#when i'm writing him and he has some feelings for the muse in that thread ??? even just STIRRINGS of A FeelingTM ???

[greedbent]

rises from the ashes just to remind everyone that kaz is a pathetic simp when he has feelings for someone so pls don't be too intimidated by him

externally he looks like he's about to commit about 5986485 crimes of the murdery variety (and probably is), but internally he will always just be consumed with so much love and appreciation for That PersonTM . . . it's almost disgusting tbh

he's literally the concept of a cat

pretends he wants nothing to do with you cold shoulder most of the time gets annoyed when you bother him

but also . . . ? goes out of his way to be in the same room as you gets jealous when you give someone else attention/affection kills and maims for you (basically no one messes with you)

side note: he's 100% aware he is undeserving of affection and love in return, so he's honestly not pursuing anything when he knows the person he cares about is "too good for him" (＾▽＾)

[generalsmemories]

sensitive

✧ sunday x gn!reader

✧ synopsis: the wings by his ears are far too sensitive for what you're both about to do to them.

✧ contents: just a lil scenario for the piercings on sunday's wings. and the hc (that has probs become every writers canon take) that his wings are oh so sensitive. established relationship, mildly suggestive cause why not, uhh, mentions of blood? sunday being utterly weak against his lover. ooc sunday cause goddamn i have NOTHING on this man.

✧ a/n: breathes in. listen i don't believe in any god but good lord i would start praying for this man if he asked me to.

jing yuan wips still in order, i just want to be on my best self mentally when writing for my eepy general so have this brainrot so i can function this week at my work and hopefully i'll write something more <3 thank you once again for your patience!

NOT BETA-READ THIS WAS WRITTEN WITHIN AN HOUR CAUSE THIS BRAINROT HAS BEEN BREWING INSIDE THE MIND FOR A MONTH, IM SORRY FOR THE ALL OVER THE PLACE WORDS - I HAVEN'T WRITTEN SINCE THE LAST JING YUAN ANGST PIECE.

Your fingertips have barely grazed the very edges of the feathers when the distinguished leader beneath you flinches in surprise. The fingers that grip your hips tightening further which causes your body that was previously hovering above him to settle down on Sunday's leg. You can hear a tiny sigh leaving his lips before you feel his head rest against your shoulder, the action causing you to chuckle.

"The longer you delay this, the more nervous you'll get, you know?" you muse, threading your fingers through his hair in an effort to coax him to lay back in the same position he previously was in. You're barely able to touch his right wing again before a gloved hand shoots up from his side and you feel a sharp nip at your neck in warning - causing you to immediately halt all of your actions.

"It would've gone a lot faster have you decided to not do it in such an orthodox method, dear." Sunday retaliates with a sigh, pecking the bite mark as some sort of apology, an apology that you knew was not sincere in the slightest.

You giggle once again, settling down comfortably on his legs whilst slightly leaning back to fully look at your lover. Your arms loop over his neck while cocking your head to the side in slight confusion, although said confusion doesn't reach your mischievous eyes or the huge grin on your face. "Why I thought this would help calm you? It was your idea to pierce these wings of yours after all," you remind him, tapping the piercing gun that you're currently holding onto on his shoulder.

The man before you sighs, seemingly in exasperation over your usual antics whilst shrugging away the piercing gun that you're continuously tapping him with. You can however clearly see the slight reddening on top of his ears, while his wings tuck a bit behind his ears - clearly a signal that he's feeling a bit embarrassed.

"You're well aware of the effect you have on me, my love." he admits, the hand on your hip moving from its spot to instead rest against your neck. "Hmm? Then I suggest that you hurry along to let me pierce your wings before said effect makes you lose your patience," you tease with a quiet laugh. "I do have a lot of experience with this lil' gun of ours after all." you cheekily say - causing Sunday to direct his gaze towards your own ears, which have a few more piercings than your average person.

"... I'm well aware." Sunday replies.

Well aware of how sensitive your own ears are, almost as sensitive as his own wings that have yet to be pierced. He could let out a breath beside them which causes you to tremble, a small peck would make you gasp softly, but if he were to use his tongue-

"You're thinking of inappropriate things again, dear." you mutter into his ears before unlooping your arms from his neck to rest against your sides, your whole weight supported by the singular hand Sunday has on your hip.

"Hardly."

For someone not of Halovian descent, you're somehow able to discern his thoughts immediately - quite a hassle to be honst.

"Well then, my dear? Why don't you relax so we can get this over with so you can return to your duties?" you whisper, moving your body to sit between his legs so that you can get a closer look on his right wing, where he preferred the piercing to be on.

"... Just- don't say anything when you're about to do- Ah!"

The single clicking noise of the needle piercing his wing before retracting back to it's original spot makes Sunday jolt in surprise, the grip on your hip increasing in pressure, but you're too busy looking at the placement in glee to care for your distraught lover right now.

You notice the edges of the piercing reddening a bit, extending your finger to gather the tiny bits of blood that had escaped from the wound. Glancing at Sunday, you notice his slightly glossy eyes that immediately diverts from your gaze.

The quiet laugh you let out makes Sunday glare at you, but his eyes widen slightly when you lick his blood away from your fingertips with closed eyes. "It wasn't that bad, was it?" you ask, opening your eyes again to lock eyes with Sunday, diverting your gaze slightly to his right wing.

You decide not to comment on his glossy eyes, deciding to instead scoot closer to peck the corner of his eyes, "Sorry that I surprised you, but as you said - Doing it this way is far more convenient for the both of us," you explain, lips pressing against Sunday's to coax him into relaxation.

"Mhm, thank you for indulging me, dove." he whispers, arms wrapping around your waist, the tension in his shoulders finally leaving.

"Although..." you murmur in between various pecks against Sunday's lips, your lover raising an eyebrow up in confusion and imploring you to continue speaking.

"I think you said you would go for 2 of the same piercings if the first one looked nice, no?" you say before pressing your lips against his once again. Sunday was barely able to understand the meaning behind your words before he could feel the same pain of the needle shoot through his already overly-sensitive wing.

The loud gasp he lets out is swallowed by your lips, his open mouth letting your tongue slip inside while the piercing gun in your hand slips away from your lips now that you've done your part of the deal. Your hands settle themselves against Sunday's cheeks now- wiping away the few tears that have now slipped down from his glossy eyes with your thumb.

There's a certain desperation in Sunday's hands by your waist. He had first bunched the material of your clothes upwards by surprise, but now he's slipping his gloved hands beneath them and quickly traveling further up - he moves in a way that you don't know if he's trying to push you away to scold you, or press you closer to him to feel your warmth.

He eventually decides to push you away. His cheeks are reddened and he's heaving for breaths while he's glaring down at you in mild disappointment and a hint of excitement - and yet the hands that's dragging the buttons of your shirt from inside to snap them open tells another desire from the esteemed leader of Penacony.

The same mischievous smile is present on your lips when you part ways, your lips are a bit swollen but it doesn't stop their journey from grazing against his now incredibly sensitive right wing, the jerk of his entire body not bothering you in the slightest as your lips glide over his feathers, your lover shuddering a bit when you let out a breath right over his newly pierced wings.

"All done now, my love," you mutter into his ear, shrugging off your now ruined shirt off of one shoulder, "Do I get any reward for doing this so smoothly and quickly?"

Sunday lets out a scoff, rolling his eyes at your triumphant expression before shoving you down onto the couch the two of you were previously resting on. "I'm thinking a punishment is more fitting for how you didn't warn me of your actions twice, no?"

[gingermintpepper]

As usual I read your tags always and so you said Apollo did not ask for resurrection of Asclepius and Hyacinthus so i just wanted to share this. About Asclepius death I read it on theoi.com, that earlier authors don't make him resurrect as a god but that's a later development mentioned only by Roman authors like Cicero, Hyginus and Ovid. But still Apollo has a role in Ovid's version

Ovid, Fasti 6. 735 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : Clymenus [Haides] and Clotho resent the threads of life respun and death's royal rights diminished. Jove [Zeus] feared the precedent and aimed his thunderbolt at the man who employed excessive art. Phoebus [Apollon], you whined. He is a god; smile at your father, who, for your sake, undoes his prohibitions [i.e. when he obtains immortality for Asklepios].

So here it is actually because of Apollo the decision was taken to resurrect him as god. And with Hyacinthus, I don't think I've read about Artemis playing the primary role. I know in Sparta there was a picture of Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite carrying Hyacinthus and his sister to heaven.

This is not on theoi.com but I saw on Tumblr it's from Dionysiaca by Nonnus

Second, my lord Oiagros wove a winding lay, as the father of Orpheus who has the Muse his boon companion. Only a couple of verses he sang, a ditty of Phoibos, clearspoken in few words after some Amyclaian style: Apollo brought to life again his longhaired Hyacinthos: Staphylos will be made to live for aye by Dionysos.

So since he is singing inspired by amyclean stories it probably means in that place it was believed Apollo was the one to bring back his lover to life.

Apollo as god of order was very important so i think it shows how special these people (and admetus too) were to him that he decided to go against the order for them 🥺

ANON!! Shakes you like a bottle of ramune!! BELOVED ANON!!!!! I'm littering your face with kisses, I'm anointing you with olive oil and honey - you absolutely made my night with this because, not only did I get the pure serotonin shot of having someone interact with my tags (yippee, wahoo!!) I also got to have that wonderful feeling of "oh wow, have I misunderstood something that was integral to my understanding of this myth/figure this whole time or is this a case of interpretational differences?" which is imo vital for my aims and interests as someone who enjoys mythological content and literature.

I'll preface my response with this: Hyacinthus is by far the hardest of these to get accounts for because his revival itself, as you very astutely point out, is generally accounted for in painting/ritual format which muddies the waters on who interceded for what. I wasn't actually familiar with that passage from the Argonautica - and certainly didn't remember it so thank you very much for bringing it to my attention!

That said, what I've come to understand, both about Hyacinthus and about Asclepius is that in the accounts of their deaths, Apollo's position is startlingly clear.

For Hyacinthus, it is established time and again that Apollo would have sacrificed everything for him - his status, his power, his very own immortality and divinity. Ovid writes that Apollo would have installed him as a god if only he had the time:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses. Book X. trans. Johnston)

Many other writers too speak of how Apollo abandoned his lyre and his seat at Delphi to spend his days with Hyacinthus, but they also all agree that when it came to his death - he was powerless. Ovid gives that graphic account of Apollo's desperation as he tries all his healing arts to save him to no avail:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book X. Apollo me boy, methinks him dead. trans Johnston)

Bion, in one of his fragments, writes that Apollo was "dumb" upon seeing Hyacinthus' agony:

(Bion, The Bucolic Poets. Fragment XI. trans Edmonds)

Even Nonnus in the Dionysiaca speaks constantly of Apollo's helplessness in the face of Hyacinthus' fate where he writes that the god still shivers if a westward wind blows upon an iris:

and when Zephyros breathed through the flowery garden, Apollo turned a quick eye upon his young darling, his yearning never satisfied; if he saw the plant beaten by the breezes, he remembered the quoit, and trembled for fear the wind, so jealous once about the boy, might hate him even in a leaf...

(Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Book 3. trans Rouse)

And the point here is just that - Apollo, at least as far as I've read, cannot avert someone's death. He simply can't. Once they're already dead - once Fate has cut their string - all Apollo's power is gone and he can do nothing no matter how much he wants to. And this is, as far as I know, supported with the accounts of Asclepius as well!

Since you specifically brought up Ovid's account, I'll also stick only to Ovid's account but in Metamorphoses when we get Ovid's version of Coronis' demise, he writes that Apollo intensely and immediately regrets slaughtering Coronis. He regrets it so intensely that he, like he does with Hyacinthus, does his best to resuscitate her:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo's regret)

And like Hyacinthus, when it becomes clear that what has happened cannot be undone, Apollo wails:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo wept.)

Unlike his mother, Asclepius in her womb had not yet died and so, with the last of Apollo's strength, he does manage, at least, to save him.

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo puts the 'tearing out' in Asclepius.)

But it goes further than even that because Ocyrhoe, Chiron's daughter, a prophetess who unduly gained the ability to directly proclaim the secrets of the Fates, upon seeing the baby Asclepius, immediately prophesies his glory, his inevitable death and then his fated ascension:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses, Book Two. Ocyrhoe's prophecy. trans Johnston)

Before she too succumbs to her hubris and is transformed by the Fates into a horse so she can no longer speak secrets that aren't hers to share.

These things ultimately are important because it establishes two very important things: 1) Apollo can't do anything in the face of the ultimate Fate of mortals, which is, of course, death and 2) even when Apollo is Actively Devastated, regretful, yearning, mournful, guilty or some unholy combination of all of the above, when someone is dead, he accepts that they are gone. Even if he is devastated by it, even if he'll cry all the rest of his days about it - if they're dead? Apollo lets them go. In Fasti, when Zeus brings Asclepius back, he does not say Apollo asked him to - Zeus, or well, in this case Jove, brings Asclepius back because he wants Apollo to stop being mad at him.

(Ovid, Fasti VI. Apollo please come home your father misses you. trans. A.S Kline)

Even Boyle's translation which you used above in your findings hints that Zeus made Asclepius a god because he wanted Apollo to stop grieving. (i.e 'smile at your father', 'for your sake [he] undoes his prohibitions')

And like, Apollo was deeply upset by Asclepius' death - apart from killing the Cyclops in anger, in book 4 of the Argonautica, Apollonius writes that the Celts believe the stream of Eridanus to be the tears Apollo shed over the death of Asclepius when he left for Hyperborea after being chastised by Zeus for killing his Cyclops:

But the Celts have attached this story to them, that these are the tears of Leto's son, Apollo, that are borne along by the eddies, the countless tears that he shed aforetime when he came to the sacred race of the Hyperboreans and left shining heaven at the chiding of his father, being in wrath concerning his son whom divine Coronis bare in bright Lacereia at the mouth of Amyrus.

It all paints a very clear picture to me. Apollo did not ask for either of them to be brought back. Though bringing them back certainly pleased and delighted him, they are actions of other gods who are moved by Apollo's grief and mourning and seek to mollify him. Him not asking doesn't mean he didn't want them back which I think is a very important distinction by the by, but it simply means that Apollo knows the natural order of things and, even if it hurts, he isn't going to press his luck about it.

Which, of course, brings us to Admetus. And I'm really not going to overcomplicate this, Admetus is different because, very vitally, Admetus is not dead. Apollo can't do a thing once Fate has been carried out and Death has claimed a mortal but you know what he absolutely can do? Bargain like hell with the Fates before that point of inevitability. And that's what he does, ultimately for Admetus and Alcestis. He sought to prolong Admetus' life, not revive him from death or absolve him from death altogether and even after getting the Fates drunk, he's still only able to organise a sacrifice - a life for a life - something completely contingent on whether some other mortal would be willing to die in Admetus' place and not at all controllable by Apollo's own power.

All of these things, I think come back to that point you made - that Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore these people are very special to him if it means he's willing to go against that order but, I also wish to challenge that opinion if you'd let me. Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore, I would argue, that it is even more important that it is shown that he does not break the divine order, especially for the people that mean the most to him. The original context of my comments which started this conversation were on this lovely, lovely post by @hyacinthusmemorial which contemplated upon Asclepius from the perspective of an Emergency Medical personnel and included, in their tags, the very poignant lines "there's something about Apollo letting go when Asclepius couldn't that eats my heart away" and "you do what you can, you do your best, but you don't ever reach too far" and I think that's perfectly embodied with the Apollo-Asclepius dichotomy. Apollo grieves. He wails, he cries, he does his best each and every time to save that which is precious to him but he does not curse their nature, he does not resent that they are human and ultimately, he accepts that that which is mortal must inevitably die. There is nothing that so saliently proves that those who uphold rules are also their most staunch followers - if Apollo wants to delight in his place as Fate's mouthpiece, he cannot undo Fate. And, if even the god of healing and order himself cannot undo death, what right does Asclepius, mortal as he is, talented as he is, have to disrespect it?

The beauty of these stories isn't that Apollo loved them enough to bring them back. The beauty is that Apollo loved them enough to let them go.

[wwilloww]

sh. | chapter twenty three | jhs

PAIRING ot7 x reader RATING Explicit. 18+. GENRE smut. fluff. angst. nonidol au. wildnerness au. roommates au. friends to lovers. SUMMARY Six months of quarantine have kept you apart. Somehow the distance sparks something new in each of you: questions, unfinished conversations, threads once chased now left cold. So when your roommate invites you to come with him to a mysterious house in the mountains with your friends, how could you even think of saying no? WC 5.8k WARNINGS AND TAGS non penetrative sex. some mild angst.

AN hey :) i'm that dude sliding into ur dms after not responding to ur text for three months but i AM here with a new chapter for you all. this one, for some reason, was a doozy to write, but i hope you find something warm in it waiting for you. more to come soon! love you--and thank you for sticking along with me on this ride!

← || series m.list || →

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE: WITHOUT A GOAL

Hoseok’s hand is warm in yours. You smile at him as he tugs you from Jimin’s bedroom. For a moment that is all there is: you, Hoseok, and the singular place where your bodies are joined. You are silent, curious about where he is bringing you. 

Namjoon calls your name from within a door. 

He jogs out before you have a chance to respond. “I’ve been looking for you!” he says with a grin. 

“Have you?” 

“I need a hand organizing some of the books in the library.” Then, sheepishly, “I thought you might like looking through some of them. I was hoping you’d help me.” 

You glance between Namjoon and Hoseok, trying to read their expressions, wondering if this is some remnant of your dream or if this is simply a perfectly normal conversation. 

“Hobi-hyung!” Taehyung calls, appearing at the end of the hallway. “I’ve been looking for you.” 

You and Hoseok share a look. “Apparently we’re quite popular,” he muses. 

“It seems,” you reply. 

“Sorry—” he mouths at you, as Taehyung slips his arm through Hoseok’s and tugs him away. You watch each other until the other disappears from view. 

Looking at Namjoon shakes loose the dregs of the dream from last night—the swirling mist of early morning, the possession in his eyes—as Namjoon leads you to the library. You watch his face closely for any recognition that the person you saw in your dream is the one standing before you. But his face is open– happy, even–taking in the sights and senses around him. 

“Is there a reason you keep pulling me away from Hoseok?” you finally ask Namjoon.

“No—why would you say that?” Namjoon asks, his brow furrowing. You shrug it off. 

“No reason.”

The day speeds by in a blur, and before long you find yourself at the dinner table, crowded around with your friends. Jin has whipped up a fusion meal: gochujang parmesan pasta with a whole brown butter spatchcocked chicken. It’s rich, creamy, and zings with acid at the end of the palate. You all coo over Jin’s culinary accomplishment, which he happily soaks up.

Jimin is a little quieter than normal, but when he’s not staring at his hands beneath the table, he’s consistently glancing at you, like he’s looking for something.  You offer him small smiles when you catch his gaze. He quickly looks away. It doesn’t feel like him. You have the sense he’s standing across a bridge from you, a forest, large and looming at his back. 

Where are you, Park Jimin?

—--------------

When dinner’s done, you all stay seated for hours around the table, laughing, talking, sharing small moments from your day. Jungkook shares that he tried to find a way onto the roof, which procures a very large, very enthusiastic scolding from the rest of you, Taehyung found some paints in an unexplored closet and has begun painting in his free time, and Yoongi sheepishly shares about a new song he’s been working on, in very vague, humble terms. You and Namjoon excitedly detail your work in the library, sorting books, and the discovery of a locked box of books. Everyone is enchanted by the story, and Jungkook offers to try to break the lock with a hammer, to which Namjoon shudders deeply.  

Though you never explicitly agreed to it, it’s become a tradition that you all eat dinner together each night. As the conversation winds down, your cheeks are heated from laughing, talking, and smiling so much. The gang breaks apart, some of you shifting back into the kitchen to finish dishes and tidying after Jin’s masterpiece. You and Jungkook tag team the table, collecting remaining dishes and napkins. 

Jungkook pauses, and leans across the table towards you. 

With a smile, he asks, “Wanna stay over tonight?” He waggles his eyebrows. 

“We’ve been meaning to have a moment alone,” Hoseok cuts in. You look up from your dishrag and spray bottle to find him standing in the doorway. You wonder how much he overheard of your conversation. We, you think. Hm. “Do you mind?”

You glance between Jungkook and Hoseok. 

“I did promise him earlier,” you say with a shrug to Jungkook. 

“Don’t you worry, Jungkook,” says Jimin, who also appears from the kitchen and lounges against the door. Somehow he manages to make every position—seated or horizontal or standing—look luxurious and effortless. “Why don’t you come hang out with me tonight?” 

“Really?” Jungkook says, his eyes lighting up. “Yeah—yeah, I’d like that.” 

“Mind if I join you two?” Yoongi chimes in. He, too, has emerged from the kitchen. Jungkook and Jimin nod, Jungkook’s face reddening slightly. You can read on his face what he’s imagining: the three of them tangled up in bed. 

This is may be the first time you’ve noticed Jimin and Yoongi being so straightforward with each other. You had always noticed the way that Yoongi would watch Jimin a little bit extra carefully than the others, his eyes tracking Jimin’s movements and the immediate surroundings whenever the latter was present. Before your group agreement you had always attributed it to Yoongi’s protective side, how he looked out particularly close for Jimin, despite Jimin’s lack of need for a guard dog. It had always seemed to you to be some kind of disagreement in perception, one you couldn’t always understand. Jimin had never needed protecting, not with his quick words and sharp judgment. But now, alone, stranded in the wilderness, who was Yoongi protecting Jimin from? 

“I, um, wanted to do some reading tonight anyways,” Namjoon chimes in, poking his head through the entryway. You exchange a glance, your gaze asking what no one wants to ask aloud: Do you want to be alone? He nods in response.

With arrangements settled, Hoseok slips his hand into yours. You look down at it, a little surprised. 

“Come on,” he says, and leads you to the back of the house. 

In the bedroom, you take in the sight of what is supposed to be your room (even if you share it). The last time you were here, you were getting ready for the dinner party that changed everything. The room remains unchanged, and yet it feels entirely different than the last time you were inside. 

You wonder where that red dress went. Knowing Namjoon, he probably returned it with a careful touch to its proper home shortly after the orgy. 

Standing in this room, something in you feels older, a little more mature. That’s not the word…

—Bigger?—

Yes, like you had grown, larger, more expansive, around the edges of your previous self. Has it really only been a couple days since you left your belongings here and began wandering the beds of the house? (Officially, and with everyone’s knowledge, that is.) The distance between now and then feels like it stretches weeks, time itself stretching taut and thin, despite it only being a handful of days.

Time seems to move so strangely here, in this house, like a river, barely moving in some places where it collects, stills, and becomes cold in the far reaches of its depths. And yet, there are other days that speed by with the quickness of a white water rapid. Right now, there is a part of you that feels caught in the eddies: whipped along and holding your breath. 

“You probably just want to just go to bed, don’t you?” Hoseok says as he strips off his sweater, revealing a simple t-shirt beneath. “You must be tired.” 

You come up behind him and wrap your arms around him, standing on your tiptoes. With your head on his shoulder, you look at him in the mirror. 

“Mmm. A little. Not too tired though.” The end of your sentence remains unspoken, but still understood: Not too tired to touch you.

You catch his gaze in the mirror and hold it for a moment. He smiles. A sense of ease and affection flutters in your chest. 

After a moment, though, that warmth becomes too warm, searing into your cheeks and making your heart flutter, and you break away, your hands falling to your sides as you take a step back. 

“Almost everyone in this house has asked something of me today, but I never learned why you pulled me out of Jimin’s room in the first place,” you say. 

“Do I need a reason? I just wanted to spend some one-on-one time with you. Is that too much to ask?” 

You startle, but gather yourself.“Never.” 

You both get ready for sleep, as if there’s nothing else to do. And when you have very thoroughly brushed your teeth and washed your face twice, instead of climbing into bed, you grab the book you were reading earlier in the tree and Hoseok promptly grabs his journal. You are avoiding the bed. 

You settle on the couch by the fireplace, sprawling out comfortably. The two of you lay there for a while, both minding your own business. It feels awfully domestic. Like you’re a married couple already settled into routine. The difference is—not a single word of the page in front of you is sinking into your mind.

 The difference is—you’re burning up, your whole body tuned to how close he lies—where his hands are (they’re playing with the edge of the page)—how his foot brushes against yours—how deep his voice resonates when he apologizes for nudging you. 

The difference is—you notice every edge of him. 

“Don’t apologize,” you say firmly. 

“Sorry—Don’t? Why not?”

You laugh. “I don’t ever want you to apologize for touching me. If anything I want you to touch me.”

“You do?” He stares blankly at you. 

“My god, Hobi,” you say, rolling on your side and discarding your book. “Sometimes you can be so thick.”

“Me?? I’m the thick one? And what about you? I’ve been waiting for days for you to pull me into a closet or a spare room or—god forbid—just kiss me out there in front of everyone—”

You reach for his hand, pulling it away from his book, and into yours. For a long moment, you both stare at each other, as if waiting for the other to make a move. And then, making a decision, you both move at the same time, hands reaching for faces, lips magnetized towards lips. 

Hoseok’s hand trails down your body, slipping beneath your pajama pants. Your hand wraps around his wrist, stopping his movements. 

“But—Jimin—” He said, I’m not allowed to come.

He chuckles. “It’s so sexy when you say another man’s name in my bed.”

You roll your eyes. “Behave,” you remind him. “But I did make him a promise. And in all honesty, I have no interest in being punished again. Today was enough.” 

Hoseok’s brows raise, and for a moment you think he’s going to ask about what happened between you and Jimin, and will end up hurting himself by wanting to hear the gritty details. But instead, he shakes his head and continues. “You know, not everything about sex has to be about orgasm,” Hoseok says, raising and waggling an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?” 

“Sometimes sex can just be about pleasure. Instead of trying to chase something down, like a goalpost or, um…” he searches for the words. “Like some kind of race, where the only objective is to come. It can just be about the sensations along the way. Gentle pleasure.” 

“Edging, you mean,” you say, a little bit of disappointment in your voice. You have had enough of edging in the last weeks to last you an entire lifetime. You would consider yourself the resident expert of edging, considering how many orgasms you’ve been denied since arriving at the doors of this mysterious house, though you have a sense Jimin or Jin might try to come for your title. 

“No, not quite.” He frowns, trying to find the words. “I think edging brings you right to the cliff of an orgasm and hangs you over the drop for as long as you can hold out. The thrill is in not knowing if you can hold on or not.”

“Oof, all this talk of edges and cliffs hits a little too close to home,” you giggle.

“Okay, yeah that wasn’t the best way to say it.” He smiles. “But you know what I’m trying to get at, right?” You nod. “What I’m proposing, we just get to feel each other. Make each other feel good—without running. Running towards a finish line, I mean.”

That sparks an idea in you. “Where did you learn all of this?” 

Hoseok flushes. “Oh… You know.” 

“I don’t.” 

“It doesn’t really matter. Former partners. Reading.” 

You pass quickly by the first answer and focus on the second. “You read… about sex?” 

“Yeah. Sex. Psychology. Sexual health. Namjoon is my dealer.” 

You laugh. “Your dealer?”

“My book dealer,” he grins. You nod knowingly, well aware of one of Namjoon’s favorite activities: shipping his friends books during quarantine in the city. He sent the books out wrapped messily but compactly in brown construction paper. You can picture his notes, scrawled in pencil in the margins. He hated the thought of permanently marring a book with an ink pen, but in the same moment, couldn’t shut up with his brilliant ideas, even if it was received by the silence of a page. 

Namjoon had always been the designated librarian of your friend group, and was ever enthused to coerce anyone into reading whatever book suited his most recent interest with him. He had been trying to get a book club with you all up and running for years now, and yet—

“Never thought much about what it was that Namjoon was reading,” you murmur. 

“He’s got a diverse taste, that’s for sure,” Hoseok chuckles. “So, what do you say?” He leans in close, his fingers gliding over your belly. “Want me to make you feel good?”  

You’ve never really thought about the possibility of sex without a goal, without an orgasm to reach for at the finish line. But you nod, and smile, and his fingers slip beneath your pajamas again. 

At first he just explores you, his fingers tracing around your lower lips, pressing here, circling there. He doesn’t kiss you, but lays close enough, watching your face as you try to hold it together. But you can’t help it: little gasps slip out and pattern the silence. A gentle warmth begins to build in your belly. But without the urgency, the rush, the goalpost of it all, you find yourself focusing on the sensations in a deeper way than usual.

“Hobi—” you breathe. “It feels good.” 

“Good,” he grins. You reach for him, to slip your hands into his own pants, but he stops you. “Just let me make you feel good, okay?” 

That’s when he slips a finger inside you. He begins by pumping shallowly and oh-so painfully slow. You can feel every inch of him as he slips deeper on each thrust, opening you up for him. He’s careful, deliberate. 

“Close your eyes,” he whispers. “With your mind, I want you to trace where I’m touching you. Focus on the sensation of it all. Put all your attention there.” 

His other hand wanders your body, a gentle finger tracing your collarbone, a palm cupping and pressing against your breast, swirling touches against your belly. Your attention follows his. You feel your skin brighten, warm. All of it culminates in a sensation that he’s exploring you, learning you with a careful sense of duty. You can feel his diligence. 

“I want to be closer to you,” you gasp as he adds a second finger to you. And you mean it in more ways than one. But he answers the surface request, pulling you flush against his chest, lifting your leg over his hip. Your fingers cup his face, tracing over his features. 

He builds you to a slow, radiating heat, one that sifts through your whole body. You burn like embers, flushed and gulping for air. 

“Where are my hands?” he asks gently. “Follow them. Tell me what you feel.” 

“Warm. So warm, Hobi. Like sunshine.” 

Where he touches light radiates through your skin, down to your bones. It’s sex like nothing you’ve had before. There’s a part of you that keeps wanting to shift away from the slowness and sense of it all, to grab for more, to beg him to let you chase pleasure. It is the same part that has whispered since you arrived at the mountain house: run, run. The whisper turns to a shout: run, run. But when you breathe in deep and bring your attention back to touch—his finger circling your nipple, your bare feet brushing against the soft cotton of the sheets, his lips biting down on the soft flesh of your earlobe, his fingers moving slowly in and out of you—there is a new awareness, golden and bright. 

You take a deep breath. You settle into the feeling. 

It feels like forcing open a door, hinges rusted shut from disuse. 

It is a door that leads into your own body. It’s traitorous territory. But you breathe once, then again, sinking deeper, deeper, led by his touch.

You let your hips move against him, a slow grind. His hand is now between his and your pelvic bone, and you know that as you rock against him, he can feel it too. You shift closer, so you’re intentionally pressing against his groin, your hands tangling in his hair, raking slowly against his scalp.

The closer your bodies move, the more his touches blur into pleasure against your skin, the more the lines between you blur too. This is what you had all anticipated a few days ago, right? The muddling, the mess. You had told everyone you wanted to lean into it. But as sensation bubbles to the surface of your skin, so does something else within you: something dangerously warm. Something dangerously happy.

When he groans into your mouth, echoing your own pleasure, you know you’ve gotten what you want. 

Tonight, it’s so easy to find a quiet rhythm with him. It feels like it was never any other way. Without the element of chasing down an orgasm, there’s nowhere to go except here, now. Nowhere to go except towards him. 

That’s how you fall asleep, your bodies slowly grinding against each other’s, gasping against the other’s mouth, the other’s neck, the other’s chest until sleep swallows you whole. 

-----------

When you wake up Hoseok is pressed close to your face, his eyes wide open, a grin on his cheeks. 

“Oh my god are you watching me sleep?” You roll over, away from him, sleep fogged and groggy. 

“Come here,” he rolls you back towards him. “I was waiting for you to wake up. I have something to show you.” 

With his urging, you quickly get dressed, grab some coffee and something quick to eat, and head out. You’re sure he’s going to bring you outside.

“Hobi, maybe we shouldn’t,” you say. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, a look of genuine confusion on his face. 

“I don’t think any of our stints outside were any good,” you say. “Can we stay inside today? Please?” 

Hoseok nods. “That was the plan anyways. No outside for us, at least not for a while. We’ll stay inside today.” 

You smile at him.

He leads you to the back door, but instead of going outside, he takes a turn down a narrow hallway that you hadn’t noticed before. It leads to a spiraling, narrow staircase descending down into the unknown depths of the house. Though the white walls of the passageway are narrow, as if they might lead to a basement or root cellar, the steps shine as if they’ve been polished recently. As you step onto the first step, you notice a thin carving on the edge of every stair. A woodland scene: a bear, an evergreen forest, a collection of tree-loving creatures. The wood itself is gorgeous: a reddish lumber that glows in the dim light. A delicate handrail leads your descent.

“Where are we?” 

You’re in shock that even after all this time in the house, there are still parts you haven’t explored. A dark basement is hardly something you’d like to explore alone, but you trust Hoseok, so you give him your hand and let him lead you down the stairs, trying to ignore how they seem to melt into the darkened floor below.

The sound from upstairs dampens, the voices of your friends blending into silence as you journey deeper. 

The temperature too, drops, raising goosebumps on your skin.

You emerge into a dark hallway, and Hoseok’s grasp tightens around your hand. 

“This way,” he whispers. 

There’s a doorway at the end of the hallway, a simple thing, and you know that’s where you’re headed. 

Hoseok pushes the door open and light spills all over you. 

The room that opens before you is walled by a thousand mirrors, an oak-golden floor, and a sweeping modern chandelier dangling from the ceiling. To your right, a wall of windows looks over the valleys and peaks of the mountains. Today the light is bright and warm, and as it spills over the changing leaves, you feel like you are held in the center of a pendulum. 

You’re standing in a ballroom. 

“This is it.” 

“Goddamn, Hoseok, this is beautiful.” You step away from him to wander the room. In one corner is a baby grand piano, and you run your fingers over the keys. Perfectly tuned. 

“I thought you would like it.” 

“I love it.” 

There’s something about the open space and the reverberating light that fills you with energy. 

“Yoongi showed it to me,” Hoseok says. “I bet he loves coming down here.” He plinks a key too. “Where he can play and sing without anyone listening.” He smiles fondly, and then turns his attention to you. “I thought maybe today I could give you a dance lesson?” Hoseok offers. “It’s something we could do together. You know. Without having to fight off a rabid bear or dangle off a cliff.” 

“Risk management. I like it,” you laugh. 

“But also selfishly—I was missing dancing with someone. And I’ve been working on a new piece of choreography, and, well, it needs two people. Will you help me with my little experiment?” He gives you those doe eyes you know better than to say no to. Still, you hesitate.

“You know I’m no dancer.” 

“But you’re good enough.” 

“Are you saying ‘I’ll do?’” you laugh.

“Yes, basically. But also, I wanted to do this—”

Hoseok steps closer to you, wrapping his hands around your lower back. 

You had danced with Hoseok in the past,  stepping in when he needed a hand or wanted to practice teaching a new dance before bringing it to a studio. You were decent, you could admit that, but you were no professional. 

“You just want to touch me, don’t you?” you tease. 

“Of course I do.” 

“And last night wasn’t enough?”

“Of course it was enough. And now I want more.”

“Ah…” You trail off. “I dunno. I’m not at the level you’re used to.” 

“You’re at the perfect level,” he grins. “Please? For me?” 

You sigh and nod. “Fine. But you owe me.” 

“I owe you times a hundred! Yes! Thank you!” 

He bounds away from you, before flicking on a stereo. A remix of an old waltz comes on, synths and electronic iterations dotted throughout the classical sound. He pauses, puzzling over how to start. You can see it in his eyes, all of the steps of the dance existing at once, the story of the dance, and the logistics of how to pull it out of the trenches of his mind to share with you. And then it clicks.

“Maybe we can just start out with a basic waltz? Just to warm up?” 

“Absolutely,” you say, and offer him your hand. He messes with something on his phone—speaking of, when was the last time you checked your phone?—and the song changes to a traditional waltz. He sweeps you into his arms. 

And like that, you’re off. His left hand holds your right tightly, while his right hand presses gently against your back. You’ve done this with him before, and the steps come back quickly and easily. Before you know it you’re laughing gleefully as you twirl around the room. 

You can’t help but compare it to the dream. There’s that same warmth, the way both dream Hoseok and real Hoseok had felt identical. Or no-–that wasn’t it. You had glowed identically in their presence. 

That was it. 

“I dreamt about this,” you blurt, before you can think of what you’re saying. This is the first time you’ve spoken about the recurring—and intimate—dreams you’ve been having about your friends to anyone beyond Jimin.

“So you’re dreaming about me now?” When you don’t answer, he asks, “What did you dream?” 

“That you wanted me—to marry you or something. It was some old timey thing. There was a barn. And lots of candles. And you teased me, endlessly. And you wouldn’t kiss me.” 

“I’m sorry—” 

“Hobi, it was my own imagination that didn’t kiss me, not you.”

“Well dream Hobi was right about one thing.” 

“What’s that?” 

“That I want you.” 

You flush, letting your eyes drift down. 

The dance comes to an end and Hobi puts the original song back on. He shows you the dance once from beginning until end, miming a dance partner in his arms, before he walks you through his choreography step by step. Tongue caught between your teeth, you follow him painful step by painful step, over and over again, until you’ve gotten the movements down. 

“Now we try it all together?” 

“That wasn’t all together?” 

At first it’s stumbling and awkward, but it doesn’t take too long for you to catch the gist and begin moving in tandem with him. As your hips roll, so do his. A perfect mirror. As you turn, he’s ready to catch you and pull you into him. As you step towards him, he steps back. 

Your bodies move as one and it feels so easy, too easy with him. The movement of the dance feels so natural that you find yourself blurting out: “You’re easy.” 

“Excuse me?” He stops moving, an incredulous laugh breaking free from him. 

“Shit, no sorry—I mean. You feel easy.” 

He tilts his head, still not understanding. 

“These past couple of days. Everything has felt so nice with you. So simple.” 

He nods slowly, finally unraveling what you’re getting at. “Yes, I, well, I agree.” He steps away to turn off the music and all at once, as the gargantuan room around you settles into silence, you’re struck by the profound quiet. Although it’s frequently quiet in the house, you usually have at least a passing awareness of the other people in it, a shuffle from the hallway, a cough from the room next to you. Now, all you hear is your breath, and his. Now, it’s just you and Hoseok. 

You nod. You’re not really sure where you’re going, what thread you’re trying to pull at. You follow him across the dance floor. 

“I’m confused that it’s so easy.” 

“You’re confused?” He turns back to you. “Aren’t these kinds of things supposed to be easy?” 

“Yes—I mean, gosh.” You run a weary hand over your face. “It was so hard. After we fucked the first time. Not hard. It was so goddamn awkward. And in all honesty, painful too.” 

Hoseok grimaces. “Yeah, I—Even though I was shitting on everyone else and, you know, the whole ass dynamic, I don’t even know how to put into words how uncomfortable it was for me too. Even though it was my own fault, I hated it. I hated every moment of it.” 

You nod and squeeze his hand. 

He continues. “It feels so stupid because I can’t even remember what was holding me back from you,” he clears his throat. “From you all, I mean, when right now it feels so easy. It makes me think that I was a complete and entire dummy.” 

You chuckle. “You were a complete and entire dummy. But then again we both were.” 

You want to say that you’ve been holding back too, but you swallow the words down. This moment, everything, him, it feels like it’s drawing short. Like it’s so fragile that at the arrival of the wrong word or touch it would shatter around you, leaving you too, broken into a million pieces. 

“We work well together, you know,” Hoseok says. “We’re good partners.” 

“It is really easy dancing with you!” 

“I don’t just mean dancing.” 

You stop. “What do you mean then?” You ask tentatively.

He pulls you close, runs his nose against your neck, nips against your ear. “I mean, I think you and I work really well together. It’s so natural it makes me wonder.” 

“Wonder what?” 

He laughs. “What it would be like to lean in—to explore this connection. To keep making it work.” 

“Well, of course–” you stop yourself. Well, of course we can keep exploring and making it work. You swallow the words, swallow the promise of offering him something more than what you can give. “Well, of course there are the others too. It feels so wonderful to be connected to you as well as to the others. Like it feels like it’s not supposed to work? But it totally does.” 

“Yeah, uh.” Hoseok steps back, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. “The others. Totally.” 

You notice the tension but you’re too worried to step into it and interrogate it, lest you upset the precarious balance you and Hoseok hold these days, the tightrope between past and present that it feels like you’re constantly walking. 

“I mean it, Hoseok. It feels like this should all be a disaster but—it’s been the best part of my year.” 

You get him to smile at that. “I know. It’s been really special for me too.” The two of you grin at each other for a long moment, and then Hoseok is blinking and stepping away, moving towards the speaker to flip it on again. “Again? I think we can really get that final move down.” 

“Alright,” you sigh. “Again.” 

This time, when you go through the steps, you really feel the core of them. You understand the story behind it. You keep catching Hoseok’s eye in the mirror, and find his gaze glimmering and full of admiration. Sweat beads on your forehead with the effort of it all, but you’re exhilarated. In glances and glimpses in the expansive mirrors, you watch two bodies—bodies so familiar you might mistake them for those of a pair of old lovers—glide across the floors. Behind your figures, the valleys stretch, cavernous and deep. The mountains radiate with the kind of sun that only spills right as the seasons are in shift.

And then, you are back in the moment, trying to remember the next move, and the next, and the next. 

When he pulls you against him, he slips his leg between yours and raises an eyebrow, pausing longer than the dance calls for. The command is clear: Grind on me. 

You give a tentative swivel of your hips against him, gaze stuck to him, his form. 

“That’s all you got?” His hand on your hip presses against you, showing you the way. Showing you how to move your hips. You lean forward, so your lips are at his ear. Your breath ghosts over him, and you can feel him shudder beneath you, before his strength returns and he continues guiding you. 

“Like this,” he says. 

Sure, the move is part of the dance, but not quite like this. 

“Again,” he breathes. 

This time you shift your energy, bringing your focus to your hips. With careful deliberation, you grind your hips forward, pushing your pelvis to his, letting his thigh press up to your core. It’s the perfect amount of pressure to have you shuddering against him. 

“Fuck,” you groan. 

“I love when you have that filthy mouth on you.” 

You smile into his shoulder. His hand continues to roll your hips against him, matching the beat of the music. 

And then he shifts, his weight pulling away, pulling you with him, resuming the dance. But this is different. As you move, your bodies are pressed together without air, your lips ghost over one another’s, your fingers dig into each other’s flesh, desperate for more. When the dance dictates that he’s at your back, he presses his pelvis to you and you feel him against you. In the mirror you catch his gaze and he smirks. 

“This okay?” he whispers against your neck. 

“More than okay,” you reply. 

There’s a darkness swirling in his gaze, a contradiction to the usually sunny disposition you’re so used to. It’s a warm darkness, one that beckons you near, one that sings sweet promises of drowning oh-so gently. 

Do you want to drown?

In the next step you’re spinning back into him, and all choreography forgotten, you kiss him, hands flying to his face, pulling him down to you. He seems surprised at first, but soon relaxes into you, his arms wrapping around you, hands splayed across your lower back. Your kisses are hungry, needy. 

It’s like you’re making up for lost time. You devour each other, lips mashing together messily, hands wandering, clutching, gripping. Time slips past you like a stream. 

He begins to walk you backwards, until your back hits the cold surface of the mirror. You gasp at the cool sensation, your body split between the heat of exertion and the livening shock of the glass. His lips devour yours, his tongue scraping against the roof of your mouth. You pull him as close to you as possible and whisper in his ear: 

“I want you.” 

“Fuck. Forget the dance. Bed. Now.” 

— 

You sprint through the halls and up the stairs, laughing, giggling, Hoseok pulling you forward, forward. When he kisses you against the wall of your bedroom, you melt. When he slips under the covers with you, ignoring the knocking on the door and the sound of one of your friends calling your name, you turn into liquid in his hands. As he fucks you with his fingers, while you take him into your mouth, you hum with pleasure. 

Still at the back of your mind, the knot of a question sings: Why don’t we ever talk about what happened that night, all those months ago? It’s repeating like a chant, in tune with the sounds of pleasure that he pulls from your body over and over and over again.

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[stormblessed95]

Who Thoughts and Theories

First, it's such a good song. I'm genuinely so in love with it, with Jimins vocals, with his dance, with his backup dancers. I'm so impressed with how hard he worked and all the choices he contributed to it. While this is the only song on the album that Jimin doesn't have writing credits on, he was still very much involved in every aspect of the songs creation and it was written with the feelings Jimin wished to portray. I talk briefly about what I believe the overall feelings that Jimin was trying to express in the album Muse, here:

And of course because you should refresh yourself on the song and get that extra stream in before you read....

I'll otherwise just be talking about what I think, my thoughts, my feelings and my theories about Who, the song and the MV in this post. These are of course just my opinions, coming from my perspectives. You are free to agree or disagree as much as you want.

First, I want to say that regardless of the pronouns used in the song, I don't think it has any bearing on Jimins sexuality. People (read: homophobes) cannot use this song as a way to try to say Jimin can't be queer. Not only is that nonsensical and ignoring the fact that Jimin would be closeted if he is queer. But it's also ignoring the way Jimin speaks about the song, which is solely in gender neutral terms. From the original lyrics being "you" instead of "she."

To the way he says "people" instead of "girls/women" about the scene where people walk past him as the options of who he could be looking for. Along with the fact that the billboard with a man's eyes drop right after he sings "who is my heart Waiting for?"

The way that Jimin dances with both men and women and the scene then when they come together, it's absolutely giving west side story. Which is my personal opinion. Which one of the themes of west side story is love striving to rise above the hatred.... And idk about you, but I think that can easily relate to queer love as well. But again, personal opinion only! So this BS that I know everyone rolled their eyes at with the "this proved he is straight" nonsense, is at its core.... Nonsense...

Speaking of his dance, this thread has absolutely nothing to do with what I'll talk about in this post but is so cool and FULL of Jimin appreciation and you should check it out if you want!

Jimin switched aspect ratios of film during his MV of Who. An ARMY linked together all the times he changed ratios, which you can watch here:

As well as going through multiple different types of media: television, comic strips, movie, billboards, etc. Jimin is showing us multiple different storylines within his MV. This same person from above goes into great detail about how all this can show the various details of storylines and storytelling. It's a good read, worth checking out

It's super interesting the way the words play across the screen during certain parts of the MV and how it changes the screen ratios as well. I would love an actual interpretation from Jimin or the MV director over what they actually mean or if it was just in the 90s theme with zero correlation or meanings, but I doubt we will ever get that. So all we can do is guess and make our own interpretations. Which will be affected by our own personal biases. That's the beauty of art though!

The ones I'll point out that I'll say something about are:

Play, both in the corners at times and on the little TV's around the MV

Auto calibration, with the burning wrecked car, where the words flash quickly across the screen at the bottom, right before hand too, the screen ratio had changed again too. And it changes again as he does his partner choreo with the girl

Rewind, which appears during the bridge. Right after the billboard falls and the screen ratio had changed again

And then pause at the very end before the whole screen cuts.... And then we get the end screen with the words play again, basically looping the video, and the Smeraldo Flower

So let's talk about it!

It's interesting that the video basically loops, it's really giving storytelling. Jimin being an actor basically. "Play" being inside the story for the most part. And it's interesting that those parts happen right before a lot of the partnering choreo too. Auto calibration means bringing something back into an acceptable range. Which if we relate this at all to queerness, it's absolutely giving "don't stray too far out of that closet." And it does happen right after Jimin dances with men, before dancing with the woman again. And play is back in the little TV's. It's giving, trying to be perfect and fit into expectations and be in the perfect storybook. And at the end, Jimin is left behind by all the dancers and the billboard drops at "who is my heart Waiting for" and it's clearer and clearer that it really is most likely JKs eyes. If not, it's absolutely a man's eyes and that is screaming queer energy. And even if it is just a promo of some kind, since we don't know the connection between the eyes, JK, "keep going" and AYS yet, it's WILD to put Jikook promo in this type of love song. And yet, these are the two that publicly claimed the song serendipity as theirs. So it tracks.

And when we get to rewind, it's at the same time as he is talking about "people" walking by him as potentials for his perfect match, as well as how he is not able to "match" any of the women he attempts to meet with through dance in his short walk. It is also right after that billboard with ?Jungkook? drops too. Interesting. Trying to get back into the original story perhaps? Perhaps it's not working so well?

Pause. Off. Smeraldo Flower which represents the Truth Untold.... Speaking yourself. Loving yourself. Being true to who you are..... Which is maybe not what was the perfect story that was being depicted through the MV. Who knows! But that is the end. Just to loop around and start again with Play. Where he literally tells us with Muse to "please misunderstand." Again, just interesting. And if you are following my thoughts here, you already know why that is "interesting."

It's giving closeted queer energy and it's giving I like people, not genders and it's giving love.

Which brings me to the very LAST thing I want to talk about. Sorry, I know this is already SO LONG. Jimin is singing amongst natural disasters. So did V and JK actually too. They are singing about declaring love in the middle of some kind of disaster. And I can't stop thinking about that honestly.

It's giving peak grand gesture kinda romance. It's giving intimacy found between two people in love no matter where they are or how loud the world might be around them. It's giving raw and honest declarations of intent and love type vibes. And i just love that they are into and going for that exaggerated confession scene and storybook kinda romance. It's absolutely tracks for who they are as people and the romance they've all talked about wanting too. And who else do we know who always seems to like doing grand gesture type romantic BS for someone else?

Anyway! This is the feeling that people write epic romances about. Your favorite ships? It's the same type of feeling that's inspired here. Let me try to explain this in some kinda way....

It's a trope. "Love conquers all" where it doesn't matter what life throws at you. All the trials, the tribulations, the natural disasters, the normal disasters, any and all shortcomings or failures you might face in life.... The moment of being with the one you love? Of being vulnerable and baring your soul with another person who means the world to you? Making sure they understand how much they mean to you and how much you love them? That's always going to be the most important thing and moment. That is the significance of the intimacy and the romance displayed.

It's the peak, idealistic version of the best relationship you could find yourself in. Nothing and no one matters more than the moments you create with your loved one, even in the middle of a raging horrific apocalyptic disaster ridden world.

And how sometimes, just building up to that confession can make things feel like a horrific apocalyptic disaster ridden world, until you confess. And you let those feelings out. And it's okay. All those disasters quiet down, maybe you even start to enjoy the rain. It was your emotions all along. And then you discover that hey, maybe the reason I'm feeling so calm now is actually BECAUSE of this person I love. Being with them calms my mind, brings me safety, happiness and joy.

Sometimes, in the middle of all the madness and chaos of the world... You are only minutes away from finding that moment with that person that's going to give you something infinite. Something that no natural disaster can destroy or take away from you. Something, and/or someone, so precious.

And there is something so beautiful in depicting this in their love songs. It's inspirational. As well as humorous in regards to Seven. Lol

I'll just finish this off with a link to this twitter user as this moment just came out, and it's about rebirth, but I do low-key agree with them here 😂

And anyway, that was my essay! Lol if you read all of this. Bless you and thank you! You are appreciated! A reminder that this is all just personal opinions. You are free to agree or disagree as you choose!

[t-errifier]

𝖌𝖊𝖙𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖙𝖔 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖒𝖚𝖓.

NAME : jack

NICKNAME : jaxx , jaxxon, jackson

FACECLAIM : i'm literally art the clown

PRONOUNS : he/him & she/her

HEIGHT : 5'9"

BIRTHDAY : august 12th

AESTHETIC : halloween, black & red, cats, coffins, bats

LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO : something by will wood, most likely

FAVORITE MUSE (S) YOU’VE WRITTEN : i'm really enjoying writing art so far, but i also had a good time writing my oc sabu, he was a long time muse of mine & has a lot of love put into him.

GETTING TO KNOW THE ACCOUNT :

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO TAKE ON THIS MUSE : my girlfriend was a fan of the movies & i was hesitant to watch them, on account of my phobia. so, i did the normal person thing - downloaded the book onto my cellphone. i read the entire book in a day and a half, and i knew the second that i was reading it . . . i was going to end up making a blog. then, my girlfriend was over my house & i joked i would make the blog - she said: do it. now, here i am.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE ASPECTS OF YOUR CURRENT MUSE : besides the fact that he is absolutely silly and i love that energy of his. i actually adore that he doesn't require me to write any dialogue at all. i am not a strong dialogue writer in the slightest. so getting to yap on with no pressure of having to write anything that comes out of his mouth??? absolutely flawless to me. i could write someone who is mute all day, it makes my job so much easier. not to mention, i'm naturally gravitated towards evil - gothic muses. he really is just the perfect character for me to write.

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST INSPIRATION WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING : the novel series was my biggest inspiration for how i was going to write art in threads. if you have ever read the novel of terrifier, you would know that they include art's internal monologue quite frequently, which i love to include in my own replies - so that people get a good idea of what he is thinking about their muses.

FAVORITE TYPES OF THREADS : oh man, i love threads of all kinds - as much as i love writing art being the scary big bad, i also love getting to write him be softer with people as well. i am so open to giving different kinds of relationships to everyone & i don't want to water myself down to only doing killer / victim scenarios. so, i love giving other people a chance to befriend art & take part in wholesome activities with him. he's very 50/50 & impulsive about his actions, you really never know what you are going to get with him.

BIGGEST STRUGGLE IN REGARDS TO YOUR CURRENT MUSE : as much as it's a positive to me, it's also a struggle that art cannot talk. it takes away some aspects of relationships with people - he can't forge super meaningful in - depth chatting relationships with people because of the fact that he is mute. however, with the correct muses . . . i don't feel like this is a negative at all.

𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖊𝖉 𝖇𝖞: no one,stole it. 𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖌: you !

[abubblingcandle]

I love all your stuff from TIP but I just stumbled across your 16 year old Jamie and I'm just 🥺 Beard stepping up to be the one to actually ask Jamie what he wants and mentor him is so special and spot-on and ahhhh! I can't wait to read more if there's more!

Hey Charlie! Good to see you here too and I'm so glad that you've been enjoying my stuff. 

16 year old Jamie is one of my fic ideas that I am most excited about but also one that I am quite apprehensive about as I want to do the concept justice! @altschmerzes has an amazing teen Jamie that inspires me daily in Wiggle Up On Dry Land and I want to do my version justice. So I have various story beats and I know how I want it to end but I've just got to get there and get all of these ideas tied up into a cohesive outline before I can get started properly. 

I've mentioned before but the big theme of this fic is Jamie trying to take control of his own life. Young athletes their lives are so controlled and so structured and then you add the fact that Jamie is living with his dad throughout all of this is makes it worse. So! a big thing I am trying to work out is how I can drop hint of this and the toll it is taking on Jamie without it just being "look here's this child that is crumbling". Because Ted is going to want to just fix it but is also going to be quite blind to Jamie's struggles because Jamie is absolutely going to activate all of his dad panic. So in summary! I need to come up with the overarching threads before I can proper start writing :) 

BUT here's a little snippet for you to tide you over until then:

"I'm worried about Jamie," Beard stated, slamming through the peaceful silence Ted was relishing like someone asleep at the wheel of a bulldozer.  "Expound?" Ted frowned, leaning back on his chair. The wood creaked under the strain of the bend and the sound was a calming rhythm as he moved.  "The lad's tired," Beard tucked the receipt back into his book and rested it on his chest when his posture turned to mirror Ted's.  "This is his first premier league season and I will admit we have become quite reliant on his certain flair for the dramatic," Ted mused. "But he's a spring chicken and he's still springing around." “Not just physically, spiritually,” Beard continued, his lips settling into a grim line as he stared at Ted. “Well you know me. I don’t feel like a man upstairs would be that interested in the day to day life of me as much as I would love to be on cable tv but people can wish what they wish,” Ted shrugged. “He checks out when you’re talking. It’s like he’s not entirely there,” Beard added. Ted sighed and rolled his shoulders. Jamie did often seem disinterested whenever Ted opened his mouth but Ted did have that effect on people sometimes. It was bad, and Ted knew it was bad coaching, but some times a disinterested Jamie was better than an interested Jamie. Because, like all other teenagers Ted had interacted with, when he was listening and engaged ... he was really mean.

[positivelybeastly]

What have been some of your favorite rps over the years? Have you developed any personal ocs that you particularly enjoy (I know you've got Dark Beasts going on, so if you wanna talk about what's going on there, that'd be cool too!

Oh, this is a tricky one! Not least because it relies on my memory, which is one of my least reliable traits, ha - but I shall do my best!

The first one that comes immediately to mind is this thread with @themckaytriarchy - it was sort of integral to the process of my getting over what X-Force did with Beast by taking control of it, and it also just let me dive into a more horror based thread, which I don't often get to do. Beast is a character who is often very horror-aligned, so getting to really explore that was a ton of fun. I got very poetic in there, but I had a great time.

There's also this thread with the same writer, which was sort of how Cereal and I really got to be such good friends, and how Hank and Tess ended up becoming BFFs. They just had such instant chemistry and bounced off each other really, really well, and I love getting to play Hank as the best aspects of all of his selves - the more mature vibe of his feline self mixing with his younger, gremlin energy, the regret of his modern self mixing in with that, I like when I can pull on all the strings at the same time, if that makes sense.

Oh! Another one is this thread with @silverjetsystm - one of the things I absolutely love about Hank is that he knows goddamn everybody, like, the man's been on every team you can imagine, so there's always some era you can dive into, and his time on the Secret Avengers was so undeveloped, and MK-mun has just been an absolute joy to write with. You can really tell when I'm getting into a thread because I just write reams and reams and reams, and things get more poetic, and Hank starts thinking heavier and heavier things.

Easily another one is this one with @thebettermccoy - I've been wanting a good Dark Beast to bounce off for ages, to the point where I took him on as an extra muse just so he and Hank could interact and I could practise their voices, but then Squirrel-mun took the brave step to take him on, and it's been a joy ever since. It's so gratifying to get to refer to one specific issue from 1996 that no-one but me and Squirrel-mun know about, and they know the lines of dialogue just as well as I do, and we can just dig.

Another one is this one with @themarvelliteraryuniverse - I've lowkey shipped Beast and Sabretooth for years because of Wolverine and the X-Men vol. 1 #8, and getting to actually attack that dynamic and explore it and see Locke's unique take on Victor mesh with my Hank in such an instantly compelling way . . . god, it's a dream come true for me, honestly. Something that often gets lost about Hank is his inherent sexual drive and energy, his repressed primality, his morals interacting with his pull towards the dark, and exploring that is always just a complete joy.

Oooh, ooh! This one with @notmymamasboy - not only is it fun to play Hank as getting used to being pursued again, but Stabby is just so good at throwing this inescapable, unrelenting energy into Raze that makes him feel like a force of nature that Hank has immense affection for and attraction to, but, again, knows has a lot of darkness attached to them. They just bounce off each other really well, and it's probably what fandom would qualify as a crack ship, but I just like the intellectual conflict intersecting with the interpersonal chemistry.

Another one I've loved is this one with @emmatriarchy - I'm an absolute sucker for getting to fill in missing bits of Hank's history, and I always thought it was such a travesty that X-Force never tugged on the very brief but incredibly impactful time where Hank and Sage interacted in X-Treme/New X-Men, because it adds such dimension to their dynamic. Getting to explore that in-situ is a dream for me, and I also just love getting to play Hank from specific periods with specific moods, especially with gloriously obscure and underappreciated muses, with is sort of this mun's whole thing. :)

Ooh, ohh! This one, with @maximummuses - I again felt like this entire thing was swept under the rug back in the 2010s, and it felt like such a disservice to Hank and Logan that they never got to have this conversation, that they never got to just GO AT one another, everything laid out, all honesty, all feeling. This was, again, just another dream for me, and as far as I'm concerned, this is canon and exactly how it happened.

Now we get into stuff that was more dynamics, and also older threads with are, like, a decade old . . . my X-Force Beast's twisted toxic relationship with dusktrip's Wolverine was a delight, and I miss that writer very dearly (they had to stop RPing due to a lack of time) because it let me just drown in a very dark place for a bit in a very controlled way. They, like themckatriarchy, were integral to me coming to terms with what X-Force did with Hank's character.

There are tons of threads with people like brandisnotmygivenname (Abigail Brand), technarchology (Warlock), hulksdontdoweak (She-Hulk), this-city-is-a-symphony (Dazzler), fangedfirecracker (Jubilee), levoleurcinetique (Gambit), healingtheassassins (Elixir), dontcallmejulio (Rictor) - a lot of people from nearly a decade ago who aren't active anymore, but I still think of them a lot, and a lot of the time, I have to remember that Hank's dynamics and history with these people in canon don't necessarily include these versions of the characters, ha.

But, very formative to my interpretation and exploration and journey with Hank.

As for OCs - I'm sort of a one fictional obsession kinda guy, so I don't really have too many! I did have a guy called Danny Jones who was a mutant based on Tito Bohusk from New X-Men. He was from a Young Avengers RP ages and ages ago, and I think at one point he was going to become a Ghost Rider? It was a long time ago, in fairness.

I also have an AU version of Hank called Sir Henry, codenamed Grandmaster, who's inspired by the Ghost Box steampunk version of Hank and Sublime. Instead of being a scientist, he's a Victorian era spymaster with Hank's typical intelligence, but a lot less of his warmth and ethical consideration. He tended to dual wield pistols a lot.

I actually still have some art a friend of mine did from the Exiles RP he came from. This is her OC, Joan, with whom he had a budding romance.

But, as of late, the biggest one has been The Irredeemable Beast, which has spawned a number of characters, the most significant of which is Zeke.

Zeke has always been a clone of Dark Beast, in my conception of him. I always figured that Dark Beast would absolutely be the type of person to keep spare clone bodies around because, frankly, he keeps wagging his ass at people who are stronger than him and can kill him, and the fact that he kept dying and coming back diminished only solidified to me that he would eventually kick the bucket and need an out.

The version of him in Irredeemable is altered slightly, in that he's a recently created clone of Dark Beast - in the original chain of events, he was released as a kid, along with a twin brother, Strauss, and they grew up relying on each other, eking out a meagre existence by living between the lines. They had full lives, but obviously severely disadvantaged, and hated Dark Beast whenever he was around because, well, why wouldn't they?

Zeke's fun to play around with just because he has a lot of Hank/Dark Beast's perception and wit, but he doesn't have the same level of intelligence, knowledge, privilege, or advantages, so he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder - yet he still tries to have fun, which is very Hank. He's a good grounding presence, which is why I decided to make him a central part of Irredeemable, and I have a good few plans for his arc going forward from Dark Beasts.

His narrative arc is sort of meant to tackle a big problem I had with both X-Force and, more widely, the Krakoan resurrection system, which is the amount of wasted bodies/clones, and the lack of thought put into what's a 'real' life and what isn't.

The whole Talon/Wolverine split is treated completely differently to how the clones in X-Force of both Hank and Logan are treated, and I wanted to unpick that, question exactly what a clone's life is worth, and question why we arbitrarily decided that we put more value on Talon/Wolverine, but carving dozens of Hanks and Logans was perfectly acceptable.

Every one of those Hanks or Logans could have been a valid individual in the exact same way that Ezekiel is, and I want Hank to have to think about that, and be faced with the ethical/existential question of the lives he arbitrarily brought into existence in such a cold, mercenary fashion without any consideration for his responsibility for them.

Zeke is just a really good foil for Hank, and Hank absolutely needs a foil, because his internal monologue is fascinating, but it really can get maudlin and self-involved, so you need to break that up with some youthful 'I don't give a shit' energy, which Zeke provides in spades.

One of the other characters in Dark Beasts, Yekaterina, is a pretty minor character, but pretty much any time I come back to my long term plans for the fic, I keep wanting to give her more to do. I think it's really important to me that X-Men have human characters who are friendly and pro-mutant, who make up the other half of the mutant metaphor, because that's something the comics really did just give up on for the longest time, and it makes such a difference to have a human who's like 'no, fuck Orchis, fuck all these racists, I'm with you because it's the right thing to do.'

I also have a tendency to write exclusively dudes, so Yekaterina and Jennifer Nyles keep being given more and more to do so that I break out of that writing rut. Same thing with Olivia Ocampo, the Orchis commander in Dunfee - I explicitly gave her a Marvel branded alliterative name so that I would use her more, and I know where her story goes. I need to get on that, actually, I want to release that chapter close to Christmas if I can . . .

Gorobitz and Taft are pretty shameless Rosencratz and Guildenstern expies. I like giving goons personalities, and I think it's funny exploring the weeds of the arbitrary distinctions of anti-mutant racism through the lens of a pair of garden variety Orchis grunts. They're gonna turn up in future chapters with similar segments.

I think that covers the majority of it? There are other characters who are going to appear later on, including an Orchis agent that I want to be a bit of a surprise. The entire fic is about the ramifications of Hank's actions and dealing with them, and that agent has a backstory that is all about Hank's actions and what they meant for her, and I think he's gonna struggle not to feel like he should just let her shoot him in the head when he finds out what her deal is.

Thanks for the question! It was a really good one!

[originemesis]

"creation took 7 days; now watch me fuck it all up in one night"

canon divergent adam / abel // haz.b.in h.o.tel

21 + / mid-low activity / private and 🐢 SLOW

ordained and entertained by skeu ; icon templates by cinna! 💜💛

Commission human icons by bbglucifer ;p <3 --- > xxx

side blog: vortex @gutstaken (changing over to Abel at some point.)

here are some cool people 😎 : @mourningstarred / deathinfeathers , @voxistem , @lilitophidian , @cast-you-dxwn , @2ndrib , @atomeyes , @arachn0philia , @drraphaelmd-a @brokendreamscreation , @hlylight , @chasingrainbcws @danger-tits-lute , @hclluvahctel , @bored2deathiswear , @bbglucifer6669 , @themosthatedbeingg , @metaladam ,

about // playlist // active headcanon // current verses // rules [beneath]

Caard-Esque:

Blog is 21+ for content concerns and mun is 25+ (an old) and will not interact with minors on this blog. minors should technically not follow me here either ~ so, don'tttttt...do that? thanks! if i catch you, you're yeeted to the shadow realm.

Do not follow this blog if you are sensitive to the sensitive topics related to this particular genre. I tag with "content word cw" for the extra wild stuff, but that's about it. adam literally has the highest swear/slur count in the show and he's only in 3 episodes, so be aware of that.

I tend to be private/selective as i get fairly overwhelmed with too much activity. i really get into plots though, and i'll spam the dash with some silly original dick chauvinism from time to time when ive fed my inner gremlins past midnight. That said, I do get easily overwhelmed when I'm following too many people and multi muse blogs in particular can exacerbate this feeling, so if I do not follow back - I might just not be in a good place to atm or I just don't see possible interactions btw our characters. It's nothing personal! ^^

This is a mutuals only interaction blog for my sanity (anons being fine). if i can see plots happening between us, i'll likely follow. but i get overwhelmed easily so please don't take it personally if i don't follow back or follow back right away.

I am not exclusive, but I prioritize my plotted threads and may have some mains/activity based off that as far as my main verse goes. But I will never be fully exclusive and i enjoy exploring different character dynamics. Also multiship is fine, but I am not exclusively here to ship or write suggestive content. My muses have always and will always require plotting and scene chemistry for me to consider writing ship material. In the case I do reblog shippy prompts still feel free to send in ofc! I'll see if I can make it work or not.

If I don't get a follow back within a week or two, if blogs i follow go inactive for up to 6-7 weeks, or if there's just no attempt on either of our ends to connect for an indefinite amount of time - i'll occasionally go through my list and soft block to clean things up. if we ever want to give it a go in the future, the option is there for us to re-follow and resume! i have in the past been made to feel like I'm walking on egg shells in rpcs regarding these matters and id rather avoid it here...im just here to chill, write and leave weird surprises in dms.

I don't like the feeling of being 'collected' so...if you are interacting with multiple of my muses, I ask you have a different dynamic for mine than them. This is just an act of courtesy I also extend to my rp partners. I interact more with folks that have a special relationship with my muse, so it's needed to deep dive into more interesting topics for me. I also do not usually interact w/ other of the same muse cuz I feel like I 'absorb' how others play him and I want to keep my version separated from that. I might give it a shot some times though depending on how it's presented.

I know that Adam is a bad guy. He's insufferable and can push buttons- but I am not him and I dislike constantly feeling like I'm being barraged for his actions, especially since I consider him to be a heavily layered character that should not be shoe horned into a standard 'ok irredeemable and never allowed nice things' box. So- if you honestly hate this character please don't interact. I am here for exploring taboo topics and ways that a flawed character can make others think he's justified, betray them, make people feel COMPLICATED things... I also love torturing my muse and taking the piss out of him, so I don't need people moving in and tying to constantly put him down/ruin his current plots by being god modey or not at least asking me how we should proceed in a power dynamic, or relationships cuz you don't ship what I ship, or find my interactions with other characters 'toxic' and 'not allowed'...let me explore and enjoy what I like on my blog within reason and do talk with me on dms if you don't like how things are going with our muses and you wanna explore other routes. I love to plot and I am very reasonable.

This post/my rules and conditions are subject to change based on what I get up to on here.

[anogete]

Hi. Update of random shit in case anyone cares.

The scary test I was stressed over in the fall when I was posting my last fic? It was the CFP (Certified Financial Planner) exam. Yes, I passed it. The designation requires a bachelor's degree, so I had to go back to school to finish my last 10 classes. Then I had to take 7 more classes that are pre-reqs for the exam. Then I spent probably 700 hours attempting to cram everything you could think of related to personal finance (my god, there is a metric shit ton) into my head. The designation also requires 5,000 hours of experience in the planning field (which I thankfully already had). By the time I passed the test, I was no longer proud of the accomplishment, just relieved to have it behind me.

Work was intensely busy in November and December. I got little reading and no writing done.

I have a WIP featuring the Darcy/Rumlow pairing that has been languishing on my computer since 2020. To be honest, I've mosty forgotten what the conflict driving the plot was going to be. I think I was trying to tie it into the events of Wandavision. Took place after the show and had Monica Rambeau and Darcy kinda sorta working together and trying to figure out what, if anything, crossing the barrier that Wanda had thrown up did to them. Of course, Rumlow is alive and scarred and back with the good guys. And also really annoyed that his recent gunshot wound stuck him on desk duty watching the nerds complete their physicals as part of employee onboarding. Darcy doesn't want to have gym class with Rumlow, and Rumlow doesn't want to be there either but he's also kinda into the sassy brunette who tried to sweet talk him into passing her without making her run a mile. In the chapter or two I did write, the banter between Darcy and Rumlow was so fun, so I'd love to go back to it and try to move it along.

I got sucked into reading Draco/Hermione fanfic recently. Blame those damn Snow edits from the latest Hunger Games movie. Guys, I have never read those books or seen the movies, but blonde Tom Blyth is looking like the fanfic Draco of my dreams. How dare. This rabbit hole led to me deciding I needed to write a Dramione piece. It's maybe 6 pages and has gone nowhere even though I have a vague idea of the plot. My muse is struggling.

I found my old folder of all the fic I wrote in the past 20 years. There are still a couple hockey fics I haven't posted to AO3. There are also Anita Blake fics (I was a hardcore Anita/Edward girlie) and Harry Potter fics (don't cancel me but I used to write Snape/Hermione; NO student/teacher stuff though). I think I have an old Doctor Who fic featuring Nine/Rose (yes, I'm a Nine girlie). And a very old Forgotten Realms fic that paired Catti-Brie up with Jarlaxle. Look, I don't know. It was ages ago. With the exception of the hockey fics, I do not think any of these are of the same quality I've posted on AO3, but I've been toying with the idea of trying to clean them up and posting them so more of my work is archived together instead of spread over various fan sites. Does anyone have any interest at all in reading this shit? Like, at all?

I decided 2024 is going to be my book binding era. I bound isthisselfcare's Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love a couple weeks ago. I did all the typesetting with the help of some macros. Printed it, folded the signatures (the booklets that comprise the book), sewed them together with waxed linen thread, glued the text block together with some mull, and used chip board and book cloth to make the case. It feels and looks like a book, y'all! I could do a better job with lining the signatures up when punching the holes for sewing and with the measurements on the case, but overall I am pretty proud of it. If anyone is interested, I can link a nice tutorial series on TT and/or post progress pictures I took during my book binding experiment. I have to say, it's exciting to have the ability to put my fav fanfics on my physical bookshelf.

[doublejango]

how do you allow yourself to write without becoming depressed by the whole process?

Hopefully my answer will be enough, but if you need to ask follow-up questions man, by all means, feel free.

When it comes to writing for RP, I don't get depressed by the whole process because I love it. I really, really love it. I may be ungodly slow, and definitely try my partners' patience when it comes to that, but I love it. I love reading people's replies, love writing my own. I love reading other threads that have nothing to do with me. I love reading other people's headcanons. Or when a crazy magic!Anon happens, like when Lucid ( @brokendreamscreation ) was turned human and just landed splat into the forests of the Pacific Northwest, I adore trying to keep up on that. I often can't, just because I am too busy during the day, but whenever I catch a glimpse? It's wonderful. Or, although they're someone who is pretty busy with university, when @aroyaltailor pops on and mentions something about their muse, it makes my day.

RP is about the writing for me, but also a lot about the people. I just really like seeing people happy, being part of their fun, even if a lot of the time I am just the audience cheering them on. There's nothing depressing about that to me. The hardest part, what does make me sad, is trying to choose well when it comes to mutuals. I want to follow everyone back, but know that I can't. If I can tell that we're not going to mesh because of differences in rules, or if someone just swamps the dash with endless content that's going to make it way too hard for me to see other people's posts (nothing wrong with that! it's just a difference in styles and priorities), I have to regretfully just not follow, or not follow back. I always feel like an asshole for that, not gonna lie, especially when they have already followed me. I'm not mutuals-only though, so in theory if someone wanted to write together and we weren't mutuals? I would absolutely be on board.

Writing doesn't depress me because coming here, even when it is hard, is an escape, a happy place. I was depressed the other day when I couldn't make sentences make sense--they all felt so slippery--but that was the fresh concussion messing with me, causing its own depression, not something resulting from the writing process. But even with that? I am so lucky, so fucking lucky, to be blessed with just the kindest damn mutuals, who have been so supportive and sweet even when I was feeling useless because of the concussion. There are some really special people to me, who even when they are posting with someone else entirely, just seeing them pop up on the dash gives me that little spark of joy that nothing can snuff out, like @botanikos and @visage-of-hell. There are people who know their muses backwards and forwards, who manage to take characters that a lot of the fandom sometimes seem to ignore, like @moxxietude who has just absolutely taken Moxxie and breathed so much life into him, and who could definitely convince me she was part of Viv's team if she chose to, her writing is that solid, that incredible. I just, like?? Fuck, man. And @poisonedspider is a fucking babe--Strode you're magnificent, don't fight me on this--and @infxnatum is one of those unsung heroes of the RPC, who will always go out of his way to send people messages, even when he doesn't get love in return. I feel like somehow, I landed in the best fandom of all, surrounded by the best people? And like I'm being a monster for not @'ing everyone, I am so, so sorry. I know the natural inclination is to feel left out but please, please, I love you fuckers, don't feel left out, I am just rambling so much and realize I need to end this. And just. Yes.

So, TL;DR?

It doesn't depress me because I am surrounded by the most wonderfully uplifting people, and I will do fucking anything for this fandom, I adore you guys.

And if you meant writing as in the writing I do for work--I am really lucky in that the majority of my content is queer, so I get to roll around in feelings and love for my own community. There are occasional non-queer things, like a short story here or there, or a random zoom lecture I was paid to give, or contract pieces--usually articles, always under dry af NDA contracts--that kind of suck sometimes, but being able to produce content for my community gets me through the hard times <3

(Also, I fight with depression constantly, so writing doesn't need to serve depression up to me. We're bros by now, and constantly knocking each other around).

How about you though, are you like--are you doing okay? Are there points you want to talk about? You can IM me, friend, always.

[shukakumoodboard]

HELLO 👋 I would like to know about (in any order that excites youuuuu)

Love (As Told Through the Medium of Last- Minute Grocery Lists)

Mercury Retrograde

AND/OR

Thread of deepest scarlet, heart of shining pearl

And TGOD obvi if you're not burnt out by that one lol no pressure for replying about them ALL but I'm here for the excited yapping. 👉😎👉

*waiting menacingly*

omg hello winkwonk

i can do these in order -- under the cut because i'm about to Talk For Tew Damn Long

mercury retrograde

ok mercury retrograde is a fic based on a really goofy premise called "what if i shit on all the canon pairings at once?" via the medium of gaalee fanfic. it's essentially a story told from all of the other konoha 12 POVs where everyone on earth is having relationship (or pining) problems except, apparently, gaara and lee, who (in the POV of non-overlapping people, so no one makes the connection) seem to have secret paramours that are perfect for them hooHA. some start pairs include sasusaku, naruhina, and inosai, and end pairs being sns, inosaku, kibahina, etc. shikatema and chokarui stick the landing but. i like them well enough xo

basically a fix it fic for all the endgame pairs As According To Gospel Me

behold! a snippetteptpetptp

Damn it, not only was her love life awful, but the weather was, too, and she didn’t have an umbrella! What was up with this week? Mercury must be in retrograde or something, she mused, slouching against the bark of the tree at the edge of training field one. She’d have to ask Tenten, she was an astrology nut, she’d know for certain. “Ino-san, what are you doing out here by yourself, it is raining!” Ino looked off to the side to find her unexpected hero of the hour, one Rock Lee, clutching a scroll to his chest with an umbrella in hand. “Suffering,” she said. “Oh dear. Is there any way I can help?” “Actually,” Ino said, eyeing the umbrella, “are you heading towards town? I didn’t know it was going to rain.” “I am!” Lee said, and held out the umbrella. Ino slid out from under the tree and joined him. They started walking, Lee asking polite questions about her day while Ino scrounged for a more interesting topic. Maybe she could use this moment to answer the questions Sakura had posed a few days ago? Her eyes settled on the scroll Lee held, his grip tighter on the still-rolled paper than Choji’s grip on his beloved chip bags. “What’cha got there?” Lee turned a brilliant pink and smiled hugely. “It is a letter from my precious one!” “Oh, who!?” Ino cried, hamming it up, just a little bit. She was curious. “That,” he said very seriously, “is a secret.”

Love (As Told Through the Medium of Last- Minute Grocery Lists)

so this one is the fic i've started to create for my FTH 2024 bid winner @chinesefirethorn <3

it's a series of alternating POVs developing a gaalee relationship through unintentional dates which are actually just various gaalees having to run errands -> inspired, actually, by the fact my partner, the colloquially-christened-by-gaalee-discord mr. bread, tells me every time we have to do long distance that he misses going grocery shopping with me. which is like. how dare u make me feel romantic about feckin' woolies actually. no snippets for this one but here's the extant tag list:

clown-to-clown communication

Grocery Store (Romantic)

5+1 Things or similar

Food as a metaphor for love

Gardening also as a metaphor for love

Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and

scenes of domestic bliss

note: currently this one is on hold because reg has been offline for a while and i want to write this one for her when she's around again so it's tailored to her. reg come back i miss u

thread of deepest scarlet, heart of shining pearl

allow me to redirect you to this post where i unloaded about it

The Grapes of Debauchery

tgod my goode friend tgod, u are my brainchild and the bane of my existence rn. before i even begin to talk about tgod u must observe this hysterically funny advertisement post by @rkaln because i think about it every day

ok tgod. up next, thank thine lordt, is the long awaited sober winkwonk time chapter god Bless what has taken me so long it's the doctorate whyd i do that to myself we shall neber knwo

but i can tell you what i will deliver, and that is: Virgins Being Awkward In The Sack. none of this red face fanning self smut no this is pure cringefail shenanigans you're gonna get home grown baby not outsourced man directly from the kitchen table at my house you want it we got it guaranteed

gaara says "raw dog" out loud. the condoms are expired. lee nuts too early and panics about it. gaara's hungover. both of them WILL cry at some point. they've non-startered three times even im getting annoyed and im the author. just boink you clowns

here's a snippet from the next chapter, which is titled, to my absolute delight, Will You Two Please Just Drink Some F*cking Water:

Gaara stood and crowded into Lee’s space while he riffled through the drawer and yanked out a small, brightly coloured tube. “Lee, these are expired.” “Ex—huh?” Lee took the box and squinted at the date. Then he looked up, horrified. “I did not know they expired! I can um, go get—” “I don’t care,” Gaara said, taking the small bottle the lube Lee held from him. “I haven’t had sex with anyone, so unless you have some sort of genital illness—” “I do not!” Lee’s shout rattled the windows. Gaara winced.

truly i have achieved the pinnacle of yammertime, if ur still here holy sgat u are devoted and i lov u

[thesparklingwriter]

a gift from a dragon

"Was I ever going to be told about this, or was I supposed to accidentally discover it myself?"

tags: pet names, fem!reader, established relationship, reader is preganant, dragon!zhongli doing dragon!zhongli things because im a simp, nesting, tooth rottingly fluffy

ao3 link | taglist | masterlist | next

hello everyone ^^ this segment of the zhongli flufftober that is now just 31 fluffshots is inspired by this ask! i recommend checking it out so you know what the original context was :) i had so much fun writing this, i was literally kicking my feet and giggling like an imbecile... anyway I've been told by a couple of betas on some other works that i may have a slight over reliance on dialogue so I've been working on setting the scene a bit more through description, please tell me if this slays or not.

i am down so astronomically bad for family man zhongli be still my beating heart and ovaries cause wtaf

Zhongli's favourite part of the day is easily six pm when he can hurry home from the funeral parlor to see you. But over the few weeks, he's been becoming more on edge as the clock tends to the end of his work day. He's never particularly enjoyed being away from you for long, granted, but he always wants to be at home now.

On his way home, he passes through the market stalls and finds himself drawn to a couple of stands, musing over how the wares would suit your home perfectly. Before he knows it, he's bought a ridiculous amount of goods and is staggering under the weight of it as he returns home to you. He'd only meant to buy the vase, but then he'd been drawn to some woolen blankets and pillowcases with golden threads, and how could he ignore his instincts when they were calling out to him so loudly?

"You're finally home," you smile when he comes through the front door. You dare not ask about the ridiculous amount of things he's been buying recently–when you do, he looks at you with confusion, as if you're supposed to know what he's doing. You don't. At all. When it comes to Zhongli and his instincts, you've learned to ride the wave and accept whatever you're told.

Zhongli lowers his head to kiss you, manoeuvering his pile of goodies out of your way. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm great. How are you?" You shoot back snarkily. You know that's not what he's asking—he's asking about whether the baby's been good today or whether you've done anything particularly exciting with the sudden excess of time you've been granted since taking maternity leave.

"I'm well, thanks," he replies, chuckling at your evasion of his question. You do this almost every day, withholding the details of your day from him until he sits down and gives you his full attention—something he can't do while carrying a whole mound of knitted goods.

"I'll tell you more after you put that away. Where are you stashing all that stuff anyway?" You ask, and Zhognli shrugs.

"Places." he smiles, heading upstairs. The aforementioned place is your room—not that you spend much time in it. In fact, Zhongli's been in your old room more often in the past three months than you have since you moved in. As your pregnancy progresses, you seek him out more than usual, desperate for his comfort. And so, his room has become a shared room. Not that he particularly minds.

When he returns downstairs, he lies down, resting his head in your lap, and you tell him everything you've done today, absent-mindedly braiding his hair as you talk. He likes being close to your stomach, even though you're barely showing, and listens attentively, asking questions about your adventures. Nine times out of ten, you both fall asleep like this, and you awake in the morning in your bed. But today, you wake up before Zhongli does, having napped earlier in the day, and carefully slip away from him, slipping a pillow under his head where you once had been.

The sheer amount of knitted things Zhongli brought today has made you want to revive your old hobby of crocheting in the hopes you might be able to make something for the baby. If you remember correctly, the last time you crocheted anything was when you still used your room for its intended purpose—and not as a walk-in wardrobe. And so, you march yourself to your room, ready to check under the bed for your trunk of supplies.

Or rather, you would be if Zhongli hadn't replaced your bed with what feels like thousands of pillows and blankets.

Oh, Li, you think, wrapping a blanket with golden threads around your shoulders.

Sometimes, it's easy to forget that the man wasn't always human—that even though his body is that of a man's, his mind and soul aren't, and that sometimes old instincts kick in. Was he embarrassed? Was he worried that you'd think he's weird?

You walk towards the large pile of comforters out of curiosity. If he put this much work into it, you might as well test if it's any good, right? You sink into the blankets, curling up with one of the pillows in your hands. It feels like every part of your body is being hugged by him and you can swear the blankets smell like him. Before you know it, you've fallen asleep, a golden pillow clutched close to your chest.

When Zhongli wakes up and finds you replaced by a pillow but the house silent, he's slightly concerned. Have you injured yourself while he's been sleeping? It can't be. He would have woken up. And so he decides to search for you. Just to make sure you're alright. He can't be too careful. But you're not in his bed, and you're not in the bathroom, the study, or the small makeshift library he'd put together for you.

The final place to look is your old room, but you'd had no reason to go in there before, so why would you go now all of a sudden? But of course, that's where he finds you, curled up in the middle of the sorry attempt of a nest he'd put together to try and curb his urges. He wishes he'd had enough time to finalise his preparations, but seeing you sleep so happily makes his heart swell. He sits on the floor beside the bed, carefully taking your hand in his as you stir, resting your hand on your stomach as you sit up.

"Good evening," he smiles, and you stare at him blankly as if you don't understand, a sign you've slept well. "Are you alright?"

You nod, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him into bed with you. When you've finally woken up enough to talk, you look up at him and ask: "Was I ever going to be told about this, or was I supposed to accidentally discover it myself?"

"I had intended it to be a gift for you and the baby when you were further along, but I have no objections to you getting an early present." His smile is excited and bright as he pulls you closer to him, suddenly overcome with the feeling that you can never be close enough.

"This is not what I expected when I found out dragons nest." You smile against his chest.

"Well, I can't exactly bring you feathers, can I? You'd slaughter me the minute I step over the threshold, so this will have to do."

"I can think of worse places to sleep," you smile, kissing him lightly. "Thank you. I love it."

© 2023, thesparklingwriter. please do not copy, edit, repost, or translate.

taglist: @ainescribe @thelonelyarchon

[citrinitxs]

somewhat serious announcement:

hi. I'm so sorry for dying (again). This year has been immensely difficult for me to gain motivation into the likes of rping and, consequently, to writing for my genshin muses. I've kind of grown to... distance myself from the game because of various reasons, and my writing muse for both bedo and kazu has just. consequently ate shit and died for the entirety of oct to now.

although it sucks, I will put both in low activity (meaning I will not be musing them unless w/ selective mutuals, and replies WILL be sparse). I just need a breather from genshin and I kind of want to. well. branch out to other fandoms I guess.

again im. so sorry. i feel horrible doing this but I just. dont feel the love i used to for these silly idiot/s (mostly bedo, he's been my fave since starting genshin and meeting him). however, life happens, and my interest in this game kind of dwindled and... it just isnt sparking up anymore. and i feel bad about saying that, because i still love it.

so yeah. my genshin muse/s + oc of this variant (alice) will be on low muse for the time being. i'll probably be slowly working on adding other muses of diff. fandoms, but some will definitely be in different variants such as rain code, hsr (I'm still thinking abt this one tbh), pressure, buckshot roulette (I have a lot of ideas for a potential dealer expy), and many more.

to my genshin mutuals, im so sorry i couldn't inform you guys. i feel genuinely sad for doing this and i wish that i could catch up to our threads. but for now, i just need a break from genshin and musing my muses, cause my interests in this game has dwindled, and i dont know when i can get it back.

[immobiliter]

VEILGUARD ARCS: VARRIC

ALL of this is going under a cut because it includes big spoilers for the endgame, so click at your own risk !

okay so for those who didn't read my angry, rant-y thoughts after finishing the game ( here, and even after two weeks i stand by them, i'm still not a huge fan of the end part of the game ), when it comes to varric and veilguard i want to keep the essence of what bioware intended — namely that varric's death remains intact and, outside of very specific plotted threads/verses, i do not intend to really write varric as being still alive post-veilguard — however, i have big, big issues with how it was executed in the game and will be changing that as i see fit.

after much consideration, i've decided to give varric two veilguard arcs for the most flexibility in terms of interactions, because bioware making him dead from the start severely limits me as far as interactions go during veilguard lmao. the first is this one, which is the easier one to figure out, where varric does survive the ritual ( as most of us believed at the time ) and then dies later on in the lighthouse during the course of the game ( the specifics of which can be plotted with the relevant writing partner/muse, as well as the impact that this has on solas' plans to use rook's regret over varric's death to escape his prison which??? i still don't understand how this was ever actually meant to make sense but y'know. whatever. the point is, nothing is fixed aside from the fact that varric dies from the effects of solas' lyrium dagger at some point before the endgame ). this allows at least some interaction between varric and the companions during the veilguard timeline while still allowing his death to have the impact in the narrative that it does

the second is one that is more canon compliant in the sense that varric did perish at the ritual site and has been dead all along, but that this isn't something that rook only discovers at the very end of the game ( since i feel like that's an insult to rook's grief, to all of the companions and faction leaders who purport to care about them, an insult to varric's own impact on so many other characters aside from rook and solas and an insult to solas that he thought he could keep up the illusion for that long, blood magic or no ). again, this is not fixed and i am open to plotting depending on the partner and muse in question, but i do think the revelation regarding varric's death should come no later than late act 2, pre-endgame mission. varric has had too much of an impact on too many other characters in this game series for rook's illusion to reasonably hold after that point imo, especially as rook is supposed to have a support network of companions around them that would have been witness to their denial and grief for weeks, if not months, by then.

i am also toying with a veilguard arc for varric based on a lot of fan speculation prior to the game's release that would yeet varric into the second fade prison alongside solas so it's the two of them advising rook during the game ( and... honestly? at this point i would have preferred that for varric than what we got ). he's still dying though, apologies but i am still here to inflict varric-related grief on everyone :))

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

WIP Wthursday

meant to post yesterday and then forgot bc of who i am as a person so, whoops. anyway, current state of affairs

embroidery:

absolutely 0 progress on the Hermit since i last posted it in like mid september. whoops. i WILL finish this thing by veilguard i swear but for some reason it's just grueling every step of the way. meanwhile, i'm banging out this mini version of The Tower in like 4 days. I want to post the pattern/thread colors I made for my big design, but i feel guilty selling a pattern for a piece where i hand-dyed at least 5 of the colors involved. So I'm making a second version with only commercially available colors as an alternative (and a slightly less saturated background), and I'll include both color guides as options.

haven't made any new digital designs/patterns since the last one of the qunari dialogue symbol. considering making a new one for another piece of art to copy out, but currently unclear on how to get the proportions for the frame accurately copied into photoshop because I want to try an oval frame instead of circular so... yeah. we'll see.

writing:

went digging through my old WIPs folder and found a k!meme prompt fic for Lavellan getting hit by a truth spell that I'd basically almost finished and then just... completely forgot about I guess? it's a silly premise and under 15k so it must have just poofed from my brain when I moved and lost track of all my then-projects.

           Just the memory sends a flush down the back of her neck, her heartbeat skipping inside her chest like a stone over water. She can almost feel it, even here, her legs aching after a days of travel. The warmth of his body against hers in the cold air of the mountains. The unexpected passion of their kiss, the pressure of his lips crushing against her own, driving all other thoughts from her mind.             The way just beforehand he’d still hesitated, almost tearing himself away.             That’s the real problem, she thinks to herself, as she tries to ignore the wet slapping noise the drenched fabric of her robes makes with every step. She just can’t reconcile the intensity of his words with the way he keeps drawing himself back again. Every time she considers making another move, she can’t help but think that maybe it will be what convinces him she’s not worth the trouble after all.             Ar lath ma, he’d told her, despite it all.             She has no idea how to respond to something like that.

the first two and final chapters are entirely finished, while 3/4 are more disjointed segments that need some fleshing out. but i'll probably just go ahead and post the first bit soon because why not. maybe that'll push me to clean it up faster. i'll also be honest. half of this fic is like... the prompt premise, and the other half is just. me wishing i was out backpacking. i wrote it the summer of lockdowns when i went from working outside 5 days a week to bedroom WFH prison, and its funny rereading now like. oh yeah so i was going fully insane about not being the one camping myself, huh.

Anyway. otherwise I also started another new short thing for my still currently nameless No-Longer-Lavellan from reunion, but it's only a couple hundred words and some vague notes so far. Not sure if I'll turn it into something more polished or leave it as general musings. I wish I could draw better because I have way more concrete visions for visual art for that whole scenario but, alas.