#wasn't sure which of them i wanted to be more

[grvait]

old art again!! this time a rough animation of sawyer and yarnaby 😎 (looks better if u click to view 😭)

im working on a short ppt animation rn. im thinking i should post it to my youtube channel, though im not sure if people here would see it. i think i can link videos on here?? idk

okay I'm gonna talk abt more chapter 4 stuff.. this time about prototype's previous identity.. ch4 spoilers and also a theory below..

hiding the solo yarnaby under here LOL

people theorized 1006 was elliot, which was recently disproven in the chapter 4 tape where poppy refers to elliot as her dad and wishes he were there. in the same tape she addresses prototype as a completely different person. also recall that elliot died in the 90s, meanwhile prototype met theo in 1989. so yeah, they aren't the same person

I've also seen people say rich is prototype, which cannot be true either. in a ch4 tape he speaks to one of the boys who eventually got turned into doey. the kid mentions his coworkers joking about him going missing. before the bbi, it would not make sense for this to be a common rumor at the company, which means this tape had to happen after harley was hired in 1990; at a time when the company would have a reason to silence people

prototype existed in 1989 at the minimum, but considering he says "it's always been about you and me" to poppy, he's likely the prototype of HER. she's elliots daughter, she died in the 60s, meaning prototype was probably created around that time as well.

this means that rich can't be the prototype because he was human long after prototype was made

if you want my take on who prototype truly is, i'd say his identity doesn't necessarily matter. i don't mean to say his origins aren't important, just that his name and specific role in the past probably doesn't mean anything in the long run. i've never believed he was elliot or rich, and maybe in the future i'll be proven wrong but for now i'll tell you the theory i've had since june of last year

elliot's daughter dies in the 60s. he divorced his wife in 1930, so his daughter is probably in her 30s when she dies. she gets sick or injured, maybe she's actively dying or already dead by the time elliot begins his research. he looks for ways to bring her back, but it doesn't work on the rats (as he mentioned a note in the 2nd chapter)

so what does he do? he tries it on something bigger as he said he would: a human. of course he's not going to try this experimental method on his own daughter, even if she's already dead, so he finds someone else to use it on. we know that elliot wasn't evil or anything, so it's unlikely he killed anybody to use for the experiment. considering the orphanage isn't open yet (it opened in the 70s, not the 60s), prototype probably wasn't an orphan child either. if i run with my simple version of the theory, elliot may have dug up a body in a graveyard and used that. maybe a fresh one, who knows. he tried it, it worked, then he revived his daughter with the same method.

this is likely what harley wanted to know about in the chapter 3 tape (the "i learn something new about you every day" one), and also what prototype is asking harley to figure out in the ch4 tape they're both in. in that case, sawyer never actually figured out how to revive people with the poppy substance. sure, he can transfer people into the toys, but he can't bring anybody back to life

more reason to believe prototype and poppy are of the same "batch" is because it seems they are the only two who don't need food. it's outright stated about him in the ch1 trailer, and insinuated with her saying the "toys will starve otherwise" when she's talking about how nasty them eating humans is. she refers to them, not herself. her and prototype are probably the only 2 who were ever brought back from the dead, which circles back around to his monologue and gives meaning to the "it's always been about you and me, poppy. what we are". when i heard him say that i felt like my theory was lowk confirmed 😭😭

no guarantee this is right, but it's been my guess for a long time

[sexually-attracted-to-pans]

My drama so far is so much more lame. I'm about halfway through my Freshman year so you have a timeline for this.

Theater: So this couple that's in sophomore year, broke up after three years together. They were cast together as the main couple in our play Puffs this year, and on the night of the second show they had an argument. Now I'm a tech person so I didn't see anything go down but apparently this happened again the next day, the day of our final show. And that night at the cast party, one of the other actors was flirting to the girl from this relationship while she flirt back and that's how everyone found out they broke up. About 90% sure they got together. But anyway the guy was devastated no one saw or heard from him for weeks, we were all getting really worried and then he just showed back up one day and hooked up with one of the senior guys(yes he's bi its high school theater none of us are straight), and we found out he was quitting theater the same day.

(Bonus: I wrote fanfiction about 2 unrelated characters from the play and it was shared around the entire cast before a senior friend of mine read it out load in dramatic reading for one of the actors who played one of the characters that I wrote about. The fanfiction I wrote about to sad gay Hogwarts kids and the life of one of them after the other dies in the battle of Hogwarts. traumatized him. I feel sorry for the man but we have talked and luckily he only holds the grudge against the friends that read it to him, who later wrote smut fanfic about the characters on Wattpad(mine was ao3)).

BEN(before I start this one I want to say I did date him for a month in middle school but I hate him for being a manipulative gaslighting bitch): SO started with small lies last year about being extremely good at a card game he played called Battle Spirits, none of us though anything of it as it was just him being cocky and pretending to be cool.

Then this year, supposedly has 9 grandparents die in the same 2 weeks, is still going to school and claims he cared but never brings it up unless we are talking about something he doesn't know about. Then claims his mom got pregnant with his what 5th sibling, a little girl. We know he doesn't have a mom that he's in contact with as he was adopted and his father is gay(my friends dad is friends with Ben's dad that's how we found out). Then less then 5 months after he made up lies about her whole pregnancy he claims his "little sister" dies of a non-existent heart disease. Still going to school and doesn't even bother pretending to act sad. Claims to win a world wide contest for the card game in Japan, we don't even have proof of him going to Japan over the summer.

We are getting tired and kick him out of the group. You want to know how he tried to convince us to let him back in? Claim he got a girl(from our school who we know) pregnant. Only took a month for him to try and gaslight the school into believing that abortion wasn't a medical procedure which you need parental consent for so that he could lie and say they never told their parents.

He also tried to claim he had the rarest blood type in the world when our school did a blood drive. He was referring to Rh-null also called Golden Blood. "Rh-null aka “Golden Blood” is the rarest blood type in the world with fewer than 50 (43 to be exact) known cases ever reported. While there are only eight main/common blood types, there are an additional 61 possible antigens in the Rh system, which means that the eight main blood types can be subdivided into millions of different blood types. Rh-null occurs when a person’s blood lacks all of the 61 possible antigens." (I am quoting this from an article about blood types: https://rarest.org/people/blood-types).

Yep this man has done so many other small things like claiming to have 1000s of dollars in custom made costumes while showing us ai photos of them, and thousands of dollars in cards for the card game(which might be the only true one as his dad owns a card and game shop).

Now that I wrote that whole thing maybe my life is much worse then I thought...

where do TV shows get this idea that high school is constant drama, nothing even fucking happened to me in high school

[writingangst]

Friendly Fire

Summary: The aftermath of Simon Riley's paranoia has left the reader with an inner battle of holding onto her anger or making room for forgiveness.

Simon Ghost Riley x Reader

Warnings: mentions of violence and torture, angst, cursing, hurt/no comfort.

Words: 1.3K

Part One

I wasn't planning on posting on this account except for that one off, but since a lot of people liked it, I'm down to give you guys more angst. So, enjoy. (Also, if you want to request anything be sure to message me.)

Whispers and lingering stares were a part of your day to day since you and Ghost got back from the extraction mission. The barracks were filled with theories, the team making assumptions to make sense of the bruising you wore like a collar around your neck. As if you were some damn dog, beaten into submission. You hated every second of being on display and serving as a symbol of what they thought had to have been insubordination.

She must’ve mouthed off to the Lieutenant.

Poor girl was probably put in her place. 

Because Simon Ghost Riley couldn’t do any wrong. Surely the woman must’ve misbehaved to deserve being put in a life-or-death situation by someone she trusted. You couldn’t calm the anger that stubbornly sat in your chest. You wanted to scream. You wanted him in the same position you were in. You wanted the fucking bruising to go away so everyone could stop talking about it, reducing you into a fucking victim.

You were a Goddamn soldier.

Ghost on the other hand had been quiet. Even more so than usual. You would catch his eyes roaming the patches of dark purple and blue he painted on your skin from time to time, turning away when he noticed you looking back at him, your expression stoic. You could sense the tension. The regret. The nasty gut feeling assumed to be guilt swallowing him whole. 

He’d never felt that way before.

It wasn’t a part of your lives. You got jobs done that would make any normal person weep for years. Trauma so consuming, veteran suicide rates were in increase and violent crimes committed by them going up as well. You had no room for guilt or regret. You were machines. It was in the job description, under the fine print. There wasn’t an option to dwell on things, it was either keep pushing or people could die in your line of work. 

Yet Ghost was stuck on that feeling.

And it was becoming harder to ignore. You saw the way his fingers twitched when you flinched from any sudden movement. The quietness that overtook the space when you stepped into any room he was in, like everything suddenly became too heavy to bear. You wanted to laugh from the bitterness of it all. This was the same man that had threatened your life. And for once, it seemed like the monster that made him who he was couldn’t hide behind the skull mask.

You couldn't decide which one was worse though. The silence or the moments you caught him struggling with himself and what he did. But the worst part. The thing that kept you up at night, tossing and turning in a bed that felt more like a grave… Was that you had started feeling sorry for him. For the way his dark eyes would catch yours when you least expected it, as if they were silently begging for forgiveness you didn’t know if you could offer him.

Maybe that was the worst part. There being a chance to be able to forgive, but never forget. Missing his touch and dreading it all the same. The way he tainted something both of you needed. Severing a conection both physical and emotional. Needing him and hating him. It was the same fight within yourself and it made you angry, until you began yearning again. Your own personal hell, a cage he viciously hand crafted to fit you.

I hate you, Ghost. 

It was a mantra. Maybe soon you would start to believe it.

But as night fell on the fourth night, the repetition wouldn’t preserve your sanity. The common area was eerily quiet, devoid of any operative in your wing. The faint hum of the overhead light was the only sound as you sat on the worn couch, eyes scanning the documents in your hands. They were sending you out again. A covert operation. Then, the bitter taste of reality hit you again as you saw his name typed out on the call sheet under personnel.

I hate you.

“I’m sorry.”

You jumped instictivley at the sound of his voice, your head jerking in his direction, slightly to your left, standing within the door frame. His words were clumsy, raw, but there was hesitation in his tone. Like he was scared. Scared of what he did, scared of what you thought of him now. The silence between you both stretched like a taut wire, brittle and poised to snap.

For a fleeting moment, something in your chest softened—a crack in the icy wall you’d built between the both of you. But it was brief. So brief. The softness evaporated almost as quickly as it came, replaced by the old familiar coil of tension in your gut. You straightened, pulling your walls back up.

“So, he speaks.”

“I didn’t want to push you,” he said, his gruff accent thick with something unspoken—uncertainty, regret? You weren’t sure anymore.

You laughed bitterly. “But choking me out is fine.”

Your words were sharp and unforgiving. A hard accusation that was meant to hit him in the chest. The tension was unbearable now, like the moment might snap any second. He didn’t move though, didn’t back down. But you saw it—his jaw tightening, his fists clenching at his sides, the way his eyes flickered to the ground. The frustration was there, the guilt too, but he couldn’t seem to find the words. He was struggling, you could see it.

He hesitated. “I fucked up.”

Raw. Unpolished.

But you weren’t so forgiving.

“You think?” You spat back, your voice filled with sarcasm, every word laced with the bitterness you couldn’t shake.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to excuse any of it. I was a paranoid motherfucker and I hurt you. I’m sorry.”

His words landed heavier than you expected. You almost wanted to let you anger slip. To take the edge off, to relax into the moment, maybe even believe him. But you couldn’t. You’d betrayed yourself by awarding him with your forgiveness. Your nostrils flared at the turmoil you felt in your chest, your fingers digging into the documents in your hands with a fierce grip as you attempted to counterfocus the tightness.

“I don’t know what to do to make this right,” he confessed, knowing his words weren’t right. And they never could be. They didn’t carry the weight of what he had done. “I rarely ever apologize. If ever.”

You scoffed, shaking your head. “So that should make me feel special?”

“Hardly,” he stated, wincing at your sarcasm, the impact of your words sinking into him like a punch. “I’ve made an even bigger mess of this. I can’t fix it. I know I can’t. I just—” 

—miss you.

You could almost hear it in the rawness of his voice, in the way he faltered. The silence was heavier with the words he didn’t dare utter hanging there. And that just made the anger swell in your chest. The more he held back, the more it stung, the more it fed your fury. The air felt thick around you. Heavy. Your breath shallow, your chest tight, and every beat of your pulse was a reminder of everything he had done. Everything he hadn’t done.

“Yeah?” You locked your gaze with him, the intensity in your eyes unflinching, your voice colder than you thought you could manage. It was steady, but laced with an undeniable edge. “Well, I fucking hate you, Ghost.”

The words slipped out, more venomous than you intended, but they felt good to say. They felt earned. You could see it in his eyes—the flicker of hurt, the way his shoulders slumped a fraction, as though your words physically struck him. But he didn’t say anything. Didn’t try to defend himself. He couldn’t. Not anymore.

The silence stretched, thick and unbearable, but it was better than what had come before. At least now there was nothing left to say.

Nothing left to break.

[thesportsprgirl]

Truly, F1 social media (including Reddit) was an absolutely miserable place to be a Lando fan in 2024. Anything positive you said about him, overrun with nastiness, whether on Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, even podcast and YouTube comments just went way over the line. People sought out his fans' tweets and TikToks just to be absolutely vile in response to them just being fans. He was driven off of Twitter and massively reduced content on IG, YouTube and TikTok. And even Threads, which he seemed to have fun with for a bit, took a turn when people outside of his fanbase realized he was using it and decided to go pile on him there too.

I hear a lot of "oh it's bad for every driver" and sure, it is, but some drivers get it from one fan base or maybe two. Lando and his fans were getting it from a good six, minimum. And it wasn't just the hate directed at him, which was bad enough. It then went to his family and friends, and even just nonstop attacks on random fans who just wanted to post positive stuff about him and interact with other fans. Even that was ruined and as someone whose masters thesis was on the challenges for athletes in balancing reputation, promotion, brand, and privacy concerns (all specific to social media), I wish I'd been collecting references earlier because I would have a LOT to say from a more academic/professional perspective on how certain things were probably a bit more coordinated than they seemed.

[whateversawesome]

Spy x Family Ch. 111: Anya's Mama

So many things for such a little chapter, don't you think?

We saw baby Anya and we finally caught a glimpse of Anya's biological mother.

Something to notice is that they're both wearing hospital gowns, which makes me think they were in the lab and, because of that, we can solidify the theory about Anya being born there. It could be that her mom was pregnant when captured or that they experimented on her and she got pregnant while in that lab. A secret third option is that Anya's mom actually volunteered for the experiments (maybe she was a scientist herself or a family member coaxed her into doing it), although I find this unlikely due to her comment about the butterfly. Either way, I have a feeling we won't know for a very long time.

Mindreading or no mindreading?

Endo chose not to let us know about that explicitly. However, look at this panel:

I don't think Anya's mom is talking here. I think she's thinking this. Because of that, I do suspect Anya can read her mama's mind. She doesn't fully understand it but those words are inside her memory.

However, as you can see in the panel below, we don't see her classic mindreading sparkles. So, it' could also be that she saw her mom getting sad or nostalgic and she wanted to hug her. Kids are very perceptive of their parent's emotions.

If you ask me, I think she was born with that ability. Either her mom was also a telepath who was being studied during her pregnancy or she was experimented while pregnant and gained and passed her abilities to her daughter.

All this makes me consider that maybe Anya wasn't experimented on like many of us believed for a long time. Maybe those scientists were just studying her/observing her in order to understand and try to replicate her abilities. I'm really hoping Endo will go this route, it's less cruel. In any case, keeping someone so young as a case study is still wrong and I don't think Twilight and Yor will like this.

Anya's Mama

I'm talking about Yor, of course.

First of all, I think Endo summed up what motherhood is about in this panel:

It's not exactly that a mom can read their kid's mind, but it's something close. As a mom you get to know your child inside and out. When you take care of them, see them grow and love them with all your heart, you simply learn to "read every part of them."

That's how we know that Yor loves Anya and that she is her mom.

I don't know what happened to Anya's biological mom; she could be gone or still be alive. I'm sure we'll find out eventually. However, no matter what happens, I think Anya will always have that unconditional love from Yor.

There's a prevalent theme about motherhood in sxf: a mother as a safe place. Yor has mentioned it several times; she knows her job is to protect Anya and Anya feels safe when her mama is around (even Twilight notices this.)

I think the bond between them will get stronger as the story moves forward. Come on, it's pretty obvious Anya is Yor's baby, she's already head over heels and she decided she wanted to be a good mother since day 1. Also, a big theme in the story are bonds that are forged, and chosen family. In the story, blood ties sometimes are complicated (look at the Desmonds, for example.)

I'm not fluent in Japanese, but I am aware that Anya calls Yor and Twilight, Haha and Chichi, which is an English equivalent of "my mom and my dad", instead of just "mom and dad." In case you are wondering, Anya did call her biological mom, the right way: "mama."

At some point in the story, I think we will see Anya call Yor and Twilight, mama and papa the right way. I suspect this will be the moment when they will realize they're no longer a pretend family, but a real one. And it'll be simply beautiful 💖

A Few Questions

Whenever we learn something about one of the Forger's past, we are usually left with even more questions like:

Where's Anya's mom now?: I think either she's still a prisoner somewhere or she's dead. And if she's alive, does she know Anya lives?

How did Anya escape? She was so little! She must have had help from someone.

Who is Anya's dad? Maybe a scientist? A prisoner of war? Or was artificial insemination possible back then?

Is Anya her real name? I'm wondering if her mom called her differently. Here are some theories about her name. I suspect this will be important and I wouldn't be surprised if Anya is not her real name, almost as a foil of Twilight's name and story.

And also, there's a gap between that scene/memory and when Anya gets adopted by Twilight. We know thanks to Franky that in the year before Twilight adopted her, she was previously adopted by four different families, however, there's still a chunk of time missing.

I estimate she's probably 2 years old in that memory, she was 4 when she was adopted by those other families, and 5 years old when Twilight became her dad. That leaves 2 full years blank. Where was she during that time?

[transformers-spike]

tfp knock out getting fascinated by human anatomy in of itself. this is me projecting here, but finding out about intersex people and getting interested in the anatomy of it all. pop in tfp soundwave and shockwave, too. what do you mean the dna and chromosomes of humans are complex?

reader having congenital adrenal hyperplasia and being really self conscious of it. thinking they look weird in their vagina for not being "normal". how their uterus and inner testicles hurt on a period.

i can imagine the three get interested and want to learn more. they do the research and ask questions since the reader educates them that most things are outdated or are very harmful stereotypes. knock out is frustrated that the porn he sees with humans who have similar interfacing equipment like cybertronians are fetishizing the difficulties.

so, as his apology towards reader, he is abusing the fact that the reader's "anterior node" is always puffy and big. watching as they squirm and cry from overstimulation from the simple motions.

soundwave is in love with how hairy reader's bush is and seeing that happy trail. he possibly purrs with his engines to comfort reader, letting them know that he adores them. all of them. they may think they are weird or a freak, but he does not. they are perfect.

shockwave... experiments. he is able to take what sciences he has learned and asks questions how they affect interfacing. reader gets to explain that certain areas are a lot more sensitive like their ass. he enjoys watching them grab at his seams and their body trembling overload after overload.

Oh gosh I've been trying to figure out what to add to this - it's really lovely. The best I can come up with is some extra insight regarding Knock Out and his relationship to pornography (yes you read that right). I assume there wasn't much of it on Cybertron to begin with (at least compared to Earth), and the war made this material nearly impossible to get ahold of. Once KO finds out there is better content than drive in theater flicks, he's obviously going to scour the internet. Yeah, while he's going to be ecstatic at finally seeing someone with a familiar interface array, a lot of it goes down the drain once he figures out fetishism is a thing. Sure, you could find content based on frame types back on Cybertron, but no one was being sexualized just by existing. The only fetishization he truly cared about was interface biolight mods (which he partook bc he loved the look - it made him feel hotter). But hearing that a society so based on sexual content is fetishizing an entire group of people that want nothing to do with this type of media in the first place is???? Well it kind of fucks him up. Yes, he will absolutely abuse any kind of info you give him about your genitals - once he figures out how to get you off, he's going to rub your anterior nodes together until you both overload. Shockwave should not be trusted because he's going to test out your body's limits in the name of science or some shit - making you cum so much until you forget your own name. Soundwave is so sweet oh god - out of all of these freaks at least he's normal about it and makes you feel okay.

[abbysimsfun]

Sims In Bloom: Generation 2 Pt. 136 (Twists and Turns)

The next morning, Heather woke to a fresh blanket of spring snow (must be Canada 😂). She was hit with another bout of nausea, and stunned by news that one of her vet techs, Rico Garrison, had been unceremoniously culled killed in a shock drowning accident in Dachshund's Creek. This left her down a tech and about to commit to a months-long rebuild of Buttercup Pet Clinic.

Despite the unseasonably snowy holiday and feeling less than stellar, Heather had to go to work to cover Rico's appointments. She felt horrible for her best tech, Kaori Hayashi, who had been dating Rico since late winter. They were even expecting a child, which meant Heather would soon lose Kaori to maternity leave, too. At least Thaddeus, her most recent hire, could help pick up the slack, but this was undoubtedly a tragic setback.

Despite the unseasonal snowfall, J Huntington came in with his dog, Archimedes, thanking Heather for her advice over working with Landgraab Corp. "I signed the contract to give them the company. They'll take care of straightening out George's books, and for the first time, my guys will get healthcare, so everyone's on board with the change."

Heather forced a smile. She didn't care much for things that would please Nancy Landgraab, but she knew a strong presence at the docks was important after everything they'd been through over winter. "I'm happy for you," she said, and it wasn't a total lie.

She returned home in mid-afternoon, finding her younger sister back from Henford in the living room. "Hey Hazel! How was Easter dinner?"

"It was great." She fiddled with the hem of her jacket as she sat on the sofa. "I'm sorry I got upset with you while you were away. I was freaking out about all the marriage talk, but I shouldn't have put that on you."

"It's okay," said Heather. "I'm not upset, but I couldn't tell you what you should do. What if I had said no?" (That option won the poll, by the way!)

"I would've been more upset," she admitted. "I'm not ready to marry again right now, but I want to be with her for a long time."

"Did you talk to Suri?"

"I did. She said she's been feeling like she needs to hold on to the important people in her life since she lost her aunt so suddenly, and I totally understand what she's going through. But it's too soon to get married. We want to live together first - just the two of us."

"Here in Brindleton Bay?"

Hazel nodded. "I like working with Alex Goth, and the deal's almost done for Suri to buy the Salty Paw. She said when the owners found out her grandmother was Clara Bjergsen they did their own renovations and upped the price, but once a deal goes through, I'll move in with her in the small apartment over the bar."

"There's an apartment over the bar?"

"Not much of one, but we're going to try to turn it into something nice."

"I'm happy for you, Hazel. And I'm happy you handled this so maturely with Suri."

"You didn't think I could, did you."

"I hoped you would."

"Are you sure you guys won't miss me when I'm gone?"

"The Salty Paw's only about fifteen blocks away."

They laughed together and Hazel smiled. "Thanks for everything, sis. You're the best."

Heather still wasn't feeling great as she tried to get a few chores done around the house. She'd started to feel like she was fighting off an infection; it was time to see a doctor, so she left Conrad at home with Lavender to visit her gynecologist.

But she came home in a daze, stunned by the doctor's diagnosis. She found Conrad and Lavender upstairs, chatting as Lavender tried to bargain for another story. "When you're five, we'll talk about a later bedtime, but until then, that's now. Time to get into your pajamas." Conrad's attention turned when Heather shut the bedroom door behind her. "Hey! What did the doctor say?"

Heather sighed. "Well, I have a UTI. But that, the nausea, the fatigue...they have nothing to do with the spider bite."

Conrad's face fell. "What's up? You're okay...right?"

"I'm pregnant. About seven weeks."

She smiled as his expression flipped from concern to ecstatic joy. "Heather, that's incredible!"

Lavender glanced at her parents with confusion. "What's pregnen?"

"It means you're going to have a baby brother or sister."

Lavender still wasn't sure what they meant. "I have a brother awreddy. Can it be sister?"

"We don't choose, sweet girl."

"I hope it's a sister!"

After tucking Lavender into bed they settled onto the sofa for a comfortable night in, but their movie was interrupted when Heather's phone rang. She checked the call display before she connected the call. "Malcolm? What's going on? Is Ash there?"

The line was quiet for a long time. Too long, and Heather felt the phone start to shake in her hand. Finally, she heard Malcolm take a breath.

"Heather...I...It's...Ash is missing. H-he's been kidnapped." ->

<- Previous Chapter | Gen 2 Start | Gen 2.1 Summary

Gen 1 Start | Gen 1 Summary

NOTE: Sorry I buried the baby news, but I didn't have enough content to make a whole other post and I set myself another arbitrary deadline to get to a certain point in the story by a certain date. And Heather was supposed to learn she was pregnant later than this, but the mod-generated UTI sent her to the gynecologist and she/we found out earlier than planned. No offense to this very wanted baby but ASH IS MISSING!!

NOTE 2: @purplesimmer455 the way I couldn't react with the excitement I wanted to your meme share on Sunday knowing I paid homage to it in this very post ("What's pregnen?") and didn't want to give the truth away yet! 😅 Shout out to @matchalovertrait who also guessed this, and @changingplumbob who I think was thinking it when she asked why Ash's room had bunk beds. I made up a small fib about repurposing the tiny nursery space, but actually I still need it for the new nooboo!

NOTE 3: On one hand, it's very sad that Rico was culled when he's expecting a baby. On another hand, this is a setback on my likely-fruitless search for a five-star rating because now I have to train up a new tech! Tragic!!

WCIF Phone Poses: Unexpected Phone Call by @starrysimsie and Shocked News by @simmireen. I used @nataliaauditore-blog's iPhone 11 accessory in both poses.

[anghraine]

Okay, so this is the Tarsus IV post I vaguely threatened alluded to a few days ago. I wrote most of it before last night's grumbling about movie Kirk, btw, so it's not a result of that; I was already thinking about what we know about Kirk and the Tarsus IV massacre from TOS, and what speculations and headcanons make the most sense to me in the context of TOS. I just waited until today to post it because I wasn't quite done yesterday.

Anyway, I was going over the finer details of "The Conscience of the King" to figure this out, and ended up with a ton of thoughts about the Tarsus IV backstory. So here are my (many) personal takeaways:

Firstly, there's a vague reference to some kind of local coup or uprising that put Governor Kodos in power, I think shortly before the food supply crisis. We don't get any details about the uprising from TOS, though the next to last version of the episode's script did mention Kodos setting himself up as a messianic figure once the coup succeeded. In any case, his power grab was certainly reinforced by the starvation crisis, as revealed by Spock's research:

"there were over eight thousand colonists and virtually no food. And that was when Governor Kodos seized full power and declared emergency martial law."

As far as we know in TOS, the crisis was set off by chance: an exotic fungus happened to destroy most of the colony's food supply, and it wasn't clear when relief would arrive. In fact, the Federation did send relief to the colony, per their usual practice, but it took them long enough to get there that the situation had become dire by then. Nearly all food was gone and the colonists were starving; the episode implies that some had even started committing suicide. Nevertheless, the Federation relief force arrived sooner than expected.

Kodos tries to argue in "The Conscience of the King" that the Federation's relief showing up so soon was just luck and he couldn't have guessed it would happen. But given what we know about the Federation as an institution, and given the urgent pressure the Federation puts on the Enterprise crew in multiple episodes to get food/supplies/medicine to some colony or another, it seems like there is a pretty competent, long-established Federation infrastructure for addressing crises like this. In reality, Kodos used the circumstances to justify something he already believed in and wanted to try implementing.

That thing was eugenics. This isn't ambiguous; the aired episode explicitly describes his atrocities as based on eugenics. The starvation of the colony gave Kodos the opportunity to put his theories into action.

He declared that half the colony would be executed, and the remaining food distributed among the other half. Moreover, the assignment of each colonist to either group was determined by Kodos's conception and judgment of genetic superiority. The genetically inferior half of the population, according to Kodos, was executed, and the genetically superior survivors (again, according to Kodos) were given all the food supplies. Kodos's exact words at the time to those slated to die included these lines:

"Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony."

Kirk says of Kodos's full speech to those chosen for death:

"I remember the words. I wrote them down. [...] Are you sure you didn't act this role out in front of a captive audience whom you blasted out of existence without mercy?"

In the episode, Spock condemns Kodos in similar terms as "without mercy" and "ruthless," and is clearly horrified by what he's discovered:

"Children watching their parents die. Whole families destroyed. Over four thousand people. They died quickly, without pain, but they died."

The means by which Kodos had thousands of civilians killed isn't stated in the episode. As we see in the above quote, though, it seems to have been done very rapidly.

In an earlier draft, there's mention of some kind of re-purposed anti-matter chamber as the mechanism, and Kodos deliberately "sparing" Kirk while making him watch as the chamber switch was flipped. In that version, Kirk seems to be personally targeted for some reason, where in the episode as it is, he's just one of several random eyewitnesses who survived. I personally prefer the episode's version, which I think better fits a narrative around a mass-scale atrocity.

Anyway, there's another take on the massacre where the thousands of civilians slated for execution were gunned down with phasers, but I find that more difficult to reconcile with Spock's description, which sounds more mechanized and efficient to me. I do think there's reason to believe phasers or some other form of advanced weaponry did get used in the course of events, but not in the executions—more on that later.

As I mentioned in my poll, Kirk is established in TOS as being only 33 during "The Conscience of the King," and thus was only 13 when he personally saw all this (the episode repeatedly insists the atrocity took place exactly twenty years earlier—I think the emphasis on this time gap is important). There is no explanation in TOS of why 13-year-old Kirk seems to be the only member of his family who was present for this—and certainly the only one of the Kirks to personally see Kodos—though earlier drafts do have various explanations that make sense.

For instance, there was an idea floating around the drafting process that Kirk might have been a young midshipman stationed on Tarsus IV during the massacre, not a child. His exact age in TOS was up in the air until the second season explicitly established his then-current age as 34. So that idea is not at all canon, but did internally make sense, since there'd be no reason for his relatives to be posted with him.

There's also a fairly late script in which Kirk's father was among those killed. I believe Kirk Sr was already envisioned as a Starfleet officer at that point, and had been assigned to a post on Tarsus IV some time earlier, which is how a boy born in the Midwest ended up living in a remote colony as a child. However, as I understand, the writers were forced to remove the reference to Kirk's father getting killed because higher-ups didn't want to nail down Kirk's history too much in S1, in case they later wanted to take his family in a different direction.

IIRC, TOS never did do anything with Kirk's parents and we're never even told in the show if they're currently alive or dead, much less told anything about their roles during the massacre. His brother Sam Kirk was envisioned as 10 years older than James (I think the new shows shrink this, but that's irrelevant to the TOS production process), so it also made sense that Sam wasn't there, since he'd have been in his 20s and early in his own career elsewhere. (Sam and his family are mentioned in both earlier and later S1 episodes, so "they hadn't invented him yet" isn't the reason for his absence.)

Beyond all that, another detail I find interesting is that Kodos's speech announcing the impending massacre is preserved in some kind of audio file that Kirk has access to on the Enterprise. Kirk gives "Karidian" a copy of the exact words of this speech and orders him to read it aloud, and has the computers run a vocal comparison between that reading and the original recording. The computer analysis strongly indicates that both speeches were delivered by the same person, but lacks 100% certainty—perhaps due to vocal changes over the last 20 years, perhaps to a difference in the quality of the recordings or some other reason.

However, we don't actually know who recorded the original speech; since so few survivors ever got near enough to even see or hear Kodos in person, maybe the recording was done by Kodos himself or one of his people, and recovered later by Starfleet. The speech only addresses the colonists slated for death, suggesting that the 4000 chosen for survival had already been separated out. But it's possible that it was one or more of the colonists themselves who managed to record the speech.

Only nine of the survivors ever personally set eyes on Kodos (this seems to again imply that those selected for survival were mainly not present during the speech). There's a preserved photograph of him from that era, but that's all, and one of the reasons he's able to evade discovery for so long is because of the vanishingly few people involved who had ever seen him—this is not only canon but a major plot point in "The Conscience of the King."

I read on the wiki that there's a book about the whole thing, and in that version, Kirk never actually saw Kodos and just found a picture in a database, which honestly I think is stupid as fuck and makes no sense in terms of the episode as written (though very typical of corporate franchises watering down the horror of some element of an original, less sanitized story in later byproducts). In "The Conscience of the King," though, Leighton, Kirk, and Riley are explicitly stated to be among the nine survivors who saw Kodos personally.

It's never explained why they were among this small group of eyewitnesses, especially considering that Kirk and Riley would have been children at the time and Leighton was quite young.

Another intriguing data point is the fact that half of Leighton's face is very heavily damaged, and it does seem strongly indicated that this happened during the massacre. We don't know why, though, or how old he even was at the time—he seems older than 33-year-old Kirk, but they're good friends and rough contemporaries, so not that far apart in age.

There's also some interesting phrasing in the episode:

"There were nine eyewitnesses who survived the massacre, who'd actually seen Kodos with their own eyes. Jim Kirk was one of them."

This description is also from Spock after his research dive, someone unlikely to be loose with his phrasing. The general assumption, I think, is that the nine eyewitnesses (who I'm going to call the Tarsus Nine for convenience) were among those chosen for survival for eugenics purposes. The reason such a small number of them had ever seen Kodos is, presumably, that most people who'd seen him were deliberately assigned to the genetically unworthy group and killed. The Tarsus Nine were just the tiny fraction who flew under the radar.

That was my original impression, and it is possible, but there were some things I found puzzling about that scenario. For one, if the Tarsus Nine were separated with the other survivors, why are they persistently presented as the only eyewitnesses? If Leighton was separated into the survivor group, why was his face so heavily damaged in all this? Did he try to fight? Would he have been spared from death if he did? And the episode is clear that Leighton, Kirk, and Riley all heard Kodos's speech and witnessed the massacre in person.

Leighton:

"I remember him. That voice. The bloody thing he did [...] Jim, Jim, I need your help. There were only eight or nine of us who actually saw Kodos. I was one, you were another."

Kirk:

"But I remember. [...] I remember the words. I wrote them down. [...] All I understand is that four thousand people were needlessly butchered. [...] I saw him once, twenty years ago. Men change. Memory changes."

Riley:

"He murdered my father, and my mother. I know that voice, that face, I know it. I saw it. He murdered them."

I had been considering possible explanations for the uniqueness of these nine people as the only direct eyewitnesses among some 4000 survivors + the fact that the three eyewitnesses we meet would have been so young at the time (and Spock talks specifically of children seeing their parents die) + Kirk saying he remembers hearing the speech and that he only ever saw Kodos that one time + the Tarsus Nine knowing that nobody left alive except themselves saw Kodos as governor + their very accurate estimates of how many eyewitnesses survived + Leighton's facial scars.

And then I tripped over an ancient post (on livejournal of all things—I was linked to a post unrelated to the massacre and then followed another link) that collected some of the relevant Tarsus IV quotes and offered a very simple and elegant solution.

What if the Tarsus Nine weren't assigned to the "genetically more valuable" group? What if Kirk, Riley, Leighton, and the other six were in fact considered genetically unworthy and assigned to the group slated for death? What if they're the only direct eyewitnesses because everyone else was either removed from the massacre (and never saw the speech) or killed, and that's why there are so few of them?

me: oh damn, I didn't think about that and ... whoa, I don't think the episode ever does say what group they were actually assigned to. It's possible. Holy shit.

So, here's an alternate possibility/headcanon:

4000-odd colonists including the Tarsus Nine were gathered without any knowledge of the intended massacre. They didn't know where the other colonists were or what was going on beyond starvation and martial law. None of them had ever personally seen their reclusive governor. They were just waiting with their families to find out what was going on. Kodos came out to speak to them, at last, and delivered his speech to those slated for death (hence Kirk saying in TOS that he only ever saw him once, 20 years earlier). The "survival" group didn't hear it and never saw him. But Kirk, Leighton, and Riley did—because they were supposed to die.

Kodos's description of 33-year-old Kirk is, uh, let's say intriguing in that context:

"Here you stand, the perfect symbol of our technical society. Mechanized, electronized, and not very human. You've done away with humanity, the striving of man to achieve greatness through his own resources."

Kodos's murderous daughter Lenore, similarly, says:

LENORE: Are you like that, Captain? All this power at your command, yet the decisions that you have to make— KIRK: Come from a very human source. LENORE: Are you, Captain? Human?

It's likely that these colonists and other residents didn't all go meekly to their entirely unexpected deaths. If we go with the concept of Kirk's father as a Starfleet officer serving on a post on the colony, some of these people were in Starfleet and might well have still had weaponry of some kind. They were just as hungry as the rest, but I suspect would have fought to the death against an undisguised atrocity. I think others also would have fought back against Kodos's people, despite being starved and much less well-armed (if armed at all).

In all probability, none of them expected to win, but hoped to buy time for others, especially their children, to escape (hence the conspicuous youth of the eyewitnesses). The resisting residents would have been massacred by Kodos's troops as he took control of the situation, even before thousands of more people were sent to their executions, but I imagine this resistance created enough havoc for nine children and young adults to escape with their lives (Leighton's face getting seared in the process—perhaps by a phaser set to kill that barely missed him).

Most of the literal children among the Tarsus Nine had seen their parents killed as Kodos's people took control, as had other children who didn't survive (hence Spock's description of children watching parents die and of the nine eyewitnesses directly surviving a massacre). The Tarsus Nine may have seen the other colonists forced into the execution mechanism, whatever it was, either during their escape or if any snuck out afterwards to see. Regardless, I headcanon that the Tarsus Nine found each other and hid out together (I'm assuming they ended up cooperating because they're so accurate about just how many of them there were and because I'm guessing literal children wouldn't have survived alone).

We don't know a whole lot about what was going on psychologically with them at the time. But something else I've been thinking about is the interesting ambiguity in Kirk's statement to Kodos about the original genocide speech. Kirk says, "I remember the words. I wrote them down," which seems a reference to Kirk writing the speech down during the episode to force Kodos to read it. However, something I find fascinating there (/Spock fistbump) is that Kirk's statement that he himself wrote down the speech follows so directly from "I remember the words."

I think the implication is that he wrote down the exact words of the speech from memory (indicating that Kodos's genocide announcement that Kirk heard at age 13 is still seared into his mind). Or possibly, the causality is reversed: he perfectly remembers Kodos's speech because he wrote it down at some point in the past (likely not long after surviving the massacre). The former seems a bit more probable to me, but either case would suggest quite a lot about how deeply this affected him.

But whatever the Tarsus Nine were up to, they lasted long enough for Starfleet to arrive and take charge of the situation. We don't know the details of how that happened from TOS, either, though the fact that Kodos got the hell out of Dodge and left a burned body to be misidentified as him suggests that it was obvious enough what Starfleet's arrival was going to mean well before any fighting began.

Afterwards, well ... some of the Tarsus Nine maintained ties, for sure. Kirk and Leighton seem to be trusting friends; they address each other by familiar nicknames, Kirk knows Leighton's wife, and he regards Leighton's deception as something of a personal betrayal. Kirk is a bit vague on Leighton's professional life and dismisses his suspicions at first, so I don't think they're super close, but it's a trusting and familiar relationship in general.

Meanwhile, others among them lost contact. Kirk clearly has no idea that the Lieutenant Riley he knows on the Enterprise was a little boy among the other eyewitnesses, which seems probable enough. Riley likely ended up with caretakers who wouldn't have been all that keen on him being reminded of the horrific trauma he'd experienced. Him ending up on the Enterprise by sheer chance is a hell of a coincidence, but that's not unusual for Star Trek, let's be real.

A minor point: I'm guessing Sam Kirk had a hell of a week as the information about what was happening on Tarsus IV leaked out. I'm guessing from the outside, there'd be the official alert of the food crisis -> the colony's communications going dark -> Starfleet arriving and discovering what had happened -> their updates as they searched for survivors and those responsible -> their reports of finding the 4000 chosen for survival and the Tarsus Nine.

Moving forwards chronologically, we don't know that much about the longer-term effects on the Tarsus Nine apart from Kirk, though Riley is clearly haunted to some extent. Thomas Leighton has a respectable career, though his wife says after his death:

"At least he has peace now. He never really had that before."

As for Kirk, I think the next "version" of Kirk we know anything about via TOS is him as a very young man at Starfleet Academy. This Kirk is repeatedly described as bookish and solemn. In "Shore Leave" (which follows very shortly after "The Conscience of the King," though it's far lighter), we get this exchange:

KIRK: I know the feeling very well. I had it at the Academy. An upperclassman there. One practical joke after another, and always on me. My own personal devil. A guy by the name of Finnegan. MCCOY: And you being the very serious young— KIRK: Serious? I'll make a confession, Bones. I was absolutely grim.

Yeah, I wonder why.

Even as late as his time as an instructor at the Academy, when he was Lieutenant Kirk, he seems pretty recognizably "that" Kirk. He taught a notoriously challenging class (the subject not stated, but implied to be philosophy) and was known as a demanding teacher. In "Where No Man Has Gone Before," his friend and former student Gary Mitchell says:

"Well, I'm getting a chance to read some of that longhair stuff you like. Hey man, I remember you back at the Academy. A stack of books with legs. The first thing I ever heard from an upperclassman was, watch out for Lieutenant Kirk. In his class, you either think or sink."

Mitchell jokes about how he only passed by orchestrating the campaign of a "little blonde lab technician" to distract Kirk from his usual severity. And even this was not a fling; Kirk's relationship with the lab technician reached the point that he almost married her. So even that suggests someone who was taking every part of his life deadly seriously.

The personable, dutiful-but-easy-going charm and good humor of Kirk in much of TOS seems to not have been much in evidence for many, many years of Kirk's life. And even by the time we meet him, this runs much less deep than his powerful sense of responsibility and his commitment to the ideals of the Federation and his own philosophical convictions. We often see his outwards charm switch off like a light when it doesn't serve his purposes.

This is especially apparent in "The Conscience of the King" itself, which includes one of Kirk's most cold-blooded charm offensives—he can't immediately reach Kodos, so instead he deliberately charms Kodos's nineteen-year-old daughter Lenore in order to dig up information on him (not realizing Lenore herself is a murderer). There is a chasm between this calculated charm and his manner when he finds Kodos and drops the front:

The last thing I wanted to say about "The Conscience of the King" and this particular backstory for Kirk is that, after all of this, what exactly is the point of the backstory revealed in this episode? It's Star Trek, there usually is one, even when it's executed badly or clumsily. What is it gesturing at?

There's a repeated emphasis on the twenty years between the present moment and Kodos's atrocity. He is now an old man living a normal life, and doesn't seem to be a particular threat to anyone. One of the major subplots involves Spock trying to figure out what the hell happened twenty years earlier, then trying to convince McCoy of the threat, then Kirk and Spock and McCoy having this fraught discussion about it.

Spock is not dispassionate; he is horrified by both the past atrocity and current threat to Kirk, and quickly reaches a point of certainty about Karidian's/Kodos's identity and what should be done about him. Kirk is more anxious and unsure about getting it wrong and about his own motives, despite simultaneously wanting to just kill this guy on the spot. McCoy doesn't want to believe at pretty much every turn, and even when he does, is wary of acting out of potentially questionable motives so long after the fact. It leads to this great scene between all three:

SPOCK: Why do you invite death? KIRK: I'm not. I'm interested in justice. MCCOY: Are you? Are you sure it's not vengeance? KIRK: No, I'm not sure. I wish I was. I've done things I've never done before. I've placed my command in jeopardy. From here on I've got to determine whether or not Karidian is Kodos. SPOCK: He is. KIRK: You sound certain. I wish I could be. Before I accuse a man of that, I've got to be. I saw him once, twenty years ago. Men change. Memory changes. Look at him now, he's an actor. He can change his appearance. No. Logic is not enough. I've got to feel my way, make absolutely sure. MCCOY: What if you decide he is Kodos? What then? Do you play God, carry his head through the corridors in triumph? That won't bring back the dead, Jim. KIRK: No, but they may rest easier.

Of course, the matter of "oh hey, we keep finding elderly people who committed atrocities some 20 years ago and we've got to navigate how to deal with them now in a way that honors their victims" was not at all metaphorical at the time. In the 60s, the architects of atrocities who made their escape twenty years earlier and were discovered as ostensibly normal aging people were just literal Nazis.

While the Tarsus IV massacre is on a much smaller scale, obviously, Erin Horáková has a good explanation of the topicality here:

In “The Conscience of the King”, we learn that Kirk is a survivor of a colony-world genocide that occurred during his childhood. As an adult, Kirk attempts to determine whether an old man, now an actor, is actually Kodos, the mass murderer who perpetrated this genocide. “Conscience” is a complex, shifting episode made in the wake of the arrest of aged Nazis in South America by Mossad agents (again, it’s subtextually important to this episode that Kirk is played by a Jewish actor).

For further context, plenty of people involved in TOS had themselves fought in WWII, so "what do we do about elderly Nazis" was not a distant issue. Also, while Roddenberry himself was unfortunately antisemitic (a quality presumably related to "Patterns of Force" ever seeing the light of day), there were a lot of Jewish people working behind and in front of the camera on TOS, most famously including both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (both are/were Jewish actors from Jewish communities, though this tends to be much more present for many fans with Nimoy—it's hard not to think that is at least partly related to their physical appearances). So the whole premise is complex and fraught in real world terms, as well, which I felt was also worth mentioning as a significant element of what's going on here.

[samhadjblog2]

I like how you go on about "You need things to spelled out like a child" bit. Its the same "pretentiousness" of " You need to have a high IQ to understand rick and morty". Also I said that Caitlyn and Vi had different goals in the start of the season and its only as the season went on that they gradually developed the same goal. Its also important to note that Vi and Caitlyn while wanting the same thing also clashed with one another. (Example being Caitlyn about to shoot Isha in order to get to Jinx). And that's the thing with Arcane it wasn't just "Characters joining up" and that's it. It was "Characters with varying different goals and ideals that often had them either team up push each other away".

Again with your sentiments of "needing to spell out thing" I understand foreshadowing. However as I've stated before the scene between Jayce and Silco is talks about what the city stands for "Progress". Yes they mention "The Rune wars" and how the city was built with the idea of standing against a common foe. However I keep on telling you "This is the only point of reference of "People coming together" is about just that "Coming together" not "Coming together against a common enemy". You go on "This is so obvious" and yet everything else indicates that this wasn't the case. The conflict of the first season were both sides fighting against one another and besides this "One reference to the cities founding" nothing indicates the two sides would fight a common foe. Because up to that point there was "No" common enemy and so much of the focus was the characters fighting one another all with varying different goals. To then just say "Well here's a common enemy to fight against" is very much out of place for what this story was trying to be. My argument wasn't "This had to more specific", like you keep going on about, I just said that "One scene with Jayce and Silco isn't evidence for this being the inevitable outcome of the story". Had there been more references to this then sure "that would be foreshadowing".

Honey you going on about "You don't get how stories work just demonstrates that you have no argument and relying on "Ad Hominem's". Ambessa didn't appear with as you put "a moist ache to twirl indicating evil intent". She came with a value for strength and dominance, someone not to different then Silco. Yes she had her own intentions to get Hex-tech yes however that didn't take away from the fact she was there to support Piltover, even if it was for her own selfish intentions. If we used the same logic of "Well she appeared menacing" then Silco would of been the main antagonist that everyone rallied against. Because he did equally bad stuff as Ambessa and yet he wasn't someone that was pitted against by everyone else in the end of S1 in fact as you mentioned he even struck a deal with Jayce. Ambessa's involvement is not to different then to how America would help out other countries as a means for their own gains. While its a negotiation built off of selfish goals its still a negotiation none the less.

Here's the thing about the Hexcore again you can argue was morally questionable but acting like that this would apply to "All of Hextech" is ridiculous because so much of the negative ramifications that we were exploring this season weren't the one's with "The Hexcore" and instead its "the anomaly" which was so contrived,but more on that later.

As for the "Find out" analogy let me clear things up. Jayce uses the Hexcore and VIktor something that happened "To Viktor" not something of his own accord. (Which isn't bad, just wanting to point that out because this is a problem later on). As for the whole Jayce makes weapons part fine. However I would argue after Viktor heal Huck he is sidelined really hard after this.

However "The anomaly" is pure contrivance for instance "When was it ever established that there was a second hexgate generator. Your telling that "VIktor (WhoJayce helped built the generator) someone from the Undercity" would he not consider how the generator would affect the Undercity ?" This is full on contrivance.

AlsoIts only until "now" that the anomaly starts to have an effect on the tree ? The tree seemed pretty fine before so why now ? And this isn't a sign of 'Over-usage" because the Hex gates were shut down at the time and so its affected wouldn't of been as prominent. And it seems like the show is saying "All of Hex-tech is bad".

"Tree was never re-visited when it shown to be a serious issue". On top of that besides the one glitching of Caitlyn and Vi's hex-tech weapons "The anomaly" doesn't affect anything else and is just reduced to being a "Mcguffin for Viktor". So it simply just "negative ramifications". On top of that all its just there for is to simply fling Ekko, Heimerdinger into an alternate dimension in order for Ekko to learn a "Specific lesson to help Jinx" (Not trying to trash on the episode and I honestly think its pretty great, just that a lot of its purpose is to simply get Ekko from point A to point B in a unnatural way") Same with Jayce it was simply character development in order for him to see the dark future of the Glorious evolution and sure it was kind of interesting to see Jayce's journey parallel Viktor's life however I feel like this storyline faulters a bit in the end (More on that later).

So "The anomaly" is entire existence is just solely to get the characters where they need to be. So. A contrivance.

Jinx's not blowing up the council wouldn't of had Ambessa not take over. Ambessa is a ruthless person who is able to use deception just like her daughter she would of found a way. Also there was no guarantee that Silco would of agreed to this deal, because when he learned that he would have to give up Jinx to get what he wants he was on the fence. (Sure you could say that might of gone through with it however it was still a very complicated choice and there is some hints that he might of not gone through with it). Also the council was also on the rock about giving the Under-city sovereignty. There was a lot that would've gone wrong. And all of it could of been easily exploited by Ambessa. So I wouldn't call that a consequence of Jinx's action.

The main focus of Arcane was its politics saying that "It was about its characters" is a disservice to the show. Because so much of their goals, motivations and ideals are intrinsically tied to the conflict of Piltover and Zaun

I looked over your post. And a lot of what you said are themes of class. ". People who come from the oppressed class can, in turn, oppress their own people." A theme of class.

"People can benefit from being part of the rich/oppressor class" without realizing how they benefit from the system, and even those who see it can struggle to break from their own privilege. A theme of class

"Some people are most concerned with harm reduction while others seek radical change" A theme of class

The only one that's more interpersonal is "Sometimes, the only way to move forward is in step with the person who was just holding you back. "

Class conflicts aren't "Black and white" narratives where rebel heroes fight bad oppressive people. A lot of them do explore the themes that you brought up. And people weren't upset the story wasn't some "Black and white heroes vs bad guys" In fact a lot of people would consider the ending "Black and White". Because as I said "Saving the world is a baseline goal that tells us nothing about characters motivation". Also analogy's to Nuclear ware-fare, and a bigger nation taking advantage of a small nation are another examples of "Political themes".

My point about Warwick is that "Him loosing his agency "Again" isn't tragic it just demonstrate how meaningless his character is. Because compare it to his LoL a former gangster who wanted to turn a new leaf, only to have his past catch up to him, which led to Singe capturing him and experimented on him. All with the effort revealing the true nature of who he was. And so became a dangerous wolf-creature that killed relentlessly. However as time went on he began to come to slowly regain small fragments of his past and focused on only killing criminals. However he could not escape the beast.

Meanwhile in Arcane half of this is true he is revived he go's on a rampage (with a lot of cuts in-between fights). And as he see's Vi he immediately regains all semblance of his humanity and is able to hug it out. And then he is taken to Viktor to be fully healed and regains all of his humanity. And then when Jayce shot Viktor that is how he "Loose control", not because he's too much of a beast but because of magical circumstances. And then his memories just immediately stripped away again. Making him into a generic blank-slate. And that isn't interesting that just makes him a plot-device. A cheap excuse for the Sister to reconcile without having to truly explore their internal issues. On top of just having things happen to him instead of making meaningful choices of his own accord. His tragedy isn't because of his own choice rather its because things happen to him.

Intersting standpoint about Mel and Ambessa's confrontation.

My argument for Ekko's acceleration rune is that People say that future Viktor went back in time multiple times in order to create the right outcome for Jayce to go and save him. A lot of people point out that all of this led to Ekko using the acceleration Rune in order to get to this moment. Which again makes no sense because "The Bleak future that future Viktor came from has all of the same elements as the timeline where Ekko builds the Z-drive, because if not why are things like the broken clock tower (Something that wouldn't of happen had Ekko made the Z-drive) appear in the same dark bleak future. So I wouldn't make sense for there to have been a loop if the events of the dark future were one and the same. And so Jayce was responsible for Viktor's dark turn. I.E a self fulfilling prophecy

I'm not saying that the show "had to end with a civil-war" rather that just that it should end with the focus put squarely on the conflict between Piltover and Zaun. However if it were to go in that direction your forget that the undercity also has Shimmer and those chemtanks which would still pose a threat. Also the black rose also could've supported Zaun's independence. Which would led to a more interesting Cold-war analogy. Heck I suggested and ending where its Vi and Jayce trying to stop the war from breaking out and trying to negotiate peace talks once again.

There are many ways the show could of ended, I just think that the ending shouldn't of ended with a "Let's team up to fight a singular bad guy" trope because it lacks any real interesting meaning. I also think its important to note that a lot of people though that the show would end on a note that would have the characters end up in a similar situation that there LoL counterparts ended. Jinx continues to be a terrorist, Vi and Caitlyn continue to be enforcers, Jayce continue to make Hex-tech tools, Viktor seeks to accomplish his "Glorious evolution". Ekko uses his Z-drive to fight against both Chem-baron's and Piltover with some tension with Vi. Warwick becomes a vigilante who fights criminals in Zaun. And that there wouldn't be a "Nice happy ending."

And as I said before the story of Arcane 'is" about class conflict. As the themes you've listed indicate this to be the case. And back to my point about episode 5 onward. A lot of issues start to rear there head around here. For starters we have VI's pit fighter story be glossed over through a music-video, when it feels like this should of been an arc in of itself (It especially felt annoying since Act 1 felt like a season if of itself ). On top that the episode doesn't really delve into much of the sisters internals issues and just have them make peace. Also I'm not really a fan of Vander and Silco knowing who Felecia kind of muddles thing such as "Why didn't Vi or Silco remember each other ?". It also seems odd to have Silco at the violent attack on the bridge when it seemed like what happened between him and Vander happened before the events on the bridge. Episode 6 was alright baring the dumb Jayce shooting Viktor bit.

As I said before I enjoyed episode 7 a lot. And I enjoyed Ekko learning to not give up on a better tomorrow.

As for Jayce not shooitng Viktor my point is that "He Just met his future self" Why not go up to Viktor and try to tell him this information. Also as I said "The events in the finale lines up with the dark future Jayce just came back from". The Noxian ships, The broken clock tower, A mannequin that looks like Caitly ,as well as his future self being in the same pose as he was in the finale were in the dark future. So him shooting Viktor was a Self-fulfilling prophecy. Also Viktor wouldn't of been able to accomplish the "Glorious evolution" Singe pointed out that his powers were weakening. Also just "Having Jayce be crazy" be why he shoots Viktor is just a dumb. Its not a meaningful turn of events its just the story forcing itself into a specific direction.

Also no the "question of Zaun joining the help" kind of doesn't happen. A lot of the people from Zaun joined the fight. Because as I said "When faced with the end of the world of coarse people would say yes". A we see that Zaun already joined the fight even before Jinx brought reinforcement (Many of the people being her followers). And also this conflict isn't "The consequences of their actions" Its the consequences of Jayce being dumb and shooting Viktor instead of talking things out. And his glorious evolution has very little to do with "Piltover and Zaun". Its too much of an overbearing Ontological threat then one built from the class issues of Piltover and Zaun.

And as I said it doesn't feel like the show ended on the note of "The two cities reluctantly working together however there is still tension. Because as I said Viktor's glorious of Evolution had very little to do with the conflict between Piltover and Zaun. And so because of this when they easily united they in the fight it feels less like an awkward first step towards peace and more like just quick way to resolve everything. (Again this didn't have to conclude with a civil war, rather an ending that placed more emphasis on Piltover and Zaun and less on Viktor's glorrious evolution.)

And as I stated before I believe if they wanted to convey the idea of "Sevika being placed" as an awkward first step. I think a better of achieving this would be a scene similar to Silco and Jayce making a deal. With focus on Sevika's confliction as well as a scene similar to Jayce telling the Council about this negotiation. That would feel more engaging. Because that is what makes for meaningful political drama, and that's a Arcane is a show about class.

Yes this is a show about characters however the character's motivations were tied to class conflict of Piltover and Zaun. And so simply having the characters break away from the cycle without examining the issues that forced them into this situation. And its not like these issues should of been resolved in a year just that ending should feel more attached to these issues.

Back to my main point. Things like Heimedinger's memories whiel alluding to the dangers of the Hexcore a lot of the more negative ramifications towards hex-tech. Its not a sign that the show would end on a "Save the world narrative". Rather its meant to indicate that Viktor was going down a dark path and that he is messing with something he doesn't fully understand.

And as I've said about Silco and jayce's conversation. Its a reference of how the city should "Come together" not "Come together against a common enemy". Because if you want to argue that the show was always hinting at the two cities coming together fine I can see that. However to say its to come together to stop a world ending threat far from the case. And as I said Ambessa getting involved isn't foreshadowing that "She is the endgame villain" She was here to help Piltover as means for her own gains. Because by your own Logic Silco would be the main antagonist because he too comes off as equally menacing.

And no if there was a civil war it would be Piltover and Zaun. Because those are the two cities that have the most focus and where what the main conflict started as in the first season. And having the focus be directed towards a newly introduced threat would be cheap not matter if it were Ambessa or Viktor. Because it makes the story Black and white and not morally grey. And like I said Heimerdinger while have legit concerns for Viktor's Hexcore it still not a sign that the show would end on this note rather that he was going down a dark path.

“What happened to rebel Vi? Season 2 destroyed her character!”

“What happened to rebel Vi” is that Vander took her to the bridge where her parents died in his revolution and asked her what she was willing to lose. Then she meets Cait who is gentle and kind while still being tough and it makes her rethink how she sees topside. When Jinx tells her she changed too, that’s what she’s talking about.

I’m sorry if you thought Vi was going to be a topside-hating revolutionary in Season 2, but that’s clearly not where her character arc was going. Remember how she forced her way between Ekko and Cait? It seemed very straightforward that was the role her character was taking on.

I feel similar about people who act like the show was betraying its premise because it ended with reconciliation/Zaun and Piltover working together. Again, the fact that two of the most important relationships were between characters from both sides and that they made a point of talking about Zaun and Piltover first coming together against a common enemy was a pretty clear indicator that was the plan.

Now, I get being annoyed that that was what they chose to do. You don’t have to love the creative decisions of media, just like media doesn’t have to compromise its creative direction to satisfy you. But not liking that they went that direction is not the same as the show having bad writing or engaging in character assassination.

Everything Vi did in season 2 was very much in character with how she changed and who she became throughout Season 1. Hell, she used enforcers and Hextech to raid Shimmer facilities before Commander Kiramman ever threw on a beret. So, yes, actually wearing the uniform was a huge and complicated decision that she was definitely not happy about, but it also fell in line with what she had been doing.

There’s meat for another post at some point about the three different Zaun/enforcer partnerships we see in the show: Vander/Greyson, Silco/Marcus, and Cait/Vi; but I’m not going to go into that now.

TLDR: “Rebel Vi” who wants to fight all of topside hasn’t existed since the end of the second episode of the show.

Editing to add that Vi doesn’t see attacking Chem Barons as attacking Zaun; she’s taking down the people who are destroying Zaun.

[wisteria-lodge]

2 things about Lily

It's obvious that she was the one to defeat Voldemort the first time around, not Harry, but Rowling refuses to elaborate on the spell, saying that she cast it accidentally (which... yeah sure, but then she created a world where only one mother and child could do it out of love... like did other children that suffered were not loved enough? oh i so dislike that). I don't know why Rowling does it. Like I always wanted it to be an actual spell that she (and James) researched and did as part of their back-up plan, but noooooo. A woman? Win against the big bad? In the 90s?? Noooo

Lily grew up with two people that we get to know intimately, and loved them dearly. Two very miserable, envious people, who likely hid their accents and the fact that they are of working class, two people who did everything, and sacrificed many things in order to be around characters who where wealthy. Two social climbers. And you know what Lily also did? This has to be deliberate. Like, I don't think that it's a bad thing. I think that Lily definitely wasn't as insane about social climbing as Severus and Petunia (I consider social mobility to be a positive thing!!), buuut she too married into money. So there is that.

I find it sad that the prospect of Lily being crazy ambitious and wanting to have better things are always portrayed as bad in fics, if it is discussed at all. You could have made her into a person who dreams about making it and give her a conflict about marrying into money, feeling like she will become a fake, and still craving that security! But nooooooo. Pefect perfection or a sleazy seductress, nothing else ever

Extremely good points. Wanting social stability is just a real, relatable thing, and it's got to be a lot for Lily, being told you're magic... and ADDITIONALLY learning that the power structure of the magical world that you live in now is super prejudiced against you? And there is an active dark wizard *currently* targeting people like you?

Also the sacrificial magic being cast accidentally never made sense. Harry does the same thing (I guess) on purpose at the end, with the result that all of Voldemort's spells have trouble "sticking," because Harry sacrificed himself for EVERYBODY? But I mean Regulus also sacrificed himself to protect people from Voldemort, he didn't have to die. Dumbledore willingly died to protect... Harry, Draco, Snape? Shouldn't that have had some magical effect?

It honestly would have been *so* much easier to say that Lily defeated Voldemort with a spell that sacrificed the caster's life. That's very cool, old-magic vibes.

But... this slots into an larger trend with the way JKR writes passivity and self-negation as heroic traits. The best example of this is Newt Scamander, her hero with the central traits "neutral" and "pacifist." But even with Harry... there's a reason he doesn't level up his core spells, and is most heavily associated with a disarming spell that he learns in year 2 and a shield spell he learns in year 3. JKR actively doesn't want him to be a combat character. It is *true* that Harry does not cast a single spell on-page in the entire first book. He does more magic later, but that original tendency is still there: there's a reason most of Harry's level-ups consist of loot given to him by loved ones, and not so much skills that he improves. JKR's ethos on power (expressed through Dumbledore) is that the people who handle power best are the people who don't want it.

And unfortunately... leveling up your spells on purpose... now that sounds like something that a person who WANTS POWER would do. Casting super duper powerful spells accidently (which harry also does, constantly) (and Lily does, of course) ... now *that* is much more morally pure.

[kirlicues]

Rockwell Drive | Sims 2 Residential Lot Download

The Rockwell Drive house features quoining accents to give interest to the large swaths of red brick. It's built on a 3x3 lot and has 3 bedrooms and 3 baths.

It also has beautiful garden spaces, as well as a pool because swimming to gain body skill is so much more fun than running on the treadmill for 10 hours. Let's take a short tour and I'll tell you more about how this lot came about because you have nothing better to do with your time. Jump to the bottom of this post if you want to download it into your game. 😊

Here's what the backyard looks like:

Several years BC (before children) I found it entertaining to set up a household of Sims (Sims 1 was the only game out at the time) and just watch them interact without interfering. It was quite funny, until the kitchen caught on fire, and then it wasn't. 😧 I hate letting my sims have bad experiences, especially when I could intervene and stop them (now if only that could be the case with real life kids as they grow up)!

I decided to try this again with the Sims 2, but armed with several hacks that make the characters a little smarter when it comes to fires and a little more motivated to go to work (further reducing the chance of fires). It was much more successful and other than the sims hogging the computer (until I removed it) didn't give me near as many grey hairs. 😂

This was the house that that family lived in.

Back then it looked a bit different, but it's been freshly remodeled inside, and given some colorful wall treatments to make up for the seas of red brick on the exterior. Please feel free to redecorate it to fit your sim family's needs though.

Here's what the floor plan looks like:

1st Floor: Clockwise from bottom left: garage, sin room, downstairs family room, stairwell, kitchen, dining room, living room, entry, bathroom, and laundry room.

2nd Floor: Clockwise from bottom left: kids bedroom 1, kids bedroom 2, laundry room, upstairs family room, master bedroom, bathroom, walk-in closet, hall way, and kids bathroom.

Rockwell Drive: MF | SFS

All EPs and SPs are required.

*I highly recommend that you have the PerfectPlants mod from TwoJeffs*

I’ve run this home through the Lot Compressor so any random references to sims that aren’t there should be removed. I have also run this lot through the Lot Cleaner to remove any bits of buggy code. This lot comes with a shiny custom thumbnail so it has even more curb appeal in your Lots and Houses bin! 😄

This home has only 2 pieces of CC, which you may already have in your game. These can easily be replaced or omitted if you don’t want them though.

CC List (Included): -Maxis Match Wall Cabinets by CTNutmegger at ModtheSims -Functional Washer and Dryer by mustluvcats at ModtheSims

CC Not included: -Maxis Match Chimney recolors from Mod The Sims (I'm not sure which one I used at the moment so grab them both if you don't already have them!) -Lost & Found BENNO Coffee table from the Ikea Stuff Pack

I ALWAYS recommend using the Sims 2 Pack Clean installer to install lot files.

[lsunstreakerl]

definitely going to be posting more on this particular avenue because I think it's horrid and interesting, but until then- 1.5k words, max POV: discipline

HELLO still darkbull! mature themes and content and all that.

Max is fuming as he gets out of the car, fingers angrily yanking at the straps of his helmet. They keep skating over the latches, fucking missing, and Max is-

Max is so pissed off. He waves off GP, and he knows that it's rude, but he doesn't want to snap at him, doesn't want to take his anger out on the team again- even if they maybe deserve it.

He finally gets his helmet off, chucking it into the corner of his drivers room as he tugs at the strap of his racesuit across his neck.

Everything is hot and sticky, and the car won't fucking drive. Max feels like his entire body is slick with sweat as he peels his suit off, and he can't bring himself to feel bad yet, but he'd snapped over the radio earlier, pissy and annoyed.

It's his right, as a driver, but he hasn't been that bad for a few years. The team wasn't expecting it.

He wants to shower, and he wants the car to work, and he wants the team to listen when he tells them there's a fucking problem-

Two of those problems he can't solve. The first he can handle when they get back to the hotel, but he still has media and debriefs, and he'll probably fall asleep after the debrief and forget to shower, and then he'll feel worse when he wakes up.

There's no winning. Not in his choices, certainly not in this race, and probably not the fucking championship either. He's mathematically in it still, but-

It's not happening.

Max clenches his jaw so hard he hears something pop when his door slides open. He's still pissed off, standing in his drivers room, and he doesn't even have pants on yet, just his boxers and one sock, so if it's someone here to tell him to behave better he's going to lose it.

"What."

It comes out snappish, which is exactly how Max is feeling anyways. He drags a hand through his hair, bracelets clinking together on his wrist.

Christian steps in. He's holding Max's water bottle and a damp towel, and if it's a cold towel Max might actually start forgiving the team here and now.

"You left your water outside."

He passes the towel to Max, and it's ice cold- feels so good against his overheated skin that Max just holds it to his face for a moment.

He lets out a low groan, trying to get rid of the anger. It's still there, simmering in his gut, but already- he needs to apologize to the pit crew, probably. In a week or two.

Christian huffs a laugh, holding the water bottle towards Max.

"Thought you might like that. Jake put some electrolytes in your water since you didn't drink enough during the race, so make sure you finish it please. I took you off the presser."

Max lowers the towel finally, looking at Christian in surprise. He thought for sure he'd have to do the press conference.

He finally grabs the bottle, taking a few long sips as he starts running the towel across his arms, trying to get rid of the sweat.

Christian has a point that Max probably should have drank more in the race, but he just didn't think about it. At a circuit as hot as this one he should know better.

He feels marginally better once he's wiped down, or at least less like he's going to fly off the handle if someone breaths at him wrong.

The towel gets dropped onto the bench, and Christian passes him a bundle of clothes, not looking up from his phone.

Max eyes the clothes, a soft shirt, sweatpants, fresh socks, and boxers. It's not teamkit, which means he might not have to do the debrief either- might be able to go straight back to the hotel.

He still waits until he's dressed again to ask Christian about it, pulling his necklace out from under his shirt collar as he speaks.

"Are we debriefing?"

Christian finally looks up from his phone, eyes briefly skating down Max, cataloging that he's changed completely.

"No. Straight back to the hotel for you."

There's the tiniest bit of edge to his voice, and already Max is starting to feel bad, guilt creeping in on the edges of his emotions.

"Christian-"

Christian cuts him off with a sigh, tucking his phone into his pocket and crossing his arms.

"You can apologize to the team tomorrow, Max."

Max shifts on his feet.

"What about apologizing to you?"

Christian's shoulders slump slightly, and he uncrosses his arms, spreading them.

"Come on then."

Max takes a few steps forward and wraps Christian into a hug. He doesn't quite envelop Max anymore like he had when he was younger, but it's still one of the safest places Max can think of, tucked between Christian's arms.

"You were shitty to the team."

Max is well aware.

"I will apologize. I really am sorry."

Christian brings one hand up to spread across the back of Max's neck, palm pushing the chain of his necklace into his skin. His fingers curl around the side of his neck, the tips of them pressing slightly into the front of his throat.

Max breaths out a soft sigh as Christian squeezes lightly.

"For what?"

Max hates this game- the one where he fucks up and has to admit it more than once. It's for 'team cohesion' or something. He still thinks it's humiliating.

He lets the weight of Christians hand settle him, heavy where it's resting. It's grounding.

"For snapping over the radio."

Christian hums.

"And?"

Max's lips twist into a frown.

"Not talking to GP about it."

That's the crux of the issue here- when Max has a problem, he's supposed to go to Gianpiero about it. Preferably before it gets to the point where he's snapping down the radio, and he hadn't done that today- had tried to drive through it instead, letting the frustration build up.

To then go and brush GP off when he was getting out of the car- Max has fucked up here.

Christian squeezes his neck again before letting go, stepping away.

"That's right. Take some time at the hotel to cool down, and we're having a team dinner later. You can apologize to GP tonight, everyone else tomorrow."

Max nods, feeling chastised.

Christian sighs again before reaching forward, tugging lightly at Max's necklace so he looks up at him.

"It's okay, Max."

Max gives a thin smile and nods. He knows it will be okay, but he hates when the team is upset with him.

Max snags his water as Christian turns and leaves, and he falls into step behind him, taking a few more sips. It tastes a bit off, but Christian had mentioned Jake put electrolytes in it- it's probably that.

------

Johnathan is laughing about something with Daniel across the table from Max, but he can't quite follow the thread of the conversation. Hasn't really be able to follow it since they got to the private room at the restaurant, but especially not now.

Max looks back down at his plate. He's not sure how long he's been loosely holding a fork in his right hand, or even what he'd had- it looks like a half eaten portion of pasta, but he can't quite remember what kind.

He leans slightly to his right, shoulder lightly bumping GP's.

"GP? Do you know what I ordered?"

"Aw, Max."

GP half turns, resting his arm across Max's shoulders and tugging him close.

"Can't remember?"

Max frowns. He should be able to, he knows that, but-

He always gets so twisted in knots when he's upset the team, and it seeps into his brain, practically turns him into a different person. He hates when it happens. It makes him feel stupid.

"Don't tease, GP."

His voice comes out a bit whinier than he means for it to, and GP gives him a quick squeeze and a smile.

"Sorry Max. You know it's only out of fun."

Max feels a hand settle across the top of his left thigh, broad and hot, and he turns his head to meet Carlos's warm gaze.

"You got the salmon fettuccine."

Oh. That sounds right. Max leans slightly into Carlos's side, resting his head onto his shoulder.

"Thank you."

Carlos drops a kiss into Max's hair, dragging his hand up the inside of his thigh and brushing over his hip before it's gone, and Max can't help the soft noise he makes. He wants the feeling back.

Carlos is chuckling low at him, lips brushing against his hairline.

"We're still at the restaurant, remember?"

Max fights to wrestle back control of his thoughts, but it's hard- like trying to catch smoke in his hands.

Restaurant. Team dinner.

He looks down at his plate- he can't quite remember what he was eating.

Max turns to look at GP on his right. GP will know- GP always knows.

"GP? Do you know what I ordered?"

GP smiles fondly at him.

"Oh Max. Can't remember?"

[hongjoongspoetry]

LET'S GO, BABY! A FIC FOR MY BIAS MADE BY THE ONE AND ONLY ARI??? Life is looking bright again, the grass is greener, and it’s raining money—Okay, so I was actually going to read your Yunho stories first, buuuuut I couldn’t hold back, and you can’t blame me. Hongjoong’s my bias, what was I supposed to do?

Anyways, I don’t even know where to start. Whenever I read something new of yours, it feels like you outdo your previous work, which is crazy because I always think, “This is it, this is the story!” But then you go ahead and prove me wrong by creating a new masterpiece that won’t leave my head for an X amount of time.

Both the MC and Hongjoong were really interesting characters in this story and for a good chunk into the fic, I didn't know what to think about Hongjoong. He was quite annoying in the beginning with his "know it all" talk and I feel like his attempt at cheering up the MC was so poorly done on his part, like what was he thinking talking sweet to her when another douchebag was already getting on her nerves? 😭

“Don’t we all wish to have a piece of the pretty barista?”

It wasn't even anything remotely nice, he literally talked about her as if she was an object. what is this shitshow of a man? 👹 I also like how you made his appearance give a hint of "I'm a mysterious guy" but he still turned out to be a douche. I feel like in most stories nowadays, the mysterious character is almost always flawless or perfect. They never get to fuck up.

Your eyebrows furrowed as the guy reached for his Cosmo, your fingers brushing together since you hadn’t retracted your hand yet. You ignored how warm his fingers felt, the softness of them as they lightly brushed against yours, “It’s just sad to see talented people waste their lives away in places like this one, you know? I mean, we all go to college to make something of ourselves, but then we end up in a dimly lit and smelly bar, selling alcohol to entitled pricks, forced to listen to their attempts at flirting, or them berating us for ‘not’ doing our job. Sure, it’s honest work, but at the end of the day, when you walk home after an ungodly long shift, you still hate yourself, so…”

Oh, this shit got me fucked up. Lord knows I would've lost my job that night if a customer ever talked to me in that way. Matter of fact, I'd be put on a blacklist and be unemployed for the rest of my life because not only would I jump over the counter, but I'd beat the shit out of him until he wouldn't know the simplicity of the alphabet. And although this made me furious and angry at Hongjoong's character, I still love how you made him into an entitled prick 😭 Like yes, give me something else than the woke artist who thinks good of everyone. Give me a douchebag who wears a million bucks and gives his honest opinion about others, without thinking if he's going to get his ass beaten to a pulp.

“Hey, yesterday…what I said at the bar, I didn’t mean to berate you.” The guy gulped, his eyebrows furrowing as you looked back at him, slightly taken aback to see such sincerity on his face. You’ve never met someone so easily readable before, “My intention wasn’t to hurt you, I was smoked out too so I was just running my mouth, I do that when I’m high, sorry…”

While I love to drag out on the angst, I really enjoyed his apology. It wasn't anything grand, just him owning up to his mistakes and taking responsibility. It makes the story feel a little more like real life, just two adults talking it out.

The guy hummed, a smile slowly appearing on his lips before he took another drag of his cigarette, his eyes boring into yours again, “I’m glad the pretty barista doesn’t hate my guts anymore.”

THE WAY I SCREAMED, LIKE FUUUUUCK!?!?!?!? WE GOT MULLET!JOONG CALLING ME A PRETTY BARISTA?????? THAT's ANOTHER THING — WE GOT MULLET JOONG BACK!!?! He can psycho analazye me all he wants baby- *GUNSHOT*

Ahem... Anyways!

“Humans are easily susceptible, you know? We judge without knowing first, and we rarely apologise and recognise our mistakes. I hate people like that, rude people for no reason too. I don’t stand for all that bullshit, so I’m glad you told me to fuck myself instead of smiling at me like you do with all the other assholes. I appreciate your hard work, we all have to make due somehow and you aren’t less for working in this pub, pretty barista.”

Man, this lil dude really loves running his mouth, doesn't he? Like NO ONE ASKED what you think of people. WHY IS HE LIKE THAT????? But at the same time, I LOVE HIS JOONG VERS. YOU'VE CREATED?!!? He's not plain and boring and all nice, he actually has some color on his canvas.

It's crazy how they haven't exchanged names until much later into the story :0 That's another thing that makes this story so real, their interactions aren't long enough for them to just stop and ask for each other's names, but they aren't that short to not have grown into some form of acquaintances.

“Pretty barista from the pub!”

HE'S SO SMOOTH AND SHAMELESS WITH IT OMG. If a man (hongjoong) would call me that every time we saw each other, I'd be giggling like Lisa Simpsons, WHICH REMINDS ME. WHY IS THIS (0:34) LITERALLY THROUGH YOUR COLORS HONGJOONG?????

“Sorry, I saw you’re buying The Hobbit. It’s a pretty famous reprint, the covers are gorgeous, my best friend is collecting them so I assumed you are too.”

Is this said best friend perhaps Park Seonghwa? 👀

“We can’t smoke weed with closed windows, so it’ll get colder.” Hongjoong suddenly explained, shrugging on a cardigan that looked very soft, “Wear my hoodie, it’ll keep you warm.”

I would call her out for following a stranger home and getting high on his weed, but he gave her his hoodie 🥹🥹 (the bar is in hell, is it not?)

The scene where Hongjoong and MC talk about their "dreams" /goals is so... nice and so real (again). How Hongjoong won't give his art to just anyone mirrors his irl personality too; how they value their works (songs and paintings) and just how much effort is put into it. We can clearly see the moment he "fell" in love with the MC. It wasn't the first night when she served him a Cosmopolitan or when she called him out on his bullshit, no that just caught his attention. The moment he knew MC was the possible one for him was when she saw him through his paintings. The MC subconsciously showed that she could see beyond Hongjoong's exterior and actually understand his soul. It's quite intimate, at least to me it felt like an intimate scene filled with a lot of emotions and to be frank, it's the best type of intimacy I've read in a while.

And perhaps not just in the city, but also in foreign countries while you attended Hongjoong’s art expositions, an expensive bottle of wine waiting for the two of you back at the hotel.

I always say this, but it won't become less of a truth the more times I repeat myself: Your writing is one of a kind. Both your creativity and the ability to come up with amazing ideas that makes the reader yearn for more, and your writing style that gets better and better with each fic/story you publish. You really outdo yourself Ari and I can't wait to see your next project 🩷

Through your colours

Author: bvidzsoo

Pairing: artist!Kim Hongjoong x barista!reader

੭ Warning: recreational drug use (weed), alcohol consumption, swearing ੭ Word count: 11k ੭ Rating: nc-17 ੭ Genre: fluff, angst-ish, slice of life, strangers to lovers, a hint of simp Joong? post university setting ੭ Summary: A broke barista and a broke artist meet in a student infested dingy pub, what do they have in common? The desire to make something great of themselves, to live a fulfilled life. But first impressions can go wrong, deterring people from each other. You're probably lucky that's not how your story with Hongjoong goes, though.

A/N: Hello, hello, my lovelies! I present you another story that was supposed to be a drabble but instead turned into...a smaller oneshot?? I consider anything that's below 15k a drabble because my oneshots just go over 20k all the time, save me! This idea came on a random whim while my pinterest suggested three photos lol, and it took me some time to write it, but it's here at last. Your feedback is greatly appreciated, let me know what you thought of this little story, and I hope you enjoy it! divider

            Gustav Klimt had once, sometime during the nineteenth century, stated that, “Art is a line around your thoughts”. This could be interpreted many ways, of course, but for an artist it was just as plain and simple as Mr Klimt had said. Whatever was on your mind, you could give it life by putting it on a piece of paper by the brush of ink and feather against the parchment, or by the swift twist of one’s wrist as their brush coloured their canvas. Art comes in many forms, many thoughts, and many interpretations. After all, everyone relates to it based by their own experiences, based on the emotions they feel and have felt before…and overall, their capacity of seeing beyond what’s shoved in front of their eyes. Maybe that’s why Hongjoong would stare at a painting or picture for hours on end without growing tired. He liked to see everything, he wanted to understand every stroke of brush, or why the lightning fell in that specific way on the item in the picture. Hongjoong wanted to feel the same emotions the author of the creation had felt while creating their piece. It helped him draw inspiration, expand his horizons towards new possibilities. Hongjoong liked new challenges as long as they were about his art. In life, he preferred the steady and sure lifestyle, the one that was predictable enough that it wouldn’t send him into an existential crisis over the smallest inconvenience.

Hongjoong needed order in his life since his art was all over the place, judged by many and often misunderstood. He didn’t paint just for the fun of it, sure, there were passion projects he started on a whim without much of a goal in mind, and usually those were well received by his professors, by his colleagues. But whenever Hongjoong wanted to say something through his art, he’d get scrutinized for it. He yet had to find that one person that saw beyond what others called a mess. He’s never thrived for attention or validation, but it had gotten lonely after a while when he realised nobody really understood him. He felt like he was the odd one even in a crowd full of odd people. He’d always been different, more open-minded and receptive to the changes in the world, and he’d always been judged for it. Here, instead of being frowned upon due to his character, he was sometimes ignored because his art was either dull or not good enough. Nobody seemed to understand that art is relative and subjective, that whatever lay on the canvas made by Hongjoong was his and would always be. That he had dipped his brush into a touch of colour from his soul, displaying it for the world to see on the once blank canvas. He became vulnerable for them and yet nobody had appreciated it yet. And so, Hongjoong got used to not being seen for his art, but for who he was.

Quirky with questionable fashion taste to many, bold because he wasn’t afraid to try out new styles—much like with his paintings—and intimidating because no matter how many times he tried out something new, he’d instantly make it his, owning whatever concept he had in mind. Hongjoong knew not everyone was against him out there, but it was easy to fall hostage to such thoughts when he was alone. It would make sense for an artist to have a mind clouded by questions and rarely answers, a mind that worked too fast and yet never good enough. Doubts and fears pulling one down, Hongjoong loved expressing it through his paintings, his hand nothing but a guide to the brush clutched tightly between his fingers, calling out to him even when he chose to step away. Hongjoong was in it for life, and he wondered whether the weeping willow tree by the river bank in his framed painting was a premonition for how his life would look like.

            The bar was busy like every other night in this student-infested town. It wasn’t even a surprise anymore, you should have known better than to wear your boots with high heels. There were no seconds to waste and even less time for breaks between preparing drinks, cleaning the bar, and running around the room to clean the tables too. Nobody wanted their hands sticky because someone had previously spilt their drink, and you were more than ready to clock out for the night. The only problem was, however, that you still had three hours left of your shift. You sighed as you averted your eyes from the clock, realising you hadn’t started preparing the drink the drunk college student had asked for on the other side of the bar. His eyes were glossy and he was swaying in his spot, you debated filling his cup with water rather than Vodka, but you couldn’t risk getting a complaint since your boss was a stinky little fucker. Your hands worked fast, and years spent doing this kind of work were showing as you did a few tricks, hoping you’d get a nice tip. You doubted the college guy would leave a huge tip, if anything at all, but at least you tried. It was all about trying in places like this one. Trying to stay calm when a customer was rude, trying to remain sane when night after night the DJ played the same playlist for the drunken students, trying to smile and hide the fact that you hated when these frat boys flirted with you. And also try and hide the fact that you were fed up with people, and needed at least a month away from civilisation.

But if one wanted to achieve something in life, one had to work for it to happen since it wouldn’t fall from the sky. Going abroad and starting a new life over there wasn’t for free, and it especially wouldn’t happen overnight. You were well aware of that, that’s why you were working day and night, taking up shifts that were probably too long to be healthy. But the dream you had in mind demanded such sacrifices, and if it meant working hard right now for a comfortable life in the future, you were willing to spend your nights sleepless and surrounded by annoying college students. You had been like them once, after all, but that was a few years ago, and since then, the harsh reality has awoken you. What was the purpose of a degree you couldn’t do anything with? Yeah, you could’ve laughed at yourself, but then it would soon turn into hysterical crying and you weren’t strong enough to deal with such emotions. You’ve cried enough, it was time you took action now. You sighed as another rush of bodies crowded the bar, asking for shots and long cocktails. You weren’t a fancy place by any means, but you served the usual sweet cocktails that could be found in every other place. Your hands worked fast as you catered to everyone’s likes, your coworker, Hanni, was somewhere lost between the students as she had gone to clean up the tables. And even in your rush, it seemed like you couldn’t satisfy everyone. It shouldn’t have phased you, but you’ve had a rough day today.

“Hey, babe, think you could work those hands faster, maybe?” You ignored the question and smiled as a group of girls paid for their pink cocktails, leaving a bigger tip than most men would. You felt grateful and felt your smile turn genuine when the tallest in the group winked at you before they became part of the rowdy crowd again. Then, you could face your impatient customer. He didn’t look like a student, way too old to be in a crowd filled with students, but who were you to judge? Some people go to college at a later age, maybe he wanted to get the full student experience. Although, you doubted a thirty-year-old had anything in common with young adults on the brink of maturing, if they managed to mature during their upper-level study days.

“What can I get for you?” Your voice was raised since the music was booming, and unfortunately, you also had to lean over the counter to hear the man better. For some reason, that made the man smirk as he leaned forward as well, eyeing you up as if you were a piece of meat. You ignored it as your teeth ground together, you’ve seen men like him before, he wasn’t the first to act like this and you knew he wouldn’t be the last one either.

“How about…you, sugar?” Your expression didn’t budge as his smirk became shit eating as if he had accomplished anything by saying that. You waited, without blinking or reacting to what he’s said, hoping he’d catch on that he wasn’t hilarious nor flirty.

“Don’t we all wish to have a piece of the pretty barista?” That managed to throw you off as your head whipped to the side, eyebrows furrowing as you just now noticed the newcomer. He was…well, something else for sure. He wore no casual or ordinary clothes, nothing you could compare to the annoying frat boys or just the other dudes with a regular fashion sense. His hair was dark but it looked a little fried, as if it had been bleached already one too many times before. His white blouse was loose and tucked in at the waist, his black pants wide and reaching below his ankles. A thick belt was secured around the guy’s petit waist, and if you looked harder, you swore you could see a dark blue bow tied to it. His brown vest seemed to elevate the outfit even more, the pleated brown choker sitting at the base of his throat with a few other silver chains, a ruby pendant hitting his pecks as he was leaning against the counter lazily. His hip was jutted out and his painted nails tapped against the side of his head, cat-like eyes blinking slowly as he watched you. The hat he wore looked something like you’ve only seen in Peaky Blinders, and for a second, you almost chuckled. He looked peculiar but not in a negative sense, it’s just that you haven’t seen someone like him stumble inside the pub before. He didn’t seem to belong with the crowd and that would’ve been something you’d appreciate on any other day than today.

“I don’t think we were talking to you, no?” The cocky man in front of you raised a mocking eyebrow at the other guy, and you rolled your eyes for a second. But before you could answer, the other guy did for you.

“You threatened my game is better than yours?” The artsy-looking guy asked with a chuckle, his tone was more on the higher side, and you found yourself not irked by it too much. But you weren’t here to have men measure their cocks by who can get the barista’s phone number faster, so you interrupted them before they could piss you off even more.

“Listen, fellas, I don’t have all night. What do you want?” Your tone was sharp, straight to the point, and shut down all attempts at flirting as the man in front of you scoffed, shooting a dirty look at the peculiar-looking one. You tilted your head as the older man finally faced you, trying to downplay his irritation as he plastered on a charming smile again. It made your jaw tick again, but you said nothing more.

“Do you have whiskey?” You were already reaching for the bottle of Whiskey before the man was finished talking, your other hand grabbing a glass as Hanni finally returned to the bar, her tray filled with dirty glasses.

“I’ll just wash these and come help.” She said as she passed by you and you nodded, filling the man’s glass with ice and whiskey, not too much but not too little either. Who even drinks Whiskey in a place like this one? But you didn’t care as long as he’d be out of your hair, so you placed the glass on the counter, but before you could tell the guy how much it was, he had already slid a bill on the counter, sauntering away. You grabbed it and pushed it into your fanny pack, taking a step back to take a deep breath. You could do this, Hanni was back and maybe you could ask her to cover for you for five minutes. A bathroom break was allowed at any time, after all. Your small moment, however, was interrupted by a scoff. You blinked your eyes open and looked towards where the sound came from, eyes narrowing when you realised the other guy was still lingering around.

“What a pig, he didn’t even tip you.” You had to agree with his slurred words but instead walked over with an impassive expression. You weren’t here to be nice or to make friends, and you never failed to make it clear to your customers. These entitled dudes thought they could get your number and get in your pants with just a few—fake—nice words, you could confidently say you hated them all and that they made you wish you never again encountered their species. But alas, that wouldn’t happen tonight, so you headed over to the pompous guy, raising an eyebrow. He was intriguing, you couldn’t deny that, but you also knew not to mingle with guys who frequented the pub. So, even if one sparked your interest, at the end of the day, you’d still walk home alone and relish in the quiet of your room.

“What can I get for you?” You tried to keep your tone level as your hip pressed into the counter, feet aching now even more. You were ready to chuck your damn boots at the wall and call it a night, but as Hanni flashed you her typical sweet smile, you knew you couldn’t leave her alone in the wolf's den. She was too sweet and too naïve, smiling and laughing along to the shitty jokes of the frat boys who were eyeing her up with little regard for the fact that she was visibly uncomfortable.

“Something sweet like you.” You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, telling yourself to keep your cool. He wasn’t saying anything offensive, unlike many other men, he just kept calling you sweet and pretty. That could be considered even nice, but not tonight.

“The menu is literally behind me, you can choose anything from it.” You pointed a finger behind yourself, where you knew the menu was hung high on the wall so that everyone could see it. The peculiar guy just gave you a look of confusion before looking past you, blinking his eyes lazily once again. You tapped your fingers against the counter, waiting for his choice, glad that you could take a breather now that nobody was crowding to get their drinks refilled. Hanni whizzed past you when she noticed a smaller group of girls approaching, her smile reaching her ears and already talking to them, beckoning them closer. Hanni was an excellent barista, she kept her customers entertained and always engaged with them…unlike you, but that’s why your duo worked so well. You were the stoic one and she was the sunshine, but you were both quick on your feet so your boss couldn’t complain.

“Uh, I’ll take a Cosmopolitan.” The guy finally decided and you quirked an eyebrow, grabbing the shaker.

“That’s not sweet.” It was unlike you to make conversation, but the words were on the tip of your tongue so you couldn’t ignore them. The guy chuckled, letting his elbows rest on the counter as he placed his chin in his palms. Your eyes raised for a second to look at him, and you were taken aback by how cute he looked. But as he blinked slowly again, a small smile spreading onto his lips as he watched you, you quickly focused your attention on his Cosmo.

“I know, I was just trying to make you feel better.” He sighed, tracing a manicured finger against the dirty counter. You had to clean that too. As you grabbed some olive to stash on a toothpick, you followed his finger with your eyes and noticed the two silver and shiny rings on his finger, his nail done a neon yellow with a black smiley face painted on top of it.

“What do you even know…” You scoffed to yourself, placing the martini glass on the counter for the guy to take. He was still looking at you, his eyes hazy, and you allowed yourself to take in his features. He had a petite and sharp nose, pretty and well-fitting with his sharp jawline and otherwise intimidating eyes if it wasn’t for the smile in them. His lips were more plump than thin with a pretty Cupid’s bow, slightly pouty as he gave you a small frown.

“Well, I bet you don’t plan on wasting your life away here.” The way he spoke had an airy feel to it, as if he wasn’t really thinking before speaking, “And by the looks of it, it seems as if your degree didn’t take you too far as of now, which is not a big deal, people change their minds all the time.”

Your eyebrows furrowed as the guy reached for his Cosmo, your fingers brushing together since you hadn’t retracted your hand yet. You ignored how warm his fingers felt, the softness of them as they lightly brushed against yours, “It’s just sad to see talented people waste their lives away in places like this one, you know? I mean, we all go to college to make something of ourselves, but then we end up in a dimly lit and smelly bar, selling alcohol to entitled pricks, forced to listen to their attempts at flirting, or them berating us for ‘not’ doing our job. Sure, it’s honest work, but at the end of the day, when you walk home after an ungodly long shift, you still hate yourself, so…”

Something in you broke at his last sentence, making you gulp hard. You still hate yourself, the guy had said with the most easy-going expression on his face, a slight smile pulling at his lips as he continued to blink lazily at you. What did he even know when he was clearly wearing designer clothes to a pub where alcohol could be spilt on you, among many other things? Who was he to assume you couldn’t do anything with your degree, rubbing it in your face that he knew people ended up like this when he clearly came from a rich background with all those accessories on him, his tone airy and almost mocking. Your jaw clenched again as you realised you had tears in your eyes, and your hand came down harshly on the counter as the guy slipped a bill towards you, way over the price of his damn Cosmopolitan.

“Go fuck yourself.” You snapped as you threw the change back at him, watching his expression fall, his eyebrows raising comically high. You didn’t sit around to listen to him trying to get your attention again, you brushed past Hanni and leaned down to tell her that you needed five minutes. She gave you a worried look before nodding, letting you head to the bathroom as a few tears spilt down your cheeks. Today was complete shit, you couldn’t wait to get home and ignore all the responsibilities and problems you had. You were doing this for a better future, this was just a small fragment of your life, and it wouldn’t last forever. At least you really hoped so.

            You released a long sigh as the cool air hit your face, eyes stinging from the sudden coldness as the red backdoor slammed shut behind you. Hanni and you kept telling your boss to change the hinges, but he had more important things to take care of, of course. Stepping aside so that the door wouldn’t slam into your back if any staff member decided to come outside at this moment, you leaned against the cold wall, pushing your hands into your pockets. You didn’t bother grabbing your jacket, although you should have given the fact that your skin was now covered in goosebumps, teeth slightly chattering. It was always a whiplash coming outside from that parched pub, having to forcefully push through the bodies too busy to notice your approaching form. It was another busy night, the weekend was approaching so the students were coming in waves that the pub could barely house. You’ve been telling your boss that you should put a capacity limit, but he wouldn’t make as much money like that as he was making now, so of course, he said no. He was a greedy monster and he didn’t even try to hide it.

Just as you closed your eyes, you heard a loud tsk followed by a hiss, and your head jerked to the side, your eyes widening. You hadn’t realised there was someone else here with you, too taken by your own thoughts of wondering what you’d cook for dinner…if you make it home at a decent hour, which was looking less and less likely to be. With your eyes narrowed and head turned, you tried to find the source where the sound had come from, eyebrows furrowing when you noticed someone crouched down right by the door, their head lowered over their knees. It wasn’t your business what anyone was doing, really, but if a client was feeling unwell and would need assistance, you’d feel guilty if you just walked away without a word. So, sighing to yourself, you pushed off the wall and took a few steps to approach the person, eyes taking in the black messy curls on the top of his head. The person had a baby mullet growing out, framing his pale nape. You cleared your throat and reached down, gently poking at the guy’s shoulder.

“Hey, you good?” You asked unsure, eyebrows furrowing when the guy grunted only. Tilting your head, you realised he was shielding his left hand, his right thumb trying to roll the sparkwheel of his lighter, but to no avail.

“Yeah, this bloody thing won’t work.” The guy groaned, shaking his lighter as he tilted his head back, a hand-rolled cigarette hanging between his lips. Your eyes widened as you realised the face was familiar, having seen him just yesterday. The guy’s eyes looked innocent as they rounded, recognition flashing in his too. You gulped and straightened up, your expression slightly hardening as the guy’s harsh words from yesterday rang through your ears. He seemed pretty fine to you, but before you could step aside and go back inside, he spoke up.

“Hi there, pretty barista.” He then grinned, a lazy pull of his cherry-red lips, his tone easy. You didn’t expect him to be so easy-going after what you had said to him, but it almost looked like the guy wasn’t bothered by you cursing him out…maybe he really wasn’t, “You on a break?”

You crossed your arms in front of your chest, watching as he struggled to get his lighter to work. You had one in your pocket, but you found a bit of satisfaction in watching him struggle. Maybe if he asked whether you had one, you’d let him use yours. But people who didn’t ask wouldn’t get help, that’s what your father taught you, at least.

“Obviously.” You muttered matter of fact as the guy hummed, grinning wickedly when the lighter finally sparked to life, allowing him to light his cigarette. You watched as the flame danced in front of his face, making his dark eyes appear amber-like, sharper from this angle. You realised, alarmed, that you were appreciating his looks so you quickly stopped, looking away as the guy puffed out a whiff of smoke.

“You want some?” The guy asked, reaching his hand toward you as you eyed the cigarette, its smell hitting you. It was too herbal to be a normal cigarette, you belatedly realised as you watched the guy take another hit of his joint.

“What’s in it?” You decided to ask, just to make sure. If you were wrong and it was a regular cigarette, maybe you’d accept a smoke. You didn’t usually smoke but you were still tired from yesterday’s shift, and something that could loosen your nerves would be highly appreciated.

“Good stuff.” The guy grinned, giggling even a little, and the sound almost put a smile on your lips, but you caught yourself in time and instead shook your head, pushing your hands into your pockets again.

“I’m working, so, no.” The guy just hummed as he looked up at you again, taking a drag of his joint as you gulped and everted your eyes. It felt like he was gazing right through you and into your soul as your eyes had met, and given the fact that you were still butt-hurt over what he had said to you yesterday, you refused to look at him too long…you’d only admire his beauty, either way. He wore a fuzzy yellow and pink sweater today, his brown dress pants looking way too thin for this weather, but the guy didn’t seem to mind. His nails stood out with their unique design, and he wore fewer rings today but more earrings than yesterday.

“Hey, yesterday…what I said at the bar, I didn’t mean to berate you.” The guy gulped, his eyebrows furrowing as you looked back at him, slightly taken aback to see such sincerity on his face. You’ve never met someone so easily readable before, “My intention wasn’t to hurt you, I was smoked out too so I was just running my mouth, I do that when I’m high, sorry…”

A beat of silence passed as the two of you shared an apprehensive look, making you bite your bottom lip. You cleared your throat and at last averted your eyes, kicking a few pebbles towards the guy without meaning to, “Right, I shouldn’t have cursed you out either…I’m sorry too, I guess.”

The guy hummed, a smile slowly appearing on his lips before he took another drag of his cigarette, his eyes boring into yours again, “I’m glad the pretty barista doesn’t hate my guts anymore.”

You have no idea what took over you, but your cheeks were suddenly flushing as if you had been noticed by your crush for the first time, your skin prickling. You weren’t one to care about the compliments your clients gave since most of them were only trying to get in your pants, but this guy seemed to be genuine. He didn’t try to hit on you, he was just calling you pretty, and it was getting to you. You hummed and turned towards the door, hand reaching out for the knob when suddenly the guy spoke again, “Humans are easily susceptible, you know? We judge without knowing first, and we rarely apologise and recognise our mistakes. I hate people like that, rude people for no reason too. I don’t stand for all that bullshit, so I’m glad you told me to fuck myself instead of smiling at me like you do with all the other assholes. I appreciate your hard work, we all have to make due somehow and you aren’t less for working in this pub, pretty barista.”

There he was again, making your chest feel heavy as you huffed, a sarcastic smile pulling at your lips. Once again, what did he know about you? Maybe you loved this damned job, maybe being a barista in a shitty pub has been your lifelong dream. You almost scoffed at yourself, eyes narrowing as the guy took more drags of his joint, seemingly waiting for an answer that you didn’t exactly want to give. But you didn’t want him to have the last word, much like yesterday, so you plastered on a sarcastic smirk, “There you go again, blabbering your mouth when you’re smoked out.”

You didn’t expect the guy to start laughing loudly, his head falling back as it landed against the wall, his eyes crinkling at the corners. You didn’t mean to gape, but he was beautiful and painfully honest, it was refreshing in a world full of fakeness. He was an intriguing person, and you would’ve allowed yourself to become interested in him if only you had met in a different setting. With a hum and lingering eyes, you pushed the door open as the guy nodded at you in goodbye once he realised you were leaving for good. And with a faster beating heart, you willed yourself to focus on the few hours that you still had of your shift.

            It’s been quite a while since you had the chance to wake up at the crack of dawn without feeling tired, or without having to rush in for an early shift. Through hard work, you had earned these two days of break, and while you wished you had been given a full week, you made sure to utilise these two days wisely. You had always been an early bird, wishing to wake with the sun, opening your windows to hear the song of the birds, but it was too cold for them to hunker down in front of your window today. You didn’t mind, you’d take a stroll after your breakfast and check out the new art store that’s opened not too far from your apartment. You’ve heard great things about it, the prices seemed to be reasonable, and it had an adjoint bookstore and a coffee shop as well. A quick check on the internet showed you just how cozy it was, so you thought you could buy a book from your to read list and settle down in the coffee shop. It sounded like a great plan to destress and forget for a bit about work and all the idiots that kept you up at night, quite literally.

Your scarf was thick as you buried your nose into it, trying to keep it warm from the cold chill of the early morning. The city was awake with you, orange sun rising on the horizon and blinding you as you were walking towards it, you couldn’t help but smile. It warmed your cheeks and body, feeling the sun on your skin during cold season always felt like a blessing, you would always relish in it as much as you could because you knew it wouldn’t last for long. You exhaled as your eyes remained squinted, watching the people around you as you walked towards your destination. Kids were rushing to school, parents by their sides guiding them, and traffic was as crazy as ever, impatient drivers honking and disturbing the little peace everyone had. You paid it no mind and felt thankful that you were able to wake up so early instead of just going to bed, all tired and wishing for your boss to fire you. But if he did fire you, you would be in trouble, so you didn’t actually wish for that to happen. And suddenly as you turned the corner, the guy’s words from the bar managed to ring through your ears once again. Working at the pub was just as much of an honest job as it would’ve been working anywhere else.

You sighed, realising you were thinking about him again. You’ve been doing this a lot lately, letting your mind wander to his peculiar fashion sense and even more peculiar way of thinking. He seemed almost raw with his words and thoughts, unafraid to say them to your face. It was refreshing and intriguing, but you couldn’t let yourself be sidetracked right now. You had a purpose, and that was working until you had enough money to move away. If somehow a guy came into the picture right now, you felt like that would mess up all your plans and vision of the future. Under no circumstance would you stay here, but you knew your heart would betray you and try to keep you here for longer, with your lover. You didn’t even want to think of the guy as a potential love interest, you didn’t even know each other, so you shoved these thoughts to the back of your mind as you reached the art store, eyes widening at its exterior.

You haven’t seen anything quite like it before, the windows reached from ceiling to floor, a clear view of what was going on inside. There was a spiral staircase that led to the higher level which was littered with bookcases and low hanging retro chandeliers, bean bags spaced out on the floor as people sat around with books in their hands. To the right was the coffee shop with a separate entrance if you were only here for coffee, but you could also enter through the art store. And the art store was gorgeous as you made your way inside, the double doors opening easily. A sweet scent hit your nostrils as you walked further inside, your eyes wide as you took in the whole place. Paintings were hung on the walls, blank canvas placed underneath as many shelves housed all kinds of art supplies. The clerks were all smiley and they welcomed you warmly once they noticed your arrival. Maybe you could find a nicer workplace, something like this one. The workload seemed less strenuous and the people that came here to shop were less rowdy and rude. As much as you loved admiring the fine arts, you didn’t have the talent for drawing or painting, you could mess up even something as simple as a cloud. It was embarrassing, but arts have never been your forte, so you headed for the staircase to look for the book you had on your mind.

Navigating around the many shelves seemed a bit intimidating at first, but then you noticed they were sectioned on different genres, the tags hanging low from the ceiling with an arrow pointing towards the section to help you out. You smiled to yourself as you unrolled your scarf from around your neck, the warmth of the store helping your frozen fingers as you turned down a corner, two tall bookshelves on your sides. At the end of the row sat a younger girl with a manga in her hand, another one pressed to her lips as she seemed to be giggling. You felt yourself smile as you came near her, looking at the titles of the books. Asking for a clerk to help you find the book you were looking for would’ve helped enormously, but you found yourself wanting to stroll around in the warmth, fingers grazing the spines of the books. The girl giggled just a bit louder and blushed when you glanced her way. This wasn’t a library, so she wasn’t disturbing anyone, but she was still mindful of those around her. You turned the corner once again, finding the High Fantasy section, having made your research beforehand, you knew you were in the right place. It took a bit more cruising down the row to finally find the book you were looking for, and you grinned when you found it, taking it off the shelf.

You thought about strolling around the store more just to discover it further, maybe they had cheap trinkets you could buy. You even thought about paying a visit the coffee shop as well, maybe they had one of your favourite patisserie delicacies. You wouldn’t turn down something sweet right now, you didn’t have a sweet tooth necessarily, but there were days when your cravings got the better of you. With that in mind, you headed back the way you had come, sneaking another glance at the younger girl as she gasped, manga now clutched tightly in both of her hands. You chuckled before you rounded the corner, now back on the main aisle that led to the spiral staircase. You noticed that most people who were inside the store looked to be college students, their outfits mismatched colours and patterns, hair coloured something vibrant as most of them had piercings you never even thought possible before. You really liked their style and found yourself staring at them, blushing when a girl caught you and raised an eyebrow before she smiled. You nodded your head and hurried down the stairs, flustered and a little embarrassed. They oddly reminded you of the guy from the bar, you thought he’d somehow fit right in with the people inside the store. It looked something he’d enjoy, not that you knew anything about him besides that he smoked weed, wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, and had a nice sense of fashion.

You were looking at the hard cover of your book as you got to the base of the staircase, taken by the pretty illustration and completely unaware that someone was headed straight towards you, just as taken by items in his hands as you were by your book. The collision could’ve been avoided if you both had been paying attention to where you were going, but alas, you gasped loudly as you felt a hard body collide into yours, items spilling loudly onto the floor. Your head shoot up, eyes wide as you looked at the equally startled man and—wait, it was the same guy from the bar! You gulped, suddenly feeling nervous as your cheeks burned, but the guy hadn’t noticed you yet as he had crouched down to collect his items off the floor. You felt bad and hoped the expensive palette on the ground hadn’t been broken, so you crouched down too and reached for it to inspect it. The guy still hadn’t quite noticed that it was you out of all people, but as you reached for the same brush, his head raised sharply. Your smile was apologetic as the guy’s eyes widened, recognition flashing on his face. This was the third time you met this week, the sheer coincidence of meeting outside the pub was a bit jarring…especially since you’ve been just thinking about him.

“Pretty barista from the pub!” He motioned towards you then chuckled, letting you pick up the brush. Your book was placed on the ground next to you so your hands were free to help.

“Hi,” Your voice came out a lot shier than you had intended it to be, and you chewed on your bottom lip awkwardly, “Sorry about this, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Don’t worry,” The guy chuckled, scooping up the small canvases, “I wasn’t either. If it makes you feel better, it was both of our faults.”

You hummed and grabbed the last item off the floor, standing at the same time as the guy. His arms were filled with his items, and you wondered if you handed over the four in your hands how he’d be able to carry everything. Despite the cold weather outside, he was underdressed. He wore a simple turtleneck with a brown knitted vest over it, long flowy plants and mismatched tennis shoes. As you both stepped aside from the staircase to make way for others, you cleared your throat and averted your eyes once you realised you were staring again. But you hadn’t seen him wearing glasses before, and with the curly strands falling over his forehead, he didn’t only look handsome but cute as well.

“What brings you here?” The guy made conversation as you tried to figure out how to hand him his items without making him drop them all again, “I say this without meaning to be rude, but you seem like the last person who’d be interested in art.”

You huffed, not bothered by his honesty, “While that statement is incorrect, I’m not here due to the art section of the store. I was looking for a book.”

“Right!” He exclaimed, glancing down at his own chest, “Oh, sorry, you can hand me those, I can carry them!”

“Are you sure?” You asked as he nodded enthusiastically, so you complied. You stepped closer to place the other four items in his arms, watching as he clinched the smaller canvas underneath his chin to keep it from falling. You would’ve laughed and offered to help until he got himself a bag or something, but the guy looked pretty content like this. Like it wasn’t his first time doing this…

“Are you collecting them?” The guy’s incomplete question left you raising a confused eyebrow at him, “Sorry, I saw you’re buying The Hobbit. It’s a pretty famous reprint, the covers are gorgeous, my best friend is collecting them so I assumed you are too.”

You glanced down at the book in your hand and bit your bottom lip, trying to brush off your embarrassment. Why were you feeling like this all of a sudden? It made no sense, but you didn’t want to leave a bad impression on the guy…even though his perception of you might already be fucked since this wasn’t your first time meeting.

“I’ve, uh, so, uhm, I have a to read list for books I’ve never read while growing up, so now I have a little tradition that I buy a book from the list each month and read it.” You spoke quickly, avoiding eye contact as the guy listened to your ramble. His intake of breath was sharp and you chanced a glance at his face, finding his eyes wide and his mouth rounded.

“Wait. Are you saying you haven’t read The Hobbit before?!” He sounded incredulous and alarmed, and your cheeks grew hot once again, actually managing to sour your mood a bit. Not having read the book didn’t make you less by any means, but you had a feeling this guy was well-versed in literature, so it felt like a jab and even a subtle scrutinising.

“Yeah, not everyone likes reading while growing up…” Your tone grew cold and voice snappish as you continued to avoid eye contact, looking towards the front desk so that maybe the guy would get the hint that you were done with this conversation. But it didn’t actually surprise you that he continued speaking without noticing you didn’t want to keep conversing anymore.

“That’s totally cool, my brother hated comic books growing up and now he’s obsessed with them.” The guy chuckled, expression innocent and tone genuinely excited, “I think you’ll love the book, it’s filled with adventure and otherworldly creatures. It’s a nice step back from our grim reality, I feel like you need that right now.”

Okay, there he was assuming again that he could just…psychoanalyse you or whatever, “Can you stop doing that? I’m not a painting you can interpret to your liking.”

The guy blinked, face going blank before his cheeks flushed, his gaze averted now from yours, “I…have I been doing it all this time?”

“Ever since we’ve met.” Your answer was sharp and quick and the guy blushed even more.

“Oh, sorry, I just…I’ll stop doing that,” Then he smiled awkwardly and held eye contact with you, “I’m Hongjoong, by the way, I don’t remember introducing myself.”

Because he hadn’t. You repeated his name in your head, finding yourself liking the sound of it, it seemed like a fitting name for him. You hummed, extending your hand.

“I’m Y/N.” But you and Hongjoong glanced down at your extended hand and then his occupied ones at the same time, chuckles leaving your mouths as he seemed flustered.

“I’m shake your hand the next time we see other.”

“If there will be a next time.”

“I quite like the pub you work at, pretty barista.” You cleared your throat and avoided looking at him because as corny as it was, it kind of made your heart flutter. What was happening? The chiming of the doorbell reminded you that it was time you left and took care of other errands you had in your schedule, but before you could say goodbye to Hongjoong, he asked a question that took you off guard, “Wanna grab a cup of coffee with me?”

Then he turned sideways, nodding towards the adjoined café, and you hesitated for a second. You could actually slip in a little time to have coffee with him, but you felt reluctant. You had met him at the pub, after all, and you still couldn’t decide what type of person he was. Of course, he was handsome, and so far, has showed a good character, but there were little moments when he somehow managed to ruin everything with his words. And he was still a complete stranger, so, listening to your rational mind, you slowly shook your head.

“I don’t like coffee, but thanks!” Your smile was easy, Hongjoong’s face morphed into something knowing as he hummed with a nod.

“Sure, I’m glad I caught you here.” Then, as you were about to take off, he added, “The pretty barista now has a name, I can say my morning was successful.”

You tried to huff and look irked, but the blush betrayed you. You just shook your head before heading for the front desk, “Goodbye, Hongjoong.”

“See ya!” His smile was radiant as he turned around and headed for the café instead, and you realised he was underdressed because he had come from the coffee shop, his things already there. And with Hongjoong on your mind, you followed his distinctive walk as he sauntered over to his table with an elegancy yet swagger you hadn’t seen before.

            Now, a week ago you probably would have said no to a preposition that involved you following home a complete stranger whose name you had known for a maximum of four days, but tonight had been literal shit and you were on the verge of tears when Hongjoong had sauntered over to the bar, his Chesire like smile blinding. You had one more hour left of your shift and you’d be clocking out, not even staying behind to help Hani clean up. Your cramps were terrible and a guy who hit on you for the whole night had spilt his drink on your favourite blouse, calling you a bitch as well for shunning him away, so, when you saw Hongjoong approach the bar with mischief in his eyes, you were ready to scream at him and tell him to get lost. Except that you didn’t do all that because his question completely threw you off guard.

“Y/N, do you like art?” He had a rolled-up joint resting at his ear, his hair pulled to the side and clipped back with colourful hair clips. Your laugh that bubbled past your lips sounded incredulous and tired, but you nodded.

“I do, do you want something to drink?” Hongjoong shook his head, leaning across the bar despite it being wet from spilt alcohol.

“When does your shift end?”

“In an hour.”

“Wanna see some of my art?” Then Hongjoong grinned, looking proud of himself, “I’m a painter.”

Something came over you and didn’t even let you ponder over your decision, “Do you have weed?”

The answer was obvious as you glanced at the joint and Hongjoong laughed, tilting his head in a way that sharpened his features under the neon lights of the pub.

“Obviously, got some on me right now. Want some?” Not while you were working, afterwards, however, you were free to do whatever.

“After my shift, yeah.”

“Cool, I’ll meet you in the back. See ya.”

And that’s how you ended up at Hongjoong’s apartment, not even ten minutes away from the pub. Your feet ached and your cramps were so bad you felt like doubling over and emptying your already empty stomach, but you tried to hold yourself together in front of Hongjoong. There was a nervous flutter in your chest as you had followed him up the steel staircase, the building old and dodgy. However, the second you walked inside his studio apartment, it felt like you had entered a different realm. He was the true definition of an artist, you came to realise, with canvas strewn around the apartment, most finished but some blank, oil paint tainting the wooden floor and even the walls. The colours were neutral, beige with a slip of sage green here and there, the curtains sheer and pulled to the side as Hongjoong hurried over to the windows to push them open. There was an earthy smell in the air mixed with something sweet like vanilla, and you couldn’t help but marvel at the cosiness of Hongjoong’s studio. You recognised a few prints on the walls, they were the paintings of well-known painters who no longer lived, and the décor Hongjoong had used was rather vintage than modern. His huge wardrobe was open, and he pushed the door closed with little care as he picked up a hoodie off the floor. You were surprised he even owned one of those.

You flinched when it collided against your head, confused as to why he had thrown it at you. Hongjoong chuckled as he shrugged his coat off, trying to tidy his messy bed but quickly giving up when he realised you didn’t look like you cared. Truthfully, your apartment wasn’t in a better shape, the dishes in the sink had been there for three days and your bathroom was in dire need of a deep clean.

“We can’t smoke weed with closed windows, so it’ll get colder.” Hongjoong suddenly explained, shrugging on a cardigan that looked very soft, “Wear my hoodie, it’ll keep you warm.”

You hummed, glancing down at it before you stepped out of your shoes, shrugging your jacket off and wearing the hoodie. Its scent was sweet but potent with something musky, and you blushed as your nose buried into its fabric, drinking in its soft material.

“Make yourself feel at home!” Hongjoong grinned, walking over to the small kitchen section to grab two cups, “Do you want tea?”

You shook your head as you walked towards the small bean bag, pushing it with your leg to try and get it more gathered together. And then, just as you were about to sink into the chair, you heard a faint sound come from the kitchen. You turned your head and were met with a small black creature blinking at you in wonder.

“You have a cat?” You asked in surprise, staring back at the little pet. Hongjoong chuckled, looking down at his pet as the electric kettle started whistling.

“Is it so surprising? I found him near a dumpster a few years ago, he’s been by my side ever since.” You couldn’t help but gaze at Hongjoong with admiration as he spoke, pouring hot water into his cup for the tea, “His name is Woo ‘cuz he reminds me of my friend. They are both rascals and really loud.”

As if on cue, the cat meowed loudly and you chuckled, finally easing yourself into the bean bag. Your lower back protested and your spine cracked as you allowed yourself to lean back, arching your back. You could’ve cried at the relief, thankful to finally be off your feet. You couldn’t wait for the weed, it would dull your cramps and help you ease up after the day you’ve had. You were probably in dire need of a shower since you smelled like alcohol, but you didn’t feel comfortable showering at a guy’s place you barely knew. Which, now that you thought more about it, realisation started setting in. You weren’t too smart for following Hongjoong home, but he had never creeped you out, so you decided to give him the benefit of the doubt tonight. You stared at the cat as Hongjoong mixed honey into his berry-flavoured tea, the warm mist hogging up his glasses. The cat, still at Hongjoong’s side, stared back at you and then slowly walked towards you, its head tilted in wonder. You smiled at it and let it smell your fingers, taking you off guard when it unceremoniously climbed into your lap, starting to make biscuits against your lower abdomen.

“Ah, of course, you’re already in the lap of the pretty barista.” Hongjoong mused with an amused smile on his lips, “You take after Wooyoung more than one would think.”

You had no idea who this Wooyoung guy was, but it sounded like he was a flirt if Hongjoong wasn’t bluffing.

“I like your apartment,” You blurted out as you started petting the cat, smiling down at it when it started purring, “It’s got character, much like you.”

“That’s the first time you said something completely honest to me.” Your eyebrows furrowed as you looked up at Hongjoong, the joint from his ear now gone as he grabbed some matches to light it up. You didn’t think that was true, but you didn’t say anything as Hongjoong came nearer, sitting down on the floor across from you. You looked at him as he took a long whiff of his joint, then extended his arm for you to take the weed. It’s been quite a while since you smoked any, you knew it would hit you faster, but you hoped it wasn’t too strong or you’d become sick. You took a careful drag of it as Woo settled into a slumber in your lap, and the earthy taste of it made you grimace. But you kept the smoke in your lungs for a bit before exhaling, taking another drag as Hongjoong watched you with a lazy smile. He looked so…handsome. You’ve had a few days to yourself to think about Hongjoong after your encounter in the art store, and you realised you were attracted to him. It was mostly physical since you liked his looks, but his brutally honest character also had you intrigued even if you’d get offended at times by what he was saying.

“I find it hilarious that you decided to come home with me after you declined to have coffee.” Your eyes met Hongjoong’s quickly just as you were about to hand over the joint, “Do you really don’t drink coffee? Or did you just want to get rid of me that day?”

“I…” You licked your lips as Hongjoong took the joint from you, grinning as he took a long drag once again, “Both, actually. I just…I don’t know you well enough and we’ve also met at the pub, I don’t like meddling with clients. Those frat boys are horny and only want to sleep with me.”

“Good thing I’m not a frat boy then, right, Woo?” Hongjoong grinned and ruffled the slumbering cat’s fur, looking back at you with an understanding look, “I’ll be done with my master’s degree in just a few months.”

You hummed, picking at the sleeve of Hongjoong’s hoodie before you saw the joint handed to you again, “And after that? What do you plan on doing?”

Suddenly, Hongjoong had a pensive look on his face as he leaned back on his arms, staring up at the ceiling. You took shorter drags of the joint now but kept the smoke in your lungs until it started burning.

“I want to travel the world, visit art galleries and drink a lot of expensive wine.” That didn’t sound bad at all, Hongjoong continued before you could tell him, “It’s hard breaking into the industry as a painter even though some realtors have already approached me to buy my paintings and put them on display.”

“And? What did you say to them?” You felt genuinely curious, the cat sighed loudly in your lap and Hongjoong looked at you two, reaching out for the joint. Your fingertips brushed together and Hongjoong’s hands felt too cold, but you didn’t comment on it.

“I turned them down,” Hongjoong smiled, but it looked almost sad before he shrugged, taking a drag, “I don’t want just anyone owning my creations. I want someone who understands what’s on that canvas to contact me, I want someone who genuinely loves art and isn’t just doing it for the money. It’s hard to find people like that nowadays, but I’m willing to wait as long as it takes…even if that makes me broke.”

Hongjoong scoffed out a chuckle, sounding bitter by the end of his sentence. For someone who was so good at reading others and commenting on their lives, Hongjoong seemed to be having his own demons he had to fight. You hummed, closing your eyes for a second as you felt your muscles ease up, your cramps less torturous. You were glad the weed was slowly kicking in, your cramps would’ve had you crying if not.

“So how do you plan on travelling if you have no money?” Maybe the question was insensitive, but you were curious. Hongjoong didn’t take offence as he smiled, looking at you with sparkling eyes.

“There are art courses all around the world, I might sign up for one and leave, never look back…”

“Do you hate it here?” The question tumbled past your lips before you could stop yourself, “Because I don’t.”

Hongjoong didn’t look surprised as he nodded, handing back the joint so you could finish it. Three drags and it would be gone, so you took your time savouring it.

“It’s not the worst, but I don’t see much of a future for myself here.” So, Hongjoong was just like you then, “When are you leaving?”

“How did you know?” You sounded shocked as Hongjoong shrugged, averting his eyes.

“You and I are rather similar, you just fail to see it, Y/N.” Well, maybe he was right, maybe he wasn’t. You couldn’t read Hongjoong as well as he could read you, you needed more time to feel out his character.

“Six months and I’m out of here, never to come back if life’s kind to me.” Your voice was quiet as you didn’t look at Hongjoong, smoke wafting through your lips as you finished the joint. Hongjoong hummed, a low and warm sound, as he reached for the stud to take it from you. Your fingers brushed together once again, and you looked at Hongjoong when he held your wrist.

“You’re stronger than you think, you’ll make it big out there, Y/N, have more faith in yourself.” You found yourself smiling now, head a little hazy as you nodded, finding it easier to believe whatever Hongjoong told you.

“You’re the artist between the two of us, you’re the one supposed to make it big.” Hongjoong chuckled and stood, headed for the kitchen.

“Can’t we both make it big?” He raised an eyebrow as he threw the stud away, turning around to face you. You hummed, not entirely agreeing with him, but you decided to nod. Then, Hongjoong turned towards where his bed was and grinned, “You’re here to see some art, no?”

“Right, I almost forgot about that.” Hongjoong chuckled, then beckoned you over. You grabbed the cat in your lap and pressed a kiss against its small head, placing it on the bean bag in your spot. Your feet felt light as you headed towards Hongjoong, who had sauntered over to the desk pressed up against the wall underneath the open windows. He turned the small lamp on, and suddenly you were looking at small canvases filled with colour and abstract shapes. Somehow they looked like an organised mess, even in the overflowing swirl of colours, you managed to find a pattern that seemed to never end like a loop. You turned your head to look at Hongjoong, and suddenly you realised his art was a perfect reflection of who he was.

“I can tell you made these.” Perhaps phrasing it like that was offensive, but Hongjoong only looked curious. He hummed, raising an eyebrow.

“How come?” His voice was quiet, curious.

“I can see you in these.” You pointed at the canvas with orange and yellow as the more prominent colours, circling a deep blue that looked almost black, “The blue is you at your core, dark and perhaps scared of the world. And then all that orange and yellow? I think that’s how you see the world, how you wish it treated you, hoping it would lighten all that darkness that looms over you all the time. And this one? I wonder if it was a coincidence you hid so many infinity symbols in the background, this burgundy is gorgeous, by the way. I think everyone is afraid of disappearing without leaving a trace of themselves in this fucked up world, and I actually…I admire you for being so honest and straightforward, very few people are like you.”

Hongjoong’s eyebrows were furrowed the longer you spoke, but he remained silent as you smiled, looking down at the white canvas, unfinished but with light blue swirls creating the illusion of a clear sky, “I wonder what this will turn into. So far, it reminds me of serenity, of the calm before a storm. Life’s like that too, don’t you think? It’s quiet and gentle, and then it turns into a scary thing that can destroy us if we let it.”

Hongjoong just gulped, his eyes clouded but his heart racing. He was positive no one had been able to interpret his art for what it was before, and he wondered how much of him you could see through his eyes if you could read so well what the trail of his brush had left on a blank canvas. It made him feel seen like never before, not even his biggest supporter, Wooyoung, could see beyond Hongjoong’s intentions when he sat down to paint, to tell the world his pain and rage, yearning for someone to just finally see him.

“You’re…” Hongjoong gulped, his throat feeling dry as you smiled at him, curious if you’d been right, “You are a person I should cherish more from now on.”

Your eyebrows raised in surprise, your heart skipping a beat once again. What did he mean by saying that? You wanted to ask, but Hongjoong stepped closer, his tone breathy as he spoke up again, “‘Whoever wants to know something about me – as an artist which alone is significant – they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognize what I am and what I want’…that’s what Gustav Klimt once said. And so far, you are the only person who’s managed to do that.”

Your mouth gaped open, and you both heard Woo stretch and meow loudly, his soft footsteps loud as he walked towards Hongjoong’s bed, jumping up and finding a new spot to sleep. You didn’t know what to say back to that, but you felt your heart race as your cheeks flushed, shy all of a sudden. Hongjoong was looking at you with a softness no man has looked at you with, it was a bit hard to take it all in without freaking yourself out that this wasn’t real, that it was just the weed, or that maybe Hongjoong wasn’t as genuine as his expression showed.

“Y/N,” You didn’t flinch when his hand wrapped around your wrist, his tone still soft, “I think you already know that I find you pretty, and I…I might have gone to that dingy pub for so long just to see you, actually.”

Those words had your heart racing even wilder as you looked up, finding Hongjoong’s face closer to yours as his eyes now bore into yours, “I should’ve been more specific when I asked you to have coffee with me. I meant to ask you out on a date, but I panicked because I knew I had slightly upset you, but…”

He gulped nervously and you felt so curious to hear what more he had to say, perhaps a smile would encourage him, so that’s what you did, offered him a small friendly smile. He released a breath and cleared his throat, his hand slipping from your wrist to your hand, “Can I kiss you?”

If this was anyone else but Hongjoong, your answer would have been an instant no. But the longer you looked into his eyes, the more excited and giddy you felt, so you just nodded your head and licked your lips, trying to ignore the deep flush of your cheeks. Hongjoong chuckled, suddenly looking shy, but he started leaning in, his eyes fluttering closed just as your lips met. It was careful, it was sweet and it made your heart roar as you stepped just a bit closer, your noses brushing together as your lips moved slowly and carefully, mostly just testing out the waters. Hongjoong’s lips were soft and sweet, and surprisingly didn’t taste like weed but like peaches. You wondered if he used any sort of lip balm to have them taste like that. His hand settled on your cheek and he gently caressed your cheekbone with his thumb, making your heart roar once again. It’s been long since someone had treated you with such gentleness, and you told yourself to remain level-headed, but it would be just so easy to fall in love with Hongjoong. You couldn’t help but smile as you two pulled apart, Hongjoong tried to hide his own grin as he sucked his lips together, but his eyes gave him away. You chuckled and he giggled, and suddenly you felt the urge to pull him into a hug.

“So,” He cleared his throat as he let his arms rest around your torso loosely, “If you don’t like coffee, what do you like?”

“Delicious cakes.” You didn’t hesitate to answer and Hongjoong chuckled, patting your head.

“Well then, would you like to go on a delicious cake-hunting date with me?” You closed your eyes to contain your excitement, but the weed had not only eased your muscles but your always worrying mind as well.

“Yes!” You didn’t mean to squeal, but it was hard not to when Hongjoong startled giggling sweetly once again, nodding his head.

“Good, I’ll make sure we find the best spots in the city then.”

And perhaps not just in the city, but also in foreign countries while you attended Hongjoong’s art expositions, an expensive bottle of wine waiting for the two of you back at the hotel.

੭ Masterlist ੭

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[lu-is-not-ok]

hi there! i’ve been motivated by previous asks, so i would really like to hear your thoughts on hong lu’s relationship with yi sang, as it is currently and how it may progress with the story… they have very interesting parallels to me and i wish i could see their relationship explored somewhere other than my own head lol

also, (if you would allow me two questions) do you have any particular thoughts about hong lu’s particulars (bachelor and sheltered)? i find the sinners’ particulars to be really interesting too but i never see them discussed anymore. thanks for your time & have a good day <3

When it comes to Hong Lu and Yi Sang, their relationship is much more straightforward but also much more genuinely positive.

The two don't really interact with each other in any notable manner until Canto 4, which is also where their dynamic Truly gets established. Canto 4's Dungeon is where they both end up connecting, as Yi Sang recognises Hong Lu as someone who heavily resembles Young Ji from the League of Nine, while Hong Lu himself appears to relate to and understand some of Yi Sang's struggles.

This all comes to a head when Hong Lu is the one to recognise the emotional core of what was happening and gives Dante the advice they need to actually reach out to Yi Sang at his lowest.

From this Canto onward, Hong Lu appears to consistently check up on Yi Sang during moments that remind the latter of his past with the League. Hong Lu shows that he not only holds concern for Yi Sang's emotional well-being, but also wants to make sure he doesn't bottle up his thoughts the way he learned he did in his past.

Likewise in Canto 7 Yi Sang is shown to be returning the favor to Hong Lu so to speak, though he's shown to struggle a bit more with processing how Hong Lu responds in comparison.

Outside of these moments, Hong Lu and Yi Sang are shown to generally have a cordial and amicable rapport, both showing curiosity towards each other when they share their respective knowledge and likewise jumping off of each other's observations to add their own. While Hong Lu does tease Yi Sang once or twice, it doesn't read nearly as mean-spirited as some of the shit he pulled with people like Heathcliff and Rodya.

Their relationship is perhaps one of the few on the bus that I can genuinely say is an entirely positive one for both of them. They both clearly care for each other and enjoy speaking with one another, even if they might struggle to understand one another at points. No ifs or buts, they're just straight up honestly decent friends.

It really makes me wonder how Yi Sang is going to take it once Hong Lu's lies are revealed... Compared to a lot of the relationships Hong Lu has with the other Sinners, his bond with Yi Sang seems the most genuine. Will Yi Sang be able to recognise that and will he decide to still stand by Hong Lu side?

Now. As for your second question.

I don't have much to say on Hong Lu's particulars beyond mentioning that their translation is. Interesting to say the least.

According to someone who speaks Korean, the term that got translated to "Bachelor" would more accurately be translated to "Young Master", aka it doesn't really have anything to do with marital status in its original language.

Similarly, the original wording for the "Sheltered" particular is more so an allusion to Hong Lu having a different sense of reality to what is considered normal. It's an interesting specificity that the English translation added that from my understanding wasn't there in the original text.

I don't have much else to add beyond the fact that people are too quick to trust the Manager Instructions as being the ultimate truth on what the Sinners are like. Their description of Ishmael as someone whose "patience runs deep" is proven incorrect in the fucking Prologue where her impatience is directly called out. This shit isn't a trustworthy source of info.

[leupagus]

Please enjoy this section of "A Song of Darkness and Dawn" that's at least three fics into the future (somewhere around season 8?) that I've had in my drafts for literally a year

Happy anniversary?

"Father never talked about the Rebellion," said Lady Stark after a long moment. "At least not with me. Our septa taught us about it, a bit. How King Robert made his claim to the Iron Throne in part through his grandmother, Rhaelle Targaryen. She was the younger sister to King Jaehaerys and Queen Shaera."

"You believe Daenerys's claim to be stronger than mine?" He took a breath, wondering at himself even as he said, "It may well be."

Lady Stark gaped at him. "'It may well be'?" she echoed, incredulous. "Whatever happened to 'the Iron Throne is mine by right' and 'all those who deny my claim are my enemy' and 'I alone can unite the realm'?"

"I don't sound like that," he snapped, ignoring her badly-suppressed snort. "Robert won by right of conquest more than birth, and three dragons gives Daenerys Stormborn a better claim than any bloodline. But the more I think on it..." He sighed. "I suspect that there is no such thing as king — or queen — by right. It's simply a pretty phrase for those in power to pursue what they want, at the expense of their duty to their people." He glanced at her. "What?"

"Nothing," she said quickly, though her expression was odd. "I just never expected to hear such things from you."

"It's your fault, if it's anyone's."

"Really." This expression was more familiar: a glower. "I'm sure this will be interesting."

"You took Winterfell back, despite having no real claim other than the..." He cast about for the right word, "sentiment, I suppose, of the Northern lords."

It wasn't the right word, he soon discovered. "I'm a Stark," she replied hotly. "My family's held the North for thousands of years!"

"But you're not the heir to Winterfell," he pointed out. ". Daughters can inherit — but they usualy don't, not if there's a son living. And your father had three."

"None of whom want to be Warden of the North!" She looked ready to kick him. "And you yourself granted Winterfell to me—"

"And I meant it," he said, stepping back a judicious pace. "You've rebuilt the Keep and brought order back to the North, made it safe for your people. Now you're preparing them for the Great War, and I'd ask for no one better. You're doing your duty. But it was a duty you sought, and a duty that rightly belongs to someone else."

"It's a duty I'm suited to," she countered. "Just as you were suited better to be Lord of Dragonstone and Master of Ships than to be Lord Paramount of the Stormlands."

Stannis jabbed a finger at her. "That was completely different!"

"Only because King Robert gave Storm's End to Renly outright," she said, raising a finger in turn. "You're the one who considered it a slight, even though Dragonstone was the holdfast given to the heir to the Iron Throne, which you were, until Joffrey was born. Not only that, you were the only man Robert could have trusted to rebuild his fleet. And," she added, pushing his hand down when he tried to interject, "You would have hated being Lord of the Stormlands."

She said it with such triumphant confidence that he was left gaping at her for a moment, before hurredly pulling his hand away from hers. "I admire your confidence, my lady," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "But bear in mind that I am Lord Paramount of the Stormlands."

"Yes, and if you were there, you'd hate it," she said blithely. "You'd have to deal with people, throughout the day and every day — and not just people who do as you tell them. You'd have to listen to the complaints of smallfolk about their taxed grains, hear out disputes between two holdings that have been fighting over the same half-acre for three generations; you'd have to listen all the wheedling lords and the irascable septons and blustering tradesmen. You'd have to offer comfort to the sickly who come to you for the healing touch of their lord, attend feast days and wave and smile at the crowds, accept the flower crowns the children weave for you at the tourneys. You can't just shout. You have to care, and be shown to care. You—" Suddenly she stopped and laughed. "I wish I had a mirror right now, to show you your face."

"Flower crowns?" he asked, wincing. Shireen would look well in them, at least.

"Good thing I didn't bend the knee, Your Grace," she said, "if the mere thought of daisies wrapped around your head makes you rethink the entire enterprise. What did you think being king meant?"

[telluriannovice]

Day 2: Hand Kiss

Danny glared at Vlad like he was trying to see through his skin. He'd been acting weird all day. First, Vlad took the day off work, which is fine, he's an adult and everyone needs time off. Then, he offered to take Danny to the park, the one with a playground, a skate park, and an open field. And then Vlad just so happened to have brought a picnic basket that had Danny's favorite sandwich (a BLT without the T) and Danny's favorite cookies. Then he just decided to "swing by" the arcade, that somehow didn't have any people in it, and the two of them got to play whatever they wanted for as long as they wanted. And now, Vlad was leading them towards the Pier Carnival, and Danny had a feeling he was going to suggest they "swing by" that too.

"What's wrong, Danny? Something not to your liking?" Vlad asked and seemed actually worried.

"No, it's literally perfect." Danny said, glaring at him more.

"Then why the death stare?"

"Well, the last time you were this nice to me, my emotions were tied to the weather."

"So what? I can't take you on a nice date without it being suspect." He didn't actually sound convincing.

"I mean, yeah," Danny admitted. "This feels like one of your old schemes."

Vlad made a disgruntled sound then quickened his pace. "I thought something that felt more go with the flow would suit you better, but if not, then come on. We're going to go have a good time and things will continue to be perfect."

Vlad did lead them to the carnival and they did have a good time. Well, Danny did. His main problem with the supposed perfect date was... well, they didn't do anything Vlad liked. Vlad dates were fancy dinners and museums. He'd spend hours dressing Danny up like a doll to make sure his outfit was perfect, and then they'd go somewhere that would kick you out for wearing shorts or burping too loud. The best date Danny can remember them going on was right in the middle - a fancy fundraiser dinner at the observatory. Vlad got to talk snob with the other rich guests and Danny got to see the new museum wing before the rest of the public. Sure, it wasn't the fanciest of dinners and Danny had to wear an uncomfy suit, but they both got to have their fun and spend time with each other.

Danny was still trying to figure out what Vlad's game was, when he realized they were alone. It was past closing time, but not past the time a security person would have asked them to leave. Vlad took Danny out onto the pier, where they could see the sun setting in brilliant color.

"Perfect." Vlad hummed in satisfaction and quickly took Danny's hands in his. "Danny, my beloved little badger. I have loved you from the moment we met, and through every fight we had, and I will continue to love you till the end of time. So I ask..." He pulled a small box out of his jacket and fell to one knee. "Will you marry me?"

Danny blinked at him, his brain still trying to process what Vlad just said. He just, proposed? After an entire day of doing stuff Danny liked, and on a pier at sunset. Danny was taking too long to answer, he could feel it. The ring box in Vlad's hands started to shake and Danny knows Vlad doesn't do well on his knees.

He needed to say something. He needed to say anything. He needed to tell Vlad how much he appreciated their date and how much effort Vlad put into their relationship. "Yeah, sure."

No! Come on! "No, wait, sorry. I mean yes."

Vlad sighed in relief and stood back up, taking the ring from its box and putting it on Danny's hand. Vlad kissed over it gently, then down Danny's hand and threatened to kiss all the way up his arm. But Danny was able to divert his attention, cupping Vlad's cheek and pulling him into a proper kiss. And you know what? Fuck it! He pulled Vlad into a playful dip kiss, like they were ballroom dancing.

Eventually, they stopped kissing. Danny gave Vlad a scheming look. "Alright, when's your next day off?"

"We can't get married that quickly, little badger. Weddings take-"

"Not for the wedding!" Danny interrupted. "For my proposal!"

"You don't need to-"

"Mines going to be way better than yours."

"It's not a competition."

"Sounds like you're scared you'll lose." Danny joined when Vlad laughed, but it wasn't a joke. His proposal was going to be way better than Vlad's!