-fox-speaking]

ok so. here's my thoughts on how things went for memory recollection.

Sissel remembered the moment they got into their past body. Something about Temsik fragment fuckery, I dunno. That's my only excuse. Merging memories or being hit with memories probably isn't as soul punching when you're literally a little kitty cat. They've been very sworn to their duty to love their families so so much!

Yomiel remembers a little bit after the timelines reset. Like, these memories probably get him for a while as some sort of familiar feeling similar to deja vu, but it actually just hit when he started painting in jail. He couldn't pinpoint exactly what was going on or why he painted that figures he knew he hadn't seen before, and- "Oh fuck, wait. That's right. I KNOW THEM." Kinda like a Jowd situation but.. reversed?

It takes a few months or maybe a couple years for Jowd to remember. He gets freaked out when he realizes he knew exactly what his daughter was going to look like, and- then he's immediately hit with it. Yeah, him and Yomiel probably had a few good talks over some of those prison days. He doesn't tell Alma or anything. Even though he feels bad about it, he knows it wouldn't really be the best thing to tell your wife that.. all of that happened. Unless you wanna look like a crazy person. Again.

Cabanela has his own few deja vu moments when he meets the other for the first time after the park incident, like the Pigeon Man or Lynne. I'd like to think he actually remembers a little before Jowd does, since he was literally also possessed by good ol Manipulator over here, and was so obsessed with figuring him out. He doesn't bring it up at first, until Jowd brings it up, then he just casually admits he's been- almost literally- dancing around the topic until the right time. Idk if this is very in character, lemme know. I've only watched through this game a total of once because it's.. really long. And I just recently finished it.

Lynne remembers over time, but it's specifically whenever she sees Yomiel's face. He's familiar, yet she can't place why, and it's not just from the park.. and when she finally gets hit with the memories once shes older, she kinda goes through some stages before going back to regular old, hyperactive lynne, towards Yomiel. He has the face but not the same personality of who she's used to, but.. she knows he's changed. And we know Lynne is.. quite the character! Not negative, just. I dunno how to explain her! Yomiel is her bestie against his will. This is not a choice.

Kamila doesn't remember any of it. It only comes to her in short visions- aka, "nightmares". I imagine as she gets older, it's possible she might remember these memories more clearly/solidly, or she'll ask Jowd and them, and they sigh and begrudgingly admit what really happened. Kinda up to interpretation, truly! It's fun to think about, either direction.

I think it'd be bittersweet if Missile sometimes had small dreams of being a lamp in the city's trash. Or simply being an odd ghostly figure. Or just being his own, lively doggy self, digging about the trash, yet being ignored by all the humans that come by. Sissel doesn't have the heart to tell him the truth. It's bittersweet because even though it means Missile has to remember this sad life of his old self, it still means Ray lives on, even if it's just a little bit. Probably a similar situation as Kamila, where he'll remember once he's much, much older. Past his dog years.

I feel like Pigeon Man would remember but just. Not give a fuck. He rambles about it to Lovey Dove sometimes, when he's bored, but that's about it. He doesn't care. He's got more important studies to worry about.

The Minister... I'm not really sure. I don't wanna have him remember or else he'll be all sad and mopey again. I'm gonna let him be happy with his family.

As for all the other characters- park protector, Minister's wife, his daughter, etc- they all have faint feelings of it. A small bit of deja vu every year or two, but it's nothing huge at all. They never really dwell on it.

[operation-cursed-sweet-tooth]

You know... I'm starting to believe that Rookie is not sick... but something else... I mean, I haven't seen how Rookie eyes color changed for a moment... a bit yellowish...

...

You know when Rookie arrived here he still had a trace of sweet candy on his beak when he arrived at the EPF... and he doesn't remember why he is in this state...

...

No... I'm not going to jump to a definitive conclusion... but I think Rookie or well... his body is suffering from "something"...

Does anyone want to give their own deduction of what's going on with Rookie?

and someone calm him down a little...

...

JPG you could calm him down... I mean, I think you're one of the penguins Rookie trusts the most apart from the Director... it's just a suggestion, it's okay if it's a No partner

Ya know…I ain’t no scientist or doctor, but even I couldn’t tell ya that… Rook is a strange one normally and for all I know this could just be a huge prank of his since he does know how to act….kinda- the glowing eyes could’ve just been some fancy smancy contacts or whatever…. They make those I think- right?

But if ya said candy- I will say I know his favorite one of them Spectral Candies was them Fullmoon Fireballs- least I think that’s their name…. Gary names these things so I couldn’t tell ya much aside from that….. I did like those Zombie Zingers though- kinda too sour for me sometimes

Knowing Rookie…. This could just be a case of a regular stomachache…. He eats such weird things all the time he might’ve just asked Charlie to make him a super gross pizza again…. And he liked it enough to eat the whole box- that or he gorged on all his leftover Halloween candy…. Those weird jack-o’-lanterns did give quite a bit to everyone

Then again it’s still Rookie…. anything could’ve happened with him

I… kinda noticed the chocolate on his beak too… I don’t wanna accuse him of nothing as he’s already pretty skittish and a little defensive as it is right now…. But I have a hunch it was those Spectral Candies…

Only issue with that theory is…how would he have gotten hold of any?? Yes the Halloween Party had only ended a week ago now but….Gary confiscated any and all traces of those things and sealed em away… he even had his lab on lockdown for a bit after the party in case someone did try to get more of those things- they are a little addictive I’ll give ya that…

I’ll try to calm him down if he’ll let me near him… but I can’t promise that’ll do any good… as for everyone asking about AA…please calm down…. She’s busy in the other room and won’t be done for a while… she can’t always hurry off to help us whenever you call for her, she’s still taking care of island duties in her office…. as much as I’d wanna argue that she should be out here helping her son… I can’t force my own boss into doing something when she doesn’t have the time to yet….

[fatatoes]

M’kay I have some thoughts about the witcher and wlw representation in the Witcher book series!

CW for sexual abuse and spoilers

Tbh when I had just read the Last Wish and half way through the first book I just gave up on the series. The women were just written so weirdly to me. Ciri was so innocent it was almost fetishised and the long and meticulous description of Triss and her sexual history was really unnecessary.

IN FACT when Triss’ “experiments” with women were mentioned it was almost explained as like ‘she tried EVERY deviance. EVEN *gasp* the THAT’ :| it was weird.

That’s not to say the writing didn’t get better later, like I guess Sapkowski spoke to a woman since finishing Blood of Elves.

BUT. He insisted on pointing out gay people exist in his world. Which is fine. He also insisted on telling us how people of his world felt about gay people. Also fine. You can write homophobia in your stories, not the worst thing I haven’t been warned about.

But in the entirety of the literature I’ve read from the Witcher series, I haven’t come across one i think more about than the Mistle and Ciri sex paragraph.

For anyone wondering how they’re supposed to feel about this: NOT GOOD. It was a not good thing that happened :||

Mistle took advantage of Ciri’s vulnerability and fear and, yes, practically raped her. But it was written???? As if it was a good thing???

I didn’t expect any better from Sapkowski having read the previous Witcher books, but I still feel like this is a fascinating part of Ciri’s story.

Were I not more aware of tone armour surrounding this event in the book, I would’ve said it was an interesting study on queer youth because IT COULDVE BEEN RELATABLE.

From my own experience as a queer woman: as a teenager, finding a queer friend group with people who are actually interested in you was everything! Even if those initial friend groups are full of lying and manipulation and violence and yes, sometimes even sexual harassment, you finally feel safe, why would you ever give that up?

I feel like a lot of my friends ended up being dragged into problems with vandalism, drugs, sex addiction etc exactly because they stuck in the environment that raised them to be used to that as a price of love of their chosen family.

Mistle and Ciri are a toxic couple. Ciri WAS just a child when she joined the Rats and having peers who harness her skills and treat her as one of their own was a treasure to her. Even if that family came with drug abuse.

I have no doubt in my mind Ciri loves the Rats and that she loves Mistle, just as I have no doubts Mistle loves her just as much. But they are hurt queer kids in a homophobic world that feel like they have nobody else, who else would they love?

I am SO SURE Sapkowski didn’t write them in with this in mind tho pffff. Honestly? The Rats feel like an afterthought in the books.

If I were to write the Rats arc into the Witcher series, honestly I WOULD have the Rats survive, but Ciri to still be taken away. Them dying might’ve felt like a resolution to some people, but I would argue that having Mistle survive to break up with Ciri would’ve been a better resolution.

I’m not done with the book yet but it seems as though they are going for a familial love angle where Ciri will not take any of her remaining love interests, but it would be so cool if she were to face her sexuality and admit the toxicity of her past choices.

Idk sounds like a *lmao libtard* kinda ending, but it seems to me like Sapkowski just wrote that relationship in there to be able to say he has a bisexual character in his books so I’m no more shallow than that kind of thinking.

Also also

This is kind of why I would’ve loved to see the Netflix version of this story. As much as I hate how much they changed the story, as a standalone piece of media, it isn’t that bad. At least it has more believable women. Were they to adapt the wlw relationship with Ciri and Mistle though, I’m sure they would’ve sanitised it, which isn’t the BEST adaptation but at least one that doesn’t make me want to die

[charmercharm3r]

Stray Kids as Ouran High School Host Club

OT8

Masterlist

wc: 2.4k

warnings: none

I hate that I love this show, no one look at me :o

-

CHAN AS KASANODA RITSU

Now, it was hard to choose another character to use since there’s only 7 main characters and 8 of skz, but the appearance Ritsu had in ep. 22 and 23 did a real number on me. Ritsu is the next leader in line for one of the most powerful yakuza clans, so he was raised to be independent from a young age. Sometimes he just wants to act his age, kinda like Channie he's five. They’re both just always wanting to be a better version of themselves, which is why Ritsu wanted to join the host club in the first place. He takes in “strays” and shelters them within his clan, which if that doesn’t convince you that Chan and Ritsu are one in the same idk what will. There was also the bit where Ritsu meets Haruhi for the first time and develops a little crush on her while he still assumes she’s a boy, then later walks in on her changing on accident and is still attracted to her. I remember Chan mentioning something about feeling like he was intimidating to approach, same as Ritsu who people assume to be scary but really they’re just big softies. They both just want some love! When everyone finds out how sweet they are, it’s hard not to fall for them. Ritsu doesn’t end up staying in the host club to lead his clan, but Chan would make a great host considering how flirty he is. I can imagine it going something like this…

Having some tea, “you like my dimples? Feel!” He takes your hand and leads it to his cheek, except he doesn’t let go even after you poke him. Instead, he guides you to cup his cheek and lean into it, smiling sweeter without looking away from your eyes. “Your touch is so gentle, isn’t this nice?” The skinship is what makes you keep coming back and requesting Chan every time.

MINHO AS MORINOZUKA TAKASHI

Okay, I was really struggling to choose who suited Minho the best (Kyoya was a strong competitor). But Mori just made so much sense the more I thought about it. They’re both seen as the silent types, brooding and mysterious– which is all true. Though, they’re both the kind of people you have to get to know slowly and sort of sneakily, if they find out you’re trying to truly understand them, they’ll run away! But not because they’re unsure, more like they’re afraid of voicing their real emotions out of fear you won’t want to stay after they reveal more of themselves. They’re both observant and let people come to them. Mori and Minho are wildcards when you finally peel away all their protective layers, one day they’ll barely speak two words and the next they won’t leave you alone. Mori is also extremely protective of those he loves, take Honey for example. Minho is the same, loving quietly but when you realize that’s what his small acts of service are, it’s like he’s carrying a permanent banner above his head written in bold letters saying, “I care about you! (maybe too much…)” You’ll never doubt their feelings.

“Oh, you have something right–” he reaches across the table and thumbs across your lips, wiping away some stray frosting, “here.” You watch with your mouth slightly dropped as he brings the same thumb to his mouth and licks the frosting away. You’re a blushing mess while it seems Minho hadn’t given it a second thought. Except, he was jumping up and down on the inside, afterall, he isn’t touchy with everyone and you happen to be his favorite customer. Something about how you bring treats for his cats ever since he briefly mentioned them a while back.

CHANGBIN AS HITACHIIN KAORU

As we all know, Changbin is nothing short of a gentleman. But he is also very playful and loud. When it’s needed, Changbin can be super serious or not have a single care in the world. Kaoru is the younger of the Hitachiin twins but is clearly the more mature one (i.e. the Hikaru-crushing-on-Haruhi arch). When the Hitachiin twins are together, they’re absolute menaces that can only be calmed either by Haruhi or someone even more annoying Tamaki. Changbin has voiced that he has very big feelings, but proves that he can control them. He isn’t afraid of those feelings and utilizes them in his creative process. Much like Kaoru, Changbin doesn’t let his emotions blind him side eyeing hikaru x haruhi again. Even though both twins have romantic feelings for Haruhi, Kaoru doesn’t act on them much out of love and respect for his brother. Changbin as Kaoru just makes so much sense to me, even though I really did consider putting Mori just for the sake of muscles and Mori’s 6’4 ass. Changbin doesn’t seem to need very many friends, but the ones he does have he knows are some incredibly good ones. He sees the good in people and will do anything for them if they can see the good in him as well.

On a walk with him and you come across a large mud puddle, “oh, let me carry you! Can’t have your pretty shoes getting dirty.” He lifts you easily and steps around the puddle as carefully as he could. Changbin doesn’t stop walking, escorting you all the way back with you in his arms. “You’re so cute, I wouldn’t mind holding you like this whenever you wanted. I mean, as long as you wouldn’t mind having lunch with me when we’re done.”

HYUNJIN AS SUOH TAMAKI

They’re both princes, what can I say? I have no self restraint. Tamaki is dramatic in every sense of the word and lies more on the irrationally emotional side, especially with Haruhi. Though, that is because Tamaki is also another one with big, big feelings and he has trouble managing them sometimes. Sort of the same with Hyunjin, they’ve both found outlets for their big emotions. Hyunjin has his art and dance, to which he pours his soul into. When required of them, both Tamaki and Hyunjin leave no room for error. The happiness of others is what both of them thrive off of. They try to stay optimistic and see the beauty in everyone, which is only a small portion of what makes them attract attention like moths to a flame. Both of them can lean a bit on the obsessive when it comes to the things they want to excel at or when they want someone’s attention. Tamaki has a few hidden talents, such as playing the piano. With Hyunjin, it’s his art. It stuns everyone upon finding out they’re much deeper than just a pretty face, only making you love them even more. Tamaki’s attachment to Haruhi stems from the fact that she didn’t just see his looks or money, but rather he himself. Tamaki can be painfully oblivious at times and needs it to be right in front of his face in order to understand, but that’s okay because like Hyunjin, once he gets it, he really gets it. 

Hyunjin has his art supplies the next time you’re scheduled to meet. “I want to draw you, if that’s okay. I’ve wanted to for a while, actually.” You don’t mind the silence as he concentrates on his sketchbook, looking up at you every few moments with a particularly tightly wound-up expression that indicates how hard he’s focusing. He doesn’t take long, not wanting you to get bored. But when you tell him you don’t mind, Hyunjin lets the biggest smile spread across his lips. “How did you know quality time is one of my love languages?” The following meeting, he gifts you the drawing which is now painted with a beautiful assortment of water colors.

JISUNG AS HITACHIIN HIKARU

Jisung feels things very, very deeply– which isn’t a secret, just look at this man’s extensive discography. Like Hikaru, they’re playful and like to have a good time, always wanting to make people smile. But also, Hikaru has immense trouble voicing his feelings in a way that makes sense, usually coming out as a burst of pent up anger because he can’t articulate it the way he wants. Hikaru and Kaoru are usually up to no good, which is why Jisung and Changbin as the twins makes perfect sense– the Hitachiin twins aren’t pockets of sunshine together like Jisung and Felix, but rather raging balls of chaos that leaves not a lot, but just enough damage to make you weary and side eye them from across the room. Jisung is also very loyal, though introverted. Hikaru is the same way, unless approached first, you won’t catch him looking your way. Hikaru is deeply bonded to all the other hosts in different ways, like Jisung is to his members. They’re both silly and smiley and love a good laugh, but they need that extra reassurance that what they feel is valid, no matter how big or small.

“You loop it, then make some bunny ears–” “I know how to tie my shoes, Jisung,” you giggle, patting his hair as he looks up from his kneeling position in front of you. “If you knew, I wouldn’t be down here doing it for you, would I?” He laughs back, resuming his mission of teaching you to lace up your shoes. When he finishes, Jisung stands tall before you and pets the top of your head the same way you did to him. You thank him and he smiles big and bright, “can’t have you falling for anyone but me, right?”

FELIX AS MITSUKUNI "HONEY" HANINOZUKA

Everyone knew this was coming, c’mon now. They’re both cute, love sweets, and both martial artists. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the creator based Honey off of Felix because they’re one in the same. Honey’s personality is big, there’s a lot of sides to him you wouldn’t see because he doesn’t like anyone viewing him as anything but happy, much like Felix, they don't want anyone to worry about them. Despite their child-like natures, Felix and Honey are very observative and can read people rather well. They hate seeing their friends upset and go to great lengths to cheer them up, even if only a little. Do I dare mention their attachment to plushies? Usa-chan and Dwaekki would be besties, not to mention they’re both pink bunnies. Honey is someone who just seems like he needs to be protected, queue Mori. Felix is always being babied by the members, even if he doesn’t do the same back to them. Honey explains that Tamaki and the host club is the reason he’s able to be himself, much like Felix and his members. Their endless support encourages Felix to be nothing but himself, everyone is head over heels for him and can’t do anything but take care of him.

“We should have some cake! This one tastes really good with the tea,” Felix all but shoves his own cup of tea towards you and finds the best looking slice. He only grabs one fork, insisting on feeding you. As you chew, his eyes are staring at you widely, awaiting your reaction. You tell him it’s delicious and that he’s right, the tea and cake are a great combination. Felix gently rubs the underside of your chin like a cat and feeds you another piece, “I knew you’d like it. It’s sweet, like you!”

SEUNGMIN AS OOTORI KYOYA

Do I even need to explain this one? Kyoya is the cold, detached type of host but everyone knows it’s just a front in order to avoid emotional confrontation. Seungmin is blunt and straightforward, but like Kyoya, it’s charming. Never rude, but rather classy in the way they approach topics. Kyoya is logical, never forgetting to remind the hosts of their duties while also accomplishing his own. Seungmin is like Kyoya in the sense that their first priority is honing their abilities and applying them wherever needed. Kyoya is also the single holder of the brain cell in his and Tamaki’s friendship, Tamaki idolizes him for him ability to stay cool in the most stressful of situations. Much like Seungmin’s relationship with Hyunjin, Seungmin just breathes and Hyunjin is on the floor laughing (who can blame him, mans is a comedian).

You asked Seungmin to help you with your math homework, which was a mistake. It had only been forty five minutes and you were already regretting letting homework take up your time with him. He’d been doing his best to help you, but you just weren’t getting it. “C’mon, I know you know this. You’ve got such a big brain in that pretty head of yours, you just gotta use it.” Backhanded, but nevertheless a rare compliment that made you blush and put the homework aside all together.

JEONGIN AS FUJIOKA HARUHI

Okay listen, lisTEN, LISTEN! Jeongin is just the main character, alright? The world does in fact revolve around him. To the host club, Haruhi is their favorite girl, even if she doesn’t act like the ones they’re used to. But that only makes them love her even more. Jeongin doesn’t necessarily care about others opinions, he just needs to exist and all the members fawn over him. Leave it to Jeongin to do the bare minimum and have every single one of them giggling and kicking their feet. With Haruhi, she has the mannerisms of a warmer Kyoya. As a host, she isn’t cold but she isn’t overbearing. Jeongin is the same, he gives just enough to make you want more. He understands both the male and female gaze, making Jeongin just that more attractive. He’s the youngest, but has the mindset that could easily be mistaken as older because he has such high expectations for himself. Jeongin and Haruhi both expect greatness from themselves, Haruhi in her studies and Jeongin with his singing. Depending on who they’re interacting with, Jeongin and Haruhi’s personalities may shift a little. When he’s with Seungmin, Jisung, or Felix, Jeongin has someone to tease and bicker with since they’re closer in age. The older members minus Chan sometimes tend to let him act younger and enjoy the small bit of babying. Jeongin is the epitome of main character.

Spending time outdoors during the spring was a necessity, asking Jeongin to accompany you for a stroll through the gardens. Walking shoulder to shoulder, he loved talking about the latest fashion trends from all over the world. “Windbreakers will be making a comeback, I’m telling you!” The breeze picked up and made you shiver. “Told you you would get cold. Here,” Jeongin began taking off his cardigan, “keep it for the weekend. Maybe when you give it back, it’ll smell like you when I get to wear it again.”

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A/N: let’s all ignore how terrible this show actually is and just look at it extreeeemely surface level🫣