#(well... non-professional fan-fiction anyway)

[freepassbound]

📷 What’s set as your phone’s lockscreen?

✏️ Have you ever written fanfiction?

🐰 What do you think says the most about a person?

📷 What’s set as your phone’s lockscreen?

It's just the default - I've never changed it. 🤷‍♂️

✏️ Have you ever written fanfiction?

I have not, actually.

🐰 What do you think says the most about a person?

These days, in most countries, probably their politics. There are some pretty obvious dividing lines where who a person supports speaks clearly to what they think of large numbers of their fellow humans.

[aulescev]

Prisoner König x Nurse Reader

Soooo, I made a fanfiction where Monster!König is a prisoner, while the reader is a nurse at a maximum security prison. I'm so excited to share it with everyone, but also kinda anxious because I never really had someone read my works, let alone post a fanfiction I made (っ ̩̆╭╮ ̩̆)っ Anyway, here it is! Hope my writing will find a place in your heart somehow!

The Confinement, To you, the nurse who loves overstepping her boundaries, be careful and take this warning seriously, or else, the monster that lives under a man’s skin might devour you whole.

Nurse Reader x Prisoner König, hate to love trope.

!! Warning, this story contains: Dub-con/Non-con, Gore descriptions, Death, Poisoning, Manipulation, Obsession, Suicide, Possessive and Controlling tendencies, and Immorality. Heavily NSFW, minors DO NOT interact. Do inform me if I missed any.

!! Proceed at your own discretion

Disclaimer: I only have basic knowledge about prison, and what prison nurses are assigned to do inside its secured walls. The same thing goes for prisoners. Consider this a fictional work based in an alternative universe, only with the same countries, and stuff but with monsters + altered laws and rights to fit the story. So take this as it is, or shoo away. You can give me a few tips so I can take note of them, but please, be kind (｡ •́‿•̀｡ ) This is my first fan fiction, and story so yeah, expect a lot of errors + English isn’t my native language + I don’t speak German and only used a translator for this, so sorry in advance for the migraines my writing could cause you.

Chapter 01: The monster that lives under a killer’s skin.

Word Count: 3.9k

∆. 12:04:55PM of November 24, m. hallway of the prison.

You're a nurse at a maximum-security prison. Providing care for both the staff and prisoners, a right everyone equally has so even if you don't like the idea of aiding murderers, and people of such backgrounds, due to some reason, this is the only job opportunity you can take as of the moment.

Today's actually your first day, so naturally, you're shown around the workplace you now have to get yourself accustomed to.

"Most importantly, don't trust anyone other than the staff. These men are filthy, better not get your hands dirty, know what I mean?" Sir Wagner stated, the disgust in his tone is evident and it's enough to let you know how much he despises the criminals behind the bars of his prison.

Even though you would like to agree with the statement of the prison's head, you can't find it in you to despise the people in the prison as much as he does. You're a little too soft sometimes, and also of contradicting nature that makes you automatically take the opposite side of any argument even when it gains you nothing.

Sensing you won't reply— honestly, he doesn't really care if you'll reply or what, since he just wants to get this over with— the warden decided to conclude that conversation there.

"Do you have any questions?" He asked, a plain tone now as he speak, putting his hands deep inside his pocket.

"None, thank you for showing me around."

You replied in an equally plain tone, also wanting to get over it already like he does. He didn't take it personally, his years as the warden made him professional and collected most of the times. Plus, he understood your unenthusiastic nature at your new job, no one after all would be that happy to work in a prison where they keep high profile criminals.

"Well, that's great then. I'll have Benedikt here assist you while you get accustomed with your new work. Ask him when you need help, and if you have any questions." With a brief glance over to the man on his right, sir Wagner introduced the other guy that unnoticeably joined your group of two along the way.

Benedikt nodded at you when you looked at him, he's got an awkward smile forced on his face as he stretch his arms towards you for a handshake.

"Benedikt MacTavish, nice to meet you," He introduced himself, his hand hanging in the air as he wait for you to reach it.

MacTavish? Doesn’t sound like a local name. You’re glad for that, at least you’re not the only foreigner on your new workplace.

"I'm—"

"Yeah, I remember. Your surname's familiar though, Price, yeah? Are you perhaps related to a military captain?" He casually cuts off your introduction, seemingly eager to know something like he can't hold the question another second longer.

A little taken aback with how he outright talked over you, you were silent for a minute to process that fact and also his question.

"Ah, yes, right," you replied when things finally start sinking in your brain, "Well, he's actually my uncle. How come you know of him?"

Honestly, he's not related to you by blood. He's just your adoptive father's cousin, which makes him your foster uncle if that word even exists. But he doesn't need to know that much about you, what would he even do with the information if you told him?

"Ah, well, my cousin's actually the man's friend. John MacTavish? Soap? Does that ring any bells?"

"Oh, Johnny, yeah, I know the man. What a small world we live in," you smiled after hearing a familiar name, finding the coincidence a bit funny.

Finally, you took Benedikt's hand to shake it, forgetting for a moment that it's still waiting for your hand.

"Nice to meet you, Soap's cousin."

"Nice to meet you, Price's niece," he returned the introduction in the same humor, a genuine smile now plastered over his lips.

"I'll leave you two to it." Sir Wagner interfered and just left you two without another word, which is honestly weird but expected of a man his type.

"Phew, glad I found something common with you, or else it'll be hard to find an ice breaker activity," Benedikt sighed in relief after sir Wagner's finally gone from the scene, "Have you already went to the dorms? Found your room, and all?"

With a shake of your head to answer his question, you wordlessly replied no and looked at him, seeing what he'll say or do.

"Ah, alright, I can show you where it is, then we can start our rounds after. Is that alright with you?"

"Sure, thanks," You answered, your tone is a bit lively now compared to with sir Wagner earlier, since you're like a chameleon who adapts to whichever environment it's in.

You're blue when they're blue, pink when they're pink, red when they're red, and so on and so forth. A firm believer of do unto others what they've done to you. Karma? You rarely put your faith in that, you mostly take things to your hands and be the human version of the word revenge. It's not really cool, in fact, you kind of live harder because of it, but no way your ego would let go of your way of living.

Benedikt started walking, looking at his back every now and then to check if you're still following him as he quietly traversed the halls that should eventually lead to the dorms.

In the middle of your journey, you passed the center of the prison that connects all wings of the building, which means, each transported prisoner would also pass the center before getting to their assigned cell.

The tension in the central building was thick, the air is almost suffocating that it made you freeze on your spot as you try to find the cause of such unnatural atmosphere.

When your eyes landed on the now closing heavy door of the building, your gaze immediately fell to the tallest man in the middle of armed men.

He instantly caught your attention with his tall height, sticking like a sore thumb from the whole crowd.

"Benedikt, you know anything about that man?" You asked in a low voice, curious to find out who he could be, not even tearing your eyes away from the behemoth of a man.

"Ah, shit, today's his transfer, I totally forgot…" He muttered under his breath with a curse, "König, an ex-military guy. Would you believe that today's only his 8th day in prison? Like all prison days combined. He won't behave in any cell he's put in, forcing him to be transferred on new places every other day with how many crimes he commit on each one."

"What??" You uttered in disbelief, taken by a total surprise with the information.

"Yeah, I'm being totally honest right now. It's not normal that a criminal would be transferred from a normal prison to the maximum security because of misbehaving, but guess what? He's committed murder after murder in each base. That's what made him worthy of maximum security prison."

You can just try to press your lips in a thin line, an attempt to hide your disgust. Murderer… The vilest things to exist in this world. How can he live knowing the fact that he's ended a person's life? Oh, how much you loathe them.

You kept a scornful gaze towards his way, throwing daggers as if your stare alone could kill the guy. And of course, it's impossible that he wouldn't feel it, eventually staring back at you.

König, as Benedikt referred him, looked back at you straight in the eyes. Even though there were no holes in the sack that's put on over his face right now, you're certain that he turned his head just to identify who could be burning a hole on his head right now.

You feel like throwing up. Just the thought of breathing the same air as that of a murderer was enough to make you feel nauseous.

"Benedikt, let's go. Bring me to the dorms already." You said, almost pleading as the desperation to get out of his presence faintly showed.

∆. 06:39:07PM of the same day, nurses' office.

"So how was your first round?" Benedikt asked, giving you the canned sparkling water he opened just now.

"Horrible," you replied, taking the canned drink from his hand and downing it quickly.

The drink slid down your throat just like any other liquid, but it's a little painful because of the fact that it's carbonated. You just downed your drink, the bubbles popping on your throat and making you feel like it's burning your insides for a second.

Benedikt gave you a concerned look, but quickly masked it with a soft laugh, "Well, I cannot blame you… Working with criminals isn't exactly the most honorable thing out there. Plus we're understaffed, which makes the workload for each of us actually horrible."

"Yeah, right, that too," you grimaced, feeling more exhausted than how you usually do back when you were just working at the hospital, "I'm sorry Benedikt, my condolences goes to you. You're the most packed nurse here."

He chuckled, "Well, if you're sorry, take some of my patients?" He joked, which earned a laugh out of you.

Before you could even reply, there's suddenly a loud bang in the room and it wasn't a gun, it was the room's door being haphazardly thrown open by a panicking nurse who's also out of breath.

Jane, one of the nurse you've met today.

"Someone! Help! Vanessa! She's– she's wounded! Her eyes! Oh my, heavens, her eyes! We have to sedate König, where's the syringe?!" She started rummaging the room for a syringe and a drug that's supposed to put a person to a deep sleep.

Alerted, Benedikt and you stood up and helped her search for something. When Benedikt got his hand on the drug, he approached Jane and held her shoulders, trying to calm her down.

"Jane, calm down, I got it, but first, I need you to take a deep breath. You can't work with panicked nerves." He tried calling in some sense to her, but she won't calm down.

She started screaming, and started getting hysterical.

Jane, and Vanessa, you're pretty sure they got a thing with each other, maybe this is why she's acting inconsolable?

"Give me the syringe and the drug, I'll respond instead," You presented, preferred to sedate a monster rather than calming a stranger down.

Benedikt's got a better knowledge than you do, it’s better you leave them be than be left to console her with words you probably wouldn't mean. At least that's what you thought.

Benedikt pondered for a moment whether you're fit or not to handle the situation, but in the end, he decided to trust you, giving you the things after all, and also telling the number cell of König.

Rushing to the scene, with an emergency kit you grabbed in the office, you wasted no time and ran as fast as you could.

1245. Cell 1245, prisoner 190228. Must hurry up to cell 1245 before it's too late.

Eventually, you reached your destination, and unfortunately for your guts, you were met with a gore scene. There's an emptied syringe poked into one of Vanessa's eyeballs, one of her hands wrapped around the object in fear as she trembles, and cries.

There's also a whole puddle of blood under her, a lot on her white uniform, and mouth. Now that you observe her, she's also shedding tears of blood, her lips tainted red as blood continues to flow out of it.

What the fuck. This scene is fucking horrendous. What happened?

The guards are gathered around König, watchful of his steps, expectant and quite tense as they wait for him to make a move— ready to stop him from causing even more havoc. While he's not moving, König is watching Vanessa bleed on the floor with cold eyes which is honestly more frightening than him causing a scene.

He's fortunately not punching one guard after the other, so you doubt there was a need for sedating him.

Surveying the situation, you decided to change your plans of prioritizing the sedation of König, to aiding Vanessa first.

Without an inch of hesitation, you knelt in front of Vanessa, some blood soaking the edge of your white skirt. You placed the emergency kit beside you, opening it with haste until everything in the kit is visible.

"It's no use!" Vanessa cried, "The poison has–" she then frantically screamed, fumbling a few of her words as she started gagging from her own blood.

Before you could even touch her, she dropped dead on the floor. A sight that will be the reason of your nightmares for days, or weeks.

You were shaken down your core, blood suddenly cold, and heart beating extremely fast out of shock. You feel your body freeze, hands that were supposed to hold her now are hanging mid-air.

"I just saved her years in prison for murder," You heard a man's voice from behind you speak in a thick, and unexpectedly boyish accent.

You can't stop your brows from furrowing, and eyes show contempt at the mere sound of his voice, let alone his words.

"You are disgusting, a vile creature, don't you dare open that filthy mouth of yours." Unable to restrain yourself, you spit each word with venom as you slowly turn around to look at him furiously, "You are the murderer here. Don't confuse it now."

He does not speak. His eyes only staring at you through those 2 small holes on his makeshift mask.

Holding his equally piercing gaze, you stood your ground, rationality has left your body. You're acting on impulse, on your emotions, something a professional shouldn't do in this type of situation but damn, your ego is just some other kind of level. It will definitely put you on your place someday, but you thought that you should just worry about it when that time comes.

"Pathetic human. Too dumb to even think." He finally broke the silence, irritation in his voice.

Before you could even reply, he had already turned his back on you, walking back to his cell on his on will. The guards locked him up quickly after checking on him one last time.

The maximum security prison is totally different from a normal one. It's worse. Because everyone is sworn to confidentiality, no word really gets out on what's happening behind its high walls.

Prisoners in this place are like expendable pawns. The government uses them however they wish, and unsurprisingly, companies too. They have illegal control over some of the prisoners, depending on how much they paid the government for it.

Someone wants König dead, and you're not even surprised that he was already tried to be disposed of first day in. It could be a private company he used to work for, or maybe enemy, it could also be done for personal reasons. Signing up for a job here means you should expect those types of things, that's why you made sure to be adequately prepared over events like this happening during your shift.

If he was a normal person, you would've felt bad for the prejudice you have over him, but he's a convicted murderer– a serial killer at this point, so you believe that he doesn't deserve the benefit of doubt.

"A killer won't get my sympathy. That will be the last thing I'll ever do in this earth," You've uttered, anger never leaving your eyes as you sat still in your place.

∆ . 11:59:31PM of that day, staff dormitory.

With a gasp, you wake up from a shallow sleep, catching your breath as you try to recover from the nightmare you just had.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," You cursed repeatedly, frustration and distraught are clearly heard in your voice.

Fortunately, you're the only one in your room, not a shared dorm or anything, or else your hypothetical roommate would've pegged you for a madman.

Why would it be about that now of all days? You said at the back of your mind, frustrated over the dream you just had.

Desperately, you tried to swallow that thought, along with the nightmare. Fortunately, before the memory gets too vivid, the alarm on your wristwatch goes off which pulled you out of the world you’re sucked in.

It's the alarm you set the first time you got it, 12:00AM. Midnight on the dot.

You sat down, trying to calm yourself.

Ah, right, your next shift is at 12:45AM which is just 45 minutes from now. With Vanessa gone, and Jane temporarily dismissed to rest, you had to take the extra shift and give up a few hours of your precious sleep.

That reminds you, have you checked up on König as you were supposed to? Even if you hate him, you still have to do your job.

Shit, now you got to fill his report before anyone even notice or ask for it.

Reluctantly, you got out of your bed and prepared to check in early for your shift, planning to stealthily take the prisoner's record to fill it up, hopefully while no one's around to harshly criticize your tardiness on your first day.

— &

You made it to 1245 cell without any road bumps, luckily. Now all that's left is actually checking up on König which you can just frown about. Before sticking the key in the hole, you took a deep breath and tried to at least look neutral—your working face.

Counting from 1 to 5 quietly at the back of your mind, you collected yourself at 3, steeled yourself at 4, and finally, pushed the iron door open at 5 without giving yourself enough time to hesitate and get cold feet.

This prison gives each prisoner a spacious place to live in almost comfort, with only one person per room. At least that's how they do it in this part of Austria. There are quite a lot of cells after all, so they're not shy on using all of them.

"I'm your nurse, I will be checking up on you so please, sit down." You said with a firm tone, putting the bag on the bedside table where all of the essentials for vital checking should be packed.

Each nurse on duty is required to use the same bag, for both safety, and precaution.

"Ärgerlich schädling," he muttered under his unusual breathy voice which set an alarm in you.

Now that you look at it, the back of his shirt is wet, and he's panting a little. Did you really mess up big time on your first day? Shit, now you have to fix this somehow.

"Prisoner 190228," you read the number assigned to him, printed on the sheet of paper you're holding one-handedly, "I said sit down. I can't check on you properly if you're positioned that way."

It was pathetic really. Your nerves are getting the best of you, and it's hinted on your voice.

“Will nicht,” he grumbled, unmoving and unbothered.

You never really stayed in Austria that long in the past. Only a year or two to finish the last 2 years of your nursing school but your university didn’t require you to speak German so you didn’t bother getting that deep into learning the language. You’re an entry-level speaker at best, but since it’s been years already, you’ve lost that ability and can only guess what he’s saying.

“You will, now hurry up and sit down so we can get this over with.”

“Ich sagte nein, verliere dich.”

“Yes, you will. And please, I would really appreciate it if you speak in English.”

You heard his tongue clicked at that, “Warum sollten sie überhaupt eine Ausländerin einstellen? Ich bin es verdammt leid, diese verdammte sprache zu sprechen!” He groaned, almost sounding like a teenager throwing a tantrum at his bed.

He sat down on his bed after that outburst, you don’t even need to peek under that mask of his to know he’s frowning in annoyance, his eyes alone says it all.

“Awfully late to check up on me now, yeah?” He asked, begrudgingly you think, but you decided not to give attention to it.

“Did the syringe grazed you? Was it injected on you? Or did it find other ways to get into your veins?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“It did not.”

“Are you certain?”

“I am fine, so get lost.” He snapped again, his voice starting to sound like his catching his breath again.

You thought he was grinding his teeth the whole conversation, and now it made sense. He’s holding something back, and it’s probably the pain from the poison, his tone only adds up as an evidence to that.

“You are not. You’re breathless, sweating, and,” your eyes looked all over him, trying to observe his posture, to find proofs to support your claim, “…You’re sweating buckets, and shaking.”

You bit your lips, an attempt to maintain your composure as you try to find a solution.

“I need to see your face, take that mask off,” without a warning, you reached for the edge of his mask— something that you later regretted doing so.

In an instant, he has put you under him, his gloved, big hand is wrapped around your neck while the other one is gripping your wrist that was once the closest to his mask earlier.

He’s fuming in anger, the heat coming off him is immense as if he’s a steam machine. Bodies wouldn’t act normally like this against poison, not this much heat while keeping a great vigor. His body feels so different… something you’ve never seen before.

“Touch my mask once more,” He seethed through gritted teeth, anger evident in his unblinking eyes, “Then I will have to devour you.” He threatened, his hot breath and heavy body touching your skin, “Stubborn maus. Get your ass out of here before it’s too late. I won’t take responsibility for your insanity.”

This marks the end of this chapter.

[A/N: Thank you for reading this far! I'm open to gentle criticisms because my heart can't handle harsh words hsdahfw. I'll try my best to take them positively though! Notice that there are timestamps (like ∆ . and — & with the former being a longer time skip, and the latter a matter of a few minutes difference from the latest indicated time), and locations during an event. I placed them there so there would be less confusion regarding the timeline and when a particular event happened:) I added translations in the last part to keep it realistic too. Like, you're meant to not understand him much whenever he speaks German so yeah. Still, if you're curious what they translate to, the translations will be just down this note. That's all, thank you again! (´｡ • ᵕ •｡ `) ♡]

CHAPTER 01 TRANSLATIONS:

[1]: Ärgerlich schädling, Annoying pest

[2]: Will nicht, [I] don’t want

[3]: Ich sagte nein, verliere dich, I said no, get lost

[4]: Warum sollten sie überhaupt eine Ausländerin einstellen? Ich bin es verdammt leid, diese verdammte sprache zu sprechen, Why should they hire a fucking foreigner at all? I’m fucking tired of speaking that damn language

[5]: Maus, Mouse

[twopoppies]

Good morning Gina and Happy Weekend!

Disclaimer: I do not believe Harry and Louis are in a romantic relationship but I am also not about to criticize others that do. With that said, I am SO incredibly glad I at least looked into the relationship because I fell in love with the fan fiction in this fandom. It has been a lot of fun to read so many incarnations of the characters of Harry and Louis and the other boys as well.

With all that said, my perceived idea of who these guys are, based on the interviews they give is somewhat different than how they are usually (not always) portrayed in fan fiction and I was just curious if anyone else felt the same way or if I am a minority in this thought. Were many of these perceived personality traits shown in fan fiction formed at the beginning of 1D and just continue to carry on?

Harry: fan fiction: sensitive, loving, selfless, principled and unaware of his own magnetism. Somewhat insecure.

My perception: Calculated, strong businessman and very self aware.

Louis: fan fiction: strong, leader, selfless, a ball of pure sunshine at times. Likes to be the center of attention.

My perception: insecure. Still trying to find who he is. Loves to be center of attention. Does not like to follow others, sometimes to his professional detriment.

Niall: fanfiction: All around good guy. Loving, supportive, but almost shallow at times. The trusty sidekick.

My perception: Much more layered, very comfortable in his own skin.

Liam: fanfiction: strong, calm, peacemaker

My perception: Hot mess of anxiety and insecurity. I want to hold his hand in therapy.

Zayn: Fan fiction: Liam’s other half, whether as a romantic interest or a soulmate of sorts.

My perception: haven’t paid enough attention to him to form one.

Anyway, was just curious how others perceptions of the boys in real life is the same/differs from how they are usually portrayed in fan fiction.

For everyone: if you haven’t read it yet, go read Danger I can’t Hide by Celtic Sky! For me, hands down, the best historical fan fiction I have ever read.

Gina, thank you for your time and for keeping up with the fan fiction for everyone in the fandom. You have no idea how much it is appreciated!

Hi, darling. First of all, Danger I Can’t Hide is one of the best stories I’ve read, fic or otherwise. I would publish that book so fast.

In regards to everything else, I think what you’ll find is that the fan fiction changed as Harry and Louis’ public narratives changed over the years, as well as just changing with the times. For example, there was a period of time around 2012/2013 (IIRC) where Louis was very often portrayed as having intense internal homophobia and Harry was the pining friend who Louis finally admits his feelings to. 2013 also saw the rise of bisexual/internalized homophobia Harry, Uni fics and “Dark Harry” fic partly because the boys were getting older and because frat boy Harry was being pushed. 2014/2015 You’ll see a lot more mermaid/pirate stories because Harry grew his hair out.

Early days nothing was tagged and there were a lot more PWPs written. Then there was a period where BDSM, Daddy Kink, and rimming was in every fic (I think this mainly started after Ren wrote the driving instructor fic). When Fine Line dropped there was an increase in fics where mostly Harry, but sometimes Louis, was trans/non-binary etc.

I think what you’re picking up about how they’re written may depend in part of what authors you’re gravitating towards (for example, I can’t stand the “ball of sunshine” characterization of Louis. For me that’s just not who he is and I think I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a fic where that’s how he’s written). I agree with your perception of who Harry is now (although I think there’s a lot more to him that what you listed), but I wouldn’t have said his main characteristics were that he was calculated or a strong businessman back when people were writing fic about the boys 2011-2015. Additionally, I do think many authors idealize both of them as well as their relationship, which is often fun to read, but doesn’t always make for the most interesting or complex stories.

As for the others, in many Larry fics they’re just used as fillers and aren’t really well developed characters. Niall is often fun-loving and gives good advice, Liam works out a lot and has golden-retriever energy, Zayn is quiet and cool and an artist of some sort. None of that gives you much of a sense of who any of them are IRL or in a book. Personally, I don’t tend to write them into my fics except very peripherally, but there are many good fics where the rest of the guys are given bigger roles and are more fully developed.

Last, there aren’t a lot of authors who consistently write the guys as older men (the age they are now, or even aging them up), so what you may be coming up against are authors writing young versions of these men you know, but also many people just take the five of them and mold them into the characters that make their fics work best and don’t really care if they’re getting the characterizations “right”. If you’re talking about canon, that’s a whole other kettle of fish, but barely anyone writes canon these days, so I can’t really speak to characterizations there.

Sorry this got so long. Clearly I’ve got lots of thoughts. I’m also on the airplane and I’m really bored. 😂

Glad you’re finding my fic recs helpful ❤️

[thewordworrier]

Like a Tattooed Golden Retriever

[Not quite sure why the brain went down the route it did for this one, but it is what it is.]

After falling sick during the ProRev tour, Shelly keeps more of an eye on Frank than normal, and he's not totally mad about it.

Word Count: 3,518 words. Notes: ~ Title from "The Tortured Poets Department" by Taylor Swift. ~ new Taylor music means a new piece inspired by it somehow - you know the drill by now. ~ Surprise! Another piece!

~#~#~#~

[We’ll be a little fast and loose with dates and times because, after all, this is fiction with stolen elements from reality. I know Frank had pneumonia during this time, but, again, fiction with stolen elements from reality - so we’ll go with a non-named illness.]

[Setting: Projekt Revolution 2007 - some time around the end of August. Ish.]

“Yeah J, I know, I’m not happy with the idea either,” Shelly paused, holding the phone with her opposite hand to shake some feeling back into the hand that she usually held it with. “But you know what he’s like, you know how stubborn he is. Just as much as I do.”

The man in question looked up from his spot on the couch and smiled at the blonde on the phone as she moved closer to him and started to tidy his hair with her free hand.

“Mm hm, I know,” Shelly smiled gently down at Frank as he tilted his head to her hand. “The most stubborn, but we love him that way.”

Frank turned his head to kiss Shelly’s palm as she listened to Jamia on the other end of the line. They were discussing him, obviously, and the fact that he… He wasn’t doing too good. That was an understatement, actually. He’d not long been discharged from hospital due to a strong bout of illness.

He spent a little bit of time since then, arguing with Shelly about whether or not he’d be show ready - she wasn’t happy with the idea, and neither was Jamia, but, as she said, he was stubborn. He had a feeling that she’d already been on the phone to a doctor, to see if he’d be medically clear to perform, but he wasn’t sure what the result of that call had been, or even if she was waiting on a call back or something.

“Well,” Shelly continued, answering the question he hadn’t verbally asked. “I have spoken to a medical professional, and,” she eyed Frank. “They say they can’t really forbid it if he’s really that determined. It’s probably better that he doesn’t but -”

Frank knew that on the other end of the line, Jamia was saying; “but he’s never going to take that for an answer.”

And that was right. He wasn’t going to take that for an answer; he didn’t want to let the fans down; people had travelled, and tickets weren’t cheap on top of that. Plus, he didn’t want to let the rest of the band down. Especially not now they were so close to the end of the ProRev tour. He wanted to finish out the last handful of dates.

“Mm hm,” Shelly continued, checking his forehead with the back of her hand. “I know. So what do you think?”

She listened to the other woman on the other end of the line for a few moments, nodding even though she knew she couldn’t be seen.

“Uh huh, well, you know I’d do that anyway. I’ll just have to step it up a notch if he insists, and we know -”

“That he probably will,” Frank said quietly as Jamia said the same thing in Shelly’s ear.

Shelly raised an eyebrow at the guitarist, but she smiled at him slightly. “Yeah, okay. I’ll do what I can, you know I will.”

Frank reached out to pull Shelly closer to him and she took the hint, sitting down beside him on the couch. Once she’d settled, he leant his head against her shoulder and closed his eyes for a moment.

While he was, essentially, cuddling up to her, Shelly finished her call with Jamia and pocketed her phone before turning her attention to the guitarist on her shoulder.

“Hey you,” she murmured. “How’re you feeling?”

“Tired,” he admitted. “Not too awful, but just tired.”

“You’re keeping up with your meds, yes?” She shifted slightly to face him better.

Frank nodded. “Like you’d ever let me forget. Same with drinking enough.”

Shelly hummed. “That’s right but -”

“And before you say,” Frank interrupted her quietly. “That’s just your job, I wanna tell you to hush your mouth.”

She raised an eyebrow and was about to speak when he interrupted her again.

“Respectfully, and full of love, of course,” Frank smiled at her.

“Oh well, in that case,” Shelly checked his forehead again before taking his hand and gently pinching the skin on the back of it.

She was checking to see if he was hydrated enough, he knew that much. She’d been doing this test to all of them a lot over the course of this tour, and during the summers in general.

“How’s it lookin’ Shell?” He asked, watching her.

“Not bad,” she replied, gently rubbing where she’d had to pinch. “Not bad for now.”

“The ‘for now’ is encouraging,” Frank said dryly, smiling when Shelly giggled. “So what’s the main verdict?”

Shelly glanced up at him, having been focused on gently rubbing where she’d pinched him. “Main verdict?”

He nodded. “I know you were consulting with J, and with a doctor earlier, and you may think that I’m stubborn, but deep down you know I’ll listen to you.”

“‘Cause you’re a good boy really,” Shelly said.

Frank raised an eyebrow at her and she just giggled.

“You like comparing me to a canine, don’t you?” He said, making her giggle a little more.

“I do,” Shelly smiled a little at her choice of words, nodding alongside them before frowned as she looked at him. “Hmn.”

“Hmn?” He tilted his head at her - that was a thing she did that was adorable on her, but he’d picked up on it too apparently. He realised a little too late that it didn’t help the canine comparisons though. “I saw that smile, but… What’s the frown for?”

“I’m…” She checked his forehead again. “I think I’m a little concerned. When did you last have something that I’d consider food?”

“Mm, I’m not sure. And I’m not sure that I’m hungry, I’m just tired.”

Shelly moved away from him and went to check the cupboards of their tour bus. He knew that she was looking for the small stash of nutrient supplement shake powder sachets she kept for when he did get sick and couldn’t keep much down.

“Will you drink one of these for me if I make it?” She asked, shaking the box a little bit.

“Depends.” 

She tilted her head. “Oh? On what?”

“The flavour,” he grinned slightly as she laughed. “And also, will you cuddle with me for a little bit?”

“The flavour thing I understand, but,” Shelly shifted to lean her hip against the counter as she gave him a look. “You don’t need to do anything other than ask for the other thing, you know. I don’t gatekeep my affection that much.”

Frank grinned widely. “You gatekeep your boobs though.”

“Frankie!”

He laughed and coughed a little bit, during which Shelly put the box on the counter and grabbed him some water, sitting next to him to gently rub his back.

“What flavour would you like?” She asked softly once he’d stopped.

“Mm, is there any vanilla? Something plain-ish?”

Shelly hummed and went to make that up for him, returning to sit on the couch beside him. He took it from her with a soft “thanks” and started to drink it, feeling her take his free hand with her own. “Don’t rush it,” she said quietly, watching him a little. She wouldn’t normally watch anyone eat quite so closely, but she was worried about him. “And don’t worry too much if you can’t finish it. We can put it in the fridge.”

Frank just hummed to let her know that he’d heard her. He focused more on the feeling of her thumb stroking circles on his hand than what he was drinking. Actually, that seemed to help, and soon the cup was empty. He offered it back to her and she smiled.

“Good boy,” she whispered, genuinely. “You okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Don’t feel like it’s gonna come back up?” Shelly went to rinse the cup before returning to him.

“No ma’am,” Frank whispered, watching her settle down; lying on her back on the couch, her legs over his lap.

Shelly hummed, made sure that she was comfortable enough - that the arm of the couch wasn’t digging into her at all, and gestured for Frank to cuddle up to her - which he did really quickly, resting his head up against her collarbones, his body sandwiched between the back of the couch and hers.

“You don’t have to call me that, you know that,” Shelly mumbled as she nuzzled into his hair, wrapping her arms around him.

“I do when you’re giving up time with Gerard to look after me,” Frank replied, sighing softly but happily. Or as happy as he could be considering the circumstances. “Which you know you don’t have to do.”

“Yeah I do,” Shelly nodded against his head. “Lux may be my littlest kitten, but you’re my sickest. And I wanna look after you and make sure that you’re okay.”

Frank hummed a little.

“Gerard can wait,” she continued. “He gets me the rest of the time, like, all of the time. He can share for a little bit.”

Frank couldn’t help it - he giggled quietly. “I’m sure he’ll grump about it for a bit.”

“But, at the end of the day, he’s not gonna mind because you’re not doing so good,” Shelly interrupted. “He does care.”

“I know,” he nodded against her. “Really I do. I just like to tease.”

“We know. Just like you like to flirt,” Shelly checked his forehead again, as best as she could. “How’re you feeling?”

“Not awful, just… Not tired, but…”

“Run down?” 

“Mm hm.”

Shelly hummed and they fell quiet for a few minutes, Frank essentially using her as a body pillow, and her not minding, not really.

“Hey,” she spoke a little louder than a whisper. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything Shell,” Frank nodded, enjoying the feeling of her gently running her fingers through his hair. Yes, she was essentially petting him like a dog, but it felt so nice, he didn’t even mind.

“Why are you being so persistent about playing when you should be resting and recovering?”

“I wanna finish out the tour,” he said, curling his fingers in her top. “The fans paid to see us - not whoever we can get in at the last minute to cover.”

“Mm,” Shelly hummed.  “That’s true, but you guys have a very dedicated legion of fans, so I think that they’d understand if you had to pull out -”

Frank sniggered very slightly and knew that Shelly rolled her eyes at that. He felt her shake her head and that normally was accompanied by her rolling her eyes.

“Because you were sick,” she continued, poking him very gently. “Behave, you dog.”

He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”

“My point is,” Shelly quit poking him and went back to walking her fingers up and down his back - something he enjoyed when he was sick. Then again, he enjoyed the extra affection and attention when he wasn’t well.  “If you feel that bad, then it’s okay to stop and rest.”

“That’s what I’m doing now,” Frank said with a nod against her. “Resting.”

“You know what I mean, Frankie.”

“Mm, I know, I know.”

“So,” Shelly tapped his shoulder a bit. “Look at me, Frankie.”

Frank lifted his head to do as he was told.

“If you feel like you can’t face a show,” Shelly maintained eye contact with him. “You tell me, and we’ll figure something out. There’s nothing wrong with needing to take a step back, okay?”

Frank hummed, leant up a bit and kissed the tip of her nose, laughing softly when she blinked rapidly in surprise.

“Yes ma’am,” he repeated, a small smile on his face.

Shelly swallowed a little and cleared her throat. “You don’t have to call me that.”

“I know,” Frank laid his head back down, feeling her fingers move into his hair. “But, honestly, I promise that I’ll let you know if I really can’t do it.”

“You know Gerard won’t blame you,” Shelly pulled her phone out of her back pocket with her other hand, holding it up so she could check it. “If anything, he’ll also want you to just rest and recover.” 

“Mm maybe.” “No, no ‘maybe’ about it,” Shelly checked his forehead. “That’s how he’ll feel.”

“Because that’s how he’ll genuinely feel or because that’s how you’ll tell him to feel?” Frank glanced up and grinned at her.

“A bit of both, I guess,” she shrugged a bit. “But no, genuinely, he cares about you. About all his bandmates.”

“But,” Frank shifted a bit so he could sit up better.

Shelly tilted her head as he moved, removing himself from her.

“He will pretty much do whatever you tell him to, he’ll feel however you tell him to feel.”

She hummed and sat up a bit better, but not moving too much so Frank could cuddle up against her again if he wanted to.

“Well,” she said. “I don’t know about that.”

Frank snorted. “Shell, he’s so wrapped around your little finger; and he doesn’t even care. He’s so in love with you, it’s disgusting.”

Shelly giggled softly. “Hey, that doesn’t mean he’d feel how I told him to.”

“That’s what you think,” Frank shook his head a little and his voice dropped in volume. “Shelly, he’s crazy about you. He’s so, so in love with you. You can see the hearts in his eyes when he sees you, and the hearts floating above his head whenever he thinks about you or whenever anyone mentions you.”

She’d been focused on him as he spoke, and the more he said, the pinker her cheeks went. She couldn’t stop a small smile appearing on her face though, and by the time Frank had finished talking, her gaze had dropped to her hands in her lap as she fiddled with the hem of her top.

Frank had noticed this behaviour and he was certain that there’d be hearts floating up from her too, if that was a thing that happened in real life. He couldn’t help but smile.

“You’re both so grossly in love, I can’t even stand it.”

Shelly shook her head. “Oh and you and Jamia aren’t?”

Frank grinned widely at her. “This is why I’m qualified to comment!”

“Oh pfft,” she snorted. “Alright, okay, I guess I’ll allow that.”

“I’m honoured, Shell.”

Shelly just beamed at him before a thought hit her and her eyes widened. “Oh!”

Frank tilted his head. “Oh?”

“J’s not gonna mind about,” she gestured between the pair of them.

“Oh!” The pieces fell into place really fast and Frank shook his head. “No, of course not. She adores you, she appreciates that you’re around to keep an eye on me to make sure that I don’t overdo it.” She seemed to relax at that, and looked back up at him when he leant forward to take her hands.

“You are many positive things Shelly,” Frank said softly, earnestly. “Smart, kind, protective, feisty.”

He smiled at her and she shook her head slowly.

“Honest, caring and generous,” he continued. “Hot as all hell.”

That last one was said with a grin and a wink, which just made her giggle.

“Oh behave.”

“Gerard would agree with me there,” Frank rubbed his thumb on the back of her hand. “He’d probably also mumble something about wife material too.”

Shelly raised an eyebrow at him. “You sure that’s not just your opinion? You keep threatening to run away with me after all.”

Frank pretended to think about it. “Maybe it’s a shared opinion.”

“Hmm,” she narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, giggling when he just beamed at her. “Alright, I guess I’ll leave it at that.”

“Like I said,” he continued quietly. “You are so many things - but you’re not a homewrecker or a cheater.”

“I… I appreciate that.”

“Though,” Frank cleared his throat. “If you ever wanna like, be my band wife -”

Shelly snorted and poked him in the chest. “Give over! Good luck convincing Gerard to go along with that!”

Frank grinned. “I’m sure I might have a few ideas…”

“Hm? And, out of curiosity, what are those?”

Frank puckered up his lips and made kissy noises, which just made Shelly giggle.

“I don’t know about that,” Shelly checked Frank’s forehead before taking his wrist to check his pulse. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” Frank confessed. “A little breathless. Maybe thirsty?”

Shelly nodded, shifted off of the sofa and went to get him a bottle of water, bringing it back, handing it to him and sitting next to him. While he was sipping the water, she pulled out her phone and started quickly typing a message.

“The breathless thing is worrying,” she said quietly, sending her message and going to her phonebook, hitting ‘dial’ on a number and putting her phone to her ear. “Give me a minute.”

Frank nodded and watched her get up and wander just out of earshot to have a quiet conversation. He kept sipping the bottle of water she’d gotten for him and tried not to listen in; he was aware that it was probably about him, but she would come back and tell him about it because she was good like that.

She actually made two quiet phone calls, and one was quicker than the other, but between them she sent another text. Or it could've been an email. She was typing for a few minutes so it might’ve been a long one, and Frank wondered if he should feel sorry for the recipient. After a moment’s thought, he decided against that, because normally she would have a Strongly Worded phone conversation before she followed up with an email. That was Manager Mode and that… That could be fun to watch. What was even better was when she hung up the phone and Manager Mode instantly flipped to MamaCat Mode.

“Alright?” He asked when she pocketed her phone again.

“Mm hm. Just setting some things into motion so I can make sure that you don’t get worse,” she sat with him again. 

“And I appreciate that.”

“But,” she turned to get comfortable again, knowing that he’d cuddle back up to her once she was. “You have to do something for me.”

Frank waited, watching her get comfortable; because of course she wasn’t wrong. “What’s that?”

Shelly cupped her palms around his cheeks. “You have to remember that everything I do is in your best interests. I just wanna get you better quickly, Frankie.”

He nodded. “I know Shell, I know.”

“It’s not just because ‘it’s my job’” she said, using her fingers for air quotes. “But also because you’re my friend, Frank. I care about you.”

“And the others too.”

“Well, yeah,” she nodded before cupping his face again. “But it’s not about them right now.”

Frank practically giggled and then hummed as she leant forward to kiss his forehead.

“So,” she whispered. “Please, promise me you’ll do as you’re told?”

“O- of course Shell,” Frank nodded again. “I know that you’re just trying to look out for me.”

She smiled brightly, obviously happy with this, and let his face go so they could settle down for him to rest for a bit longer. He leant his head against her when she was comfortable again, and she started stroking his hair. After a few moments, she giggled and he moved his head slightly, just in a “oh?” gesture.

“I was just about to say; ‘you’re such a good boy.’”

Frank snorted slightly. “There’s that dog comparison again.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she hugged him a tiny bit tighter. “But you are. Good, I mean. For me at least. And I like dogs anyway.”

“Well… Woof then.”

The blonde couldn’t help it, she snort-laughed. “Don’t make me get the spray bottle! Get some rest.”

Frank glanced up at her. “You sure you’ll be okay staying like this?”

“Mm hm,” she nodded. “Absolutely sure. I’m comfortable, I can answer my phone, I can pet you. I’m good.”

“And Gerard’s not gonna mind?” He grabbed her hoodie from the back of the couch.

Shelly took the hint, unzipped it and used it as a makeshift blanket to cover his top half. “How’s that?”

“Better. My arms just felt a bit cold.”

“Good,” she adjusted it slightly. “I don’t care if he minds. Looking after you guys comes first. I’ll play the job card if I have to. And that has to come before our relationship most of the time.”

“Though really, there’s a delicate balancing act to it,” Frank said, nestled against her, settled between her body and the back of the couch again.

“True. But he’s not gonna mind,” she brushed his hair off of his forehead. “I promise.”

“Mm, well, I’ll take your word for it. For now.”

“Good,” Shelly nodded a little. “I’ll take it. Now, get some rest. We’ll see how you feel later.”

[papillon82fluttersby]

Fan-made ‘Famous Five’ video

So I wanted to share this little video that I found while I was looking for something else. It’s a fan-made adaptation of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five book, “Five On A Hike Together” or “Le Club des Cinq en randonnée” for its French translation. The episode is 50 minutes long and worth a look for the effort that went into it. It was all made by the members of one family, and shot over 4 days in August 2009. Admittedly the kids’ acting is rather amateurish, and the adults’ just a midge above, but it’s a very endearing endeavor for all that. The filming/directing is actually quite good, as far as I can judge. There’s no director mentioned, but my guess is that the person(s) who directed it (likely one of the adult actors) has/have a background in film making. I particularly enjoyed the spooky moments, like the siren blaring at night and Dick/Mick’s encounter with the escaped prisoner. Very atmospheric!

The story is set in a fictional village called Langonnec, which as far as I know doesn’t exist, but sounds like a place that you could find in Brittany, where the original stories are located according to the French translations. It’s a bit funny because the video was actually shot in South-West France and several details give it away: 1) outside the bakery there’s a poster announcing a local country fair and the town mentioned is easy to pinpoint in Aquitaine; 2) both the baker and the policeman have a slight south-western accent, not very pronounced but noticeable all the same; and 3) something very telling that made me laugh a lot: the kids use the word “chocolatine”, which is a colloquialism found in South-West France rather than “pain au chocolat” used in the rest of the country (“chocolate croissant” to English speakers) – there's actually a whole good-natured warfare going on between “chocolatine” and “pain au chocolat” advocates (count me firmly on the “chocolatine” side! 😉) Anyway, the point is, the word “chocolatine” is a dead giveaway that this wasn't shot in Brittany. These little imperfections are rather funny – definitely not something that you would find in a professional movie - but charming in their own ways.

I usually don’t appreciate when stories are “updated” to a modern setting but the video makers were creative in incorporating their modern environment into the story. For example, Dirty Dick/Mick-qui-pique rides a motorcycle, which adds an element of danger when he chases the kids. It’s also the basis for a joke that made me chuckle: when the kids split up to find help for an injured Timmy, Julian/François pointedly tells Dick/Mick not to lose his way, to which Dick replies “Don’t worry, I have a GPS in my head”; he and Anne then leave in one direction, only to be stopped by Julian who then points the other way. This moment was genuinely funny, and a good setting for Dick and Anne getting lost later on, so this is good film-making at work! It’s at the 6’00 mark if you want to have a look and a laugh!

The video makers were able to shoot in a real bakery, as well as the local police station, which helps ground the story. I was a bit disappointed that they were unable to find a suitable ruined house to provide scenery, but they made do with a shot of an overgrown yard and a line about how there’s nothing left of the house. The lake is what’s important to the story anyway, and they have the kids sleep in what they call a “cave”, but is really more of a rock overhang. They were also ingenious in adapting the treasure location markers from the original “Tock Hill / Steeple / Chimney / Tall Stone” to “pierre blanche / pylône / clocher” based on the available landmarks around their shooting location.

Unfortunately for non-French speakers the video does not come with captions, but if you have a passing knowledge of the original story, you should be able to keep up. As a heads-up, the sound is missing in a couple of places. Also, Julian/François is dark-haired in this video while Dick/Mick is blonde, which can be… confusing at first; and George/Claude has longer hair than her canonical self, but I can’t fault the kid for not wanting to cut her hair just for a few days’ shooting!

If you have an hour to spare, go and give it a look, I hope you’ll enjoy!

(Tagging @sweetsorcery and @majormcnerdy-geekinfantry-blog who are the two people on this site who I know are into this fandom 😉)

[yuukei-yikes]

it makes me so glad u like my saeru post bc honestly i get so scared sharing my kagepro opinions in this cold world but like yeah it's makes zero sense whenever i see people try to view saeru the same way they view the other characters bc that's seriously not the point😭. saeru is like sad from an objective standpoint but in kagepro's narrative alone he's what is holding the characters back from developing and gaining happiness. like the only thing abt him is that he's a fabricated shallow version of what being human is like and even then hes only the horrible parts bc he was created from despair. he's meant to be azami's, and by extent all of the mkdn and co's trauma holding them back. if someone tries to find any understanding in his actions then it defeats the whole purpose of his character. a true saeru fan wouldnt try to find empathy in his character but that sounds a bit crazy uhm. anyway sorry for the long ask just kagepro's narrative is so special to me so it makes me a bit insane. *closes the door to my cage and locks it*

1. i totally get you. ive been into kagepro for almost 10 years, ive grown up with it but only started sharing my content when i made this blog (like 5 years ago) and while ive always been loud abt my opinions i think im only NOW like REAAAAAALLY letting loose. i know what it's like to be nervous abt sharing ur opinions lol but u should keep doing it even if u think no one is listening bc someone IS listening and even if someone isnt WHATEVER i love living in delusion talking to myself that's what i do best

2. EXACTLY EXACTLY IT IS SO SO REFRESHING TO SEE SOMEONE GET IT SO PERFECTLY AND PUT IT INTO WORDS SO PERFECTLY TOO like i barely have anything to add because u just say it so perfectly. saeru IS a tragic character in the way it is created from despair like u said but the fact is that since it cannot feel anything like love u can never truly feel bad for it when it dies... it never wanted to help kenjirou, or save hiyori, or give haruka his life back. its purpose through and through is to keep killing everyone precisely because it brings tragedy. like sure it wants to live forever etcetcetc but what it wants to do is bring misery bc that's what it is

i think ppl are generally bad with characters like these because they try to give everyone a humanity?? like with alien characters for example. like it's such a pet peeve to me that people always wanna apply human principles and feelings to characters that are not... human. and the whole point is that they don't understand it and have to learn it or they just understand it differently or like in this case are straight up incapable of it. like this is so interesting. it is so interesting to have a character u will NEVER truly understand fully precisely because of your existence as a human vs their fictional non human existence. THAT'S the kind of thing that's so fun and interesting abt fiction and writing stories and characters, i think. srry that's kind of an unrelated rant that could apply to dozens of characters but here specifically it's like... yeah. there is definitely something interesting in humanizing saeru and making it be one of these characters who learn what love is and etc but that comes at the expense of kagepro's message and the question is why do u even wanna do that so bad. saeru is not THAT lovable anyway fuck that guy fr

because in my professional kagepro experience and here i am about to get a little bitter, 90% of the time it comes from being horny over omg posessed sexy anime boy bc ive never seen ANYONE objectifying clearing when its in kenjirou's body‼️‼️‼️ personally, that's also why im so UGH EYE ROLL at ppl sympathizing saeru but that's more personal lmao. *shakes fist* like mamoru miyano was 1000% chosen as haruka's va thinking primarily of saeru, secondarily of konoha, and haruka as the oh well he's here too ig. i am so sure. i am so DAMN SURE. u got sexy anime voice guy???? are you SERIOUS??? AND THE FACT HE VOICES SAERU EVEN WHEN NOT POSESSING KONOHA AND SOUNDS...LIKE THAT... MAKES IT MORE THAN CLEAR. THEY WANTED PEOPLE TO OBJECTIFY SAERU SO BAD. AND THE WORST IS THAT IT WORKED AND I WILL ALWAYS HATE IT FOR IT.

...........anyway. yes. i love long asks ty for writing to me and reading my tags and also for writing that awesome post (bow bow bow bow)🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

[cyanoscarlet]

alive, awake, alert

(Or, in our language, "conscious, coherent, cooperative".

Not enthusiastic, though. Much too late in the day for that.)

Felt physically fine after my bout with COVID last month. Was immensely demotivated for some reason, though. Always retired early everyday despite not being sleepy at all. I knew I was wasting time by not working on my slowly-piling academic output (hello, 0% written Graduation Thesis), but I couldn't muster the motivation to drag my ass to my desk beyond 9pm.

Today's the first day I properly set up my workstation. I already feel fulfilled. Hope this is a sign things get better for me again. I really, really, really need to get my shit together.

Last three months in residency - crossing fingers.

- (more rambling under the cut)

- Since I don't want to bother making another post anymore, have some more words from moi while I still remember my Tumblr exists lol.

-

Twitter Presence

Or rather, my sort-of lack thereof. The accounts are still up, but I haven't posted at all in months, for those who've noticed. Been busy IRL, and I find Twitter's pace too fast and too toxic for comfort these days.

Funnily, around once or twice a month I'd decide to end my Twitter hiatus and post just once to get the ball rolling, but every time I'd log in, the timeline would overwhelm me so much I end up nope-ing out again, so.

cyano scarlet

*** WIPED AND LOCKED. It's there only as a placeholder now. *** I don't really have a fandom account anymore. *** A lot of things happened- mainly drifting from the BSD fandom and the friends I made on it, for almost the same reasons I left the YOI fandom in the past. For a while after, I kept getting the nagging feeling that I really shouldn't have given in to my over-enthusiasm over BSD back then and made that damn account. *** Engaging in fandom made me lose confidence in my writing again for a while, then I became so busy with IRL (residency) that I eventually lost interest in writing fan fiction altogether. (That I'll write about as a separate post when time allows- got a lot of thoughts to unpack and unravel regarding my relationship with creative writing in general at this point. I hope this is just because I'm worn out from residency and not a sign of something deeper going on. IDK.)

choon xie

*** It's the public version of my IRL account, minus all the specific self-incriminating stuff, as well as all the fandom-related stuff. *** Originally just a "nom de plume account", but it's now basically just "me" except with a different surname. (My IRL surname's a whole boatload of complicated I don't want to explain again and again to people anymore. *** When I locked cyano scarlet for good, I decided to not complicate things anymore. Being my IRL self means I can and should be able to talk about and retweet whatever the hell I want on MY space, so if I want to talk about fandom or other non-mainstream / professional (MD) / original writing-related stuff, I'd do it all as "me" and not as some partially-sanitized version of myself. (i.e. "Oh, Doc Therese is a fujo / fangirl / stan / whatever?" Yes, She Is. Deal With It.) *** That said, it's currently DORMANT / ON HIATUS. Too busy.

Real IRL Account

*** My REAL account. Also my very first one- had it since college, so around 11 years ago. *** It's the unfiltered version of choon xie, including but not limited to: specific self-incriminating stuff, regular breakdowns over residenshit, Anxiety and Depression(TM), petty whining, and more. Locked private ever since, for a reason. (That said, I whine about everything on Tumblr these days, so yeah everyone knows now anyway - if anyone's even reading.) *** Followed only by people I know IRL, and fandom / online people whom I consider close enough to let into my "real" world. You know who you are. *** Also DORMANT / ON HIATUS.

-

Aerial Arts

Ah, yes, happier life update. I've started taking Aerial Classes at a pole dance stuido!

I actually took some classes in 2018 as a graduation gift to myself after med school. I wasn't actually working yet then, so I only limited myself to what I could afford with my meager allowance + red envelopes saved through the years. The day I filed for my medical license, I swore to myself I'd attend regularly and pay for it all myself.

(Then, of course, pandemic happened, and everything closed down. And of course residenshit's obviously an energy-draining bitch, but apparently I'd sorely underestimated how busy it could get, despite people saying Family Medicine's "just an easy program". Was only able to adjust properly now, sometime in the middle of senior year.)

So far the class I'm taking most regularly is aerial silks (tissue). It's the apparatus I was most drawn to in 2018, and for some reason I find myself gravitating back to it. (Also, silks classes for beginners are every Saturday, and I'm almost always available only on Saturdays, so there's really no other choice lol.)

Of course I also equally enjoy aerial hoop (lyra) and aerial hammock. They both involve a lot of spinning! Thing is, those classes happen on days I'm not available (just for now in residency!), so I don't get to attend them as regularly as I do aerial silks. I plan to attend classes for both hoop and hammock when I graduate, since I don't have hospital duties anymore by then - and hopefully will be earning more than I do now!

There's also pole, of course, which is actually the most popular class there! (Obviously.) I have my reasons for not doing pole - but who knows?

(Another reason why I'm not on Twitter or Tumblr anymore is because I'm using my Instagram again! Funny things is that I used to be inactive there instead, in favor of the two abovementioned sites, but now it's the reverse lol. I post all my aerial class videos there, despite it being locked to only IRL people.)

-

I believe this has been long enough. Have work tomorrow.

[maguro13-2]

KEIJO THE GAMBLING WATER SPORT FINALLY EXPLAINED!

[Sadness by Fumie Kumatani]

Nozomi : I don't understand. I don't how this happened? Why did my author abrupted my story? Why did they betray me? Has Japan decided that I did something wrong? Who's fault was it that destroyed a good sport for our reputation of Keijo?

Aoba : I hate Gecko endings.

Non : This did not turned out well.

Sayaka : Let's all pray that we deserved a better story for a better future of Keijo. Let's all just pray.

Nozomi : Agree, friend. I hope Keijo gets better sometime.

Omochao : *yelling while falling in a hot air balloon*

*CRASH!*

Nozomi : What the heck was that?

[Chao Kindergarten by Fumie Kumatani]

Omochao : *groans* Stupid hot air balloon! I don't know why I fell down just because I am a goner, this thing is useless! Didn't know why the chao used it in the special stages in the previous sonic game back at the end of 2003. Anyways, Girls of Keijo! I just got some exciting scoop!

Nozomi : Are you that announcer and reporter?

Omochao : Uhh, I think I am. Well, what do you expect? Anyway, why is the whole Keijo Stadium got quiet?

Nozomi : It was some troubles with the studio. When I was about to reach the true final chapter, the author who made my story abrupt in an end discovered we've been terminated because of the sales from that studio. I should never get my story adapted from that horrible studio that they did. They did Keijo dirty and never got to unleash the story's true full potential, so our author abandoned us and I felt like that I was betrayed.

Sayaka : Yeah, this is what we get for being adapted by idiots. Can't all of Japan do anything right for these mangas, these mangas to deserve attention and popularity.

Omochao : Did you get your into badminton?

Nozomi : But I did do some badminton and...Wha-? No I did not do badminton, I did surfing! I hate being a gymnast! Surfing was my thing and then I even had this!

*holds out the Blue Star Extreme Gear*

*Sonic And Knucles 1-UP jingle*

Omochao : SCHMOWZOW! That's Sonic's original Blue Star board! You kept it all along by yourself!?

Nozomi : It was a gift from a friend. I've known about him at a race! The race was all about sporting! I've feel like that Keijo would be a cool gambling sport. And all of the fans think that gambling in Japan's illegal.

Omochao : Gambling's illegal, you say? Well, say no more. That's how people addicted to these kind of sports, guess what and here's the truth. It turns out that this beloved contact sports for women was only a massive ploy by someone that is a dirty love for Keijo!

Nozomi : What's this about? What do you know about Keijo's fate?

Omochao : What I'm saying is that the beloved sport Keijo does not exist. Everyone knew that the fictional sport was a massive ploy orchestrated by people. Peach and recoome did all of this to make a fool out of you that and for the reason you were only a surfer when you were nine years old while having age progressively into the body of a 17-year old you.

Nozomi : Like what is that?

Sayaka : Are you telling me...

Nozomi : Wait, who's idea was it to make Keijo's story or something that made up.

Omochao : Ummm...

Nozomi : Well...?

Omochao : Both Princess Peach and your mother made the whole Keijo thing up, Nozomi.

Nozomi : You mean Keijo was a dreamy sport and story of mine that my mother and Princess Peach made it up? That's why my author betrayed me for something like that, because Keijo is literally all made up? Then what sport that I was into, Gambling?

Omochao : Listen to me, Nozomi Kaminashi. You were into Extreme Sports this whole time and you couldn't face the facts that you and your mother had been doing it for the past years. Your mother was actually hot surfer in Hawaii, but was a professional wrestler who was the world famous sports enthusiast that made up the story of Keijo, along with Princess Peach, and that it's so good it became a part of her life. But your dream was about being a surfer and a wrestler, she was the original ribbon girl and you were just a lonely outsider that doesn't even know about other sports that isn't gambling.

Aoba : All of this....All of this because of wrestling and surfing?! That means...

*clock ticking*

Nozomi : ALL OF THAT KEIJO STUFF WAS FOR NOTHING!?! PRINCESS PEACH HAD THE NERVES TO FLEECE ME!?!

Omochao : Technially, The idea for the Hip Whip Sumo girl was Princess Peach's idea that...Wait I sec, I think Miscalculated. I believe that you were also the one who made Keijo's story, you made it all up.

Nozomi : AND NOW YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT I WAS THE ONE WHO MADE UP KEIJO!?!

Omochao : Which is all nothing but a fantasy by you, your mother, and princess peach all this time.

Sayaka : I don't believe it. After all this time you, Nozomi Kaminashi, have played us all for fools! This entire Keijo story was all made up, you, your mother, and princess peach did it! Now I understand why did Shogakukan made our author betray us.

Non : The idiots at To Love Ru studio had been adapting on wrong information and decided to mess it all up with excluding the first of the manga's 20 chapters. Can you believe that? This sh** doesn't make any sense!

Aoba : Can't believe it was all for nothing!

Sayaka : It's all because of not just about wrestling and surfing, it's about the feminists! Yeah, this was all humanity's fault! I'm sorry that I thought Keijo would be cool and awesome and then ended with the geckos! That's what you really explained Keijo by all of us! All of this was nothing more than a fantasy and all of Shogakukan wanted us to get rid of Keijo for a Gecko ending? That's how it happened with Soul Eater and other shows that had a Gecko ending! What was Japan thinking about having good stories that give our selves the wasted potential!?

Nozomi : This is unacceptable! Now I felt like an idiot! I should've never had my story to be adapted by that stupid studio that made the animes of Mega Man. Oh wait, they did Shaman King and To Love Ru, big difference.

Non : I can't believe that Shogakukan gave us all the Middle finger. And now we're stuck in limbo with a wasted potential on Gecko Endings. This never happened before that is the same as Gainax endings and that's just stupid because Xebec gave us wasted potential from that stupid director!

Sayaka : I'm just clearly in deep sh** right now! I just don't know why the Anime/Manga industry was such in a harsh way to make good Shonen stories with the lowest and worst potentials ever to be adapted! I don't known if we could get ourselves a good reputation and a true full potential, would've had the true ending before To Love Ru studio messed up everything for us. Oh yeah, I know just a thing that we are gonna do for ourselves. Either we demanded to bring Keijo back to it's former roots and glory or I'm gonna kick both Sorayomi and Shogakukan's asses for giving us the downs with the Geckos!

Aoba : Woah, woah, woah! Hold the phone! My potential is to kick their asses! Yeah, I wanna beat the motherf***ing sh** out of their dumbass heads! That's my potential!

Omochao : Easy, girls! Easy! No need to go frustrated over the manga being Axed by the company. Shounen Stories like yours have quite the amount of potential. You all needed what you wanted for yourselves, right? You want potential that is needed for a story? I'll give you much potential there is to live up to your reputations. You'll have a peaceful future way ahead of yourselves and Keijo would never be messed up so that the future can be altered. Now then, Nozomi Kaminashi. If Keijo would like to comeback to the world of aquatic sports what would you do if you use Sonic's legendary Extreme Gear to make Keijo great again and not just a feminist's fantasy or something? What will it be?

Nozomi : Well, I could use a lot of potential on this Extreme Gear Board, then I'll have prove it to Mr. Sonic when I was in this body of a 17-year old being while I was nine years old in the year of 06. I got potential that I desperately needed to save this sport of mine that does not need gambling. The feeling that I need the potential that will never lay waste! Stories with Gecko endings like these are much a stupider way than Imagined! it's not the same to have a perfect ending. But first, I need some payback for all of industry. It's needs a true potential with a perfect potential and I know how give major paybacks to the author that made us and eventually those guys.

"meanwhile..."

Keijo Author (Sorayomi) : Look, Mr. Shogakukan president. You don't really have a choice, do you? I don't know why you wanted me to force Keijo to end the manga's story with a gecko. I mean, I was so close to making it to the true ending! It's not possible for to have my story to have all it's potential to be wasted! I mean it's got good potential, and you nearly just ruined my career! I don't know what the big fuss is about.

Shogakukan President : Listen here, Sorayomi! Your greatest story would not be perfect for to have a great story since the adaptation was a total bust and therefor it does not have great potential that it deserves a true happy ending! So the studio that adapted your manga has now with the latest and wasted potential that there is! So I am giving you a request that I am forbidding you to conitnue Keijo and axe it for newer mangas!

Keijo Author (Sorayomi) : But that's not fair! I worked my whole life for this, you can't just axe my greatest story! It's a masterpiece, fans loved it! Who says that you can't throw a perfectly good manga for a--WOAH!

*RUMBLING*

Shogakukan President : What is happening here!? You! Did I requested you to axe Keijo immediately?

Keijo Author (Sorayomi) : Hey! You told me that you forced me to give my story's ending the gecko and this what I've been telling you about.

*Master Core ABIS roaring*

Kagome : *screaming in terror* OH MY GOD!

Shinichiro/Conan : There's a giant robot attacking the company!

Shogakukan President : ...(looks at the author) I hope you know that you and your story are no longer welcoming here at Shogakukan. Also, I'm gonna have to ask you to resign from Shogakukan.

Nozomi : Hey, author! Remember me?

Keijo Author (Sorayomi) : Nozomi! But I...

Nozomi : I Told ya. This what happens when you throw you away with good potential from that horrible studio I was at. being by another studio was a stupid idea.

Sayaka : Hey, I was right. Extreme Gear was the kind of potential that we needed to bring Keijo back.

Keijo Author (Sorayomi) : But Nozomi! Why!?

Nozomi : Payback from 2016.

Keijo Author (Sorayomi) : Look! I'm sorry, okay!? I'm really sorry! Studio Xebec should've never adapted my story and was given with a wasted potential they would forced me to end the story with the Geckos! I promise that I would have my story to be adapted with that same studio again!

Nozomi : You promised that you would give me great potential?

Keijo Author (Sorayomi) : I promised! I promised to give you, your friends, and all of Keijo to have the true fullest potential you needed! I'll give as much potential you need! But please, don't hurt me! I'm just a simple man that needs a story with a greatest potential there was! Heck, even the fans wanted your story to have the full potential! I owned Keijo's story fair and square and all of that potential from Studio Xebec have been wasted! I'm really sorry that I screwed things up for you, Nozomi Kaminashi! Please, forgive me!

Nozomi : That's better now.

Non : You did great Nozomi, but there is a problem. our world of Keijo maybe gone forever, but we can never forgive one these people for letting us down with the Geckos. I'm sure there might be a way to give Keijo a better reputation if these people that does not wanted us to go down with the Geckos.

Sayaka : Yeah, I'm sure we'll live up to that, Nozomi. You'll be better without Keijo in spite of your dream of becoming prize queen. I don't if that Extreme Gear that this Blue Hedgehog back in 2006.

Nozomi : I think you're right about that, Sayaka. Sonic did gave this to me when I was at the race with around ten year ago before Studi Xebec could give me with the Geckos.

*DING!*

Nozomi : I have a better idea. (to her author) Starting with you.

Keijo Author (Sorayomi) : Oh no.

"meanwhile later..."

Amy : Hey, Sonic! Congratulations on saving your friend's dream! We're glad that Keijo is no longer a sport for gambling, Keijo is now a sport for everyone. How on earth did you smake Keijo a regular sport and this time, how did you let Nozomi able to reach her dream?

Sonic : Well, it happened around ten years ago. I did helped Nozomi Kaminashi to race with me on Extreme Gear. She told me that she would have the coolest potential that she needed to be unlocked. Extreme Gear was her truest and fullest potential to save that sport. But don't worry, Keijo's not going anyway!

Knuckles : Hey, guys! Come quick! The EX-World Grand Prix is about to begin!

Omochao : Welcome sports fans to the exciting extravaganza racing event of the EX World Grand Prix! I'm your host Omochao! And to this race, we have the return of the Legendary Blue Star and original Extreme Gear boards of the first Ex-World Grand Prix! We now go live with the participants of Blue Star's current and newest boarder, Nozomi Kaminashi! The girl who saved Keijo who saved a major sport that is officially now part of Extreme Gear history, along with her friends! So, Nozomi. How does it feel alive to have yourself back into the world of racing?

Nozomi being Interviewed : I just wanted to say that Keijo may have been my favorite sport, but I believe it is now part of Extreme Gear history, I thank the fans with all their help along with my friends a good reasoning that Keijo will be saved and preserved to be a part of this race! And I couldn't done it without their help especially you, Sonic the Hedgehog! Thanks for giving me your old Blue Star board! Congratulate on me for helping me save a contact sport that is not gambling anymore.

Tails : All thanks to you, Sonic. You finally made her reputation to live up to the Sonic Rider.

Sonic : It's called Sonic Riders that happened in the 06.

Tails : Exactly. Speaking of Keijo, I wonder where that rival yours anyay.

Sonic : Oh, I know exactly what he has been doing.

(scene changes)

Keijo Author now being crazed : [laughs manically] I'm going ahead like a potato! Need more potential! Can I even catch a break!

Jet : Faster! Faster! We don't got all day! Nozomi's reputation is on the line! We need her to win this race! The EX-World Gear isn't going it hold itself! Keep writing!

Keijo Author : I'm going Krazy for Keijo! I don't even why that I'm doing this!

Orbot : I got a bad feeling about this, Cubot.

Cubot : I don't even know what we're doing?

Eggman : Why that horrid hedgehog!

Nozomi seen on TV : Alright, everyone! Let's the show world what Keijo and Extreme Gear is all about! Winning from our buts with Keijo Style!

Omochao on TV : And there off!

Sonic : Hey! This looks really great! This is much better than gambling sports!

Amy : I know, right? This is a great for racing and combat material! This new and improved Keijo that looks nothing bad and it's so good!

Sonic : Sweet! I bet the World Aquatics will wait for a day to meet Keijo as a historic sporting each and for everyone! Now that's potential.

[Iris shot]

Kirby : (loses color, begs the animator for color)

Animator : Whoops. Sorry about that. *colors Kirby back in with pink*

Kirby : Poyo!

[Iris out]

~ TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH KEIJO ~

[teamwitch2-blog]

Long time, lot of magic

Hello everyone, sorry I’ve been MIA for so long. I’ve been trying to make ends meet. Part of which is due to a divination class idea not panning out as I had hoped. Anyway, I have recently been studying magic under a friend of mine and have been learning to expand my gifts and accept who I am. This friend of mine doesn’t teach magic in a religious context which is great because I absolutely love non-religious magic. I’ve been working most recently on a project revolving around healing brain trauma. My twin sister recently had a concussion so badly that it’s causing residual trauma in her brain and it sucks to see her in such pain. In addition, I have several friends who have potentially life threatening injuries. They’re all being taken care of in the proper medical care, by professionals. However, to see my twin sister like this is truly heartbreaking. Now I don’t get along well with her much, but she is still my sister. To that end, I’ve been working on a new spell that will allow me to potentially speed up her healing process. I hope to keep you all updated as I progress with this endeavor. I also have been learning about the power of the fictional works that drive us as practitioners. There’s very few practitioners who don’t like fictitious works on some level or another. I was watching tv last night and was brought to a concept called videomancy. The term originates in the unknown armies rpg setting and is basically a diehard fan turned psycho towards their show. If the videomancer ever misses a single episode (even reruns) then they lose their powers. Thats gotta suck. On the flip side, I have seen the potential of watching tv or shows and seeing the causality of why you chose that show or why that particular episode was chosen or is playing (if you still have cable). This is just a thought as I sip my coffee and wait for people to get up.

[nevermindirah]

Do you have any thoughts on the use of AAVE for Nile (or lack thereof) in TOG fanfiction? I've been reading some Book of Nile fic and some writers seem to write her as a Millennial™ (using words like "fave" and "woke") but never acknowledge her Blackness in her patterns of speech. I know we don't see her use as much AAVE in the films, but I would argue she's in situations where code-switching would be valued (first in a "professional" environment in the army, then around a group of non-Black strangers).

Hi anon! I have many thoughts on this and I'm honored you asked me! But I should start by saying I'm white and any thoughts Black fans and especially Black American fans have on this that they want to share would be beyond lovely. (I'm not gonna tag anybody bc that feels rude but please add onto this post if any of y'all see this and want to!)

The main reason I personally avoid AAVE for Nile in my own fics is because I'm not Black. But Nile-centric fics by Black writers tend to avoid using much of it too, at least from what I've noticed/understood, and my guess is it's largely for the reason you mention, that she's in situations that encourage code-switching.

In movie canon Nile is highly competent at tailoring her language to each situation she finds herself in. This fantastic linguistics analysis meta shows how skillfully Nile chooses her vocabulary and grammar to meet her goals with different conversation partners in different contexts. In comics canon Nile had a bunch of different civilian jobs before joining the Marines, so she would've had experience code-switching in the ways that made sense for all those different contexts as well as the Marines and her family and high school and wherever else she spent her time before we met her. And now she's spending her time with a handful of immortals none of whom are native English speakers and a fellow Black American but one with a Queen's English UK accent whose professional experience is in the CIA where high-status code-switching is often an absolute must for success or even survival.

Fics featuring Nile are charged with extrapolating from that to how it might show up in her use of language that she's coping with a traumatic separation from her family and her career and pretty much everything she's ever known and now she needs to be able to make herself understood to people who seem to care about her and each other but are super duper in crisis, three (soon to be four) of whom predate Modern English entirely and the only one who's anywhere near her contemporary she's not supposed to talk to for a century. All of these people are telling her that pretty much any contact with any mortals poses an existential threat to her and the rest of the group. How the FUCK is she supposed to cope with that, like, generally? And would it be a more effective way for her to cope if she talked to Andy Joe and Nicky using the speech patterns that she used to use with her mom and brother, to at least retain that part of her identity even if it means having to do a lot of explaining, or would it meet her needs better to prioritize Andy Joe and Nicky understanding what she means with her words over using the particular words and grammar forms she used with her family?

I've seen several fics, both Nile-centric / BoN and otherwise, explore this a little bit in how/whether Nile uses Millennial™ speak. It's often a theme in Nile texting Booker despite the exile because of the popular headcanon that he as The Tech Guy is the only other immortal who understands memes. But Nile's much-younger-than-Booker mom probably uses Boomer and/or Gen X memes and Andy has been adapting to new communication styles for forever as evidenced by her canon high level of fluency with standard-American-accented English.

Which brings us back to people avoiding AAVE because they're not Black and they don't want to make mistakes (or they're not Black and they don't want to get yelled at for making mistakes, though I think many people overestimate how much they'll get yelled at while underestimating how much these mistakes can hurt). I can imagine some Black fans hold back from using much AAVE in fic because they don't want to share in-group stuff with white people who are likely to then adopt and ruin it, as white people so often do with Black cultural stuff. Some links about this including a great Khadija Mbowe video. I'm saying this gently, anon, because you might not know: woke, an example you cited as Millennial™ speak, is AAVE, and that's gotten erased by so many white people appropriating it and using it incorrectly online.

And also there's the part where fandom is a hobby and you never know when you're reading a fic that's the very first thing someone's ever written outside of a school assignment. This cultural considerations of language shit takes a level of effort and skill that not everybody puts into every fic, or even could if they wanted to because they haven't had time to build their skills yet. It's definitely easier for non-Black fans to project our millennial feels onto Nile than to do the layers of research and self-reflection it requires to depict what Blackness might mean to Nile, and it's not surprising that often people sharing their hobby creations on the internet have gone the easier route. There's not even necessarily shame in doing what's easier. It's just frustrating and often hurtful when structural white supremacy means that 3-dimensional Black characters are rare in media and thoughtful explorations of them in fandom are seen by the majority of fans as not-easy to make and therefore Nile Freeman, the main character in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood, has the least fic and meta and art made about her of our 5 main immortals.

I've been active in different fandoms off and on for twenty years and I barely managed to write 5,000 words about Sam Wilson across multiple different fics in the 7 years since I fell in love with him. There's an alchemy to which characters we connect with, and on top of that which characters we connect with in a way that causes us to create stuff about them. Something about Nile Freeman finally tipped me over the edge from a voracious reader to a voracious writer. It's not for me to judge which characters speak to other individuals to the level of creating content about them, but I do think it's important for us to notice, and then work to fight, the pattern where across this fandom as a whole Nile gets way less content, and way less depth in so much of the content that's in theory about her, than any of these other characters.

Anyway, back to language. My two long fics feature Nile with several Black friends — Copley and OCs and cameos from other media — but all of those characters except Alec Hardison from Leverage aren't American. It's very possible I'm guilty of stereotyping Black British speech patterns in I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore. I watched hours and hours of Black haircare YouTube videos in the research for that fic and I modeled my OCs' speech patterns on what I heard from some of those YouTubers as well as what I've heard people like John Boyega and Idris Elba saying in interviews, but the thing about doing your best is you still might fuck up.

I'm slowly making progress on my WIP where Nile and Sam Wilson are cousins, and what ways of talking with a family member might be authentic for Nile is a major question I need to figure out. For that, I'm largely modeling my writing choices on how I hear my Black friends and colleagues talking to each other. I haven't overheard colleagues talking in an office in a long-ass time, but back when that was a thing, I remember seeing a ton of nuance in the different ways many of my Black colleagues would talk to each other. Different people have different personalities! And backgrounds! And priorities! A few jobs ago my department was about 1/3 Black and we worked closely with Obama administration staff many of whom were Black and there was SO MUCH VARIETY in how Black people talked to each other, about work and workplace-appropriate personal stuff, where I and other white coworkers could hear. There are a few work friends in particular who I have in my head when I'm trying to imagine how Sam and Nile might talk to each other. From the outside looking in, God DAMN is shit complicated, intellectually and interpersonally and spiritually, for Black people who are devoting their professional lives to public service in the United States.

One more aspect of this that I have big thoughts on but I need to take extra care in talking about is the idea of acknowledging Nile's Blackness in her patterns of speech. There's no one right way to be Black, and Nile's a fictional character created by a white dude but there are plenty of real-life Black Americans who don't use much or even any AAVE, for reasons that are complicated because of white supremacy. (Highly highly recommend this video by Shanspeare on the harms of the Oreo stereotype.)

Something that's not the same but has enough similarity that I think it's worth talking about is my personal experience with authenticity and American Jewish speech patterns. My Jewish family members don't talk like they're in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I've known lots of people who do talk that way (or the millennial version of it), some of whom have questioned my Jewishness because I don't talk that way. That hurts me. Sometimes when another Jew tells me some shit like "I've never heard a Jew say y'all'd've," I can respond with "well now you have asshole, bless your Yankee-ass heart," because the myth of Dixie is a racist lie but I will totally call white Northerners Yankees when they're being shitty to me for being Southern, and this particular Jew fucking revels in using "bless your heart" with maximum polite aggression, especially with said Yankees. But sometimes I don't have it in me to say anything and it just quietly hurts having an important part of me disbelieved by someone who shares that important part of me. The sting isn't quite the same when non-Jews disbelieve or discount my Jewishness, but that hurts too.

Who counts as authentically Jewish is a messy in-group conversation and it doesn't really make sense to explain it all here. Who counts as authentically Jewish is a matter of legal status for immigration, citizenship, and civil rights in Israel, and it's my number 2 reason after horrific treatment of Palestinians that I'm antizionist. But outside that extremely high-stakes legal situation, it can just feel really shitty to not be recognized as One Of Us, especially by your own people.

It can also feel really shitty to be The Only One of Your Kind in a group, even if that group is an immortal chosen family who all loves each other dearly. Sometimes especially in a situation like that where you know those people love you but there are certain things they don't get about you and will never quite be able to. I'm definitely projecting at least a little bit of my "lonely Jew who will be alone again for yet another Jewish holiday" stuff onto Nile when at the end of I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore she's thinking about being the only Black immortal and moving away from the community she'd built with a mostly-Black group of mortals in that fic. Maybe that tracks, or maybe that's fucked up of me.

Basically, this got very long but it's complicated, writing about experiences that aren't your own takes skill which in turn takes time and practice to build, writing about experiences not your own that our society maligns can cause a lot of harm if done badly, it can also cause a lot of harm when a large enough portion of a fandom just decides to nope out of something that's difficult and risky because then there's just not much content about a character who deserves just a shit ton of loving and nuanced content, people are individuals and two people who come from the exact same cultural context might show that influence in all kinds of different ways, identity is complicated, language is complicated, writing is hard, and empathy and humility and doing our best aren't a guarantee of avoiding harm but they do go a long way in helping people create thoughtful content about a character as awesome and powerful and kind and messy and scared and curious and WORTHY as Nile Freeman.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

[marginal-notes]

Would you mind sharing your thoughts about mha’s world building? I never put much thought into it positive or negative. Where do you think there was wasted potential? I am curious

OH BOY, OKAY. BUCKLE UP. This isn’t really a cohesive essay covering all my thoughts, just some bigger points immediately coming to mind.

First things first, some context.

I have yet to run into any other fandom that lives off its own fanon the same way as the MHA fandom does. It’s not even like how the HP fandom did it, where they completely threw out the burning dredges of canon they didn’t like. Reading MHA fanfiction, there’s a lot of broadly accepted fanon that still gets treated like it could be canon. Idk, it’s weird and fascinating.

As you’ve probably figured out from my ramblings here and the random details I like stuffing into my writing, I care a lot about how fictional narratives can convey and explore societal institutions and conventions. Form should drive function, and everything should have consequences.

I am absolutely aware that MHA’s a mainstream shonen primarily functioning off the rule of cool, and thus isn’t supposed to operate at the level I keep trying to bully it onto.

Anyways, short story of my love/hate relationship with this series boils down to: it keeps bringing up tiny details that implies that SOMEONE on that writing/editing team is trying to make this series deeper than an almost dried out puddle, and then abandoning all thought for more of the same old “who can punch hardest” boring shonen tropes.

Also, I’m an American reading this without the full Japanese cultural context.

Here’s the long story.

Inherently, My Hero Academia is telling a story of a society reaching its breaking point under the strain of its social politics, through the lens of a highly influential and powerful industry associated with law enforcement. From the beginning, the series introduces the concept of a social hierarchy constructed on the basis of having a quirk and its raw talent. It’s a story of blind veneration and a country still not fully ready to accept a world of superpowers.

And to me, it’s extremely important to understand that for all that professional heroes are technically public servants, professional heroics is first and foremost an industry.

~~~

Okay, let’s just start with quirks themselves.

To this day, I’m still a much bigger fan of the spinoff manga than the main manga itself. I like the cast better, I love their interactions with each other, the plot makes sense, and it still has spent more actual panels discussing the impact of trying to accommodate quirks in universe than the main series has. Sure, Hori put in tidbits into the end of chapter extras, but that’s it.

Vigilantes actually takes the time to discuss how people with non-humanoid quirk mutations can run into difficulty finding affordable housing and the inadequate government assistance on that front. This piece of worldbuilding actually has consequences on characters and as the plot progresses, the consequences actually have influence on locations that appear as settings.

The main manga just doesn’t have this level of thought.

How do highways and mass transportation handle very large individuals and very small individuals? What changes to building codes and architecture has there been? What changes had to come to product design to accommodate different quirks? How do you as a society deal with individuals whose biology aren’t close to the old quirkless standard? What happened to food production and distribution? How well are government agencies addressing concerns brought up among the citizens due to their quirks? What impact has quirks had on the medical system?

(Minor pet peeve, and this is more directed towards fanon. I personally hate healing quirks, from a logistical and ethical standpoint. Canon proves that repeated use and high stress causes quirks to evolve and change over time. If you’re medical personnel and you’re using your quirk on your job, that quirk’s going to change its effects and abilities over time. Hello? Do you have any idea what the short- and long-term side effects of your quirk fully are? How did you figure out its full benefits and drawbacks? Are you taking a risk with each new patient that something completely unexpected could occur? Do you know how annoying it is when you can’t replicate or standardize procedures in a field like medicine where you need to carefully evaluate safety through scientific investigations? Do you know what using healing quirks sound like to me? Dangerous human experimentation, on both the patient and the doctor. AAAAUGH.)

I really want to know the political history behind the rise of quirks. What rate did it spread across the world and through generations? How did the politics around quirk rights shift over time? When did society stop using language like “meta-humans” or “quirked individuals” and started assuming having a quirk should be the default for describing humans? When did quirks first appear in the Imperial family? What shifts happened in rhetoric across the political spectrum over time in relation to quirks? How did that influence legislation and law enforcement? How does that influence employment statistics and population demographics? How did what was considered “desirable” change with each generation and decade? What influence did quirks have on the international scene? What really happened during the period of chaos and violence in the earlier quirk years? What pressured the system to finally hitting its boiling point? What were all the influences that finally calmed that period down?

Hori, for the love of god, shut up about daddy issues and fuck you for turning AFO into a stupid, boring cartoon villain.

~~~

If you’re going to introduce a corrupt government institution that has no problems abusing its power to order assassinations and partake in child trafficking, go all in. And I don’t mean go all in the way the “HPSC Bashing” tag on AO3 tends to. I mean stop treating the HPSC like some kind of singular monolith that didn’t derive its power through its connections and influence.

If you have corruption in the HPSC, that means you have corruption in the Ministry of Justice. You have influence and competition with the police force. You have relationships with the courts and the judges ruling cases. You have the ears of politicians in the National Diet writing laws on criminal justice and prison infrastructure. You have sway through your own regulations and oversight on heroes and their agencies. You can steer the industry towards addressing one kind of crime over the other by dangling the secret ranking algorithm over the heroes’ heads.

You can create a society where the shiny surface covers over the reality of letting violent offenders go on light sentences, if they’re prosecuted at all, so you can have enough repeat offenders to feed and inflate the apprehension and arrest performance metrics of heroes. You can create a society where powerful businesses can lobby with their money to influence patrol routes. You can create a society where the insular press clubs dutifully spread your party message across the country. You can actively craft a society that forces large portions of your population into crimes of desperation in order to feed the gaping maw of an oversaturated hero industry.

This is just run of the mill politics and dealmaking, folks. You don’t need to turn towards torture and more cartoonishly evil entities to create conflict. Freaking – god, I hate whump. (EDIT: it occurred to me after posting that this is a great place for me to wax poetic about how much I LOVE, ADORE, APPRECIATE “may death never stop you” by slex on AO3 for addressing some of my points in a witty and engaging way. Superb writing.)

Of course, MHA also doesn’t go into goddamn ANY OF THIS even in the background as flavoring that can color the plot in interesting ways. Hori, it’s not enough to just have Aizawa point out that his students are being drafted as child soldiers, and then move on. HELLO? HELLO?

~~~

MHA, I swear, is your technology more advanced or not? You can’t just throw in “Detnerat makes support tech and now it’s moving to hero gear” and then bail. And the way it’s portrayed? As making all this custom gear? Tailored to each customers’ quirk? MAKES NO SENSE FOR A LARGE CORPORATION? How did you scale that?? How are your logistical supply chains not a profit killing mess? What on earth is your manufacturing and fabrication process like? How inefficient are your operations that no one freaks out or notices your prototypes being intentionally leaked to the black market? How did you even make those connections, you’re a bunch of –

Using the excuse that they’re the arc’s villains is such lazy worldbuilding. Sure it’s in-line with the series LITERALLY going “UA’s Sports Festival has replaced the Olympics in importance” (w h a t, no, bullshit, get back here, STOP MOVING ON, HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE), but still it’s frustrating and it’s lazy.

Smartphones and vehicles?? Still look the same?? Even though chapter one implies it’s been around a couple centuries since roughly modern times?? Are holographs cheap tricks or not?? If they are, why aren’t they more widespread? Why are there still plenty of normal monitors and TVs? If they’re not, then why is UA able to jam them into their acceptance letters and it’s able to be some kind of bonus item among Kirishima’s merch?

I swear there was no thought put into tech beyond pure rule of cool. Which creates completely arbitrary hijinks and aesthetics without a lot of internal consistency, for something that really should be extremely important in universe across society, not just with heroes.

Like at least ATLA’s consistent and there’s logic going on with its tech. They’ve pulled off some things that also raise a ton of question marks with me (again, putting all that fire right next to the airship fleets is a recipe for disaster), but there’s at least an internal logic. Take Sokka’s submarines for example. The thought behind their design makes sense in a world with waterbending.

MHA’s just like, “And now UA’s a flying fortress.” WHAT??

(Disclaimer: Like how I don’t consider material outside the original shows canon for ATLA, I don’t really treat the movies as canon to MHA either. If people try bringing up I-Island at me, they’re just going to get a different giant but WHY rant.)

~~~

Uuuugh, the Todoroki family situation.

This response is already clocking in over two thousand words, so I’ll save my giant rant about Hori’s and Japan’s stand on abusers for another day. Suffice it to say, I’m extremely cynical about the various redemption arcs and why they occur the ways they do. I believe the driving force behind those arcs is highly motivated by real world profits and massaging the series’ messaging to conform to an easy to digest black and white mentality.

But, it always makes me. so frustrated. how fic proves again and again how the Todoroki plot can be an excellent lens into the trappings and failings of elite pro hero society. It can be a really engaging lens into the corrupting influence of power and the dangers of blind hero worship. It can discuss people’s choices when the system fails them and their different decisions on how to take matters into their own hand. It can show the dangerous and corrosive effects vigilantism has on a society (ugh, more personal beef from me against some fandom tropes, ANYWAYS) through some of vigilantism’s more extreme manifestations.

The implications and consequences involved here are pure Navi bait. And Hori and his team just.

The things going on right now in canon always, guaranteed, makes me so angry.

~~~

Also, as a final insult to injury, Hori’s self-insert is basically Mineta, whose main character trait is being a repeatedly aggressive sexual harasser. Dude.

~~~

Idk if you really got anything out of this, I’ve been obsessively thinking about different parts and facets of the MHA universe for over a year now. My thoughts are just all over the place.

I still haven’t gone into the whole AFO situation from an organized crime perspective. Nor have I addressed the full impact of the ranking system on the hero industry as a whole, when you split heroes into a pyramid of the top elites, mid-tier, and bottom-tier groupings. Nor have I gone into all the wild potential and shenanigans of an elite, exclusive, and wealthy place like UA (that’s a whole fic in progress right now). Or about what kinds of social insecurities and concerns craft the look and feel of each generation of heroes.

There is just so much that can be explored in MHA, and since it’s a mainstream shonen, all it cares about is punching people real hard.

[dreamcatcherrs]

toxic - sapnap x reader

+ this is an entry for the writing competition hosted by @salinesoot​! go and show them some love<3

++ DISCLAIMER; in no way do I claim that sapnap is addicted to any form of drugs. this is all just fiction! with that I hope you enjoy this longer story :)

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: drug addict/ex-lovers au! addict!sapnap x addict!reader

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: months after your break-up, nick reaches out to you to put a peaceful ending to the disastrous fall of your relationship. the meet-up is rough; you're not willing to comply with anything he’s saying, and he just can't seem to get over the state he sees you in once he arrives.

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 5.952

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: !ADDICTION! drugs, alcohol, smoking, break-ups, swearing, manipulation (?), abandonment.

I want to put a very big emphasis on addiction, as I don't want to trigger anyone! if you feel in any way uncomfortable with the things listed above, please don't continue reading :) thank you.

playlist:

save your tears - the weeknd

so high - doja cat

apocalypse - cigarettes after sex

high - sivik

habits - tove lo

champagne problems - taylor swift

the silence in the room was violent - it lay like a thick fog between you; hard to breathe in, hard to see through. not to mention the rays of sunshine hitting your back through the windows behind you, glowing into his clear eyes and burning you up inside. but not in a nice way - not in the same way that the first intake of the tip of a cigarette would once set to a flame; not in the same way the almost glowing row of white would once going up your nose and through your system. no, this kind of burn felt claustrophobic, not freeing or euphoric at all. it felt awful - but not as awful as his sorry eyes staring over your body like you were the entrance to a pity party.

a quiet flicker sprung from the lighter in your hand, a small flame glowing under the shade of your frame. your brows furrowed slightly as you lifted the lighter to the death stick sat between your lips, silently lighting it and immediately sucking the sweet smoke right into your tired body like it was oxygen to you. removing the cigarette from your lips and letting it hang from your index and middle finger, you blew out the smoke in one big puff, eyes meeting his.

“so... what do you want?” you snarled at your ex-lover, leaning back on your seat on the counter to lean your weight on your right hand - the one without the cigarette -, watching as he inhaled through his mouth slightly, only to quickly close it again once catching some of the smoke in his mouth. he waited till the cloud was gone to speak up;

“can you... not do that in here?” was the first thing he could say to you. one year after leaving you, and that’s the first thing he has to say? it made you scoff, but you chose to put out the cigarette in the ash tray beside you anyways. funny how times can change so quickly.

he cleared his throat before adding; “I don't smoke anymore - I’ve been clean for nine months now.”

the way he said it with such pride, such happiness - it angered you. was it because you were the one sitting in the dust and ashes of addiction, and not him? well, you both knew it wasn't. or at least he would if he had a sense of memory, which you guessed he had.

all you could do was raise your eyebrows at his words, arms crossing over your chest after bouncing off the kitchen counter. “I asked you a question nick - not for an update of your wonderful life,” you spat, squinting your eyes at him. his eyes somehow softened, and you just hated to see it. because you knew it made your heart beat just a little bit faster. you knew it brung back memories that you both despised and at the same time absolutely loved to have.

he moved away from the fridge he had been leaning his back against, scratching the back of his neck as he looked at the ground instead of your eyes.

“I came to apologise.”

“for what?”

“for… everything.”

it was at the biggest college party of the year for newcomers that he met you.

he was high. he’d spotted you in the crowd, looking like a lost puppy. was that what made him come to you? no, but he couldn’t deny the fact that your innocent complex caught his attention. throughout the night, his eyes would gaze away from the conversation he had with his friends and over to you, and after a nice two rows of heroin through his nostrils, bubbling his blood and dilating his pupils, was when he noticed the guy approaching you. grabbing you, twirling your hair around his finger when you were clearly uncomfortable with it. and as if he hadn't already had about 3 already, he chugged a whole can of beer all in one go, before pushing himself out of the chair he was sat in. clay and george mumbled something in drunk behind him that his ears blocked out anyway as he moved towards the douche in front of you, combing a had through his hair.

he made it to you just as the guy grabbed your thigh with his rough, dirty fingers that god knows where had been, and with complete fury and the world spinning around him, nick grabbed the guy by his shoulder, turning him around to be met with his fist. when the realisation hit you, you visibly gasped (not that he could hear it over the loud music or the ringing in his ears), watching in shock as the guy stumbled back into the cupboard behind him, hand reaching up to grab his eye. the people around you seemed to notice as well, some stepping back a little in shock, some taking photos, some laughing and wooing for more. when nick noticed that the guy was about to get up again, and to his knowledge about to throw some punches back at him, he quickly grabbed you by the waist, pulling you to his side.

“get your filthy hands off my s/o,” he snarled, drunkenly and not very intimidating, but still made for a good effort. he didn't notice the way you'd tried to hide your disgust when smelling his alcoholic breath and his scent of weed - everything was hard to pay close detail to when in a drunken state like his.

to nick’s surprise, the guy, who by the was was way bigger than him and could probably easily take him down in one hit, backs away with a bleeding nose, and everyone else returns to partying as normal.

he turns to you, and you’re blushing. either that or you’ve just taken 10 shots in a row, but that was clearly not the case. your lips moved, but he would have to have the most powerful ears to be able to hear you over the loud music pumping through his body. so instead he leans down, lips hovering by your ear.

“what?” he slurred, loud enough for you to hear, and as if your cheeks weren’t already burning, his close proximity to you sure didn’t help. from behind, a couple of giggling girls shoved into him to get over to the counter filled with alcohol, causing him to push you further against the cupboard. his hand landed on your hip in reflex, preventing him from literally falling into you.

quickly you uttered out into his ear, louder this time; “I- I said thank you,” and closed your eyes tightly in embarrassment, because why did you have to stutter? and why did this drunk mess of a guy have to be so goddamn attractive?

he took a step back, letting his hands fall with him. he looked back at his friends - clay glancing over at him, laughing confusedly, while george was busy downing a shot with karl. he ignored clay’s signal to come back to the table, and instead leaned over to your ear again.

“you wanna get out of here?”

your eyes widened. why did this complete stranger want to leave one of the biggest parties with you? it would be stupid to say yes, yet something in you strived to know what the night could turn out like if you did. it’s not like you had much fun anyway, and what the hell, your life isn’t one filled with surprises, so what was one night filled with them gonna change?

“so... you’re a first year’er?” nick inhaled deeply, the smoke from the blunt of weed between his lips going straight to his head. you nervously scratched your elbow, kicking a harmless rock that was in the way of your path as you nodded. the smell from the stick of weed in his hand went through your nostrils, tickling your nose in a not-so-pleasant way. you chose to ignore this though, not wanting to seem fussy.

“yeah. but parties are not really my forte, in case you hadn’t noticed,” you laughed quietly, folding your arms over your chest when a cold breeze fanned your body. he turned to look at you with slightly squinted eyes, taking in your sober self.

“well, have you ever tried weed? cause I’ll tell you; everything can be a party with this shit.” he laughed at himself, sucking in smoke once again from the blunt, before turning to see you shake your head. he suddenly passed it in your direction. you stared down at it, a trail of smoke rising from the tip of it, before looking at him again. “wanna try?”

he didn't look too bothered wether you said yes or no - just high and drunk out of his mind, which actually made him look kinda peaceful and… cute? what the fuck. you shrugged your shoulders, grabbing the stick of weed from between his fingers. it was the start of college - everyone does this, right?

“do I just… inhale?” you asked, clearly a rookie and non-professional weed-smoker. he chuckled, stopping in his tracks, making you stop as well, as he fished out something from the pocket of his jacket; a lighter.

“yeah, you just gotta light it again cause of the wind. just treat it like a cig.” you raised your eyebrow at him, watching as he stepped closer to you with the lighter, waiting for you to put the blunt between your lips, and when you didn't was when he noticed your confusion and raised eyebrow. he looked shocked. “you've never smoked a cigarette before?” you shook your head, swinging your arms along with their place inside the pockets of your jacket, a lopsided smile forming on your face. his eyes widened further. “drugs? alcohol? nothing?” you gave an innocent smile, flashing your teeth at him as you shook your head. he raised his eyebrows. “damn. well, it’s no shocker to me that you don't like parties then. you've never tried real partying.”

he softly took the blunt from your hand, gesturing for you to open your mouth, before tucking it between your parted lips. he moved closer to you, close enough so he could focus on protecting the flame from the wind using his hand, and holding the lighter up to the tip of the weed stick. “this’ll be fun,” he mumbled to himself, igniting the lighter. “now you just inhale and then eventually blow out the smoke. it might burn to start with, but fuck does it feel good afterwards.”

you did as he said, squinting your eyes as you inhaled the smoke, feeling your throat burn with every passing second you of inhaling, and before you had the chance to blow it into a cloud casually, you coughed out all of the smoke, choking on the pure taste and burn of weed. he chuckled lightly, patting your back gently as he watched you gasp for fresh air.

“alright alright, not too bad.” he took the blunt once you handed it over to him again, easily inhaling the smoke like it was nothing to him, before blowing it out into the fresh september air in different sizes of ���o’s. you watched in amazement as he did so, wondering how long you’d have to smoke for, for a person to be able to do that. your guess was quite a while.

he handed it over to you again, encouraging you to take it. you did. “here, keep it.” he sent you a dopey smile, watching as you took it. you placed it in your mouth just as the wind passed through you again, making your body shiver very obviously. you were stupid to not bring a jacket. in your defense, you thought that you wouldn’t have stayed long at that party anyway; not that you’d be here, walking through an empty playground with a stranger. well, not a stranger anymore - nick was his name, as you’d come to learn.

he noticed your freezing self as you inhaled again, the smoke making you cough again even when you tried your hardest not to. busy getting your oxygen under control, you didn’t notice him taking off his leather jacket before it hung heavy on your shoulders, immediately giving warming you up from the body warmth it had consumed from him.

you moved the stick out of your mouth, looking at him with a raised eyebrow, trying to play his gesture off cool. “what are you doing? you’ll freeze.”

he scoffed playfully, inhaling the fresh smell of the cool air. “I’m drunk out of my mind right now. you think I even think about what temperature it is right now?” you giggled at that. it was crazy how your cheeks were able to grow so warm despite the cold breeze flushing over you constantly, hands tugging the jacket tighter to yourself.

“thank you,” you quietly said, a small smile spreading across your face. your head started feeling empty - a good kind of empty, causing you to smile even more without even noticing. the sudden release of dopamine in your brain was causing you to feel lighter - that’s what it was, you thought.

without realising, your eyes had been closed and you’d stopped walking anymore, just taking in the feeling and the nice, fresh air hitting your skin in small waves. you felt a hand on your back, and then heard a quiet laugh from beside you. you turned in the direction, opening your eyes and smiled up at the handsome creature of a male in front of you. he smiled along with you, looking into your clouded eyes with his reddened ones, placing his hands on your neck softly.

he started laughing. and you started laughing. you placed your hands on top of his, leaning in closer to get a better look at his eyes. they looked like a cave filled with shiny crystals if you looked close enough. and you’d still be looking into them when he kissed you if he hadn’t closed them.

it was mainly a very toothy kiss, your white pearls clanging together as your smiles stayed on your faces throughout the kiss. when he pushed his tongue in between them though, they slightly faltered, and your hands flew up to hold his face in your hands as he started kissing you harder and with additional sloppiness.

you pulled away to catch your breath, and before he had the chance to lean in for a second kiss, you placed the marijuana between your lips, spending him a playful smile as you sucked in the burning smoke.

were you high or were you just crazy about this guy that you barely even knew? at that very moment you felt that the answer was both.

your brows furrowed. he actually looked… sorry? you weren't sure if you were willing to hear what he had to say - after all he’d put you through. but… something made you listen. something made you wanna give him the chance to speak up. maybe it was the soft spot you had for him in you heart, that you so badly wanted to deny yourself was there.

“look… I know I’m the reason you've ended up like this. I’m the reason you can't even let go of that pack of cigarettes in your hand. and I can't stop thinking about that every single day. I- I ruined you, y/n. and I realise- well, I’ve realised this a long time ago - I just left you here to rot. all alone. I fucked you up, and left you to deal with it all alone. and I’m really fucking sorry about that. I treated you so badly and got you into things you probably wouldn't have gotten into if you'd never met me...” he trailed off, a solemn look in his eyes, almost glowing as they stared compassionately into yours.

you broke away from them, a soft frown on your face as they trailed off to the wine shelf stacked with bottles of alcohol behind him. he was right. you knew he was. but it didn’t explain why he came here. to seek your sympathy? for you to accept his apology? to give him that form of closure? you weren’t really sure if he deserved that.

he saw the look on your face, and figured he’d continue; “I don’t expect you to accept my apology or... stop being mad at me. I just wanted to come here to finish things the right way instead of the way we left it. well, the way I left it.” all of a sudden he stopped in his tracks, eyes focused on your arm. his eyes widened once noticing the bruise on the inside of your elbow, clearly from some type of syringe or needle. he would know what that looked like.

he took swift steps towards you, grabbing your arm in shock. you were worse than he had thought. you looked down in shame when his eyes tried meeting yours.

“y/n,” he said seriously, very carefully rubbing his thumb across the mark. “you need help. like, serious help. you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

with that, you tore your arm away from him, staring into his eyes with your eyebrows furrowed and teary-eyed. “why do you care? since when did you ever care, nick? I don’t understand why you’re here - you don’t really want to help me.” you stepped away from him, heading over to the pile of ashes from the previously smoked cigarettes to get another one, but were stopped by his hand grabbing your arm.

he hugged you.

you sobbed into his shoulder,

and hugged him back.

you swallowed a big gulp of air, craning your neck as your eyes rolled to the back of your head. a pleasurable smile appeared on your face, the sweet feeling of cocaine rushing through your system being the cause of it. you lay down on the flat rooftop of the college gym, inhaling the smoke from the already ignited cigarette between your two fingers. you blew the smoke out into the air in small rings, like nick had showed you, happily succeeding in it. needless to say, you'd done it for what felt like a million times before.

nick grabbed your hand from his place on the roof beside you. you turned your head to look at him, squeezing his hand in the process. he moved closer to you, lifting your hand to his lips before placing a wet kiss onto the back of it. he gestured for you to place the cigarette between his lips, and you did so, holding it in place as he inhaled the smoke like you had. when you moved the cigarette away from him though, he pushed you closer to him by the back of your neck, placing this lips on yours in time for him to blow the smoke from his mouth into yours, catching you by surprise.

you waited till he’d moved away again to blow the smoke out, turning your head as you did so so that he wouldn’t get it in his face. he laughed at the way your eyes had widened, leaning over you to place a kiss on your flush cheek.

“did you like that?” he asked with a raspy voice, followed by a giggle and still holding your hand in his as he clung it to his chest. you looked up at him with a pouty smile, watching as his eyes crinkled at your soundless response.

“you know… we’re probably not allowed up here,” you muttered, tracing figures onto his palm

“yeah, we’re not allowed many things. including all of this cocaine, but I don't plan on stopping,” he replied nonchalantly, clawing up some of the white, illuminating powder onto his finger, sniffing it up his nose with one large inhale, before exhaling deeply in satisfaction. you watched as he did so, and it made your chest turn. something about this felt wrong all of a sudden. you felt bad, ashamed to even be sat on a roof at 2 am, doing drugs and smoking weed, when you really came here to study and make friends.

your thoughts did not just swim away once he started leaving small little pecks onto your neck, hair tickling your jawline with bubbly giggles flying past his lips. you gently pushed him off, letting go of his hand and standing up from the rooftop. your sudden distress did not go unnoticed by nick, though, and he stood up with you, stumbling, but standing, watching as you threw the remains of the cigarette onto the ground, and looked off onto your campus with a clenched jaw and stern look on your face.

nick was confused, and a little uncertain with what he should do. you'd never acted like something was wrong before, so he didn’t exactly know what to do in this type of situation. all he could do was walk over to you, standing by your side as he looked off into the same direction as you. his eyes glanced over to you every now and then, chewing on what to say exactly. he tried saying something, but stopped himself before he had the chance to even let out a squeak.

“is.. what- argh. did I do something wrong?” he finally spoke, frustrated with his own form of speech. you turned your head to him, your small smile causing relief to rush through his body. when you responded with a ‘no’, he felt a little better, but that still didn’t stop him from seeing right through that smile and into your worried self. “well, what's wrong then?”

what's wrong? you almost wanted to ask yourself that question. why would you want to ruin such a nice moment with him just because of some doubt? maybe it was because you thought that all good things wouldn't last, and that whatever this was between you was too good to be true. or maybe it was the fact that you could feel your lungs set on fire just thinking of every bad thing you’d consumed into your previously healthy body, head feeling empty, but at the same time heavy enough to keep all of the bad things inside of it to weigh down on you. maybe it was because you'd never felt so unlike yourself before as you do now, and you weren't so sure if that was a good thing anymore.

when you told him this (well, the parts about the drugs, not your feelings), he sighed heavily, placing a hand on your shoulder to fully turn you to face him. “y/n,” he started, moving his hand up to your cheek and brushing his thumb over your cheekbone, sending you a lopsided grin. “you're overthinking too much.” you raised your eyebrows slightly, looking at him with a mix of confusion and hope in your eyes. he continued; “we’re just having fun. there’s noting wrong with that! isn’t that what college is all about?”

he did his best to assure you that nothing was wrong, and it seemed to be working. you eased up - he could feel it -, yet you still had that worried expression stuck on your face, and he knew he had to do something to change that. he kissed you softly, cold nose touching yours in the process. you couldn’t help but to kiss him back, placing your hands on the sides of his neck as you closed your eyes tightly, wanting nothing more than to get lost in his lips.

when he pulled away, the tip of his index finger lightly bopped your nose, causing the very least of a smile to form on your face. that made him smile. “don’t worry, baby,” he assured you, kissing your forehead before fishing the metallic circle-shaped box out of his pocket, offering you some of the addicting white powder by handing it to you. “we’re in this together.”

his phone buzzed on the coffee table, the waves of vibrations feeling as if they filled up the entire room. someone was calling him, and you only just managed to see that the caller ID was someone named “rose” before he dismissed the call. as far as you could remember, he’d never even met someone by that name.

he put his phone in his pocket, doing up the zipper before staring across the table and over to you again. his brushing off didn’t help your curiosity from spilling out. “aren’t you gonna get that?” you questioned, wiping the wetness on your cheeks away fully from your previous outburst of tears. you could still see the tear stains on his shirt.

he shook his head. “I have more important matters right now.” your heart warmed at his words and you hated to feel that. of course you’d been on his social media since your break-up - you knew very well that the girl calling was his new girlfriend. and as much as you hated yourself for feeling it, you couldn’t help the jealousy from flaming up inside of you. you decided to hold back from saying more about it, though, knowing that it would just be your hurt and anger talking.

he stared at you for a while with droopy puppy eyes, and it made you hate this moment even more, moving around in your seat to distract yourself from the situation. but then his hand was on yours, squeezing gently like he’d done so many times before. you tried not looking into his eyes, cause you knew it’d make you weaker, but it was so damn hard when all you could feel was his eyes burning into your skin, the pity from him seeping right into you. it made you feel awful.

“I want to help you, y/n. get you out of this shithole I put you in in the first place,” he explained lowly, rubbing his thumb across the back of your hand. tingles trickled up your arm and down your spine, a knot forming in your stomach. you looked down at the table, away from him. “I still care for you, you know?” he gave your hand a squeeze, wanting you to look at him again.

you didn’t.

he sighed.

letting go of your hand, he stood up from the chair. your eyes followed him as he walked over to your side of the table, pulling out the chair that was right beside you and taking a seat on it. he looked at you for a while, taking in the way you looked.

your eyes were bloodshot, red streaks coming out from the beautiful crystal in the middle of your eye. those deep and dark bags under your eyes weren’t there before, the cause of them being so very obvious. you were thinner, frail, weak. you looked as if you would break if he as much as lay a finger on you - like you’d turn to dust if he tried reaching out to you. if he tried to save you. it was soul-crushing to see you in this state. he couldn’t believe he’d done this to you.

you noticed his staring. he didn’t care. you needed to know this had gone too far, even if he was the cause of it.

he pulled his phone out of his pocket, pulling up a list of names and numbers on his phone from his contacts. he gave you his phone.

“these are the places I went to when I tried getting clean. it’d be no problem getting you in there. you just have to try. have to want the help. that’s all I ask from you.” you scrolled through the contacts slowly, like it’d make a difference to the foreign names on the screen.

“nick, I-,” you sighed and shook your head. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“of course you can,” he assured you, grabbing your hand once again. you turned your head to him, heart pumping louder in your chest as you stared at him. you missed him, you realised. “you won’t be alone.”

it all happened so fast.

you pulled him to you by his hand, yours coming up to grab his cheek softly to simultaneously pull his face to yours, closing your pained eyes tightly and-

“what are you doing?”

your voice boomed through the dark room. you stood with crossed arms and a tired look on your face, having just woken up by the rustling coming from the living room, only to find your boyfriend packing his stuff with tear-stained cheeks. worry shot through your tired body as you watched him halt, staring back at you with a startled expression on his face.

“y/n? wh-why are you awake?” he quickly shoved a shirt of his into the duffel bag in his hands, running a hand through his hair as he looked at you with baggy eyes.

your eyebrows furrowed. you knew what this looked like, and you realised exactly what was happening. he was leaving you. he’d been distant for the past few weeks, but you never thought it was because of you. you thought that, maybe, it was just a phase. because, he would never really leave you. would he?

you took a step towards him. “nick are you… leaving me?” you could feel the tears well up in your eyes when you heard yourself say it out loud. you felt like you’d just been hit by a truck, lungs failing and body crashing down. you didn’t understand. you didn’t understand at all.

he didnt answer, just looked down in shame? sorrow? you didn’t care. how could he leave you? how could he? you wanted to pinch yourself to wake up from this horrible dream- no. from this nightmare. but this wasn’t just a nightmare - it was reality. this was really happening.

“I-I don't understand, nick. don't you l-love me?” you sobbed, feeling your wet tears trickle down your face. here they came. the tears you hadn’t cried for so long now.

he softened up at the sight of you crying, wanting so badly to hug you, comfort you, but knowing that he couldn’t let himself. he had to leave somehow. leave this town, this drug-filled life. he had to escape it, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to with you.

“I can't stay here, y/n. I have to go,” he muttered lowly, grabbing his headphones from the coffee table and stuffing them into the bag as well. he started packing again.

“wh-why? I thought things were good between us?”

“they're not, y/n!” he yelled suddenly, causing you to step back slightly. he turned to you, a wild look on his face as his arms flailed around in the air. “I’m sick of only being able to feel good because I’m drugged up or drunk. I’m getting clean.”

he packed the last couple of things into the bag, scanning the room quickly to make sure he got most of it with him, before taking haste steps over to grab his jacket from the coat hanger. you followed after him with just as fast steps, heart beating out of your chest. was this the last time you were gonna see him? no. you refused to believe that.

“b-but you can't just leave me!” you pulled at his arm, tugging him over in your direction as he struggled to slide his leather jacket on. he looked at you for a moment, chest heaving slightly from the bad feeling he had inside of him.

“if you're not gonna let me leave, then you have to.”

you looked at him with pure shock and anger- the audacity. he sighed, calming himself down before continuing; “if you still love me you’d leave.”

you shook your head, angrily shoving a finger at his chest. “you got me into this mess in the first place! you’re the reason I’ve ended up like this! and you want me to leave?” you scoffed at his words, yelling out yours in rage as tears of frustration kept falling from your eyes.

he sighed, brows furrowed and a sad expression stuck on his face as he looked at the ground. “I’m sorry, y/n. I can't do this anymore.” he turned to grab the doorknob, and your eyes widened with the movement.

“you can't do this to me nick!,” you clawed at his arm, dragging him backwards, away from the door. but he was stronger than your weak body and easily pushed you away from him to get access to the door. you hit his back with your fists, crying out in anger as you did so.

“you bastard! you can't just leave me here!” he stayed quiet as he rushed out of the door, not even looking back as he made it out of the door, escaping your grasp on him. you sobbed even louder, walking out of the door to follow his body with your eyes as you collapsed to the ground. “I hate you! I fucking hate you, you hear me?”

nick silently cried as his back hit the elevator wall, the doors closing in front of him as he made his way downwards to the entrance of the apartment complex. what had he just done? he placed a hand over his mouth, wide eyes staring into thin air in shock. nick’s only ever done what he was raised to think was right. it’s not his fault, right?

it’s not.

it’s not.

for a moment, you kissed.

did he not pull away because his feelings for you were still there somewhere in the depts of him? or because he was so shocked that he was unable to think straight enough to pull away? honestly, he couldn’t tell.

but alas, he pushed you off. and all he could do was look at you, baffled, confused and feeling more lost than ever. “y/n…” he trailed off, watching as you stared back at him with wide eyes and red lips from the kiss, almost looking as if you were just as shocked as him.

“I’m… I’m happy now. without the drugs, without the alcohol, without the cigarettes. I’m with someone else now, y/n,” he mumbled quietly, hands still pressed against your shoulders as he stared at your plump lips in a flustered state. he sighed. “we can't be together, y/n. not like this.” he didn’t specify “like what”, but his eyes staring up and down your form clearly showed what he meant. you knew that already, but it still hurt you. it still hurt you that he’d moved on and you hadn't - that he was away from all of the things you now lived off of. it hurt you that he was able to find happiness without you.

he lifted your head up by your chin, and you hadn't even noticed that you were looking at the ground, and got to eye-level with you. his eyes were soft (when weren't they?) and this time, he looked like he was pleading, begging for you to hear him instead of denying him. “I want you to be happy, too. that’s why I’m trying to help you. if only you’d let me?”

your eyes dropped to the ground again, brows furrowing in thought. should you? should you let him into your heart again? into your shitty life? what if he just ended up leaving you again like he’d done before? breaking your heart into a million pieces this time instead of just two? you looked up at him again, biting down on your bottom as you made your final choice.

__________________________________

tag list✰

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[duckprintspress]

Contributor Spotlights: Rebekah D. Cook and Nina Waters

Welcome to She Wears the Midnight Crown and He Bears the Cape of Stars, two brand-new anthologies that share a common theme – masquerades – but tell different types of stories – wlw in She Wears the Midnight Crown and mlm in He Bears the Cape of Stars. These collections are the latest titles from Duck Prints Press, the indie publisher founded by fans to publish original works by fan creators, and they’re crowdfunding NOW, only on Seed & Spark!

Curious about the collections? Well, here’s a sneak peek of the works of two of our creators!

She Wears the Midnight Crown Contributor Spotlight: Rebekah D. Cook

Biography: Rebekah D. Cook is an author of queer romance and speculative fiction living in the Pacific Northwest with her spouse and two dogs. She is sad to report that she has not yet mysteriously disappeared nor encountered any cryptids. Her hobbies include spoiling the aforementioned dogs, drinking inadvisable amounts of coffee, and running unreasonably long distances very slowly. She’s secretly just a collection of loosely-related stories dressed up in a meat suit.

Links: Personal Website | Tumblr | Twitter

Story Title: Nice Girls Don’t Get the Superweapon

Teaser:

Ever since it became clear Mia’s negligible fire starting power wasn’t enough for her to make a go of it as a supervillain, Mia’s dream has been to become a top-tier henchwoman. It’s practically the family business, and anyway, sometimes a girl just wants to be the one setting off the explosions instead of watching them happen.

“Morning, Miller.” The greeting is punctuated by a sharp and wholly unnecessary knock on Mia’s desk.

Mia gives Brandon Pratt her most withering look. The man is epitome of corporate nonsense: all flash and smarm with no substance underneath. He’s also barely competent at his job and somehow manages to come in egregiously late any morning Doctor Bombardier isn’t in the office. Mia doesn’t understand why he hasn’t been fired yet.

“Barely,” Mia says with a pointed look at the clock.

“Lighten up,” Brandon says with a laugh straight out of a Hollywood satire of corporate corruption. “It’s Friday. Working hard or hardly working, eh?”

He shoots her a pair of finger guns before heading toward his office, and Mia valiantly refrains from setting his tie on fire.

He Bears the Cape of Stars Contributor Spotlight: Nina Waters

Biography: Claire Houck (she/they/he), pen name Nina Waters, fandom name unforth, is the founder and sole proprietor of Duck Prints Press LLC. She is queer, 39 years old, married to the lovely Lisa, and a mother of two. Claire has been writing fanfiction since the young age of seven, when she penned (well, two-finger typed and printed dot matrix) the timeless classic “the story of my littl ponies and the glob.” Since then, her spelling, grammar, and prose have improved immensely. She has written over three hundred short stories, a number of novellas, and 16 novels—some original, some fanfiction—including A Glimmer of Hope, which was successfully Kickstarted and self-published in fall, 2016. Before she became a full-time writer, Claire had a career as a professional grant writer and program evaluator, providing consultation services for the New York City Department of Education and other non-profit education organizations.

Links: Archive of Our Own | Tumblr | Twitter

Story Title: To Sing a Song of Many

Teaser:

The agora bustled with the usual business of the day. A hawker offered what they claimed were freshly gathered mushrooms. A Priest promised that the penis charms they’d blessed were especially effective at warding off evil. A Hero struck a noble pose, as if she were cast from marble instead of merely flesh clothed in bronze and linen, while beside her the two members of her Chorus sang her story. Perhaps, if she adventured long enough and successfully enough, she’d be captured in marble in truth, as the once-King Azan was in the marketplace’s center; an artist sprawled at the sculpture’s feet to refresh the bright, gilded paint of his sandals. A melee of colors, sounds, smells, and movements could have captivated, begged to captivate, but Himeros couldn’t spare them the attention he longed to, because he had bigger concerns.

How on Gaia was he going to pass through the crowd to reach the other side of the town’s center without being accosted?

Behind Himeros, his Chorus shifted impatiently. All right, no, in their defense, the four men were actually calm, patient, along for Himeros’s quest  as observers and recorders and criers. It was Himeros’s jitteriness that made their normal weight-shifting, robe-swaying, and mask-adjusting seem loaded and imminent.

Truly, what was Himeros going to do?

*

Intrigued? You should be! But, if you want to read the rest of these stories you’ll need to back our campaign, running now through July 14th, 2022!

Only Days Left to Back – Read Our Campaign Now!

[weneepaw]

Handcuffs / Ep 01 _ Invitation

Word count: 5.8K

Characters: Wonho x Honey (just a fictional character)

Genres: Angst, Romance, Smut, Fluff in some other sides

Warning for this part: English is not my first language so if you see some errors in grammar or words please don't mind it and enjoy it 😅😅

Summery: Lee Wonho is an idol, a god like one but he has some secrets in his life, just like all other normal people. But those secrets are turning to some serious problems and hurting his feelings. Every time he thinks about them, things are just going worse. He needs help to fix himself and finds a way to go free and it's like he found a great one at his birthday night party. Or maybe he just thought in that way? Will she becomes a helpful friend or only a disaster to ruin his life?

After some long weeks, there is a time for him to getting some rest. He was so busy lately and working so hard non-stop to his ass off on his albums and choreography of stages because he needs to get his place at business and manage his life in the best situation. He always wants everything to be perfect and flawless, so he works until midnight to the sunrise for days and skips his time to rest because he just can’t sleep when his damn brain doesn’t stop thinking about songs and stages and how they could be in fans’ eyes. Fans are always so much important and valuable to him, like always he says they keep him alive, but that much caring about them sometimes makes him forget about himself and what he needs as a normal big boy. He is an adult male, after all his schedules and his career, he needs to have a normal life and a healthy sex life too, for sure. But every time he is asked about having a girlfriend or being in a relationship, he shows his teenager shy smiles and says, he is happy to be alone and he has his fans, but let’s be honest, fans can make his sex life to be real? He knows the answer as everyone else does but he just disregards and prefers to think about how he can be on his own best for others.

Of course, he is damn good at everything, he is super talented and has a perfect look. From head to toes, he is the definition of perfection at one sight. He got a perfect buff body that worked on it hard for 10 years his ass off again, just like other things, and still cares about it too much. He and his body are out of genders to be loved and his personality is much more adorable than his muscles or abs. he can talk in that way to makes your heart meltdown over his voice and smiles, His beautiful sparkling eyes and his damn soft pink lips are too cute to handle but besides of all these sweet features and his manly look, there is always some secrets in the dark. He usually tries to ignore those secrets and telling himself he still has time to fix some hidden problems but also, he knows it’s already getting too late for it.

Tonight is a special night for him and his friends made a little party for him in a VIP club named “Lady M Club”. This party is all private and there are no worries about getting caught while having some fun. All the guests must have an invitation card to get permission to come in, so everyone there are idols or important people who want to have a good time in their personal space.

His all friends are present and so excited to make him surprised. but for him, today was only like other days to get up, go to work and only focus on the songs till night and then get back home. But his friends want to give him some happy moments and a little gift for his birthday, thanking and appreciating him after all the time of his hard work. Sure he deserves it all, but he doesn’t know it, himself.

He is just relaxing in the back seat of the car, while his manager is driving him home. In the space of the care is nothing but silence. He looks tired and leans his head back, watching lights of the cars and stores in street sides coming and going away, thinking about his life. Life is like this car and lights are like people, but he is always just like now. In his personal life, he just can watch them coming and leaving, there is no one who he can be able to hold it tight, but the fans. Anyway, he always can’t deny it all the time, he feels alone. Most of the nights and sunset hours of the days, when everyone is drowning in their own life and going on their ways, it’s only him, lonely on his bed, in the gym, in the room, in the studio, or wherever else. He tries hard to only keep his mind on his job and fans, but he is a human after all and needs someone only for him. And there is a fact, fans can’t just fill this gap in his life up.

Tonight, he will be on his 28 and another year passed so fast. Time is flying so damn fast and he is thinking about his dark secrets, the reason for being alone all these years and even running away from talking with his family or friends about marriage or being in a relationship. Even when he is thinking about it, he is under stress and uncomfortable feels come around because when he is trying to find a way to fix it, things just go weird and scary more and more indiscriminately. Lately, he is even trying to escape thinking about it but he can’t stop this body to do not react. He needs and unfortunately, he knows it, but can’t do anything for it.

He is all drowning in his fears and doesn’t notice that car is moving in another way and it’s not even close to his place. When he just snaps back on the present life, the car was in front of an unknown club door. He becomes confused and looking around.

“What’s this?” he whispers under his lips. He has no idea what is coming up.

“Your friends and team Wonho decided to build an especial night for you, so better you don’t make them wait for it more.” His manager states and comes out of the car. He smiles before coming down. His friends always were kind and so cherish him. They always were in his side in the best or worst times in the professional or ordinary times of his life and warming his heart up to go on and be the best. He always had a good and happy time with them, so tonight will be one of those good memories too.

He walks into the club's hall, following his manager. Suddenly lights and sparklers all around the hall turn on with a loud voice of crowd in there, singing the happy birthday song for him. His friends holding a big cake in their hands, his backup dancers are clapping and singing so happily, even his hairstylists and makeup artists are there to celebrate this wonderful night with him.

There is a cute chubby white rabbit on that light blue creamy cake with a big “happy birthday”, plus 2 little candles. He looks like a happy baby, standing right there and watching his friends and that creamy cake with a big cute grin on his face. He likes creams on the cake more than all of it so there is no wonder why he tries to take some creams from it even before blowing on the candles. He tastes his creamy finger with giggles as sweet as the cake flavor and finally, blows the candles with the ending of the happy birthday song.

Everyone makes noise for this big little boy and he looks incredibly happy. But it didn’t take too long because he hears a question reminding him of some fears.

“What did you wish before blowing on candles?” Minhyuk asks and makes his smiles almost disappear. By the way, he tries to hold it on and pretends as nothing happened. He had no wish on his mind before, but when he asked it, one word just passes from his thoughts. He surreptitiously wishes his fears be gone and stop hurting his feelings more.

“Nothing. I already got everything I want and I need, like best friends and going on billboard charts.” He says but it mostly smells like a lie.

“Yes, you make everyone jaws drop with your songs and concerts. You are one of the best male solo artists now. We are so proud of you bro.” Shownu says, putting his hand on his shoulder so proudly. But while he was appreciating him, another bro comes up with some annoying words.

“But now, living alone must be hard and boring, right hyung?” Changkyun asks and makes keeping that fake smile even harder. Now they were sitting around the table and start eating some piece of cake. He just drops his head down, knowing they are waiting for his words to know if he is doing well alone? So he has to answer it and stop making them consider that.

“It was hard at first and I was nervous about everything because I always had you guys around and now I have to take it all alone but I tried to take control. I’m fine now, don’t worry about me.” He scrambles at his best but it doesn’t look like if it works. That just turns to a switch on for his friends that are close to him as his dear little brothers show their feelings about his empty place at home and talking about some old memories. Memories are tasting bitter-sweet now. He will always keep them deep down in his heart and never forget or leave them but he can’t deny he does miss those days too. Sometimes, the world is just too cruel but we have to go on like him.

Only some minutes later, space just gets back on a fun and happy night. Everything is ready for having a good night out of all idol hustle life and just be young, wild, and free for everyone, but him. He just sits there alone, watching his friends dancing around or flirting with some of the girls at the party. He is rolling down on his thoughts and even didn’t notice the loud song in the club until he finds his ears are reacting as a female voice volume up. He gives his glance to the source of the voice, to the canter of attention on the little stage in front of the hall.

Some girls are singing and dancing there but one of them is the main vocal. Her voice is strong and will stay in your mind forever but it’s not just about that. She has 2 big dark beautiful eyes full of little stars. It’s kinda impossible to do not stare at her, with her black short hair, bright smiles while a red danger color has painted her lips and a shiny black short decollete dress hugs her craved body so tight. She makes sure that every girl in the party feels nervous about losing their men over her.

Hoeseok finds her looking at him back but there was a male familiar voice to steal his attention and give it to the owner of it.

“She’s pretty.” It’s Hyungwon, standing beside him from how god knows long minutes before and he didn’t notice his presence.

“y-Yes. But I was just watching the show like others.” He tries to protect himself, clearing his throat to make his voice goes right into Hyungwon's ears and don’t cause any misunderstanding. But it’s like Hyungwon is already into another thought of reality as he smiles with some special meanings to his friend.

“She’s a new friend of ours so we decided to introduce you to her too. This club belongs to her.” Hyongwon explains more about that female fatal who is still watching them with no shame on her wild eyes. Hoseok only shakes his head as he got the information and decides to drop his head because he is already choking with a clumsy feel boiling inside of him and he doesn’t want it to jump out with a blush on his face.

He just wants his night to go as well with no drama or any chaotic issues but it's freaking hard to focus on himself while that female voice is feeling ticklish in his ears like a magical spell to take him back and watch how mysterious she can be. But no, he is not one of those types of boys who are looking for pretty sexy girls to add some fun to their life. He just minds his own business and stays away from all troubling shits. He goes on his way.

Fortunately, songs finished and noises calm down but it doesn't mean party night is over. He is just pleased that voice is gone, so he can keep himself down easily, but it's like everything is out of his control tonight. Because while he is getting successful on taking good enough self-control, he hears Changkyun is greeting so warm to someone new-coming in the crow and automatically feels anxious rush in his bloodlines.

Before he tries to look at the new one, that familiar damage control female voice plays in his ears again. It's her, now closer and even more dangerous than what she seemed from the top of that little stage. She's perfectly a red light alert of danger to any man who is not about to get in deadly troubles, but also her bright smile pushes any buttons to make keeping any good controls impossible. He's not that crazy or even drunk to do any weird act, but he just feels he can't keep his eyes on himself when she is around. That girl is no good for his health because his heartbeat is already rose so damn fast and its pumping voice fills up his ears. He can't hear others' voices when they talk and laugh with her and her friends, until he feels Hyungwon's hand on his shoulder, saving him from a feeling like a coma with open eyes.

“I’m Chae Honey. Nice to meet you.” He only sees that girl in front of himself, offering her hand and introducing herself with a light smile on his red lips. Maybe he is all mesmerized by this foreign girl who has a face almost close to Korean cute babies but he still knows how should be polite or just try to keep himself together and push himself to DO NOT look like a boy who didn’t see any other girls in his life before.

“I’m Lee Hoseok, as might you know my name already, and nice to meet you too.” He says with a simple smile and tries to look confident enough. He secretly hopes they don’t see his clear embarrassing symptoms, as red cheeks or stupid look smiles. He has no idea what's wrong with him now because clearly he was around many beautiful girls before and he usually didn’t give a flying fuck, so what's different now?

“Oh, of course, I know you.” She states with a bigger grin. Her friends are already giggling behind her and whispering things between themselves. She tries to join them, but she didn’t even bother to keep her voice as a whisper to say “He’s too cute, isn’t he?”

And he just finds himself turning to their funny entertainment for rest of the night. This is so fucking embarrassing. They easily sit together and raise a toast for his birthday but intenlligibly, he just smiles and apologizes because he can’t join them for the peach champagne. He doesn’t like to drink while he knows it will catch him only on 2 shots and he will make himself even more ashamed in front of others. No thanks, He prefers to stay away as much as it's possible from them and rolls down on his thoughts' gray clouds.

But it didn't take too long. His friends want to enjoy and use all of their time with girls, music, and alcohol. What he doesn’t want to do. Why the fuck even he is here now for? It was like a torture on birthday's night before they leave, but when the last one, Shownu, just left and let him be alone with that damage control girl, it just turns to a perfect slowly death to him. The best he can do now is just stare at his feet and play with his glass of orange juice.

But he doesn’t know, the more he tries to be invisible, the more he attracts her attention to his shy behaves. She watches every move of him. His fingers gently dancing around on edge of glass between his hands, his nervous eyes, the way he moves neurotically his legs on the floor. He looks so cute to be able NOT To stare. It's rude but she just can't help.

“You are acting so awkward.” She says, while she keeps her big tempting eyes on him and drinks the last sip of her champagne. Almost makes him jump of his seat, surprised by her words. It wasn't hard for her to catch him up and he knows it completely, but he doesn’t want to be that easy.

“Excuse me?” He tries in his way to show things differently, hoping it works out and confuses her. But she didn't change her mind even for one second and just smirks. Like she already has read his mind and knows everything. What a dangerous lady!

“I’ve seen lots of boys and big men in my life and you are not like any of them around me. You are feeling so uncomfortable from that first moment you saw me. What’s the problem? I’m just wondering.” She lets her empty glass rest freely alone on the table and pulls herself closer to him, to make sure he hears every word she spells with her tongue. But it makes him even more nervous. Any move of her, even a simple breath and even that sweet scent of her, makes him nervous. She is so harmful to him.

“I’m just surprised by all this show because I was on my way home and suddenly I saw myself here. I apologize if I made you feel bad because of my behavior. I’m just tired.” He explains as best as he could, hoping he just leave him to be and find another fun company of her own for rest of the night, but she doesn’t want to go anywhere. He catches her eyes already. Rabbit on a damn shit trap.

“Yes, but it’s not for working too much until the morning.” She says with a smirk that makes her look even more devilish. He watches her like she's the real Satan and just comes on the earth to deceives him and makes him do horrible things. But the fear in his eyes only causes a beautiful light tone laugher of her.

“Don’t look at me like I’m a witch or something. I just know that kind of tiredness. And for your knowledge, I’ve seen lots of celebrities here and talked to them more often too.” She apprises to him about the truth of her. Might it help him relax and tries to have some fun.

“I don’t know what are you looking for on me, lady.” His words come out so cold like ices on a glass of whiskey, audibly talking to her about letting him go, but will she give up? absolutely not!

“Honestly nothing because you look like a statue of Michelangelo but only made of glass and I can see everything without even bother to ask.” She giggles silently after saying those words, mostly looks like saying she kinda gets into him already, but just even he can take the point? Not at all!

“I'm trying to make you take it easy.” So she tries to talks at an easier level of flirting.

“Yes. But I don’t need that ma'am.” And there we go again with Hoseok and his words from another level of speaking to fuck off bitch topic but in a polite way. He even doesn’t want to take a chance for himself to know a girl who is showing green lights to him, to come into her world.

“Ain’t you prince charming baby boy? Because you look like a gentleman jumping out of one of the fairy tails.” She speaks of that fact which is saying, the more you push and the more I'll follow.

“Are you trying to flirt with me?��� He asks with a suspicious look on his face. Of course he found that out from the very beginning but he doesn’t want to accept it. Even now he hopes more kicking that he found her point on her face, would makes her to get off. But mostly and far from his hopefully wishes to all dead and living Gods, she looks like saying to herself ,,GOD! He finally finds out what's going on,,.

“Maybe. Just for finding what’s the problem of those red cheeks and wet hands?” She states and wants him to know his nervous acts are so clear and there's no need to try harder to hide them because he simply can not. But the ice-cold-look boy keeps his glances away and leaves her only with no words.

“Maybe a female Hitler girlfriend?” She tries to guess. When he doesn’t want to play with her, she continues it alone.

“Ah no!” He says in an annoyed tone. He looks so done already with her but why just doesn’t leave and run away to save himself from this devil murmuring in his ears now? “No, I have no girlfriend.” He just says to make her stop.

“Interesting big boy!” She says while thinking about other possibilities. “So may I ask why no girlfriend?” she tries again with another guess.

“Because I have a very busy lifestyle.” He lazily answers, almost giving up on her little game.

“OH God, please! Be honest with a girl like me who knows 99% of idols has their lovers.” She says in disbelief. In her thoughts, a man just like him never can be alone in his life because he is already too perfect to be untouched by no girl's hands. Girls are ready to kill for him, she can swear.

“Maybe I’m just on that 1%.” He states against her judging tone and raises an eyebrow. Now he looks like that devil which he used to imagine her in disguise.

“People on that 1% are only looking for a good partner, so do you?” She continues on her explains about what she almost experienced with people around her and at the end, when she indirect points at what scares that big boy in front of her the shit out, she just killed all the warming up space between herself and him.

When he just drowns in his silence again, she tries this time to read his facial expressions. “There is something that you are hiding from everyone, Lee Hoseok.” She speaks about what she can see behind his eyes. There's a secret. A truth is untold to anyone.

As to keep saying no words is not a good way to reject lady devil away, he gets another idea. “How old are you?” And he asks to start it with a question.

“It’s a dangerous question to ask from a lady, big boy.” She says perfectly amazed by this change in his voice and sentence.

“I just wonder because your beautiful face can’t talk honestly and your tongue is about to have over 30.” So now he tries his best to use some of his flirting skills. He and everyone around know he is one of the best boys on it, so it's better he uses it now.

“Oh my my! I’m only 22.” She says almost raising her volume and puts a hand on her chest as he hurts her with his mean words. Acting just like a drama queen. That looks funny and makes him smile.

“If I had a sister, she could be your age.” He playfully talks before takes the last sip of orange juice on his glass.

“But people don’t flirt with their sisters, so I dare you to call me sisi now.” She wiggles her eyebrows while talking back in the same tone as his. Causing a warm laugher between them like they are not strangers anymore and it feels right.

He feels better now around her. He likes the power she holds and how she is full of positive energy even while he kept pushing her away and tries to break her heart politely, but he couldn't. He just can't break a girl like her or maybe better say because this is her. An especial one.

As the silence back, Honey finds some heavy glances on themselves. It was Hoseok friends, hopefully watching them and wishing under their whimpers between each other that Hoseok finally decides to move on and step up to another level of his life. A new thing and new feels.

“They’re thinking you are finally starting something.” She calmly tells him what she already found from their way to watch them and trying hard to do not act like they are watching their most exciting favorite TV shows.

“Why is that so matter?” His annoyed tone backs when he looks up at his friends and makes them immediately turn around and do anything to look normal as much as possible.

“Because they want you to be happy.” Honey tries to make him understand that his friends only want him to have a life for himself.

Before this party and even the time that they all decided to plane a big gift for him, Honey and Hyongwon and sometimes with other boys, they talked about how Hoseok lives as Wonho on stage and mostly he forgets the Hoseok part of his life. That personal part, that part which should be full of his things, not fans, not friends, not even his family but only him and what he enjoys doing. They always said how he cares about others more than himself and it's not hard to find him completely lost in thoughts to how to fix things when someone is talking about its own problems.

Secretly, boys thought that probably Honey is the one who can change Hoseok's life with her special powers of being a female alpha. They just wanted to give a chance to their best and kind friend to get some happiness for himself. But this all wasn't like Honey didn't know anything about the secret plane.

She knew Hoseok or that sexy Wonho always shinning on TV or everywhere else he appears with his god-like body shape. She silently had a little crush or some ticklish feel for him but she wasn't sure to look perfect enough to be with an amazing complete man like him.

This female fatal always tries to look so incredible and shine better than other girls around, but on another side, she always asks herself is she enough for everything? Is she good at what she's doing? And in her own eyes, no matter how much she tries, she's never all enough. Maybe it's all because she never had someone simply told her that she's fine. She doesn't need to push herself too much to get through. People always expect too much and they don't understand how it can hurt.

Suddenly, she finds herself drowning in staring at him like she is all about to appreciate one of the best and awesome works of art just here next to her. He is tired and needs to sleep, so she thinks it's better to make the night shorter and let him to finds his peace for what is left of the dark hours of the night.

“I have to wait till they back and we give you this. But I think before you get more awkward in front of everyone, better I do it now.” she states before taking off a little envelope from her handbag.

“This is your birthday gift.” Then she explains what's up about it, keeping the envelope close to him, expecting he takes it sooner and opens it.

“Two tickles of a flight, straight to Jeju Island for a break.” As he takes the envelope and slowly trying to open it, she couldn't help but leaks what's the surprise on it so then sees how his face changed to a shocked look.

“But I can’t go to a break now. I have a lot of stuff to do here.” He disaccords the idea of what they planned for him.

“They got your back and just want you to relax your mind only for a week.” She tries to comfort his worries and tells him to go and just have fun.

He looks at tickets in his hand. He knows he needs that to relax his mind for some days and only let his body and soul rest in peace to get enough energy to come back and work even harder. Indeed, he finished his promotions of his new album just some days ago and a great online concert after that, so he can accept it and just go. But when he just looks at that extra ticket, he feels bad even more that what it was. He doesn't want it. Better he chocks himself with working damn hard and pass out in late hours at night till tearing up every sunset in lonely holidays.

“You have to choose who you like to take with yourself for this trip.” She talks and makes it even more difficult to him. That much hard till he can't just deny that sad truth in his life.

“But I’m alone.” He says, mostly like a painful whimper and drops his head down. This view just aches Honey's heart. She doesn't want to see him like that.

“Any crush or someone you were into and you couldn’t tell it to her or even him to be with you?” She desperately tries to remind him what is not even exist in his life. And soon, when his expression even didn't change on a good way, she gives up. She feels guilty now because she sees herself as a bullying little girl at kindergarten who holds on a poor little boy and torturing him by the fact that he is all alone with no friends. She feels like a monster now.

“Ok! It’s up to you baby boy. You have your time till Friday night to find someone and stop being alone after all these years. Don’t you think?” She just says fast and gets up without waiting a second for his conceivable answer. But her words light his mind up this time. She's right. He's so sick to be alone, to wake up alone, to eat alone and even crying alone. Enough is enough to him.

He takes a deep breath and rise his head up to look her in the eyes, but it was like she was just that devil he thought about before and now she's all gone. Fully disappeared. But he doesn't want to give up. After all these times, he feels different around a girl and he can't deny his inner tendencies. His secret desires that used to scare him the hell out now feels not that bad and he knows it's all because of this fearless wild woman. He can't let all of this go so starts to search around between the crowd.

His friends are coming to him just by the time that they saw he gets lonely again. Almost disappointed in that thought he lost his chance to get a good girl in his birthday's night. Minhyuk climbs up to say some sarcastic words but Hoseok is faster. "Didn't you see where Honey goes?" He asks without even thinking twice and lets his friends confused. They also search around themselves to find her, but mostly they are curious why he is searching over her now after that long conversation between themselves? They want to know all about it.

"Does everything go well or ..." Hyongwon asks but he cuts his words off, his eyes moving between people faces one by one. "I'm fine. I'm about to leave and thank you for all of this but ..." He pauses at his words as his eyes catch her in front of the bar, ordering a drink for her terrible feels.

"I need to thank her too." He ends his sentence with some words which are meaning differently in this situation. Passing his friends so fast and almost running to the girl who is busy with choosing a heavy drink for herself.

She thanks the barman with a simple smile on his face which is gone almost when barman is turning around. She takes a deep breath and wants to spin around and see if he still looks upset or not, but when she just moves, almost jerk off with seeing him in only some inch distance with her face and body.

“Come with me.” He talks so speedy and she is not sure even if she hears him right with the loud music playing in the club.

“w-What?” She asks, looking like a lost little girl and completely eyes confused, do not to know where to focus. But he seems so serious and in rush.

“I know I look so rude and weird now but I think I want you to come with me.” He keeps himself down a bit and explains what he means. Now watching her with hope in his eyes to she accepts.

“So … I have to pack my things up.” She says confusedly. Not sure even what she's doing. Maybe it was what she waited for, but surely not like that. Anyway it looks cute so then why not?

“See you later.” He says with a fainted color smile on his lips. Probably thinking about he could save himself but also there's a voice in back of his head, saying terrifying words about how he can even control himself when he gets alone with this girl?

“Saturday morning on 9 AM.” She mentions date and time written on tickets. Low key saying that she spends a lot time to stare at those tickets wishing she be that lucky one who can stay with him on his unexpected vacation.

“Good night.” He says quickly as he sees his friends coming there. He was in pressure enough tonight from in and outside so better to run away now and let them to guess any dramatic things around what happened tonight.

“Yeah ... Good night.” She whispers, as watching his perfect back going out of her club, leaving her alone in shock and a bunch of questions which are coming to her and she doesn't know even how the fuck she supposes to tell them.

_____________________________________

Finally!!!!! I dare myself to upload it and there we go 😉

I hope you guys enjoy and don't care about errors lol 😆

Please let me know if you like that or not 🙏🏻🙈 sorry I'm so curious and excited for this fiction as it's my first one in English so ... Yeah just let me know 😅

Thank you guys 💕💕

[maxwell-grant]

Do you have any opinion on the Wold Newton universe or more generally the attempts to create a coherent universe based on massive crossover of victorian and/or pulp fictions ?

Fair warning to any and all of you who follow my blog and might think to yourselves "Wow, I want a Pulp Hero Cinematic Universe!". You don't. What you want is for these characters to thrive again and maybe kick ass together after reestablishing themselves as cool and popular and interesting characters in the pop culture eye, and I want that too, I've been working on ideas for years to try and bring some of that to reality, it's part of the whole point of this blog in the first place, and I must stress: Nothing, and I repeat, nothing, is going to put these characters six feet under faster than a botched attempt to follow in the MCU's footsteps. You don't want to watch these characters suffocate under the strain of a cinematic universe. I didn't like watching it happen with Marvel to begin with, as much as that clearly worked out for them.

If DC could only just barely catch up to the MCU's shadow and only started to thrive when they took a diametrically opposite approach, if the Monsterverse, despite the fact that it's characters were already in a cinematic universe together, only just barely limps on due to the popularity of it's central players, the pulp heroes don't have a chance in hell if they try and play by those rules. The Shadow and Doc Savage and Green Hornet can survive failed reboots, but not every character's got that kind of safety net, not every author can afford to take the risks necessary to commit to these properties, and some characters take a lot longer to crawl out of graves than others.

So with that said, let's talk about the WNU.

When I first started doing research on pulp heroes in general I spent a very long time going through all of the Wold Newton pages I could find, and I have a lot of them saved in case the websites get taken down one way or another. I still consult them frequently and I still consider them a pretty invaluable resource for anyone who wants to get acquainted with pulp characters, even if it must be prefaced that the WNU is basically fanfiction.

The Wold Newton Universe was a massive shared fanfiction universe before we had a proper name for this kind of thing and I do find it a little disheartening that, despite it predating or influencing works like LOEG and Incognito and Planetary, and how several current authors either got started writing articles for it or even professed their love of it, it's a currently dead project. I guess it ultimately wasn't supposed to even last as long as it did anyway, and much like the characters it's based on, it ultimately doesn't really die so much as it just lives on differently.

The big problem I have with the mainline WNU is, besides not liking Phillip Jose Farmer's writing, that much of it is basically crack fanfiction built on very, very flimsy family connections as an excuse to tie characters together, and already I think the premise that somehow, all of these characters are related, all of them are part of a special family tree connected by meteor-irradiated blood, to be extremely weak. A lot of the writing in many of the WNU pages is just not good and not workable, and it's hard to fault it as such considering this is fanfic, it's written by enthusiastic fans and not professional writers (although some of these people are, the Lofficiers have no excuse). But the great thing about the WNU is that, because it's a shared project with no ownership, everyone gets to play around and rewrite canon at will and bring their own angle to it.

There's WNU pages that are very hardline against the inclusion of superheroes, others don't have that restriction at all. There's WNU fan pages focusing exclusively on monsters and horror. Jess Nevins wrote a ton of pages digging out the really obscure characters only he knows about. There's Cool French Comics which is focused heavily on the European side of things, which is also where I discovered The Grey Claw's existence, and Tales of the Shadowmen is based a lot on these. I know for a fact that there used to be at least a couple of pages focusing on anime although the Wayback Machine doesn't have most of them archived. It's not so much a single shared universe or timeline so much as it's several, outright dozens, of them depending on who's writing the pages, and they were all free to either incorporate theories made by other authors or purposefully rewrite them. It’s a freedom afforded by the fact that these are non-profit fanfics, and the fact that over half of the characters in these webpages are public domain or in copyright purgatory to begin with.

Unlike with DC, who's got a hodgepodge of concepts that logically shouldn't work together but are still held together by the consistent ideal of the superhero and the Justice League and whatnot, and Marvel, who was a continuous crossover soap opera right from the start, the Pulp Heroes don't live in the same worlds, don't live in the same time periods, many of them weren't designed to do so, don't have a sliding timescale or rebooting timeline to keep them perpetually on the same level, they don't exist under unified copyright, don't operate by the same rules, and are less built to sacrifice their individuality and settings for the sake of costumed punch-ups with a bunch of randos. Superheroes are able to exist together by operating under a very strongly defined notion of what a superhero is and does, and if the Pulp Heroes had anything of the sort, I wouldn't have to make a chart in the first place trying to create a coherent explanation as to what defines them.

Before the MCU could sell people on the Avengers, it first had to sell them on all of it's other team players first, it needed to do the groundwork and rework all of it's existing characters to make sure they could reasonably be crammed on screen together. From the start, their universe was dictated by the need to have these characters team up. Be honest: Do you think this is gonna work for the Pulp Heroes? Characters whose greatest selling point, whose most enduring and unique traits, are the ways in which they are not like other heroes? Characters that currently struggle for newfound popularity because of the common notion that they are just superheroes, except old and racist and outdated. Do you think these characters aren't better off instead dispelling these preconceptions to rebel against the superhero dominance and thrive in different areas? The secret of their success in the first place was the ways in which they weren't like the Victorian Heroes that preceded them, and guess what, now they are on the same boat.

The concept is not unworkable, it's not impossible, some good stories have resulted out of mashing the icons big and small together, hell I have several Pulp Hero universe concepts I'm working on. But I must stress the need of approaching this from a different perspective. And that perspective starts with doing the groundwork on what works and what doesn't for them.

The only genuinely successful pulp hero universes to an extent I've seen were those that were built from the ground up based on an idea that these characters were supposed to interact and work together, or at least share a history together. The strongest one I've seen would definitely be The Chimera Brigade, because it's not preoccupied with mashing icons together but instead telling a story informed by the history of these characters, informed by it's central point: Namely, what does a pulp/superhero history look like from a French perspective. It's biggest names are used only sparingly, it's got a ton of original characters to make the world feel more seamless and real, it takes the routes less traveled to make the story stand more on it's own feet and not just based on the characters it's intended to reference. And in doing so, it's also allowed several of it's characters to thrive individually as well as collectively.

In that regard, I think the greatest thing the WNU has is that it provides a skeleton to work with. It provides not just one but several ideas of what you can do with these characters past their respective stories, either in personal canons, crossovers with other properties or even existing in shared universes. The ideas are there either for existing characters or original creations. What you do with those ideas is up to you.