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flemingsfreckles · 6 months

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Be a Good Teammate pt. 4

Jessie Fleming x Reader

Read Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 first!

Preview: You and Jessie have dinner at her new place.

Warnings: it’s angsty yall, buckle up (just for a bit), swearing, very brief mention of sex (no descriptions, nothing like that, but it gets mentioned)

WC: 5.5k

A/N: I think this is the end of this series. I never intend to make it more than 1 part honestly, but you all enjoyed it enough so here we are at Part 4. This also ended up more angsty than I had planned so, whoops :)

It was nearing 5pm when your Uber pulled up in front of the address Jessie had sent you. You thanked the driver and hopped out. You hadn’t thought much of the address, not noticing that there wasn’t an apartment number or a unit letter attached to the end of it, so you were surprised to find yourself standing in front of a house instead of an apartment complex as you had expected.

It was a small little blue house, wood fencing all around, a good sized front yard, a few trees, it was exactly what you would expect Jessie to pick out.

You pulled your phone out of your sweatpants pocket to let her know you had arrived. You had gotten back to the hotel, quickly thrown on a Nike sweatshirt and a fitted pair of gray joggers.

“Hi.” You look up to see Jessie walking through the doorway and down the steps toward the fence gate. You put your phone back in your pocket, not needing to let her know you were here anymore. She reached the gate, unlatched it and held it open for you to come inside. You notice that she quickly looks you up and down as you walk through into her front yard. You can’t help but do the same to her.

Jessie’s hair was down, still slightly wet from her postgame shower, she was wearing a lavender colored long sleeved shirt and a pair of sweatpants. She looked cozy, as if she was ready to cuddle up on the couch for the evening like she had mentioned wanting to do.

“You bought a house?” Your curiosity gets the best of you and you can’t help but ask.

“Yeah, I did. I lived with Janine and her fiancé for the first few weeks while I looked at places, and then I had to leave for the gold cup and I just couldn’t find any apartment that felt like home. I started looking at houses instead once I got back. This was actually the first one I saw and I really liked it. It’s not too big, which works since it’s just me right now but has some room if I need it in the future.” Your brain wanders to the thought of Jessie having her own kids in the future, you knew she wanted them and you had seen how good she was with kids over the years.

“Plus I figured even if I’m only here for a couple years, I can keep the house. It’s only been a few weeks but I love the area. I'd consider coming back here to settle when soccer is over.” She opened the front door, stepping back to let you walk in first.

You slip off your shoes, placing them on the mat next to the door where Jessie’s shoes lay neatly in a row. Looking up you realize you're standing in her living room, there’s a large gray couch, a small table in front of it, a tv, a bookshelf that’s filled with books and art and other trinkets.

“You can keep a plant alive now?” You tease her as you see she has a variety of green plants. In college you had watched her become what you described as a serial killer of plants.

“I’m getting better. A lot of them were housewarming gifts from my teammates so I maybe just haven't had enough time to kill them.”

Stepping out of the entryway you walk over to her bookshelf, looking at the various titles, there’s a couple photos placed on the bookshelf, one with her parents after she had won the gold medal, one of her and her Chelsea teammates holding up a couple trophies, one of her and her siblings all wearing matching Christmas pajamas. The opening to the kitchen was just to your right, you step in its direction before turning to look at Jessie who was following closely behind you.

“Can I see the kitchen?” You don’t want to invade her privacy by inviting yourself to take a tour of her place.

As if she read your mind she gestures her hand in the direction of the kitchen. “Go ahead, I can just give you the whole tour now while we wait for the food, it should be on its way by now. I was also thinking we can watch the Angel City and Orlando game, only if you want it should be on at 7. ” She looks at the clock mounted on the wall.

“Yeah that sounds good.” You reply as you step into the kitchen.

Her kitchen was cute, the same wood accent from the outside of the house scattered throughout. She offered you an ice pack for your nose as you stood looking at her fridge. You declined, having just taken the pain meds, it was bearable pain.

As you continue to move through her house Jessie makes a few comments here and there about what she liked about the house so much, the wood flooring, the large windows that let in natural light, the little nook that she had set up to be a place to read. Hearing her talk about the little things, paint colors, furniture was so simple and yet it made you feel like you were back to your old friendship. The simple minded discussions, the joking around, all the tiny moments you would have with her, it hit you how much you really missed just her existence and company.

You get to two closed doors at the end of the hallway, you point at the one closest to you and look back at Jessie.

“Linen closet, nothing exciting unless you want to see towels.” You move your finger to point at the other. “My bedroom.”

“Oh,” You’re not sure what to say, the closed door seemed like an obvious sign to not go in. Jessie again, able to tell what was running through your head, speaks up.

“You can go in, I just close the door out of habit. I don’t have anything to hide.” Wanting to see her bedroom, you push open the door. It reminds you a little bit of her bedroom in your college apartment. Not much as far as decor, just a few special things on display throughout. Her bed in the center of the room, a nightstand on one side.

“Sorry it’s still a mess in here, I haven’t had a ton of time to dedicate to unpacking and I was more focused on the rooms everyone else would see.” You look around, trying to find the mess she was referring to. Her bed was made, no clothes scattered across the floor, no pile of clean laundry to be put away, no water bottles on bedsides, not even dust, just a few boxes stacked neatly in the corner, the one on top open as if she had been in the middle of unpacking when you had arrived.

“If this is what you consider a mess, we have completely different standards of mess.” You let out a laugh, Jessie doesn’t say anything, just gives you a smile and slow nod.

You’re interrupted by her phone ringing, she picks it up and before answering the call she points around the corner. “If you want to see my bathroom, it's through the closet. I’ll be right back.”

She walks out of the room and you hear her answer the call. You take a second look around her bedroom, looking at the couple of personal items that were scattered, photos of her and her Canada teammates, photos of her family, photos of skylines and nature that you assume she had taken. She has her array of cameras all neatly set on a shelf, displaying them. Making your way over to her closet you walk through to peek into her bathroom. It looked like a bathroom, nothing too special about it, a shower, toilet, a vanity with two sinks, her toothbrush, hairbrush, and other bathroom things just placed neatly around one side.

You turn back to go wait in her bedroom being done looking at the bathroom. You walk into her closet, taking a quick glance around, the closet had more boxes in it than unpacked clothing items. Each box was neatly labeled, varying in sizes, all stacked on top of one another. You look at what clothes she had unpacked, it was nearly all clothes for training, one pile had clothes with the maple leaf and the name Canada across them, the other a mix of red, green, some blue, with the thorn’s logo and Portland across them. Looking back toward the exit of the closet your eye catches on a box, more specifically the label of the box catches your eye.

It was a box with your name on it. Printed carefully along the side, in Jessie’s handwriting. You could feel your heart begin to race. You couldn’t move, your eyes staring, your own name looking back at you. Why did she have a box with your name on it?

“Foods here.” You didn’t even hear Jessie coming, the sound of your blood rushing through your ears muffling outside noises. She comes around the corner, you quickly look away, not wanting her to see you and think you were snooping through her stuff. You weren’t, but you could see how it could look suspicious, but then again she was the one with a box labeled for you. She must’ve seen your sudden movement as she looks at you with a questioning look, then at where the box sat, you see the moment she knows you’ve seen the box. Her eyes widen and dart back to you. You expect her to say something, she does, just not about the box.

“It’s on the kitchen table.” Her face returns to a relaxed state, almost emotionless.

“Perfect.” Mirroring her behavior you decide maybe you’ll both just pretend that box doesn’t exist. Maybe you’ll just let it eat away at you for years, just like you had done with your feelings for the girl. You follow her out of the closet and bedroom back down the hallway and into the kitchen.

You both make a plate, grab a water, and sit down at her kitchen table. She sits first and you’re then forced to make the choice between sitting next to her or across from her. You decide on sitting across, hoping she doesn’t judge your choice. It’s quiet for the first few minutes, just the sound of silverware. Jessie keeps her eyes down, looking very interested in the plate of food sitting before her. You knew it was going to be awkward, seeing her in a non-football setting for the first time in so long, you were prepared for the small talk, asking about your family, your friends, the weather, you weren’t prepared for whatever this was. Both of you sitting here thinking about that box brought a whole different level of unexpected discomfort, it was making you itch.

“Your girlfriend doesn’t mind you having a box with another girl's name on it?” Unable to hold it in any longer, you let the question come out, you quickly kick yourself for asking that way, bringing her girlfriend into this conversation. Jessie picks up her head and puts her fork down.

“She’s not my girlfriend anymore.” Choosing the wrong time to take a sip from your glass you choke slightly causing a coughing fit. Jessie just looks at you as you try to calm down. Once you stop coughing she continues muttering the words, “and she actually did mind. A lot.”

Your brain is spinning, you heard her keep talking but your mind kept repeating the words she had spoken “not my girlfriend anymore”.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you split.” You now feel guilty for bringing up the girl.

“Of course you didn’t, you stopped talking to me, you didn’t get to have the privilege of knowing that we split.” Her tone of voice was shifting, becoming annoyed. Wanting to ask more but also not wanting to pry on a relationship you barely knew about.

“Why didn’t you just get rid of the stuff? If that would’ve made her happy?”

“I don’t know.” She pauses looking down at her hands. “I mean I do, it’s,” she sighs. “To be fair it wasn’t just the box, she had always been a little suspicious of our relationship, I told her the truth, that there’s never been anything between us, we didn’t have a history. And she believed me, I think, at least at the start. But then when you stopped talking to me, she’d catch me watching your games, checking up on you, looking at old photos of us, and she eventually found some clothing of yours that I had put away, along with the notes we used to write each other, the birthday cards, the Polaroids, everything. I wasn’t intentionally hiding but it was out of sight out of mind for me. I didn’t need the constant reminder that I had been dumped by my best friend. She again made the assumption that we had dated, or at least had slept together. She read the letters claiming friends to talk to each other in that manner. That was just the start of the mess.”

Nodding along to her story, you try to show her you’re paying attention, and you were, it was just hard when your mind was drifting to a hundred different thoughts.

“And then the rumors started about my transfer. I hadn’t told her about it, I hadn't even mentioned the idea of leaving London. I wasn’t even sure it was going to go through, it was a lot of money for Portland and I was waiting on visas and medical and all that bureaucracy and we got into an argument about it. She accused me of moving for the wrong reasons, she brought up you.” Jessie pauses for a minute as if to collect her thoughts before she continues.

“ I then said some things about you I shouldn’t have said to her and then it was over with her shortly after.” The volume of her voice drops as she rushed her words at the end of her sentence.

“You could’ve just thrown it all out at the start, if that would’ve fixed things with her, I wouldn’t have known.” Your statement is true, you didn’t even know she had kept all those things you wouldn’t have known if she had gotten rid of them.

“It wasn’t that easy, I know we weren’t talking, and like I said we weren’t even friends, but fuck I missed you so much. You were my best friend for nearly 5 years, only to get dropped without a reason and I was mad at you, sure but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of that box of stuff.”

“There was a reason, I hope you know that.”

“Well you didn't give me a reason, if you just would’ve told me I could’ve fixed it or apologized or something. Instead I just had to sit and run through every decision I had ever made questioning where I went wrong with you, what I did to hurt you.” You can see tears welding in her eyes as she continues to stare at you, despite the tears, her eyes are cold and make you feel tiny under her gaze.

You stayed sitting, staring back at her, having no clue on what to say to her, stuck between wanting to apologize and also wanting to yell back at her. You silence allows her to continue.

“I would’ve done anything to have you back in my life, all you had to do was ask, but it felt like you wanted nothing to do with me. And that fucking hurt.” Her fist comes down hard on the table, it startles you, making you sit back away from where you had been leaning against the table. You cross your arms as you sit back and bow your head to stare down.

“I couldn’t ask.” It comes out quiet, from your mouth almost as if it was an accident.

“What?”

“I couldn’t ask you to fix it, it wouldn’t have been fair.” Speaking louder you bring your head back up to look at her.

Now it’s her turn to say nothing. She looks from you to where her hands sat on the table. She just waits, giving you the space to give her more information. You know you owe her the explanation, what you don’t expect is the word vomit that comes out once you start.

“I couldn’t ask you to break up with her, I couldn’t tell you I was jealous of her, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you those things, you seemed so happy with her, it wouldn’t have been fair. I had my chance for 4 years before she existed to tell you and I didn’t, but I also couldn’t stand seeing you so happy with her, it tore me apart, I wanted you to be happy and you were. It just sucked that you were happy with someone else. It sucked trying to be a supportive friend, I hated having to hear about your dates, and hearing about your first kiss, and I really hated having to hear all about the first time you two fucked.” The last word coming off with extra emphasis, the memory of her call to you after their night together briefly plays in your mind, only making you more upset.

“I hated it Jessie, but I sat through it for as long as I could because I wanted to be there for you. I wanted to be a good friend to you. I wanted to still be your best friend but I couldn’t and all I wanted was for her to no longer exist. I started to think horrible things about her and your relationship and that’s when I knew I needed to take a step back for my own health. I was no longer being a good friend to you. So I stepped back.” Your voice was loud, you were slightly out of breath barely stopping between words as you yelled across toward her, you’re not sure why you were yelling, you weren’t trying to yell at her. It wasn’t her fault she had found someone to make her happy that wasn’t you. But the past year of frustration had built and built and unfortunately this was the time the wall broke, and here you were practically shouting at Jessie across her own kitchen table.

Jessie doesn’t say anything. She stands up from the table, the sound of her chair scraping the floor was the only noise in an otherwise silent room. Grabbing her own empty plate and then extending her hand she offers to take yours. You pass it to her. She walks them over to the sink, putting them down, running the water over them. You stand up, not wanting to feel like a terrible house guest, you start packing the leftovers back up. You open the fridge door and place them inside. The water shuts off and Jessie puts the plates on a mat to dry. She walks past you, not saying anything as she moves into the living room. You hear the noise of the couch, assuming she has sat down you take a few steps toward the other room.

She’s sitting on the couch, bent over with her head in her hands. Her thumb is rubbing against her temple and she’s bouncing her knees. Leaning against the doorway you stay quiet, you feel bad for yelling at her, seeing her overwhelmed like this because of you, tugged on your heart. You wanted to rush to her side and hug her but you also knew that would probably be the worst thing you could do. You stayed put, leaned against the wall just watching her. She lets out a large breath and then sits up.

“What?”

“I didn’t,” you shake your head, not sure what she’s asking. “Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

“I know, but you look like you want to, so what? Just say it. Don’t be a coward again.” Her words are harsh, insulting you in a way she hadn’t ever before. To be fair to her you realized you had also never yelled at her before either.

“I’m not a coward.”

“Hiding your feelings for 6 whole years, 5 of those years when we were best friends feels a little cowardly, but that’s just my opinion.” You hadn’t seen Jessie like this often, especially towards you, she was almost being mean, not caring what she said to you or how she was saying it.

“Fine, what did you say about me to her? Before you broke up, you said that you said stuff to her about me that you shouldn’t have. What did you say?” You can’t help but ask, the question of what she had said had been sitting in your brain since she mentioned it.

When Jessie doesn’t respond right away you push her. “Don’t be a coward.” You mock her tone from earlier using her own words. She rolls her eyes at you.

“She accused me of moving to try and be closer to you, she said I wanted to rekindle our relationship. And by that point I couldn’t take her nagging about you anymore and so I was honest with her. I told her the reason I had kept all of your stuff, the reason I checked up on you, the reason I would look at old photos of us, even though you didn’t care about me anymore. I had to tell her my memories of you were comforting for me.” She looks you in the eyes for a second before looking down at her hands.

“Those memories felt like home, that you felt like home. And I then had to tell her that was something I had never felt with her.”

You’re not sure how to respond, trying to process all of Jessie’s words before saying anything back to her. You move off the wall and sit down on the couch, putting some distance between where you both sat.

“Naturally, admitting having feelings for someone else to your current partner doesn’t go over well so that was the end of that.” She mumbles as you sit down.

“You have feelings for me?” Maybe you had heard her wrong, doubting that this conversation was actually happening. She slowly blinks at you.

“Did they check you for a concussion after the hit?” Her question only confuses you more.

“What?”

“Oh my god.” Jessie throws her hands up. “Yes, I have feelings for you. That’s what I just said, I just didn’t really know that they were those kinds of feelings until you stopped talking to me and I realized how important you were and that it felt like I was missing a part of me that no one besides you could fill. And then I had her, and that was fine for a little bit, but she wasn’t you.”

You have half a thought to call her out, call her a coward the way she had to you for hiding her own feelings, but decide against it.

The silence takes over the room, you’re not sure what to say to her. What do you say to someone you’ve been secretly in love with for 5 years when they finally admit they want you back? Where do you even start to make up for the time you both wasted? Where do you go from this conversation?

Thankfully you don’t have to figure it out at that moment as both your phone and Jessie’s vibrate and light up, both of you reviving the notification that the Angel City and Orlando game was set to start.

Jessie looks up from reading the notification, “Do you still want to watch the game? I understand if you don’t, I probably wouldn’t want to stay around someone who called me a coward.”

“I want to stay, if that’s okay. You can yell at me and call me whatever, but just being around you has really made me realize how much I’ve missed your company. So, I’d like to stay if you’ll let me?”

“Of course.” She reaches for the remote on her coffee table and points it toward the tv turning it on.

“Can I get that ice pack you offered earlier?” No longer caught up in the intense conversation you feel the pain from your nose starting to return in full force. Jessie tosses the tv remote in your direction and hops up from the couch immediately, rushing to her freezer. She comes back with an ice pack, a bag of frozen veggies, a towel, and a bottle of pain meds.

“Do you want to just sit and hold it or lay down? I can get you a different pillow. I brought the towel in case the direct ice is too cold. And if you want these.” She gives the bottle of medicine a shake. “I also wasn’t sure if the ice pack would sit nicely on your face so I got this.” She holds out the package of frozen vegetables to you.

“Yeah that’ll actually probably work best.” You take it from her hand. “Thanks.” You add. She placed the pain meds on the coffee table and leaves to put the other ice pack back in the freezer. You use the remote to find the game, and Jessie returns as they commentators start talking about the starting lineups for each side.

When Jessie sits down you notice she sits a lot closer to you then the two of you had been before. Your hips and thighs are only inches apart. She leans back and puts her feet up onto the table.

You both sit in what is now a more comfortable silence, watching the game. You both make comments here and there about footwork, ball movement, passes, shots, critiquing and complementing the players. At halftime Jessie stands up, takes the now thawed bag of vegetables from you and brings it back to the freezer. She comes back from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn and waters.

When she sits back down, she closes the gap between the two of you. The outside of her leg now resting against the outside of yours. She places the popcorn bowl so that it rests on both of you. Jessie leans back to rest against the back of the couch and you do the same. The game starts back up again, you both focusing your attention back to the tv.

It only takes 5 minutes into the second half for you to feel Jessie shift in her seat. She’s moving only slightly but being hyper aware that she’s pressed up against you, you can’t help but notice her movements. Your breath catches in your throat as you feel her lean her head over, placing it to rest on your shoulder, leaving her body more forcefully against yours. Your whole body tenses, not wanting to move and disturb her.

You stay like this for a couple minutes. Deciding you couldn’t let her make all the moves you glance down to see Jessie’s hands resting on top of each of her thighs. You place your own hands in the same position, then move the one closest to her, in her direction. You move just as slow as she had until your pinky finger is hovering just over hers. You slowly let your hand fall on top of hers, she doesn’t pull away, or tell you off. Instead she flips her hand so her palm is now facing up. Eager to finish what you had started you now quickly move your hand, interlocking your fingers with hers. You wait a minute, then let the pad of your thumb gently rub against her thumb.

You stayed in that position, holding her hand, her head resting on your shoulder as the two of you watched the remainder of the game. Wanting more time with Jessie you desperately were hoping for an insane amount of added time, unfortunately only 3 minutes are added and the game is quick to end.

Jessie pulls her head off your shoulder, sitting up with a yawn.

“I should probably get back.” You say, realizing it was nearing 9pm and while you didn’t have a curfew, you still didn’t want to be caught coming back too late by any of your teammates knowing you’d never hear the end of it, especially since they knew you were at Jessie's.

“Right.” Jessie stands up from the couch and flips a light on. The sun had gone down as you watched the game and the two of you were in the dark without the light from the tv. She holds her hand out to you, you take it and stand up. You quickly pull out your phone and order an Uber, thankful you were in a larger city and your ride would be here in less than 5 minutes. You move toward the door, bending down to slip your shoes on before standing up facing Jessie.

“It feels weird to say that I had a really good time tonight with all the yelling that happened, but I did. I had a really good time with you Jessie.” You smile at her.

“I had a good time too, this was nice. I’ve missed you.” She replies to you. She holds her arms out to you, offering a hug. You take a step toward her, leaning in to wrap your arms around her waist as she places hers on your shoulders. You stay hugging, longer than a normal friend’s goodbye hug would be. You both release the hold on each other but you don’t move back from her. You stay face to face, your eyes staring back at her brown ones.

Much to your surprise Jessie is the one who makes the move. One of her hands comes up to your cheek, her fingers are warm and soft on your skin. Her eyes break contact with yours dropping to your lips quickly and then back up. She starts to lean in but stops just moments before your lips would connect.

“Is this okay?” Her voice is barely audible, quieter than a whisper.

“Yes.” Before you have a second to think about kissing her it’s already happening. It’s a gentle kiss, her lips just placed on top of yours. She starts to pull away a second later, but you let your head chase her lips, giving her a bit more forceful of a kiss. In doing so, you bump your nose against hers causing you to pull back quickly from her, hand coming to clutch your nose.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry I forgot about your nose.” Jessie’s eyes are wide as her hand comes to rest on the forearm of the hand holding your face.

“It’s okay Jess, that was my fault, I forgot too for a second.” You wipe your hand under your nose and look down at your fingers making sure you’re not bleeding again. “It’s not crooked or anything right?”

“No, but those black eyes are starting to come in.” Her eyes dart between both of yours. You both let out a small laugh and then are left in silence.

“I’d like to take you out sometime, on a proper date, if you’d want that?” You look at her hopeful she’ll want to continue whatever the two of you started.

“I do, I want that.” She smiles back at you, you let out a sigh of relief.

“Okay.” You can’t help but smile big back at her.

“Okay.” She just repeats your words.

“I should be going.” You repeat your words from earlier, you knew you had to go, you just didn’t want to.

Jessie moves her hand from your forearm up to your face to grab your chin. You think for a second she’s going to kiss you again but then she’s pushing your head away from her and to the side. She moves in and places her lips on your cheek.

“Once your nose is healed you can have more on the lips.” She says teasingly. The gentle gesture has you blushing more than the kisses to your lips did. She releases your face and you see her eyes look at your cheeks, the blush growing. You turn quickly facing the door, grabbing the handle and stepping out.

“Goodnight Jessie.”

#jessie fleming #portland thorns #jessie fleming imagine #jessie fleming x reader #jflem #woso imagine #woso x reader #canwnt

253 notes · View notes

trustfratedjin · 1 year

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BANGTAN OT7 FIC RECS VOL. 1

Aight, here we go

Keep in mind that the 18+ warning does NOT only apply to smut, so please read the individual warnings on EVERY fic, thank yeowww :)

OT7

Idol!AU

Little Do You Know by @yoongiofmine Complete 18+

Relax, It’s Our Honeymoon! by @birchandspruce Complete 18+

You Complete Us by birchandspruce Complete

wild, wild, wilderness by @kimnjss Complete 18+

home sweet castle by kimnjss Complete 18+

The Plot Twist ft Soulmate!AU by @blog-name-idk Ongoing 18+

The Line Between Love And War ft Soulmate!AU by @purpleyoonn Ongoing

baby (you complete us) ft Soulmate!AU by purpleyoonn Ongoing 18+

Unorthodox by @beahae Ongoing 18+

The curious move-in to apartment 27 by @sor-vette Ongoing 18+

Got the music in you baby by @minniedaisies One Shot

Love Starved by @hollyhomburg One Shot 18+

The Sex Strike by @borathae One Shot 18+

Soulmate!AU

The Book of Soulmates by @alpacaparkaseok Complete

Moonchild by @jeonggukkiepabo Ongoing? idk hehe 18+

Mafia!AU

Between The Bloodshed by @agustdakasuga Complete 18+

Ethereal ft Fantasy!AU by purpleyoonn Complete 18+

Ride With you by @jellifysh Ongoing 18+

The Way Of A Criminal by agustdakasuga Ongoing 18+

Thou Shall Not Steal by @xherxx Ongoing 18+

A/B/O!AU

House of the Omegaverse ft Dark!AU by @sopejinsunflower Complete 18+

Lone Wolf by @sopebubbles Ongoing 18+

Before I leave you ft Dark!AU by @hollyhomburg (READ THE TW FOR REAL) Ongoing 18+

Royal!AU / Historical!AU

The Return of an Empress by @you-are-my-joy Complete 18+

Fall of Empire by @aloneatpeace Ongoing 18+

Hybrid!AU

Abundance by @angelicyoongie Ongoing 18+

100% sure i've read more but i can't remember any of em rn lol

Dark!AU

Death Valley by @bangtangalicious Complete 18+

College!AU

Everything Falls (Into Place) by blog-name-idk Complete 18+

Thesis It by xherxx Complete 18+

The Apartment Games by @softiejoon Maybe discontinued but here for the aesthetics

Kings of Campus by @luxekook Ongoing 18+

Journey to the dick by @whatifyoulivelikethat One Shot 18+

Sharing is Caring by @theharrowing One Shot 18+

Fantasy!AU

Recrudescence ft Idol!AU by @chimchimsauce Complete 18+

To have, to hold, to make you stay by sor-vette Complete 18+

Other

All the Kinks ft Multifandom, Multi!AU’s by @helvonasche Complete 18+

Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things by jellifysh Complete 18+

Boyfriend for Hire by @remedyx Ongoing 18+

Audios by @youmyjhope 18+

Sh. by @wwilloww Ongoing? idk hehe 18+

NOT OT7

Idol!AU

Need by @bang-tan-bitches ft KNJ, JHS and MYG ft A/B/O!AU Complete 18+

The bias room by @chimivx ft MYG, KTH and JJK One Shot

Desperate by borathae ft PJM, KTH and JJK One Shot 18+

Floored by @lavienjin ft JHS, PJM, JJK One Shot 18+

College!AU

Stretch You Out by @chateautae ft KNJ and JJK One Shot 18+

Fantasy!AU

bitten & knotted by @jamaisjoons ft JHS and KNJ One Shot 18+

Other

Magic Hands by @breadoffoxy ft PJM and KTH Complete 18+

Fucking Around by @tanniefm ft PJM, KTH and JJK One Shot 18+

The Art Of Self Restraint by @scribblemetae ft PJM, KTH and JJK One Shot 18+

The Sope Surprise by @chelsea-chee ft JHS and MYG One Shot 18+

The D Box by breadoffoxy ft KSJ, MYG and JJK One Shot 18+

Swiss Miss by @here4kpopfics ft KNJ and KSJ One Shot 18+

Bigger & Better by lavienjin ft KNJ and KTH One Shot 18+

Package Deal by @hoseokhasmyheartxx ft JHS and MYG One Shot 18+

Rain On Me by @dawnagustd ft KTH and JJK One Shot 18+

When i tell you my hand is cramped from all the clicking and my eyes are blurry for staring at the screen for 8+ hours...

AND THIS IS HOW WE CONCLUDE 1/9 REC POSTS WUUUU

Stay tuned because I still have to post the recs from each member and one final giving a massive shoutout to all my favorite BTS fic authors of all time (including everyone here and many more hehe)

You'll notice that some authors weren't properly tagged, that's cause tumblr wouldn't let me tag more than 50 users, so I made sure to tag the writers AT LEAST ONE TIME in case there were more than one of their works mentioned here :)

Btw, if any of the links don't work or there is a mistake or anything, please let me know so I can fix it :)

BANGTAN'S HYUNG LINE FIC RECS VOL. 1

BANGTAN'S MAKNAE LINE FIC RECS VOL. 1

#trustfratedjin's fic recs #bts fic rec #bts smut #bts x reader #ot7 x reader #bts fanfic #bts x you #bts fic #jungkook smut #taehyung smut #jimin smut #hoseok smut #yoongi smut #seokjin smut #namjoon smut #bts fic recs

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mybeingthere · 8 months

Text

Tzu Ting Wang, b. 1987 in Taiwan

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany / Taipei, Taiwan

2011 MA Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London, UK

2007-2009 Fine Art, Taipei national university of the Arts, Taipei, Taiwan

http://www.jamieswang.com/

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sugarwithtea · 2 years

Text

moonlight sonata | myg [teaser]

pairing : pianist!yoongi x fem!reader

rating/genre : m (18+) // angst, smut, fluff, enemies to lovers

summary : Passion is a fickle thing. It is a feeling that drives you to success, but if lost -- you can turn as stagnant as a pond. Min Yoongi has always took pride in his passion, his skill, his art. But what happens when slowly the flame dies inside him? He returns back home, to the place where he had started to love music. But, you are there. The bane of his existence. You hate him like a sweltering flame, bigger than his passion for music. And you, are not so thrilled with the news of his return. What happens when you both inevitably cross paths and start a saga of hate and love?

word count : 978 [teaser] // TBD for the full fic (15k+)

warnings : for the teaser - none // full fic - explicit smut, use of drugs, alcoholism, mental health issues (not glorified) (all of them will be mentioned explicitly in the final piece)

note 1 : this fic is a part of the composition of the century collab hosted by @joheunsaram @raplinesmoon and @kithtaehyung !!

note 2 : this idea has been in my drafts for so long, I'm glad I'm getting the chance to finally put it out !! i hope i am able to do as well as i expected! HAPPY YOONGI DAY !! also, big thanks to @oddinary4bts and @moccahobi for helping me with this one and saving my ass !!

masterlist | taglist (permanent)

Yoongi is falling relentlessly.

He is also failing, relentlessly.

His hands slide down the keys making a sharp ping sound. They then rest on his lap, as his head hangs low and eyes burn with the tears that well up in them.

The moonlight spills into the empty auditorium as if to mock him of his upcoming days, if he goes on like this. An empty auditorium, no audience, no one who will listen to him.

He toys with the fake red ruby encrusted on the edge of the fall board, before he stands up abruptly from his seat, slings his bag over his shoulder and leaves.

He has been doing this for weeks.

He doesn't know how he got here. Not in the auditorium, that was with his Palisade parked snugly in the lot. No, it's not that. He doesn't know how he got to the point where he feels like a college student, struggling to write a composition and bleeding his tips by playing the keys for endless hours, and still not excelling or performing impressively.

It was not always like this, of course. The past five years have brought him nothing but success. He vividly remembers the first time he tapped the heels of his Chelsea boots against the sleek marble of the Juilliard and a swarm of admirers, fans, professors gathered around him.

The renowned school of music had invited him as a guest lecturer. Yoongi, a mere boy of 22, fresh out of the same school with a show stopping performance at Carnegie Hall, which was attracting the ears and eyes of people all around the world. He had clammy hands and a flushed neck as he practiced in front of his mirror in his small Brooklyn apartment.

That day, he gained a massive applause and a similarly huge following of budding musicians who looked up to him. He felt uncomfortable, out of place. As if it was not his place to gain the trust of these students, not his place to lead them when he himself didn't know where he was going, not his place to steer them in a direction when he himself looked in the eyes of his favorite professor, Mr. Castillo, to calm his nerves down. But still, he was able to do that.

And now, years later, he sees a dark fog sit upon his mind as he relentlessly tries to navigate through it.

He once thought of what he would do when he got so old that his fingers trembled when they touched the keys, when his back would hunch so he couldn't sit on the seat, when his face would be ridden with wrinkles. He came to the conclusion that at least he would still be able to write music and guide others.

Alas, he now sees himself nowhere near that Yoongi. The Yoongi he sees now is lost, unwanted, with no traces of passion and no will to move forward. He is like stagnant water, dirt and germs piling up on him. His melody is playing the same note again and again, with no chords supporting it, no tempo giving it rhythm; it sounds like a mess.

He is stuck in a happenstance – at least that's what he likes to think. Because his inner turmoil is still not bigger than his ego, and even though he is getting there, it is hard for him to swallow the thought that this is all because of him. He is not ready to accept that this is a domino effect, how one thing led to another, and now here he is.

After all these years, his brain is wired to think he can't do anything wrong. Although that is going haywire, as after years of working on himself and his self derogatory mindset, he is there again. He knows it's because of him, he just isn't ready to accept it.

Because accepting it will put him into a spiral, a dangerous spiral which will suck him in – like the eddy currents of a whirlpool, giving him no chance to escape. He knows he is weak, that's why he doesn't tread on the edge of the ledge, that's why he doesn't let things affect him. But it's high time now.

The emptiness of the auditorium has irked him, mocked him, laughed at him, made his blood boil. His fingers grip the steering wheel tighter as he changes lanes on his way home. An empty home – as empty as the auditorium.

His passion is dying, faster than the flame of a candle on a windy night. And that is concerning. Because Min Yoongi has a steadfast personality, a strong will, and a mindset to never give up. Then why is it that whenever he sits in front of the keys, his fingers refuse to move? Why is it that whenever he thinks of a melody, his fingers refuse to reciprocate it?

There was a period in his life, a few months, when he thought he was on the top of the world. The fall of a musician, and the rise of a celebrity. He didn't know the pianist in him would sleep so soundly when he embraced his public persona. Didn't know that the musician would starve when he fed his fame.

But now he knows what he needs. He needs to get back to the ground, touch his feet on the earth that gave him the platform in the first place. The place where everything started. The place where he dreamt his dream, the place where he found his first friend – a brown piano. The place which will never turn him away.

Home. His safe place. Back to his people, to the ones who never let him feel like he was a failure.

Min Yoongi is returning to Korea and there is nothing left that could change his mind.

taglist : @nuniah @jinsquishes @jeonkookiesworld @sailoryooons @jjkeverlast @aliimac @gimmethatagustd @namjoonwhoresworld @apotatomashedbybts @synnfulqt @saweetspoiled @chimchimmarie @sugababylove84 @axigailxo @yoongukie-ff @instabull @graycosco @wobblewobble822 @jungkooksseuphoria @kalea10 @yoongimarryme3

also, end notes : if you'd like me to tag you in the final fic -- join the taglist (which is permanent so it means you will be tagged in all my fics henceforth) or send me an ask, or reply to this post and I'll tag you in THIS FIC ONLY !! i am not making another form for moonlight sonata because it's too much of work, so it will be better if u reply to this post 🤍

feedback, reblogs and comments are highly appreciated so please let me know your thoughts :)))

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gurugirl · 1 year

Note

Will you give us a little something else for the stepmom!reader fic? I'm really curious about how you'll go about it. Will it be anything like your stepdad!harry one? I hate/love stepdad!harry. I love reading it (super guilty pleasure) but in reality that man would be trash so I also hate him.

I'm really looking forward to the stepmom one though, as a 30 year old woman I feel like usually we see a lot of Harry being older and dominant but it would be fun to look at this in a different perspective with reader being a little older.

YES - i know what you mean about stepdad!harry. he's kind of trash but that's the whole point in that au. it's mostly about the smut. 😂

But for stepmom!reader it's not going to be like that at all. As a woman I cannot see her being toxic in the way I've written harry as stepdad.

This one will have some background about her marriage and the kind of arrangement she and harry's dad have.

While it's still a completely messed up situation, this one will be softer and there will be some pining a bit. I've got almost 20k words written for it already and I'm actually loving it. Harry meets yn when he's in college and an adult so there's nothing too odd about them being attracted to one another. She's about 7 years old than him. Harry will be a virgin but not for lack of confidence or charm. You'll see.

But I'll give you a little teaser below the cut (1.3k words). Enjoy!

She was in sweat shorts and a tank top and tennis shoes with no makeup. She had wanted to shower and get freshened up a little at least. Before Harry arrived. Though, she wasn’t entirely sure he actually would come on Friday as he said.

But then she laughed at herself worrying so much over how she looked to her stepson. A silly silly girl, she thought to herself. Who cares? Why should she care? She was doing all this for his birthday party anyway. And she was his stepmom.

Looking down at the placement of the dancefloor tiles being installed she allowed her mind to drift to that night at the club. His warm skin, his deep voice. The way he handled her like he knew what he was doing… She hated that she had been allowing those kinds of thoughts to trickle in about him. Hated, hated that two days ago when she had sex with Leo it was Harry she was thinking about.

She felt like a nasty and disgusting woman. A pervert.

In the early afternoon, the landscaper had gone and the garden looked like it was ready to be filled in with hundreds of people ready to party. She was proud of the way it turned out. It all looked great.

But she was hungry. She’d eat then shower. Hopefully before Harry arrived. If he arrived that evening.

The chef’s kitchen had a lovely granite island with unstained walnut and wide plank hardwood floors. The refrigerator was ridiculously large. Opening up the state-of-the-art appliance she peered inside trying to find something quick to eat. She planned on having cheese tortellini later on. Leo was out for the day and told her not to wait up. That he would be back late. Some conference or something. It wasn’t abnormal for him to be gone for hours or days. She enjoyed the quiet and loved to eat simple dishes when he wasn’t around. Things that she craved like macaroni and cheese, frozen fish sticks, or cheesy tortellini, and a bottle of wine.

She settled on yogurt and a double serving of granola as she sat at the island. She just needed an in-between lunch and dinner snack to tide her over.

Just before she scooped her last bite into her mouth she heard footsteps and then his voice, “Anyone home?”

She quickly scrambled off her stool and stood up just as he entered the kitchen. His dark curls were perfectly placed on his head and he wore a colorful Hawaiian-style shirt and black jeans with leather Chelsea boots.

“Hi! Yeah, was just eating a snack. Uh, make yourself at home, Harry!” Her tone was a bit too perky and she cringed at how silly she sounded.

Harry smiled gently and nodded as he dropped his gaze to her legs and back up, “Yes ma’am. Just gonna take this up to my room first.” He lifted his duffle bag, “Looks really good out there,” gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder, “Looking forward to it.”

“Oh, so glad you like it. It was some work to get everything just right. The guys setting up were so great, though. There are still a few more things to finish up tomorrow but I think for now we’re on track. But um…” she walked to the sink to rinse her bowl out as she looked over her shoulder at Harry, “I’m, uh… just headed to take a shower, though. Haven’t had the chance yet today. So…” she trailed off her sentence. None of what she was saying mattered to him at all. She was sure of that.

Harry puffed out a quick little laugh, “Okay. Yeah. Well, I’ll be in my room.”

Her shower was delightful but her nerves weren’t soothed. She was wound up tight and now that her stepson was here in her house, alone with her… she closed her eyes to compose herself. A ridiculous woman. A dirty and perverted woman. Who thinks of their stepson in this way? It’s absolutely disgusting. Immoral. Depraved. Evil. But it had all begun with that night and the way he danced with her. Innocent. Until it wasn’t.

She stayed in her room for a while. Not sure how she should go about acting casually in front of Harry. After that night at the bar, how could she? They had crossed a line. She had crossed a line. She took responsibility for this whole mess in her mind. She was the one at fault. Harry was only 20. Well, 21 now. Technically his birthday was today.

Fuck! She’d forgotten to wish him happy birthday!

Pulling her leggings up and slipping on a t-shirt she huffed as she paced the room. Well, now she had to go and tell him and also apologize for the state she was in when he arrived and how she’d forgotten and…

Calm down. He probably doesn’t even care, Y/n.

Knocking at his cracked open bedroom door she peeked in to see that Harry wasn’t in there. She looked down the hallway and for some strange reason she stepped into his room and her eyes landed on his laptop that was open.

Porn.

He was watching porn. Y/n let out a surprised laugh and shook her head. She was overstepping so many boundaries. She looked at the screen as she moved away, intending on leaving his bedroom and going to find him when her eyes landed on the title of the video he had up.

Stepmom and Stepson Share a Bed

Her pulse grew fast and her palms began to sweat. Of course, perhaps that meant nothing. Perhaps that was just something he was watching that he found hot and didn’t realize it was stepmom porn or something…

She backed herself out of the room quickly but when she felt his hands on her shoulders and his voice, that fucking voice that sounded like sex, “You okay? Nearly ran me over-“

But he stopped short. He looked at the bed where his laptop was open and realized what she’d seen. He’d been saving his favorite stepmom porn videos lately. This one was just up. He wasn’t actually watching it before he’d stepped out of the room. It had just been on the screen when he closed out the Word doc he was working on for an essay at school.

“Fuck.” He whispered and released her shoulders, “Y/n, I… look that was just-“

Y/n turned with wide eyes and held her hand up quickly, “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have come in here. I was looking for you to um… I was gonna wish you a happy birthday, and I… I’m the one that should be sorry. That…” she pointed toward his bed, “I shouldn’t have seen that.”

Harry was embarrassed. He felt like crawling under the bed and staying there til the day he died. Never to be seen or heard from again. He was so careless to leave that up like that.

He swallowed and ran his hands over his face and shook his head, “Oh my god. Fuck.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Y/n placed her hand on his forearm and pulled one of his arms down, “Look at me.”

Harry opened his eyes and looked at her like she asked, “No worries okay? That was just nothing. It’s just porn. Everyone looks at porn. It’s normal. Okay?”

“Watching stepmom porn is normal?”

Y/n swallowed. She didn’t think he’d directly come out and say that, “Well… I mean… sure. If there’s a category on Pornhub for it that means someone likes it. You’re not the only one.” She tried to laugh but it died in her throat when Harry clenched his jaw and tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling.

“And besides,” her fingers tightened over his arm, “it’s not like that’s about me anyway. Come on… it’s just porn. So don’t-“

“Of course, it’s about you, Y/n. Why else would I be interested in that kind of thing?”

#ask #firstpost #harry styles #harry styles fic #coming soon #stepmom!reader x harry #harry styles x stepmom!yn #harry styles smut #virgin!harry

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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year

Text

I HAVE TEA

Thank you for Discord awesomeness finding this

WE KNOW WHAT BUILDING JONNY SIMS WRITER MAN HAD IN MIND FOR THE MAGNUS INSTITUTE

youtube

3:43:50

THE CHELSEA COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN

Oh yes

Perfect

#TMA #the magnus archives #the magnus institute #magpod #magnuspod #magnus pod #tma meta #Youtube

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bitter69uk · 10 months

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“Mary Woronov burned herself into my brain when, as a college student in 1966, I first saw her smoldering, imperious performance in Andy Warhol’s epic film Chelsea Girls. She was one of the most original, stylish and articulate sexual personae of the royal House of Warhol. I never forgot her, and I followed her subsequent movie career with great fascination … Warholism, which is my philosophy as a critic, merged the visual and performing arts and closed the gap between high and popular culture. Thirty years later, it can be clearly seen that the Warhol Factory, with all its riveting decadent excesses, was as seminal an avant-garde circle as that of the Dadaists and Surrealists after World War I in Paris.”

/ Camille Paglia from the back cover blurb on Mary Woronov’s 1995 autobiography Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory /

Born on this day 80 years ago (8 December 1943): insolent Warhol Superstar turned queen of cult movies, actress, writer, visual artist and recovered amphetamine enthusiast … Mary Woronov! I love the strikingly angular Woronov’s deadpan performances, resting bitch face and witheringly contemptuous voice in Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972) (which is recommended Christmas viewing by the way), Death Race 2000 (1975), Rock’n’Roll High School (1979) and Eating Raoul (1982). But hell, Woronov is even great value doing guest spots on episodes of Charlie’s Angels (1976) and Murder, She Wrote (1985). One of the best things she ever did was play the mother in punk band Suicidal Tendencies’ 1983 video “Institutionalized” (“All I wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi, and she wouldn't give it to me”). Pictured: sullen young Woronov as Hanoi Hannah in Chelsea Girls (1966).

#mary woronov #cult cinema #underground cinema #warhol superstar #camille paglia #lobotomy room #exploding plastic inevitable #chelsea girls #speed freak #cult movies #eating raoul #rocknroll high school #silent night bloody night

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rimouskis · 2 months

Note

omg now all i want to know is everything about your music taste. what do u like. how do u curate playlists or do u listen only straight thru albums? if you had to pick your five favorite genres and one song from each genre, what songs and genres would u pick? what genre do you feel like u listen to the least? the most ? what's the three most fascinating albums you've ever listened to. i need to know 🫧🎶

I sincerely believe the question is more “what DON’T I like”!

Alright this is a fun way to spend my Friday night in after walking 8 miles today and then doing dinner with friends ahahah so 1. Thank you for this and 2. Let’s go through this point by point:

1. What do I like? Man… I like a lot of music. I’ve gone through phases in my life: I was raised on my dad’s love of 80s/90s rock (think INXS, U2, Melissa Etheridge, Peter Gabriel), I discovered KISS FM in middle school and was a fiend for Top 50 pop then (the pussycat dolls were my everything back then lol isn’t it hilarious that I didn’t figure out I was gay until my 20s. also timbaland was consistently on my favorite songs.)

then in seventh grade I did a heel turn and got really into metal after my older cousin lent me his iPod at thanksgiving (I really liked Disturbed’s album Ten Thousand Fists)... then within the same year I did an even MORE hilarious, second heel turn and discovered K-pop, which I lived & breathed for like two years (my favorite band was SHINee; I still sometimes pop into the K-pop world to sample what’s coming out these days, though I don’t know the new generation of bands well).

THEN in high school the indie alt pop phenomenon hit and I was all in on the bands of the time… bastille, alt j, the 1975 (before they really blew up, #hipster), glass animals, lorde, walk the moon, chvrches, x ambassadors, the naked and the famous, halsey, grouplove, milky chance… like, if it was on tumblr, I was listening to it, hahaha.

Then in college I got really into alternative music, like chelsea wolfe and susanne sundfør and son lux and ms mr.

In adulthood I find that all this musical influence has meant that I like all kinds of music. I like trashy pop country. I like heavy rock. I like top 50 pop. I like rap. I like hyperpop. I like 80s synth pop. I like indie folk. I like it all, man. I have been in a pretty heavy rock era for the last, like… four, five years, though, so I think I probably primarily register as a rock listener, and if we were to get even more granular, I really love guitar-forward rock.

2. I’m a HUGE user of playlists. Spotify is the only streaming service I pay for, and I’ll pay for it for many many years, I imagine, haha.

I have over 100 playlists on there and really enjoy curating them as a little art form for myself. I rarely listen to albums, which I kind of think is too bad, because I DO think the album ~as a cohesive piece of art~ is kind of becoming a lost art in the age of streaming, and I’m not helping the cause at all.

But, on the flip side, playlist curation is a really enjoyable form of curatorial art, imo, and I deeply love and appreciate it. I love making playlists for anything and everything. One of my favorite playlist I’ve ever made is actually a reylo playlist, lol. I also made a killer Batman playlist after seeing rpattz’s batman, and I have some good old check please playlists as well. Fun fun stuff.

3. This is HARD but okay, I can do this…

Alt/indie rock: “Change For You” by Friday Pilots Club

Pop punk: “Why Do I?” By Set It Off

Electronic: “Fake” by Mystery Skulls (BUT A VERY VERY VERY CLOSE SECOND IS “DANCEFLOOR” by NOISY and Charlotte Plank)

Folk: “Leaf Off/The Cave” by José González

Rock: “Thrown Away” by VAST

Since three of those are rock/rockish offshoots (I am who I am, sorry), I’ll give you a few more divergent others:

rap would be “Boss Bitch” by Doja Cat OR “Von den fernen Bergen” by Ali As

house would be “Derezzed” by Daft Punk

disco would be “You Win Again” by The Bee Gees [my dad loves disco lol so… so do I]

country would be any and all Orville Peck [though normally my country tastes veer WAY WAY WAY trashy country pop lol sorry but it’s catchy]

and my pop pick is obviously Most Perfect Pop Song Of All Time, “Lonely Dancers” by Conan Gray

4. The genre I listen the least to is R&B, probably. I wasn’t raised listening to it and I’ve never really gained a taste for it, even though other genres I wasn’t raised listening to (country and rap, for example) DID grow on me. That being said, I really enjoy THEY., who is technically categorized as R&B.

Like I said earlier, I was really raised on rock music and I think that foundationally I am just a Rock Music Kinda Gal. I love guitars so much, man. But a close second is probably pop. Just as I was created to love guitars, so too was I created to love synths.

5. What makes an album “fascinating”? 🤔 I think this is hard, because first and foremost I am not an album listener, but also I don’t think I examine my music through a critical lens of fascination. I usually operate on a pure “how-much-straight-up-dopamine-is-being-poured-into-my-system?” scale when it comes to music, haha. Like, I’m not even primarily a listener of lyrics. I pay attention to the music first.

That being said…

Album 01 is going to be “Strange Trails” by Lord Huron. To be very, very annoying: I was into Lord Huron since their first album, and when they blew up due to a song from "Strange Trails" getting included in the TV show 13 Reasons Why, I was very annoyed because I think their sonic output shifted, and for the worse.

Anyways, I maintain that their first two albums are as close to perfect as albums get, and “Strange Trails” is what I find to be their strongest narrative album. There’s a whole storyline through the album that follows a fictional character Ben, the frontman, created. There was a comic book to accompany the album too, and I think the storyline is very lovely and I love some tragic love and magic wrapped into my music:) My favorite song off of “Strange Trails” is “Fool for Love.”

Album 02 is going to be “Bad Blood” by Bastille, which I also find to be Bastille’s finest work. Dan Smith wrote all these songs by himself in his den and—I really believe—perfectly embodied and channeled the sound of the 2010s indie moment. The entire album is so strong, and not only is it so strong that it doesn’t have any skips… even the EXTENDED version, “All This Bad Blood,” has no skips. Whatever Dan was fermenting in the lead up to “Bad Blood”’s release, it was pure gold. Nothing else quite captures the feeling of it being 2012 as much as this album. My favorite song off off “Bad Blood” is “Icarus” <3

Album 03 is going to be “Dream Machine” by Des Rocs. Des is on a one-man cocaine-fueled mission from God to bring back hard glam rock and I sincerely could not support his mission more. He constantly churns out bangers (his EPs “Martyr Parade” and “Let the Vultures In” are also worth checking out) but I found his songwriting to be simply ~exceptional~ on “Dream Machine.” I think he’s wonderful at writing evocative, classic-rock inspired lyrics that read as poetry to me:) From “Natural Born Thriller”:

Roll, thunder, roll / Riding like a freight train down on the tip of your tongue

Rattle in your bones / Shockwave ripping through the sky, in and out of your lungs

Love, lock and load / Fire in your eyes and you’re ready when the fever gonna come

Way down the road / Big wheels turning to the rhythm of the blood-red sun

Half a man and half apocalypse / The chase, the thrill, that you cannot resist

Day and night, every time / That one there is a natural-born thriller

Like MAN... that’s poetry in action to me. That’s just good writing. I also find the lyrics and storytelling of “In the Night” fantastic, and “Dream Machine” is such a perfect tone-setting, atmosphere-building track for that album to open on. It’s just one of the best constructed albums I’ve heard, full of bangers. My favorite song off it is probably “Natural Born Thriller.”

Damn that took me like two hours to get through, mostly because I got to experience the joy of scrolling through all my music and painfully selecting a few. This was delightful. Thank you, anon!

#this is terrifyingly long btw. just warning you.

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goddamnwebcomics · 4 months

Text

My Brief Review of Peterverse (Peter and Company + Peter and Whitney)

(I felt I should take things full circle with the image used)

When I first was asked to riff these comics, I thought they were going to suck. Like, REALLY suck. A lot of people had told me that these were going to be the worst comics I would ever riff…

What I instead got was a fine comic, yes, there was some bad writing, there was a lot of AWFUL moments, there were some very questionable creative decisions and a sequel that was completely 100% unnecessary. But I will elaborate more on the rest of the review of Peterverse.

PLOT AND WRITING

Peterverse is split into two main comics, Peter and Company, a formerly semi-autobiographical slice of life fantasy comic, and Peter and Whitney, autobiographical romantic comedy.

In Peter and Company, Peter is a young lonely boy who struggles with social anxiety, both him and his only friend neurodivergent lizard Iggy are both watched over by mysterious guardians. Implied to be angels but nothing else is given about them, guardians job is to accompany lonely children across their childhood into their adulthood after which they seem to disappear from their memories. Peter has many different trials and tribulations during his formative years. He has a rivalry with the local alleged bully Chelsea, his parents don’t have time for him, his teacher is a violent orc, he develops another rivalry with a mouse named Tracy over a failed school project, not to mention his guardian Seth treats him like a piece of garbage sometimes. However it’s not all bad, as a girl named Whitney moves to town and it is Peter’s job to overcome his social anxiety and talk to her but nothing ever seems to go right for the poor guy. We also sometimes follow a monkey delivery boy and his obnoxious talking pet dog Edd who seems to show bizarre abilities.

In Peter and Whitney, Peter is grown up and Guardian-less, and he has just graduated high school and we learn Whitney moved out at some point. However, coincidence of all coincidences, Whitney is moving to the same art college he is. They don’t run into eachother immediately, as Peter also meets some new friends and some old enemies like Tracy who is still holding a grudge against him. Eventually however, the two meet and then zzzzz mimimi zzzzz mimimi.

Yeah as you can tell, even by the synopsises alone, Peter and Company is the heavyweight of the Peterverse. In fact it is the main comic, while Peter and Whitney only allegedly exists because there were people only interested in Peter and Whitney’s adult shenanigans and as a matter of fact the comic will eventually become a journal comic cataloging the daily events of Peter and Whitney’s real life inspirations. This might as well lead to the key aspect of both P&C and P&W, the autobiographical elements. Jon Ponikvar is not shy about what aspects of both comics were inspired by whatever happened to him in the past, this leads to the questionable element of including real people from his past and, rather than combining them or modifying them, the characters are quite blatantly transparently based on them and sometimes made out to be antagonists, like with Chelsea and Tracy. It really isn’t an issue until you learn about it through Jon’s very detailed authors notes on every page and then it can feel uncomfortable. It also doesn’t help for the longest time Peter and Company, the more fantastical of two comics was “semi-autobiographical”, which is a deranged non-description at best. There is also the inclusion of Whitney who Peter I mean Jon didn’t know until she was in college, and it doesn’t help the character uses her real name, leading to some misunderstandings that other characters in the comic also use the real person’s names they’re based on.

Now that we’ve addressed elephant in the room, let’s talk about the strengths of Jon’s writing. I think what he is best at is the balance of tone between serious and comedic stuff. And serious stuff has got a lot of effort behind it. Some of the best stories especially, ironically enough, involve Chelsea and her guardian Persephoni. P&C does also have some genuinely intriguing fantasy elements but these are never elaborated upon.

Comedy is more of a hit and miss, it has more funny punchlines than most comics I’ve riffed but it also creates characters who are comedic for the purpose of being comedic while also breaking the nature of the comic, I will elaborate more on these in the character section. I can’t say any of the punchlines are laugh riots but best of them will give you a worthy chuckle.

Jon’s biggest weakness (aside from the real life inclusion stuff) when it comes to writing is his tendency to drop a shock twist every arc. Two infamous examples of this include Whitney hooking up with a character we’ve never seen before called Jake at the end of Valentines arc, and Peter having another character we’ve never seen before become his secret admirer. Also he is bad at introducing new characters, like Kel, whose personality is never defined or shown in his debut arc, and when he shows up again he might as well be a different character. There is ONE plot twist that only works because, perhaps unintentionally, it has Jon taking advantage of his own flaws. A new character called Chloe debuts out of nowhere and it seems to be another Kel situation but later we learn it is actually Persephoni in disguise, who wanted to accompany Chelsea to the school and spend more time with her.

More of a minor problem is the presence of a floating timeline, sometimes modern (at the time) video games and movies make their way into the comic just because Jon talks about them. If you’re expecting accuracy to the time Jon grew up, there is none of it here. It’s a floating timeline and anachronism is the only history.

But most of writing positives and negatives I listed were from P&C, P&W on the other hand, is so lacking in any sort of conflict, it feels way too sappy. I will elaborate how it ruins the established characters later, but it really never has any real conflict and it feels real empty as a resutt. Okay there is one conflict whose existence makes no sense, and that is Tracy. Tracy is an asshole to Peter when she first appears in P&C, this carries onto P&W which was being worked on at the same time. However, since Tracy was based on a real person and people started hating her, Jon backpedalled and basically retconned Tracy forgiving Peter in BOTH comics at once.

Peter and Whitney is pretty much harmed by Peter and Company existing at the same time. It shouldn’t have been written. It should have at least been a non-narrative diary comic and it probably would have worked a bit better.

CHARACTERS

The center of the Peterverse is Peter, a brown cat that I already talked about. He is our protagonist and in both comics he is bad in different ways. In P&C he is an idiot child whose social anxiety is exaggerated to unrelatable levels. He is also a troublemaker and most problems in his life are his own fault. Not helping him is Seth, even if Peter is kind of an idiot, Seth is always snarking and sometimes downright abusing the poor kid. Seth does have hidden depths to him, but admittedly he works as a character more when Peter is not on-screen and he is entangled in guardian drama and his own mysterious past.

In P&W, Peter has lost his social anxiety to the point it’s in the negatives. In fact, he is too socially successful, instantly forging lifelong friendships just by saying Hi. He also lacks the mischieviousness of his old self, like, outside of two instances. In P&W porn comics however, which I haven’t mentioned until now, Peter actually gains some of his shy wimpiness from P&C back. As sad as it is to say, the porn comic version of Peter feels more like P&C version of Peter grown up than the P&W one.

The secondary character for P&W and also P&C later on is Whitney. She…exists? No seriously she doesn’t have much personality besides “this is the character based on my wife”. The only time she had a character was when she was angered by Jake’s stupidity. She doesn’t even exchange a word with Peter until very late into P&C’s existence. You would say that’s part of the problem but P&W version of Whitney is not much better. She is just a nerd girl, and she exists to be the destined love interest of Peter except more sexy this time. Whatever, let’s move on.

Then we have Peter’s best friend and the badly aged presentation of neurodivergent children, Iggy. A lot of early punchlines for Iggy have him be the quirky child who is afraid of frisbees and believes in aliens who speaks in Crayon speak. That being said, later down the line, not only does Iggy become a good friend, he admittedly feels more of a love interest to Whitney than Peter does in some parts of P&C, mainly because he never jumps into a bush. We also learn that he has ADHD without the comic saying he has ADHD which is why his mother is an overprotective Karen, which helps to give him more sympathy. In P&W however he has lost his quirky qualifies, we learn that he ends up dating Peter’s sister, and also he grows a goatee. He doesn’t really do much besides shutting down Peter’s roommate trying to hit on the sister.

Speaking of, there is Peter’s family, which consists of his mother, father and sister. And the sister appears a lot and plays a role in some of the punchlines and more dramatic stories, but not enough because I’ve forgotten her name. Depending on the story she is more paranoid than Peter, or she is a bully, or she is streetsmart. She’s not really written consistently.

Sigh…speaking of inconsistently written characters, it’s time to address the second elephant in the room. Chelsea. You can’t talk about Chelsea without talking about her real life inspiration. She was Jon’s childhood bully who later became his friend, but then they had a bridgeburning in the adulthood due to political differences, Jon considered extending the olive branch only for her to tragically pass away. Basing her completely on this person instead of making a completely original character was just the first of many really bad creative decisions Jon did in regards to this character. The thing is, this was always preventable because in the original version of Peter and Company Jon does not want you to read, Chelsea was a quirky girl with weird tendencies, but at no point was she implied to be a bully. However in the reboot, Chelsea became an alleged bully. We don’t see her bully Peter at any point but Peter still wants to punish her. Then we later learn she has a weird crush on Peter, and she ends up tricking Peter into almost murdering Whitney by giving her some perfume loaded with things Whitney is allergic to. Granted, Peter was 100% to blame in that last story due to randomly trusting the girl she blindly hated until that point, and him not knowing about Whitney’s allergies could also be blamed on Peter’s inability to socialize with her, but the story ended up punishing Chelsea instead of Peter.

After that, Chelsea started being somewhat course-corrected. We learned that she is an orphan, and she has a guardian named Persephoni who cares deeply about her but can’t show it because she is forced to be disguised as a pet rabbit in her proximity. She goes on to improve in the context of the story, but none of it would be possible without Persephoni who is the best character in P&C. Her presence makes more hateable characters like Seth and Eddie feel more likeable, she isn’t afraid of calling out others for acting like idiots. She also possesses the ability to shapeshift, and she does use the shapeshift ability to create her new persona, Chloe, who is based on another girl she used to be a guardian to.

Even if Chelsea has the best moment in the comic, I don’t think that best moment would be possible without Persephoni. Without her, Chelsea is quite possibly the most botched concept of a character I’ve seen in any webcomic I’ve read. She is an example of how to NOT write characters based on real people.

But if Chelsea wasn’t the most terribly handled character in the comic, that title would probably go to Tracy. I already talked about Tracy before so we’ll move on.

While Chelsea and Tracy are littered with irredeemable creative decisions, I don’t think they are the worst characters in the comic. That title belongs to characters whose sole purpose is to be wacky and funny but also not provide any depth. The Clownshitters, consisting of Jon’s childhood creations, The Worms, Peter’s orc teacher Korgar, the Ghosthunters trying to prove existence of Guardians, and local mailman Jeff the Monkey and his talking dog who irritates him to no end, Eddy. Eddy acts like a clownshitter OUTSIDE of the segments where he talks with other guardians, as Eddy is actually a leading guardian who is responsible for delivering letters to guardians about their former children and their current whereabouts. Unfortunately Eddy is an irritating little bitch who torments Jeff, not that Jeff is that much likable. He is a loser with no connections to other characters in the comic. He is a very average “oh no my life sucks” type of character but he is still better compared to other clownshitters who often waste our time, especially Ghosthunters and Korgar. Ghosthunters are even hated by Jon himself whereas Korgar was popular at some point but seems to have been written out of the comic for now due to his joke stopping to be funny, when, spoiler alert, it never was that funny. And to think Korgar almost got his own spinoff comic, but even that would’ve been better than P&W.

Speaking of P&W, the only exclusives to that comic aren’t that important. They’re all nicey nice people Jon knew in his college, and then there is Gene who is constantly trying to bang chicks and irritate Peter, but even he doesn’t really provide conflict. The only original character that has any sort of substance is Whitney’s new friend Jess, because she has few funny punchlines and she acts as Tracy’s sidekick during her short Peter hatred.

Rest of the characters in both comics are pretty forgettable. Minor characters that I liked the most were Peter’s music teacher William and Whitney’s snarky brother Rob. There was also Jake, Whitney’s boyfriend, a character I hated at first due to how he came out of nowhere to serve drama, but eventually I grew to love to hate him because of his non-subversive constant nice guy attitude.

ART

The art in P&C starts off pretty ugly looking. It tries to be like every furry comic from that time period, with elongated facial expressions and exaggerated motions, not to mention the overuse of smug Eric Schwartz glances. Overtime, as the comic goes from newspaper format to full comic format, the art slowly but surely gets better. It goes from rough and sketchy to somewhat cutesy. This style is fine and all, but backgrounds are often lacking in detail…when they are not filled with unnecessary cameos. Seriously, one of the worst things about later days of both comics are the amount of cameos, and some of these cameos don’t even work in this comic’s settings, as there’s cameos from dragons, weird snake people and fucking UBOA.

The cute style works fine in P&C and P&W, but not Jon’s porn comics. I mean the porn comics he did 13 years ago worked because they had more of a rough style and more of the Eric Schwartz inspiration, but the modern ones just look way too polished to be sexy. It’s genuinely offputting, and if Kit n Kay Boodle didn’t exist it might be the most offputting art style for a porn webcomic I’ve ever seen.

Admittedly there is a lack of variety with non-cameo and non-clownshitter characters sometimes. Jon has been drawing identical looking characters for so long, the new characters who are introduced often suffer from Same Skull Syndrome, especially the new characters in P&W. They’re all different species but placement of their mouths and eyes are interchangeable. At least the characters do look like the species they’re trying to represent…most of the time. The guy who is supposed to be a chipmunk looks way too much like a cat to pass off as one.

There’s also the subtle character changes in between P&C and P&W, as characters have aged. Problem is Peter looks near identical, and so does Whitney except Whitney has big boobs now. Sure you’ve got characters like Tracy, Iggy and Peter’s sister who actually look like they’ve grown up but if our main protagonists don’t look like they’ve actually changed, it can be a bit…hard to take the more sexual tension-filled P&W seriously. However, it does get a bit better in some of the newer pages but not by much.

FINAL WORDS

Peter and Company is a comic that has good amount of depth and intrigue, despite its flawed portrayal of characters, terrible cast of comedy characters, extremely questionable creative decisions and sometimes gimmicky writing. The drama and the ongoing mysteries may keep the readers hooked, but it will be a long time before any of the plot threads get satisfying conclusions. Still it is probably one of the better webcomics i have riffed but that’s not saying much.

On the other hand, Peter and Whitney is genuinely a slog to get through and it should not exist. It makes almost everything in Peter and Company look better by comparison outside of the treatment of Chelsea. it is the definition of “Dull is worse than bad”, because at least Peter and Company can get a reaction out of you.

As a whole, Peterverse is a mixed bag when you ignore behind the scenes bullshit. It has some very high points, some very low points and a ton of white noise in between.

When it came to my coverage of Peterverse, I did a lot of mistakes. I don’t know, with everything that has happened during my riff, I think everyone who suggested it, everyone who reported about it and everyone who only wanted me to talk about the drama want to move on. And I especially want to move on.

Read it if you want to read it, or don’t read it. i don’t care. Don’t expect me to ever revisit it again. But whatever you do, Be VERY fucking careful if you should choose to join Jon's Discord

#peter and company #peter and whitney #review

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